(November 3, 2016 at 8:25 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: They're silly, but also harmless.
In what context? No, sports superstitions don't start wars, but on individual fan or player levels they can cause depression, and the rivalries in sports do lead to stupid bullshit like fan violence and riots after wins or losses.
But the same bad logic is the same that leads humans to think something magic, be it an object or deity, lead to the outcome. It is still the same gap filling flawed perception logic that suffers from selection bias and sample rate error.
Sports are metaphors for war, and mimic the evolutionary grouping competition that exists in real evolution. There is no magic or god involved. And the harsh reality for all of life, is that what we see is the small output compared to all the attempts going in. No different than knowing how big the universe is and how the vast majority of it is hostile to life.
It is not harmless. One beer isn't harmless either. But just like religion, a hockey or soccer or baseball or NFL fan can get so superstitious or tribal about it as to get depressed and or get violent over a loss. And that part while not on the same scale as religion, is just as absurd as claiming God/Allah/Yahweh favor your club and your sect at the expense of others being second class and or deserve to die in war because they picked the wrong club.
European an South American soccer fans outside of NHL hockey, can be very violent. Sports superstitions are NOT harmless, nobody is saying it or should say it is on the same scale as violence of religion, but it is still stemming from our species flawed logic.
