The hunt for Nigerians who can change into cats | Hacker News Reader

The hunt for Nigerians who can change into cats

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132 pointscodezero207 comments

This is the kind of thing (Korean fan death is another) that sends me into a momentary spiral as I rack my brain for any scientifically indefensible convictions I may hold myself. Of course I don't come up with anything—that's the whole issue—save for the fact that I, out of sheer ignorance and blind faith in what I've been told by various authorities (and, to a much lesser degree, by what I've observed personally), generally believe in peer-reviewed, effectively canonized science.

It's easy to point to western religions as examples of this kind of thing, but I think there are plenty of other unverifiable (or even effectively disproven) but deeply felt beliefs that proliferate among both the right and the left, some of which are deeply dangerous and only gaining momentum.

"Don't swim for 30 minutes after eating, you'll get cramps and drown" is one I've heard in the US from multiple people

"Hydration", or "8 glasses of water a day" is another one.

Your kidneys work, if you aren't thirsty (barring certain medical conditions) you don't need to drink water.

There's no such thing as "dehydration without being thirsty" on a routine basis. You'll develop a pretty powerful thirst at 2% water depletion, and for most healthy adults you need to see 4% or more for negative effects.

Drinking a lot of water can be helpful - if you expect to perspire heavily from temperature and/or physical exertion but that is a different kettle of fish.

It can be very difficult communicating people new to the Phoenix area just how much water they need to drink during the summer if they are going to exert themselves outdoors.

I am French and travelled menu times to Phoenix for business. I loved the place (Scottsdale) and was once invited to play golf there (my first golf experience).

I was slowly turning into lyophilized me, fortunately I could give up at the 9th hole and went to immediately drink 2 liters of water.

Drinking a lot of water prior to exertion isn't helpful. You'll just piss it out.

I’m not an expert, but 20 years ago I had a small part in DARPA research into monitoring soldiers’ hydration. The idea was that people in combat often don’t notice they are thirsty, or power through it, and as a result are operating at reduced cognitive and physical capacity. Of course, that’s combat. And for all I know the funding was based on the popular misunderstanding.

Yes, and marathon runners or other people in extreme situations need to drink before they're thirsty so that they keep their intake high enough. But those are really extreme situations, most people walking around with a water bottle aren't sweating out 2 liters per hour.

Nonsense. As we age, our sense of thirst diminishes. Senior citizens are at higher risk of dehydration.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/drink-up-dehydration-is-a...

That's true, and that's why I said "healthy adults" - Senior citizens are in a special category where they may need to drink before they are feeling thirst, but most people are not senior citizens (yet?). The average person walking around with a water bottle doesn't need to drink before they're thirsty.

Is there such thing as a "blood hygrometer" (for lack of a better description) that could objectively tell you when you're dehydrated?

Dehydration skews a lot of blood values. Hematocrit is probably the most direct, since it's the percentage of red blood cells in a volume. Dehydration decreases the volume, and thus increases hematocrit. Electrolytes get out of whack too.

In practice, I don't think anyone really does this: thirst, urine/sweat, and weight are very easy to measure, and the obvious next step would be pulse or blood pressure.

I was thinking more along the lines of whether there is something like a continuous glucose monitor but for dehydration, which could beep or otherwise alert a semi-independent elderly person that they are becoming dehydrated so they could get some water before it started to stress their kidneys. Like those pill boxes with alarm clocks built in so they don't forget to take medication.

But I'm aware there are various issues with CGM's (a friend has one, which may act as an insulin pump as well, and complains that the needle needs to be moved around every so often as the attachment site stops giving accurate readings). The cost/benefit probably isn't there, if an elderly person cannot control their own hydration they probably also aren't able to adequately care for a CGM or similar monitor. If it was something you could implant into the body and poll wirelessly it might have some value.

That might be overkill.

I think you could get 99% of the way there with a reminder at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm to have a glass of water. With a few exceptions (e.g., heart failure), there's no real harm in moderately overdoing it--you'll just pee it out.

Now that I have my own children, I'm convinced this myth is a delay tactic perpetuated by parents :)

Yep, white lies. The underlying rationale is that kids do throw up in pools and you don't want to get into a public argument with a kid about how they're not going to throw up, can they go in pretty please.

It's like the thing about getting arrested for turning on the lights inside a moving car. No, you won't get arrested, but the reflection on the windshield can be annoying, and getting distracted by kids going ham on flicking the lights on and off is obviously dangerous.

See also, school "permanent records".

I think the white lie is even simpler.

As a kid, I always wanted to go swimming (swimming pool or sea) as soon as I finished eating. My parents told me not to because of the cramps. "You must wait an hour before swimming".

It wasn't about throwing up and as an adult I finally understand it: they wanted to have a chat at the table after eating, take it slowly, maybe they were a bit drowsy. What they didn't want to do was to look after kids doing potentially dangerous activities such as swimming. So that hour of waiting? A period of grace for them to enjoy their meal and maybe rest for a short while.

Exactly! Parental relief.

Nah, it's definitely the hygiene thing. Pools often forbid food and drinks at the deck for the same reason: if someone dirties the pool water, they basically need to close off the whole pool and recycle the pool water for a few hours, which is super inconvenient for all parties involved (and obviously embarrassing for the parents of the kid who made the mess). You'd be surprised at how often these things happen.

Ask me how I know :)

In British Columbia, Canada, the BC Motor Vehicle Act mentions interior lamps in connection with larger passenger vehicles. In addition to requiring that they have them, it has this requirement that they be on while driving at night:

  Interior lamp
    10.20 (1) A commercial passenger vehicle shall be equipped with a
              lamp or lamps within the vehicle so arranged to illuminate
              the aisle of the vehicle to the rear of the driver.

           (2) A person driving a commercial pass enger vehicle having a
               seating capacity including the driver of more than 12 occupants
               shall insure that the light or lights referred to in subsection
               (1) are illuminated at all times that passengers are being
               carried between sunset and sunrise.

AFAIK, that's meant for buses, and it's the same rationale as airplane floor lights (i.e. illumination is necessary to avoid falls from tripping in the dark, e.g. if the passenger is going to the toilet, which some buses have).

I can't find any other mention of interior lamps in the same traffic code document.

We had a child swim in our pool immediately after eating and she threw up. Probably where that one came from. Kind of like how it is bad luck to open an umbrella inside. It's not bad luck, but somebody might get poked in the eye.

Even if wrong, it seems harmless enough.

Even if I believed that, I wouldn't, say, avoid jumping out of a burning ship into the water just because I just had a meal.

I'm from the Netherlands; I always heard that's because you might get a bit too excited and throw up your food. The 30 minutes are to allow your stomach to settle a bit.

I don't recall the original interaction anymore but I remember confronting my mother in my early 30's about her telling me the one about gum staying in your stomach for 7 years. She had no recollection of having done that, and argued that being a nurse she would have never told us that.

But apparently younger me was convinced that story came from her and not from the schoolyard rumor mill.

An amusing thing about such myths is that instead of abandoning them outright, we wrap them in auxiliary myths such as not wanting kids to throw up.

On the other hand, how long does it take to know that your kids haven't gotten food poisoning from the food that would be served near a swimming pool?

It's presumably not just food poisoning--it'd be exercise-induced.

That getting a cold does/does not come from exposure to low temperatures is a strong conviction I've encountered in both versions.

Those I can understand. It doesn't really take magical thinking, some viruses perform better at colder temperatures.

Things like magnetic bangles, crystals and other stuff does appear in the west. I can't say how prevalent. Anecdotally it wasn't common amongst western researchers I've known, at least not outwardly.

Ah, I can point out some along those lines, too. Acupressure. Chiropractors. Horoscopes.

Less fringe, but also less magical: the notion that a wild animal will abandon their young if a human touches them. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but only on a second thought.

If a human touchea a young wild animal, the human will abandon life soon; is that what you meant?

There's an entire trend of witchiness with the secular, where they disavow traditional western beliefs but subscribe to paganistic beliefs on spells, charms, and magic. This stuff isn't uncommon at all honestly

It is easy to understand why people might assume so. There is a correlation. In colder temperatures people gather in indoor spaces and that helps spread the virus.

The reasons respiratory illnesses tend to be more prevalent in winter are not so definitively understood.

I'm not a medic but it would seem rational to me that if viruses spread from one person to another then when people are close together in a group in a room for longer periods of time and the same air circulates in the room rather than get blown a way by wind outside, then it is much easier to spread the virus.

From what I've understood, being cold weakens your immune system. So while the main cause is the closer contact to others, the cold weather does make it more likely to get sick.

That's a very wishy-washy response without an effect size, though.

It's the kind of thing that's hard to quantify. But we have good reasons why cold weather weakens your immune system with how it effects mucus production. And people with weaker immune systems get sick more often. Therefore, stay warm to reduce chance of illness

Unless it's like half a percent of the base rate, in which case you're wasting effort and failing to enjoy situations for no good reason.

Getting sick less is a secondary benefit of not getting hypothermia. Being cold isn't really an enjoyable thing.

> Being cold isn't really an enjoyable thing.

Sometimes it can be.

Sometimes there are tradeoffs.

If it was as simple as "don't do the thing you hate", nobody would ever get cold in the first place, regardless of it makes them sick.

So it matters whether the sickness effect is negligible or not.

>Sometimes it can be.

Nope. I guarantee people would like skiing more if you were possible at ~70 degrees. Snowmobiles can be fun, but they'd be more fun without the twenty extra layers of clothing you need to put on. Warming yourself by a fire can be nice, but it's the warming that's enjoyable. Being cold sucks.

Again, being cold leads to hypothermia. Just wear a coat, it's not that big of a deal.

If it was as simple as "don't do the thing you hate", nobody would ever get cold in the first place, regardless of it makes them sick.

"Effectively disproven" with regard to religion. I'll take a stab at this, because it's a personal grievance of mine. As a result of the Enlightenment, empiricism became the de facto standard for verifying or justifying what is "real" or "true". But empiricism is blind to many things that we still interact with in our everyday lives, and consider "real" and that we have ongoing beliefs about.

Numbers are an example. Numbers are a strictly metaphysical set of categories and rules, and they can relate to physicality, but there is no physical evidence for the idea of "seven", for example. Logic is another example. Cities are another example.

Ok, cities might need a little explaining to show what I mean, because you say "A city is physical!" and I say yes, but it's also metaphysical. I'll reduce it from city to a mayor to explain more clearly. Does the mayor exist? If you walk into the city office, you can meet with the mayor. So the mayor is real. However, if you go to the bar with the mayor and he starts talking about his car insurance or his marriage after a couple of drinks, you're no longer talking to the mayor. You're talking to Steve, who acts as the mayor during the day, but is also a person with a private life. Now, if Steve dies that night on his way home from the bar, does the mayor cease to exist? Well, in a way, yes, but in a few days, a new mayor will be appointed and in the meantime there will be an "acting mayor". So is the mayor real?

We could say the same for a city. It has physical boundaries, and if you don't pay your water bill "to the city", then the "city will turn off your water". Is it some entity called "city" who comes to your house and turns the valve? No. It is a member of the city's "body" that comes and turns off your water. So is the city "real"?

Marriage is another example. A couple that is married acts differently than a couple who is not married, and if the marriage ends, that can have drastic, real effects on the people in the marriage. So is marriage "real"?

I mean... OK. But those are just names for things that are useful to think about. Saying marriage is real isn't the same type of thing as "Korean fan death is real" or "God is real".

Right, I think "metaphysical" sounds too mystical for most people. A better word is "abstract". Numbers are abstract things. You don't have to believe in them because in a sense they don't exist, they exist only as a definition.

Anybody can come up with a definition but the usefulness of doing so is based on whether the definition is self-contradictory or not and whether there are useful rules of deriving more abstract things out of them. 1 + 2 = 3.

Fortunately abstract things like numbers can be made semi-concrete by representing them in a physical medium such as pen and paper or computer-memory. Then we can observe how they behave and verify event by observation the soundness of our rules for manipulating them. 1 + 2 seems to always be 3.

"Just names for things that are useful to think about" for which you have no empirical evidence, but they are identities/categories that you find useful, interact with, and that exist through time. Are they real?

This just sounds like one big confusion of the map for the territory. What you are describing are abstract concepts. The fact that concepts are not 'real' in that they are not physical entities isn't much of an indictment of empiricism, nor does science claim to employ empiricism alone without any foundation of conceptual rationalism.

What is the empirical evidence for conceptual rationalism?

I had no intention of treading into the real-or-not quagmire. I thought I safeguarded myself against that with the concession that I consider belief in general science exactly that—a belief. But perhaps that was unclear.

The 'disproven' part was also deliberately parenthetical and only indirectly linked to religion, with the used notions of proof and veracity both subject to the aforementioned concession.

Forgive my defensive parsing here, but it's important to me that I don't present myself as someone who feels he 'knows the truth'. My intent was to say that I don't.

What I was trying to point to, with a fumbling attempt was pointing to your idea of "scanning your mind for scientific data that might be wrong" and coming up empty, was that just the idea that scientific empiricism is the only or most reliable way of establishing what is "true" is actually a presupposition that is a result of the Enlightenment, and is not the basis for traditional societies when they are determining "how we know what we know" and "what is the hierarchy of meaning"?

I was just trying to point out to you that you might be open-minded regarding what evidence you are willing to consider, but just he point that you consider evidence as a way of establishing truth is a presupposition that can, and should be examined.

Ooh, okay. I gotcha. Thanks for clarifying!

Empiricism is autoreliable. And is perhaps the only thing that is. It continually reconceptualizes our understandings and produces its own reliability. See how things like the indifference assumption of statistical mechanics is now empirically generated. Empirical science in limited domains can explain its own reliability and justification.

But what you’ve done is none empirically assert numbers are “this”. Cities are “this”. No non-empirical claims have the same weight as empirical science. It’s not that empirical science should talk about things it does not yet know, rather we shouldn’t make claims like yours. We should only go as far empirical science says if you want to match empirical science’s reliability, and it doesn’t say numbers are metaphysical categories.

> I rack my brain for any scientifically indefensible convictions I may hold myself.

But you'd never deliberately cause harm to someone over such a conviction, so it's not urgent.

You might want to self-scan for convictions that are likely to cause you inadvertent harm.

That can be lazily evaluated; in any situation in which you're making some critical decision where the wrong one could cause harm, check those convictions that are inputs to it.

Well I certainly hope to be as sure of that as possible, and do what I can to 'look beyond myself', but I won't pretend to do it any better than the next person. I think humility is the key there. The second you become convinced your convictions aren't harming anyone, you've developed a conviction that may lead you to harm someone :].

Take conversion therapy for example. My understanding is that many, if not most, proponents of sexuality-focused conversion therapy truly believe that it is not only not harmful, but in fact directly beneficial to its subjects, for a variety of (mostly religious) reasons. I suspect the agony felt by the people subjected to such things is seen not as so much as harm by the people promoting it, but more as the pinch felt from a vaccine shot: a momentary sting in service of an eternal afterlife of painless happiness and purity.

Of course there's tons of predatory money to be made in the business of religion, and it's likely that most of today's religious bigwigs dgaf about anyone's eternal salvation, but that's due to a separate set of convictions.

There's a surprising amount of people in the US who believe in variations of witchcraft, things like tarot cards, horoscopes, and talking to the dead. Much of this actually comes from secular society.

Yeah. I think this is a good example, because it's similar to the juju in the article in that the belief often seems more aspirational or preferential than necessarily defensible or provable in some sense. My impression from people I've known who were into, say, astrology, isn't that they would put it up against gravity in a facts-or-not evaluation, but rather that they like the idea of a world organized thusly, or that they find it benefits them to frame things thusly, and therefor 'believe' in it.

The shopkeeper wasn't prepared to demonstrate the good things his pouch of talismans were doing for him, but he certainly preferred to believe that his day would go better with them in hand. Who wouldn't? What an easy way to ward off misfortune.

It's like a belief in Myers-Briggs personality types, too, in that it's easily bolstered by a confirmation bias and, arguably, can serve a broader function in metaphor. The same of course can be said for much religious dogma and many faith-oriented parables. I think most people would agree that the world would be a better place if more people behaved as Christians believe Jesus did.

Continuing to think about this, it's occurred to me that I've spent so much time digging into Galen's and Empedocles's framings of the world, and the grander notion of the integrated universe, that they have, in some abstract way, had an impact on the way I think about things.

I don't believe that an excess of something called black bile, which relates to autumn, Earth, etc. makes me feel melancholy, but I have, numerous times, described my girlfriend as 'sanguine' to people who've not met her, and then, when I was rightly mocked for saying that instead of something more colloquial, proceeded to attempt to justify my word choice with an approximate characterization of her based on a humorist framework.

Perhaps this is just a product of insufferable douchiness and self-satisfaction, and is little more than analogizing, but that's kind of all beliefs are, anyway.

I saw a talk about this one time and the lecturer said that 50-60% of people believe in ghosts (iirc). But I don't think this as crazy as it sounds. If you read William James' on the varieties of religious experience, he talks a lot about peoples experiences feeling entities and stuff like that. Also if you read a bunch of psychedelic trip reports people say similar things like feeling spirits. So I think the more reasonable take is there is a part of the human brain whose function generates these weird paranormal feelings of presence. Some people have brains that do it more, some people less, and some chemicals can change that

The boom in late-19th century haunted house stories can be attributed to CO poisoning from dicey gas lighting systems...

https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide...

I'm no anthropologist but I would bet "talking to the dead" is a near universal human cultural constant.

From a US survey completed in 2020, 88% of people claimed to believe some religion. These beliefs aren't really any different from those featured in the article. Western religious beliefs are just as absurd; they are just more acceptable as they are part of our culture.

There's a big difference between low-impact, low-evidence beliefs like fan death, and easily verifiable, high impact things like "sacrifice a cat person".

The problem isn't that people have momentary false beliefs (fan death can be disproven with a bit of evidence gathering) but that there appears to be no correction mechanism. If you never see a dude turn into a cat, and if sacrificing people doesn't make you rich (worked for Jeff! ... Sorry couldn't help myself) then why do you think it works?

I'm not sure the answer is intellectual. It's quite possible people have some sort of psychological desire to believe things they know deep inside aren't true. Perhaps it's some sort of group belonging that must be satisfied ("yes, he walked on water!") by professing belief in what everyone can see is false.

And “fan deaths” brought us some neat things, like fans with timers in them.

I do not see what neat things “sacrificing cat person” will bring.

My ex-gf was Korean and she assured me that fan death is scientifically backed. Her logic was that running a fan in a closed room can result in asphyxiation due to CO2 accumulation. But she said that this only applies to Korean rooms, which are smaller than normal rooms.

I’ve never thought of that before! I had heard of the effect and always thought it was a freak case that spiraled into fame, but CO2 accumulation actually makes perfect sense.

So, would that not normally happen without a fan? If a room is that small, and that pooorly ventilated, how does a fan make the co2 concentrate in a more dangerous way?

Not sure if you're joking, but no, that doesn't make any sense. Asphyxia is a lack of oxygen, not an excess amount of CO2. Even slight increases in CO2 will make you feel extremely uncomfortable, long before you actually run out of oxygen.

Unless your fan has a gas motor, it's not going to produce any CO2. The tiny Korean room, which I'm betting is not any smaller than your average New York City bedroom, would have to be pretty poorly ventilated indeed for you to not survive the night.

One thing that is overlooked is historical context. In Korea, there's a type of building called an Ondol[0], which is basically a building w/ underfloor heating (traditionally via smoke from wood fire). There's also a bed variation called a dol bed.

When you take into consideration that there's a literal CO2 spewing furnace underneath your room that you can't easily turn on or off, the introduction of electrical fans into the picture becomes the next obvious thing to watch for.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondol

> the introduction of electrical fans into the picture becomes the next obvious thing to watch for

How is that in any way obvious? I don't see any connection, like at all. The furnace does not vent into the room.

See this layout[0], for example. Notice how the black soot marks are directly underneath the windows.

[0] https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/newsV2/images/202104/301...

There is one theory that "fan death" has been a cultural cover-up for suicides that occur when people are at home by themselves.

When I was a kid I read a story about the oil field fires after the first Gulf War. That planted a seed to look at how different cultures solve the same problems. Not unlike code reviews and relationship advice, the problem is always so much easier to see when you're not in the middle of it. Some things are easier to forgive, others harder.

My culture is very efficient at solving some problems, barely equipped to solve others. That's true of everyone. Some holidays or traditions are quaint, even silly, others make me envious. Some ideas are mutually exclusive, but others complement each other.

For the [oil field fires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires) the real story is stranger than I had recalled. Apparently the Hungarians mounted a MiG engine onto a tank and used it to power the water cannon. I had recalled the tank (high thermal mass rather than expensive heat shielding), but not that the water was jet powered.

I really love that whole story. The tank is obviously very badass of course, but there were a lot of other cool ideas too.

Folks from Texas just thrown explosives on the fire until it blown it out.

There was some other nation who lifted in a long pipe over the fire, forcing the oil to go in the pipe which obviously kept burning at the top of the tube. And then they suddenly tipped the pipe to the side. The oil was still flowing of course, but when they got the timing right they could remove the oil stream fast enough from the heat that it got extinguished. That looked like a very ingenious solution from the lower-tech side of the spectrum.

> ... but not that the water was jet powered.

I found this video[1]. It sounds like it's not really that the water was jet powered. They were blowing out the fire with the oxygen-depleted exhaust of the jet engines and they mixed water into the exhaust to further enhance the process with the cooling effect. Or at least that's what the guy in the red helmet next to the machine says in Hungarian.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Ss3BMrscE

I think at one point they told the UN it might take 5 years to put out all of the fires. At the beginning they were doing one well a week, sometimes less. By the end they were doing 2 a day. They started in April and were done by November. In six months they were going over 10x as fast. Which means they probably put out half the fires in the last 8 weeks.

Wiki link to tanks mounted with water spewing jet turbines:

https://second.wiki/wiki/aerosollc3b6schfahrzeug

But it was never used for its intended role:

> When the vehicle was completed, however, the fires had already been put out by Hungarian turbo fire engines. The vehicle was used experimentally and showed good results. Even so, it was no longer used.

At least that one. Sounds like they had others that were smaller that were used instead?

Appeal to traditional science only works for knowledge that you've actually studied the science on, and not papers cherry-picked for you by your own bias or others recommending them. That's so hard that almost nobody does it except scientists themselves and even then, only in their narrow field. So normal people can't really appeal to science as why they trust their beliefs. What most people believe instead is what their peers told them they're supposed to believe to make them a respectable person and just tack "science says" onto it.

That’s why you need to defer to the scientific consensus, when it exists. (And note that the deferral to expertise heuristic is different than the appeal to authority logical fallacy.)

> I rack my brain for any scientifically indefensible convictions I may hold myself.

Me too... except for the jinx. If someone says "This project is going great" it strikes terror deep in my soul.

"Pre-menstrual syndrome" and "children become energetic after eating candy" are both widespread beliefs in the US which are generally not mirrored in other cultures.

PMS is not a "belief".

Not sure if you're referring to the fact that it's not well understood, but that doesn't make it less real.

It has as much evidence going for it as fan death does.

I don't think the NHS has a page about fan death

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pre-menstrual-syndrome/

You really seem shockingly self-unaware given the thread you're posting in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death#South_Korean_governm...

> The Korea Consumer Protection Board (KCPB), a South Korean government-funded public agency, issued a consumer safety alert in 2006 warning that "asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners" was among South Korea's five most common summer accidents or injuries, according to data they collected. The KCPB published the following:

>> If bodies are exposed to electric fans or air conditioners for too long, it causes [the] bodies to lose water and [causes] hypothermia. If directly in contact with [air current from] a fan, this could lead to death from [an] increase of carbon dioxide saturation concentration and decrease of oxygen concentration. The risks are higher for the elderly and patients with respiratory problems. From 2003 [to] 2005, a total of 20 cases were reported through the CISS involving asphyxiations caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. To prevent asphyxiation, timers should be set, wind direction should be rotated, and doors should be left open.

That's not the NHS :) And it's also not a health institute/system.

Maybe you should explain what you think the problem is with PMS, because I don't get it. It seems to me that the scientific consensus is to acknowledge the existence of something called PMS. What it encompasses (e.g. including "mood swings" or not) and whether it's a medical problem is, however, debated.

I would say that the best part of the scientific method is that you don't have to have blind faith in it, nor take it on the faith of others. You can look around at all the ways people most often get things wrong about the world, and then analyze the steps of the scientific method to understand how they directly counter those mistakes. Not to mention, you can look at all the things the scientific method has been able to accurately predict, vs any other method of understanding the world, and that should bolster its credentials.

Is the scientific method perfect? No, of course not; as long as humans are involved, nothing will ever be perfect. But to paraphrase Wigner, science is and has always been "unreasonably effective" at getting things right, far more than any other way humans have looked at the universe, and as such is the best we've got to understand it.

I worry more about those misconceptions shared by most cultures, as they are hardest to spot yet also likely to be most relevant. The single-minded pursuit of economic growth and all the values wrapped up in that comes to mind. Exponential growth is the antithesis of sustainability, yet we collectively claim to pursue sustainability through growth...

I have similar experiences to you to this kind of stuff, and will add to that another layer of analysis -- racking your brain for all the beliefs and experiences you have that contradict each other.

I have no belief in the supernatural, paranormal, or any hocus pocus. I don't believe in ghosts. But, conversely, I've had an experience that I've a hard time explaining as anything but a ghost. My dad lived in a house that once was used as a pheasantry, but no pheasants lived on the land for ~100 years. At night, though, I and many other folks would hear pheasants coming from inside the conservatory, where the pheasants used to be hung after slaughter. On many investigations, no source of the noise was ever discovered.

The only way I can harmonize the two is to just avoid thinking about it. If asked if I believe in ghosts, I say no. If asked if I've ever experienced a ghost, I recall this experience.

I don't mean this as some spooky tale or suggestion that anything mystical is possible, just one account of the weird ways evidence and beliefs work.

Peer-reviewed canonized science has a reproducibility problem. That's your Nigerian who can change into a cat.

Shhh that's the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Peer reviewed studies using the scientific method is why we assume we are more logical than others. With that in question, we might have to admit we don't know a lot of things

That's the reason why I love flat earth.

Obviously the earth is not flat, or... is it? I suggest you take a look at all the flat earthers arguments, they can explain a surprising amount of things. I particularly like the one that explains gravity using a variation on the Einstein elevator thought experiment. I know it is all wrong, but try to let go of your preconceived ideas and look at their arguments for what they are.

What is good about flat earth is that it is a safe and well "documented" exercise in epistemology. Arguments are relatively easy to disprove even with minimal scientific knowledge, and besides ridicule, it is a harmless belief. I mean, flat earth doesn't suggest that you should kill people or anything like that.

My understanding of flat earth was that it's about coming up with convincing arguments for something that you know (or at least assume) to be false. There are a large number of people who participate and they've been doing it for a long time. I'm sure they've heard and come up with solid refutations for every possible argument against flat earth. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe as well, but I've come to see it as more of "a lot of people who enjoy playing a rhetorical game"

On the one hand, flat earth doesn't suggest killing people. But on the other hand, you don't want them in very many roles in society.

Flat earth isn't harmless. Conspiratorial beliefs like flat earth don't exist in a vacuum, but within ecosystems of more dangerous beliefs and insular communities which spread those beliefs among members. If "they" can hide the true shape of the world from everyone, then any conspiracy theory seems plausible in comparison.

Maybe "they" did fake a pandemic to slip mind-control chips into the vaccine. Maybe "they" are plotting to take control more overtly, more violently. Maybe "they" aren't even human, they just appear human. Maybe "they" are among us, hiding within a certain religious or ethnic group.

Here's one belief many of us hold, one that is right in front of our eyes: That Africa is a primitive, pre-modern place of magic, lions, and brutality.

There is so much going on in Africa, and what story makes it onto HN front page? The one that confirms our beliefs. (This is an issue common to the portrayal of many 'outside' groups.)

Eh, there's plenty if you look. For example, most people have strong opinions about the health effects of food (fat, sugar, oils, processed/unprocessed, gluten, you name it), which are mostly unsubstantiated.

Pregnancy and childbirth is another area that's ripe with (literal) "old wives' tales". I read both Japanese and English advice on the topic, and it was both hilarious and disturbing to see completely contradictory recommendations like "eat healthy food, avoid sushi and caffeine at all costs" and "eat healthy food, like sushi and green tea". Another good example is co-sleeping, which the rest of the world considers obvious but in the US is considered outrageously dangerous, mostly because some studies found that adults who are {morbidly obese, drunk, on drugs} occasionally squash their babies.

There are verified occurrences of gluten intolerance, squashed babies of drunk parents, and listeria contamination of raw fish. I agree that it’s not wise to let oneself be scared by incidents with low occurrence. But how is it unsubstantiated?

(In my family we do practice co-sleeping, but without any alcohol involved; and my wife never had sushi during pregnancy because listeria are rare but really bad for the fetus.)

Of course celiac disease and listeria are actual things, but I think we'd agree that a general "gluten is bad for you" is unsubstantiated. It's also funny how sushi gets singled out, when the CDC (below) doesn't even mention it in its list of listeria high risk foods. When did you last hear about pregnant women avoiding hot dogs or melons?

https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/prevention.html

Hot dogs are commonly on lists of food for pregnant women to avoid.

I'd never heard of "fan death" but wow, what a rabbit hole that is. It's like the pseudoscientific version of a hat on a bed.

Love is the most common one in the west. The idea that you can know another person completely, and that your strong feelings are proof of future dedication. Love is ultimately just feelings, and in a more logical society we wouldn't value feelings that evolved to make us pass on genes and anything but a strange quirk. Many people can even recognize that others are probably just fools in love, but they are always convinced their love is really a supernatural force rather than a simple feeling

Anecdote: I lived in Ibadan, Nigeria around 1970 or so.

I recall the newspapers had serials, some were comics they bought from England, e.g. Garth, and some were a kind of photobook thing where models would stage scenes from a story and captions would be added just like a comic. There would also be extremely crude effects drawn in by hand.

I remember that one such serial involved were-leopards, and it made sense to me that while Europeans had stories about humans who transformed into wolves, Africans would have stories about humans that transformed into big cats.

>These beliefs are not just held by the uneducated, they exist even at the highest level of Nigeria's academia. Dr Olaleye Kayode, a senior lecturer in African Indigenous Religions at the University of Ibadan, told the BBC that money-making juju rituals - where human body parts mixed with charms makes money spew out of a pot - really work.

Are the "uneducated" people basically screwed until the academics are willing to challenge this kind of magical thinking? How do you even go about starting that process?

Maybe he doesn't even believe this, maybe he just doesn't want to alienate certain (groups of) people. People do the same thing with religion all over the world.

That possible, and why I said "willing to challenge." There isn't much effective difference between proclaiming something because you believe it, and proclaiming something because you're afraid of repercussions or alienating people. You could even argue that the latter is worse.

It's not enough if they secretly believe it, they also need to be willing to challenge it publicly.

Would you say the same is true about speaking out regarding Critical Theory or social justice?

I think if people hold secret beliefs in their hearts, and those beliefs have been carefully introspected and are not coming from a place of ignorance or hate, then people need to express them, no matter what they are.

> and those beliefs have been carefully introspected and are not coming from a place of ignorance or hate

No one ever thinks they’re the villain of the story.

Even if they're wrong, the careful introspection implies good faith, and this should become apparent by how a person talks about their beliefs, especially wrt to their acknowledgements about other peoples beliefs and feelings.

I think the risks of that person being or becoming a villain are quite low, and certainly not high enough to justify self censorship (not saying you were suggesting that).

This could have to do with something called preference falsification. [0]

[0] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

TIL! Thanks for the resource.

Right, challenging people's deeply held AND common beliefs is dangerous because it is "blasphemy", punishable by ... see the map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#:~:text=A%20pros....

Thank God United States has constitution which forbids blasphemy-laws, not blasphemy.

No, but if you challenge people's deeply held beliefs they'll wage a long and complicated protest against you often including harassment, DOXing, and attacks against your livelihood. So I don't think it's so simple that anyone here can speak their minds without worry

I totally agree

It wouldn't be very difficult to find a senior lecturer of Christian theology in any American university with borderline insane beliefs.

I wonder how much of this is lazy journalism coupled with the fact that non-believers might not want to speak out.

What does "but what about Christians?" have to do with the question of how we should address magical thinking in academia? Unless you are saying it's not a problem because Americans have the exact same problem?

I absolutely don’t believe that’s what the commenter here was saying.

What I got from the comment is that it’s a problem everywhere, not isolated to this area or set of beliefs.

The commenter was simply providing another example of this, not stating this isn’t an overall bad thing. Of course it is.

To me, it feels kind of like the poster is agitated that the article focuses another country's problems, which elicited the kneejerk response about "Americans", "Christians" and "lazy journalism", as if to say "focus on your own problems." This response is confusing I never stated this was a problem specific to Nigeria, but instead I asked a general question about magical thinking in academia.

This is the problem with "cultural relativism" in general, which states that we cannot, must not, judge the beliefs and customs of other cultures because who are we to condemn them?

We should condemn magical thinking wherever it happens because truth is truth and falsehoods are falsehoods regardless of in which culture(s) they occur. And they pretty much occur in every country.

Another way of saying that is we should NOT condemn magical thinking in other cultures UNLESS we also condemn it in our own culture.

It is not like its impossible to tell what is magical thinking and what is not, we have science for doing just that.

It's relevant to point out that there's a certain element of "look at the ridiculous natives" to this when the article does not even mention that this is not a problem isolated to juju, but one that is found everywhere, including with Christian groups. Especially when talking of the difficulty of challenging such beliefs, which is something many of us here will have if not faced directly, then at least grown up with it being a consideration even in relatively secular societies.

>Questioning the existence of supernatural powers is considered taboo in much of Nigerian society.

>To be openly expressing such thoughts, as Mr Adewoyin was doing in a market, was risky. He could just as easily be arrested for blasphemy or lynched by an angry mob.

I think it's a little credulous to take anyone's on-the-record statements as reflective of their actual internal beliefs in this kind of environment. No doubt some people believe these things -- that does not mean any particular person claiming to believe these things actually does.

>Questioning the existence of supernatural powers is considered taboo in much of Nigerian society.

Questioning the existence of the supernatural power God is considered taboo in much of United States .

>money-making juju rituals - where human body parts mixed with charms makes money spew out of a pot

Rituals like this never really existed pre 1600s. They are relatively modern and came with west africa's foreign relations. No serious indigenous spiritualist believes this. It may exist but it's most certainly not indigenous. That lecturer's a joke.

Your comments imply a lot of knowledge - are you from Nigeria? Have you studied these things? I wish you would tell us more.

That is the great question. We have a similar situation in United States see

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stella-immanuel-trumps-new-cov...

I think part of this is political, they want people to believe in crazy things and not look for the rational truth because that might expose those who are trying to hoodwink the public in other ways. Like giving huge tax-cuts to billionaires. Give huge tax-cuts to billionaires and money will appear in your clay-pot.

I'm trying to understand your response. Are you saying that most magical thinking, here and elsewhere, is a result of "them" (rich people?) trying to keep the population under control? Is there no grassroots element to magical thinking that can be addressed?

No I'm not blaming rich people here in particular, but the fact that people having certain crazy beliefs is often advantageous to some other people.

A (witch-) doctor is a good example. It is good for them that people believe they can deliver the cure. It may sometimes be even good for the patient because of the placebo effect.

People having non-scientific mind-set (i.e. people believing crazy things) is beneficial to people who try to hoodwink them. Snake oil!

I have a good friend who grew up in Northern Canada. He's Inuit, and told a few stories of his tribe to me. One such story sounds eerily similar to these stories.

One such story was a person who, by indirect account, said that he could transform into a wolf at night. He was threatening the community with that. The elder knew how to do so as well, but chose not to until this threat came.

The 2nd night after this intruder showed up, the elder transformed. During that night, a ferocious fight was heard. Next morning, the elder said that the deed was done, and the intruder who threatened the tribe was dead.

The people searched the area, and found a man mauled to death by a wolf.

The cynic in me immediately wants to dismiss this story - but I do have to say that’s a pretty damn cool story, even if it’s not true. It makes me wonder, for sure; and that’s cool enough in and of itself for me.

The story is entirely plausible. The man was mauled by an ordinary wolf by coincidence; everything else was just bullshit talk.

Long ago, some man who had some dispute with a village and was mauled by a wolf, and the story was invented and embellished from there as it was handed down.

Reminds me of the Beast of Gevaudan.

Or "Darker Than You Think" by Jack Williamson who was inspired by Jack Parson, the US rocket scientist who was also an occultist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darker_Than_You_Think

Am I missing something, or is the only similarity "man turns into animal"? Because there's absolutely nothing eerie about that single element showing up in multiple places.

Isnt the more modern version of this the new age movement where people think they can just "manifest" success just by meditating on it? Books(The Secret) and speakers talk about asking the universe for something and "manifesting" that it will happen and then not understanding why they're stuck living in an apartment with 3 people at 40 years old.

No. I think the new age movement generally keeps the supernatural at a safe distance, or at least frames the discussion in very general terms. Further, I think much of the manifestation of success via meditation isn't really supernatural at all, but rather just another life hack. The sort of spirituality described in the article has very specific ideas about the supernatural world, and the entities that reside in it. There is also an understanding of the uncontrolled, dangerous nature of the entities.

It's really easy to imagine a Nigerian person saying their belief is grounded in the reality of people they know claiming to have seen it, and that the charms are more of a lifehack than anything supernatural.

This is absolutely untrue. Just a few obvious examples: shakras, crystals, anything "quantum", "vibrations", or harnessing "energy", planet alignment mechanically effecting their lives.

I know many new age spiritualists and have had in depth conversations with them regarding what they believe and I can tell you, at least those people believe a staggering amount of supernatural things and they will tell you this directly usually. As in if you asked them if they believe in the supernatural, they will give you an emphatic yes.

People in this thread are incredulous that the "educated" believe in this stuff, and yet most of these spiritualists are college educated and then the apologists who say "it isn't really supernatural" are college educated as well.

I personally take these people about as seriously as if someone told me they could make money manifest in a pot. It's indefensible to have received the amount of education these people have received and have access to the unlimited knowledge in our current society and to believe what amounts to kids' fairy stories.

It depends on what self-help books you're reading, I really liked the Four Agreements

Like other spiritual texts, you can just take out what you want and leave the rest. The Second Agreement, don't take anything personally is something everyone should live by.

It works for job hunting, it works for career growth, it works for dating, it works for friendships.

The more you take everything that happens to you as a personal attack, the more miserable you'll be. For example, let's say you just put in an 80 hour work week, you're really proud that a feature got pushed out. But You get let go the next week, don't take it personally. Often, it's for things outside of your control, if you're in this industry for any real amount of time, you're going to have a bad manager who will actively prevent you from getting your job done. All you can really do is pick yourself up and move on.

When you take things personally, you're getting upset over nothing at all. I take it the same way with dating, for example, you really like someone and then it doesn't work out, you can dwell on this and call them asking for an explanation, but you're not changing anything.

The secret, originally comes from Earl Nightingale. His original message, we become what we think about is great wisdom.

I don't use social media, because if I'm arguing with folks on Instagram and Twitter all day, I'm becoming negativity. I'm preemptively wasting tons of mental energy trying to figure out how I'm going to respond to negativity I'm choosing to partake in.

The Power of Now is another fantastic book. Using myself as an example, recently I've been spending a ton of time planning out if I get a new job, if I would like to move or not. And then I'm worried about well... If I move, where do I move, will I be able to find a cheaper apartment, will I be able to save money, and a million other thoughts?

All of this is irrelevant if I don't actually get the job!

The only self-help book I really didn't like, was Mark Manson's art of not giving a f**. And mainly because the messenger. I can't take life advice from anyone who's never had to work because he comes from money.

If the protagonist of this story, Gbenga Adewoyin, is here, or if someone can put me in touch with him, I am willing to back his efforts with my money. This is so that he can raise the stakes, and attract more attention to the social evils, and the drag those evils create on the people's lives and on the economy.

Think of it like Randy's Paranormal challenge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_...

this seems to be his twitter https://twitter.com/gbengadewoyin

Why are the articles about Africa that are posted on HN always about how strange and different they supposedly are? This isn't even tech related. Rather than focus on their technology industry, what gets posted is some strange folk belief of the poor-- as if people in the USA don't also have superstitions like black cats are unlucky.

These conversations seem to turn into a self congratulatory series of people talking about how they would never believe anything so illogical, in fact they don't even understand how you could believe anything so illogical. Though the intention is to place themselves as the more intelligent ones, this just makes me think people here are naive that they don't understand they've went through a lifetime of training to think that way and still have weird superstitions(ie romantic love is special as opposed to evolutions way of tricking you into thinking having sex is meaningful)

Not any less ludicrous than any other religion. People believing in fairy tales is unfortunately the norm, not the exception. I even find it a bit condescending that this report comes from the BBC. Last time I checked, UK was still predominately religious as well.

For anyone interested, you should look into George Knapp's Hunt for the Skinwalker. It ties in with the were-mythos.

A lot of Nigerians must have superpowers cause I get emails almost daily from princes saying they can help me get rich real quick.

I feel like many Western folks would laugh or gasp at this, while at the same time, we (especially in the US) are inundated with equally superstitious BS from a young age. Christians will tell you their beliefs are about love and therefore are harmless, but the Bible they claim is both inerrant and an example of the purest love actively glorifies, and even explicitly commands, murder in multiple places.

And then there's the more subtle dangers of teaching people this nonsense: recent studies have shown that children brought up religiously are less likely to be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality (as tested by comparing mundane stories with stories of wizards, for instance, and asking which one is probably real). And more egregiously, telling children they will go to paradise when they die is disgusting.

I have a personal anecdote on the matter. My dad is a fundamentalist Christian, a young-Earth creationist who truly believes that the primary-school concept of Conservation of Mass disproves all the science showing the age of the Earth (because he has no idea how radiometric dating works, but is convinced he understands it better than physicists and chemists). Anyway, my brother-in-law let him start taking my niece and nephew to church. After a few weeks of church, My niece, who was then 8, was talking to me about something and then said, with a smile mind you, "Oh, well, it'll be good when I die."

I was like, "What? Don't say things like that!" "Why?" she asked. "Because everyone would be very sad if you died." "But why?" she asked again. "They should be happy, because I'll be in heaven with God!" She grinned, and I was disgusted and terrified. I didn't know how to convince her that death was bad without directly contradicting her parent's decision to bring her to church.

Religion, simply by the promise of an afterlife, makes young children happy about dying. That alone should be enough for people to chuck it in the bin, and yet, it's not. (By the way, this is the same reason so many religions with paradisiacal afterlife promises almost always have to outline that suicide is a sin. Because when you convince people that their death will be far better than their life could possibly be, of course they'll want to get there as soon as possible! But then you'd have no followers left alive, so you have to tell them "wait, no, but you can't do that because, um, then you won't get that paradise after all!")

Theistic religions, and honestly any religion with any sort of afterlife, are fundamentally sick. And expanding that to all religions with beliefs in the supernatural, they are all BS and dangerous and have no place in a modern world built upon the efforts and successes of rational and scientific considerations.

>Religion, simply by the promise of an afterlife, makes young children happy about dying

So was she suicidal? Or are you just annoyed that she didn't view death as an awful terrifying thing? She's a child, she doesn't understand death. The idea that any religion with an afterlife is sick because kids think dying isn't all bad is so strange. So then I suppose you must hate psychiatrists, because they teach you must move on after a loved ones death to be healthy?

She was explicitly happy about dying, and explicitly said everyone should be happy when she dies because she'd be in heaven with God. There's a big difference between moving on after someone dies, and being happy that they've died.

I find these kind of beliefs baffling, from anywhere in the world. It would be trivial to prove any of these work, and yet no one will. Surely they know it doesn’t actually work?

Believing it works is the whole experience. Most people never change socio-economic status and objectively nearly all startups fail yet here we are…

"Of course juju works, he doesn't know what he is saying," said one trader who lingered with a scowl on his face.

In his pocket was a black amulet, a small leather pouch containing supposedly magic charms, that he said was for protection. However, he was not interested in publicly demonstrating its powers, not even for $6,000.

This man wouldn't prove his powers, even when he could only stand to gain from it. People act the exact same way everywhere when it comes to this type of belief.

He'd stand to gain money, but from the sound of the article he'd lose social standing, and it takes a lot of money to offset something like that

There is no "would" here; he couldn't prove anything and the money is safe.

But let's say we live in a magical universe in which juju is real and yet someone is foolish enough to offer a lot of money for a proof.

How would the prover lose social standing? He proved wrong that obnoxious nay-sayer. He'd be a juju hero, with stars in his eyes. Or maybe not. If juju were real, he would also have been trampled by a throng of others trying similarly to get the easy money.

What I suspect is that there might be an element in the juju mythology which stipulates that any wielder of juju power who tries to prove juju to nonbelievers will die.

What I meant was he'd lose social standing by failing to prove something everyone in his social milieu thinks is obviously true. Big risk to take if you have any doubts at all, unless the potential payoff is v large

Saw a documentary back in the 90s about similar stuff in India - a group of young "rationalists" going around debunking stuff. I wonder has it made any material difference in the last 30 years

Oh yeah there’s a video where an Indian doctor is standing there being “cursed” by a man who claimed to be able to kill people with a look (evil eye?) Nothing happened to the doctor.

I just tried to find it on YouTube but like most primary sources its been buried by SEO and cute thumbnails.

He could have offered any amount of money in the world, they still would not have done it.

He'd lose social standing because he knew it would never work. Grifters know they're grifters, even if they deny it to their dying breath.

This man wouldn't prove his powers, even when he could only stand to gain from it.

I disagree that one can only stand to gain from "proving" the supernatural. The value is in that it is not provable; thus it is also not debunkable or replicable.

>The value is in that it is not provable

do you have proof that it's not provable?

Even you don't know that. It is so difficult for many to accept that there are things they just cannot know or do not know that they don't know. It is also apparently very difficult for some people to consider things from someone else's perspective. I don't mean people who are of your belief system only but also the people in the subject of the story also think like you "surely those secular westerners don't really believe everything suddenly decided to exist all on its own and that people are really well-bred apes?"

My point is, a little humility and willingness to understand others goes a long way.

its a little hard to be willing to understand people that murder and mutilate others in an attempt to gain material wealth.

Understanding them doesn't mean condoning what they do, or even sympathizing with it. It's obviously so real to them that they are willing to sacrifice the life of another human being in order to improve their own future. I agree that's reprehensible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to understand it.

honestly, why? Would you or I understanding lead to some way to stop them doing it? I doubt it. Sometimes actions are egregious enough to stand on their own with no need for rationalization or understanding. They are simply wrong. Most peoples time would be best served simply condemning their actions and seeking to understand things that can benefit the world. With that said, its not hard to comprehend why they do it. People are a product of their environment and if they are raised believing in certain truths that shape their world view, they tend to hold onto those and ignore things that fly in the face of them. They pass those same truths on to their offspring.

Understanding is absolutely one of the best ways to change the behavior of others. Peoples' actions is the result differing forces on them like societal norms, laws, and expected outcomes. One of the best and only longterm solutions for behaviors you don't want is to make changes to the forces surrounding them. Without understanding the forces involved you risk having no effect on the problem or worse.

If you're stuck in orbit around the earth and thrust towards the earth in an attempt to get home, you'll just waste a lot of energy and end up further away instead when you run out of fuel before you're done.

No. Under that pretense we could justify or at least unjustly minimize the significance of pretty much any atrocity. To piggyback an easy example off current affairs: "Russia can invade Ukraine because under their beliefs they're just one unified people who have been unjustly separated by western influences".

There are beliefs who inflict evil upon this world and they must be socially condemned as such, and any crimes committed in the name of such beliefs should be punished with the full weight of the law.

I would also personally argue that if the belief pertains to a cult, religion or similar group that encourages sharing the belief that lead to the crime, an additional penalty for criminal incitement should also apply; for any legislation where incitement is a thing that is.

Where is OP asking to justify or unjustify anything? Again the only thing they recommend is to at least understand. Not empathize, not sympathize, nor moralize. But understand.

As programmers (and fields adjacent) it’s seems foolish to react to something before we even understand it.

Well,try hard then.

It's not a perfect parallel but circumcision is alive and well in the west.

No, there is no reason to have a little humility and willingness to understand people killing children for body parts to use in a magic ritual to earn money. There's no evidence that it works, there's no evidence that it should work, and on top of that, it's reprehensible.

There are people who think like you about abortions and wars caused by the west/east because of "democracy" as well. Outrage is fine, anger is ok but when you lack humility and refuse to understand others it turns into hatred, violence and misunderstanding.

This is why the west is being divided so much on so many simple issues. Vaccines,politics, education, you name it. You are right, they are evil. Who cares why? The other side feels the the same, so what now? Go ahead and start killing then? Or maybe some 17 year old kid should wear a uniform and do it for you?

I will never understand people that think this way. I remember a guy who was in the military getting angry at me when I said we should understand ISIS, to him the only thing we should do is bomb them, understanding meant undermining his country. How utterly foolish! People like this are fathers and mothers of tragedy. Even if all you want to do is to destroy the other side, isn't it best to understand them well so that you know how you can harm them with minimal risk and effort from you?

Do you really think you can convince others what they do is wrong without understanding their beliefs and approaching them with humility so they can hear your perspective?

Forget foreign places, if you live in democracy, this is literally your civic duty: to convince other voters of your views!

> There are people who think like you about abortions and wars caused by the west/east because of "democracy" as well.

Do they think abortions don't work??

I doubt it.

But if you can make money appear out of a pot, why has no one ever demonstrated it happening?

If someone has a charm that can make a person turn into a cat, it would be trivial to show that it works.

> everything suddenly decided to exist all on its own and that people are really well-bred apes?

Well they're the current theories with the best evidence. If someone can show me an alternative explanation for either that has more physical evidence and a compelling theory to explain it, I'm all ears.

> But if you can make money appear out of a pot, why has no one ever demonstrated it happening?

It could be rare and conditional and the typical claim is it was demonstrated many times. What you are really asking is why can't it be reproduced ondemand with any condition.

> If someone has a charm that can make a person turn into a cat, it would be trivial to show that it works.

With many myths, it involves preconditions and activators. Not trivial. The underlying reason for the belief system is what sustains it, not the superficial activity you take at face value and evaluate against your way of thinking.

> Well they're the current theories with the best evidence. If someone can show me an alternative explanation for either that has more physical evidence and a compelling theory to explain it, I'm all ears.

Under your belief system where indviduals evaluate correctness of evidence and best theories are practically equivalent to fact that makes sense. Billions don't share your belief system but they do share a planet with you. Also, why would random people care about proving things to you, have yoy considered they just don't care if you accept their belief or not? Most of the time most believers of a belief system ask for respect and with that, for the curious they are open to explain it to you. Your pursuit of correctness and standards of reason can be different from others. Ultimately truth does not care what you believe but in your pursuit of truth, you must not consider others unworthy of your respect or understanding unless you have acheived knowledge of absolute and complete truth.

Just the thought of presenting some kind of physical evidence and that would somehow verify that it "works" or is "true" and would be accepted by everyone reveals your materialist worldview and is a key to understanding why these beliefs exist in pre-modern cultures around the world. The traditional world looks at the world as a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of meaning. That's completely different than a materialist viewpoint of the world, but it explains why you see their beliefs as baffling and they see materialism as myopically ignorant.

what does materialism have to do with facts? JUJU is not real. Also the article specifies that they are killing people for materialistic wants, they are trying to cast spells to get money.

This is a different use of the word materialism. You are reading it as the tendency to consider material possessions of high importance. The post is referring to a philosophical doctrine that nothing exists except for matter, its movements and its modifications. This is in contrast to belief systems that include things that are "supernatural" such as invisible beings, spirits, mystical energy forces, etc.

Previous comment means materialism as defined in philosophy. Not materialistic.

I don't mean materialism as in a love of money or material goods. I mean materialism as in believing that truth claims must be verified with empirical, physical evidence.

People in traditional societies do not think physicality or empiricism is the primary way of determining what is true.

These people are showing you that fear, desperation, and hope lead them to believing a narrative that requires them to take another human being's life in the hope of gaining some physical advantage for themselves. They are literally sacrificing another human being for the hope of improving their own future.

Is what they are doing based on some empirical evidence? No. Are the effects of what they believe still real? Yes. Their hierarchy of ontology has a coherence of its own and allows their society to function, and is a very ancient structure. The concept of the "evil eye" (which is tightly related to these African practices) is a very old mechanism for managing wealth (and good or bad fortune) in communities for thousands of years.

To come along and say "well, this is nonsense. Let's convince them they're wrong by using physical evidence to prove it!" seems pretty hubristic.

Or in other words, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

Yes, you can. Not everyone, not all beliefs, but it's certainly not futile to try.

Isn't attempting to divert native peoples from their traditional beliefs, customs and traditions colonialism?

It certainly is if in the process you establish a colony there and start taking lands by force. People who do that also try to erase any previously existing culture, good and evil beliefs alike.

Otherwise, no. In this particular case, you'd simply be trying to get people to stop killing innocents in the name of spiritual/religious beliefs; something that is clearly evil and, in my opinion, so is anyone who tries to pretend it is not whether they believe that honestly or is just arguing in bad faith.

fair enough, I saw you using the word in a different manner, my apologies. At the same time though, their actions are the very real world murder and mutilation of innocents. Hubris or not, I think in this situation its ok to shake one's head and be pretty outraged and disappointed in their beliefs and the actions that they lead too. Not sure of the solution but one does not have to feel bad for not attempting to empathize with people that are murdering others for supernatural profit.

> The traditional world looks at the world as a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of meaning.

<sarcasm> Cool cool cool... Back to the topic of that juju which makes you stab proof. I'm sure you don't mind if I stab you while you hold on to it. Would that be okay with the hierarchy of being and the hierarchy of meaning? Not proving anything mind you, i would never ever do anything as violent as trying to force my materialist worldview on you. </sarcasm>

That being said probably juju which is supposed to bring you diffuse and probabilistic benefit is dime a dozen, while ones bringing you easy to verify, concrete, and immediate benefits are harder to find. Such is life I guess. :)

This "hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of meaning" is the justification superstition retreats to when its plain claims are revealed to be simply false.

There's also a false dichotomy here: you don't ether have to have respect for base superstition or subscribe to materialism. There's plenty of room for philosophies that reject both horns of this dilemma.

But either people turn into cats or they don't. Either money comes out of the pot or it doesn't. What am I missing?

Are you saying no one actually believes you turn into a cat but it has some other meaning apart from the literal meaning of those words?

There is a whole industry that makes money from people believing that it works, an industry that has been entrenched for centuries. Its really not so different than modern western religions conceptually although much more violent. Western religion believes in miracles and the power of prayer and people donate hundreds of millions of dollars to buy churches or planes for pastors. How often do people in dire straights ask people to pray for them in the west? Its just something that becomes entrenched in a culture and is very difficult to remove.

And I find the Western rituals and beliefs equally baffling.

This reveals that basic sanity (basing your beliefs on what you observe) is learned and not innate. Your own ancestors likely believed things like that, and your descendants could believe some future equivalent of QAnon.

I imagine it's kind of like believing in the more extreme conspiracy theories (the dems are a bunch of satanic baby eaters) - deep down I reckon almost all "believers" know it's not true, but life is boring and these people are poor and have not much to look forward to, so why not jazz it up by believing in magic.

Western society has a ton of these. The HN gestalt has a ton of these. But it's very hard to see your own equally silly beliefs.

Yes, there's many in Western society as well. I'd get downvoted if I mentioned them, however.

I'm sure there's also beliefs I hold that would fit this description as well, though I try to be as open-minded as possible and willing to let go beliefs that don't stand up to scrutiny. I've definitely changed my mind on many things over the years as I learn more. Some beliefs are hard to disprove.

But some are trivial.

But if someone wants to sell me a charm that makes them stab-proof, I'm not paying until I see it in action. You don't need to be a scientist to think of an experiment that determines if it works.

  > Surely they know it doesn’t actually work?

Do you think that carrots make your eyesight better? Every culture has its misconceptions.

Yes, but some misconceptions are easier to disprove. And some misconceptions are genuine (in the sense that people genuinely believe them) and others are mere scams that even their alleged "believers" don't believe.

I know at least one source for the misconception that carrots make your eyesight better: a WW2 lie to hide the fact of the existence of either radar or encryption breaking (I forget which).

But someone who actually believed carrots make your eyesight better might try to test it for themselves. They may even keep on deluding themselves after doing an experiment (hey, the placebo effect is strong).

What about someone who believes a juju amulet makes them impervious to stabbing. Would they be willing to try it? You offer to stab at their heart with all your might, and if they survive you give them money. Do they accept your offer? If they don't -- and they never do -- what is happening is that they suspect it doesn't really work.

It reminds me of Jack London's story, "Lost Face": https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london/short-stor...

It was Radar as I understand

I'm not saying I'm surprised they believe something that isn't true. We all do, myself included I'm certain. But some things would be trivial to test to see if it's true or not.

I used to think carrots made your eyesight better, because that's what I was taught. I've since let go of that belief in light of new understanding and evidence. That is a claim that's harder to demonstrate, so it takes time to learn the truth of the matter.

If was selling you a charm that made you bulletproof, it would be trivial to demonstrate. I'd wear it and you'd shoot me and I would be unharmed. But I'd wager money that no vendor selling such a charm would ever agree to such a simple demonstration of their wares.

There's another possibility: perhaps it works, but in a way that is not trivial to prove. For example, maybe it depends on who's doing it. You or I would be unable to prove it, but we're not cat changers.

But if there is an unbeliever witnessing these rituals, usually it means they will fail.

This is a common theme with all such rites.

The human capacity for self-deception amazes me. The people in the market claim to believe juju works. This is not a lie; they put up their own money to buy charms. But at some level they know it doesn't work, since they know the prize will go unclaimed. They can switch between these two beliefs to keep from confronting the inconsistency of their worldview.

It's not really self deception. It's more of faith with a whole lot of ignorance. Ignorance of the old ways. How to go about it. So they get easily scammed by fake priests. Most african indigenous spiritual practices have been bastardized by the influx of islam and christianity. Most people believe in the old gods and are right to do so; but generational knowledge transfer is dwindling because of societal pressure. It's not really fashionable to be a traditionalist in Nigeria.

"Most people believe in the old gods and are right to do so." I would strongly disagree, but then again, you would follow that by disagreeing with my disagreement :) As long as everything is allowed to be subjective opinion, anything goes.

And so I ask: what objective evidence is there that it is "right" to believe in the "old gods"? What makes the old traditions more accurate than the new ones? What evidence is there that any of them work, beyond stories and anecdotes at best?

Could the old practices do any of this cool stuff either? Did they claim to?

Context is king. It's likely less about structured/analyzed beliefs and more likely about expected/allowed behavior in situation A versus expected/allowed behavior in situation B.

For instance, inside church or around people from church, context A exists and behavior capabilities set A is selected, and when at a strip club, a different behavior capability set is selected. Where there is no context leakage, e.g. you don't hang out with the same people at the church that you do at the strip club, there may never be opportunities for the non-self-relfective to change.

This demonstrates to me the 'power' of the mind, similar to the placebo effect? If a belief is objectively 'true' or not is irrelevant, what the mind believes and is able to immerse itself into can manifest some unexplained results.

Of course, I'm not advocating any superstitions, but simply it seems that powerful beliefs can yield astonishing results sometimes (good or bad).

I think it speaks more to the social pressures of cultures. When a practice is embedded in the social expectations of a culture, it becomes very hard to remove or to dismiss without breaking social ties or generational ties. Breaking those ties can leave people without support, finances, or even shelter, so it's often taboo to even try.

The placebo effect has control over a person's own perceptions and, to a much lesser degree, their own health. It can make them feel happier or less pain, it can even bolster the immune system by reducing stress, but it won't cure cancer. It also will not manifest money, or turn you into a cat or a banana, or do anything supernatural. It cannot manifest anything beyond a person's own perceptions and mild health benefits.

Whether something is true or not is absolutely relevant. To quote Tim Minchin's brilliant poem "Storm": is truth "so loose-weave of a morn / When deciding to leave your flat by the door / Or the open window on the second floor?"

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