You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Tem42 comments on Stupid questions thread, October 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: philh 13 October 2015 07:39PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (223)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Tem42 16 October 2015 02:29:34AM 1 point [-]

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:

  • An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
  • Garlic protects from evil spirits [if read 'sickness'].
  • After receiving a container of food, the container should never be returned empty.
  • Meditation makes you healthy and wise.
  • Going to church makes you a good person. [networking, community, charity]
  • Being bad will send you to hell.
  • Being bad will reduce your chances of Santa bringing you toys.

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.