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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Rationality Quotes Thread May 2015 - Less Wrong
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Why, prayer almost certainly has psychological benefits, like being less gloomy and more hopeful about the thing you pray for, such as healing. Placebo effect etc.
So I am not sure what exactly this quote demonstrate? That widespread beliefs can be wrong? I would say, widespread beliefs are often wrong about how things work out in the world, but not wrong about the actual end effect delivered in the mind. A religous fisherman my logic this way I pray -> I get more fish -> I feel better. Instead it works out as I pray -> I feel better. The end effect is still the same. That is because if it would be like I pray -> I still feel the same, sooner or later they would find a way to rationalize stopping wasting time.
Of course it is a bit cynical to claim to that we do everything in the world ultimately only to generate warm fuzzies inside our own minds, but it does seem so, unfortunately.
Yup. You might think that "prayer might not work even though lots of people think it does" is an entirely obvious idea, but I'm not sure it was so obvious in 1872.
(Although I notice that the argument "It must not have been obvious, or Galton wouldn't have bothered pointing it out" is uncomfortably similar to the argument Galton is refuting.)
The kind of feeling-better that comes from having more fish to feed your family is not the same as the kind of feeling-better that comes from having prayed. (E.g., one will stop your children starving and the other won't.) Isn't this relevant?
It is. I guess I was probably reading too much into it. It is just, if see a widespread practice, I don't want to simply take the most literal possible prediction of what they claim it does, and if that doesn't, then consider them idiots. I will assume people are essentially economical so not idiots as long as time invested vs. some kind of psychological profit gained goes, and want to find out in what other ways does it work i.e. what kind of potential profit it gains, even if just psychological (and sometimes not just psychological but e.g. social).