Superstition (repost)

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.

Some of you might have already recognized the title and intro of this post; it's the title and first sentences of the refrain in Stevie Wonder's song "Superstition". Damn, that's a good song. But it's also a key feature of our existence; in every culture and in every era we humans believe and do completely irrational things. I even believe that we're all doing this, no matter how rational we believe our behavior is. It's little things, like wearing the same shirt of socks at sports events because we believe they bring good luck, always choosing the same "lucky" color when playing board-games, or wanting our favorite token when playing Monopoly; it's all superstitious and irrational.

To explain why we all tend to have our own small and big irrational beliefs and behaviors, we have to look at something called operand conditioning. This is a learning process made famous by B.F. Skinner. Very simply put, this is learning by experience; when you burn your hand in fire once, you won't put your hand back in that fire, you'll do everything possible to avoid bodily contact with fire for the rest of your life.

The same way we avoid behavior that has led to a bad outcome, we tend to repeat behavior that has led to exceptionally good outcomes. So if you completely crushed all your opponents on a particularly good day at your favorite game or sport, it's somewhat natural to want to recreate everything about that day in the future; your lucky shirt and socks were born on that day.

Even pigeons show this kind of behavior. Experiments with pigeons in separate boxes showed this; in the box was a mechanism that released food every 15 minutes. After a while, all pigeons started showing odd behaviors upon approaching the 15 minute feeding mark. Some started turning around clockwise or counter clockwise, some started tilting their heads in a particular way... It was discovered that whatever they were doing at the time the food was served, they tried to repeat; they "thought" that their behavior at the time was causing the food to be served.

Some of these superstitions are so widespread that everybody knows of them. Seeing a black cat (especially on Friday the 13th) is bad luck, but now also a "glitch in the Matrix" due to that famous movie; the black cat appears (twice) just before bad things start to happen... Damn, that's a good movie. And speaking of 13... Did you notice that in high buildings often there's no 13th floor, as is the 13th row of seats in airplanes mysteriously absent? Yes, it's that bad. And completely irrational. Because there is a 13^th floor and a 13^th row; you can just count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, and eventually you'll reach number 13. We just give it another label and convince ourself that way that it doesn't exist.

Most superstitions are harmless and the conditioning discussed here is not a bad or good thing by itself; we teach and learn from each other that way. Like when we try to be better at school just to stop our parents from nagging us about it, we just exhibit behavior that leads to the removal of a negative stimulus (the nagging). Same with the hand in the fire. And even pigeons do it, so we don't have to feel particularly bad about it.

It's just that I feel that it is important to know about this. We believe a lot of things that aren't rational and behave accordingly; elections are won with charisma and good, "honest" looks, not with a sound plan for the future. It's sad but true, almost as sad as the way we're conditioned by popular media to believe certain things that are bad for us. It's important to know that evolution has given us the ability to be fooled for reasons of survival, and to fool each other as a means of building and maintaining society. It's important to be aware of this, because beliefs matter. They matter because they shape our behavior. So, try to be aware of what you choose to believe and why you believe it.

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