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Isn't "cargo-cult-science" simply "engineering"? You use the models handed down by the researchers because they work. They help you make machines and navigate

Isn't "cargo-cult-science" simply "engineering"? You use the models handed down by the researchers because they work. They help you make machines and navigate reality and such. There's nothing shameful in that. You don't have the time for research. Time is money after all. You are not a scientist. You are not interested in Truth. You just want to get from A to B.

bagacrap 3y ago
Yes, Stack Overflow is also cargo cult programming. Of course sometimes you have to use tools handed to you by others and sometimes you won't understand how they work (I don't know how CPUs work but it hasn't stopped me from programming). This speech is largely about how you shouldn't willfully delude yourself. I think we've all had that situation where we're hunting down a bug and rearranging the code just so seems to resolve it, but we don't understand why. At a certain point the temptation is high to shrug your shoulders and move on even without fully understanding the mechanics of the fix. But if you do that, it will likely come back to bite you/someone one day. In the case of science it's even worse than engineering because the entire point of the endeavor should be to advance understanding, rather than to get certain results.
Sharlin 3y ago
No. A cargo cult is about doing X, or more commonly some flawed facsimile of X, in order to attain some desirable Y, because you've seen someone else do X and indeed attaining Y. What you don't know, however, that Y is not directly caused by X but there exists some W that's the cause of both X and Y. Now, "Y after X thus Y caused by X" (see: post hoc ergo propter hoc) is a perfectly fine hypothesis worth testing, but to keep doing that even if it doesn't work? That's the "cult" part. What Feynman criticized were certain fields of study, which in his opinion claimed to apply the scientific method to get scientific results (and importantly the associated prestige of Doing Science), but which in his view only practiced a facsimile of the scientific method and got merely facsimiles of scientific results! Now, cargo cult engineering definitely also exists. If you do X – even without entirely understanding why – and reliably get the wanted result Y, that's engineering. If you don't get exactly Y but are able to adjust X to compensate, that's also engineering. But if you keep doing X without understanding why and keep not getting the wanted result Y (even though you might get some different result Z and misinterpret it as Y), that's cargo cult engineering!

bagacrap 3y ago

Yes, Stack Overflow is also cargo cult programming. Of course sometimes you have to use tools handed to you by others and sometimes you won't understand how they work (I don't know how CPUs work but it hasn't stopped me from programming). This speech is largely about how you shouldn't willfully delude yourself. I think we've all had that situation where we're hunting down a bug and rearranging the code just so seems to resolve it, but we don't understand why. At a certain point the temptation is high to shrug your shoulders and move on even without fully understanding the mechanics of the fix. But if you do that, it will likely come back to bite you/someone one day. In the case of science it's even worse than engineering because the entire point of the endeavor should be to advance understanding, rather than to get certain results.

Sharlin 3y ago

No. A cargo cult is about doing X, or more commonly some flawed facsimile of X, in order to attain some desirable Y, because you've seen someone else do X and indeed attaining Y. What you don't know, however, that Y is not directly caused by X but there exists some W that's the cause of both X and Y. Now, "Y after X thus Y caused by X" (see: post hoc ergo propter hoc) is a perfectly fine hypothesis worth testing, but to keep doing that even if it doesn't work? That's the "cult" part. What Feynman criticized were certain fields of study, which in his opinion claimed to apply the scientific method to get scientific results (and importantly the associated prestige of Doing Science), but which in his view only practiced a facsimile of the scientific method and got merely facsimiles of scientific results! Now, cargo cult engineering definitely also exists. If you do X – even without entirely understanding why – and reliably get the wanted result Y, that's engineering. If you don't get exactly Y but are able to adjust X to compensate, that's also engineering. But if you keep doing X without understanding why and keep not getting the wanted result Y (even though you might get some different result Z and misinterpret it as Y), that's cargo cult engineering!