"Magical thinking includes all systems of magic, as it includes the idea of mental causation, i.e. the possibility of the mind having an effect on the physical world directly."
We actually already do this. We all believe that our minds will have direct effects on the way we move, for example. Free will is just an instance mental causality. The problem is that while it's easy to not believe in magic, it's just so hard not to believe in free will.
> For example, an obsessive-compulsive cleaning ritual may overemphasize the order, direction, and number of wipes used to clean the surface. The goal becomes less important than the actions used to achieve the goal, with the implication that magic rituals can persist without efficacy because the intent is lost within the act.
This made me think about the way we teach beginning programmers to comment code. In commercial practice writing comments is an economic activity. One spends time and money now, hoping to benefit a year in the future when one needs to modify the original code. Optimal commenting requires knowing your cost of capital. If you are funding your start up on your credit card at 2% per month you should write fewer comments than if you are polishing corporate code funded by a bond paying 2% per year.
There is a good reason that we overlook cost of capital when we are writing comments. A bad comment costs 5 minutes when you write it, and costs 5 more minutes a year later when you read it and find that the information that you cannot get from the code isn't in the comment either. A good comment saves you two hours on reconstructing reasoning that you have forgotten, but only cost five minutes to write because the key point was fresh in your mind from composing the code. The difference in profit between a good comment and a bad comment are so large that they overwhelm any reasonable cost of capital.
I have never seen a tutorial on writing comments that even mentions the cost of capital. So it seems to be traditional that the intent (to make money) is lost within the act.
"Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming that is characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. Cargo cult programming is typically symptomatic of a programmer not understanding either a bug he or she was attempting to solve or the apparent solution..."
Interesting that you mention this. I'm almost done re-reading "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dörner and have come across this gem (p170) (s/war/software engineering/, s/commander/developer/):
"The effects of "methodism" - the unthinking application of a sequence of actions we have once learned - can have a significant impact in areas other than measuring quantities of water. The motivation is the same, however: we are most inclined to deconditionalize a form of action and use it over and over again if it has proved successful for us or for others. [Karl von] Clausewitz, from whom I have borrowed the term methodism, observed:
"So long as no acceptable theory, no intelligent anaylsis of the conduct of war exists, routine methods will tend to take over even at the highlest levels...Their only insights are those that they have gained by experience. For this reason, they prefer to use the means with which their experience has equipped them, even in cases that could and shuold be handled freely and individually. They will copy their supreme comanders' favorite device - thus automatically creating a new routine...War, in its highest forms, is not an infinite mass of minor events, analogous despite their diversities, which can be controlled with greater to lesser effectiveness depending on the methods applied. War consists rather of single, great, decisive actions, each of which needs to be handled individually. War is not like a field of wheat, which, without regard to the individual stalk, may be mown more of less efficiently depending on the quality of the scythe; it is like a stand of mature trees in which the ax has to be used judiciously according to the characteristics and development of each individual trunk."
...The methodist is not able to cope with specific, individual configurations on their own terms, for he has two or three ways of proceeding, and he uses one or the other depending on the general features of the situation as a whole. He does not take into account the individuality of the situation as it is evidenced in the specific configuration of its features."
"In religion, folk religion and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense."
In Silicon Valley, the correlation posited is between investment ritual and an expected benefit or recompense.
The fact is that only a tiny portion of the population of the world today do not espouse some form of magical or teleological thinking. It's extremely important to recognize and understand such phenomena.
We actually already do this. We all believe that our minds will have direct effects on the way we move, for example. Free will is just an instance mental causality. The problem is that while it's easy to not believe in magic, it's just so hard not to believe in free will.