Everything you do is a signal, or highlights from The Elephant in the Brain

The following are some notes, followed by a lot of highlights, from the book Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [Amazon].

The book is about, in a word, signals. Everything we do is – in small and often large part – a signal to others:

We talk to seem smart and build alliances.

We make art to attract mates.

We donate to charity to impress neighbors.

We laugh to let people know that we’re ok, it’s just a game.

We pray to belong to a group.

We vote to show our loyalty.

Even this blog is a massive signal :P

Signals, signals, signals. Oh, and sex. Signals and sex.

In fact, this quote buried in the book’s footnotes might be the underlying reason behind all of the seemingly complicated but ultimately simple reasons behind why we do what we do:

As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote about sexual love: “It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort… . It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts”.

The below are all highlights copied verbatim from the book, which I highly recommend. Very much in the Yuval Harari “things are both more complicated and more simple than they seem” vein.

GENERAL HIGHLIGHTS

To understand the competitive side of human nature, we would do well to turn Matthew 7: 1 on its head: “Judge freely, and accept that you too will be judged.”

The essence of a norm, then, lies not in the words we use to describe it, but in which behaviors get punished and what form the punishment takes.

Collective enforcement, then, is the essence of norms. This is what enables the egalitarian political order so characteristic of the forager lifestyle.

Our ancestors did a lot of cheating. How do we know? One source of evidence is the fact that our brains have special-purpose adaptations for detecting cheaters. When abstract logic puzzles are framed as cheating scenarios, for example, we’re a lot better at solving them.

We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together working at cross purposes.

There are dozens of schemes for how to divide up the mind. The Bible identifies the head and the heart. Freud gives us the id, ego, and superego. Iain McGilchrist differentiates the analytical left brain from the holistic right brain, while Douglas Kenrick gives us seven “subselves”: Night Watchman, Compulsive Hypochondriac, Team Player, Go-Getter, Swinging Single, Good Spouse, and Nurturing Parent.

What this means for self-deception is that it’s possible for our brains to maintain a relatively accurate set of beliefs in systems tasked with evaluating potential actions, while keeping those accurate beliefs hidden from the systems (like consciousness) involved in managing social impressions.

Or as Venkatesh Rao says, “We ‘shop around’ for careers. We look for prestigious brands to work for. We look for ‘fulfillment’ at work. Sometimes we even accept pay cuts to be associated with famous names. This is work as fashion accessory and conversation fodder”

All ads effectively have two audiences: potential product buyers, and potential product viewers who will credit the product owners with various desirable traits”

HUMOR AND LAUGHTER

The most important observation is that we laugh far more often in social settings than when we’re alone—30 times more often

When Provine studied 1,200 episodes of laughter overheard in public settings, his biggest surprise was finding that speakers laugh more than listeners—about 50 percent more, in fact.

“We’re just playing” is such an important message, it turns out, that many species have developed their own vocabulary for it. Dogs, for example, have a “play bow”—forearms extended, head down, hindquarters in the air—which they use to initiate a bout of play. Chimps use an open-mouthed “play face,” similar to a human smile, or double over and peer between their legs at their play partners.

We don’t laugh continuously throughout a play session, only when there’s something potentially unpleasant to react to.

In any given comedic situation, humor precedes and causes laughter, but when we step back and take a broader perspective, the order is reversed. Our propensity to laugh comes first and provides the necessary goal for humor to achieve.

First you need to get two or more people together. Then you must set the mood dial to “play.” Then you need to jostle things, carefully, so that the dial feints in the direction of “serious,” but quickly falls back to “play.” And only then will the safe come open, releasing the precious laugher locked inside.

what laughter illustrates is precisely the fact that our norms and other social boundaries aren’t etched in stone with black-and-white precision, but ebb and shift through shades of gray, depending on context.

If exchanging information were the be-all and end-all of conversation, then we would expect people to be greedy listeners and stingy speakers. Instead, we typically find ourselves with the opposite attitude

Our hearing apparatus remains evolutionarily conservative, very similar to that of other apes, while our speaking apparatus has been dramatically re-engineered. The burden of adaptation has fallen on speaking rather than listening.

you’re looking for a backpack full of tools that are both new to you and useful to the things you care about. If Henry can consistently delight you with new, useful artifacts, it speaks to the quality of his backpack and therefore his value as an ally.

In casual conversation, listeners have a mixture of these two motives. To some extent we care about the text, the information itself, but we also care about the subtext, the speaker’s value as a potential ally.

The competition to show off as a potential lover or leader also helps explain why language often seems more elaborate than necessary to communicate ideas—what the linguist John Locke calls “verbal plumage.”

listeners generally prefer speakers who can impress them wherever a conversation happens to lead, rather than speakers who steer conversations to specific topics where they already know what to say.

If conversation were primarily about reciprocal exchange, we’d be tempted to habitually deprecate what our partners were offering, in order to “owe” less in return

We find a similar regulatory function of laughter when a father throws his three-year-old daughter into the air and catches her. If the toddler laughs, dad knows she’s enjoying the game and wants it to continue. If instead she gives a yelp or an alarmed cry, dad knows to stop at once.

ART

Ellen Dissanayake’s characterization of art as anything “made special,” that is, not for some functional or practical purpose but for human attention and enjoyment

“During the breeding season,” writes Miller, “males spend virtually all day, every day, building and maintaining their bowers.” The reward for all this effort is more mating opportunities. A successful male bowerbird can mate with as many as 30 females in a single mating season.

human art is more than just a courtship display, that is, an advertisement of the artist’s value as a potential mate. It also functions as a general-purpose fitness display, that is, an advertisement of the artist’s health, energy, vigor, coordination, and overall fitness. Fitness displays can be used to woo mates, of course, but they also serve other purposes like attracting allies or intimidating rivals. And humans use art for all of these things.

Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, celebrated for its beautiful detail, the surreal backdrop, and of course the subject’s enigmatic smile. More visitors have seen the Mona Lisa in person—on display behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre—than any other painting on the planet. But when researchers Jesse Prinz and Angelika Seidel asked subjects to consider a hypothetical scenario in which the Mona Lisa burned to a crisp, 80 percent of them said they’d prefer to see the ashes of the original rather than an indistinguishable replica.

The advent of photography wreaked similar havoc on the realist aesthetic in painting. Painters could no longer hope to impress viewers by depicting scenes as accurately as possible, as they had strived to do for millennia. “In response,” writes Miller, “painters invented new genres based on new, non-representational aesthetics: impressionism, cubism, expressionism, surrealism, abstraction. Signs of handmade authenticity became more important than representational skill. The brush-stroke became an end in itself.”

Fashion often distinguishes itself from mere clothing by being conspicuously impractical, non-functional, and sometimes even uncomfortable.

We’re eager to evaluate art, reflect on it, criticize it, calibrate our criticisms with others, and push ourselves to new frontiers of discernment. And we do this even in art forms we have no intention of practicing ourselves. For every novelist, there are 100 readers who care passionately about fiction, but have no plans ever to write a novel.

Miller’s observation that “sexually mature males have produced almost all of the publicly displayed art throughout human history”

CHARITY

Anonymous donation, for example, is extremely rare. Only around 1 percent of donations to public charities are anonymous.

People seldom initiate donations on their own; up to 95 percent of all donations are given in response to a solicitation.

In 2011, Americans donated $ 298 billion to charity, of which only an estimated 13 percent ($ 39 billion) went to help foreigners.

Many studies have found that people, especially men, are more likely to give money when the solicitor is an attractive member of the opposite sex. Men also give more to charity when nearby observers are female rather than male.

As early as the 12th century, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides distinguished various “levels of charity” in part based on how anonymous the donor was. Acts of charity in which the donor is known to the recipient were considered less noble than anonymous acts.

EDUCATION

Each of the first three years of high school or college (the years that don’t finish a degree) are worth on average only about a 4 percent salary bump. But the last year of high school and the last year of college, where students complete a degree, are each worth on average about a 30 percent higher salary.

In a North Carolina school district, a one-hour delay in school start time—for example, from 7: 30 a.m. to 8: 30 a.m.—resulted in a 2 percentile gain in student performance.

a lot of the value of education lies in giving students a chance to advertise the attractive qualities they already have.
Caplan, for example, estimates that signaling is responsible for up to 80 percent of the total value of education.

This suggests that public K–12 schools were originally designed as part of nation-building projects, with an eye toward indoctrinating citizens and cultivating patriotic fervor. In this regard, they serve as a potent form of propaganda. We can see this function especially clearly in history and civics curricula, which tend to emphasize the rosier aspects of national issues.

Children are expected to sit still for hours upon hours; to control their impulses; to focus on boring, repetitive tasks; to move from place to place when a bell rings; and even to ask permission before going to the bathroom (think about that for a second). Teachers systematically reward children for being docile and punish them for “acting out,” that is, for acting as their own masters. In fact, teachers reward discipline independent of its influence on learning, and in ways that tamp down on student creativity. Children are also trained to accept being measured, graded, and ranked, often in front of others. This enterprise, which typically lasts well over a decade, serves as a systematic exercise in human domestication.

One recent study (Bruze 2015) suggests that, in Denmark, people are earning “on the order of half of their returns to schooling through improved marital outcomes.”

John Gatto said what many teachers surely recognize, but few are willing to state so baldly. “Schools and schooling,” he said, “are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders”

HEALTHCARE

Patients in higher-spending regions, who get more treatment for their conditions, don’t end up healthier, on average, than patients in lower-spending regions who get fewer treatments.

Today, it’s a better drug for reducing blood pressure. Tomorrow, a new and improved surgical technique. Why don’t these individual improvements add up to large gains in our aggregate studies? There’s a simple and surprisingly well-accepted answer to this question: most published medical research is wrong. (Or at least overstated.)

Patients and their families are often dismissive of simple cheap remedies, like “relax, eat better, and get more sleep and exercise.” Instead they prefer expensive, technically complicated medical care—gadgets, rare substances, and complex procedures, ideally provided by “the best doctor in town.” Patients feel better when given what they think is a medical pill, even when it is just a placebo that does nothing. And patients feel even better if they think the pill is more expensive.

Roughly 11 percent of all medical spending in the United States, for example, goes toward patients in their final year of life. And yet it’s one of the least effective (therapeutic) kinds of medicine.

As Alex Tabarrok puts it, “More people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS and yet physicians still resist and the public does not demand even simple reforms.”

Investigators reported that people who reside in rural areas lived an average of 6 years longer than city dwellers, nonsmokers lived 3 years longer than smokers, and those who exercised a lot lived 15 years longer than those who exercised only a little.

Doctors, having witnessed the futility of heroic end-of-life care, are famously keen on avoiding it for themselves, when they become terminally ill.

RELIGION

They walk seven times counterclockwise around the Kaaba—the black, cube-shaped building at the center of the world’s largest mosque. (See Figure 5.) They also shave their heads; run back and forth between two hills; stand vigil from noon until sunset; drink water from the Zamzam well; camp overnight on the plain of Muzdalifa; sacrifice a lamb, goat, cow, or camel; and cast stones at three pillars in a symbolic stoning of the devil.

Many Jews, for example, consider themselves atheists, and yet continue practicing Judaism—going to temple, keeping kosher, and celebrating the high holidays.

Compared to their secular counterparts, religious people tend to smoke less, donate and volunteer more, have more social connections, get and stay married more, and have more kids. They also live longer, earn more money, experience less depression, and report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

A religion, therefore, isn’t just a set of propositional beliefs about God and the afterlife; it’s an entire social system.

So whenever people make a sacrifice to your god, they’re implicitly showing loyalty to you—and to everyone else who worships at the same altar.

It’s easy to say, “I’m a Muslim,” but to get full credit, you also have to act like a Muslim—by answering the daily calls to prayer, for example, or undertaking the Hajj.

Yes, you probably have “better things to do” than listen to a sermon, which is precisely why you get loyalty points for listening patiently. In other words, the boredom of sermons may be a feature rather than a bug.

Note that positions of greater trust and authority require larger sacrifices; if the Pope had children, for example, his loyalty would be split between his family and his faith, and Catholics would have a harder time trusting him to lead the Church.

Note, however, that a community’s supply of social rewards is limited, so we’re often competing to show more loyalty than others—to engage in a “holier than thou” arms race.

All these sacrifices work to maintain high levels of commitment and trust among community members, which ultimately reduces the need to monitor everyone’s behavior. The net result is the ability to sustain cooperative groups at larger scales and over longer periods of time.

A 2012 Gallup poll, for instance, found that atheists came in dead last in electability, well behind other marginalized groups like Hispanics and gay people. In fact, Americans would sooner see a Muslim than an atheist in the Oval Office.

As Jason Weeden and colleagues have pointed out, religions can be understood, in part, as community-enforced mating strategies.

Our species, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, is wired to form social bonds when we move in lockstep with each other. This can mean marching together, singing or chanting in unison, clapping hands to a beat, or even just wearing the same clothes.

The particular strangeness of Mormon beliefs, for example, testifies to the exceptional strength of the Mormon moral community. To maintain such stigmatizing beliefs in the modern era, in the face of science, the news media, and the Internet, is quite the feat of solidarity.

Haidt: “To resolve [the puzzle of religious participation], either you have to grant that religiosity is (or at least, used to be) beneficial or you have to construct a complicated, multi-step explanation of how humans in all known cultures came to swim against the tide of adaptation and do so much self-destructive religious stuff”

POLITICS

the literature on voting makes it clear that people mostly don’t vote for their material self-interest, that is, for the candidates and policies that would make them personally better off.

Real voters, however, show remarkably little concern for whether their votes are likely to make a difference. Swing states see only a modest uptick in turnout, somewhere between one and four percentage

When people are asked the same policy question a few months apart, they frequently give different answers—not because they’ve changed their minds, but because they’re making up answers on the spot, without remembering what they said last time.

The kicker? Stalin himself wasn’t even in the room. His cult of personality was strong enough to sustain 11 minutes of applause even in his absence. At least 600,000 people were killed in these ways during Stalin’s purges.

This helps explain why voters feel little pressure to be informed. As long as we adopt the “right” beliefs—those of our main coalitions—we get full credit for loyalty.

Within nations, our most devoted activists are plausibly those who see themselves as political “soldiers” fighting for a cause, but whom opponents see as political “terrorists,” since their actions risk hurting both themselves and others.

The rise of secular religion


In a recent podcast interview, Senator Elizabeth Warren said: “Education is our new secular religion.” It may have been the NYT Book Review podcast, I can’t find the source.

It’s a powerful sentiment – one that she expressed in a matter of fact, almost bored, way. And it’s true not just in America – where college admissions is an intense battleground from the minute kids begin to earn grades – but also around the world. Look at how obsessively Chinese students prepare for the 高考: the test is a rite of passage, and being accepted into one of China’s top universities is no less than a religious conversion for the lucky ones.

In his speech to Maharishi University, Jim Carrey asked the graduating students, “What is your ministry?” At a young age, he decided that his ministry was to free people from concern, and he evangelized his beliefs through comedy and entertainment. He urged the students to find and express theirs.

Secular religion. Your ministry. All religious things, but all spoken of in the context of secular, non-religious activities.

What’s going on?

For starters, what is religion? Definitions are as plentiful as denominations. But a simple and powerful definition, and one that works well for our purposes, is the 3 B’s: Believing, Belonging, and Behaving. You believe in a story or set of propositions. You belong to a community that shares these beliefs. You behave in ways that act upon your beliefs, and often with your community.

Seen this way, a whole lot of “religions” qualify. Hence Senator Warren’s belief about modern education. And Carrey’s mission to free people from concern.

The convenient and widespread narrative in most developed countries, particularly in America and across Western Europe, is that religion is dying. The narrative goes something like: With the rise of science and technology and liberal education, religion is increasingly outdated and out of touch. Fewer and fewer people go to Church, or pray, or study the Bible. More and more people are identifying as atheist, agnostic, or simply “none”. Eventually, religion will become a quaint, niche practice, and one that will slowly fade into irrelevance.

But this simply isn’t true. Globally, religion is growing. Even in America, religious belief is stronger than ever. Religion – as we can see using one definition of the 3 B’s framework – is simply shifting. We might believe less in God, but we believe more than ever in free markets and capitalism. We may not belong to churches and monasteries, but we belong, obsessively, to sports teams and corporations and even to cryptocurrencies. And the way we behave? Well, just look at Apple fanboys and Star Wars fanatics. Religion is alive and well.

I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion – Harvey Cox

This realization is important for many reasons, only a few of which I can articulate below.

It means that most people who say they’re not religious are actually very much so. Salman Rushdie says “atheists are obsessed with god.” But it goes beyond atheists. I think it’s more like “non-believers are actually believers in denial.” Hundreds of years ago, if you knew a person was Roman Catholic, you’d have a reasonable starter’s grasp on their animating values and personality traits. Today, we need to look more deeply to identify a person’s “religion”.

A more or less similar point is made by Yuval Harari says in his book Sapiens: Institutions upon which we build civilization are just a bunch of agreed upon fictions. Religion is one such fiction. So are “free” markets. So is celebrity-dom. And so on.

We need to better identify these fictions in others, and more importantly, in ourselves. Which brings me to my last point: You.

You should think deeply about what beliefs animate you. What is your ministry? What is your secular religion? Because if your life is not guided by Buddhism or Islam, then it’s guided by something else. And this something else is often worse. David Foster Wallace expressed the thought beautifully:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. – DFW

Thanks for reading. I’m spending a lot of time lately reading and writing about religion. It’s been satisfying as a personal endeavor, and I hope to create some project (like a website, or a book) out of it eventually. If you can help, or simply want to chat more about it, please message me.

Confucius says, in Chinese and Korean


I recently stumbled on this blog post and was stunned to see one of my favorite Confucius quotes, not only translated into Korean, but adapted and localized too! So below is a comparison of the Chinese version as I understand it, alongside the Korean version as the author conveys it.

The Korean version (along with its translated English and commentary) is copied verbatim from the above blog.

It’s interesting to see the differences. Korean seems to have more names for the older decades (eg, 80, 90) and also a name for when you reach 20 and “become a man.” Also interesting to see the different interpretations for each decade, in particular for reaching the age of 60.

Confucius says…

Korean: 15 Age where one recognizes the value of education | Ge Hak 지학
Chinese: At 15 my heart was set on learning | 吾十有五而志于学

Korean: 20 Age when a boy becomes a man (Sorry. No equivalent for women) | Yak Kwan 약 관
Chinese: None

Korean: 30 Age to begin your life’s planning | I Lib 이 립
Chinese: At 30 I stood firm | 三十而立

Korean: 40 Age when you have enough experience not to be fooled by others | Pul Hok 불혹
Chinese: At 40 I had no more doubts | 四十而不惑

Korean: 50 Age when you begin to understand the Gods’ thinking (Note: Not religious Gods but forces of nature.) | Ji Yung 지영
Chinese: At 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven | 五十而知天命

Korean: 60 Age where you have the experience to take in the thoughts of others and determine the best and worst | I Soon 이 순
Chinese: At 60 my ear was obedient | 六十而耳顺

Korean: 61 Notable age as you have now lived through one full cycle of the 12 annual symbols (i.e. Year of the Dragon ) | Hwan Gap 환 갑
Chinese: None

Korean: 70 Age where you are filled with happiness (Because you are not dead, I guess.) | Ko He 고희
Chinese: At 70 I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the norm | 其实而从心所欲，不逾矩

Korean: 80 Meaning for this age and age 90 and 100 is as a title only to signify you have reached this age. | San Su 신수
Chinese: None

Korean: 90 See 80. | Chol Su 졸수
Chinese: None

Korean: 100 See 80, and with additional meaning of exceptionally long life. | Sang Su 상 수
Chinese: None

12 profound excerpts from The Dhammapada: “If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart. A half-hearted ascetic covers himself with more and more dust.”


I just finished reading the Dhammapada as translated by Eknath Easwaran [Amazon]. The book is a very very small part of the Pali Canon, a canonical collection of the Buddha’s teachings.

I’d also read Easwaran’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita. Both are quick reads, and his translation style is literary and powerful. Highly recommended if you’re hungry for soul food.

Below are some of my favorite excerpts.

**

For hatred can never put an end to hatred; love alone can. This is an unalterable law.

More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm. 43 More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-disciplined mind does greater good.

The immature go after false prestige –precedence of fellow monks, power in the monasteries, and praise from all. “Listen, monks and householders, I can do this; I can do that. I am right and you are wrong.” Thus their pride and passion increase.

Better than a speech of a thousand vain words is one thoughtful word which brings peace to the mind. Better than a poem of a thousand vain verses is one thoughtful line which brings peace to the mind.

If you do what is evil, do not repeat it or take pleasure in making it a habit. An evil habit will cause nothing but suffering. If you do what is good, keep repeating it and take pleasure in making it a habit. A good habit will cause nothing but joy.

I have gone through many rounds of birth and death, looking in vain for the builder of this body. Heavy indeed is birth and death again and again! But now I have seen you, housebuilder; you shall not build this house again. Its beams are broken; its dome is shattered: self-will is extinguished; nirvana is attained.

The mantram is weak when not repeated; a house falls into ruin when not repaired; the body loses health when it is not exercised; the watchman fails when vigilance is lost.

Take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha and you will grasp the Four Noble Truths: suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the Noble Eightfold Path that takes you beyond suffering.

There is no fire like lust, no sickness like hatred, no sorrow like separateness, no joy like peace. No disease is worse than greed, no suffering worse than selfish passion. Know this, and seek nirvana as the highest joy.

Gray hair does not make an elder; one can grow old and still be immature. A true elder is truthful, virtuous, gentle, self-controlled, and pure in mind.

“I will make this my winter home, have another house for the monsoon, and dwell in a third during the summer.” Lost in such fancies, one forgets his final destination.

An act performed carelessly, a vow not kept, a code of chastity not strictly observed: these things bring little reward. If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart. A half-hearted ascetic covers himself with more and more dust.

**

The benefits of being religious: a collection of studies and findings

Religious people often take for granted all the benefits that come with such a practice, from a sturdy belief system to a tight knit community. Of course there are many costs too, but in this post, I wanted to share a collection of what I’ve gathered from books, videos, papers, and podcasts that explain the benefits practicing a religion. Here’s a prior post where I shared some useful definitions of religion.

A fairly comprehensive and concise summary, from Elephant in the Brain (a fantastic book which I recently finished and will share insights from shortly):

Compared to their secular counterparts, religious people tend to smoke less, donate and volunteer more, have more social connections, get and stay married more, and have more kids. They also live longer, earn more money, experience less depression, and report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

More findings and excerpts follow…

From the NIH:

Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.

From Wiley:

We also find that religious attendance at baseline reduces the odds of illicit drug use at follow‐up. Respondents who increased their level of religious attendance over the study period also tended to exhibit a concurrent reduction in the odds of illicit drug use.

More Wiley:

It finds that religious people, members of minority religions, and people in religiously diverse countries were more likely to help a stranger. Individuals living in devout countries were more likely to help strangers even if they themselves were not religious. The results suggest that religion plays a particularly important role in promoting the prosocial norms and values that motivate helping strangers

From Wikipedia:

What Andrew B. Newberg and others “discovered is that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call oneness with the universe.”

From the great book Blue Zones.

Healthy centenarians everywhere have faith. The Sardinians and Nicoyans are mostly Catholic. Okinawans have a blended religion that stresses ancestor worship. Loma Linda centenarians are Seventh-day Adventists. Ikarians have traditionally been Greek Orthodox. All belong to strong religious communities. The simple act of worship is one of those subtly powerful habits that seems to improve your chances of having more good years. It doesn’t matter if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu.

From the podcast, Research on Religion:

My notes: Religion offers an extra layer of protection from PTSD for soldiers returning from the battlefield; Why? Possibly, if you’re strongly religious going into war, your community, practice, and faith can be protective and supportive; BUT if you’re only weakly religious, war can shatter those beliefs, and shock you out of faith. You may come back atheist, which is a double whammy where you lose your faith and suffer from this traumatic battlefield experience. The latter happened after WWI in Britain, where many returning soldiers faced nihilism, depression, and suicide

From Harvard epidemiology professor Tyler VanderWeele’s Reddit AMA:

A recent study I led found that women who attended religious services more than once per week were more than 30% less likely to die during a 16-year-follow-up than women who never attended. We found that attending religious services increases social support, discourages smoking, decreases depression, and helps people develop a more optimistic or hopeful outlook on life.

My speculation, though we do not yet have data on this, would be that groups that not only have social gatherings, but also have a shared sense of meaning, healthy behavioral norms, and a common vision for life would have a larger effect on mortality in follow-up than, say, merely showing up for a regular card game. Religious service attendance likely affects health not simply because of social support, but also because it potentially shapes so much of one’s outlook, behavior, beliefs, and one’s sense of life’s meaning and purpose.

In our study on depression, the associations between religious service attendance and subsequent depression were likewise pretty similar for Catholics and Protestants. The one outcome where we found a difference was suicide. The association between religious service attendance and suicide was protective for both Catholics and Protestants but the association was stronger for Catholics. For Protestants those who attended services were about 3-fold less likely to commit suicide; for Catholics, those who attended services were about 20-fold less likely to commit suicide. My guess is that this is the outcome which will vary the most across religious groups.

Interestingly enough, diet quality does seem to be one outcome where religious service attendance is associated with poorer health behavior. Perhaps the church potluck is indeed the culprit. Fried chicken, anyone? ;)

But, yes, with smoking and excessive drinking, religious service attendance is associated with greater likelihood of ceasing these behaviors. I do think people sometimes turn to religion when they are in particularly difficult circumstances.

There have been studies, even randomized trials, of what is sometimes called “intercessory praying” or praying for others. The standard design of these trials is that patients are randomized to receive prayer from someone else; patients themselves, however, are often “blinded” in the sense that they don’t know whether or not they are being prayed for. Some of these randomized trials have suggested an effect of prayer; other studies have suggested no effect; and the research remains controversial. Two reviews that I am aware of have attempted to synthesize all available evidence but they themselves are divided.

From the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.

It is frequently suggested that religion and particularly values associated with religion provide circumstances conducive to entrepreneurial activity (Dodd and Seaman 1998; Henley 2014; Parboteeah et al. 2015). In particular, the work of Weber (1930) is repeatedly cited in this line of reasoning. According to Weber, Protestant Christian values such as ambition, perseverance, and wealth accumulation serve as important motivators for the economic behavior of religious individuals

This is just what I’ve gathered to date. There will be lots more. I’ll probably also do a post on the known / quantified / accepted costs of being religious, too. Stay tuned.