alt Hacker News> Avoiding something [disbanding NASA] for such symbolic reasons [???] is negative cargo cult thinking.
Cargo-cult requires a rigid through-line.
What criteria would you use, to choose to avoid something in order to preemptively avoid hindsight analysis? It's a nonsensical line of thinking.
Cargo cult requires a confusion of cause and effect. Airplanes carrying cargo didn't land because there was a control tower; they landed because of prior causes that also caused the construction of a control tower.
And here, the US does not decline because of some symbolic action, but rather decline causes the action.
This confusion of cause and effect is literally a kind of magical thinking.