[HN Gopher] The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine
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The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine
Author : pfix
Score : 104 points
Date : 2023-06-12 21:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| guy98238710 wrote:
| The guy starts with a clickbait title and then proceeds to
| present a lecture on content quality.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The author appears to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature
| of the so-called "cargo cults" in the pacific. Our best
| understanding is that these cults amounted to scams conducted on
| a vulnerable population by their own leaders - leaders who had
| suffered irreparable damage to their ability to control the local
| economy when the US army briefly thrust their culture into post-
| scarcity.
|
| The infinite scroll of mindless content generated by the big
| social networks is also about creating (a shallow facsimile of)
| post-scarcity. An endless stream of hobbies and lifestyles that
| could be yours - much like late night TV offered your parents the
| same promises for the low, low price of $14.95 excl. shipping and
| handling.
|
| You can spot this in the way these companies constalty try and
| undermine the livelihoods of the content creators whose labour
| they rely on, or try and replace creators wholesale with AIs. If
| there was a genuine desire to push the social aspects of these
| systems, they'd be considerably more invested in creating a
| viable living for creators who participate in the system -
| instead these networks are just a tool for profit and power.
| aktuel wrote:
| The imperative of profit maximization is the law of the land.
| It is also in the air and in baby milk. From there it enters
| your dreams and then it's like water to the fish.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| I think the main error of the author is to assume that short
| content equals low quality content. There's value in conciseness.
| digging wrote:
| Yes, there's a difference between being concise (which may be
| highly information-dense) and just saying something that is
| intrinsically low value.
|
| - "mcdonalds is having a sale on fries" - fine, whatever, it's
| not bad or dangerous information but I don't care if it spreads
|
| - "former president indicted on 37 charges" does a lot of work,
| there is of course tons more to read, but it's hard to say that
| statement on its own isn't huge news
|
| - "normalize talking about mental illness" doesn't require much
| explanation to anyone who's struggled to talk about mental
| illness, but certainly a lot of thought went into the concept,
| and then it was fit into a known format
| nehal3m wrote:
| Attributed to a whole bunch of people so I'm gonna say quote by
| unknown: If I had more time, I would have written a shorter
| letter.
| OliverM wrote:
| I like the sentiment but this could have been a tweet. If it was
| it wouldn't be preaching to the choir.
|
| I am being glib above but in the spirit of useful feedback, the
| article needs editing for length. It's not that it's badly
| written, I just found that it took too circuitous a route to make
| its point.
| Animats wrote:
| > the article needs editing for length
|
| That's 30 to 45 seconds of reading time. Admittedly it could be
| shorter, but still, it's not excessive.
| davidthewatson wrote:
| I disagree, while liking the tone of the piece and the style
| of the writer.
|
| However, the appropriate length that the original commenter
| refers to is, in fact, a tweet.
|
| The reason is simple: the SOTA in internet criticism is quite
| old whether you read Neil Postman, Mitch Kapor, Sherry
| Turkle, or David Courtwright. The Turkle and Courtwright
| quotes are easy to find being more recent. The Kapor quote
| from the EFF dates to 1993 and so Google et al have found a
| way to lose it, and if you can find it, you may not be able
| to read it.
| pipo234 wrote:
| I, for one, learned a new word: Ennui. And I believe I finally
| understand what people mean when referring to a cargo cult. A
| tweet most definitely would not have sufficed.
|
| Thanks for the long read, interesting an well written.
|
| (And: true, I'm probably living under a rock for being so
| ignorant) :-)
| meandthewallaby wrote:
| Because of the curse of the autodidact, do note that "ennui"
| is pronounced "on-wee," as it comes from French ("ennui" is
| "boredom" in French). It is not, as I found out rather
| embarrassingly, "en-you-eye".
|
| Incidentally, I agree with you. While there could be some
| editing for length (oh well), the point was well made with a
| great example to start out with, and a bit of a discussion
| about some of the effects of being trapped in the Ennui
| Engine. It definitely hit on something I've noticed about
| myself.
|
| I have a pile of books I've been meaning to read but haven't
| gotten to. I have lots of articles that I'd like to read but
| haven't made time yet. But I'd pull up Reddit and just scroll
| there. I deleted Twitter when Elon bought it and decided to
| burn it to the ground, and I'll be deleting Reddit now. Not
| so much to make a stand, but really just using this
| opportunity of upheaval as a way for my old head to extricate
| itself from the Ennui Engine.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| 'It is not, as I found out rather embarrassingly, "en-you-
| eye"'
|
| Don't worry, as someone whose vocabulary was extended
| through voracious reading, I have made several of those
| "fox passes" over the years... (with that being the most
| memorable!)
| parpfish wrote:
| i remember when i tried to read "oaxaca" off of a menu
| angst_ridden wrote:
| I too have made "bow-coupe" such errors.
| zafka wrote:
| Funny indeed. My wife was just making fun of me the other
| day becuase of the way I pronounced this. This was the
| answer to Wordle last week. I new the word by sight, but
| like a lot of us, had never heard it spoken. I sent her a
| link to this article just because ennui was embedded in the
| title :)
| klik99 wrote:
| Everyone learns these things from different places! I used to
| get annoyed at content explaining things I already knew well
| until I realized that I once learned it from somewhere that
| wasn't the "original place". I forget who said it, but
| someone said good writing isn't about writing something new,
| it's about saying existing truths in interesting ways. This
| piece didn't really land for me, but glad it did for you.
| nehal3m wrote:
| There's a scene in the movie 'Flash of Genius'. The movie
| tells the story of a guy who invents the mechanism for
| intermittent windshield wipers and has the design stolen
| from him by Detroit auto makers.
|
| In a court scene the main character is on the stand, and he
| reads the first few words from 'A Tale of Two Cities' and
| asks the lawyer for the other side if Dickens had invented
| any of those individual words.
|
| That always stuck with me; it's the configuration of over-
| the-counter parts or ideas that makes something novel.
| Sometimes articles explain ideas with a twist, a different
| order or a different interpretation, and furthermore, when
| you yourself reconfigure a set of ideas under the shower or
| in a comment section, you should realise that you're doing
| worthwhile creative work.
|
| I see the two ironies here: I might be explaining things
| that you already knew, and this comment will probably be
| skimmed over (as the article puts it) as another pull of
| the slot machine. :-)
| toss1 wrote:
| YES
|
| Maybe not quite a tweet, but certainly editing it down to
| 25%-35% of the original length would have resulted in a much
| higher quality article.
|
| Which gets to the main point that he only grazed but didn't
| hit, and of which this article is a fine example. There is a
| resistance to engaging in longer-form works for exactly the
| same reason he derides the short form (tweets, spouts, TikTok
| vids, etc.) -- there is no guarantee that the quality will be
| there, and it is a larger investment of time & effort to
| consume the long-form content, so the potential waste &
| disappointment will be greater. It's a worse risk/reward ratio
| than reading a tweet.
|
| Yet, his underlying advice -- to be conscious of what you
| consume and whether it _ACTUALLY SATISFIES_ your needs -- is
| valid, important, and actionable.
|
| I've found that one of the keys is information density. It
| needs to be at a certain level to be worthwhile (and that level
| is different for different purposes). For example, I found some
| 20 years ago that almost all content on cable TV was far too
| dilute, so I cut the cord. I found that a default Twitter feed
| has a similarly high trash/value ratio, but this could be fixed
| by using carefully curated lists of high-value feeds to get
| high-density info much earlier (this has significantly degraded
| since Nov-22, I'm finding other better options such as
| Spoutible).
|
| It does take conscious effort to maintain our entertainment and
| information feeds to be sure they actually meet _OUR_ needs,
| but it is worth it.
|
| (maybe that's the 1-tweet version?)
| masswerk wrote:
| I, on the other hand, enjoyed a well written piece. It's both
| and argument and a narration, which sets about the right mood
| for a critique of narratives. (Also, there seems to be a
| tactical side to this: as we enjoy the story, spend time over
| and with this, as we invest energy, we also align with the
| piece... much like we identify with a protagonist, by the
| perspective of whom we reconstruct the diegetic world of a
| novel or a movie.)
| kedean wrote:
| > If it was it wouldn't be preaching to the choir.
|
| I'm not so sure it is. I think the target audience here are
| people who have already been desiring to break the cycle and
| might be currently more receptive to long-form content. A lot
| of people I know have been expressing the feeling this talks
| about lately, mostly due to the impending downfall of Reddit
| (how many people have said something along the lines of "i'm
| glad it's going away, that's one less thing to mindlessly
| scroll")
| com2kid wrote:
| > We favor videos that either are very short or don't require
| dedicated focus, confident in the knowledge that we can move on
| to something else whenever we want to. We ignore thoughtfully
| composed "walls of text," but we electronically applaud memetic
| image macros and single-sentence references that aren't
| inherently entertaining or insightful
|
| The rise of long form YouTube videos and Podcasts directly
| contradicts this. Summoning Salt, Technology Connections, and the
| dozens of other small documentary channels. Heck Matholger is
| able to regularly hit 500k+ views with 30min+ math videos![1]
|
| True crime podcasts and history podcasts are also in direct
| opposition to the idea that we only consume short form content.
|
| Then there is the entire rise of Medium and Substack. 10 years
| ago if I wanted long form journalism it was either The New
| Yorker, The Atlantic, or some tiny indie news magazines.
|
| Now long form articles are more popular than ever.
|
| Heck even movies are getting longer! [2]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@Mathologer/videos [2]
| https://www.whattowatch.com/features/are-movies-really-getti...
| majormajor wrote:
| What's your time frame on "long form articles are more popular
| than ever"?
|
| And are you using relative or absolute popularity? E.g. "medium
| form" articles in pop magazines were probably always more
| popular than longform ones in literary mags, but were they more
| relatively popular than "tweets" or "tiktok videos"?
|
| Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248
| million tickets today? And that number has a lower total
| population size to pull from! For a focused experience without
| your phone, or work, or anything else (compared to listening to
| a podcast in the background while working or driving)?
|
| There are groups that still enjoy, or are learning to enjoy,
| longer stuff still. But that's not the dominant trend.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248
| million tickets today?
|
| Avatar, Way Of The Water, a 3 hour movie, broke all sorts of
| sales records (though # of tickets sold data apparently isn't
| out yet).
|
| Heck Avengers End Game was 3 hours long and it sold 351
| million tickets.
|
| I do think you get less of the repeat sales now days vs even
| in the 90s, just because there are so many more movies coming
| out, both in Cinema and on streaming platforms, but that
| doesn't say anything about people's willingness to attend
| long movies.
| skywal_l wrote:
| I'll throw in Cathode Ray Dude [0] in there. It's hard to
| believe he will get 500K view on a 70 minutes video about some
| weird 90s hardware but he does.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude
| still_grokking wrote:
| Is there any demographic of his audience?
|
| Given the topics on that channel I would guess most viewers
| are already older people who got struck with nostalgia (a
| typical phenomenon in elder people).
|
| Gen Z and younger on the other hand seems to have in large
| parts just an attention span of a few seconds left. At least
| that's my personal experience. (I don't want to annoy anybody
| here, there are exceptions of course!)
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Reading through the text which implicitly and as a
| perlocutionary/performative act by the author is precisely
| intended to be _not_ the kind of low-effort content of the evoked
| 'Ennui Engine', actually strengthens my perception why I would
| actually feel more enjoyment in the "low effort content":
|
| The relatively long suspense of the "Cargo Cult"-like explanation
| at the end completely falls short of any built up expectations I
| had, I wouldn't have noticed a difference in the argument if it
| would have been left out. Instead it seems to function merely as
| an ornament to elicit some feeling of superiority in one's
| insight.
|
| I mean if I am able to "explain" cargo cult to you it would be
| least expected to be cargo cult'ed by the very thing. The text
| touches on that briefly but suddenly rejects its humbling
| implications for all the facets of our life by highlighting one
| aspect: > _its most insidious and impactful manifestations lies
| in entertainment and how we consume it._ Where does this uncanny
| certainty come from?
|
| Not to end on a negative note: Why not trying to appreciate some
| low-effort boredom at a time? Not something to be avoided at all
| cost but as an highly viscous opening space in one's rapidly
| passing sense of time, being mostly empty ("boring") or worn out
| of preconceived notions, but yet to be taken roads, train of
| thoughts or in some very rare cases, I'm told, for inspiration.
| Some appreciation for boredom goes a long way and makes oneself
| intrinsically less prone to the trappings of the described engine
| by just waiting "it" out.
| cgio wrote:
| I upvoted this one but wonder whether I did it because it
| cunningly convinced me to consume a long form content just to eat
| the pellet for the fact I read it to the end. I agree with many
| of the statements, always keep an eye out though for the
| potential I am just the old man who does not get the
| sophistication that goes into phenomenally only cheap,
| thoughtless content. What if the new art is not articulated in
| lighting but in the surprise out of the subtlety of the chain of
| simple contents. What if art is transitioning to a more directly
| dialectic between creators. I see my son working with a group on
| stickman animations, and I appreciate the community and its
| shared sense of newfound beauty in the pursuit of a perfection
| that I cannot fully understand.
| namaria wrote:
| I found it pretty vapid. Goes to show high effort by itself
| cannot ensure high quality.
| mistermann wrote:
| Interestingly, the author addressed this sort of thing a few
| times in the article.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Reading and upvoting brings joy because it signals "I know this
| and am part of the solution", as much as any mildly
| controversial hot take.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| The cargo cult metaphor is stretched pretty thin. Could have just
| stuck to discussing Skinner.
| klik99 wrote:
| I think cargo cult is an interesting way of thinking of
| intrinsic motivations of addiction, and useful as a personal
| tool to assist breaking addictive cycles, whereas Skinner is a
| more scientific view of external effects.
|
| I mean, I agree this piece was way too long though
| spandrew wrote:
| === Article === _" Worst of all, we snarl at anyone who tries to
| help us out of the mire, and we decry attempts at pulling anyone
| else out. We make excuses for writing errors instead of
| correcting them, we overlook factual mistakes if addressing them
| would be inconvenient, and we sneer at the alleged pretension of
| so-called elitists who haven't yet been ground into the dirt. The
| only thing that we ever really accomplish is a gradual yet
| consistent lowering of standards... because even a reasonable
| excuse is still an excuse, and it represents an opportunity for
| improvement that's being cast aside."_ ====
|
| We do? I don't recall anyone ever yelling at me for opening my
| Kindle at lunch and reading a chapter or two of Rules of Civility
| for 45 minutes as I scarf down the meatballs leftovers I prepped
| last night for me and my partner?
|
| The article is cathartic in nailing the Ennui Engine's downsides
| of cheap content. The lack of fact checking, or care put into
| basic literature. But most people aren't mindless zombies _only
| surfing Tik Tok_. You do a little of that. And a little of the
| other things you like. Cable Access TV was full of Better Call
| Saul quacks in the 90s, you know.
|
| How many people genuinely read the newspaper in 1950 versus the
| funnies or the sports page? Wasn't that a staple joke in every
| sitcom? Yokels gonna yokel. New economies spin up. But NYTimes is
| still making a killing. The straggler media outlets adapt? And of
| course some terrifically fine middle sized agents unfortunately
| got pinched in the spinning of the universe at this juncture of
| Space-Time.
| jalk wrote:
| Couldn't help thinking of the complex writing cargo cult.
| [deleted]
| mouzogu wrote:
| i wish i had an interest in learning.
|
| i seem to prefer mindless consumption.
|
| is it just laziness and lack of discipline.
|
| im unmotivated to learn anything that doesnt have immediate
| practical value, like consumption has immediate reward.
| kulahan wrote:
| Consumption is just engaging with something meaningless to get
| your dopamine instead of something meaningful. There's no
| reason you can't consume educational material that intrigues
| you.
| RegW wrote:
| > Our upvotes, likes, shares, and retweets need to be reserved
| for only those things which truly deserve to be amplified, not
| just because we personally appreciate them, but because they're
| of exceptional quality.
|
| Sounds great, but with all the morons reacting prolifically to
| every piece of trash, will my one carefully allotted upvote be
| valued?
|
| I like the idea of Quadratic Voting:
| https://www.economist.com/interactive/2021/12/18/quadratic-v...
| digging wrote:
| What does one do with unallocated credits? Would they be banked
| for future votes or lost?
|
| In the case of social media, how are credits even allocated? If
| a simple daily model, that already feels bad. See something
| great in the morning, don't vote for it! You might see
| something better in the evening. Should be able to dip into
| negatives somehow for urgent, high importance matters.
| orzig wrote:
| Strong +1 (squared) to the quadratic voting suggestion. But I
| don't think that it could be implemented in any sizable
| existing community, it is just too abstract of a benefit.
|
| But the discussion around SMOL Webb communities, feels
| applicable here, the type of person that would get excited
| about a quadratic coding community is self selected to think
| more deeply and abstractly in the first place. Plenty of these
| people exist, but there has not been a Schelling point for
| them. (definitely correct me if I'm wrong on that!)
| worrycue wrote:
| > Sounds great, but with all the morons reacting prolifically
| to every piece of trash, will my one carefully allotted upvote
| be valued?
|
| At least you aren't adding to the problem.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| When I looked at their example poll - what was interesting was
| I started to think tactically - as votes now cost - I'm much
| more interested in not wasting votes on issues that aren't
| going to be closely fought.
|
| ie Even if I had strong feelings about topic X - should I vote
| if I already can guess the outcome of the vote - surely smarter
| to avoid wasting that vote and focus on something that's likely
| to be closely contested?
|
| So you end up with a secondary market in information about how
| the vote is or is likely to go.
|
| Ideally, as a user, what I'd like is the ability see the
| existing state of all the polls, and be able to dynamically
| adjust my vote based on the current voting state.
|
| If the platform doesn't do that - then any differential in
| information about how the votes might go creates an unfair
| voting dynamic - ie the voting outcome isn't just about how
| much you care.....
|
| If you map that back to say hackernews threads and voting -
| would people hold off voting, hoping somebody else spends their
| vote first - leading to less interaction.
|
| In the end - isn't the quality of votes simply a reflection of
| the quality of the electorate?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe we can come up with a scheme to combine all our votes
| into a giant finite state machine...
| allemagne wrote:
| >We need to remember that five minutes invested in reading an
| article - even a mediocre one - will almost always offer a better
| payout of emotional energy than five minutes of gambling on a
| slot machine with only one reel.
|
| This is not true. You cannot trick your brain into enjoying a
| mediocre "healthy" thing more than the enjoyment that you
| actually feel.
|
| This a recipe for burning out and relapsing. Your brain will
| always know the actual ratio of effort/reward over time, and will
| prefer the skinner box without question.
|
| If you are truly consciously aware of yourself while scrolling,
| you might find (to your disgust and dismay) that just being in
| front of the slot machine _is_ a reward to your brain.
|
| The unfortunate truth is that you can "cargo cult" yourself into
| all kinds of debilitating addictions and behaviors with their own
| twisted, undeniably sound logic that you can't "mindset" your way
| out of.
| kylewatson wrote:
| What makes a cult a cargo cult?
| rcktmrtn wrote:
| I liked most of this article and found it interesting. Maybe a
| bit long-winded, but like many people I've been thinking a lot
| about the same topic in recent years, struggling to break free of
| a certain mindset. Hearing the images and language how someone
| else feels when they describe that "machine" that keeps them
| captive is interesting -- a very "blind men and the elephant"
| experience. The cargo cult aspect is a new connection to me and
| something I'll think about more.
|
| That said, like many tech critiques, I found the conclusion
| underwhelming. In particular, the idea that how we manage our
| "upvotes, likes, shares, and retweets" is important strikes me as
| foolish. These are the master's tools and they won't unmake the
| master's house. Sites like reddit and twitter have long put their
| thumbs on the scale to rewrite these metrics. Plus, just like
| with democracy, institutions and norms that encourage uninformed
| frivolous voting will drown out the meaningful signal. Not to say
| these forms of engagement are all bad, but they aren't a solution
| in and of themselves.
|
| The real commodity to regulate is attention, of which "upvotes"
| are only a simulacrum. It should never be forgotten that this
| means often means disengaging from certain sites and systems
| entirely.
|
| edit: on the note of attention being the _real_ metric -- another
| thing I thought the author could have done well drawing attention
| to is the trend of watching /listening at 2x speed. It increases
| our tolerance for drawn out drivel. Maybe an alternative would be
| to shun media that we don't think would be worth playing 2x times
| at normal speed.
| qubex wrote:
| It struck me as "Capitalist Realism Lite".
| nanidin wrote:
| Ennui was the wordle solution a few days ago. The number of
| people on my FB feed that didn't know it was a word was
| entertaining.
| nehal3m wrote:
| >As unpleasant as it may be to admit, we are each individually to
| blame for this slump-inducing cycle's persistence, and we are
| each responsible for halting it.
|
| To some degree we are to blame, however this doesn't take into
| account the fact that there are armies of psychologists,
| marketers and developers and billions of dollars' worth of
| equipment at the other end of your feed. They aim specifically to
| get you to stay in the Skinner box so it's not exactly fair to
| say it's on us.
| Animats wrote:
| _" There is a solution to all of this...When we scroll through
| our various feeds, we need to remain consciously aware of what
| we're doing and what messages we're silently sending.'_
|
| That's not likely to help. The author is asking for people to
| devote more attention to something trivial.
| tester457 wrote:
| So it is an unsolvable problem afterall.
| uoaei wrote:
| Hardly. I think the point is that you don't even have to play
| the game: the signals you send could be null as much as they
| could be something that you dedicate a lot of time and effort
| toward.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I think the operative word is "consciously". I think the
| author's wish is that we devote conscious thought, not merely
| emotional reaction, to whatever it is we're consuming. Not just
| what makes me feel good or bad; but rather, whether it is IMO
| good, or bad, or neither. If it's neither, move on; don't
| respond, reply, upvote, downvote, or anything else. Just move
| along. Let it atrophy and don't come back.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If people could do this conciously, we wouldn't need this
| article.
| worrycue wrote:
| I think the author is just asking us to vote more
| thoughtfully.
|
| Currently, especially on sites like Reddit, the
| upvote/downvote buttons are abused as agree/disagree
| buttons and are clicked with little thought.
|
| The recent troubles on Reddit have people talking about
| alternatives. An old site - one of the first voting based
| forums - was brought up, Slashdot.
|
| It has an interesting voting system. Only some people can
| vote - I forgot the requirements. Each post maxes out at 5
| points. Often/almost always the post has a label next to it
| saying why it was upvoted - e.g. Informative, Insightful,
| Interesting, ... I can't remember the details of the system
| as I mostly lurked back then as a kid.
|
| Anyway, I think a shift to a more deliberate form of voting
| might be what the article is advocating.
| thebudgie wrote:
| Slashdot also has a metamoderation system where after
| you've had votes for a while you are asked to confirm if
| comments were "Funny, Insightful, Troll etc" which could
| then lead to people losing the ability to vote for a
| while for using the votes incorrectly.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Only some people can vote - I forgot the requirements.
|
| One day you would get on the site, and have 5 votes to
| spend. If you didn't spend them, they would go away and
| it would take a little longer to get more next time.
|
| It was a really interesting system. People did act a bit
| more seriously when they had votes, and there was the
| metamoderation system for keeping them accountable. It
| was a little bit complex, but only long-term users would
| see it, and worked better than any other system I have
| seen on practice.
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