Reminds me of Kuhn's idea of Paradigm Shift.
Groups never admit failure
101–110 of 370 posts
Re: Groups never admit failure
#102A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Now that is a useful insight. It's a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacin…
I think the essay is strongly written — never is a strong word — but it resonated with me because of a personal experience. In that experience part of the problem was that those who disagreed with the group were purged out of the group one way or another, either because they chose to exit out of disgust or because they were driven away, or something in between. So there was a "survivorship bias" in the group, where "…
Indeed - my personal experience of this was at my business - I would admit my and our mistakes to the extent that the perception became that I was the source of all of our failures.
My partner was and is a person who is never wrong, never fails, never makes a mistake - it’s always someone else who stymied his ambitions, or circumstance, or just bad luck. Never an error.
I left, after a decade. It was partly of my own volition, but the moment I voiced the possibility he, and our investor, couldn’t show me the door quickly enough.
Now, here’s the rub.
I’ve been gone for nearly six years. In that time their revenue has fallen by 80%, their core product has been axed, and I am still the scapegoat.
Even when they ultimately fail completely, which they will, and soon, as none of the issues I identified have been addressed, I am certain that they will go down crying “damn you, madaxe_again”.
Reality, commercial or not, is purely a matter of perception.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#103The principle claim of this essay is that groups never change their viewpoints. What's ironic is that it appears in a public environment in which groups are changing their viewpoints, often quite publicly. Many are taking extreme heat for this. Technical projects and groups are adopting codes of conduct and behaviour, changing stances on what had long been accepted. Companies are similarly changing their views on wha…
> The principle claim of this essay is that groups never change their viewpoints. Actually the principal claim is that "a group will never admit they were wrong." I think I agree with both claims.
The general domain is group conflict and change. There's a literature on that. Naval's failed to acknowledge its existence, let alone consult it.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7,39&qsp=2&q...
Changing a change of mind is a subset of admitting error. Naval's claim is an absolute ("never"), and a single counterexample serves as a sufficient disproof.
I've provided multiple.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#104The principle claim of this essay is that groups never change their viewpoints. What's ironic is that it appears in a public environment in which groups are changing their viewpoints, often quite publicly. Many are taking extreme heat for this. Technical projects and groups are adopting codes of conduct and behaviour, changing stances on what had long been accepted. Companies are similarly changing their views on wha…
> The Catholic Church has reversed itself on earlier condemnations and beliefs, notably of heliocentrism and the conviction of Galileo. But nobody changed their minds or admitted a mistake: people just died or retired and were replaced by different people who thought differently. The content of the post makes it obvious that it's discussing the actions and decisions of groups over much shorter periods of time: i.e.,…
The conviction of Galileo is actually pretty funny; it took a few decades _after landing on the moon_ for the church to apologize: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair#Modern_Catholic...
That's some sinful pride right there.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#105This a perfect example of what some people have referred to as "first-principles thinking". Except in this case, the person doing the thinking is an idiot.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#106> A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Germany openly regrets Nazis and Hitler. In the US we admit that letting McCarthy run amok was a huge mistake. Globally billions of people admit that we…
> Germany openly regrets Nazis and Hitler.
If you were looking for the least-subtle example of the author's schism theory, i think you found it. :)
Though I get your point - maybe the missing piece is "a schism will split the group... but in the very long term, it might be healed."
Re: Groups never admit failure
#107A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Now that is a useful insight. It's a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacin…
people have a hard time realizing when the technology they've spent their lives learning and perfecting is no longer applicable
People have an equally hard time realizing that there is very little genuinely 'new' under the Sun, and today's 'wizbang' was yesterday's 'vozalm' with a superficial change to it.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#108A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Now that is a useful insight. It's a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacin…
Similar to the "Gun Club" (and also in the U.S. in the WWII era) was the Bomber Mafia - convinced that lots of long-range heavy bombers could win any war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_Mafia They were profoundly resistant to reality (such as sustained "unsustainable" loss rates in un-escorted daytime bomber attacks on Germany), or even ideological compromises (such as long-range fighter escorts for those bombe…
The astonishing thing was that the UK had just sustained a massive bombing campaign by Germany whixh had veeu obviously and singularly failed to break the civilain spirit and make the UK sue for peace.
So, obviously, the UK airforce proposed that a massive bombing campaign would clearly break the German civilian spirit and force Germany to sue for peace.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#109It's an interesting premise, but does not support the conclusion that for-profit companies are more sustainable than non-profits. Like at all.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#110A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Now that is a useful insight. It's a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacin…
I think the essay is strongly written — never is a strong word — but it resonated with me because of a personal experience. In that experience part of the problem was that those who disagreed with the group were purged out of the group one way or another, either because they chose to exit out of disgust or because they were driven away, or something in between. So there was a "survivorship bias" in the group, where "…
In extreme cases you have evaporative heating of groups where after some major setback all the more moderate members leave and the remainder are on average more attached to the group and more fanatical. This is pretty common to see when religious cults have prophesies that fail to pan out.