[extropy-chat] Failure of low-fat diet

[Robin Hanson]

At 06:47 PM 2/22/2006, Russell Wallace wrote:
>Consider that in the environment in which we evolved (and to a 
>lesser extent today), belief has both material and social functions.
>If you believe the red mushrooms are good to eat and the blue ones 
>are poisonous, that had better correspond to a state of affairs in 
>the physical world or you'll end up poisoned or malnourished.
>On the other hand, if tribe A believes in the tree god and tribe B 
>believes in the rain god, it _doesn't matter_ that neither of those 
>gods exists in the physical world. What matters is that you'd better 
>believe in the one your tribe believes in, or your impiety might 
>trigger a "not one of us" recognizer circuit in the brains of your 
>mates, who might then stick spears into you. ...
>Here's the test: When people get pneumonia or appendicitis or 
>whatever, do they rely on their healing crystals? No, they go to a 
>doctor. Oh, they use crystals _as well as_ real medicine, and 
>vocally credit the former with curing them - but they don't 
>_physically behave_ as though they believed that. They keep their 
>social and material beliefs separate.
>Sure, like any complex evolved mechanism, the separation sometimes 
>fails. You read about the dozen Darwin awards earned for getting 
>confused and treating healing crystals as physical rather than 
>social reality. But you don't read about the dozen million people 
>who took penicillin and were quietly saved to talk to their friends 
>about how their crystals cured them - and this is exactly what we 
>should expect.

I agree with your general concept, but your specific example actually 
turns out to be a bit off.   As a matter of fact, medicine is one of 
those topics on which people are pretty far from 
rational.   Apparently, the social functions of medical beliefs 
dominated the material functions among our ancestors.   See: 
http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf




Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323