23 ms·

The origin of the cargo cult metaphor

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• kens 2y ago
  Author here. This is a change from my usual reverse engineering articles, but hopefully you'll find it interesting...
  • derektank 2y ago
    I found your history very interesting (I was familiar with much of it but I don't think I've seen so much collected in one place) but I had some issues with your conclusion, mostly because I don't really see the phrase "cargo cult" or the verbed form "cargo culting" to be inherently pejorative. I think the concept of someone going through the motions without a necessary understanding of their purpose to achieve the desired effects is very useful one, especially given the ever increasing layers of abstraction that exist in our society. Have you thought about an alternative concept or word that describes this phenomenon that could be used instead?
    • woodruffw 2y ago
      > Have you thought about an alternative concept or word that describes this phenomenon that could be used instead? I think "magical thinking" would be an appropriate term for what Feynman characterizes. However, one of the post's important points is that we're not even using Feynman's mischaracterized explanation of cargo cults: it's become a generic negative descriptor for anything the user considers insufficiently justified, even if the underlying rationale is not "magical."
      • luckylion 2y ago
        Clearing an airstrip isn't magical thinking though, you'd need to do that for planes to land. It's just not sufficient, because the planes also need to want to land there. I don't think magical thinking covers that same concept. It appears that there are some people (like you and the post author) that are constantly confronted with someone screaming "cargo cult", which has to be exhausting. But it's absolutely not the world others live in. In my world, it comes up every now and then (I'd guess every 3-4 months), and I've experienced it multiple times that I mention it and the other person hadn't heard it before but absolutely LOVED the term after an explanation because it describes certain behaviors so well.
        • woodruffw 2y ago
          The magical thinking in the case of the airstrip is the lack of a causative connection: you need to clear the airstrip for the plane to land, but clearing an airstrip does not make a plane land. Or in other words, magical thinking doesn't imply the lack of a conceptual connection: airstrips and planes landing are definitely conceptually connected. Magical thinking is the drawing of illogical causative connections from conceptual ones. (I don't run into "cargo cult" that often. But I think TFA is a great writeup of why it's not the best term; as engineers, I think we should aspire to use the best terms available to us.)
          • luckylion 2y ago
            Magical thinking explicitly lacks the connection -- that's why it's magical after all. Jupiter and Mars are aligned, therefore I missed my bus, that sort of thing. That's not what I usually encounter. I see people imitating something they've seen others do (who appear to be successful) without understanding the full concept. Their efforts are in vain because clearing the brush for an airstrip doesn't make the planes land, and neither does one deliver projects more successfully by changing nothing except asking everyone to join a daily meeting each morning.
      • mitthrowaway2 2y ago
        Magical thinking is a bit different than cargo-culting. Magical thinking is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected. For example, "I survived the car crash because I had my lucky charm in my backpack". Cargo-culting is the belief that specific best practices which are causally connected to an outcome in one context will produce those outcomes in other contexts where the chain of causal reasoning no longer holds. For example, "I survived the car crash because I was wearing a seatbelt. Now I'll install a seatbelt on my bicycle too." Cargo-culting is an important concept in its own right in the tech industry, because those best practices do get often blindly shared, recommended and even enforced into codes and standards, even when the context that made them a good idea is lost. Without a concept like "cargo-culting" to label the fallacy, it can be hard to argue against that proposal, because the side recommending the change has lots of out-of-context data in their favor. For example, "car-crash survival rates are much higher when drivers are wearing seatbelts. Therefore, we're now requiring bicycles and motorbikes to have seatbelts."
    • herewulf 2y ago
      I read the whole history and it only affirms my belief that the phrase is spot on. I'm not concerned of its pop culture origin, etc. Look, these people were seriously believing some ridiculous junk. Most Europeans once believed some ridiculous junk. There's millennia old ridiculous junk still being believed. It's all "cargo cult". In any case, I enjoyed reading the history too.
  • sitkack 2y ago
    I always found the use of the phrase mildly racist and an easy low effort way to take someone down. Thank you for the amazing thoroughness in your research. I just read aloud the entire article with my kid. So many tributaries of history and science to explore later. Things that I referenced in our discussion about this article. Memetics and how ideas spread as contagion https://richarddawkins.net/2014/02/whats-in-a-meme/ https://richarddawkins.net/2014/02/whats-in-a-meme/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania How slang, and low fluency spread from person to person can create divergent dialects. The apocryphal story of cutting the pot roast to fit the pan. How things start true but get transformed through transcription errors. The main theme and the message may be retained, but the specifics get jumbled up. Great Sunday read!
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • fargle 2y ago
    well written and interesting. although i really do love the technical deep dives. i am fond of using the cargo-cult analogy, and invariably many people have not heard of it so the story is told and retold. i'm fairly happy that my usual descriptions of the phenomenon were much less inaccurate or exaggerated than they could have been; generally closer to the John Frum reality than the "pop-culture" one. not at all like mondo cane (which i was unaware of). for example, i've said something like "to this day, there is a cult in which members paint themselves USA 'uniforms' and march in military style with 'guns' made of sticks'" (which appears accurate). i completely missed, however, the pre-ww-ii "cargo cult" beliefs which add quite a different perspective. unfortunately, i don't know if i quite agree with abandoning the metaphor. the literal Feynman quote is about science. we in engineering have co-opted the term and use it (when imho done correctly) in a Feynman sense. i describe it as an Feynman anecdote. but it is one with significant grains of historical truth. i find the curated list of HN examples illuminating because it appears that 1/2 or more of them are using the analogy poorly, missing the point, or simply as a kind of slur. meta-cargo-cult if you will. it is as said: "is simply a lazy, meaningless attack". i agree that it is heavily misused. but in the conclusion, this leads to an argument that i see as a bit of a false dichotomy. i don't agree that Feynman's central point was either "doing something that has no chance of working" or we (mis)use it as "works but isn't understood". when Feynman said "but it doesn't work" i think meant within the analogy it didn't work: the planes did not show up. i don't think that when applied to science or engineering it only applies to something that "doesn't work". i think it's very much more about the central fallacy at play: misunderstanding processes that are built to support the science as being the science itself. misunderstanding effects for causes. misunderstanding and generalizing specific observations where they don't apply. i think Feynman's anecdote is close enough to the anthropological one and not really detailed enough to be considered wrong. it's factually true that john frum cultists do what they do. the reasons they do it aren't quite right in our stories, but clarifying all the anthropological history doesn't kill the analogy, it might even strengthen it. to me, used correctly the analogy is describing a religious or cultish adherence to principles that are not understood, in the hopes of some desired affect happening. it's similar to affirming the consequent. the fact that real cargo cults developed prior to ww-ii in places affects the story telling, not that its a cult. the fact that it's dangerous and harmful to the adherents is a good point for the analogy. the fact that the cults developed partially as a result of decades colonial oppression and mistreatment is a better framing than "look at the dumb thing those ignorant savages did". the fact that the cult members are expending energy which harms them for reasons they do not understand is still the truth. i've certainly never been as glib as "US soldiers show up with their cargo and planes, the indigenous residents amusingly misunderstand the situation, and everyone carries on." the points about it being insensitive are well taken, however. no doubt. - certainly there's a large amount of misuse of the analogy. and these uses are misused whether it be relative to pedantically accurate anthropology, Feynman, or pop-culture variations. but people using an analogy wrong does not make the analogy wrong. - i think it's fine to use an anecdote and an analogy to communicate an idea about a harmful phenomenon. the anecdote does not even need to be true at all. but in this case it isn't too far off, depending on the story telling. Feynman's short description doesn't seem as extreme as what is described as the "pop-culture" definition. - it can certainly be told in a way that is very culturally insensitive. i think this could also be done in a more neutral manner, but it's something to be careful of for sure. certainly, sticking closer to the history would probably improve things, however this may be the achilles heel. (in other words, out of all the reasons for abandonment given, i'm most convinced by this one) - the biggest issue, for me, left is this: what do you recommend replacing this with if we avoid it altogether? the imagery of religious behavior is a big part of what that analogy covers. and the ideas of observing something and then copying those behaviors to achieve a result without any real understanding. anyhow, thank you for a very thought provoking article. i'm clearly not as good of a communicator as you are (or Feynman).
  • x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
    Instead of just tearing down the current usage, you should have at least proposed an alternative that captures the metaphorical qualities that are being sought with the current terminology.
  • goy 2y ago
    I absolutely loved it. Keep up the good work! Well researched, thoughtful and balanced. What more to ask for ?
  • croisillon 2y ago
    thanks for the good post and sorry it turned into a magnet for "anti-woke" casual racists
• j4coh 2y ago
  Can we keep “tilting at windmills” then?
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    Only if you're Spanish
  • tbrownaw 2y ago
    I assume that's evolved to mean something about opposing renewables these days?
• wileydragonfly 2y ago
  It’s not stupid if it works
  • ordu 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm a fan of pragmatism also. An original version of it from Charles Peirce[1], not the version that James Williams and others promoted. "It can be beneficial to believe in God in a religious society, therefore the belief is true". Doesn't it sounds silly to you? So we are coming to a question: how would you define "it works"? If management full of cargo-cultists can achieve no technical goals but they still get their salaries, does "it work" or not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce edit: typo
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• woodruffw 2y ago
  Great post, with two important observations: Feynman's characterization of cargo cults is inaccurate and insensitive, and our contemporary use of "cargo cult" in an engineering context is an even more absurd distortion of Feynman's.
  • eadmund 2y ago
    > Feynman's characterization of cargo cults is inaccurate I don’t think that the post really supports that idea at all. It was incomplete, perhaps, but does not sound inaccurate.
    • woodruffw 2y ago
      > but does not sound inaccurate. The basic premise of Feynman's interpretation is that cargo cults arose from post-war magical thinking by native Melanesians. TFA observes that (1) cargo cults predate the war, (2) are connected to a broader millenarian phenomena, and (3) don't involve magical thinking about the cargo per se but come from a pre-existing set of religious beliefs (pre-existing spirits/gods that would take cargo from foreigners and dispense it to the locals). What makes "cargo cult" appealing as a technical is the fact that it's exotic (to the post's point about colonialism), not that the underlying phenomenon is particularly special. Substitute "cargo cult" with "Eucharist" and this becomes clear.
• kazinator 2y ago
  This article claims that anthropologists, who are the natural and proper authorities charged with gatekeeping in this issue, have a different definition of cargo cults from the one of the popular imagination. But their their definition is just academically abstracted, that's all, so that it applies to as many cargo cults as possible. The "cargo" ingredient in it, still refers to man-made goods coming from somewhere outside the island! The specific examples of cargo cults given in the article pretty much exactly fit the the popular understanding, and nicely support the cargo cult metaphor. Cargo culting refers to magical thinking in regard to some man-made artifacts. In computing it refers to the idea that people use processes, or artifacts like code, without understanding them, hoping for some good outcome, or at least the avoidance of a bad outcome. Personality worship is also implicated in cargo culting. Some great programmers decades ago did something this way in a famous system that was successful so we shall do it that way, and be rewarded with a replication of their success. Those cargo cults which long proceeded WWII and do not revolve around airplanes and white man's goods, still support the metaphor. And anyway, no one ever said that the metaphor is based on absolutely all cargo cults, or that it has to be. It is inspired by a few specific instances and their specific events. Maybe anthropologists should use "cargo cult" more specifically and use a different word for cultural phenomenon resembling cargo cults in which some key ingredients are missing. Perhaps a people who only believe that they will be rewarded with cargo in the afterlife, but otherwise don't worship foreign human beings who wants visited the island as gods, and do not try to make imitation cargo for use as props in rituals intended to attract their second coming, should perhaps not be understood as practicing a "cargo cult". Or perhaps a "weak cargo cult". The power of a word or term rests in its ability to discern. The more meanings you cram into a word, the less it discerns. Say that we agree that everything is a cargo cult. Then what's the point of using those two words instead of just the word "everything"? There's also the question of origin. Okay so anthropologists have a definition of cargo cult, under which cargo cults can be identified going back hundreds of years. But might it not be that the popular cargo cult came first, and then the academics try to hijack the word for their own use? What's the story here? People understood fruits and vegetables before science told them that a tomato is a true fruit, whereas an apple isn't. Therefore, science should have used different words for its categorization, rather than coopting farm-to-kitchen terminology.
  • 2y ago
• Aurornis 2y ago
  The history was a good read, but the conclusion feels like a strawman argument > The cargo cult metaphor should be avoided for three reasons. First, the metaphor is essentially meaningless and heavily overused. > Note that the metaphor in cargo-cult programming is the opposite of the metaphor in cargo-cult science: Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. This isn’t how I’ve seen the phrase used most often. People generally complain about cargo culting when management forces practices on a team that don’t work, nor are they understood. The “cargo cult” element describes the root cause of these ineffective practices as coming from imitating something they saw or heard about, but don’t understand. Using imitation as a substitute for experience. For that, the phrase is uniquely effective at communicating what’s happening. People understand the situation without needed a long explanation. I don’t see a need to retire the phrase, nor do I think this article accurately captures how it’s used.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • exe34 2y ago
    cargo culting programming approaches don't just not work, they saddle with both all the costs of doing things in a certain way and having to still deliver the outputs somehow. e.g. hiding work until you know what needs doing before pretending to come up with the information during bikeshedding sessions.
  • Izkata 2y ago
    Yep, "copy/paste programming" is a separate term for the version that works without being understood.
  • Groxx 2y ago
    Yeah, that quote is very far off I think. If the act never succeeded, nobody would join the cult. It sometimes succeeds, and you get the valuables: funding, whether via grants or employment or social score (which is the next sentence after what you copied). For the cults: those ships did bring cargo! That's how they knew ships carried people and cargo. And because it's a cult, rather than science/programming, they have no explanation of why it fails when it fails. They're stuck repeating the cult practices (copy/paste more things, maybe reverse some if statements) until it succeeds again, which is just further evidence to the members that it does actually work. --- I can be game to drop the term (shockumentaries are worth leaning away from), but the thing it's identifying is extremely real, and a very large problem. It deserves to be labeled and called out. Sure, it's sometimes used inaccurately... but show me a term that can't be used inaccurately. That's just humanity doing its normal thing. Is it used too inaccurately? ...ehhh, I'm not convinced, but it might be borderline. TBH I think that the modern-re-defining is just not all that far off (outside the fabricated stuff obviously). There's no "the world is ending and the dead are coming back with stuff" or "what's ours has been stolen" in the current use (... except maybe job losses due to automation), but there is a large chunk like you point out: rituals and technology that mimic things they have seen, and which don't work because of the lack of understanding. If there's a better label to apply to ^ that kind of act/cult/ritual, I have yet to see it. Probably there is, but it's currently drowned out by "cargo cult" so it's kinda hard to find unless you're deeply in that area already.
• ikesau 2y ago
  I appreciated this article. The irony of "cargo cult" being the misunderstood phrase that people here like to use is not lost on me. It's good to interrogate the wallpaper of colonialism, to discover what's hiding behind our euphemisms and clichés. The phrase "cargo cult" as I had come to understand it before reading this article, definitely centered the cult's naivete ("oh those silly cargo cultists, worshipping shipping containers!" But reading this passage: > Other natives believed that God lived in Heaven, which was in the clouds and reachable by ladder from Sydney, Australia. God, along with the ancestors, created cargo in Heaven—"tinned meat, bags of rice, steel tools, cotton cloth, tinned tobacco, and a machine for making electric light"—which would be flown from Sydney and delivered to the natives, who thus needed to clear an airstrip clarifies that this "naivete" was cultivated, by settlers with ulterior motives. Using the idiom uncritically elides this dynamic, laundering the practices of missionaries that I'm sure most people here would loathe to be on the receiving end of. Knowing this enriches the analogy when using it to describe aws lambda or whatever people use it for ("Who is producing the cargo? What are their motives? Why does one group have power over another?") but I think, in general, it would be good for people to find additional ways of talking about dynamics where people are making choices out of ignorance. Because even if you don't agree with my social justice bent, I think Orwell was on the right track to say "never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."
  • Procrastes 2y ago
    I'm someone who used to use this phrase frequently after reading Feynman, but stopped long ago after realizing how lazy the story was. It became a popular phrase with the same crowd it most closely described. That's about the time people started saying things like "drink the Koolaid" in a positive sense. I guess the real revelation is that Orwell was the prophet of our own little apocalypse.
    • fargle 2y ago
      > That's about the time people started saying things like "drink the Koolaid" in a positive sense wait, when was this? is there a linkable example? (i don't doubt you, but that's pretty bad)
• EA-3167 2y ago
  It was an interesting read, and I enjoyed learning more about the history of the term as it was used once upon a time. That's the thing though, "once upon a time"... we're not colonial powers justifying our rule, we're just people adapting existing language and metaphors to modern problems. That's the bottom line for me: language is a tool, it's descriptive and not prescriptive. I accept that the term "cargo cult" has a negative history, but it doesn't have a negative present, and the current use isn't in any way aimed at belittling distant tribes. tl;dr We get to decide what words and phrases mean, and what utility they have, we don't have to be bound by the history of the thing.
  • goofburglar2026 2y ago
    The term itself is not self-explanatory, and requires delving into its backstory for it to mean something coherent -- doing so reiterates the racist caricature at the heart of the metaphor. There are many terms and expressions that have been (largely) dispensed with because of their objectionable history, and of course many that have not. Seems to me that this one should be.
    • EA-3167 2y ago
      Tell you what, if the descendants of the alleged victims of this "racism" make it known that they find this usage offensive, I for one will drop it. On the basis of a blog post from, and I'm not sure of any other way to put this, a middle-aged white man however... I'm not so inclined. This feels uncomfortably similar to the "Latinx" debacle, in which people outside of the allegedly affected class took it upon themselves to find something to be offended by, then "fix" something the people themselves didn't think was broken... and certainly didn't want their "fix". I think that's a good heuristic to apply.
      • goofburglar2026 2y ago
        Err on the side of being racist until proven racist... Cool heuristic.
• glitchc 2y ago
  ..and replace it with dogma.
• imgabe 2y ago
  Nope, we’re not doing this in 2025. Cargo cult succinctly expresses an important concept. We’re not catering to imaginary offenses somebody hallucinates on behalf of some supposedly marginalized people anymore.
  • this_weekend 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • gwd 2y ago
    > It succinctly expresses an important concept. So first of all, I absolutely agree that it's an important concept: to me the idea is one of imitating externally observable behavior, patterns, what-not, without any understanding of what's going on underneath. Unlike what the author says, "cargo cult science" certainly can get some sorts of results; particularly when the desired results are actually things like "grant money". > We’re not catering to imaginary offenses somebody hallucinates on behalf of some supposedly marginalized people anymore. I'm still processing the information from the blog somewhat; but at the moment, for me, it doesn't come down so much to the idea that these people may be offended, but that it defames them. The story as told in popular culture gives people a skewed idea of what the cultists are like, and reinforces a skewed and arrogant idea about how much better / scientific / whatever the rest of us are. These skewed views hurt both us and the cultists. It may be, like the "frog slowly boiling" myth, that it's the sort of thing you repeat even knowing that it's not something that actually happens. Or maybe we need to come up with a different name for it -- although it's not as easy to come up with a picture that's as evocative as the pop culture version of the cargo cult.
    • imgabe 2y ago
      > it doesn't come down so much to the idea that these people may be offended, but that it defames them. The story as told in popular culture gives people a skewed idea of what the cultists are like This doesn’t matter. Nobody is talking about the actual cultists. It’s a metaphor to talk about how people right now, in our own society behave around certain topics. The story behind it is apocryphal.
    • 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• arrobbiato 2y ago
  Similarly, I’ve had to privately advise coworkers not to use the term “let a thousand flowers bloom” as an idiom meaning “let’s get ideas from lots of people.” It sounds great until you understand the horrible historical context in which it was originally said.
  • engineer_22 2y ago
    Best to just forget
  • magnetowasright 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
  • layer8 2y ago
    I disagree. The usage has detached from the historical context of the original (mis)quote, and there’s no good reason for it to be eternally enslaved by it. This is also reflected in entries like [0] and [1]. Indeed, the Wiktionary entry notes that it may “be used ironically, in negative view” of the Hundred Flower Campaign, which in turn means that by default that context isn’t implied, and instead as a proverb it merely has the meaning described above in the entry. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/let_a_thousand_flowers_bloom#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/let_a_thousand_flowers_bloom#... [1] https://playjustsaying.com/idiom/let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom https://playjustsaying.com/idiom/let-a-thousand-flowers-bloo...
    • arrobbiato 2y ago
      I don’t think it would be acceptable to say “Arbeiten macht frei” in a casual conversation. Just because Chinese history is distant from and unfamiliar to western experience doesn’t mean we should trivialize it.
  • saulpw 2y ago
    I had a manager once who said "work makes you free".
  • 2y ago
• zug_zug 2y ago
  This blog piece perfectly encapsulates an interesting discussion we are having as a society - "Do we need to care if a word has a hurtful etymology (if nobody using it nowadays knows that history)?" Taking it out of the superheated culture-war lens, let's examine a more chill example: There's a popular meme with a girl crying and pointing and a cat sitting at a table. After some number of years somebody online pointed out that the panel on the left is some reality-tv personality going through a genuinely terrible life experience. They were sort of implying that everybody on the internet should stop using the meme for this reason. Most of the arguments in either direction have thus-far been name-calling (due to culture-war nature). I'd be curious to see a well-reasoned from-first-principles argument in either direction, though curiously never have.
  • danparsonson 2y ago
    I think kindness is the answer and ironically often the reason people get so unpleasant. It's OK not to know the hurtful etymology of something; it's also OK to be hurt by it and to educate those who don't know. To me the best way that this goes is that 'hurt party' kindly explains to 'unknowing party' who, in turn, kindly agrees to abandon hurtful term, and everyone moves on with life. What often happens however is either that unknowing party pushes back (often aggressively), imagining their rights to have been infringed, or else hurt party opens the discussion aggressively, perhaps anticipating pushback before it materialises, or perhaps just already upset at having long been on the receiving end of hurtful behaviour but previously unable to speak up, often because of systemic bias (think: oppression of black people in 1950's USA just as one example among many). And then we get a super-heated culture war, which is really just mixture of people wanting to be heard and understood, and some people deliberately stirring the pot for ulterior reasons. The answer to your question is thus another question - do you care if people suffer because of the actions of others? If you do, then try to be kind, and remember that being kind sometimes means making minor sacrifices to bring greater benefit to others.
    • taneq 2y ago
      > hurt party opens the discussion aggressively, perhaps anticipating pushback before it materialises, or perhaps just already upset at having long been on the receiving end of hurtful behaviour but previously unable to speak up, often because of systemic bias Another thing that happens quite often, especially in the context of online discussions, is that a third party opens the discussion aggressively and/or condescendingly, explaining how the phrase is unvirtuous and insisting that the first party renounce it.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• baggy_trough 2y ago
  Bookmarking to read after I fix this bug on my master branch.
  • tbrownaw 2y ago
    You don't do fixes on a side branch and then create a Pull Request to ask someone else to merge it?
  • pluto_modadic 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • baggy_trough 2y ago
      What is more terrible, using the master branch, or calling somebody terrible for doing so?
    • x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
      The master branch has nothing to do with the master/slave relationship and everything to do with the concept of mastering [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)
      • bdangubic 2y ago
        yup and master/slave is all about parallel audio duplication :) /s
  • layer8 2y ago
    It really bugs me how your word choice is so uncharitable towards insects.
• talkingtab 2y ago
  Cargo cult is, to me a tag for a particular kind of action. Where someone does something without an understanding of the mechanism they are using. My best example is agile development. Many (most) people implement agile without really understanding what how it is supposed to work. This is common, and it is a real thing, and a real problem we have. We have. One could give this some other name. Perhaps recipe-ism. Where you follow a recipe instead of understanding the process. But, personally, cargo cult sort of captures the essence of the thing. I never saw it as about Feynman, colonialism, racism or such. It is just about human nature. To me. Speaking of recipes, the article very much reminded me of internet recipes, the ones that try to cram in as many ads as possible. So the recipe is preceded by the writer's life history, the history of the recipe, whether the name of the product is politically correct and then (200 ads later) three lines of the stuff you were really looking for. And in the worst circumstances you find that the core thing was not really all that informative. Sigh.
  • CRConrad 2y ago
    Hmm, "Cargo cult Agile"...? Yeah, the way "Agile"[1] is too often practiced, the way that has made everyone under ~45 hate "Agile", with its focus on Scrum and meetings and tickets and the ceremonies of "Agile"... Focus on ceremonies; how much more cult-like can you get? Yup: Cargo cult Agile. ___ [1]: Agile is an adjective, not a noun.
    • talkingtab 2y ago
      Nice one! Ceremonies! I like that. The unfortunate thing is that the tag word "agile" in this context has obliterated some very sound ideas of how to effectively develop software in teams. But that would require actual thinking. In lieu of that, maybe we should just get some kind of high priests to run the scrum meetings? Sorry. I have been in the software business way, way too long. If anyone actually wants to think about software development, my starting point would be John Holland's "Hidden Order". Don't read it. Try to implement it for software development teams.
      • CRConrad 2y ago
• dudeinjapan 2y ago
  A more neutral term is "sympathetic magic"[1] (also called "imitative magic") which seems to be somewhat of a cross-cultural human universal. At is core, it is the belief that if person/thing X does Y action to get Z result, and I mimic X by also doing Y, then I will also get Z. In some cases it's a confusion be correlation and causality. Aspects of "sympathetic magic" are definitely present the quasi-religious beliefs of cargo cults (John Frum, etc. [2]), granted they are also political and social movements. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_magic 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum
  • turbojet1321 2y ago
    > In some cases it's a confusion be correlation and causality. I wouldn't say confusion. If you read Ramsey Dukes for example, a magician focusing on correlation rather than causation is the whole point. The belief is that a) there are non-causal aspects to existence; and b) it doesn't matter why it works, so long as it works. That is, according to Dukes, a magician is intentionally uninterested in causation, and leaves it for the scientists to worry about.
    • dudeinjapan 2y ago
      [dead]
• Darkskiez 2y ago
  What are some good alternatives to express the same concept?
  • agalunar 2y ago
    “Imitation without understanding”, “imitating but misconstruing”, “mindless imitation”, “superficial emulation”, &c. I think “cargo culting” in the popular sense means little more than that (whereas actual cargo culting is much more complex, as the featured article describes).
  • mglvsky 2y ago
    Security theater
  • gota 2y ago
    Simulacra - "Something that replaces reality with its representation" [0] https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/postmodernism/terms/simulacrum.html https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/postmoder...
  • andsoitis 2y ago
    important to understand substance over form.
  • rvz 2y ago
    Cargo cult.
  • mock-possum 2y ago
    Might I propose ‘Skinner-Boxing’ - something happened but you’re not sure why, so you guess it’s because of something you did, and you decide to ritualistically repeat what you did in the hopes that thing that happened before happens again. It’s a misunderstanding of cause and effect - so when you repeat the cause, looking to repeat the effect, you’re puzzled that it doesn’t work this time.
  • Clubber 2y ago
    "Aping," is a good one, but I'm sure someone will take offense to that as well eventually.
• tgma 2y ago
  If you have to explain in 5000 words how it would offend someone and hardly anyone really knows the backstory (or your version of it perhaps) before reading your 5000 word article, including the people you think could be offended, it probably means it's not offensive. Just sayin.
• devvvvvvv 2y ago
  [dead]
• Procrastes 2y ago
  See also, the prophet Wovoka and the Ghost Dance in North America. 1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wovoka https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wovoka
• halyconWays 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Biganon 2y ago
    Don't do that on hacker news, this is not reddit.
    • halyconWays 2y ago
      I was channeling /g/ more than Reddit, but sometimes something is so stupid it has to be mocked with matching stupidity. My point is similar to other high-ranked points on this thread, I just didn't feel like gussying it up.
• boguscoder 2y ago
  So using cargo cult metaphor is considered a carbo cult?
  • defrost 2y ago
    Generally it's the Atkins diet that's considered a carbo cult.
• oswalk 2y ago
  It never sat right with me. Every time someone used this metaphor, an argument ensued over whether it was accurately applied or not.
  • stackghost 2y ago
    Bike-shedding the cargo cult? How meta.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• coldtea 2y ago
  Nah, we better abandon this kind of retroactive policing of language instead from people with nothing better to do. Nobody who uses the term "cargo cult" in a technical settings does it out of spite or even refers to specific nations or peoples. Just refers to the core takeaway of a practice which might as we be all lore. Care about politics and colonialism and injustice and what have you? There are 1000000 causes you could devote your time and make an active difference to people actually suffering this very moment, rather than language policing tech terms.
  • goy 2y ago
    I understand that all the controversies of the past years put you on the defensive (e.g. the whole thing with Github repo default branches being renamed from "master" to "main", etc), but I think that this is the kind of issue we should try to find a balance on, instead of just throwing out the baby with the bath water. My native language is Ewe. The words we usually use for caucasian people is "yo vo".It's an evolution of an archaic pronunciation used today by only a few, "ye vu", and it was brought to my attention recently that it means "cunning dog".Ye=cunning, Vu=dog. Explanation: we kinda didn't start on a good footing with the Germans back in the day ... So today most people will call every white person "cunning dog" without even knowing or meaning harm because the dialect has evolved. On one hand, for most people, it's just a random word with no insulting connotation; you try to make them switch to some another term, you're crazy dumb woke etc. On the other hand, I know I would take offense in being called that even if I'm told the word's lost the original meaning a long time ago. Personally I don't know where the middle ground should be. But some "retroactive policing of language" is definitely needed. It may seem mundane to you, but sometimes these kind of things can be unsavory to other people. With globalization, it's not you and your pals anymore ...
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • imgabe 2y ago
      So, I'm white and I live in Hong Kong. Gwei Lo (or some variation) is a slur for white people in China that I think basically means "foreign devil" or something to that effect. There's a popular brand of craft beer sold here that is literally named "gwei lo" and you know what? I don't care. Nobody cares. It really doesn't matter. I don't feel the need to campaign for the beer company to change their name. Even your username is a ~Yiddish~ (edit: Hebrew, thank you, ars) word Jewish people use for non-Jewish people (sometimes derogatory, maybe). There's no end to this rabbit hole. Judge people by their intentions behind what they say, not some etymological trivia.
• KronisLV 2y ago
  I think that “cargo cult” in how it’s commonly used encapsulates a certain kind of behaviour pretty well. If it was to be moved away from, then I’d at least like a similarly concise alternative. Though I will admit, especially as a non-native English speaker, that there have been cases where changes in the terminology used have actually made more sense than the prior alternatives. For example allowlist/deny list feels more concise and simpler to understand than whitelist/blacklist. Also, naming the main version control branch “main” is also really obvious and clear, at least a bit more so than “master”. Though once you start talking about further historical context, you’re going to lose some people along the way, who have not once considered it with much attention. A bit like some who used .io domains had never really heard much about Chagos.
  • bad_user 2y ago
    I'm also a non-native English speaker. Blacklist is a word that stands out, an interesting combination like other English words or phrases and I had no issues with learning it. It's also a word with a rich history that doesn't seem to have had a racist origin. And because it was used since 17th century and is still in use, non-native English speakers have to learn it anyway. "Master" was more legitimate as a target for change, but again, I don't think anyone had issues with understanding it. This is like when mother-father or male-female is used to describe electrical connectors. And also, the bigger problem with changing "master" to "main" is that "master" was a standard and the change was painful. At work our branch is still called "master", any change won't happen soon, as people have better things to do (needing to reconfigure CI, plus red tape due to policies and ACL policies) . So now people have to be aware that the default can be both "master" and "main", increasing the knowledge one has to possess for no good reason. It's not like the change from "master" increased the quality of life for anyone. Note that I have no issues with changes that are made for clarification. For example, in database replication, maybe it's better to talk of a primary database and of replicas, which seems more descriptive and aids learning. But I don't think many such changes were motivated primarily by the need to clarify, but by the need to sanitize the language and I disagree with such a motivation.
    • bdangubic 2y ago
• bhk 2y ago
  When some rando on the Internet make an outlandish claim I know to be skeptical. It's becoming clear that much of what I've seen in print over the last 40 years deserves similar treatment.
• Lerc 2y ago
  I this post has enabled me to put my finger on what makes me uncomfortable about articles like this. Even though I frequently understand and sympathise with the goals and feelings of the writers, there are two factors that stand out. 1. A sense of certainty of the causal nature of the issues at hand. It comes across that the author has concluded the correct course of action. 2. Everybody, including you, should follow their concluded course of action. I would be fine with an article talking about what the cargo cult metaphor means, its historical accuracy and how the author thinks that impacts upon people. It would then seem to be quite reasonable for them to say that they are going to cease using the metaphor because of those reasons, and to invite people to consider doing the same if they think the reasons seem valid to them. It's ok to say "I think this, so I'm going to change my behaviour" It seems unreasonable to say. "I think this, so everyone should change their behaviour" Unfortunately it feels like we are heading to "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" The call for everyone else to change is backed by the certainty of their opinion. It presents complainants as wanting you to do their thing not because it's their opinion, it's because it is undeniable fact. It places you as morally deficient if you disagree. This affects things large and small, whether people want you to boycott a brand of toothpaste, or talk about milliBTC as the base unit of bitcoin, or talk about the topic they are uninterested in in a different forum. The solution is simple, everyone has to do this simple act of my bidding. Surely if the case for the damage caused by the cargo cult metaphor were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would.
  • SllX 2y ago
    > Unfortunately it feels like we are heading to > "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" Depending on which avenues of the web you were on more than 10 years ago, even if that was some of the side streets on Tumblr or Twitter or whatever, we long ago already reached that point. It’s just gotten progressively more mainstream with each passing year, but the backlash was always going to come, and we’re living it.
    • jrowen 2y ago
      Or, depending on who you conversed with at the forum... How do we disprove the null hypothesis that this is a part of human nature and there have always been and will always be people that state their opinions as fact to be more persuasive, and that those voices tend to dominate over the more tempered ones?
• nikitaga 2y ago
  That's an interesting, well sourced article, I'm glad I've read it. I honestly didn't know that the full-size straw-airplanes were fakes from a movie. They're the face of this metaphor. That said, the article would have been a lot better without moralizing about harmful colonialism, or claiming that this metaphor is supposedly an insult. The purpose of this metaphor was never to gain historical insights, or to teach a lesson about colonialism, or to judge the Polynesian natives from 80 years ago, it's to teach a lesson about modern practices of software development (or science I guess). It's a fable. You can replace the Polynesians in the fable with anyone else, and the payload of the fable does not change. Because the payload of it has nothing to do with the Polynesians. I personally didn't remember that this metaphor was specifically about Polynesians and the war supplies. I remembered it being about some abstract tribes, possibly Africans and humanitarian aid supplies. Did someone explain it to me the wrong way, or was it me who assumed wrong from the fake photos? I dunno. It does not matter. I wasn't relying on this fable for anything other than a software development lesson. It was not a covert tool to justify colonialism, or to assert intellectual superiority over some historical tribes on the other side of the globe. It's definitely good to know the historical truth – as I said, I genuinely do appreciate all the exposition in this article. But, if you package that together with the moralizing, it comes off as yet more culture war BS that I am so sick of. The difference in motivation is very important. If you write with the primary goal to expose historical inaccuracies – that's great. Then I can trust you. But if you write with the primary goal to stop people from using offensive (in your view) metaphors, then the historical inaccuracies are just a convenient tool, a talking point, for you to achieve your real goal. Because if this metaphor was actually historically true, you would probably still find it offensive. And so if that's your goal, then I can't trust you to provide historical accuracy. I will suspect you of presenting selective evidence, and other tricks to further your goal. That is why your moralizing detracts from the article.
  • jwkpiano1 2y ago
    The fact that you have equated Polynesians and Melanesians here, two completely disparate groups of people, does not help your point whatsoever.
    • 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ferfumarma 2y ago
  I decline to join your hyperstitious slur cascade [1]. Your point is well taken: the idea of a cargo cult as described by Feynman never happened quite that way, and likely came from a work of fiction. But that doesn't take away from the idea of a mechanically correct reproduction of a system that lacks the essential elements. And I don't see that idea as being colonial or hateful; it's just an idea that relates to two cultures that are not understood by one another. So thank you for the important point of correction; I learned something from your essay. But I will still understand the term when I hear it, and I will not censor others from using it, or correct them if they choose to do so. The richness of language is a cultural value, just like tolerance. In this case, I think we can have both. 1. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-the-way https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-...
  • Nursie 2y ago
    That was an interesting read, thankyou, and has clarified some of my thoughts in that area. It amazed me a few years ago now to observe The Guardian in the UK running an article ruminating on whether the term BAME (an acronym for "Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic"), a term which itself had only just about escaped the halls of academia and left-wing journalism, was no longer fit for purpose and should be denied and now considered racist. The dragon was eating its own tail in real-time on that one.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• nomilk 2y ago
  Unfortunately the article doesn't suggest any alternatives. Cargo culting is a term known to most, so it's a pragmatic word choice when wishing to convey that particular idea. Incidentally, we had a 10 minute meeting to 80 staff where someone tried to explain that we ought not use the word 'guys' on grounds that it could feel exclusive to some. Thankfully, it was pointed out that the literal definition of guys is: [Informal] Persons of either sex [0], which is what most perceive it to be. I don't think anyone's behaviour was changed as a result, but the seemingly trifling disruption did irritate a fair few people, and it was 10 minutes we never got back. [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/guys https://www.thefreedictionary.com/guys
  • fenomas 2y ago
    I agree with you about TFA, but: > the literal definition of guys is: Persons of either sex I'm no culture warrior, but this isn't accurate at all. That's a definition, but it's not the usual one - ask someone "how many guys have you slept with?" and see how they interpret it. To me, "guys" is the rhetorical equivalent of a code smell. There are cases where is obviously innocuous, like saying "hey you guys" to a mixed group of peers. But when the CEO says "I want to congratulate the guys on team xyz" in reference to a team with one woman... at minimum we can say his intent is ambiguous.
    • nomilk 2y ago
      You're right about everything. But I'd argue if we're going to dedicate time to 'guys', we should no less have a meeting about every single other possible ambiguity that hardly matters, and try to somehow encourage inconvenient changes to people's natural vocabularies. Similarly to the article above, during the meeting, no alternative was suggested. I like the word 'guys' for its casualness. If you're at risk of being perceived as somewhat authoritative, it can help induce a more casual tone. I thought about 'peeps' but that's too casual (and frankly weird, in a business setting). 'Everyone' is far too sterile. 'Ladies and gentlemen' is weird. 'All' (e.g. 'hi all') is also impersonal. Workplaces could over-analyse and pick about minutiae all day long, and how productive is that? I reasoned that if we are going to pick about minutiae, then it should at least be the worst of the worst offences, and should be accompanied with some alternatives or solutions. Not just "Don't do <x> because I said so" type of thing.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• sigbottle 2y ago
  I never heard the original Feynman quote; actually such a good description for things sometimes, what a powerful quote. I also didn't know about the ties of Christianity with cargo-cultism lol. > Note that the metaphor in cargo-cult programming is the opposite of the metaphor in cargo-cult science: Feynman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. Is it used like that? I guess sometimes - I've also heard it used in the former, that there's software engineers that will adopt a practice in the hopes that it works, but even when it inevitably fails, they keep worshipping the practices by tackling it with the same tools and approaches (mainly in the context of OOP). Not agreeing with it just saying my observation
• renewiltord 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • vendiddy 2y ago
    I'm gonna keep using the term. Part of me wonders about master vs main and if anyone was actually offended by the term. Or did a small group of people get offended on the behalf of others?
    • renewiltord 2y ago
      I liked the software that set its trunk branch to 'mistress'. It was extremely entertaining.
  • collingreen 2y ago
    I expect people will still think what they think about what makes the world better and what actions they should/shouldn't take, regardless of these changes. After all, there was plenty of disagreement before these changes; it isn't like a DEI or ESG policy existing somehow made everyone think equity or the environment mattered and now a switch is thrown the other way. I actually think these kinds of things cause the counterculture to get stronger - ESG is a great example where lots of people got really mad about the idea that some people want to invest their money in ways that consider harm to the world as a criteria alongside profit. In theory if you disagreed with esg as an investment strategy (either in principle or in how folks measure it) it would be great to see out there; what an easy way to out perform those following it. In practice it actually made people livid and there is a ton of pushback against and even perceived harm from people with that strategy.
    • aspenmayer 2y ago
      > I actually think these kinds of things cause the counterculture to get stronger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_(politics)#Controlled_opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_(politics)#Controll... https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html
• padolsey 2y ago
  Gosh! Such inspired venom and "old man yells at cloud" vibes in this comment thread. I think I should send this to myself from 5 years ago: It's gonna be OKAY. It's OKAY to subtly adjust your language towards better ends, if it makes people feel more comfortable and creates a more equitable environment around you. The world won't implode. Although truly strained to the core of my being I have found the willpower to stop using "chinese whispers", preferring "game of telephone", stopped using "guys", preferring "y'all" and started to prefer generic "they/them" until I know the person's pronouns. Amongst all the slings and arrows of life suffered, let this tiny ask be not one of them.
  • boodleboodle 2y ago
    I agree. What's so hard about acting a bit more considerate instead of telling others to stop getting hurt? Nobody is out to criticize anyone's intentions or accuse them of being colonialists. Sometimes it costs to be considerate but not this instance.
    • User23 2y ago
      You're going to have to wait a generation for people to start falling for that again.
      • collingreen 2y ago
        Falling for it? Can you help me see the scam underlying their comment?
        • wvbdmp 2y ago
          It’s a motte and bailey thing, where “it costs nothing to be nice” is the motte and “you’re a nazi” is the bailey. The people in the motte aren’t necessarily the same as those in the bailey, but this is roughly what has been happening for the last 15 years. It’s like jaywalking. You keep pushing new offenses down the treadmill, so you can selectively persecute anyone, because nobody is gonna keep up with all of them. It’s nice to be educated about common misconceptions and potentially hurtful language, but unfortunately society doesn’t have enough slack right now to be a sufficiently chill about it and not devolve into tribal bullshit over it. At least that’s the concern.
• zuminator 2y ago
  Personally, aside from whether I was persuaded to abandon the metaphor, I found the history fascinating and informative. I actually remember being taught the apparently incorrect version of the origin of cargo cults in an anthropology class, so this was useful to me. HN seems put off by the tone. Perhaps if he had positioned it more like "People who use the term 'cargo cult' are mostly idiots who have no idea what it really means. I went all the way down the rabbit hole to uncover the truth for you dumbasses. Now you too can sneer at your colleague for trying to sound smart and miserably failing."
  • culi 2y ago
    It's a useful article regardless. Many a big headed HNer have waxed poetically about cargo cults and quite a few of them have even written articles further spreading the mythical version of the story. Hopefully this will at the very least lead to some backlash and a convenient article to point to anytime someone further spreads misinformation
• casey2 2y ago
  I agree, cargo cult is giving them too much credit, it's just the You made this? I made this meme. 99% of people care about themselves, .9% care about the form of science, .1% care about science. Also most of the time people call out "cargo culting" it's in defense of a system that is genuinely, needlessly obtuse, and amount to little more than "you're holding it wrong" complaints.
• kstenerud 2y ago
  I'm glad to see that the language police are finally getting the kick in the keester they've so richly deserved all these years. The virtue signaling and low-stakes bullying was getting really annoying. Mind you, I'm dreading what the next form of witch hunting will be...
  • reshlo 2y ago
    I don’t have a strong opinion on this particular example, but it’s quite surprising to me just how many people such as yourself are proudly making variations of an argument that boils down to “I have a right to be rude and I’m gonna use it even more now that I know it annoys you, that’ll show you”. What is the point? How does it add value to the world? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. When you observe someone publicly doing something that they think is virtuous, why is your first assumption that they’re broadcasting it cynically, rather than that they’re simply being virtuous in a public setting? Most people don’t think that way.
    • kstenerud 2y ago
      I think that you're assuming too much here. I have no problem with the majority of a group directly affected by a nomenclature requesting a change. Where I start to have a problem is when someone not directly affected starts championing it on behalf of some nebulous group that until then has said little on the subject. For example: git master branch. We had a HUGE kerfuffle over that, to the point where even GitHub now gives git init examples that create and rename the master branch to "main". This was a pointless exercise that served no useful purpose other than to make a bunch of social justice warriors feel important. Building special programs to lift people out of poverty is a good thing, especially for marginalized groups, but Affirmative Action was an abomination that only hurt those groups by reinforcing the stereotype that they're less capable. Same goes for what DEI mutated into over time. The backlash we see today is because they went WAYYYYYYYY too far (because the politics of these things are always "keep pushing"), and so now that it's swinging the otherway, we're going to throw the baby out with the bath water. Everyone loses. > When you observe someone publicly doing something that they think is virtuous, why is your first assumption that they’re broadcasting it cynically, rather than that they’re simply being virtuous in a public setting? Most people don’t think that way. Most people don't think that way CONSCIOUSLY, but people do crave status, and will subconsciously tweak their beliefs to put them on the virtuous side of whatever they're doing, even when bullying others to lift themselves up (dragon slaying). This behavior is as old as time, and must be fought against whenever it rears its ugly head.
• DowsingSpoon 2y ago
  I suppose “monkey see monkey do” works just as well, if you’re looking for an alternative metaphor. The phrase doesn’t refer to any human at all so there’s also the benefit that its use can’t possibly offend, or risk the appearance of offense.
  • collingreen 2y ago
    Except the people you're calling monkeys I guess, which also has a couple layers of feeling like a bully baked in.
    • DowsingSpoon 2y ago
      Best stick with “cargo cult” then! No, but seriously, that’s a good point.
• freetanga 2y ago
  My recommendation to the author: 1 - Become as relevant as Mr Feynman 2 - Get invited to CalTech to give a commencement speech 3 - Share your personal opinions there.
  • dambi0 2y ago
    I appreciate you might be trying to be funny. But this deference to authority goes vastly beyond just appeal to authority. What did you make of the argument?
    • freetanga 2y ago
      Opinions are like noses… everyone has one, but most are unremarkable. In the age of digital soapboxes, everyone feels their opinions are relevant - and many people try to leverage virtue signaling to get audience appeal, as followership has become a metric for quality. This feels the case. I think that if we look hard enough we could be offended by everything and anything. And I think the heightened sensibility to be offended these days correlates negatively with overall societal intelligence. Intelligent people have flexible mindsets to discuss and hence not so open to sensibility. People who follow others people mantras, not so flexible and reject what they doesn’t fit in their views.
      • dambi0 2y ago
        Deference to authority is a mantra. General complaints about the prevalence of opinion is a mantra, general complaints that everyone is looking for offence is a mantra. It might not have been at a commencement speech, but didn’t Feynman say, “Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, 'Is it reasonable?“. You are doing your hero a great disservice. Or perhaps you have a specific opinion on the article.
        • freetanga 2y ago
          If you want to know the full picture: neither Feynman is a hero of mine (I personally think he was a bright prick), neither the original piece stirred any important ideas rather than “wow, this guy is full of self importance”. To further complete the picture, I wrote this while sitting in the toilet, passing gas, while smoking my morning cig. Hardly the pinnacle of my day (but an adequate context for the articles quality) I respect your views, we all have noses, I don’t care much for yours and you probably should not care much about mine either. Live long and prosper.
• lurker_9384711 2y ago
  I haven't seen anyone else write my thoughts out for me (how lazy), so I'll chime in for the first time. Memes will always circulate in and out of fashion. I don't think Ken is trying to kill the meme with his own hands (there are, at most, a few thousand hackers who will read this or care what he thinks) or worse, "signal virtue" (I can't imagine why he would care what anyone here thinks, and I'm sure he knows he would find disagreement here). I think what he's actually doing is delivering confirmation to a subset of readers---probably those who already had doubts---that the meme is dead, and it's time to move on. It's the same thing that happens when some faceless corporation's twitter account parrots some joke that used to be funny to make the brand more relatable or trustworthy, but instead it's a faceless hacker news account misusing an insightful term popularized by a great physicist in hopes of also appearing insightful. I also don't think he is writing this for any "culture war" reason; I think the post may have been inspired by pure annoyance---see his 2013 post listing "cargo cult" and other phrases he's "tired of seeing." [1] He doesn't call the phrase racist, or hateful, or offensive, or morally wrong. I didn't interpret the essay to be "policing language" or "catering to imaginary offences [...] on behalf of some supposedly marginalized people" or saying that "everyone should change their behaviour" or starting a "hyperstitious slur cascade." Melanesian history just happens to be where all the interesting information lies, and I thank him for collecting it. Thousands of words about the real reason for the post (lazy hacker news commenters) would be a total waste of bytes. Maybe people are interpreting a shirriff-style super-in-depth essay through the lens of "people only write this much when they're really angry"? If you disagree with ken, maybe you think that the phrase refers to an important enough concept, or you like explaining the story, I think that's a reasonable stance to hold, and you should hold it without feeling so personally attacked you need to comment to fight back. I just think you might be clinging to a dead meme that's already used increasingly by people who like to seem smart by using an indirect term like "cargo cult" instead of "doing things superficially" or similar, and it's your choice whether you want to be lumped in with them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313925
• User23 2y ago
  Fun fact: There's an extant cargo cult that worships Prince Philip, consort to Elizabeth II, as a god.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_movement
  • rjsw 2y ago
    I don't think there is any sense of "cargo" in their worship of him.
• 1shooner 2y ago
  Making the transition from anthropology to tech, the use of 'cargo cult' in tech really made no sense to me. So at best it's an idiom with wildly different meaning depending on context. I bristled at this kind of prescriptive language dictum for a long time, but eventually I concluded the rule-of-thumb "don't use derogatory metaphors about other people" is often not hard or that big of a deal. I couldn't give you an alternative for cargo cult, though. It's wild to see the emotions it apparently still triggers on this site, it's not a big deal either way.
  • collingreen 2y ago
    > eventually I concluded the rule-of-thumb "don't use derogatory metaphors about other people" is often not hard or that big of a deal This is nice. Thanks for putting it so succinctly. I've been surprised by how strong the push back has been from people about this kind of thing. We're in a weird place culturally when "golden rule" or "default to respectful" approaches are called out as virtue signaling and idiotic. Maybe that's just the impression leftover from the silent middle on both sides not starting a judgmental shouting match so it's just the "only my way can possibly be right" people on both sides of the issue taking up all the air in the room.
  • adamrezich 2y ago
    > but eventually I concluded the rule-of-thumb "don't use derogatory metaphors about other people" is often not hard or that big of a deal This is simply untrue. A couple of decades ago, one could use the hyperbolic euphemism “I would of course be lynched for suggesting such a thing”, completely devoid of any racial animus, because human history is of course rife with instances of lynchings of people of all skin tones and racial origins. But today, a concerted effort has been made to “brand” “lynch” as a term that is “racist against black people—black Americans specifically.” There is no historical reason for this to be the case. The ADL was founded after a Jewish man was lynched because the lynch mob believed him to be guilty instead of a black man, for instance! Just because a given term or metaphor or euphemism isn't considered offensive-toward-a-certain-class-of-people today, doesn't mean that somebody won't invent a reason for it to be considered to be such tomorrow.
• mannyv 2y ago
  Just wait when he hears about Potemkin Villages.
• uludag 2y ago
  I actually liked this article. It brings to light that cargo cults were much more about metaphysical beliefs, rather than a simple lack of cause and effect. If a cargo cult wasn't "mimic the paraphernalia of air transportation to bring material goods" but rather "the world's coming to an end, ancestral spirits are gathering, talking to Jesus, performing sacred rites, etc." Obviously what we do in tech is nothing like the latter. So it seems criticizing someone for cargo-culting should be a criticism of false metaphysical understanding of the world, rather than a false instrumental understanding of it. That said, maybe the analogy could actually be stretched, but that would paint a rather different picture, with deeper implications. Like maybe there is a cult of the tech entrepreneur, with a certain teleology of utopia being brought with AI or something, with people cargo-cutting this by popping up chatgpt wrappers to summon the innovation and bring upon themselves mass wealth.
  • boredhedgehog 2y ago
    I liked the article as well for its historical and anthropological observations, but I still don't think it supports any of these conclusions. The natives did build imitations of radio towers out of bamboo and ropes, and they hoped they would work. How is that not a false instrumental understanding? It might in fact even exemplify a complete disinterest in all instrumental understanding; they never asked how or why these towers worked. The apocalyptic elements of the cults might have supplied the motivation for these activities, but they didn't shape their form.
    • uludag 2y ago
      I totally get this point. My impression was that the complete instrumental understanding was predicated on the metaphysical understanding, making the instrumental understanding almost incidental. So like, the resolution to the cargo cult wouldn't be to teach them how to actually build airplanes, but rather to first dismantle their religious hierarchies, "correct" their religious beliefs, forbid or prevent their institutions of knowledge transfer replacing them with modern schooling, forcefully replace their epistemology with a "modern" epistemology, possibly using violence, promote certain ideals and social norms, etc. It seems to me that then and only then, with the epistemological groundwork, can the actual planes and runways be built correctly.
• csomar 2y ago
  > Cargo beliefs were inspired by Christianity I am sorry but this guy is way off here. What is really kicking you to write something like that? Cargo cult refers to an idea, that is very well present today. And it should be highlighted. Here is an example: Turkey went on an infrastructure binge in order to "level up" their country. This is because of cargo cult misunderstanding. You look at the West with all these bridges, metros and skyscrapers and you think that's what made them powerful without realizing it is the other way around. The local elites were not fully corrupt but they engaged in a complex cargo cult. Cargo cult has nothing to do with Christianity, the White, or the Melanesian people. It is a misunderstanding of the processes taking place because the people don't have the information required to build the models of what is taking place (ie: a plane). The Melanesian people should get props for trying to compete and level their people up. The concept should be upheld as a cautionary tale of how this is not enough.
• A1kmm 2y ago
  I don't think analogies need to be historically accurate to be useful - and often there is something to the modern usage of them even if the original basis is a misrepresentation. Analogies and parables serve as a shortcut to aid understanding in communication, and that is valuable even if they are entirely apocryphal. Similar examples: * The tragedy of the commons - this is an extremely useful parable to invoke a game-theoretic / social behaviour concept. However, it is apparently historically inaccurate - at small scales, societies were able to protect and look after common lands, because of other societal factors such as reputation; the actual loss of the commons came not from overuse by the unlanded but from people who already had their own land taking more and fencing it off. Nevertheless, in larger scale societies, the principle of over-exploitation of shared resources in the absence of a mechanism to prevent that is a real and valid concern, so the analogy has a lot of value. * The use of probably apocryphal fables like 'The boy who cried wolf' have immediate meaning when it comes to concepts like alarm fatigue. * Many religious analogies have persisted in societies that don't hold the original religious belief. 'Holy Grail', for example, as an analogy for a desirable outcome. * Concepts from popular fiction sometimes become analogies too. "Golden Path" for example. Not every analogy makes sense in every circumstance, but they are useful as a mutually understood shorthand to convey concepts.
• anonfordays 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Apocryphon 2y ago
    Even if you disagree with the thesis advanced, this is quite a well-researched and informative essay on a little-known social phenomenon. Virtue countersignalling is equally tedious and unsubstantial.
    • anonfordays 2y ago
      Immaterial. Virtue signaling about "virtue countersignaling" is equally unsubstantial tedium.
      • Apocryphon 2y ago
        You think that’s bad, virtue signaling about virtue signaling about virtue countersignaling is worst of all!
• rvz 2y ago
  [flagged]
• f1shy 2y ago
  Things like this make me remember once I was told I should stop using the word “ojala” in Spanish (which means hopefully) because I was christian in a christian culture, and that word comes from “oh Alla” (o God, with Islam background) and that can be insulting to both christians ans islamic people. My opinion on that, is that it is a big pile of BS. I will keep using that word, because now it has a well defined, well understood meaning. So even if I greatly respect this guy when he talks tech, in this case, sorry, no. Big no.
  • debugnik 2y ago
    "Ojalá" has been Spanish for centuries, it's an ordinary word. Most of the Iberian Peninsula once was under Arab rule, parts of it for 700+ years, so of course our ancestors borrowed some vocabulary from them. More specifically, checking the etymology, "ojalá" seems related to the (old?) Arab idiom "wa sha Allah" (transliterations differ), roughly meaning "and God willing", which matches an equivalent Spanish idiom. I can't see how this has ever been insulting at any point in history. Honestly, I think your colleague is virtue signalling hard.
• thayne 2y ago
  This article could really benefit from proposing a better term to use instead. The term "cargo cult programming" (or cargo cult security, or cargo cult science, etc.) is a useful term and if you hope to get people to stop using "cargo cult" you need to suggest something else that works at least just as well. Perhaps "ritualistic programming"?
• PeterStuer 2y ago
  The cargo cult metaphore tech is a well understood and usefull concept. Feynman's preceding use of it in science as well. The author deliberatly reaches outside of these scopes to contruct an argument that circumvents the situational semantics. This feels like another attempt of non-constructive language policing, contributing nothing more than deconstruction without improvement.
• stdbrouw 2y ago
  I wonder if actually the fact that "cargo culting" is used almost exclusively to refer to the follies of highly intelligent people in the West has made it less offensive over time. Gives it more of a flavor of "look at how stupid those (historical) cargo cults are, they're almost as ridiculous as we are." Nevertheless, great read!
• fidotron 2y ago
  Some people just want to be offended by reality. Things like this exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_movement > The people of the Yaohnanen and Takel area had seen the respect accorded to Queen Elizabeth II by the colonial officials and concluded that her husband, Prince Philip, must be the son referred to in their legends.
  • spacechild1 2y ago
    The article doesn't claim that cargo cults don't exist, they just work very differently and the story that Feynman shared is likely inspired by an exploitation movie from the 60s.
    • fidotron 2y ago
      > the story that Feynman shared is likely inspired by an exploitation movie from the 60s. This sort of evidence-free leaping needs its own metaphor.
      • spacechild1 2y ago
        IMO the article makes some pretty convincing points. The things described by Feynman appear in "Mondo Cane", but there seem to be no other sources. What do you make of that? Fun fact: the Wikipedia article on cargo cults cites the movie for the airport ritual, together with a "better source needed" disclaimer :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Postwar_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Postwar_development...
        • fidotron 2y ago
          There remains no evidence he got it from the movie, especially since he was in an environment with a lot of war veterans around. There is a lot more evidence of behavior of the sort you seem to have trouble accepting occurs. For example, on your link, and cited from a book (so obviously credible): “Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.” Which is at least as ridiculous as anything else.
• alganet 2y ago
  > "Let's go, western saviors. Let's save the innocent Melanesians from this etymological hell." Feynman was a consistent asshole, the term is not the best, but you're going too far on your sensibilities to the point that you're not reasonable anymore (hint: Melanesians need to defend their culture, not you). Chanring your words without changing the white messiah attitude means nothing.
• GuB-42 2y ago
  The article would be so much better if it was called "The origin of the cargo cult metaphor" instead of the rage inducing "It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor". Instead of just providing valuable historical context, educating people and letting them decide for themselves what to do with it, it devolves into a sermon. As a result, most of the comments are a sterile discussion about social justice instead of the actual history of what we refer to as a cargo cult. I am sure this article is very successful with algorithmically-driven social networks, great engagement. Unfortunately the kind of engagement that makes people dumber when it could have made them smarter.
  • archagon 2y ago
    I am continuously stunned by how thin-skinned people are these days. A sermon? Good Lord, it’s a bog standard call-to-action essay title of the kind you’d pen in English class. You don’t have to mentally append “(And You’re a Bad Person If You Don’t)” to the end of it. By the way, the article has an addendum: > Update: well, this sparked much more discussion on Hacker News than I expected. To answer some questions: Am I better or more virtuous than other people? No. Are you a bad person if you use the cargo cult metaphor? No. Is "cargo cult" one of many Hacker News comments that I'm tired of seeing? Yes (details). Am I criticizing Feynman? No. Do the Melanesians care about this? Probably not. Did I put way too much research into this? Yes. Is criticizing colonialism in the early 20th century woke? I have no response to that.
    • chambers 2y ago
      It's not that the skin is thin, but that the muscle is tired. Our muscle (or sense) of guilt has been overused and abused. Now it's prone to inflammation when we hear people who intentionally or unintentionally trigger it. I think the irritation towards guilt may look like rage but I think it's a weary hopelessness. No matter what is done, history cannot be undone. It cannot be forgotten and many people feel it can't even be made right anymore. All the guilt of recent history did not lead to a new Civil Rights Act, it did not change the Constitution. And any of the good that was done to right history in the 20th century-- many claim it only belongs to yesterday's victims. Those with the wrong ancestors are stuck in their sin waiting for history to be twisted & jabbed into them by their neighbors, who wish to ease or to glorify their own individual conscience. IMO, the cycle breaks only when there's hope of true, genuine forgiveness that MLK preached and LBJ effected. But that forgiveness is beyond human power.
• someothherguyy 2y ago
  This seems similar to people attempting to interpret original intent in constitutional law and on their best guess at the minds of those long dead. Why be so obsessed with what things meant originally? Why not let things exist without patterning them to the past in grotesque ways that no one is doing? Language evolves, it isn't restricted to its roots. Who, other than the obsessed, are being harmed by people using this language? Why do you care so much? What is the goal of the crusade to align historical interpretation with present usage? Is it because it is easy to win battles against ghosts?
• rozab 2y ago
  I find this article very unconvincing. The info-dump style reminds me of bad video-essays and stands in contrast to Feynman's speech. He describes the relevant aspects of cargo cults in a couple sentences, and uses it to make an enduring and effective point. His talk was not about cargo cults, it was about science! Whereas I'm not sure what point this article is supposed to make. I guess the info-dumping is meant to communicate that Feynman's offhand two sentences are not a complete and accurate representation of a diverse religious movement, which I think most people could have figured out themselves. But if all this info is meant to show that the roots of the movement are more complex than Feynman indicates, I think it does terrible job without mentioning the gift economy aspect. I think this is partly a result of relying on older sources - but then again, study of reciprocity in Melanesian cultures is as old as modern anthropology, so...?? In a nutshell, these cultures relied upon reciprical exchange of gifts to define the social order. When the Japanese and Americans arrived and distributed valuable goods which the natives were completely unable to reciprocate, the entire community lost their collective social status. In order to cope with this, it was rationalized that these goods actually belonged to ancestor spirits and had been somehow co-opted by the Americans. This is the reason 'cargo cults' take diverse forms - they are just a reaction to the sudden appearance of foreign cargo within an existing socio-religious framework.
• davidgrenier 2y ago
  I think the author is generous in granting that Caro-Cult programming works.
• snozolli 2y ago
  ...and engagement in improvised ritual (dancing, marching, flag-raising) or revived cultural traditions would, for believers, bring them cargo. As you may see, the pop-culture explanation of a cargo cult and the anthropological definition are completely different What does the author think that "flag waving" and "marching" refer to?
• a1r 2y ago
  Paul Graham's essay today: "We should have a conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy. Whenever anyone tries to ban saying something that we'd previously been able to say, our initial assumption should be that they're wrong. Only our initial assumption of course. If they can prove we should stop saying it, then we should. But the burden of proof is on them."
  • gsf_emergency 2y ago
    Relevantly: I saw (on ACM site) a decades old(!!) heretical essay (="heressay"?) which argued That there is *NO* gap between theory & practice. (at least in Computer Science, & not in the eponymous eschew-first-principles Science cults of physicist Feynman's fame ) Sounds familiar?? I cant find it now, someone please help? :( EDIT: And Programmers, unlike Cargo Cult Psychotherapists of TFA's source, do quantitatively try to make deals with the spirits (in the machine)??? "In theory there is a difference between theory and practice - in practice there isn't" -- Not [Comrade] Yogi Berra
  • steego 2y ago
    As someone who has personally explained the phenomenon of cargo cult to individuals over the years, I made the decision to abandon it years ago. I didn’t succumb to the pressure of heresy. I simply grew up and realized that it wasn’t actually that useful of a tool for explaining first principles or encouraging people to learn things from a first principles perspective. My experience was: If a person felt like they already identified as someone who understands idea from first principles, the cargo cult story didn’t incentive them to question their understanding. I also found if the person didn’t identify as someone who understood things from first principles, then the implication that they were implicitly being compared to clever primitive people. It wasn’t exactly reassuring and motivating. At some point, people need to grow up and realize these conversations aren’t always about trying to censor people or to construct new heresies to use as instruments of cancellation. Sometimes we need to have these conversations so we can reflect on what we say, how our words make people feel, and if they’re actually effective at accomplishing what we hoped those ideas would accomplish. Zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• braiamp 2y ago
  Isn't cargo cult used because some dudes were using cargo pants? That's how I always understood the concept. TIL that there are other etymologies to it.
  • CRConrad 2y ago
    Dunno if you were kidding, but either way: That's the first I've ever seen of this having anything to do with clothing. (Unless you count the bamboo-and-grass headphones as clothing.)
• JoeAltmaier 2y ago
  Are we to understand that people are using the metaphor out of a cultural tradition, and not because it still applies to the situation or is accurate? By rote, if you will, and only because other people understand our message even though the message is no longer truly descriptive of reality? Sounds like we're 'cargo culting' the phrase 'cargo cult'.
• everdrive 2y ago
  There's a heated if nuanced discussion in the comments section here. What I'll say candidly is that I am so, so exhausted by the language policing and sanctimony that I will disregard it out of hand. Do you have a language-policing argument? Then I don't care what you have to say. I don't even care if you're objectively correct. This line of argument has been beaten to death by morally self-righteous zealots, and my ability to care about this line of argumentation has been thoroughly exhausted.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• datadeft 2y ago
  Those pesky Rust devs…
• sobellian 2y ago
  I remember reading the cargo cult story and thinking "ironically, I don't even know how accurate any of this is." Well, this article actually convinced me that the pop-sci description is fundamentally accurate. The author literally describes a cargo cult constructing bamboo radios to receive messages from spirits. That is perfectly described as imitating the outward appearance of methods one doesn't truly understand. I would not describe cargo cult programming as something that works for reasons unknown. Indeed, the worst instances I've seen do not work at all, completing the metaphor. The pop-sci omits some detail and the author takes issue with that. Sure, the precise origin is misattributed (is anything more American than thinking it all started with us?). But I do not think an astute reader would fail to realize that the islanders' misunderstandings come at great personal cost. That is what makes it serve as a great cautionary tale. They obviously had far better things to do than to construct these ritualistic trappings. And that actually happened!
  • jmull 2y ago
    > That is perfectly described as imitating the outward appearance of methods one doesn't truly understand. A person could perfectly well understand how radios work, while still constructing bamboo ones to receive messages from spirits.
    • sobellian 2y ago
      This is pretty generous, and while I'd like to believe it I don't think such a belief can be justified. The article, which is one of the best surveys on the matter I can find, doesn't really address whether the cargo cults understood modern technology. The furthest it goes is to state that for them, ritual was a kind of technology meant to achieve practical effects. We can say at the very least that the cargo cults did not understand how their rituals could achieve anything substantial.
  • culi 2y ago
    Did we read the same article? > People were kidnapped and forced to work as laborers in other countries, a practice called blackbirding. Prime agricultural land was taken by planters to raise crops such as coconuts for export, with natives coerced into working for the planters. Up until 1919, employers were free to flog the natives for disobedience; afterward, flogging was technically forbidden but still took place. Colonial administrators jailed natives who stepped out of line. > The natives were saying that the spirits of their ancestors had appeared to several in the villages and told them that all flour, rice, tobacco, and other trade belonged to the New Guinea people, and that the white man had no right whatever to these goods These "cargo cults" are not a cult of people who think of these cargo as magical gifts. They are well aware of the socioeconomic forces that oppress them. They are cults of people who think that they are rightfully owed these goods How is that in any way similar to the pop sci definition?
• mk89 2y ago
  Can't stop thinking about all the sad and angry circus clowns who are associated to things like serverless or other interesting "bandwagon effects" :)
• lolinder 2y ago
  > It is said that "to the Melanesian, a religion is above all a technology: it is the knowledge of how to bring the community into the correct relation, by rites and spells, with the divinities and spirit-beings and cosmic forces that can make or mar man's this-worldly wealth and well-being." Side note: this is true of most religions throughout history. Bret Devereaux has a great series on this [0]. The bulk of religions throughout history and space more closely resemble what we would consider to be a magic system than they do the Abrahamic religions or Buddhism. They're fundamentally a practical set of rituals that were/are believed to have practical effects, irrespective of belief or morality. [0] https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/ https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...
  • acjohnson55 2y ago
    Why do you exclude the Abrahamic religions? They have plenty of magical thinking. When we were in college, I remember my best friend explaining that he blesses his food to prevent food poisoning, for example. I was raised Baptist, and my parents attribute pretty much any good fortune for our family to divine intervention, to this day. I know Catholics who can instantly name the patron saint who can be asked to intercede on just about any topic.
    • lolinder 2y ago
      I exclude them because if I include them then a lot of people here will assume that they can extrapolate, and abrahamic religions vary dramatically from the bulk of religions throughout history in that they do have an enormous moral component which is simply missing for most religions. This is especially true in mainline protestantism, which rejects most forms of ritual altogether. When people accuse evangelicals or whatnot of magical thinking they're not talking about the same thing that I'm talking about here. > I was raised Baptist, and my parents attribute pretty much any good fortune for our family to divine intervention, to this day. This is similar in some respects, but a key difference is that for most Baptists they don't believe that the Divine intervention came by performing a specific ritual. It comes by the will of God through the grace of Christ. Many Baptists will even firmly emphasize that your morality plays no role in whether God will intervene, so even the moral component doesn't serve the role of ritual. > I know Catholics who can instantly name the patron saint who can be asked to intercede on just about any topic. Catholicism in general is an exception to this, especially as practiced in places like Latin America. There, there is a large ritual component that does bear a strong resemblance to these kinds of religions. But it's easier to warn people from extrapolating from Abrahamic religions in general than it is to warn people from extrapolating from "Evangelicalism, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, ...". The exceptions will be discovered, as long as you can interrupt the initial impulse to immediately associate things with what you already understand.
• acjohnson55 2y ago
  I probably first encountered the idea of cargo culting through a criticism of its casual usage, similar to this piece. It's ironic to see people defending repeatedly doing something whose true meaning they don't understand, in hopes that it will improve their team in some tangible way. And even when the truth is demonstrated to them, they persist in doing the same incorrect thing. Surely someone has created a term for this type of behavior! There's this idea that "everyone knows what is being talked about" when a term like cargo cult is used casually, and I don't think that's true for these little tech parables. Often, they're used rhetorically to try to win arguments by appealing to the authority of a piece of terminology being well known, in itself. The alternative is painstakingly constructing an argument bespoke to the actual details of the present circumstance.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• clarionbell 2y ago
  I have similar peeve about the "Spanish inquisition" metaphor. I wouldn't really write blog about it though. I'm of the opinion that attempts to police language in cases like this, is at best a waste of time.
• jacobjjacob 2y ago
  I think reading in detail about the origins is just sad, and while it doesn’t invalidate the metaphor, it does make me think twice about using it. Just like I think twice about “drinking the kool aid” or similar metaphors. The author has a great point that “cargo cult” is used to describe anything in tech that someone doesn’t like. You could even say there is a cargo cult of calling things a cargo cult...
• adamc 2y ago
  While more history is always good, I confess that I'm not much moved by the fact that the catch-phrase "cargo cult" missed context. Almost every phrase derived from history misses context. That's how languages work. The real reason to stop using the catch-phrase is that it no longer has much power. When Feynman used it, it grabbed people's attention. It was a way of saying "this is religion, not science". But endless repetition has diluted its effect. Better to just say "practices based on tradition or faith rather than understanding and demonstrated efficacy tend to under-perform", or something in that vein. Or think up a new metaphor. Overused metaphors stop being effective.
• alkonaut 2y ago
  I never heard any other meaning of Cargo Cult than Feynman's. In everyday speak it's an established term for "doing all the movements and expecting results but not understanding why the results won't materialize". > Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. I disagree with this conclusion. Cargo cult programming is (for example) creating a microservices product without understanding and then when it doesn't work (it takes 20x longer, it didn't provide the promised decoupling) not understanding why. Cargo cult programming where the desired results are actually achieved in any meaningful way isn't cargo cult programming at all. > The second problem with "cargo cult" is that the pop-culture description of cargo cults is historically inaccurate. It's a language construct. It's not really important whether there is any connection at all to anything that has historically happened, so long as everyone has the same mental model of what it means. And as far as I'm aware, enough people do to make the term useful. Whether it's scientific nonsense isn't relevant. The same can be said for a lot of commonly used phrases like "Jedi mind tricks". It doesn't matter that this is a purely fictional construct. And it doesn't matter whether diehard Star Wars fans know exactly what it means. Most people have a vague understanding about in what sense it's used. The de facto usage is the real meaning. > Finally, the cargo cult metaphor turns decades of harmful colonialism into a humorous anecdote. I think this is the only objection that has any real merit. But I don't think it has enough merit tbh. It doesn't represent a current problem.
• klooney 2y ago
  > influential "Jargon File" defined cargo-cult programming as "A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose."34 Note that the metaphor in cargo-cult programming is the opposite of the metaphor in cargo-cult science: Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. These are not oppositional, dead code that does nothing doesn't make the planes land.
• matthewmorgan 2y ago
  Should we also do without the very important word 'taboo'?
• o9aw4j5o 2y ago
  I'd say engineers should avoid most metaphors, because the whole point of a supposed engineer is that they're precise. I've heard so many metaphors misused or lazily used by overconfident software engineers in the past few years ...
• mediisoccuspupa 2y ago
  No.
• yencabulator 2y ago
  Telling people what not to do never goes well. If you want to replace the expression "cargo culting", come up with a better succinct phrase that is as targeted to the modern phenomena it is used to refer to, and is as memorable. (Good luck reaching Feynman levels of wit & charisma.)
  • Apocryphon 2y ago
    Tiger-repellent rock. Snake oil medicine. Silicon snake oil!
• wiseowise 2y ago
  Oh, boy. Master been renamed to main and now we’re searching for a new scapegoat? Hope author doesn’t work for Meta.
• dragonwriter 2y ago
  Honestly, as someone who has used the term quite a lot, I think the conclusion here is correct but the focus of the article is less on making the case and more on the inaccuracy of the basis of the metaphor, with a few other issues mentioned in the introduction and the conclusion. (1) the metaphor is not to something actually readily popularly recognizable (despite being an image from "pop culture"; its true it comes from pop culture portrayals, but it is not the case that it is to a phenomenon which, outside of familiarity with the metaphor, lots of people are currently familiar with), which is why the (inaccurate) basis of the metaphor typically needs to be explained two people who have never heard the metaphor before. (2) while neither the term nor the reference is that recognizable, for those too whom the term is recognizable, the use in the metaphor will often refers to a different thing than they are familiar with, either because their knowledge comes from the real phenomenon described by the term, or because they are used to different metaphors to the same inaccurate image. It therefore is not an aid to understanding even where the term is familiar. (3) It doesn't actually, the way metaphor can, provide a concise way to describe a concept which would otherwise require a complex explanation. It's an exclusionary term that, because it requires explanation, makes people feel like part of an in-group, but it doesn't do anything to facilitate communication. It describes a practice being done by habit without an understanding of reason, or, more concisely, by rote.
• knallfrosch 2y ago
  The contemporary usage of "cargo cult" is synonymous with "bandwagon effect." First, you can call it out as wrong. But I have never seen such "enlightenment campaigns" succeed. Nobody likes smartasses that write "accctttuuuaaalllyy" articles. Second, "cargo cult" is a useful term even if not rooted in reality. That's also why it spread and persists. It fills a void that, for whatever reason, "bandwagon effect" never filled. Third, speak for yourself. The zeitgeist moved on from moralistic language lecturing. The more you associate it with virtue signaling, the less will people adopt it nowadays.
  • dang 2y ago
    > Nobody likes smartasses that write "accctttuuuaaalllyy" articles. I have met Ken (around the time that YC received an original Xerox Alto and he was one of the experts who got it working again). Ken may be the least smartass person I have ever met. I think you (and of course I don't just mean you, but anyone commenting here) should be more careful about publicly labeling other human beings.
    • knallfrosch 2y ago
      I think it is clear to the comment readers that I have not met the author in person and that I wasn't passing a judgement on his whole person, merely extrapolating from the impression of the article. I, for one, think that is pretty clear from the fact that I don't call the author by their first name. I did not write "Ken you're a smartass." Also, I did not write on his LinkedIn profile, I commented on a specific article. In any case, it is but one of many comments and by up-/down voting, the community can send a signal to the author (if he reads here) as to whether he appears to be a smartass in this article. I think that is helpful.
      • dang 2y ago
        Those nuances may have some substance but they are drowned out by the snarky putdown. I hear you that your intent was good! but that, alas, is not enough; a comment like that snaps to an ugly internet grid even though you didn't mean it to. I don't think it's safe to assume that readers would understand that you weren't passing a judgment on the author. You called him a smartass. I agree that, not having met Ken, you couldn't know how inaccurate and unfair that was, but you shouldn't have posted it in the first place. It's clearly against HN's guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
• PaulHoule 2y ago
  My master narrative is that most of our ancestors were doing subsistence agriculture just a few lifetimes ago. For instance my father-in-law was in fascist (no kidding!) Italy which got attacked by fascist (Nazis!) Germany and had their farm ruined, their wine barrels spilled. Many members of his family wound up in Binghamton NY where their social networks channeled them into certain occupations. (Splits pretty well based on unionized/self-employed and across gender: construction, Italian restaurants, K12 education, hairdressers; my French Canadian and Polish relatives in New England seem to all be in law enforcement or some other kind of "first response", even the girls, except for the pro hockey player who now coaches college hockey and lives with his husband; if any of them tried to break into teaching at college, newspaper reporting, or things that other ethnic groups specialize in, they'd discover the same baffling barriers that black people would encounter) A friend of my son has mental health problems I can't DX (e.g. "pathological narcissism" is a sign, i see "body dysmorphia" is a symptom even if it is a DX in the DSM) but his mom who grew up in rural China (educated, got a medical certificate which doesn't let her practice here, thinks it was a mistake because she knows many people who got really rich thanks to economic expansion back home and is seriously committed to an evangelical church that should teach her better) believes the DX is "possessed by demons" which was a culturally universal and common DX almost everywhere throughout almost all of human history and prehistory. I worked for a startup where there were two Indians (a Reddy and a Juggernaut, Hindus will get a clear understanding of their social position based on that) who grew up in a village about 30 miles from Bangalore, got educated in that city, got more education here, and wound up working together where they stuck up for each other like blood brothers. Like many Indians I've met working in the industry, the younger struggled in the US, not least with the immigration authorities, and I tried really hard to communicate my sympathy, admiration and respect but failed as so I often have with Indians in his position. Various "BiPOC" histories are equally valid yet basically the same story (farm to city via severe trauma) if you separate them from the label which erases the reality: e.g. still on the farm in Africa, got torn away against their will, deliberate destruction of their culture in the past, present (and future so long as the idea that "the holocaust should never happen again" displaces the reality that genocide happens over and over again,) etc which is general but can't really be understood without the personal specifics. "Cargo cult", "BiPOC" and many other terms ought to get phased out and replaced by better and more detailed stories.
• obelos 2y ago
  I wonder if there would be as much pushback here on this article if the conclusion to these 10k words of cited historical analysis had been to discourage the phrase's continued use because “we're besmirching our reputation as engineers using this idiom inaccurately” vs. “we're inadvertently maligning and hurting people by using this idiom inaccurately.”
• theodorethomas 2y ago
  Ken, I love your work on the Apollo hardware. But here, you don't present any argument that your recommended course of action will have a desirable outcome, or any outcome at all. Which, ironically, fits like a glove. Fine, I get it, the term has been over-used and has consequently become meaningless. Orwell noted the over-use of "fascist", in 1944! Feel free not to use it. But surely you are not expecting some kind of outcome?!
• worik 2y ago
  An interesting article. I learnt a lot But it reinforced my use of the term. We see it all the time in technology. Something will solve everything.... The current AI bubble?
• zer8k 2y ago
  We truly do live a post-scarcity land of milk-and-honey when we can spend time bikeshedding over whether "cargo cult" is offensive or not. Like most of the insane (oops thats a bad word too now) language policing its mostly done by yuppies who feel some sort of non-existent transitive oppression for people they have no connection with, had no connection with, and read some history blurb and decided to create a masterpiece of verbal diarrhea on the internet. Of which this blogpost is no exception. It's yet another example of the virtue olympics and a great sign we have been without war, famine, economic collapse, or food crisis for far too long. We have no real struggles so instead we focus on policing language. I'll keep using master/slave/male/female/blacklist/cargo cult/insane, thanks. There's a reason progressivism is no longer cool.
• lamontcg 2y ago
  Well, sure it is problematic, I'm not at all surprised by anything in here, although I didn't know it had any connection to Feynman. Give me a better term to use. The problem is that it accurately and concisely describes a pattern of behavior that I see all the time, where people at businesses don't do the hard work to understand what they're doing, and they just copy methods around, unknowingly increasing the amount of technical debt in the company.