Meh – I suspect that most or all of these rituals were functional, or at least intended to be functional, but I often notice a lot of rituals that – today – can’t possibly be functional.
The example in this post of ‘we only accept scans not photos’ seems pretty clearly in that category. I can imagine that it might have previously been functional, e.g. when it was much more difficult to take photos (and develop/print them) and functionally requiring almost everyone to use a copy machine did something useful. But copy machines have always been camera+printers and there’s no additional ‘magic’ left in demanding that people continue to use them.
I suspect a big part of why ‘magic rituals’ lose functionality is that: ‘magic ritual high priests’ are mostly judged on their intentions in the first place – not any kind of strong evidence of the ritual’s efficacy (relative to alternatives, including the previous status quo), and no one’s really regularly and rigorously investigating whether those rituals are still functional.
Some magic rituals – even ones involving computers and no humans! – require entering the same info multiple times (sometimes to an absurd degree). That could be functional, but my prior is that they’re almost always due to poor ‘magic ritual’ construction instead.
Meh – I suspect that most or all of these rituals were functional, or at least intended to be functional, but I often notice a lot of rituals that – today – can’t possibly be functional.
The example in this post of ‘we only accept scans not photos’ seems pretty clearly in that category. I can imagine that it might have previously been functional, e.g. when it was much more difficult to take photos (and develop/print them) and functionally requiring almost everyone to use a copy machine did something useful. But copy machines have always been camera+printers and there’s no additional ‘magic’ left in demanding that people continue to use them.
I suspect a big part of why ‘magic rituals’ lose functionality is that: ‘magic ritual high priests’ are mostly judged on their intentions in the first place – not any kind of strong evidence of the ritual’s efficacy (relative to alternatives, including the previous status quo), and no one’s really regularly and rigorously investigating whether those rituals are still functional.
Some magic rituals – even ones involving computers and no humans! – require entering the same info multiple times (sometimes to an absurd degree). That could be functional, but my prior is that they’re almost always due to poor ‘magic ritual’ construction instead.