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Are there any common superstitions that are scientifically plausible?
Astrology is close: time of year you are born in has big effects on your life, although this may be an artifact of the modern school-year. For example, being older than kids in your same "year" of school helps you get onto sports teams.
After the first three words, I assumed you were going to point out that the entire planet gets much hotter and colder as the zodiac shifts each year. The rising and setting of the sun has a similarly large effect, and the moon is also connected with tides.
Historical astrology was the precursor to modern astronomy, and was highly complex. There was likely a relatively strong tie to the course of history. If an astrological event associated with regime changes occurs, people are much more likely to revolt, because they are much less worried about being punished for a failed revolt.
I was mostly thinking about modern astrology, since I don't really think of ancient things as "common superstitions".
As ive said before, much alternative medicine probably boils down to avoiding slegehammertastic interventions with side effects when you can actually heal on your own and invoking placebo effects, which are real and matter and come from the close integration of our nervous system with pretty much everything, with greater reliablity and strength than just taking a sugar pill.
Yes, but also no.
By definition, a superstition that is valid is not a superstition. "Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning" is usually not called a superstition, because it is a good heuristic. "13 is unlucky" is called a superstition because it is not useful.
Things that might be a 'useful superstition' include:
Obviously, the truth value of these is variable and often requires a generous interpretation. Also, some (all?) of these are only useful to people who want easy rules, indicating that they aren't really LessWrong types.
Superstitions seem to sprint from biases and as these are basically reasoning heuristics they are conceptually plausible but missed. Google for "biase superstition heuristics".
One hit: https://deisidaimon.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/trond-bounded-rationality-biases-and-superstitions.ppt