I probably first encountered the idea of cargo culting through a criticism of its casual usage, similar to this piece. It's ironic to see people defending repeatedly doing something whose true meaning they don't understand, in hopes that it will improve their team in some tangible way. And even when the truth is demonstrated to them, they persist in doing the same incorrect thing. Surely someone has created a term for this type of behavior!
There's this idea that "everyone knows what is being talked about" when a term like cargo cult is used casually, and I don't think that's true for these little tech parables. Often, they're used rhetorically to try to win arguments by appealing to the authority of a piece of terminology being well known, in itself. The alternative is painstakingly constructing an argument bespoke to the actual details of the present circumstance.
There's this idea that "everyone knows what is being talked about" when a term like cargo cult is used casually, and I don't think that's true for these little tech parables. Often, they're used rhetorically to try to win arguments by appealing to the authority of a piece of terminology being well known, in itself. The alternative is painstakingly constructing an argument bespoke to the actual details of the present circumstance.