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I think you're getting pushback for these reasons:
1. The times, they are a-changing. The title and conclusion of the article (whilst mild) are telling people not to use an otherwise useful phrase because it might be offensive to Micronesians.
2. Some of the conclusions seem on fragile ground honestly, despite how well researched they are. You start by claiming that Feynman misrepresented cargo cults because he watched a bad movie, but then give lots of examples of tribes doing the exact things he talked about. You even present photos of a "radio tower", mention a "radio" that was just a woman wrapped in wire and other such fake objects.
Feynmann's point was actually an important one about science, not Melanesian tribes. That was just a hook to get students to listen, just like how you used the famous physicist as a hook to get people to read your article. But I'm struggling to see where the inaccuracy is here. Given he spent only a few sentences on it, he did seem to correctly summarize what cargo cults are and the fact that some of them pre-date WW2 and talk about ships is really neither here nor there.
3. There is a strong overtone here of "European settlers were bad and wrong and cargo cults wouldn't exist if they hadn't turned up", which is unsupportable. These were people who started suffered a horrible prion disease because they engaged in cannibalism, something the nasty Europeans put a swift end to everywhere they took control. Their garbled belief systems about good stuff appearing when they get the rituals right weren't caused by Christianity, which is why they had to imagine that the Bibles they'd been given were incomplete to try and make it fit with their pre-existing ideas. In fact the Old Testament explicitly forbids exactly the kind of idolatry they were engaged in, leading to the interesting thought that maybe that rule evolved because it lends itself to self-destructive ritualism and cargo cult-like thinking. Christianity also forbids many other self-destructive ideas often found in isolated tribes, like human sacrifice and inter-tribal warring. If so it would seem like Christianity is the fix, not the cause.
4. The semantic drift in how people use the term seems small. Cargo cult programming doesn't work, that's the reason it's criticized. Given enough copy/pasting from Stack Overflow you might get something that superficially looks right, just like with enough work you can make an airport out of bamboo that looks right, but it won't actually meet its spec for functioning correctly because important stuff will be missing.
Whilst you certainly succeed in making the point that cargo cults were a more complex phenomenon than what Feynman presented in his brief intro, I didn't come away convinced that the metaphor is misused.
> Given enough copy/pasting from Stack Overflow you might get something that superficially looks right, just like with enough work you can make an airport out of bamboo that looks right, but it won't actually meet its spec for functioning correctly because important stuff will be missing.
There’s plenty of code that just works despite not meeting the spec, though. The allegation of cargo culting is levied against empty formalities that betray a misunderstanding of why something works or not. There are plenty of tales in software of “load-bearing code” and lines lost to faded tribal knowledge and even magic comments that are not to be removed because somehow they keep the end program functioning.
Virtue signaling is not driven by effectiveness but by the effort it takes for you to one-up people around you with a holier-than-thou attitude.
In fact, I would go as far as to argue that the point of virtue signaling is to be the least effective as possible, as to maximize the opportunities to one-up people and stand out.
Your side won. Is that not enough for you? What more do you want?
So, because of that I went and checked the definition. Merriam says:
> : the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one's awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action
So I learned something today, that virtue signalling can refer to political issues. I guess on this side of the pond I was more used to it applying to social posturing.
Anyway, that being said, I do feel that the "two party" thing you guys have going there is leading to this increased polarisation and radicalisation, especially online. If you think someone using "virtue signalling" is "attacking your side", you're literally viewing them as "the enemy". "Your side won". That can't be healthy for you. There's a lot of nuance between "your side" and "their side".
Apparently, "they" will moan loudly about being silenced until everyone else has stopped saying things they don't like.
(using "they" as a vague, undefined term, after seeing such a widespread use of "we" in this thread).
Silenced requires a someone to take active steps to do the silencing. At best this is just people choosing to not listen. If you want the blue tribe jab it's got to be something like "they will keep trying to call everyone racists until people stop saying thing they don't like."
What kind of "evidence" beyond the content of the signalling itself it would require? I mean, sure one could make a detailed critique of the article to show why exactly it fits the term very well (TLDR version would be it tries to police the well-understood usage of the term that describes real phenomenon and is useful to prevent imaginary offenses) but it wouldn't be "evidence" - it does not introduce any new facts, only one's opinion. The only factual "evidence" necessary is the content of the article, which is already here.
> Is that not enough for you?
Not even beginning to be close to being enough. Winning would be going back to the times where you can discuss political topic without fear of your life being ruined and your livelihood being taken away from you. Winning would be where there aren't thousands of people actively searching to hurt other people for disagreeing with them. Winning would be not having dozens of people in a lot of corporations specifically paid obscene money for pushing idpol. Winning would be forgetting the meaning of the word "cancelled" that we learned in the last decade. Winning would be for the culture to change so that trying to hurt people for disagreeing would be shameful, not praised. We may have hope for it to happen one day, but we're not even close to being true now. It may take years or decades - just it it took decades for "woke nonsense" to take root in the culture - and may very well not happen at all, any election results nonwithstanding.
"Virtue signaling" means someone is acting only to signal their own virtue, and not because they actually believe in the thing they are doing or expressing.
There is no evidence of that.
[Emphasis altered -- CRC.]
Really? I never knew it had to be a necessary part of it, that they don't believe in [whatever]. Are you sure that's part of the general definition, and not just something you made up?
Even if you do believe in something, if you keep preening yourself in sanctimony about how virtuous you are for believing in it -- what is that, then, if not virtue signaling?
And "wokeism" aside, he gives a good obscure-history lesson as to why the phrase "cargo cult" doesn't actually mean what most of us think it does. That itself made it worth a read for me.
He personally may not. We do know though there are a lot of people very eager to wage such campaigns, and we know speech-policing campaigns have very real and very far reaching consequences sometimes. So the sensitivity to such things is heightened right now. And I am sure that if the "rambling on his personal blog" contained some things that are considered culturally unacceptable (something like Damore memo, for example), there would be a lot of people who would call not only for widespread discussion but for suppression and deplatforming of the person expressing it. I think this is extremely wrong approach, regardless of the content, but I think also this may be the reason why discussing this seriously is an appropriate reaction. To be clear, I do not call (and I am extremely opposed to) attacking the person writing it in any way. But I think it deserves the pushback - in the form of discussion and critique - that it is getting. Language policing and censorship is very real, very dangerous and should be discussed and pushed back against.
> he gives a good obscure-history lesson as to why the phrase "cargo cult" doesn't actually mean what most of us think it does.
I am not sure that's actually true. Most of us probably thinks cargo cult is a religions practice somewhere in the Pacific that mimics external looks of the logistical operations performed by Westerners on their islands to expect the results of coming of goods that the Westerners brought in (cargo), without understanding what caused the actual logistic processes to happen and how they work, just by magic means. Most of us would probably have the specific details wrong, but that's true for almost every area. The article provided very good plenty of details, very interesting - but with all the "akshually"-ing there, I don't think it has proven the main premise wrong. The information itself is very much appreciated, but I don't think the conclusion - which seems to be "you are all wrong and should stop using this term" - is warranted.
He's skipping Twitter and jumped straight to hectoring people, going to the extent of even casting blanket criticism on the points being made by anyone using the metaphor.
Did the author make this article compulsory?
Did the author force Hacker News to put this on the front page?
Did the author threaten to sack you if you didn't read, understand and comply with the article?
Freedom of speech means that you will see things that you disagree with. But to conflate seeing an article in a _pull_ model, ie a title that you have to click on as hectoring people seems a bit, well far.
Its not like its a twitter pile on, this seems like a well reasoned, researched article with sited sources. Even if you don't agree with the outcomes.
You might find them annoying, but these people "yelling at clouds" in their personal blogs are actually refreshing when all you see around are people leaning towards repeating the darkest part of our collective history.
I read the post as the author decribing facts and imparting instructions of what we should do ("It's time to do X", "The cargo cult metaphor should be avoided") because they believe their knowledge/opinions/morals/beliefs are better than mine, and somehow they can dictate what to do; how should I feel, what should I think.
Otherwise I am oppressing, contributing to oppress, perpetuating something, [insert other accusations].
As in the past 15 years. It's enough already.
The real question is why the author is doing this? Is it ego? Money? Clicks? Pure and true altruism?
And here "virtue signalling" comes as a possible valid answer too.
The problem with saying it's virtue signaling is that when you resort to ad hominem attacks, you're conceding the argument. Attacking character concedes the argument being made. Well I don't concede. I have a good argument against it. My argument is that nobody cares about the etymology or morality of a word. They care about its meaning and context. People don't learn language by reading etymologies. Nobody cares one way or the other about the morality of the first person who said it or popularized it especially if it happened a hundred years ago. We don't need to look up the etymology of every word or phrase before using it, and asking people to do that is unrealistic and unreasonable.
Is it virtue signaling? I don't know, and I don't care. His character doesn't matter to me. It doesn't affect whether or not his idea is a good one. It's a bad idea, and leave it there.
And doesn't matter if it was written in a blog.
Pablo Escobar could say that he understand his values (whatever they were; maybe money and power over all other values?) and that he works to apply them every day. He advocated for his own values and morals (ruthlessly). This doesn't make him an Ethical person.
And more to the point, you're not believable. Are you really going to say that because Pablo Escobar may have had a set of values and acted on those values, we have to throw away that whole idea?
Hitler was really fond of his pet dog, does having a pet dog make someone evil?
In any case, here's what I dislike about your original comment, and what it seems to express.
Instead of engaging with the ideas and values presented in the article, you feel back on attacking the very idea of expressing ideas and values. You know that's a ridiculous position, I know you do, but it's easier to do that than it is to actually engage.
Depends. Have you heard of the terms or phrases "preachy"? "Holier-than-thou"? "Pearl-clutching"? "Making mountains out of molehills"? "Language police"? "White knighting"? "Misapplied effort"? "Professionally offended"?
Are those positive?
And who gets to decide what's "bad behavior" and what's merely use of an old term? Based on what? Their feelings that use of the term offends someone from some group that they themselves don't belong to and have probably never even talked to IRL? That it's use implies some intend? That certain practices of some groups can't be referenced as a name, if those groups have had a sorry past? That the only ethnic people who use such terms are just the ex-opressors of said group, and not also people who have been themselves colonized or opressed? Does he think e.g. Jewish or Latin American or African developers don't use such terms too to describe the notion?
L-1) There's a purely informational layer, where he's talking about the meaning and history of the phrase "cargo cult."
L-2) There's an logical layer, where he attempts to use the information presented to persuade the reader to (not) modify their beliefs, feelings, or actions in some way.
L-3) There's an attitude layer, which involves the way he addresses the reader, his "virtue signaling," the quality of his writing, his overall tone.
(In another situation I might also consider:
L-4) The presentation layer, which involves the look of the website, its responsiveness, etc.)
In my opinion generally information should be most important, and then we look at the logic, and last but least consider the attitude. But I feel like increasingly in society we look at the attitude and if it turns us off, we summarily discard the entire thing, or even take an opposing view on principle. Even if the information and logic is sound. Hence the bulk of the comments here dismissing what he's saying out of hand because essentially it's too woke.
So my answer is that even conceding that the things you mention ("preachy" "holier-than-thou" etc.) are negative, ideally we ought to be able to critique just that layer without discarding the rest of the communication.
EDIT: Responding to your edit, I think he has no more or less right to decide what's good or bad than anyone else. Just because he's saying we ought to reject the phrase doesn't mean we have to actually do it, so I don't feel personally offended or enraged by his exhortation.
So, it makes sense that the thing the author prioritizes and focuses on will be criticized. Would many be criticizing a historical article on the origins of the term, or the plights of the people it covers?
Collective consensus.
But that doesn't mean the author is not entitled to have an opinion and express it.
The commenters who dislike the general tone are of course entitled to express that, however, it is baffling to me that the argument is that Author is entitled to their opinion and the commenters who disagree should not comment.
>> And who gets to decide what's "bad behavior" >Collective consensus.
I know this is generally the way of things however, I dislike this as it is mob rule.
In the same way that I hate K8s networking.
For example: "spook" was allegedly used at some point as a slur against black people, so if you have ever used the term "spooky" in a Hallowe'en context you have committed the immortal sin of doing a structural racism.
To the underemployed university administrative staff who have never experienced real hardships, this sort of thing is a Big Deal(tm), except we can't call it that because it's insensitive to short people. Correction: people experiencing heightlessness.
To this, I call out the case of the words Spanish speakers have been using to refer to disabled persons.
The word for "disabled person" was at a point in time deemed too insensitive and an outright insult, so around the 1970s the word "subnormal" started showing up even in government acts to appease the virtue signaling crowd.
Except that after a few years the word "subnormal" also managed to find itself as a prime example of a gross PC violation, and therefore they coined the term "minusválido" (i.e., "less than valid", a milder form of "invalid") to appease the PC gods.
But lo and behold, "minusválido" is now also looked poorly by the PC crowd as being offensive.
https://languageacts.org/loaded-meanings/schools-teachers/ri...
How à propos, because in English "disabled" is no longer acceptable and they now demand that you say "differently-abled".
I mean hell it's not even a less accurate description, you're not able to walk but you're able to move around using crutches or a wheelchair or other mobility device. A person who isn't able to walk may still be able to do almost everything day to day (well aside from walking) that a non-disabled (or non-differently abled person, ok that sounds kinda weird) person would be able to, albeit in a different way.
These are the same people who publish "inclusive language guides" with garbage like "don't use the term Brainwave because it's dehumanizing to people with intellectual disabilities".
It's an entire R&D field dedicated to finding new and creative ways to be offended.
It feels… inconsequential.
Non constructive noise from creatures with desire only to chase something.
> It seems like you'ld have to have access to their mental state, no
Of course, absent communication, that would be the only way. Fortunately, communication - such as written text - allows us to let others to witness certain aspects of our mental state, this is one of the points of communication. So, present the communication, we can make certain conclusions about the mental state of the communicator.
The signaling is just pointing it out to make yourself look better, it doesn’t mean you’re lying.
In reality: people have opinions, and they can be different. That's fine.
The number of upvotes (and, presumably, vouches) for the article suggest that you’re in a bubble.
Instead of getting offended, consider this an opportunity to be intellectually curious and learn some interesting history.
False dilemma. No one who ever mentioned the term "cargo cult" is endorsing oppression or promoting rapists, corruption, racists, or any nonsense of this sort.
In fact, your comment reads a lot like a thinly veiled blanked and baseless accusation on anyone who disagrees with a silly hypothesis.
The concept has a very specific meaning in tech circles. No one who uses it is even holding in mind anything related to Melanesia. You can waste as much time as you'd like on virtue signaling by championing a "master-slave vs leader-follower" rebranding, but it's a matter of time before someone out-virtues you and figures out how to frame your own PC term as oppressive. It's exhausting.
> No one who ever mentioned the term "cargo cult" is endorsing oppression or promoting rapists, corruption, racists, or any nonsense of this sort.
doesn't work, as you don't have sources for that.
> No one who uses it is even holding in mind anything related to Melanesia.
Which is the whole point of the article, to give you background.
In the same way that some newspapers have listed "rawdogging" as one of their words of the year, saying "oh its ok you can use this" but neatly forgets to mention what the word _still_ means to a sizeable number of people.
> figures out how to frame your own PC term as oppressive. It's exhausting.
Come on. oppressive? The entire world of corporations is oppressive. You need to conform to not be fired. The "In" words change all the time. The list of banned phrases changes monthly. thats normally down to the whims of just a small bunch of people in the c-suite. If you transgress, you're yeeted out.
That is oppression, not voluntarily reading article that makes you sad.
Stuff like that is exactly what's so dangerous with virtue signaling: It leads to conflating tiny, or possibly non-existent, infractions with serious evil. I'm sure you didn't mean to say people who talk about "cargo cult programming" are corrupt racists and rapists, did you? Or that they promote corruption, racism, and rape?
Maybe you should have tried to find a way to express yourself that didn't make it sound quite so much like that was what you were saying. Or, you know, if this virtue-signaling article didn't exist, this discussion wouldn't exist either, and then you wouldn't have said it.