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A comment on It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor.

Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by Darkskiez on Sunday January 12, 2025 @06:05PM (#42677923)
What are some good alternatives to express the same concept?
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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by agalunar on Sunday January 12, 2025 @07:02PM (#42678403)
“Imitation without understanding”, “imitating but misconstruing”, “mindless imitation”, “superficial emulation”, &c.

I think “cargo culting” in the popular sense means little more than that (whereas actual cargo culting is much more complex, as the featured article describes).

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by mglvsky on Sunday January 12, 2025 @07:48PM (#42678736)
Security theater
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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by gota on Sunday January 12, 2025 @09:33PM (#42679439)
Simulacra - "Something that replaces reality with its representation"

[0] https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/postmoder...

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by andsoitis on Sunday January 12, 2025 @09:35PM (#42679456)
important to understand substance over form.
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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by rvz on Monday January 13, 2025 @02:42AM (#42681048)
Cargo cult.
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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by mock-possum on Monday January 13, 2025 @03:37AM (#42681348)
Might I propose ‘Skinner-Boxing’ -

something happened but you’re not sure why, so you guess it’s because of something you did, and you decide to ritualistically repeat what you did in the hopes that thing that happened before happens again.

It’s a misunderstanding of cause and effect - so when you repeat the cause, looking to repeat the effect, you’re puzzled that it doesn’t work this time.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by Clubber on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:55AM (#42683418)
"Aping," is a good one, but I'm sure someone will take offense to that as well eventually.
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