It's Bad Luck To Be Superstitious...

Factual Questions
1

Is it foolish to be superstitious?

I think so. Any sense of omen or portent may well interfere with a person’s ability to detect the correct information that a situation typically presents. This is not to invalidate the strong intuitions that many others besides myself feel. I merely want to assign the correct magnitude to such premonitions.

However much superstition stems from the protoconscious and syllogistic bicameral mind, maintaining a steadfast adherence to such manifest self-delusion represents a serious departure from scientific method.

Do I still maintain superstitious practices? I will honestly answer, yes. But I am increasingly less than willing to admit the validity of unexamined predictions, AKA horoscopes.

So, let’s hear it. Are humans still unjustifiably bound to potentially unreliable data by their voluntary practice of superstition?

2

Superstition can be a powerful method of achieving repeated success in situations where the relationship between cause and effect is uncertain. Your emphasis on the cases where superstition causes people to do wrong or silly things ignores the more general utility of superstition as a form of pre-rational scientific method.
It can also cause people to do the RIGHT thing over and over.

3

Oh, I get it. So Wade Boggs would have had a much more mundane career had he not eaten so much chicken.

Right-O. As is true with all forms of faith in the unknowable as well. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Faith is a powerful thing, even if it’s just faith in a simple ritual.

4

I’m not getting the sense of a General Question here. Can you narrow the question some, Zenster, or do you think this might do better in Great Debates?