Talk:Appeal to tradition

Exceptions

These are some pretty lousy "exceptions" to the appeal to tradition.

• "In some theological contexts . . ." - it's pretty hard to see what this is getting at. Being part of a religious tradition doesn't make a belief any more likely to be true. At best we can say that a religion like Judaism has a weight of history and tradition to back it up, unlike something like Scientology which is cooked up out of nowhere, but that's more to do with how much cultural value a religion has than how much truthiness it has.
• "Since false ideas tend to be rooted out over time, the persistence of an idea can provide some tentative evidence for its credibility." Bullshit. There are plenty of reasons for false ideas to be perpetuated, and plenty of cases of false ideas being held for a very long time before being rooted out. We can't assume that the ones not yet rooted out won't be rooted out some day.
• "An appeal to common practice . . ." - this is about pragmatism rather than theoretical logic. It's saying that it's sometimes more convenient to perpetuate a technically wrong but conventionally accepted idea than to adopt what should be a better one. Surely that's a case of tradition holding us back & therefore not great as a counterargument in favour of tradition.

Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 22:30, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Attribution

Some content from http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_Tradition Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 17:48, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

But

... on occasion 'tradition works': in number bases 5 and above 2+2 will always equal 4; willow bark may cure your headaches, and standing on the right hand side of the escalator in the UK will annoy fewer people. 31.51.113.212 (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

The point is that things that work may be traditions, but they don't work because they are traditions. We might expect that evolution would ensure that traditions persist because they are optimal, but that is obviously not the case. Many traditions arise because coincidence inspires superstition, as depicted in RW's Skinner Box article describing how pigeons become superstitious. FairDinkum (talk) 10:20, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I feel I should also add to this comment that although traditions may have arisen out of purely coincidental events that initiated superstition, many post-hoc cultural accoutrements are often added after the superstitious ritual is established, and these may serve important functions. The ostensibly meaningless superstition can act as a carrier or catalyst for establishing more culturally useful rituals, or adapting them as such. Which is why it's often not a good idea to criticize cultures according to the superficial meaninglessness of their rituals. FairDinkum (talk) 11:03, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Precedent in law

Precedent boils down to saying "That's how we always did it" but in law there are obvious upsides (and few obvious downsides) to keeping settled questions settled and not having to re-argue every case ever every few years... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 22:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)