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Religions are memetic organisms subject to survival of the fittest and this strikes me as similar to a fallacy present in thinking about genetics and evolution

Religions are memetic organisms subject to survival of the fittest and this strikes me as similar to a fallacy present in thinking about genetics and evolution as the idea that evolved features must have some use otherwise they wouldn't have evolved. Sometimes animals just do be like that, since it doesn't harm their fitness, and it seems likely to me that the same is true for most features of religions.

TulliusCicero 2y ago
The bigger issue imo is the assumption that because something is effective/useful this must necessarily "solve a problem (for society)".
- djtango 2y ago
  I am someone who enjoys challenging the status quo and am generally living unconventionally but I think we've swung too far in the opposite direction of being skeptical of practices of our forebears. For example it is suddenly all the rage to study the health benefits of breathing or meditation. But this has been common knowledge amongst yoga and qigong practitioners for 1000+ years. If you are scientifically minded, a lot of the explanations of how qigong works are hard to reconcile but if you actually try it earnestly you'd realise there's something there. Sure, a 1000 year old model has the wrong explanations, but all models are wrong some are useful. Empiricism gives us so much false confidence when we often still can't measure many things and often don't know what to measure. Especially so when real true reproducible science is hard, slow, and expensive. So for me, starting from a prior "maybe people do do this thing for a reason even if they themselves have forgotten why" can be useful
  - TulliusCicero 2y ago
    > But this has been common knowledge amongst yoga and qigong practitioners for 1000+ years. Okay, but there's also "common knowledge" amongst practitioners of yoga or qigong or other traditional practices that's complete bullshit. There's good reason to not just accept that traditional practices must be smart automatically. > If you are scientifically minded, a lot of the explanations of how qigong works are hard to reconcile but if you actually try it earnestly you'd realise there's something there. I'm guessing they're less "hard to reconcile" and more "completely made up".
    - djtango 2y ago
      Everything is completely made up. Atoms don't exist they're just a phenomenon we have observed and conceptualised - today's explanations are our best attempts at conceptualising them. We were perfectly able to use fire (and the Romans even had a prototype of the steam engine) long before Lavoisier had a working model of gases and stoichiometry. The model for what qigong is and what qi is can be wrong while still being helpful. Having worked on it I'd argue that it is a mental model / visualisation technique for honing your body awareness and mind-body connection. Visualisation techniques proliferate everywhere. I've been taught visualisations in swimming, martial arts, yoga and singing - so who cares if qigong is "completely made up" if the visualisation training achieved the goal. Only just recently in some self practice on the piano I was trying to achieve a specific multi-voicing effect on a tiny passage and have practiced this single bar at least 5+ hours. I finally had a breakthrough when I stopped trying to control the individual velocity and depth of my presses and just imagined I was whispering the secondary voice. I'm not whispering anything on that piano and my fingers are still just pressing keys. Its as made up as when I imagine I'm playing woodwind instruments during a Mozart adagio but it still accomplishes the effect. This is all airy fairy but my point is that actually my experience has taught me that for certain things, especially where the body is involved trying to think in mechanics or vertebrae and muscles is a lot less useful than imagining you're Mount Everest peaking above the clouds reaching for the sun.

TulliusCicero 2y ago

The bigger issue imo is the assumption that because something is effective/useful this must necessarily "solve a problem (for society)".

djtango 2y ago
I am someone who enjoys challenging the status quo and am generally living unconventionally but I think we've swung too far in the opposite direction of being skeptical of practices of our forebears. For example it is suddenly all the rage to study the health benefits of breathing or meditation. But this has been common knowledge amongst yoga and qigong practitioners for 1000+ years. If you are scientifically minded, a lot of the explanations of how qigong works are hard to reconcile but if you actually try it earnestly you'd realise there's something there. Sure, a 1000 year old model has the wrong explanations, but all models are wrong some are useful. Empiricism gives us so much false confidence when we often still can't measure many things and often don't know what to measure. Especially so when real true reproducible science is hard, slow, and expensive. So for me, starting from a prior "maybe people do do this thing for a reason even if they themselves have forgotten why" can be useful
- TulliusCicero 2y ago
  > But this has been common knowledge amongst yoga and qigong practitioners for 1000+ years. Okay, but there's also "common knowledge" amongst practitioners of yoga or qigong or other traditional practices that's complete bullshit. There's good reason to not just accept that traditional practices must be smart automatically. > If you are scientifically minded, a lot of the explanations of how qigong works are hard to reconcile but if you actually try it earnestly you'd realise there's something there. I'm guessing they're less "hard to reconcile" and more "completely made up".
  - djtango 2y ago
    Everything is completely made up. Atoms don't exist they're just a phenomenon we have observed and conceptualised - today's explanations are our best attempts at conceptualising them. We were perfectly able to use fire (and the Romans even had a prototype of the steam engine) long before Lavoisier had a working model of gases and stoichiometry. The model for what qigong is and what qi is can be wrong while still being helpful. Having worked on it I'd argue that it is a mental model / visualisation technique for honing your body awareness and mind-body connection. Visualisation techniques proliferate everywhere. I've been taught visualisations in swimming, martial arts, yoga and singing - so who cares if qigong is "completely made up" if the visualisation training achieved the goal. Only just recently in some self practice on the piano I was trying to achieve a specific multi-voicing effect on a tiny passage and have practiced this single bar at least 5+ hours. I finally had a breakthrough when I stopped trying to control the individual velocity and depth of my presses and just imagined I was whispering the secondary voice. I'm not whispering anything on that piano and my fingers are still just pressing keys. Its as made up as when I imagine I'm playing woodwind instruments during a Mozart adagio but it still accomplishes the effect. This is all airy fairy but my point is that actually my experience has taught me that for certain things, especially where the body is involved trying to think in mechanics or vertebrae and muscles is a lot less useful than imagining you're Mount Everest peaking above the clouds reaching for the sun.