When decisions have few externalities, decoupling bad from good decision makers by allowing people to make their own decisions works very well. When decisions have large externalities, only having most people able to make a good decision leads to a robustly safe outcome.
i think this is what tradition is meant to do; you take a few common hazards and you hard-code rules about it for people who aren’t wise enough to originate the right decision on the fly
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Unfortunately, that leads to the overadaptation trap. Conditions change, the traditions fail, but people cannot break free of them quickly enough to survive the transformation without widespread suffering.
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In particular, if long periods pass between crises, the human brain seems to overadapt to the strategies that work well in normal conditions. (This is Taleb's point about the danger of fat tails.)
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Ie you can easily have cultural norms that are good for preventing disease spread, like handwashing or mask-wearing or quarantine. handwashing & quarantine are in fact biblical commandments.
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I’m not enthusiastic about practicing a traditional lifestyle myself, but this is clearly the use case that explains why traditions are ever good.
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