[HN Gopher] It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor
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It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor
Author : zdw
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-01-12 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.righto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.righto.com)
| kens wrote:
| Author here. This is a change from my usual reverse engineering
| articles, but hopefully you'll find it interesting...
| derektank wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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."
| sitkack wrote:
| 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://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!
| fargle wrote:
| 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 use 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).
| j4coh wrote:
| Can we keep "tilting at windmills" then?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Only if you're Spanish
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| It's not stupid if it works
| ordu wrote:
| 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
|
| edit: typo
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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.
| kens wrote:
| No, I'm not claiming that anthropologists are the "natural and
| proper authorities charged with gatekeeping"; that's nonsense.
| What I'm claiming is that the description of cargo cults that
| everyone knows is fiction.
| kazinator wrote:
| You mean it never happened, or not all in one single cargo
| cult?
| kens wrote:
| The popular cargo cult story is a mixture of stuff that
| happened, stuff that was made up, and focusing on the wrong
| stuff. It's basically an urban legend at this point of
| people copying from other people.
|
| It's a bit like saying that Christianity involves handling
| rattlesnakes and putting nails through your hands in the
| belief that God will turn your fillings to gold. That kind
| of misses the point.
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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.
| exe34 wrote:
| 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.
| ikesau wrote:
| 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 cliches.
|
| 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."
| EA-3167 wrote:
| 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.
| glitchc wrote:
| ..and replace it with dogma.
| imgabe wrote:
| Nope, we're not doing this in 2025. It succinctly expresses an
| important concept. We're not catering to imaginary offenses
| somebody hallucinates on behalf of some supposedly marginalized
| people anymore.
| this_weekend wrote:
| Possibly the one good thing that will come from all the Tech
| CEOs schmoozing Trump, is that they'll stop pandering to this
| sort of pointless virtue signalling.
| architango wrote:
| 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.
| zug_zug wrote:
| 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.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Bookmarking to read after I fix this bug on my master branch.
| talkingtab wrote:
| 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.
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