6 ms·

> 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 external

by 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.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    Which is why I used the word primitive, and not the word stupid. If you are making this confusion, that is on you. The "cargo cult" terminology does not imply stupidity. It implies, at most, ignorance. Also, the tale may be apocryphal, but apocryphal tales (such as fairy tales) still can contain interesting insights about how humans behave. Maybe that's why they propagate through time.
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.

by gwd 2y ago

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.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  Which is why I used the word primitive, and not the word stupid. If you are making this confusion, that is on you. The "cargo cult" terminology does not imply stupidity. It implies, at most, ignorance. Also, the tale may be apocryphal, but apocryphal tales (such as fairy tales) still can contain interesting insights about how humans behave. Maybe that's why they propagate through time.

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.