Chapter 6.            Part D 

The mechanism of cultural evolution being described here is profoundly disturbing; it deserves some digression. What is being said here is that humans often do behave in ways that seem irrational by purely Bayesian standards. Even in our time, some adults still spank kids. Some men still bully women. Some states still execute their worst criminals. Research, as well as careful observation and analysis of these and many other patterns of behavior, suggests strongly that they don’t work; these behaviors do not achieve the results at which they aim. In fact, they reduce the chances that we will achieve those results. These behaviors and the beliefs underlying them are exactly what is meant by the term “counterproductive”. Therefore, we must ask an acute question: “Why do we do them?” Which is to say: “Why do we, as rational humans who usually operate under a rational, Bayesian belief-building system, hold on so obstinately, in a few areas of our lives, to beliefs that cause us to act in utterly irrational ways?”

                

                                 Electric chair (used to execute criminals) 

The reply is that we do so because our culture's most profound programming institutions –  the family, the schools, the media, etc. – continue to indoctrinate us with these values so deeply that once we are adults, we refuse to examine them. Instead, our programming directs us to bristle, and then defend our "good old ways", violently if need be. When deep moral beliefs, and the morés that they foster, begin, by one mechanism or another, to die out, some folk are even willing to die out with them. If the ensuing lessons are harsh enough, and if there is a reasonable amount of available time, sometimes the larger society learns, expels the reactionaries, and then adapts. But the process of deep social change is always difficult and fraught with hazards. "The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur." (A.N. Whitehead) (4.)

                                                   

                                               Alfred N. Whitehead