Ubiquity of Superstition - Why capitalists are wrong but not necessarily foolish

Superstition may be defined as a belief that seems irrational to those who call it a superstition. One can be fairly certain, that in most cases, people holding the belief do not consider it to be a superstition in the duration that they hold it.

Superstition is often the result of insufficient or incorrect reasoning. It may also be the result of ignorance of certain facts, the knowledge of which would abolish the superstitious belief in any rational person, given sufficient time. One may like to say that modern science has removed superstition from the educated class and only the ignorant indulge in superstition. Yet we find instances of what we may consider to be superstition in daily life among those whom we consider educated. In this blog I attempt to analyse the nature of superstition and whether it is really possible to remove superstition and whether being ‘superstitious’ necessarily labels you as an ‘idiot’.

We said in the beginning that superstition is the result of of insufficient or incorrect reasoning. Yet, one is usually only able to find such instances of incorrect reasoning in hindsight, unless the flaw is very obvious. This is because it is not feasible, or even possible, to critically analyse every assumption that we make in daily life. As the number of assumptions, possible fallacies in reasoning etc. are very large or even infinite, we with our finite processing powers (like the brain), no matter however great, cannot search all of them. Let us now take instances of famous superstitions that have existed in the past, and demonstrate that there was no way one could have discriminated them from other beliefs.

Consider for instance alchemy. From a modern standpoint, we would view it as little more than religious witchcraft attempting to create gold. Yet it was based on fairly firm principles in which matter was considered to be made of four principal elements, which could be combined in different ratios to give all substances. While a mere four elements may be considered an oversimplification when we know that the various properties actually arise from a lot of atoms connected in specific, complicated patterns, great complexities are known to arise from fairly simple rules. For instance all colours can be generated from just three colours (or even just two different wavelengths of light). Simple rules are also known which can generate very complex patterns in the form of cellular automata[1]. Thus we can see that the principles of alchemy are not totally outlandish. Alchemy gets it’s final stamp of validity from the fact that Isaac Newton himself dabbled extensively in it. That we now know it to be wrong is of no consequence to it’s validity before chemistry and Dalton’s theory of atoms. Indeed, chemistry can be said to have evolved from alchemy when people questioned it’s fundamental principles.

It is therefore rather likely that there are common misconceptions even today. Indeed all of science (most notably physics, due to the rather simple laws it entails[2]) is a sequence of correction of misconceptions. Newton’s intuitive laws were modified first by Einstein in his general theory of relativity and later again in quantum mechanics. When misconceptions are very widespread it is rather difficult to spot them as we do not think of verifying them. Breaking preconceived notions to reach radically different conclusions was the hallmark of many great scientists such as Einstein and Galileo.

One possible misconception that is most relevant to this blog is one of the impeccable goodness of free market capitalism. In fact, one gets to hear arguments as shallow as “you can’t be socialistic, you have to be capitalistic”. Supporters of capitalism who go slightly deeper say something to the effect of “capitalism is good because communism is bad”. Often such people are those who know very little about either of these systems and insist on having opinions based on very scarce evidence. Yet, one cannot classify them as ‘fools’, because they have never stopped to find any inconsistencies in their logic because nothing induced them to. A phenomenon totally understandable from our preceding discussion.

It is very probable that many such capitalists would see some sense in opposing capitalism when presented with some arguments, such as those that I have raised in this blog, especially when shown the graph of GDP Vs. time for various countries present in the in the second last post. Despite the rather strong arguments available against capitalism, a critique of capitalism is still seen as an impractical idealist who is too concerned with equality to see the benefits of capitalism.

Then, is there no way one can guard ourselves against ‘superstition’ or at least reduce our susceptibility to it. While no foolproof method for avoiding incorrect reasoning is yet known, it is indeed possible to ensure that we are at least capable of finding most of the assumptions made in a logical argument, whether presented as mathematical equations or as a verbal argument. The ‘scientific method’ itself can be viewed as a systematic approach to improve the accuracy of reasoning. Indeed Einstein once said that “all of science is nothing but a refinement of everyday reasoning”.

I feel that we are rather more susceptible to shabby reasoning than we need to be. If one is to put blame on a particular individual or practice for this state of affairs, I think the blame lies largely on the current education system. It seems to be hopelessly inadequate in teaching rigour in reasoning. Instead the single minded focus on rote learning completely removes any aptitude for proper reasoning that a person may originally have had. I have seen many people who make incredibly baseless ‘arguments’ and are supported by a vast majority. For instance, during a competitive group discussion in my school, we were asked to discuss whether or not world affairs will be more peaceful if women held the top positions. While the topic is rather intriguing, nobody could come up with any evidence or convincing reason to make any definitive statement on the question. In fact nobody gave any reasons at all, even those that would be considered totally inadequate by any scientifically minded person. Yet everybody managed to have a ‘view’ on the topic. One person said that it would become more violent, while everybody else other than me said there wouldn't be any change at all. Now, having opinions without reason is a dangerous habit. We run the risk of having beliefs that have only a random probability of being right. Beliefs that we would subsequently use to make assumptions later, which would also then have a random probability of being right. Thus the entire reasoning system fails.

Thus one must make it a habit to be as rigorous as possible while doing any kind of reasoning and as is relevant to this blog, point this out to ardent supporters of capitalism. However, as a footnote I should add that since I am not aware of any feasible system that can undo the evils of capitalism, the capitalists are right in a way. Yet that does not mean that we should be complacent with what we have, and this is the point I wish to make.

Notes:

1. For more details, refer “A New Kind of Science” by Stephen Wolfram
2. Simple in the sense that all of known physics can be reduced to a small set of basic equations as opposed to say biology, where each new discovery adds to more complexity, although occasional simplifications are achieved.