Superstitions are awesome

Here's an article by scientists who claim that superstitions, although usually pretty rediculous, are part of evolution. The basic premise seems to be that even if your superstition is wrong 90% of the time, if that 10% of the time it saves your ass, you might as well continue to believe in it.

Here's the link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14694-superstitions-evolved-to-help-us-survive.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news9_head_dn14694

This isn't really new findings, this line of thought has been dealt with by philosophers except under the guise of explicit learning vs implicit knowing and they pretty much came to the same conclusion. If it works, you keep it, if it doesn't, you change it.

I do wish they went a bit deeper, I mean, what happens when you believe your superstition so strongly that it increases your confidence in a situation? Shouldn't that also help you to cope with situations?

I'm also pretty interested to know how this pertains to beirut superstitions. I mean, beirut is a matter of life and death and all, but it seems to point how just how easy it is to make up superstitions (and stick to them) - but I think that is really the point of the article.

Basically, if we keep making a ton of conclusions about everything, and eventually weed out the ones that are clearly wrong (keeping the ones that are at least slightly benefitial) we will eventually have a list of good superstitions.

The real kicker comes at the end when they equate the creations and continuation of superstitions to the scientific method, much the same as I equated it to philosophy above. Which brings me to my next point - video games are like the scientific method.

Here's the link:
http://kotaku.com/5047613/are-games-teaching-kids-the-scientific-method

I mean, it is true, and games like wow have aspects of fun and learning to them that people just don't even see (even when playing). Like the joy of downing a raid boss when it takes coordinating somewhere between 5-40 angry nerds over the internet. Or understanding complex mechanics of a fight (which you learn through scientific method not by reading wowwiki)

I think this brings me to my conclusion. Article A says Superstition = Evolution and Superstition = Science. Article B says Videos Games = Science. I say Video games = Evolution. Ta-Duh. I just made you dumber. Therefore, if you play video games, you will get smarter - now theres a superstition I want to believe.