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The title (“Superstitious People and the Meaning of Life”) might come off as hopelessly pompous. Let me assure you that you will not find answers about the meaning of life in this article 😛

First of all, let’s start with the basics: what do we mean by superstitious people? And then we will have to deal with the crux of the matter: why are there superstitious people?

A superstitious person is one who perceives a connection that is non-causal between two events. In simpler terms, a superstition is the belief that event A causes event B, although there is no apparent link between them.

For example, an evident causal connection (a causal link, in other words) is that between accidentally dropping a glass of water, then seeing the floor wet and full of glass shards. Your dropping the glass (event A) has caused the state of the floor (event B). Sometimes a causal link can be more complex, such as in the linkage between thunder and rain. There can be thunder without rain, as there can be rain without thunder. But if there is thunder followed by rain, there is an obvious connection between the two events.