Sweet-potato washing revisited: 50th anniversary of the Primates article (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Sweet-potato washing revisited: 50th anniversary of the Primates article (2015)

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41 pointsdang26 comments

So what behaviors do humans do without being aware there is no reason for it?

(It doesn't count if the human knows there might not be a purpose, and they are just doing it be like others.)

I guess it would have to be something only some humans do, because if everyone does it unaware, then there's no one available to tell them that :)

microservices

"It doesn't count if the human knows there might not be a purpose, and they are just doing it to be like others."

There are so many meanings of the word reason. I suspect you mean the sense that is like “justification”. Consider, the only reason I have for looking at hacker news right now, is because I know lots of my peers are as well, though I don’t consider this consciously/rationally. But if my peers (along some dimension) weren’t here, I surely wouldn’t be.

circumcision

Particular hairstyles, other types of fashion. Slang and other communication norms - waving or handshaking or hugging, laughing together.

There’s social reasons for all those things.

Presumably, there are social reasons for sweet potato washing as well. But, I think the idea here is that the practice had a non-social-cultural purpose at first (washing the hot sweet potato that came out of the fire) but now is widely retained for only a social-cultural purpose (washing fresh sweet potatoes, apples, and other things that are not hot)

A lot of religious norms seem like things that made sense in context at the time, but not necessarily today. E.g. don't eat pork or shellfish, don't wear mixed fibers, don't get tattoos, cover your hair in public.

That doesn't count. People are well aware they are doing it for religious reasons. And, on top of that, there are reasons for the the religious actions that are still valid right now, that you are not even aware of.

> still valid right now, that you are not even aware of.

I'm here to learn and engage in good-faith discussion - I didn't mean to offend you about your religion and I apologize if I did. I'd be interested to hear what you think these are, especially if I am genuinely ignorant about them.

See this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31176549 and feel free to ask me any others.

Tattoos are because your body does not belong to you, it belongs to God, and you are just borrowing it, so it's not right to damage it that way. Same for the prohibition against ripping out hair in mourning.

You are expected to remember at all times that God gave you a body to do good things with. This also applies to the prohibition against suicide, or taking unnecessary risk (that last one is obviously very subjective). Additionally you are required to take good care of your body, and go to a Dr. when needed.

All the above are different aspects of the same thing.

Another example is you are not allowed to give up your life to save someone else, with exceptions made for your children. (You are allowed to risk it though.)

I get that the pork and shellfish thing is about avoiding trichinosis and other food-borne nastiness, and the tattoo thing to avoid infection and sepsis, but what's the context for the other ones? assuming you mean "there's a good real-life reason for this" rather than "in the religious context of the time".

Covering your hair maybe makes sense if there was a lice problem, but I can't think of a decent reason to prohibit wearing of mixed fibers.

The story I had heard was that it was characteristic of a competing tribe, but doing some quick googling right now it looks like the reason is more likely to be that such garments were reserved for priests - not sure why this rule didn't apply to them. At any rate, I am far from an expert on the Torah or Bible Old Testament, so maybe someone more knowledgeable can talk about what we think the reasons were for this law at the time.

To be specific, it's permitted for the ceremonial clothing of a Priest, and only while on duty (typically 1 week out of the year).

It's like the great seal of the US - permitted only for official use.

Not an expert but: married women covered their hair to make them less attractive to men. (Religious Jewish women now often wear wigs that look better than their natural hair, but that's OK. The Jewish God sometimes allows loopholes and workarounds.)

Not wearing mixed fibers was never a practical rule, but part of a common theme in Judaism of separating things, like separating milk and meat. Most importantly, the sacred is separated from the mundane, and the Sabbath is separated from work days.

There are quite a few rules in Leviticus that are impressively practical for an ancient people with a primitive understanding of biology: there are restrictions on a touching corpses or people with skin diseases, and frequent handwashing is mandated, including before eating, after urinating or defecating, and after visiting a graveyard.

Hair is not about attraction, it's that an uncovered head (for men as well, men wear a kippah) is considered uncouth, and it's a way to disrespect someone. Think about hat wearing in the US 100 years ago - no one respectful would be caught outdoors without a hat.

There is no rule about mixed fibers. Instead there is a rule about combining wool + linen, and the reason is simple enough: It was reserved for ceremonial use, and not permitted for mundane use.

Specifically the priestly garments were made of it, and Tzitzit (which are worn by all Jewish men, not just priests) are made of it.

Milk and meat are separated because it's considered "rude" (wish I had a better word, maybe "boorish") to put the meat of a dead animal in the same liquid that it makes to feed its young. It's also not permitted to kill a parent animal and its child in the same day, for the same reason.

The meat/dairy separation is extrapolated from biblical verses in Exodus and Deuteronomy that forbid boiling a goat kid in its mother's milk:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_and_meat_in_Jewish_law

Wear masks outdoors.

Washing chicken

I used to think this about rice.

When I first started cooking rice, I washed it because I'd seen my parents and grandparents do so. But one day I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was silly, and probably a habit passed down from decades ago before modern food mills and factories.

I decided that it there's no way that rice bought in a supermarket today could be dirty. We don't wash flour, sugar or salt, and we don't get sick. So I stopped washing rice.

I did that for a couple of years until someone saw me doing it and pointed out that the reason to wash rice was to rid it of its starchy coating.

I went back to washing my rice.

Okay, but did you notice a difference?

Sometimes I wash, sometimes I don't.

Yeah, in the stickyness. Unwashed rice is more clumpy.

You never looked at the water that came off it? There is often a lot of actual dirt on brown rice. On white rice they add talcum powder to keep it from sticking, which at least used to tend to have asbestos particles in it.

Most of them, we don't even notice they are a thing we are doing. We might notice if somebody didn't do it.

When you get down to it, what behaviors don't we do without being aware there is no reason for it?

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