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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 beha

by 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.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > 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. This is precisely what GP is talking about. It is not defamation to infer that a primitive group of people is, well, primitive. You are imagining defamation on behalf of them. The cargo cult story, as it goes, simply describes the (in many ways fascinating) behavior of humans when faced with phenomena they are unable to understand, and how they derive their own interpretations of what happened. Taking a humble approach, we may be in the same position when it comes to things we, from the height of our reason, do not understand as well.
  - nonrandomstring 2y ago
    > Taking a humble approach, we may be in the same position when it comes to things we, from the height of our reason, do not understand as well. Isn't that the main point of that cargo-cult metaphor as used today - a restatement of Arthur C Clarke's technology and magic remark and how we've let our own magic exceed our reason... that we're no longer at the "height" of reason at all?
    - surgical_fire 2y ago
      I think so, yes. I used the "height of our reason" phrase a bit ironically. There is quite a lot of things any person is unable to understand about our own word, and you can see how they handle those.
  - gwd 2y ago
    > The cargo cult story, as it goes, simply describes the (in many ways fascinating) behavior of humans when faced with phenomena they are unable to understand How can it teach us anything about human psychology if it never actually happened? > It is not defamation to infer that a primitive group of people is, well, primitive. Primitive doesn't mean stupid. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond said that nearly all the tribal peoples he met when doing fieldwork were seemed to be, on average, more intelligent, engaged, curious, and knowledgable than the average Westerner. (In his follow-up book, "The World Until Yesterday", he attempts to capture some potential wisdom that tribal peoples have that he thinks modern society may have lost.) It's this confusion between "primitive" and "stupid" that is exactly the harm that he cargo cult story creates and perpetuates.
- nfw2 2y ago
  "Defamation" is well-defined in the legal system, and anyone is able to seek the remedy of damages through the courts if they wish to.
- darkerside 2y ago
  It's far easier to say yes to something else than to say no to something that is working. Give an example of a term we can use instead that is more accurate and useful, and you won't need a wall of words to try and fail to convince people to change.
- userbinator 2y ago
  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. ...and the "Save" icon is still a floppy disk.
  - adamrezich 2y ago
    Until very recently my wife thought it was a SIM card.
  - rat87 2y ago
    Its not a floppy disk, its a save icon
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    Are there still modern software using the floppy disk icon for save? I can't recall any. In my experience most software that still use an icon for saving these days are using an arrow pointing down to a horizontal line. This icon is usually similar or exactly the same as a download icon.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I dont really get the defamation angle. It seems like the practices where still very strange and performative. They seem to argue that it was more frequently about radios and boats than airplanes. Is that that more offensive or hurtful? I think the core of the metaphor is still there, that a practice can pass into lore and performance, severed from their logic and context.
- BoppreH 2y ago
  I don't understand where's the defamation. Here's Feynman's quote: > So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. (note no mention of fake airplanes) And here are historical instances from the actual article: > They hacked airstrips in the rain forest, but no planes came. ... > They created mock radio antennas of bamboo and rope to receive news of the millennium. ... > The leader remains in communication with John Frum through a tall pole said to be a radio mast, and an unseen radio. (The "radio" consisted of an old woman with electrical wire wrapper around her waist, who would speak gibberish in a trance.) That looks to me like cargo cult in the pop culture sense. At some point the fake airplane illustrations were inaccurately tacked on, but if anything they give the cults too much credit because they depict high-quality replicas.
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> It succinctly expresses except ... it doesn't. Unless you already know what it means, the term "cargo cult XXX" conveys absolutely nothing. And for what its worth, I'm 61 years old, I've been programming computers for more than 35 years, and until I read TFA I really did not know what "cargo cult programming" meant. On the other hand, "boiler plate code" made perfect sense to me, but I suspect suffers from the exact same problem.
- imgabe 2y ago
  Well, all language has this fault that if you don't know what the words mean they don't convey anything. But you can learn what they mean and now you have a new phrase to easily communicate an idea to other people who also know what it means. If you work with people from a country where baseball is not popular you might find that the phrase "ballpark figure" doesn't mean anything to them. That doesn't mean we need a finger-wagging article about how nobody should ever say it.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Idioms are, by definition, not self describing. Arguing that we should excuse them is absurd, especially when googling the phrase "cargo cult programming" immediately reveals the relevant information, all for a grand total of five seconds of effort.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I've had no interest in what it means until the GP made the claim that it "succinctly expresses" something. The fact that I or anyone else can look something up doesn't really impact the question of how succinct of an expression it is.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      The succinct expression is the idiom. It is two words that substitute for a much longer explanation. It is both an expression and succinct, so long as you're willing to learn something new. Once you do, it can be used in the future for all similar circumstances.
thrance 2y ago
2025, the year in which we stop reflecting on our habits and instead entrench ourselves into tradition. What a brave new world.
omnicognate 2y ago
I'd say in 2025 understanding historical context and questioning passively acquired meme-knowledge are more important than ever.
okonomiyaki3000 2y ago
Yes, this exactly. In fact, we need a new term to describe the type of "cult" that pushes this agenda (probably the goal is just to get impressions/retweets more than an actual agenda though). Human languages are full of idioms that have origins that no longer relate at all to the way the terms are used. It doesn't make them wrong or less useful.
- imgabe 2y ago
  The same people who will write a history phd dissertation about the obscure, problematic origins of some innocuous phrase will also tell you that you can't say "balls to the wall" because it's "sexually suggestive" and then stare blankly when you explain the phrase has nothing to do with genitalia.
  - moronrespector 2y ago
    [dead]
prmph 2y ago
So you're uninterested in the fact that things just didn't happen the way the cargo-cult story says? I mean, you can continue to use the cargo-cult term if you want; just tell an accurate story about the phenomenon that inspired it, that's all
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > here’s a story about cargo cult origin And > you should stop using it Are different things.
deactivatedexp 2y ago
[flagged]
jwkpiano1 2y ago
You don’t get to decide for everyone what “we” are doing or not doing. People will make their own decision on what language they would like to use, including you.
- imgabe 2y ago
  Whelp, I decided to use language deciding for everyone what we are doing or not doing. You cannot make that decision for me.
  - jwkpiano1 2y ago
    What’s really ironic is that your language purported to make decisions for others more than the article itself did.
Chance-Device 2y ago
This is an excellently expressed comment.
rvz 2y ago
Agreed. Stand up and call out against how ridiculous this request is. This is 2025.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
If this was about the boiling frog metaphor, people wouldn't be nearly this upset: the metaphor is obviously ignorant and therefore not very useful to describe the underlying concept of people getting used to discomfort. You'd have a few people complain about pedantry, but nothing as angry as "nope, we're not doing this in 2025." Why the heated feelings? The cargo cult metaphor is not merely ignorant, it is also blatantly racist, which explains the unhinged resentment in your comment: "imaginary offenses" "supposedly marginalized people" "hallucinates" You are being proudly and angrily ignorant specifically because the cargo cult metaphor is racist, and hence aligns along partisan politics, and hence makes you want to fight. If it was boiling frogs you'd be amenable to thinking and learning. Instead you're waving a MAGA flag.
- imgabe 2y ago
  No, I would be making the same point if someone wrote an article that we shouldn't use the boiling frog metaphor because it is insulting to frogs. And that is a good example. Despite the fact that the metaphor is not literally true it does a fine job of illustrating the idea of slowly acclimating to incremental changes.
archagon 2y ago
Who is this “we” that you claim to speak for? Given how high this article is ranked, plenty of people are evidently receptive to it. Sorry!

by imgabe 2y ago

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.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> 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. This is precisely what GP is talking about. It is not defamation to infer that a primitive group of people is, well, primitive. You are imagining defamation on behalf of them. The cargo cult story, as it goes, simply describes the (in many ways fascinating) behavior of humans when faced with phenomena they are unable to understand, and how they derive their own interpretations of what happened. Taking a humble approach, we may be in the same position when it comes to things we, from the height of our reason, do not understand as well.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > Taking a humble approach, we may be in the same position when it comes to things we, from the height of our reason, do not understand as well. Isn't that the main point of that cargo-cult metaphor as used today - a restatement of Arthur C Clarke's technology and magic remark and how we've let our own magic exceed our reason... that we're no longer at the "height" of reason at all?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    I think so, yes. I used the "height of our reason" phrase a bit ironically. There is quite a lot of things any person is unable to understand about our own word, and you can see how they handle those.
- gwd 2y ago
  > The cargo cult story, as it goes, simply describes the (in many ways fascinating) behavior of humans when faced with phenomena they are unable to understand How can it teach us anything about human psychology if it never actually happened? > It is not defamation to infer that a primitive group of people is, well, primitive. Primitive doesn't mean stupid. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond said that nearly all the tribal peoples he met when doing fieldwork were seemed to be, on average, more intelligent, engaged, curious, and knowledgable than the average Westerner. (In his follow-up book, "The World Until Yesterday", he attempts to capture some potential wisdom that tribal peoples have that he thinks modern society may have lost.) It's this confusion between "primitive" and "stupid" that is exactly the harm that he cargo cult story creates and perpetuates.
nfw2 2y ago
"Defamation" is well-defined in the legal system, and anyone is able to seek the remedy of damages through the courts if they wish to.
darkerside 2y ago
It's far easier to say yes to something else than to say no to something that is working. Give an example of a term we can use instead that is more accurate and useful, and you won't need a wall of words to try and fail to convince people to change.
userbinator 2y ago
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. ...and the "Save" icon is still a floppy disk.
- adamrezich 2y ago
  Until very recently my wife thought it was a SIM card.
- rat87 2y ago
  Its not a floppy disk, its a save icon
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Are there still modern software using the floppy disk icon for save? I can't recall any. In my experience most software that still use an icon for saving these days are using an arrow pointing down to a horizontal line. This icon is usually similar or exactly the same as a download icon.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
I dont really get the defamation angle. It seems like the practices where still very strange and performative. They seem to argue that it was more frequently about radios and boats than airplanes. Is that that more offensive or hurtful? I think the core of the metaphor is still there, that a practice can pass into lore and performance, severed from their logic and context.
BoppreH 2y ago
I don't understand where's the defamation. Here's Feynman's quote: > So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. (note no mention of fake airplanes) And here are historical instances from the actual article: > They hacked airstrips in the rain forest, but no planes came. ... > They created mock radio antennas of bamboo and rope to receive news of the millennium. ... > The leader remains in communication with John Frum through a tall pole said to be a radio mast, and an unseen radio. (The "radio" consisted of an old woman with electrical wire wrapper around her waist, who would speak gibberish in a trance.) That looks to me like cargo cult in the pop culture sense. At some point the fake airplane illustrations were inaccurately tacked on, but if anything they give the cults too much credit because they depict high-quality replicas.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago

> It succinctly expresses except ... it doesn't. Unless you already know what it means, the term "cargo cult XXX" conveys absolutely nothing. And for what its worth, I'm 61 years old, I've been programming computers for more than 35 years, and until I read TFA I really did not know what "cargo cult programming" meant. On the other hand, "boiler plate code" made perfect sense to me, but I suspect suffers from the exact same problem.

imgabe 2y ago
Well, all language has this fault that if you don't know what the words mean they don't convey anything. But you can learn what they mean and now you have a new phrase to easily communicate an idea to other people who also know what it means. If you work with people from a country where baseball is not popular you might find that the phrase "ballpark figure" doesn't mean anything to them. That doesn't mean we need a finger-wagging article about how nobody should ever say it.
zdragnar 2y ago
Idioms are, by definition, not self describing. Arguing that we should excuse them is absurd, especially when googling the phrase "cargo cult programming" immediately reveals the relevant information, all for a grand total of five seconds of effort.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  I've had no interest in what it means until the GP made the claim that it "succinctly expresses" something. The fact that I or anyone else can look something up doesn't really impact the question of how succinct of an expression it is.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    The succinct expression is the idiom. It is two words that substitute for a much longer explanation. It is both an expression and succinct, so long as you're willing to learn something new. Once you do, it can be used in the future for all similar circumstances.

thrance 2y ago

2025, the year in which we stop reflecting on our habits and instead entrench ourselves into tradition. What a brave new world.

omnicognate 2y ago

I'd say in 2025 understanding historical context and questioning passively acquired meme-knowledge are more important than ever.

okonomiyaki3000 2y ago

Yes, this exactly. In fact, we need a new term to describe the type of "cult" that pushes this agenda (probably the goal is just to get impressions/retweets more than an actual agenda though). Human languages are full of idioms that have origins that no longer relate at all to the way the terms are used. It doesn't make them wrong or less useful.

imgabe 2y ago
The same people who will write a history phd dissertation about the obscure, problematic origins of some innocuous phrase will also tell you that you can't say "balls to the wall" because it's "sexually suggestive" and then stare blankly when you explain the phrase has nothing to do with genitalia.
- moronrespector 2y ago
  [dead]

prmph 2y ago

So you're uninterested in the fact that things just didn't happen the way the cargo-cult story says? I mean, you can continue to use the cargo-cult term if you want; just tell an accurate story about the phenomenon that inspired it, that's all

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wiseowise 2y ago
> here’s a story about cargo cult origin And > you should stop using it Are different things.

deactivatedexp 2y ago

[flagged]

jwkpiano1 2y ago

You don’t get to decide for everyone what “we” are doing or not doing. People will make their own decision on what language they would like to use, including you.

imgabe 2y ago
Whelp, I decided to use language deciding for everyone what we are doing or not doing. You cannot make that decision for me.
- jwkpiano1 2y ago
  What’s really ironic is that your language purported to make decisions for others more than the article itself did.

Chance-Device 2y ago

This is an excellently expressed comment.

rvz 2y ago

Agreed. Stand up and call out against how ridiculous this request is. This is 2025.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

If this was about the boiling frog metaphor, people wouldn't be nearly this upset: the metaphor is obviously ignorant and therefore not very useful to describe the underlying concept of people getting used to discomfort. You'd have a few people complain about pedantry, but nothing as angry as "nope, we're not doing this in 2025." Why the heated feelings? The cargo cult metaphor is not merely ignorant, it is also blatantly racist, which explains the unhinged resentment in your comment: "imaginary offenses" "supposedly marginalized people" "hallucinates" You are being proudly and angrily ignorant specifically because the cargo cult metaphor is racist, and hence aligns along partisan politics, and hence makes you want to fight. If it was boiling frogs you'd be amenable to thinking and learning. Instead you're waving a MAGA flag.

imgabe 2y ago
No, I would be making the same point if someone wrote an article that we shouldn't use the boiling frog metaphor because it is insulting to frogs. And that is a good example. Despite the fact that the metaphor is not literally true it does a fine job of illustrating the idea of slowly acclimating to incremental changes.

archagon 2y ago

Who is this “we” that you claim to speak for? Given how high this article is ranked, plenty of people are evidently receptive to it. Sorry!