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Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

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Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#151

Post by philwelch »

rmah wrote: post #123

I understand that the author was just using WW1 western front strategy & tactics for illustrative purposes, but I feel that far too many people think that the leadership of the armies involved were simply idiots, stuck in the mud, etc. The reality is quite different. Most military strategists understood before the war broke out how important recent tech developments (e.g. machine guns, improved artillery, etc) were i…

It's really not that far between the Swiss border and the coast of the North Sea if you have enough soldiers to dig trench lines, either.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#152

Post by watwut »

danaris wrote: post #84
karatinversion wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In cultures without industrialized agriculture, losing that many people to war would doom everyone. The Black Death killed an estimated 40-50% of Europeans between 1347 and 1351, but the survivors were not doomed. In fact, living standards increased as the amount of agricultural land per person increased.

To clarify what dukeyukey said a little further: The Black Death killed 40-50% of the population indiscriminately . Wars killed able-bodied men in their prime almost exclusively—removing a huge chunk of those best able to bring in the harvest (many able-bodied women can help, of course, but some percentage of those are pregnant or caring for babies for much of the day), without removing a proportional chunk of those…

> Wars killed able-bodied men in their prime almost exclusively

Definitely not true and increasingly not. Civilians, especially old and vulnerable die due to violence of soldiers, general violence, lack of food, medicine, having to move without support and so on. Armies extract very much needed resources and destabilize places.

Plus, civilians are often targets - WWII notoriously killed more civilians then soldiers.

Being soldier of front line is massive risk factor. But they are not exclusively victims, as non soldiers people die due to their activity everywhere they go.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#153

Post by jonplackett »

bobthechef wrote: post #88
jonplackett wrote: post #37

> Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes. Most western governments: "Don't worry, COVID is just like the Flu"

I don't know which planet you're from, but on planet Earth, all Western governments are currently in the middle of aggressively coercing their citizens into getting vaccinated.

I'm talking about the beginning of the pandemic. Remember that bit where our leaders literally went to shake hands with covid patients, in hospitals, without masks on? Most also compared it to Flu.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/05/boris-johns...

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#154

Post by jonplackett »

h2odragon wrote: post #67
jonplackett wrote: post #37

> Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes. Most western governments: "Don't worry, COVID is just like the Flu"

"covid is just like the flu" or "covid is just like smallpox" are both stupid; and even more stupid is the notion that those are the only choices A hallmark of human stupid I've noticed is the "It's what we're supposed to do " factor. We know its dumb but we do it anyway because "its what the job description says", or "its what the boss would want" or so on. Where we abnegate our judgement for that of another is ofte…

Exactly! But it was too big of a shift in perspective for most to get their head around, and they clung to these ideas - Britain apparently based out entire response to covid on our Flu pandemic plan (which went... badly)

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#155

Post by philwelch »

Shmebulock wrote: post #26
Animats wrote: post #18

The author may be onto something. Or they may have had one good idea and are now trying to make it fit too many problems. WWI did have moments of extreme stupidity. But the real problem was that, for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense. Machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches could resist most attacks. When that wasn't enough, both sides had plenty of railroad cap…

>for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense In the seminal book "On War" which was published in 1832 and is still required reading in many military academies, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz explicitly says that defense is stronger than offense. Maybe this intensified in WWI

Tactically, defense is stronger than offense in that you need a numerical advantage to defeat a prepared defense.

Strategically, there is a lot of value in the attack because you can choose the time and place of fighting to your advantage. This didn't pan out on the Western Front of WWI for a variety of reasons.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#156

Post by cbnotfromthere »

nradov wrote: post #100
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #47

My working definition of stupidity is making poor predictions that lead to self-harm. The more stupid the predictions, the more extreme the self-harm. I'm not sure trying to improvise a way through a novel kind of conflict counts as stupid so much as untrained. Maybe there was someone in WWI saying "This is obviously wrong and won't work - we should do this other thing instead." Maybe there wasn't. At this distance i…

Case in point: former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He was obviously quite intelligent, in the sense that he was well educated and would have scored highly on any standard IQ test. Yet he consistently made stupid decisions with drastic consequences for the entire world.

"Yet he consistently made stupid decisions with drastic consequences for the entire world"

I'm sure you can easily mention 2/two such decisions.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#157

Post by philwelch »

nonameiguess wrote: post #126
Shmebulock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense In the seminal book "On War" which was published in 1832 and is still required reading in many military academies, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz explicitly says that defense is stronger than offense. Maybe this intensified in WWI

This is still true and accepted military doctrine. We look for at least a 3:1 force ratio before considering attack a viable option. It's not exactly scientific and plenty of military historians have questioned the validity of this rule of thumb, but it still is the official doctrine, at least of the US Army. I can't speak for other countries. Force ratio doesn't have to be strictly numerical, though. Offense can hav…

> But in general, defense always has the advantage. They get to choose where to fight, they can prepare their positions, they don't need to expose themselves.

I'm curious about the "they get to choose where to fight" question, actually.

I can see where this would apply on a tactical scale, like if I'm preparing an ambush. But on an operational scale, doesn't the attacker choose where and when to fight?

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#158

Post by outworlder »

aj3 wrote: post #53
Shmebulock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense In the seminal book "On War" which was published in 1832 and is still required reading in many military academies, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz explicitly says that defense is stronger than offense. Maybe this intensified in WWI

Now we have cyber domain where this is definitely not true.

Not sure.

Let's say we have fortifications. People are needed to man them. This is understood by everyone. Entry points are checked, etc.

Compare with 'cyber' systems. How many people are adding features, working on bugs and the like, versus how many are even looking into security vulnerabilities?

Translating to the physical domain, it would be as if we were building a fort, then moving almost everyone to build extensions or new forts, with a handful responsible for the security of all fortresses - and the paths in between them! In the dark.

The fact that most systems are not immediately "owned" speaks volumes on how difficult this is to accomplish. Barring zero days, the main way one gets compromised is by making mistakes (not patching, leaving systems unsecured, etc). That is, there's a door that's open and unguarded...

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#159

Post by philwelch »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
crispyambulance wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the most toxic things that happens in politics is re-framing a problem away from rational competence towards emotive and narrative non-logic. In politics emotional and even irrational narratives are a centerpiece of how effective leaders lead. In virtually all sufficiently complicated human affairs there is NEVER enough facts and visibility at hand to make objective decisions. Moreover, now more than ever, i…

Which is kind of why democracy got popular - it got rid of leaders, it confined appeals to emotion to the election circus, and replaced energetic leadership with boredom of mind-numbing parliamentary meetings - and in the process removed one of the biggest threat to ongoing peace and prosperity, namely leaders "appealing to emotion, history, cultural background" to get their subjects to do something stupid. I mean, w…

Democracy provides an inherent advantage to an "energetic leader" who can manipulate people at scale, because that's how you win elections.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#160

Post by philwelch »

oblio wrote: post #41
duncanawoods wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the Ludendorff offensive failed I don't think you can call stormtroopers alone a solution. High casualties, outrunning supply and obtaining territory that is hard to defend which weakens your overall position. I don't agree that tanks had reached some ineffective impasse. Quoting wikipedia: > By 1918, tank capabilities and tactics improved, their numbers increased and, combined with French tanks, finally helped…

You're kind of talking past each other :-) He's saying that tanks became less effective during WW2, at first offense was overpowering defense thanks to tanks, airplanes and improved logistics. During WW2 defense started getting closer to offense, at least on land (air power improved greatly and it was the thing which facilitated all major offensives). For example during the Battle of Kursk German tanks couldn't break…

The Soviets also had more tanks, though.
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