Randomizing divination practices spread specifically where rice cultivation made them adaptive

Evidence

The patterning of bird augury supports the view that this is a cultural adaptation. The system seems to have evolved and spread throughout this region since the seventeenth century when rice cultivation was introduced. This makes sense, since it is rice cultivation that is most positively influenced by randomizing garden locations. It’s possible that, with the introduction of rice, a few farmers began to use bird sightings as an indication of favorable garden sites. On average, over a lifetime, these farmers would do better—be more successful—than farmers who relied on the Gambler’s Fallacy or on copying others’ immediate behavior. Whatever the process, within 400 years, the bird augury system had spread throughout the agricultural populations of this Borneo region. Yet it remains conspicuously missing or underdeveloped among local foraging groups and recent adopters of rice agriculture, as well as among populations in northern Borneo who rely on irrigation. So, bird augury has been systematically spreading in those regions where it is most adaptive. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 348

Categorization

• CANDY: Fun nugget: farmers once spread bird-call divination across Borneo not from superstition but because it out-performed their own reasoning biases.
• XREF: connects to: Caribou shoulder-blade divination worked as a randomizing device defeating hunter confirmation bias. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 345; Bird augury works as a randomization device countering cognitive and copying biases — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 347

Broader Connections

• Bird augury works as a randomization device countering cognitive and copying biases #exemplifies (0.88) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 347