Prejudice is central to maintaining public morality

If you take out prejudice, with "pure reason", it will get very hard for norms to develop in society

There will be too much unpredictability in people's behavior. Too heavy a reliance on law and order. A more fragile society https://twitter.com/Blackdrug_/status/1276900036043919361

Take prejudices as basic as -

"Avoid relationships outside marriage"
"Don't have kids before marriage"

These prejudices can go such a long way in ensuring better public health, lower crime, greater familial stability

Then we have social conventions / prejudices that have evolved in a culture.

E.g. The bride goes to the husband's place after marriage
(at least in a ritual sense)

These rituals reduce our choices, and can greatly simplify decision making in the early months of marriage

This doesn't mean every bride will move in for "lifetime" with her husband's family

But what the ritual does is -

It takes out options from the table...and lends a certain regularity to early marital life.

By removing choices, it enables couples to focus on other things

Let's take another useful prejudice

The surname of the kid is that of the father, no matter how distinguished the mother is

Again the convention reduces costs. Reduces endless debates / fights in every house. By offering a fait-accompli, it regularizes domestic life

Primogeniture is another example -

An ancient English prejudice that aided the rise of the English nation in the late middle ages

By letting the eldest son inherit the entire estate, it greatly reduced transaction costs

Also clarifying things to each kid right at their birth

Primogeniture may seem unfair from the standpoint of "pure reason"

But our minuscule powers of reason don't see the implications fully

Primogeniture actually promoted social mobility and encouraged adventure, by letting younger kids to move out and chart their own course