It has been argued that objectivity and certainty have become a fetish in the Western world, casting uncertainty in the role of an enemy which needs to be defeated. In this post, we draw parallels with cult like behavior and the indiscriminate use of the scientific method. What role will Generative AI play in our grasping for certainty?
A Cargo Cult is a fascinating occurrence. The cults began appearing at the end of WW 2, when the USA military left bases of islands in the Pacific. The indigenous people of some of these islands began to reenact the behaviors, rituals, and artefacts of the USA soldiers. This included performing military drills, building makeshift runways and control towers, and bamboo replica planes. The actions and behaviors were carried out in the belief that the actions would result in material benefit. Specifically, the hope that the cargo ships which used to bring supplies to the USA troops would reappear (Berlin, 1994).
The use of the term Cargo Cult has also passed into metaphor. The metaphor is used to provide perspective on groups who copy the actions of a system or a process in the hope of getting a desired outcome. The actions are carried out without an understanding of the underlying principles of the process or system which they copy. The Cargo Cult metaphor describes the consequences of paying only superficial attention, leaving the depth and complexity of a problem unexplored (Ahmed, 2011).
We have probably all experienced situations where an idea, strategy, process, or ritual which has produced an outcome our group has desired has been successfully implemented elsewhere. In the hope of achieving the same result, the group or organization to which we belong has copied the process. However, the adoption has been carried out at the propositional and procedural level, the underlying dynamics, subtleties, and nuance which produced the outcome elsewhere are not fully understood. As a result, the experience has been underwhelming at best and destructive at worst. Organizational change strategies are an illustrative example from the corporate world, but our desire for methods which produce specific outcomes affects all parts of our cultural life.
The scientific method, a yielder of astonishing positive outcomes in our culture, has at worst produced a cult of objectivity. This cult of objectivity begins in using scientific procedures to produce a sense of certainty (Kuhn, 2012). What follows is a sense of faith that certainty can be achieved if a technical process is followed. As a result, uncertainty becomes something to be solved, not a natural part of existence. The external world is then something which can be controlled by engaging with it technically.
The Cult of Objectivity, drawing from the above perspective, is an attempt to remove all uncertainty by following scientific procedures regardless of how appropriate they may be to the context at hand. This desire manifests like a Cargo Cult, with the cargo in this case being certainty and not supplies. As we have discussed many times on this blog, the scientific method is but one way we have of engaging productively with the world, not THE way of engaging with the world. If all we did as an individual was attend to the world through scientific methods, we would find that the cargo did not arrive as we hoped, we can never have total certainty.
The reason we cannot have total certainty, as Whitehead (2010) observes, is that the world and universe is an interconnected web of relations in constant change. Cause and effect is a tough case to make, and even when the case has been made the circumstances may have changed so that the result cannot be repeated. From this point, we could accept that the scientific method has its limits, and the world contains mystery which discloses itself through science, reason, intuition, and imagination (McGilchrist, 2021), not just through following prescribed methods.
Generative AI may become a deity to the Cult of Objectivity. The technology is asked questions and it provides answers, plausibly presented. If the answers are taken as the cargo of certainty, then it may have a disconnecting effect. If the answers stop us looking because we are now superficially “know”, then we have lost connection with the journey and lost touch with the depth of reality.
Reading
Trompf, Garry, and Pauline McKenzie Aucoin, eds. Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements: Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994.
Ahmed, A.S., 2011. Millennium and charisma among Pathans: a critical essay in social anthropology. Routledge.
Kuhn, T (2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 50th Edition.
McGilchrist, I., 2021. The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. What Then is True?. Volume Two. Perspectiva Press
Whitehead, A.N., 2010. Process and reality. Simon and Schuster.
