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?
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.
> 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.
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."
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?