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Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

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Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#31

Post by throwawayjava »

Jupe wrote: post #25
jeremya wrote: post #9

I found this very helpful. It gives clear language for a number of things I’ve thought and felt about public discourse in America. To name a few in particular, the belief that complicated explanations are suspect and that certainty is strength. I’ve repeatedly observed that successful people seem to have very strong opinions and wondered if that was a contributor to their success. While it seems most things in this l…

I too see this pattern over-and-over. I think there are some root causes (but I don't to have given this a ton of thought... but...): 1. Many people are confronted with the model at work. The busy-ness and complications of the real world make simplifications appealing, and backed by a successful, charismatic person with clarity of vision, well spoken, makes for an easier "sales pitch", and easier to "get behind" Exam…

> 4. I think academia suffers from this as well. Mathematicians and physicists always go on talking about "simplicity" and "beauty" as if their job is to deduce the simplicity of the universe.

There is a lot of value in building concise and easy-to-understand explanations of extremely complex phenomenon. Be careful not to throw out Occam's razor with the bathwater.

I tend to agree that the pure mathematics and theoretical physics communities get obsessive. The hero-worship of theory builders in those sciences compounds matters. However, pure math and theoretic physics are the worst offenders by far in the natural science. Theorists in both fields are typically a small minority even within their own departments. The other natural sciences and the engineering disciplines are much less infected.

Some of the over-obsession with beauty in mathematics has its roots in the Church's heavy patronage of mathematics and natural philosophy, as well as religion's overall grip on nearly every intellectual mind prior to the 20th century.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#32

Post by d-d »

I can't say I agree with most of these points, but

> Certainty is strength

> [and survivorship bias]

This I have definitely seen and experienced. Back when I thought I knew everything some people followed me and copied what I did. I unwittingly became a leader simply by being arrogant. Now that I have a little wisdom that's all out the window.

Confidence is magnetic even if its foundations are nonsense. I think the mechanism is similar to clickbait but maybe less intentional.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#33

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

catalogia wrote: post #23
sowbug wrote: post #21

Tragedy is a synonym for calamity It took me a little while to figure this one out, since I've always treated the two words as synonyms (non-ironically, I hope). In case anyone else also paused at this one, a tragedy is something horrible happening because of a weakness in someone's character, whereas a calamity is just something horrible happening. The point of the principle is that victims* of the American cargo cu…

That seems like an anachronistic meaning of the word tragedy. In the context of dramatic productions, a tragedy does indeed imply a flaw or weakness in character leading to some unpleasant outcome. But I don't think that implication is generally present when using the word in other contexts. I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during ch…

Tragedy is avoidable, while calamity isn't.

There's a difference between saying someone is responsible and the victim is responsible.

The Cargo Cult decries the principle of legitimate responsibility, and consistently attempts to deny the guilt of the true architects of tragedy in numerous ways - victim-blaming being a very popular one.

In this example, a significant number of Americans would rather an adult woman die in childbirth than terminate a dangerous pregnancy.

If adult women - who may well be married and have a family - actually do die because legal abortion is unavailable, those Americans become responsible for avoidable deaths.

But the magic of the Cult's moral inversion means they continue to consider their position a wholly good one.

"Good intentions suffice."

This is not the same as - for example - a climate denialist buying beachfront property in Southern Florida and then being amazed when it floods in a storm and becomes impossible to sell.

"Consequences are things that happen to others."

These look opposed, but the MO is the same in both examples. Legitimate responsibility is denied, and replaced by a simplistic self-affirming moralising certainty which is actively hostile to mature empirical rationality and empathy.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#34

Post by Tehdasi »

catalogia wrote: post #4
darkengine wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm missing some nuance here, but most of these (excepting maybe "Complicated explanations are suspect" and "All interconnection is apparent") just seem like different manifestations of fundamental attribution error.

It reads like a list of fairly reasonable (imho) grievances, but except for a few they don't really seem related to the cargo cult phenomenon. Namely these two do seem related to cargo cults: "The end supports the explanation of the means: A successful person's explanation of the means of his success is highly credible by the very fact of his success." "Emulate the purported behavior of successful people: This is the…

Same way as 'French fries': 1) are not french 2) are not fried 3) have to be made of potato 4) are not 'frenched' 5) etc

The author was prolly just picking a name that the mentality was most like.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#35

Post by catalogia »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #33
catalogia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an anachronistic meaning of the word tragedy. In the context of dramatic productions, a tragedy does indeed imply a flaw or weakness in character leading to some unpleasant outcome. But I don't think that implication is generally present when using the word in other contexts. I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during ch…

Tragedy is avoidable, while calamity isn't. There's a difference between saying someone is responsible and the victim is responsible. The Cargo Cult decries the principle of legitimate responsibility, and consistently attempts to deny the guilt of the true architects of tragedy in numerous ways - victim-blaming being a very popular one. In this example, a significant number of Americans would rather an adult woman di…

To be clear, I wasn't trying to make a political point about womens' healthcare. I think most people would say such a death was a 'tragedy' even if state of the art medical care had been provided. Somebody dying young is generally considered tragic in the modern casual sense of the term, particularly if it was through no fault of the victim.

In retrospect I should have chosen a less sensitive example, so I'll do that now: In the common modern sense somebody being killed by a falling tree branch is more tragic than a drunk driver fatally striking the same tree. But in the more traditional sense of the word tragedy, that's flipped backwards.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#36

Post by mistermann »

kick wrote: post #27
jeremya wrote: post #9

I found this very helpful. It gives clear language for a number of things I’ve thought and felt about public discourse in America. To name a few in particular, the belief that complicated explanations are suspect and that certainty is strength. I’ve repeatedly observed that successful people seem to have very strong opinions and wondered if that was a contributor to their success. While it seems most things in this l…

Largely, the American people have been targeted with campaigns to make every possible combination of events into sport. This isn't a conspiracy, the people responsible have said as much. From a New York Times article that quotes the president of CNN , Jeff Zucker: Zucker is a big sports fan and from the early days of the campaign had spoken at editorial meetings about wanting to incorporate elements of ESPN’s program…

I'd never heard of it before, but this everything as sport idea actually makes quite a bit of sense if you consider the multitude of weird behaviors all around us from this perspective. Makes one wonder if there are other things like this that are right in front of our eyes, but we cannot see them until they're pointed out.

I guess it's an example of the "how's the water boys" fish story.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#37

Post by catalogia »

Tehdasi wrote: post #34
catalogia wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reads like a list of fairly reasonable (imho) grievances, but except for a few they don't really seem related to the cargo cult phenomenon. Namely these two do seem related to cargo cults: "The end supports the explanation of the means: A successful person's explanation of the means of his success is highly credible by the very fact of his success." "Emulate the purported behavior of successful people: This is the…

Same way as 'French fries': 1) are not french 2) are not fried 3) have to be made of potato 4) are not 'frenched' 5) etc The author was prolly just picking a name that the mentality was most like.

Sorry for getting into the weeds here, but as I understand them, french fries are indeed fried (sometimes baked, which is heretical, but usually fried), are from either France or Belgium depending on who you believe, and are not necessarily made out of potato (Yam french fries are very popular, though whether or not yams are truly potatoes is over my pay grade.)

I think I take your general meaning though.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#38

Post by jancsika »

jeremya wrote: post #9

I found this very helpful. It gives clear language for a number of things I’ve thought and felt about public discourse in America. To name a few in particular, the belief that complicated explanations are suspect and that certainty is strength. I’ve repeatedly observed that successful people seem to have very strong opinions and wondered if that was a contributor to their success. While it seems most things in this l…

> I’ve repeatedly observed that successful people seem to have very strong opinions and wondered if that was a contributor to their success.

Did you observe this both before and after they became successful?

Because there's a lucrative touring circuit in the U.S. (and probably in other countries) where successful people substitute "X" for their historical luck and charge rubes to hear their advice on how to use X to achieve success.

Edit: clarification

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#39

Post by jakelazaroff »

catalogia wrote: post #23
sowbug wrote: post #21

Tragedy is a synonym for calamity It took me a little while to figure this one out, since I've always treated the two words as synonyms (non-ironically, I hope). In case anyone else also paused at this one, a tragedy is something horrible happening because of a weakness in someone's character, whereas a calamity is just something horrible happening. The point of the principle is that victims* of the American cargo cu…

That seems like an anachronistic meaning of the word tragedy. In the context of dramatic productions, a tragedy does indeed imply a flaw or weakness in character leading to some unpleasant outcome. But I don't think that implication is generally present when using the word in other contexts. I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during ch…

> I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during child birth." Where the implication of a personal flaw present in that statement, it would be a deeply offensive statement.

This strikes me as a perfect illustration of the article's point. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet our maternal mortality rate in 2010 was higher than "nearly all European countries, as well as Canada and several countries in Asia and the Middle East" [1]. As of this year, the rate was more than double what it was in 1987 even as it declines in the rest of the world [2]. Black women's maternal mortality rate is three to four times that of white women [3].

In spite of which it would be "deeply offensive" to insinuate blame here, or that there may be structural and cultural causes that we refuse to see or fix. "Tragedy is a synonym for calamity", indeed.

[1] https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/deadly-delivery-the-mater...

[2] https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/maternal-mortali...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-...

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#40

Post by kick »

mistermann wrote: post #36
kick wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely, the American people have been targeted with campaigns to make every possible combination of events into sport. This isn't a conspiracy, the people responsible have said as much. From a New York Times article that quotes the president of CNN , Jeff Zucker: Zucker is a big sports fan and from the early days of the campaign had spoken at editorial meetings about wanting to incorporate elements of ESPN’s program…

I'd never heard of it before, but this everything as sport idea actually makes quite a bit of sense if you consider the multitude of weird behaviors all around us from this perspective. Makes one wonder if there are other things like this that are right in front of our eyes, but we cannot see them until they're pointed out. I guess it's an example of the "how's the water boys" fish story.

It's interesting: I had a friend explain this to me when I was fairly young, and it's definitely influenced my theory of society heavily.
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