Discussion Of Cargo Cult

This discussion was moved here from CargoCult on 9-Jan-98, by TomStambaugh

DaveSmith said, on either 10-Apr-96 or 4-Oct-96: I like much of this, except for the title. I think "CargoCult" is better used to describe situations where the current inhabitants of an organization are in awe of an artifact (piece of technology, body of code, policy, etc.) that's either been left by ancient, venerable, (and now gone from the scene) ancestors, or has been deposited from a great height by distant "experts." The artifact remains in use, but the awe precludes close inspection or (gasp!) attempts at modification. Would "Protective Cover" or "Hide In The Org Chart" be more descriptive?

LloydBlythen said on either 10-Feb-97 or 2-Oct-97: No mention of Marcus Aurelius - wasn't it he who spoke of reorganising to give the illusion of progress?

AdamHill said on 30-Aug-97: I also use the term CargoCult to refer to a piece of code or a process that no one dares change due to ignorance or laziness.

This could be a case of DontFixItIfItAintBroken?, but usually it's because the code is a HouseOfCards.

TomStambaugh said on 9-Jan-98: I share the feeling that "CargoCult" names a different Pattern than the one described here.

To me, "CargoCult" suggests the idea of copying superficial aspects of something while completely misunderstanding or ignoring the underlying principle that makes the original (and is hoped to make the copy) work.

For example, newcomers to object-oriented design sometimes label random structures "Something-Or-Other-Object", or "Some-Random-Class", apparently in hopes that by naming something an object or a class, an object-oriented design will result.

As another example, some drawing packages are labeled as "object oriented", even though they do not support abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, or combine state and behavior. They follow the "CargoCult" pattern because they attempt to present the appearance, on the screen, of other object-oriented software...they have menus, selections, graphics, palettes, icons, and so on.

Perhaps we can find a new name for the pattern currently named CargoCult, and in the meantime, if anyone concurs with me, we can flesh out TemporaryCargoCult in PatternForm.

Perhaps a good name for this last antipattern is BuzzwordMakeover?, which happens when a crack team of IS types is commissioned to wrap up a TooScaryToReplace product to meet current VacuVocabulary?. -- RussBrown?

It seems we have three AntiPatterns here. I've seen all of these firsthand, and none are pleasant beasts. I'd suggest the name CosmeticSurgery? for the original, HolyGrail for the one about sacred legacy code, and leave CargoCult to describe TomStambaugh's one about people building non-OO things called by OO names (anyone seen the latest VB hype, hmm?) -- PeterMerel.

JohnBrewer reveals (thanks John):

"The classic cargo cults arose after World War II. During the war, the allies set up bases on a lot of small Pacific islands. Islanders got access to lots of goodies (like Coca-Cola and Spam) as a result. When the war was over, the GIs pulled out, at which time all the goodies dried up. That's when the cargo cults sprung up, doing things like building landing strips in hopes of attracting the giant birds who brought all the goodies.

"There's an article in a 1970s issue of National Geographic describing one such cargo cult. Members paint the word "USA" on their bare chests, and march around with sticks carved in the shape of rifles.

"Definitely a metaphor for a lot of things in the computer world."

In light of the above, I think that the term "Cargo Cult" is best used to refer to: the idea of copying superficial aspects of something while completely misunderstanding or ignoring the underlying principle that makes the original (and is hoped to make the copy) work.

There's a science fiction novel called Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes, in which cargo cults feature prominently.

-- BrettNeumeier

AlfredBester?'s book TheStarsMyDestination? featured in the beginning chapters a cargo cult in the form of The Scientific People. They inhabited a drifting science vessel in space, tatooed themselves with mathematical formulae, and used "very scientific!" and "quant. suf." as general affirmative phrases. To this day, I can't listen to managers repeat buzzword-laden claims that software marketers make without murmuring "very scientific!" ... under my breath of course.

Perhaps cargo cults are related to the motivation for terrorism. That is, because the losing side of a war sustains lots of collateral damage, lots of lunatic organizations, usually religious in nature, crop up thinking they can win a war through collateral damage alone.

Who knows how terrorists think, or the people who are turned on by war ? They are lunatics - on my personal sanity scale, a notch or two below people confused by mere sophisms such as CargoCult thinking.

Since my contribution to Wiki of "CargoCult" sparked some of this, let me say that the definition BrettNeumeier made above reinforces my selection of this term to describe the idea that changing the organizational chart will somehow magically transform the organization. That seems quite similar to building landing strips in the hopes that planes will reappear, though not so absurd that I haven't seen it in action (the org chart thing, not the landing strips). In fact, building a landing strip is more likely to attract an errant aircraft than an org chart is to create an organization. I've heard of pilots looking down and saying, "Hey, isn't that a landing strip down there?" I've never heard of a group of people happening on an org chart and saying, "Hey, isn't this a good way to organize ourselves?" -- DonOlson

This sounds more like TheMapIsNotTheTerrain? - the real org chart is not the published one. -- PeteHardie

Perhaps HideInPlainSight? for the reorg saving the project?

Some subtle distortions of the original meaning of the Cargo Cult metaphor seem to have crept into this discussion. The Cargo Cult phenomenon was notable because it posed a pernicious administrative problem for the French governors of the Melanesian Islands where it first emerged. The natives, having seen white people arriving on ships loaded with Cargo, interpreted this as ghosts returning at the end of time with gifts for the living, initiating a new beginning, and a new existential reality. This was their ancient prophetic vision of the end time. Consequently, they believed all the usual rules of society were obsolete. They put on their best clothes, slaughtered their pigs, engaged in orgiastic behavior, and just generally sat around the fire, drinking Kava, awaiting the end of the End or the new Beginning. They refused to work. This kind of behavior posed obvious social and existential challenges to the Administrators. Consequently, the French governors were at a loss as to how to persuade these natives that this was not the fulfillment of their ancient prophecies. Even after they brought the tribal leaders to the seaport to show them the ships and the sailors unloading cargo,in an effort to provide them with a disillusioning reality check, the interpretation persisted, except that the belief emerged that the French governors were stealing the gifts of the returning dead rightly intended for the native descendants. This created quite a political conflict that lasted for years. The principal characteristics of a Cargo Cult are that ordinary events are interpreted in a grandly mythological way. The Cargo Cult is eschatological in nature. Old norms and rules are abandoned. Attachment to the mythical manner of interpretation is persistent and cannot be thwarted by a consensus reality check. So, the true Cargo Cult metaphor would consist of an interpretation of reality based on the manifestation of ancient prophecies that completely overturns the status quo, and cannot be resisted by any degree of fact finding. If you look at the metaphor in this light, and look around, you can find many more situations where the metaphor seems to resonate. --JohnCave

Yeah. The essential characteristic of Cargo Cults is ignorance of the reality, not being lied to. What DonOlson mistakenly calls a Cargo Cult (a group of people with a common, innocent, delusion) is a technique or behaviour that could be called razzamatazz, that old soft shoe, sleight-of-hand or, if I understand the vernacular, pranking.

The best software example of a cargo cult in action I can think of is a functional specification written in use case terminology and templates. The cargo cultists are the consultants who don't really know what a use case is or that "use case" is a term of art, but they've seen a table of contents that they can squeeze a spec into. The result is comical when it isn't tragic. --MarcThibault

In defense of the cargo-culters, they were doing science, at least initially. The story borders on "western-centrism" and bigotry even. They noticed a pattern and tried to recreate it: planes bring goods. Thus, if they made a plane, or something as close to it as they could, then they could test the hypothesis that plane-shaped things bring goods. You don't know until you try. After all, you can trick fish and tigers with look-alike bait; so maybe the "sky beings" react the same. Just because we know far more about planes than they do does not make their tests "wrong"; they were simply using the best info they had. Our science had to start at square-one once also. I imagine we are currently using some science or medical models that may seem very silly in the future. We simply have incomplete info, and make the best with that. AddingEpicycles brings up similar issues.

Now if legitimate experiments eventually turn into a religion, well, humans do that. Christians believe in talking snakes; so go figure. Some even theorize that religion survived and prospered because it encoded successful experiments into ways that people of the time could relate to. For example, one may not understand the concept of poison chemicals, but saying a dangerous plant is "haunted by fairies" has the same intended effect: avoidance. It's a UsefulLie. Also note that all the rules don't have to be "right", just more than average. It's an organic truth-finding system, not unlike natural selection. Religious/superstitious beliefs that keep a tribe alive and thriving will tend to expand, and vice verse. Some believe the relatively-sudden expansion of human population, range, trade, art, and tools that started roughly 50K years ago was largely triggered by religion. Neanderthals had a large (perhaps larger) brain, but had never developed significant cultural systems and traits.

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