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Groups never admit failure

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#111

Post by Barrin92 »

>I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.”

Being German I would like to think that while there's always opportunity to be more introspective about your history over the last few generations we've done an okay job of correcting some historical mistakes, and that's a pretty decently sized group.

>If you want to change the world to a better place, the best way to do it is a for-profit

I can only assume that if we'd turned the country into an LLC we'd be even more on the cutting edge of error correcting today. I feel like this post is what happens if you burn every history book and instead shove a diet of a16z podcasts and silicon valley serial entrepreneur biographies through GPT-3

Re: Groups never admit failure

#113

Post by d--b »

This honestly sounds like rumblings one should have at a bar, not on a blog…

No part of the argument is backed by anything but vague personal experience, and the outcome is as far reaching as “for profits are better than non profits”

Re: Groups never admit failure

#114

Post by dahart »

akdor1154 wrote: post #106
dahart wrote: post #81

> 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."

Not sure I’d agree Germany ever split or experienced a schism. It went one way for a while, then another, and the group as a whole admits not wanting to repeat it.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#115

Post by notJim »

jameslk wrote: post #56

> 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.” Just because the author can't think of an example doesn't make it true. In fact groups of people, typically businesses, admit failure all the time. And i…

I think there's also the difference between admitting failure and admitting failure publicly. Lots of groups will admit failure internally, but there's often not a good reason to admit failure publicly, because your adversaries will use it against you.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#116

Post by valec »

Animats wrote: post #3

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.” 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…

the A-10 is actually the perfect "fighter mafia" plane aside from its weight.

the fighter mafia basically wanted more maneuverability, cheaper planes and CAS than interdiction bombing. A-10 is all of those except light.

they were vehemently opposed to optimizing planes for beyond visual range (BVR) combat like by improving sensors or stealth because they considered it "a fantasy."

problem is missiles fired 100 miles away don't care what you consider fantastical.

the A-10 is actually a giant hunk of junk outside of COIN operations. it has no stealth, it's slow and its gun is useless against modern armor. against terrorists in flipflops with AKs it can be useful but that's only because they don't have any sort of AA. even stingers are a huge problem. and in an uncontested airspace you may as well bring in a plane with even more firepower and loiter time like an ac-130.

so basically the a-10 in this day and age is a solution in search of a problem. it's big, slow, heavy and would be shot out of the sky in a peer confrontation before you could even blink. its gun is useless against modern tanks and an f-35 can carry a similar amount of munitions.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#117

Post by aeturnum »

> Usually what happens in that case is a schism

Pretty sure the "we were wrong" half of the schism is admitting failure. This feels like a "no true scotsman" fallacy. There are certainly going to be people who never change their minds, but there are many, many examples of groups changing their policies to the reverse of what they were (slavery, gay marriage, outlawing inter-racial marriage, etc). Obviously plenty of people disagree with those changes, but OP's view is that the "real" group is only the people who never changed their minds.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#118

Post by starfallg »

Marazan wrote: post #108
bell-cot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The allied bombing of civilian targets in Germany officially never happened. They were 'military' or 'industrial' targets. It's commonly understood that they were retaliatory as opposed to strategic.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#119

Post by ryderfast »

Animats wrote: post #3

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.” 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…

Usefulness of the A-10? The aircraft that was pulled from the early stages of the Gulf war for getting shot up too many times, is notorious for blue on blue, and immediately dies in the presence of any modern Anti Air?

Re: Groups never admit failure

#120

Post by ndr »

d--b wrote: post #113

This honestly sounds like rumblings one should have at a bar, not on a blog… No part of the argument is backed by anything but vague personal experience, and the outcome is as far reaching as “for profits are better than non profits”

What bar does a blog need to meet?
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