A practical way to detect cargo-cult thinking

Re:A practical way to detect cargo-cult thinking by sdfignaionio on Saturday August 05, 2023 @05:06PM (#37016296)

This mashes a few different ideas together that don't really fit. Cargo-cult thinking means emulating something's appearance without understanding how it works. This is a specific kind of irrationality. Removing gall bladders en masse is also irrational, but it's not a cargo cult. The beliefs of a cargo cult may be unfalsifiable, but that doesn't mean all unfalsifiable beliefs are like a cargo cult.

It may be perfectly reasonable to be unable to imagine a belief being falsified. For instance, what would it take to convince you that you remembered your own name wrong and that you've been called something different for your entire life?

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Re:A practical way to detect cargo-cult thinking by jsunderland323 on Saturday August 05, 2023 @05:30PM (#37016482)

I second this. I think we’re confusing cognitive dissonance with cargo culting in this article.

Cargo culting is blindly copying something without understanding the mechanistic behavior of the thing being copied. Plenty of cargo culters end up convinced after following the recipe but the planes don’t show up.

Cognitive dissonance on the other hand is about not updating your beliefs when there’s overwhelming verifiable evidence to the contrary.

I think the two can go hand in hand. Hype cycles in tech suffer from both but I think they’re distinctly different things.

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