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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
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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.