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Less than five years ago, this term was used to describe what my team was doing. The criticism was correct, and my team did change its ways. At the time, I was

• esperent 2y ago
  > the article will definitely stop me from using the misunderstood version of events as the "true" origin of the term That's absolutely fair and if that had been there point of the article, I'd be 100% behind it. I love learning new things about words and phrases. Etymology is my jam. But no. That wasn't the point of the article. It's saying "you are wrong, you should feel bad, you're not allowed to use the thing you were wrong about anymore". I generally fall quite far on the left, politically. But when people talk about "woke nonsense", this is the kind of thing where I find myself agreeing with them, much as I did a couple of years ago when we were all socially pressured into renaming our "master" branches to "main" branches.
  • kelnos 2y ago
    So what you're saying is that you agree with the underlying message, but because it was presented in a way that offends your sensibilities, you're going to ignore it and continue to use a phrase derived from something that's incorrect and never existed? And really, you're bothered by the idea that 'main' is a more neutral name for the default branch of a git repository, and want to cling to 'master', when that term has traditionally been used to describe someone who enslaves other humans? Really? You're that attached to something like a default branch name in a VCS? Or you aren't, but because it sounded like people were trying to make you feel bad about yourself for using 'master', you're just going to be obstinate and own those libs? All that seems kinda spiteful and petty. You do you, I guess.
    • brabel 2y ago
      > you're going to ignore it and continue to use a phrase derived from something that's incorrect and never existed? I would guess that 90% of phrases and proverbs used in any language fall into that category.
    • esperent 2y ago
      > So what you're saying is that you agree with the underlying message No, that's the complete opposite of what I said. Please read again. The part where I said that the underlying message is "you are wrong, you should feel bad, you're not allowed to use the thing you were wrong about anymore". If the message had been "you're wrong about something, here's the truth, now make up your own mind about whether you want to keep using it", I'd be completely on board with the article. My decision would probably be that I'm gonna keep using the phrase because all of linguistics is built on misunderstandings, mistranslations, and downright lies, so avoiding every phrase that has "bad" origins is a step on the road to 1984. But that's just like, my opinion, man. You can decide otherwise and we can all get along just fine.
      • JohnBooty 2y ago
        I’m always puzzled by this common sort of tone-policing reaction to an article that says “we should do X” or even “you should do X.” This sort of phrasing of one’s opinion is as old as essays and speeches themselves, as far as I know. Here is an english translation of a speech by Cicero, the one from which our good old lorem ipsum placeholder text was derived. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Finibus/1*.html https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de... Of course it is sensible for a person to have an opinion on the conduct of others, and to express that opinion. Where is the problem? Unless said author was in a position of power over me I would understand the “we should X” phrasing as kind of like… the standard way that opinions have been expressed throughout history…
        • esperent 2y ago
          Well, maybe this - writing in this imperative tone - is something that we should work on changing? It seems like a more useful change than policing individual words or phrases because of dubious historical misunderstandings.
  • pyrale 2y ago
    > "you are wrong, you should feel bad, you're not allowed to use the thing you were wrong about anymore". I didn't remember reading that in the article. Just as a second-check, I've re-read and none of what you say appears in the text. You're building a strawman. > you're not allowed to Specifically about this part, we're talking about someone writing on his blog about something he took the time to dig into and sharing his opinion. There isn't much the author can do to be less prescriptive, besides shutting up. This trope of interpreting every counter-cultural opinion, in every form, as "the powers that be want to gag us" is a way of saying that you won't hear even the smallest dissent.
    • esperent 2y ago
      I didn't imply that the article said those exact words, I was restating the article's subtext. I should have used italics rather than quotes though, my bad. > You're building a strawman. Given the large number of people in this thread who got the same impression from the article as me, I don't think so. I think this is the actual subtext of the article, stated simply. > There isn't much the author can do to be less prescriptive, besides shutting up. Actually there's a huge amount they could do to be less prescriptive, such as using phrases like here's what I'm gonna do but you can make up your own mind.
      • pyrale 2y ago
        > Given the large number of people in this thread who got the same impression from the article as me People count doesn't make sound logic. You will find large numbers of people believing the weirdest things, if you're so inclined. > I think this is the actual subtext of the article, stated simply. You used the sentence "you are not allowed". How do you think the blog owner will coerce you if you do not comply with his order ? > Actually there's a huge amount they could do to be less prescriptive, such as using phrases like here's what I'm gonna do but you can make up your own mind. Would you describe your own reply on HN as telling people what they're allowed to do or not to do?
        • GlacierFox 2y ago
  • CRConrad 2y ago
    > ...much as I did a couple of years ago when we were all socially pressured into renaming our "master" branches to "main" branches. Hey, at least it's two letters -- 33% -- shorter.
    • esperent 2y ago
      You're not wrong - objectively, main is an equally good or perhaps even very slightly better name than master. But it's like making a tiny change that requires a huge refactoring - in this case, literally millions of developers were involved, not to mention the countless hours of discussion which are still ongoing years later, as you can see from this thread. Was it worth it?
      • CRConrad 2y ago
        Yeah, heck, of course I didn't mean anyone should go back and rename shit in already existing repos! Sheesh, what a crazy waste of effort that would be. But for new projects it really doesn't bother me that the default nowadays is "main" in stead of "master", was all I meant.
  • api 2y ago
    The best example of this jumping the shark is “LatinX” which was greeted by howls of laughter and genuine offense by Latin people. Latin. There is already a non-gendered word in English because English is not a gendered language. Spanish is, and trying to make it not is… colonialism? What are you going to do redesign an entire language spoken by hundreds of millions of people? To avoid offending… is anyone actually offended? This stuff isn’t harmless either. It helps push people toward the far right by making them sound reasonable.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      I feel this way about “BIPOC.” I find it absolutely enraging that white people not only would other me like that in polite company, but do so in a way that lumps Bangladeshis in with Pakistanis. I tried to explain to my parents why my daughter’s teacher recruited her into a “BIPOC” affinity group and they got very upset.
      • aidenn0 2y ago
        We have anti-harassment training at work, and one of the videos from a few years ago was titled something along the lines of "can you have problematic behavior against your own group" and was a confrontation between someone coded as a second-generation Punjabi and someone stated to be a first generation Gujarati. The kind interpretation of that video is that "there are always subgroups" but it really felt to me as if they were all lumped in the same bucket of "Indian" by the video producer which seems to me to be rather problematic itself.
        • rayiner 2y ago
          Exactly! If the message was “we’re all American and we shouldn’t harass each other” that would be great. But these trainings divide people up into groups—just along arbitrary lines. All of them put white people over here and “people of color” over there. But I suspect the second strongest affinity for most “people of color”—after their own group—is white people. Because that’s who people interact with the most often outside their own group. The culture I’m most familiar with, after Bangladeshi culture, is southern British American culture, because those are the people I grew up around. If you subdivide people into any groups more granular than “American”—which I don’t think you should do—you can’t put me over there with the Taiwanese and Latinos as “people of color.” I don’t know anything about those people and have no greater affinity for them than I do for any random American. My sister in law is Taiwanese, and all her friends are Chinese or Taiwanese. And they seem like lovely people, but I’m more out of place in that setting than I am in a room full of white people in Georgia.
  • vincnetas 2y ago
    Did you also managed to rename "scrum master" ?
    • alfiedotwtf 2y ago
      lol “scrum main”
  • skywhopper 2y ago
    That’s definitely not my read of the article. Are you saying you are offended by someone researching this phrase and then suggesting it’s not a great metaphor for multiple reasons? Do you understand you are the one getting mad about what you think someone said, when they didn’t? Also, “main” is far better name than “master” for the primary branch of a git repo for lots of reasons. Did it hurt anything to change the default? Why are you so attached to the old name? If anything it made our automation code better to stop having hard-coded assumptions of what the main branch was called.
    • bigstrat2003 2y ago
      > Did it hurt anything to change the default? Yes. Change always has a cost associated with it. In some cases, that cost is repaid with benefits. In this case, it hasn't and will never pay benefits. > Why are you so attached to the old name? Because I refuse to comply with self righteous busybodies who think it's their job to ensure that everyone is acting right. It was obnoxious when those busybodies were railing against comic books/rock music/rap/movies/video games, and it's just as obnoxious when they rail against "master" as a technical term.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • Aeium 2y ago
    I disagree with the last sentence. If you have some terminology you don't like, provide an alternative. Main is fine. But like what is the alternative to cargo cult provided here? It's a very concise representation of a pretty complex idea. "You are valuing the ritual associated with an outcome instead of the outcome." Is that my alternative? Main is more concise than master. But how do I boil that down without saying "cargo cult"?
    • dragonwriter 2y ago
      "By rote". If someone is unfamiliar with the common English term or is understands it is "by habit" but isn't getting the implicit comparison with a practice following an understanding of the underlying process it, like the image of "cargo cult" referenced in the metaphor, may need expanded a bit on first encounter, but it is both more concise, and uses direct denotation rather than metaphor.
      • anthonyrstevens 2y ago
        "By rote" != "Cargo cult programming" IMHO
• ForHackernews 2y ago
  Maybe we can all agree to adopt the equally apocryphal parable of the monkeys and the ladder[0] as a cute just-so story to criticize blindly following established practice without good reason. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...
  • Maken 2y ago
    The monkeys and the ladder are a valid metaphor for a different scenario. In the cargo-cult case, the ones who started it were copying others without understanding what they were doing and why is was not working. In the monkeys and the ladder case, the monkey did understand the problem and developed a valid solution for it, and then they keep applying it long after the problem had disappeared. So, the cargo-cult metaphor refers to stick to procedures and best practices as if they were religions precepts, while the monkeys-and-ladder metaphor is about maintaining unnecessary technical debt.
• scotty79 2y ago
  I don't know. Nuanced, more accurate version is way less useful tool of communication than the popular one. Ultimately origins don't matter. Things mean, what they mean now for most people. If it's useful meaning it will be retained and passed on. It it's useless it will be transformed into something more useful or dropped from the language.
• rayiner 2y ago
  You’re making the world worse, not better. First, you’re perpetuating the idea that anybody should be offended by anything like this. You’re never going to meet an actual Melanesian cargo culter, and nobody else should take offense to this phrase. Second, you’re impairing your own ability to communicate with doers because most smart people know what the term “cargo cult” means from Feynman.
  • galactus 2y ago
    Do you believe that language should remain unchanged, or that it should evolve only for reasons beyond conscious intention?
    • rayiner 2y ago
      I’m not okay with evolving language intentionally out of a mistaken belief that minorities are so fragile that we need to change the way we talk.
      • exBarrelSpoiler 2y ago
        Indeed. https://scroll.in/article/1023979/from-outsiders-to-termites-and-infiltrators-how-bangladeshi-came-to-signify-hate-and-difference https://scroll.in/article/1023979/from-outsiders-to-termites...
      • dblohm7 2y ago
        I would argue that such intentional changes to language isn't "evolution" at all. Sure, language evolves, but not by some kind of edict.
    • baggy_trough 2y ago
      It's not evolution - more like language eugenics.
  • throwingrocks 2y ago
    > most smart people know what the term “cargo cult” means from Feynman Unsure which group you’re in after making this generalization
• mnky9800n 2y ago
  What were you doing that was cargo culting?
  • splwjs 2y ago
    social engineer: actually here's a personal anecdote loaded with goodguy words that inform you about how the thing I want you to think is correct. engineer: interesting. what problems has it helped you solve social engineer:
    • mnky9800n 2y ago
      it's true. i just like knowing how things work.
  • sandesh247 2y ago
    Our team was refactoring the codebase to follow ML pipeline best practices, but not enough attention had been paid to problem/task formulation, label quality etc.
• lolinder 2y ago
  I agree that the article was really interesting and useful in fleshing the origins out into a full human story rather than a single cute anecdote, but what the article describes doesn't really change Feinman's story, it just adds to it. Cargo cults exist(ed), and like most religious systems throughout history they hinged on a belief that performing certain rituals would have effects on the real world. Some of them did, in fact, see the trappings of the European colonizers as a form of ritual and attempt to recreate the techno-rituals by creating effigies of the European technology. Nothing in that story is fundamentally disagreed with in TFA. So while it's really helpful to be able to give more life to a previously glib anecdote, the metaphor is still very apt. The main takeaway for me is that cargo cults were really not any different than most polytheistic religions (and therefore most religions) throughout history in viewing ritual as essentially a technology through which to access good things [0]. But I'm afraid that any new term derived from that insight would be even more problematic for trying to distill an even larger swath of human experience into a single phrase. [0] See Bret Devereaux's Practical Polytheism series: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/ https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...
  • BlueTemplar 2y ago
    I love how this article embraces the complexity of the phenomenon : at least one time, not only """cargo culting""" actually worked, it even did so for a logical reason ! > In one unusual case, the islanders built an airstrip and airplanes did come. Specifically, the Miyanmin people of New Guinea hacked an airstrip out of the forest in 1966 using hand tools. The airstrip was discovered by a patrol and turned out to be usable, so Baptist missionaries made monthly landings, bringing medicine and goods for a store. It is pointed out that the only thing preventing this activity from being considered a cargo cult is that in this case, it was effective. See A Small Footnote to the 'Big Walk', p. 59.
    • rolandog 2y ago
      > at least one time, not only """cargo culting""" actually worked, it even did so for a logical reason ! Makes you wonder if one could land a job with a firm handshake.
• _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  So you refuse to use a common in your domain communication concept because? Who does that help? Do you make sure not to use the following 'problematically sourced' terms either? "Grandfathered in" comes from the "grandfather clauses" in post-Reconstruction U.S. laws that allowed white people to bypass literacy tests and poll taxes for voting if their grandfathers had the right to vote. This excluded many Black Americans whose grandfathers had been enslaved and could not vote. This seems like a way more problematic term to use especially when you use it in public facing policies (such as keeping old pricing levels) that apply to your potentially black customers. That could actually be offensive. But it's not because that isn't how normal communication works. People don't go looking to take offense, they take offense when offense is given. Though I would happily expend the brainpower to replace this one. "Rule of thumb" claimed to come from an old law allowing a man to beat his wife with a stick no wider than his thumb. This saying comes from normalized misogynist physical abuse in our society. Again, this one should go way before cargo cult. "Cakewalk" originates from the 19th-century practice of enslaved Black people performing exaggerated dances that mimicked European ballroom styles, often judged by plantation owners. Winners were sometimes awarded a cake. This one is just straight up racist and should go way before cargo cult. Especially to represent something being 'easy'. I can't imagine it feels 'easy' to dance funny to entertain your violent owner. The only 'easy' thing was that is was a brake from the slave driver out in the field. You know what, f' using that term (damn I just reversed the point I was making on myself on this one but f' this term). Heck English itself is problematic/racist at it's roots with it's tendency of saying the french sourced word is proper, and the non-french version is low class. When are we going to take back English from the imposed by violence for French conquerors French influences? The world is already exhausting. Adding in this level of constantly self policing our thoughts/communication that, in the end, leaves us poorer with less tools for communicating concepts is lose/lose. If something makes people feel bad, yes we should change it. But going looking for reasons to be upset about things and reducing our vocabulary/communal communication over 'researched' outrage is a net negative and seems an Orwellian dumbing down.