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Comment by afpx | Hacker News Reader

Except few people ask why. And, that's frustrating.

It reminds me one of my daughter's science shows. In an experiment, they hire an actor to repeat a nonsensical ritual in a waiting room. When new people come in, without being asked, they copy the ritual. The ritual continues indefinitely well after the actor leaves the room.

In another experiment (I think referenced by Sapolsky), an animal (primate) watches a human perform a ritual that produces a reward (treat). When the animal is given the same challenge, they dispose of all of the ritualistic steps and only do the relevant steps. But, when a young Human watches, they will repeat the entire ritual.

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Interesting. Presumably over time the evolutionary selection of rituals the article talks about would weed out the ones that are useless though.

I wonder if the act of closely following a ritual even if we do not know its purpose is a form of human meta-ritual? That makes it easier to learn from previous generations without having to understand the potentially harsh lessons that lead to the creation of the ritual in the first place?

> That makes it easier to learn from previous generations without having to understand the potentially harsh lessons that lead to the creation of the ritual in the first place?

This I suspect is very much a part of it. Humans have more complex things to learn, learning to do a bit extra may be better than learning to do to little. I.e. erring on the side of caution.

As an example of a ritual, you have the train conductors in Japan that point at stuff and say it out loud. [1] This is a ritual which on the surface level has no use. But this ritual does have a purpose. It's really hard to get things right every time, especially with routine inspections. It was found that by pointing and calling the thing you inspect, even with routine, fewer errors happen.

The rituals may be a way to deal with complexity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

> In another experiment (I think referenced by Sapolsky), an animal (primate) watches a human perform a ritual that produces a reward (treat). When the animal is given the same challenge, they dispose of all of the ritualistic steps and only do the relevant steps. But, when a young Human watches, they will repeat the entire ritual

I was initially sceptical of this but some googling led me to [0]. Quite fascinating. For a more general survey of how primates learn by observation have a look at [1]

[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-004-0239-6

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934467/

I am purely speculating, but the ritualistic behaviour in humans might be an attribute which allows complex multi-step instructions to propagate over generations. Pattern identification is similar in this way, in that a small amount dramatically increases problem-solving within individuals/populations but at the extreme creates dogmatism.

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