I am interested in how historically recent this feature is.

One feature that stands out about ancient religions (eg. Egyptian, Viking) is that the fables don't consistently reward the good and punish the bad. They also have this aspect that (for me on first reading) was very surprising, that after death you go to different underworlds based not on merit or on accepting the one true faith but instead based on fairly random contingent things kind of outside your own control.  For Vikings Valhala only for those who die in battle. In Egypt while you cross over to the next world their is a wasteland where hyenas might eat your soul if you are simply unlucky (although this risk can be mitigated with certain charms and things).

My theory is that the "just world hypothesis" is not a feature of human nature at all, but a cultural meme that is currently doing quite well. Maybe we got it from the Greeks (via the Christians), Greek myths don't tend to feel culturally alien in the same way. (They punish people who are idiots (Icarus), or greedy (Midas). Way more compatible with our standards.)

I am really curious what the "disagreement votes" on this comment actually mean. Gears said "I used this formatting to show sarcasm.", what does it mean to disagree with that?

It certainly proves something. However, one could argue that the economy didn't function very well for much of that time. The industrial revolution happened not long after a whole load of new world gold entered Europe. That could just be because the technology and society forces that allowed the new world to be colonised where also prerequisite for industrialisation, but I think some people draw direct causality between the gold influx and industrialisation.

I sometimes have an inner monologue, but not usually. If I am writing or reading I hear the text in my head. If I am imagining a conversation or book or talking to myself then same again. But if I am listening to music, or to someone else talking, no inner monologue of my own speaks over them. If I am focusing on something "non wordsy" its certainly not there. (When I am catching a ball I don't have words describing the process jumbling around in my brain. when I am admiring a nice view I enjoy the shades of green without thinking the word "green".)

I think its not really related.

OP's point: "Turning off my router at night will make a positive difference, but one too miniscule to matter."

Wiki's point: "Saying that a typical household would save 27.03467 pence per year by turning off the router at night is silly. Just round to 25 or 30 pence."

Interesting post. As a counterpoint, a famous cycling coach in the UK spent a lot of time talking about "marginal gains". Essentially the exact opposite philosophy, chasing down all of the tiny improvements. (Random article I found on it:  https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains , although it kind of goes off course at the end into self help stuff.)

Aside, I always assumed the salt in pasta water was for some kind of osmosis thing. My vague reasoning was that water can diffuse in or out of the pasta and the concentration of non-water things (like salt or starch) on the inside vs. outside will control how much the water 'likes' one side of the barrier or not.

I think the middle paragraph of this comment is a very good point, and could easily be enough to justify the law. (The tenants has nowhere to go if the landlord gets pushy or aggressive.) However, the last paragraph I think is a bit uncharitable. The OP makes no secret of the fact that they have a certain class of laws/restrictions that they are arguing against, with this being just one example, and that loophole is specific to the example.

When I wrote my thesis my abstract was broken into 4 paragraphs. The examiners suggested making it all one paragraph because "an abstract should be just one paragraph". But the university template required the abstract to have a page to itself, and I thought the page breaks helped so kept them. Arguably the abstract could have been shorter, but for a thesis like document its harder, because a thesis (in practice) is kind of a mash of different things you did over several years crammed together, so it doesn't have "a main point".

Reminded me of this comedian saying a similar thing:

Another data point on this theory. When I was a child "computer games" meant 5 overexcited children screaming and shoving one another off a sofa while at any one time 4 out of 5 of them were nominally playing on the nintendo (mario kart and party were particularly popular). This clearly shifted a lot, because around 2018 I remember returning a new halo game when I found out it couldn't do split-screen. (It honestly never occurred to me to check, a shooter without split screen just feels, awful).

To me, the new "bowling alone" is "FPS without split screen".