[sprafa]

another way to look at it is that cargo cult thinking is the default mode for human thinking. This is something I've noticed recently and increasingly believe to be true. The vast majority of people do NOT take the time to build an opinion from weighing multiple sources of information, looking for counter arguments etc. Cargo cult is the default mode for a civilization.

[N00bN00b]

That has to be true, right? There's just way too much to understand and it's impossible to come up with an absolute ordering of importance. At some point you have to delegate huge chunks of your understanding.

And it works 9 out of 10 times. It's just that one time that's a problem, but it's still probably the most optimal strategy for nearly everyone.

[kharak]

Is it a strategy if it's inevitable?

I have almost no understanding of anything. Everyday I use technology that just works. What happens in the background, I'll never know. I interact with complex social systems without knowing what makes them work or how my interactions affect me and any of these systems.

All of this works, because I build simple heuristics on everything I interact with. Mostly, these heuristics are called expectations. I expect something to happen, because I don't know with certainty that it will.

"I know that I don't know".

[blackpowder12]

There's a difference between knowing you don't understand something and thinking that you do - that's the difference between cargo cult thinking vs actual thinking.

Cargo cults are antivaxx, anti-climate change. Things that are obviously not true, but that many people want to believe so they do. The issue is that this kind of thinking is actually default, which I've grown to understand recently. IE many people who are in favor of good things don't really have a deep understanding of why that is - they've just adopted an opinion that sounds good to them. This is particularly pronounced in ie economics and politics, where understanding is extremely shallow.