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FiftyTwo comments on The Value (and Danger) of Ritual - LessWrong
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I like the idea of having rituals, if only because they're fun. Primates saying things together is awesome, and primates saying things about things I think are cool together sounds even more awesome.
However, I also agree that it's possible for this to go horribly wrong.
What does it going horribly wrong look like? What failsafes can we put in place? I think it would be helpful to have some "if you're doing this, something went wrong" heuristics so that we can notice ahead of time that something undesirable is happening, and stop it.
For instance, if we're ever sacrificing virgins, I think we messed up somewhere and should probably stop.
At [prominent UK university] we have a lot of rituals in our societies. The heuristic I use is that traditions should be perpetuated as long as they are enjoyable, but perpetuating tradition should not be seen as a good in itself.
What if a tradition or ritual isn't fun but serves some other purpose that is adaptive to the institution in question?