
Tradition Is Smarter (2018) - andrenth
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-you-are.html
======
CalChris
> I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, an urban rail system) uses non-standard rail
gauge, 5 feet 6 inches. US standard rail gauge, 4 feet, 8.5 inches, would be
much cheaper to use as there is a large market in standard equipment. Non
standard BART equipment must instead be built custom, greatly increasing its
cost.

With that example in mind, the reformer wants to clear away this dumb design
decision and indeed the East Bay Antioch extension uses standard gauge. The
_more intelligent type of reformer_ may ask _If you don’t see the use of it, I
certainly won’t let you clear it away._

The trouble is that no one can remember _why_ the non-standard gauge was
chosen. Sometimes design decisions aren't smarter. They're just old.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I seem to recall that it was _deliberately_ chosen for incompatibility, so
that a BART train could _never_ be run on a regular railroad track.

Why? Partly politics. Southern Pacific Railroad was the existing railroad in
San Francisco. They had an existing commuter rail operation (which, if I
understand correctly, later became Caltrain), and they didn't want the
headaches of BART trains on their tracks. They were already losing money on
their existing commuter operation. Their money came from hauling freight.

But the other reason was safety. If two trains collide, and they're both
passenger trains, they'd better be built to similar collision standards.
Otherwise the stronger train will destroy the weaker, and there are people in
the weaker train. And if there are freight trains on the same tracks, then the
passenger trains have to be built to standards such that a collision with a
freight train isn't a massacre. (By the way, this is part of the distinction
between "light rail" and regular rail. They should _never_ be on the same
tracks.)

~~~
RealityVoid
> If two trains collide, and they're both passenger trains, they'd better be
> built to similar collision standards.

Is this _really_ a concern? This sounds crazy to me, how likely are trains to
actually collide? Are they not monitored and tracked? Do they not have safety
systems?

~~~
fierarul
Romania, December 2019: two trains collide almost 50 injured.

And what is more monitored and tracked than airplanes? December 2019: "Wizz
Air A320 within seconds of head on collision with an Air Europa Express flight
over Spain"

~~~
RealityVoid
Airplanes are not tracked( as in, they run on tracks) so they have more
options as to where they might be. With trains it's far far simpler to
position. Being on a collision course should be obvious.

Funny, I'm form Romania too, and CFR is a shining example of mismanagement. I
really doubt we can extrapolate a general rule from what is happening with
CFR. Precautions and some automated safety systems could surely avoid this.

~~~
gowld
Trains are tracked, which means they can't get _off_ a collision course. A
plane can turn in 2 directions in each of 2 dimensions.

------
Avshalom
Did anyone ever bother asking the Tukanoans why they process the manioc like
that?

I wash my hands, I can't see bacteria or germs, I've certainly never seen a
anyone die directly because of unwashed hands, and it's just a slow
statistical increase in sickness if a whole bunch of people stop...

but I don't wash my hands because I observed my elders, or because some
cultural figure told me it was merely the way of our people. Some just told at
some point to wash my hands cause otherwise people get sick, and if I had had
questions they'd have mentioned germs and stuff.

Like did any one check if the Tukanoans know manioc will slowly poison them
otherwise? I know it's a bit of a fuzzy line but is that process "tradition"
or is it "technology"

~~~
idclip
I think part of the why to your question is that Its deceiving to view the
human as a singular entity.

There isnt a you, practically, there is infact an Us, and as an organism, the
rule of large numbers wins everytime, we select for what we think is right as
a social collective/organism.

That kind of thinking is accepted in science, but not wide spread amongst the
singular individuals.

Older cultures didnt need to check for anything, decisions probably evolved
through intra generational symbolism and stories about ghosts and evil
spirits. Life wont answer the why, it just is, and if we push itll just eat
us.

In the same breadth, science is nature too. So whatever works, really.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Woah, this sentiment nails it. Please recommend reading.

~~~
tekproxy
You didn't ask me but I have a similar outlook and would appreciate reading
suggestions.

Jordan Peterson talks about the diversity of opinion being important because
there is no single or constant fitness function. His lectures on personality
get into this a bit. His 12 rules book does not.

I believe he's informed a lot by the work of Jonathan Haidt. His book The
Righteous Mind is good.

~~~
idclip
It’s actually a lot of child development literature by w.d winicot and r.d
laing, and the developmental psychology cult, also my own experience as a
meditator, some nietzsche, existential theory (sartre, nausea). I surprisingly
didnt read Haidth but ill check him out.

Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious influenced me alot too, and i
find alot of sense / approval in Peterson's lectures.

I generally think the fact that we can generalize our behavior (childrens
psych lit, behavioral psych lit.) is so astounding ... the fact we can agree
on a minimum set of things we can agree we dont like happening to us (note:
smart way of asserting universality of morals, you dont want to be murdered
can be a good minimim example here) blows my mind.

In the end its what i choose to believe, i dont think im unique in thinking
this way either.

I think even my thinking’s rightness is the result of that same intra
generational process, im not unique, nor do i think i am in control (beyond
the local control i exercise by trying not to die or be eaten).

------
tribune
If divination by bird augury is so wise, why don't we still use that to plan
agricultural layouts?

/s

But that sort of underscores the main argument against this stuff. Is it
possible that many traditions, while once adaptive and beneficial, are no
longer so? In other words, has the human situation departed so significantly
from ancestral conditions that much of tradition is somewhere between
irrelevant and harmful?

Of course not all tradition should be thrown out just for being old. But the
tools of rationality have come a long way.

~~~
cjsawyer
My favorite example is some religions still forbidding pork even though our
understanding of food safety has changed so dramatically.

~~~
jzvxkxbxjx
You’re rationalizing religion.

The prohibition of pork has nothing to do with disease. We’ve rationalized it
by telling ourselves, since there is no God that could make such a silly
request, that maybe they did it to cement food safety. Theres as much evidence
that it’s all just a fortuitous coincidence.

If you think long and hard enough you can come up with a rationalization for
anything in the Torah (or anything, really).

Instead religion is to be enjoyed like Love is. You don’t talk about
pheromones and dopamine levels when you embrace you wife. You talk about
mountains, and blue skies, and soaring views. If, on a whim, your wife were to
ask you to pretend you’re a hare, would you not entertain her?

If you’re a Christian you could rationalize the pork thing by saying: “the
purpose of the prohibition was to set up a teaching moment for Peter about
Universalism and humility 1000 years later”.

But that’s silly. Instead, for a believer, it’s a insignificant request for an
opportunity to make a physical demonstration of Love to the Devine.

The Sufis aren’t dancing because they’re free of tape worms.

~~~
seventhtiger
This is getting back to metis and episteme. I liked how this concept was
explored in the Uruk Machine series if you want to read more.

Metis is "local accumulated knowledge" and episteme is "abstract, generalized,
theoretical knowledge".

Metis, tradition, is barely knowledge. It is more of a practice without any of
the justification needed for knowledge. So if your community knows that it is
best to plant seeds during a specific holiday, they might think a supernatural
blessing is the reason. Knowing something for the wrong reason isn't
knowledge.

Non-knowledge loses arguments to knowledge. When an agricultural scientist
comes with theories and results it won't be difficult to say that the farming
community actually doesn't know anything. That's fine. But we are too quick to
throw out tradition vs knowledge because unless it is specifically measured
against it, the practice of tradition may be superior to the practice of
current knowledge. Their traditional planting date may be superior to all
models. After all, they've successfully farmed here centuries or millennia.

The Sufis might be dancing because having community gatherings allows
communities to survive. The dancing and rationalization is incidental but the
actual gathering is a crucial matter of survival.

------
jariel
This issue should be talked about more, because I believe it lies at the
foundation of so many issues; not only do we face this daily in tech, but
daily in politics with respect to 'progress'.

Though 'tradition' can often be wrong, we definitely do not consider the value
of 'what is' because often there are no advocates for it.

 _Change_ has tons of creative, intellectual advocation. We all want to think,
create, adapt, and it's always this are that is the most creatively dynamic.

Advocates for consistency often don't have the same degree of dynamism,
rather, the arguments are often indirect i.e. 'the rules are there for a
reason' instead of advocating the reasoning rules themselves.

------
lhiouyreowiu
This is one of the favorites subjects of Nassim Taleb.

> _Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later_

> _Judging people on their beliefs is not scientific. There is no such thing
> as “rationality” of a belief, there is rationality of action. The
> rationality of an action can only be judged by evolutionary considerations._

[https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-
rational...](https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-
rationality-432e96dd4d1a)

------
asdf21
Until it isn't... and there are many, many cases of that too.

That being said, the funniest example aligning with the article to me
personally, is how nearly all atheists "believe" in natural selection, but
almost no atheists have more than 2-3 children. In fact, most seem to have
zero or one. And many Conservative Christians don't "believe" in evolution,
but yet trend towards having many more children / larger families.

It's just such a clear example of how a likely incorrect belief (AKA, "God
wants me to have as many children as possible") can still result in a massive
evolutionary advantage.

~~~
zbyte64
Or maybe atheists want to concentrate more resources on the upbringing of the
child so that they have a competitive advantage.

Then also consider that in 3,000 years I'll probably be ancestor to all (this
holds true for others, I am by no means special). Don't really need to go
through the hassle of rearing 6 more kids to secure my genetic future.

~~~
toasterlovin
> Or maybe atheists want to concentrate more resources on the upbringing of
> the child so that they have a competitive advantage.

If you have less than 3 children, investing more resources in each child
doesn't matter. 2 children is break even from the standpoint of procreation.
So purposefully limiting yourself to that many or fewer children is a losing
procreation strategy.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
One problem of radical ideas is selection bias. The radical ideas that were
true and useful are widely known. However, there are a lot of radical ideas
that did not work out.

One example, I see is in psychology. Pretty much every time I see an article
published that goes against "conventional wisdom", I find that some time later
that there is an issue with statistics or sample or the article is otherwise
not reproducible.

Basically, humans are generally smart and over time figure out what works.

~~~
seventhtiger
If you assume humans have not evolved significantly over the past 20,000
years, you have to wonder what all the geniuses were doing.

Perhaps genius is a function of childhood nutrition and medicine, but if a
genius is 1 in 1000, then every village must have had one at some point.

What did people just as intelligent as us but without knowledge do for their
entire lives? They build on tradition.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>If you assume humans have not evolved significantly over the past 20,000
years, you have to wonder what all the geniuses were doing.

They were mostly preoccupied trying to stay alive. Also, any physical defect
could be a death sentence. Have poor vision, you get eaten by a lion that you
didn’t see. Unable to keep up with the tribe, you get left behind.

~~~
seventhtiger
That's true, but it only redeuces the probability some. There existed well-fed
healthy populations at many points in history and geography.

Even if the probability is much lower, there is estimated to be over 100
billions humans that have lived.

I think we intuitively underestimate ancient peoples' individual abilities
because we have so much knowledge and wisdom that's been built up over
millennia easily available to us. But someone had to figure out how to farm
using primitive tools and develop the tradition for the community.

What was medieval Von Neumann doing?

------
leoc
See also [https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/eating-way-too-
much-r...](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/eating-way-too-much-rice-
almost-doomed-japans-imperial-navy-59542) and
[https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm](https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm)
. Science Is Hard™.

------
sriku
In southern India, the "pongal" harvest festival (14/15/16 of Jan) has a
component called "bhogi" that had traditionally involved burning old stuff ..
which some have implied had the metaphorical role of pointing to dropping old
baggage to welcome a new year.

Ironically, this is itself old baggage today (in Chennai) where the air
quality _just today_ is horrible due to the practice of "bhogi" burning.

------
empath75
I love the idea of divination as a random number generator. That’s something
that’s going to stick with me for a long time.

~~~
CMCDragonkai
It's something that astounded me as cultural technology.

------
Barrin92
I think the problem with this perspective and the examples picked is that
tradition is particularly beneficial when the environment is largely stable.
Two of the examples being given are explorers in the desert or ice who die
when indigenous people's survive, or the processing of poisonous fruit.

The long term cultural adaptation really does provide benefits for these
problems because they never change, so you have a long time to work and
improve on them. The desert is more or less the same as is the ice, as is the
fruit.

But it's very easy to come up with counter-examples. The so-called cargo-cult
was a group of indigenous people conflating modern planes with deities because
they were still guided by their religious worldview. The middle-east faced a
very rude awakening when confronted with the military and technological
superiority of modern European states.

In a static environment, tradition can produce long term benefits, but in a
dynamic, novel environment tradition imposes costs by slowing down the speed
at which reforms can be executed.

Arguably the world is becoming more and more dynamic and complex with large
scale problems that are entirely novel propping up every other decade. It's
hard to think of the slowness of tradition as a virtue in this case.

------
skybrian
Scott Alexander reviewed the same book a year later:

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-
secret...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-
our-success/)

~~~
asdfman123
Fascinating.

> Historically, Reason has been the villain of the human narrative, a
> corrosive force that tempts people away from adaptive behavior towards
> choices that “sounded good at the time”.

Reason and the desire to question things is part of cultural evolution as
well, perhaps adapted for an age when things change incredibly quickly.

