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A perfect example of this is the young-earth creationism movement, which is a fully fledged cargo cult in this sense. It publishes legitimate-looking books and papers, has intellectual leaders who are highly regarded within the group, and an army of well-trained foot soldiers on YouTube and other social media sites. Cargo cults are by no means limited to Polynesia, or even less developed countries. They are everywhere.

I mean pretty much all religion is a cargo cult. How is a cargo cult fundamentally different than Catholicism, which has a series of rituals in preparation of the return of Jesus?

I guess I wasn't entirely clear on this, but I meant that YEC is an example of cargo cult science in the sense described by the GP.

Generally religions have some justification for practicing revolving around what happens after you die

Isn’t that the same thing as a cargo cult? The key shared similarity is that neither religious people nor cargo cultists understand how their desired goal works (a good afterlife or cargo respectively). Both groups believe they can obtain their desired goal, despite having no knowledge of its mechanism of action, if they blindly carry out their respective rituals.

That is a very interesting view, thank you for sharing it.

I've often used "cargo cults" as a way to categorize stupid ritualistic things about the world I didn't like, but it's good to be reminded that the world isn't so two dimensional.

This is a problem with the cargo cult analogy, the observer assumes to be an outsider, while it would be more useful to the observer to assume of being part of it.

It is very difficult to be a part of a different group. Even if you move there it would often take years to become a member, if you ever can get that much trust.

The idea is sound, but don't assume you understand the members enough to do a good job.

I think they meant you should assume that YOU are part of a cargo cult. You should look for ways your own viewpoints/society/etc are cargo-cultish

Like Feynman says “The first principle is not to fool yourself, and you are the easiest to fool.”

Case in point:

>> I think a better example of a cargo cult than bad science is climate change denial. The followers see the potential loss of "cargo" in the form of their current way of life as a problem and the leaders apply the skills that brought them success in politics to that problem. Someone good at reading legal documents is going to think that there is something wrong with scientific papers.

Specifically: "The followers see..." - it is not known what climate change "deniers" believe - rather, people tell each other stories about what they believe, and believe these stories to be true. Some humans are currently smart enough to realize that this behavior is flawed in certain scenarios (race/gender/etc stereotypes), but when it comes to ~political stereotyping the mind (and mainstream "right thinking" culture/media/etc) will defend the delusional practice to the death.

Typically these topic are argued primarily using memes (Gish Gallop, Whataboutism, Brandolini's Law, etc) and rhetoric (rendering it not possible for a strict logical perspective to "win"), with some stats and studies included to give the appearance of objectivity, permanently locking humans into this ~conceptual Overton Window.

If humans could analyze and evaluate the system we are embedded in with the same emotional/psychological detachment we analyze computer systems with it would be a big improvement, but I do not see it happening anytime soon.

One does not have to look far from our current field to find similar rituals.

More than one capital-A style agile consultants have told me that they don't really believe their scripture but the job pays well.

I can believe that. I work with Kubernetes-shaped objects, and the rituals we go through can not in any way be technically motivated. But there are conferences held and new software written so who cares, really. Nobody really needs this stuff and we all know it.

I suspect that the leaders of the cargo cults were leaders in that society before the "Outside Context Problem" happened, and that the ideas followed by the cult will come from what kind of leader they were. If they were previously a religious leader then the cult would look like a religion.

I think a better example of a cargo cult than bad science is climate change denial. The followers see the potential loss of "cargo" in the form of their current way of life as a problem and the leaders apply the skills that brought them success in politics to that problem. Someone good at reading legal documents is going to think that there is something wrong with scientific papers.

A climate change denial group in the UK [1] rented office space from one of the scientific institutions that used to meet in Carlton House Terrace. The GWPF held meetings where they could talk in a sciency way even though they were not reporting any real science that they had done themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foun...

This is a real problem. Realistically, a well researched flat earth scientist could destroy the average nasa scientist in a debate. You only need to lie about or misrepresent a few facts to undermine a whole field, and to an outside observer it looks like science got conclusively btfo. Of course, given enough time the nasa scientist will be able to piece things together, but they might never be able to recover some people.

While there are legitimate concerns about the scientific method being too strict, I think it's necessary to help us keep faith in a field. That's why I dislike fields that lean into methodological anarchy, like critical theory. They really have no business claiming any sort of authority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

The logical conclusion of that is the Gish Gallop:

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

> The Gish gallop /ˈɡɪʃ ˈɡæləp/ is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution.[1][2]

Even if it's a moderated debate where an outright gallop isn't allowed, it's still easier for the dishonest party to erect a strawman claim than it is for the honest one to carefully rebut it, especially if the dishonest claim is so far into wackyland it's Not Even Wrong and requires a lot of its assumed premises to be demolished first.

And with how modern media is structured, for short drive-by statements and social media engagement, this (I would argue natural) human argument style is made a thousand times worse.

Realistically, a well researched flat earth scientist could destroy the average nasa scientist in a debate. You only need to lie about or misrepresent a few facts to undermine a whole field, and to an outside observer it looks like science got conclusively btfo. Of course, given enough time the nasa scientist will be able to piece things together, but they might never be able to recover some people.

> While there are legitimate concerns about the scientific method being too strict, I think it's necessary to help us keep faith in a field.

Important phrase: "keep faith in" - faith is always in play (it is fundamental to culture & consciousness), and it is healthy for the institution of science to acknowledge it imho.

> That's why I dislike fields that lean into methodological anarchy, like critical theory. They really have no business claiming any sort of authority.

Might this be an instance of "You only need to lie about or misrepresent a few facts to undermine a whole field, and to an outside observer it looks like {the field} got conclusively btfo"?

You are discussing your opinion/interpretation of critical theory, necessarily, but it would be very easy for readers (or even yourself) to form a belief (which is typically perceived as knowledge) that your subjective evaluation is objective and accurate.

Science and its methodologies are excellent for figuring out the physical realm, but watch out if you apply these methods to the metaphysical realm.

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

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

> Important phrase: "keep faith in" - faith is always in play (it is fundamental to culture & consciousness), and it is healthy for the institution of science to acknowledge it imho.

Science does rest on unfalsifiable foundations, but this isn't productive to discuss. I'm talking about the faith that scientists aren't making stuff up given the reasonable foundations we all already agree on.

> Might this be an instance of "You only need to lie about or misrepresent a few facts to undermine a whole field, and to an outside observer it looks like {the field} got conclusively btfo"?

I don't think so. If you accept my premise that authoritative fields should be held to strict and conservative scientific standards, then critical theory is categorically ruled out by it's own definition. Yet people dress it up as if it were strict and conservative field, like a cargo cult.

> You are discussing your opinion/interpretation of critical theory, necessarily, but it would be very easy for readers (or even yourself) to form a belief (which is typically perceived as knowledge) that your subjective evaluation is objective and accurate.

I think I made my premises clear, but I dislike the suggestion that they are merely my opinions. Most people actually share my views, but are willing to pick and choose when they apply them.

> Science and its methodologies are excellent for figuring out the physical realm, but watch out if you apply these methods to the metaphysical realm.

I'm not applying science to critical theory. My issue with critical theory is it's methods.

> Science does rest on unfalsifiable foundations, but this isn't productive to discuss.

How could you possibly know such a thing? What does "not productive" even mean in this context?

> I'm talking about the faith that scientists aren't making stuff up given the reasonable foundations we all already agree on.

Ya, me too - is it not weird that those who subscribe to science because it "does not" deal in faith do so based on faith?

> I don't think so. If you accept my premise that authoritative fields should be held to strict and conservative scientific standards, then critical theory is categorically ruled out by it's own definition. Yet people dress it up as if it were strict and conservative field, like a cargo cult.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"