Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

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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 list stem from one or more logical / informal fallacies, the way the principles are categorized and described makes the fallacy obvious and, for me, familiar. Since 2003 when this was published, I believe the network effects of social media have significantly increased the frequency at which these sorts of fallacies are uttered.

What are the systems at work here that lead to this so-called cargo cult? Is it easier, psychologically speaking for people, and Americans in particular, to walk with these mental crutches? Is our education system broken? What variables are at play here?

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" Example: H. Ross Perot (a presidential candidate of a couple decades ago who advocated economic nationalism) was about as business-minded as Donald Trump. Perot was known for showing bar graphs and line charts during his speeches. People literally laughed at him. Trump, appealing to peoples righteous self-import and "American Greatness" was applauded.

2. There is a "marketing mindset" in America. People speak with a hint of respect when meeting or hearing of someone who could "sell an ice cube to an Eskimo." To me, an image of a slime-ball used car salesman comes to mind, but for some reason, others see this as a "respectful" skill. Salespeople are seen as "skillful" in eluding the normal track of school/eduction, hard-work, hard-thought, and the like, but they are still "successful".

3. Many American successes were "simple" in nature: Henry Ford's assembly line is a good example. Washing machines, electric refrigerators; most of the "big box" items that came out of the American Industrial Revolution are other examples. I'd bet money that, since Albert Einstein moved to the United States later in life, many Americans believe (incorrectly) that his famous simplification of E=mc^2 was only possible because of America. Tell Americans that the Arabs invented algebra, the number zero and much more, and rather than increase their respect for the culture and people, they'll simply reinforce their stupidity and their own lack of interest in such subjects.

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.

> 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.

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 programming into CNN’s election coverage. "The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/magazine/cnn-had-a-proble...

To quote the former-CEO and founder of Fox News (and media consultant for the Nixon, Reagan, and H.W. Bush Presidential campaigns, on top of an advisor to the Trump Campaign for debate prep) Roger Ailes in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

"We’re competing with TNT and USA and ESPN."

https://web.archive.org/web/20150409110830/http://www.hollyw...

These people have worked outside-in to make everything in America sport. When everything is just a game, nothing matters, and every occurrence is equal: the only thing that matters is that whatever you're wanting gets in the headlines enough to where people know what it is.

Some, like Ailes, go into politics to make sure their candidates are entertaining enough to be known by the widest net of people possible (that means they win, because it's easier to get people to love you than it is to get them to hate your opponent).

Others go into the private sector and reap the benefits of making every headline equally temporary.

You weren't talking exclusively about politics, but I think most of the cargo cult stems from political/economic desires that have bled into having an impact on everything else by making all other forms of information have to wrestle control from the sportsified headlines, time-slots and ad spots.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_race_journalism

Even NPR spends most of their time armchair quarterbacking presidential campaigns. News happens. How will the campaigns respond? One candidate makes some claim about another's positions. How will that affect the campaign? Did their poll numbers drop? What does the fucking Twitterverse think about it? Instead of, you know, reporting the news and examining policy positions. Was the claim true? What might we expect various candidates policies on things like the news item, if they implement those policies? Who cares. How're those poll numbers looking? Who's the underdog? What tea leaves can we read today? That's what matters.

It's so frustrating. And now that presidential campaigns are damn near two years long that means a huge amount of their total news coverage ends up being political horse race bullshit.

It's one step deeper than that. It's not that everything is sports. If you watch sports coverage, the coverage is less and less about the actual sports and more and more about the underlying drama. Not even sports is sports anymore. Instead, both sports and politics are being transformed into a combination of sports and melodrama.

Which American institution lies squarely at the intersection of sports and melodrama? Professional wrestling. I'm not saying that politics (or even other sports) are turning into professional wrestling in the sense that the outcomes are completely rigged, but they are being covered and treated much like wrestling, even by the participants themselves. So it's no coincidence that the current President is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.

Pretty good article making this same observation: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783

> 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

In short it is a consequence of everyone became a seller and every conversation became a salespitch. There is never nuance in a salespitch. Everything projected needs to be flawless and beyond reproach, every competition vilified and without merit.

If everyone is competition, there is no more 'us' outside the context of 'them', and you can never show weakness in front of the 'enemy'.

Ultimately it is this projection of everything being a zero sum game that fuels our decend into tribalism.

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 cult treat every tragedy (blame or causality) as a calamity (no blame or causality), thus losing the opportunity to reflect on their own potential responsibility.

*term used ironically, I hope

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 child birth." Where the implication of a personal flaw present in that statement, it would be a deeply offensive statement. But in practice I think that's an agreeable statement.

It could be the case that Americans have a bias towards seeing calamity instead of tragedy (that rings true in my opinion), but I don't think that bias is evidenced in you or other modern English speakers treating the two words as synonyms.

I agree, and will surely keep using the anodyne sense of "tragedy" in my day-to-day chit-chat about calamities. Your "bias toward seeing calamity instead of tragedy" phrasing might be a better way to put it, because it contrasts the two words without suggesting widespread misuse.

It wouldn't have to be widespread misuse. It's not impossible that the author meant it in the way the grandparent comment wrote it, even while understanding that's not how most use it. They show an interest in using language more adventurously throughout the piece.

Yes, the comment struck me immediately as off because in typical conversation involving real people, tragedy usually implies the person is blameless.

Now that I think of it though, even in this other use implying a flaw, you are supposed to relate to and sympathize with the flawed character. In this view it seems harsh and inhuman to complain that every calamity might be seen as tragic. A mature person can often sympathize with human suffering even if the sufferer did something "bad" to get there. We shouldn't be 100% in punishment mode or gloating at comeuppance. Forgiveness is a thing. Sympathy for imperfect people is also a thing.

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.

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.

> 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-...

Please do not twist my words. I hope it should have been clear that when I said insinuating blame would be offensive, I meant that insinuating the woman died as a consequence of some moral failing on her part would be deeply offensive. I chose that as my example because I thought it universally agreeable, because I hoped to avoid political responses. Obviously in retrospect, my example was poorly chosen.

See also, my clarification 6 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911068

Sorry, didn’t mean to twist your words; I misinterpreted what you meant by that example.

> 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."

They would not find fault with the statement because, particularly in the USA, they will indeed consider it a tragedy and that there must be someone to blame.

English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance or, relatedly, allowing figurative, sarcastic, or hyperbolic uses to overtake and replace original meanings. I know languages and word meanings change, but my sense is that this is happening very fast, and largely in the direction of creating redundant perfect synonyms than adding new meanings or nuance to replace what's been lost. I don't really see new vitality of this sort coming into English to replace what's leaving.

If this effect is real and not something I'm imagining, my best guess is that it's a result of much wider exposure to language (consider: how many fewer words, spoken and written, did the average person in 1850 hear or read in an average day, than you do?) with the bulk of it coming from writers and speakers far less well-educated, on average, than the people who had access to, say, publishing in the 19th century or perhaps early radio, and so more likely to mis-use words or phrases. Mistakes have always become common usage if they live long enough, but if the rate of mistakes become very high and the ability of those mistakes to gain a wide audience grow, that must surely have some effect on language, and any notion that it must necessarily be neutral or even beneficial strikes me as wishful thinking—I believe it's at least possible that changes of this sort would harm the practical expressive potential of language (as when we here judge that this useful word's distinct meaning is dead, to no purpose, and without ready replacement).

> English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance

Languages lose complexity all the time. Ask Italy, Spain, Portugal, France why they don't have a full Latin case system with various suffices to distinguish them. It's not because their ancestors suddenly became stupid. It's just that languages change and a very common outcome is that complexities get lost in time. I can tell you with certainty that this has been happening in Indo-European languages for thousands of years and yet civilization has thrived in the same period.

You're overthinking it in a very judgemental way.

I think I’m allowed to judge loss of expressiveness with no apparent benefit as bad. It’s fine to judge things.

You are perfectly welcome to get stressed out over completely natural processes that happen repeatably in the course of human history, but I would just like you to be aware of this aspect before thinking it improper. Happy new year.

I just don’t think that such things are bound to always be fine, is all. I’m aware of the evolution of language and not upset that folks don’t like it when I put a circumflex in “rôle” these days. I would like to know where new expressive vocabulary is coming in to replace what we’re losing—I don’t see it. Yes slang and such, as always, but those are mostly more close or exact synonyms for existing words and aren’t entering Standard Written English at the same rate we’re losing words, as far as I can tell.

> I wrote these principles after reflecting on the content of contemporary newspapers and broadcast media and why that content disquieted me.

I agree that the principles listed are highly present in American media, especially during an election year. However:

> I really think that most Americans believe these things at a deep level.

I don't think most Americans "believe" these things, so much as these are just typical human cognitive biases that Americans succumb to. If you were to ask most Americans whether they agreed with these statements, they would say "no". But come election time those same people who answered "no" would probably go and vote for a candidate who exhibited these principles. Or given the choice to save money for the future or buy some junk on Black Friday, they would probably choose the junk.

To some extent I have all of those.

To a lesser extent, I believe we all have those, even my thoughtful non-American friends. Some of those flaws might be more characteristic I some people than in other peoples.

So why call it “American” cargo cult? The only uniquely American aspect is that our inability to rise above these flaws is destroying the country.

(I’m actually not American. I’ve just lived in the US for over a decade)

I think the author isn't doing any kind of comparison between Americans and other people - it's just that his focus is entirely on his own country and culture, so he calls this an American problem. I.e., it is a problem in America - but might as well be a problem everywhere else too.

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.

At least those do not seem to be:

> There is no long term

> Certainty is strength, doubt is weakness

> Emulate the purported behavior of successful people

> The end supports the explanation of the means

But you're right in that it can be explained by fundamental attribution error in some part. It's still more understandable when the quite broad cognitive error (it's called fundamental for a reason!) is instantiated to some common manifestations.

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 key to the cargo cult. To enjoy the success of another, just mimic his rituals."

But for instance, this one: "Good intentions suffice: You can always apologize." How is a culture of casual forgiveness related to cargo cults? That sounds like a Protestant approach to the topic of forgiveness, and insofar as Protestantism has been influential in America that approach to forgiveness probably does accurately generalize the American public. But where is the cargo cult angle?

the way i read is it that we have the American Cargo Cult and these are some principles that help explain what it is. E.g. "Good intentions suffice: You can always apologize." When you see everyone just apologizing you internalize that just having good intentions suffice without understanding why this may be the case.

Because it's magical thinking to believe that the harm caused by the consequences of your actions is ameliorated by your intentions beforehand or your apology afterward. A civilization built on Protestantism wouldn't be less superstitious for holding these as cultural values. Which is where I guess the cult part comes in.

It may well be magical thinking, but magical thinking isn't synonymous with cargo cults. Cargo cults seem like a particular sort of magical thinking; a subset of magical thinking. As I understand the concept, a cargo cult is specifically characterized by one group of people superficially emulating another without understanding the underlying mechanisms in play.

If the Protestant approach to forgiveness is relating to cargo cults, perhaps it's because they witnessed Catholics talk about forgiveness and decided to adopt that aspect of the Catholic philosophy without also appreciating the importance of the Catholic concept of penance (Catholics talk about forgiveness a lot, but don't give so freely as Protestants.) So perhaps Protestants are cargo culting Catholics.

I know a few Catholics who'd probably smirk in agreement with the above, but I'm not convinced of it myself. I'm neither a Protestant nor a Catholic and although I was raised as one and grew up surrounded by the other, I never felt I understood either particularly well. So it's possible I've gotten it all wrong.

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.

Even if they can all be reduced one one generic complaint, seeing the specific manifestations of is spelled out is quite helpful.

In the same way, we teach students the derived results of mathematics, instead of just telling them the axioms and assume they can figure out the consequences themselves.

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.

Yes, the phenomenon is true, but the point of the article is that it's a problem, and leads to bad outcomes. In your example, you've "became a leader simply by being arrogant". Were you, in your arrogance, to make a mistake, wouldn't your followers walk right into it and suffer the consequences?

> Emulate the purported behavior of successful people

This one is very obvious and appears everywhere. People are fascinated by Jobs and the like, some even go as far as trating their employees like he did, considering this is one of the critical factors of his success.

This is scarily accurate, thanks for sharing kick.

You're welcome! Always happy to share!

Why is this called a "cargo cult"? Whatever the merit of these observations, this is not what a cargo cult is.

""" Emulate the purported behavior of successful people

This is the key to the cargo cult. To enjoy the success of another, just mimic his rituals. """

Because Trumpism wasn't in the vernacular when it was compiled.

How does this compare to non-American media and culture? Is it simply a human problem?

This is great. And not uniquely American.

Such a terrible experience on mobile. Sigh. WTB a new Internet where only ten html tags are allowed.

https://readerstyle.com/

Is it? I find a raw page like this better for pure reading than the majority of “well designed” websites, and reader mode works wonderfully.

Here is my experience: The text is tiny and I cannot double-tap to zoom into the article. When I use “reader view” the article disappears except for the donation section. When I rotate my phone to try to be able to read the text by making it bigger, a bar at the top eats a chunk of the page at all times and cannot be closed. A plain vanilla raw page is exactly what I’m wishing for.

worked great on my ios device

Perfectly fine on my Android device as well.

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