# Cargo Cult ## Metadata **Status**:: #x **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Created**:: [[2023-06-03]] **Topic**:: [[♯ Mental Model]] ## Synopsis > In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas — he’s the controller — and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes landed. > – [[Richard Feynman]] ## Mentions * [[Matthieu Cneude - 8 Cognitive Biases in Software Development (Highlights)]] * [[Umer Mansoor - YAGNI, Cargo Cult and Overengineering (Highlights)]] * [[Edlyn V. Levine - Cargo Cult AI (Highlights)]]