NationStates Jolt Archive

Say you're an atheist. You don't overtly believe in God, religion, etc. But do you engage in "magical thinking"? Like baseball players who won't wash the "lucky shirt" out of fear of breaking their winning streak, do you have any oddball unspoken beliefs about fending off disaster?

http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080506/1194772262125.html?.v=8

Suppose you’re preparing to travel by air. Which of these precautions do you think is most likely to prevent your plane from crashing?

A) Sacrificing a gilt-horned bull on an altar.

B) Sacrificing two goats on the tarmac.

C) Buying flight insurance.

I’m guessing you didn’t go for the bull sacrifice. Although this preboarding procedure was practiced by ancient Greek travelers, as Homer reported in grisly detail, today there are serious doubts about its efficacy, if only because of the litany of tourist woes in “The Odyssey.”

The goat option was tested at Katmandu Airport in September to propitiate Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god. Officials of Nepal Airlines told Reuters that they had sacrificed two goats in front of a Boeing 757 whose mechanical problems had forced the airline to suspend some flights.

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed, and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” one airline official reported triumphantly. Nevertheless, it is probably premature to put much faith in a single experiment that so far, to my knowledge, has not been replicated.

We do, though, have abundant data regarding option C. Last year, tens of millions of people bought life insurance for scheduled flights of airlines in the United States. Not one of those insured passengers died in a crash — and this was not just a coincidence, at least not to many of the people who bought the insurance.

No, at some level they believed that their insurance helped keep the plane aloft, according to psychologists with new experimental evidence of just how weirdly superstitious people can be.

We buy insurance not just for peace of mind or to protect ourselves financially, but because we share the ancient Greeks’ instinct for appeasing the gods.

We may not slaughter animals anymore to ward off a plague, but we think buying health insurance will keep us from getting sick. Our brains may understand meteorology, but in our guts we still think that not carrying an umbrella will make it rain, a belief that was demonstrated in experiments by Jane Risen of the University of Chicago and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell.

“It is an irony of the post-Enlightenment world,” they conclude, “that so many people who don’t believe in fate refuse to tempt it.” The psychologists first identified this reluctance last year by reconsidering a well-known superstition about lottery tickets. Experimenters had repeatedly found that once people were given a lottery ticket, they would refuse to trade it for another ticket despite being offered a cash bonus and reassured that the other ticket was just as likely to win.

This superstitious behavior had been explained with the theory of “anticipated regret”: Even though the people realized the odds were no different for any ticket, they anticipated feeling especially stupid if they traded away a winner, so they held on to their ticket just to avoid that regret.

But there’s also another reason, as Dr. Risen and Dr. Gilovich reported after running a complicated lottery game with cash prizes for competing teams. If a player watched his teammate (who was secretly a confederate of the researchers) trade away a lottery number, the player actually believed the new number was less likely to win, and he would hedge his bet accordingly.

The fear of tempting fate showed up in further experiments with Cornell students. When told about an applicant to graduate school at Stanford who had been given a Stanford T-shirt by his mother, people assumed he would hurt his chances for admission if he had the hubris to wear it. And they believed that a professor was more likely to call on them in class if they didn’t do the assigned reading.

Even people who consciously reject superstitions seem to have these gut feelings, says Orit Tykocinski, a professor of psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. She found that rationalists were just as likely as superstitious people to believe that insurance would ward off accidents.

In one of her experiments, players drew colored balls out of an urn and lost all their money if they picked a blue one. Some players were randomly forced to buy insurance policies that let them keep half their money if they drew a blue one. These policies didn’t diminish their risk of drawing a blue ball — but the insured players rated their risk lower than the uninsured players rated theirs.

That same magical thinking was evident when Dr. Tykocinski asked some people to imagine buying travel insurance before getting on a plane, and others to imagine not buying it because they ran out of time at the airport. Sure enough, the ones with insurance figured they were less likely to lose their bags, get sick or have an accident.

These results presumably come as no surprise to marketers of travel insurance, which is now purchased by half of American leisure travelers — a fivefold increase since 2001, according to the United States Travel Insurance Association. As a purely economic investment, some of this insurance can be dubious, particularly the flight insurance policies. (For more on this, see nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

A magical belief in insurance sounds crazy because at a rational level we realize that our decision to forgo an insurance policy is not going to affect pilots or mechanics. But Dr. Risen and Dr. Gilovich say that there’s a logical explanation for this superstition: Because calamities are so vivid and easily brought to mind, we tend to overestimate their probability when we intuitively judge what will happen if we tempt fate.

So when we think about passing up flight insurance, we conjure up disaster just as easily as ancient Greeks imagined a thunderbolt from Olympus, and we too figure we can avert it through the equivalent of a bull sacrifice. Intuitively, we haven’t made great strides since Homer’s day. But at least our gods take credit cards.

Ahh...I believe humans are naturally disposed to think about the supernatural.

Ahh...I believe humans are naturally disposed to think about the supernatural.

In the sense that in the event of an unknowable, we cling to hope - by nature we anthropomorphize such things, from animals to emotions - it's no surprise that polytheistic religions have actual gods representing human emotions.

So in some senses you're right if we take 'supernatural' to mean the anthropomorphization - jeez I had to type that slowly - of emotions into a separate being but it doesn't mean we're necessarily disposed to believe in Gods as such - note I capitalize here where I didn't before.

If you want to PREVENT a plane crash, none of them help.

If you want to SURVIVE a plane crash, drinking lots of beer is the best choice because it gives you a chance of being obnoxious and getting banned from air travel before the plane leaves. >_>

If you want to PREVENT a plane crash, none of them help.

If you want to SURVIVE a plane crash, drinking lots of beer is the best choice because it gives you a chance of being obnoxious and getting banned from air travel before the plane leaves. >_>

Actually, if you can drink yourself into a state of unconsciousness then you probably do have a better chance of surviving - where your body stiffens in anticipation of impact, it's less 'bouncy', and the body is actually quite bouncy, people have survived long falls from fainting.

It's why you can throw babies such a long way and they're not hurt - try it.

No thanks, I'm not indian.

Also, drinking into unconsciousness is another way to not get on the plane.

Well I catch a plane and think no more of it. I have a decent amount on trust in modern technology.

Insurance doesn't prevent accidents. It just ensures that, should you get into one, it makes it easier to deal with.

Health Insurance doesn't help keep you from being sick, it just makes it easier to get better.


This article fails because nobody can well and truly reject superstition. Even if you could, humans love explaining the unknown with something they believe they can influence, hence where it even comes from. Good luck avoiding that.

This article fails because nobody can well and truly reject superstition.

I thought it a very interesting article myself, I think irrationality is both interesting and beneficial - irrationality causes us to make decisions we wouldn't necessarily make on experience, that kind of gambit links in with gene mutation - it's helped us survive.

Ahh...I believe humans are naturally disposed to think about the supernatural.

Or they have something of a hole in them thats needs to be "filled".

Sort of like needing some one to tell them what to do.

Insurance doesn't prevent accidents. It just ensures that, should you get into one, it makes it easier to deal with.

Health Insurance doesn't help keep you from being sick, it just makes it easier to get better.


This article fails because nobody can well and truly reject superstition. Even if you could, humans love explaining the unknown with something they believe they can influence, hence where it even comes from. Good luck avoiding that.

That's pretty much exactly what the article said.

In the sense that in the event of an unknowable, we cling to hope - by nature we anthropomorphize such things, from animals to emotions - it's no surprise that polytheistic religions have actual gods representing human emotions.

So in some senses you're right if we take 'supernatural' to mean the anthropomorphization - jeez I had to type that slowly - of emotions into a separate being but it doesn't mean we're necessarily disposed to believe in Gods as such - note I capitalize here where I didn't before.

Yes. I would have used the word "religious" rather than "supernatural" if I meant we are necessarily disposed to believe in "Gods" as such.

Well I catch a plane and think no more of it. I have a decent amount on trust in modern technology.

Same.

i try to keep crazy thinking to a minimum. i do find myself having superstitious feelings now and then but i dont act on them.

i have never considered buying flight insurance but now that i know its true function im glad its offered.

Ahh...I believe humans are naturally disposed to think about the supernatural.
Strange...I believe humans are naturally disposed to stupidity.

Well I catch a plane and think no more of it. I have a decent amount on trust in modern technology.
I catch a plane and think no more of it...after I've had enough sedatives :p

I'd probably be drinking already.

Here is my take, which is pretty much in agreement with the article.

People tend to feel better when they bargain with fate than they do when they flip a coin. When the darkness and randomness that is chance comes into play people feel powerless, because they are.

Humans are social creatures, so in the end they feel like they can bargain with some kind of sentient force instead of trusting chance.

Nobody can influence chance, but they can influence fate, so it makes for an empowering substitution.

I feel like I could have written that less repetitively, but oh well...

I think you're trying to make a bullshit argument not even asscosiated with how faith and God works.

Praying for a plane crash not to happen? Jesus, why don't I pray for Hitler to never invade Poland? How about the stock market never to crash?


Some things are beyond individual perception, as such, they hold a vital place in world history, and cause a chain reaction.


Now, I can pray for myself. I can pray for myself to survive the crash. (Stranger things have happend) Or I could pray for my girlfriend to hit the lottery so she'd be fucking rich and would atleast be well off and could have whatever she wanted. That'd make me happy knowing that.

We don't pray for the big things, we pray for the little things.
It's the little things that make us happy, and the big things that teach us.


Also Shifting Mist, there's a flaw in your logic. Fate is sentinent, might be harder to "control" then chance.

Chance is math. Mathamatically there's this and there's that. You can shift the math based on how you add and subtract variables.
God on the other hand acts in His own will. Therefore you have to actually be more prepared to accept what happens to you then if you were to "flip a coin" as you said..


I like also how you say "humans are social creatures", as though you weren't human. It doesn't work to look at a species from a third person perspective when you yourself are one of them.

We don't pray for the big things, we pray for the little things.
It's the little things that make us happy, and the big things that teach us.


I would rather learn from the little things so the big things don't kill me, but to each his own I guess.


Also Shifting Mist, there's a flaw in your logic. Fate is sentinent, might be harder to "control" then chance.

Chance is math. Mathamatically there's this and there's that. You can shift the math based on how you add and subtract variables.
God on the other hand acts in His own will. Therefore you have to actually be more prepared to accept what happens to you then if you were to "flip a coin" as you said..


That may be true, but I stand by my logic. Something with a will of it's own can be bargained with, even if that makes someone more likely to die, it is still empowering to know that you have a say.

With chance stuff just happens, the end.


I like also how you say "humans are social creatures", as though you weren't human. It doesn't work to look at a species from a third person perspective when you yourself are one of them.

I do that because I generally dislike refering to myself in the body of my argument, it dosen't really mean anything.

If a plane goes down, it goes down, if your on it, stick your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye, as it's unlikely, (but still possible variables such as speed, altitude, pilot, and the nature and cause of the crash) you will survive.

Health Insurance doesn't help keep you from being sick, it just makes it easier to get better.

Actually, I think there's something to be said about this. I find that when I have health insurance, I rarely get sick and when I do not, I tend to get sick more often. However, I think this has to do with being worried about becoming extremely ill when I'm between insurance and being relieved of that stresser when I have health insurance. Granted, it isn't a lot of stress on my mind, but it's still there, at least at a subconscious level, and stress is known to increase one's chance of falling ill/slowing recovery time. So, in terms of health insurance, it does make sense that having it is likely to keep one from being sick as often.

Planes, though? Nah.

Yeah, superstition annoys me, things like people shaking dice in their hands before rolling them as if it'll give them a better number. Though fear of a plane crashing is totally unreasonable, it's the safest form of travel we have.

Well, I was going to say "Use your mom as a parachute", but I wasn't sure the mods would find that funny. I have learned not to offer to make lunch for my ex on statutory holidays, because he never shows, and not to be in the driver's seat if I want a vehicle not to crash.

I'd get blitzed. That way, I wouldn't care if the plane crashed or not, I'd go down happy.

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

But yeah, I don't really have any rituals. No plane has ever crashed with me on board, therefore my very presence is good luck and prevents planes from crashing.

Actually, buying flight insurance does reduce the chances of that flight crashing. The insurance company now has a financial incentive in ensuring the insured flight goes well, and will thus use whatever influence they can to improve the odds of that plane having a safe flight. This influence might be direct, through financial incentives directly to the airport or airline, or indirect, through lobbying for more stringent maintenance screening of aircraft.

I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it would do any good. So, sure, I'd engage in "magical thinking." In fact, in the event of a hijacking, say, I'd probably attempt to cast a Mind Thrust.

I'm an agnostic atheist and also EXTREMELY superstitious when it comes to sports. My whole family is. I knock on wood, never say the word "shutout", go to games or don't go to games depending on the team's record when I'm in attendance, adjust the volume on the TV/mute it, etc etc. I recognize that this makes no sense, and I don't really believe that these things effect strangers playing a game... but I still do them. Sometimes I just think it's fun.

Actually, buying flight insurance does reduce the chances of that flight crashing. The insurance company now has a financial incentive in ensuring the insured flight goes well, and will thus use whatever influence they can to improve the odds of that plane having a safe flight. This influence might be direct, through financial incentives directly to the airport or airline, or indirect, through lobbying for more stringent maintenance screening of aircraft.

I'm not convinced. They're already making money selling insurance against something that's almost certain not to happen. To appreciably decrease the odds of insured flights crashing, they'd probably have to spend more money than they'd lose if one of those flights did crash.

Strange...I believe humans are naturally disposed to stupidity.
The two are hardly unrelated. Anyway, if it keeps people quiet, then whatever imo.

Anyway - last time I had Sad Times on a plane (super turbulence about 100ft over Leeds-Bradford, and we overshot the landing, which meant a rerun :() I did very little praying and much swearing and making of unhelpful comments.

For example :

People were playing "I Spy" to try to take their eyes off the situation. I win. And immediately should "I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE, SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH 'C' - CRASH!", which did very little to help our situation. *sighs*

Alcohol consumption, baby!!

Clearly Insurance. The accountants that secretly run the world are obviously going to ditch the plane that costs them the least in payouts.

Actually, if you can drink yourself into a state of unconsciousness then you probably do have a better chance of surviving - where your body stiffens in anticipation of impact, it's less 'bouncy', and the body is actually quite bouncy, people have survived long falls from fainting.

It's why you can throw babies such a long way and they're not hurt - try it.

Damn you beat me to it. Anyway as for the baby part I would suggest using Michaels Jacksons or Britney Spears baby as a throw toy.

I would rush into the the cockpit and pull the air brake, hey it worked for Bugs Bunny didn't it?

Say you're an atheist. You don't overtly believe in God, religion, etc. But do you engage in "magical thinking"? Like baseball players who won't wash the "lucky shirt" out of fear of breaking their winning streak, do you have any oddball unspoken beliefs about fending off disaster?

Magical thinking is superstition. As I'm a cross between an atheist and a rationalist agnostic, I don't believe to supertitions either... Although, as Bohr said, while nailing a "lucky" horseshoe above his office door: "No, I'm not superstitious, but I've been told that it works for those who don't believe to it, too".

Btw I don't do anything to prevent a plane from crashing: I try to avoid taking a plane that is likely to crash. Also I played a lot with Flight Simulator. ;)

I can do anything while drunk, so I would get totally flutered(read: drunk) and then rush the cockpit and sort the whole thing out.

Well the odds of two planes crashing on the same day are pretty high so if you just make sure another plane goes down in flames...

In the sense that in the event of an unknowable, we cling to hope - by nature we anthropomorphize such things, from animals to emotions - it's no surprise that polytheistic religions have actual gods representing human emotions.

So in some senses you're right if we take 'supernatural' to mean the anthropomorphization - jeez I had to type that slowly - of emotions into a separate being but it doesn't mean we're necessarily disposed to believe in Gods as such - note I capitalize here where I didn't before.

As interesting as this idea of anthropormorphizing everything being something to do with the "supernatural" is, there's a far more mundane explanation: such behavior--including superstitution--is a result of a survival instinct. That shadow could be a tiger about to eat you. This smashed grass could be the footprint of a prey animal you can feast on. And so on and so forth.

Superstition comes about because we search for patterns in everything, and we sometimes come to the wrong conclusions about certain things. False patterns and all that.

Really, it's all very simple and easy to understand. No need to invoke some sort of "supernatural" thing.

As interesting as this idea of anthropormorphizing everything being something to do with the "supernatural" is, there's a far more mundane explanation: such behavior--including superstitution--is a result of a survival instinct. That shadow could be a tiger about to eat you. This smashed grass could be the footprint of a prey animal you can feast on. And so on and so forth.

Superstition comes about because we search for patterns in everything, and we sometimes come to the wrong conclusions about certain things. False patterns and all that.

Really, it's all very simple and easy to understand. No need to invoke some sort of "supernatural" thing.

Hmm...yes, anthropomorphization might be the wrong word, I was going to say that I was applying it to emotions only but we do also apply emotions to animals, the entire Chinese zodiac is testament to that.

Even in your examples though, we're placing living characteristics on non-living phenomena and, further, I'd say these are slightly different examples.

Where we hope desperately for something, it's, as someone else has also said, easier to place our hopes in 'something', be it a God, be it touching wood, than to merely hope. This slightly differs from mentally conjuring up physical causes of non-physical phenomena - light playing to create shadows for example

Yet both are examples of the brain grasping for something we can relate to, I'd say your example relates more to ghosts rather than Gods though I can see they're very intertwined, especially in terms of cause.

It is, as you say, also related to patterns, how our brains work, noting patterns and making predictions will cause this side-effect, not that side-effects are necessarily bad and, where it helps us avoid tigers, it's very good.

Well the odds of two planes crashing on the same day are pretty high so if you just make sure another plane goes down in flames...

lol that reminds me of a joke.

There once was a man who went to see a psychiatrist to try and cure his fear of flying. He's phobia was based that there would be a bomb on any plane he boarded. The psychiatrist tried to shift the phobia but couldn't, so he sent his patient to a statistician. The statistician prodded a calculator and informed the man that the odds against there being a bomb on the next plane he boarded were half a million to one. The man still wasn't convinced and believed that he would be on that one plane out of half a million. So the statistician prodded his calculator again and said "all right would you feel safer if the odds were ten million to one against" the man said yes of course he would. So the statistician said all right the odds against there being two, separate, unrelated bombs on board your next flight is ten million to one against. The man looked puzzled and said "that's all well and good, but how does that help me?" The statistician replied "Simple, you take a bomb on board with you"