Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is your definition of profit?
Same as Naval's definition.
They do not actually define profit.
They do mention "social profit", which I guess is what you are up against?
Groups never admit failure
151–160 of 370 posts
Re: Groups never admit failure
#152> 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.”
What would this look like? 100% of members all announcing it at the same time? A simple majority? Just a single leader, or board?
Because if it’s the leader option, that does happen occasionally. And even when groups don’t instantly change their minds, they can change their minds over time and eventually admit they used to be wrong. That does happen.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#153> 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…
Without it the blog post is less interesting. Having listened to Naval on Clubhouse he's extremely confident in everything he says (/said on Clubhouse, which was largely political/covid/government/society/extremely broad categories). For people to find you interesting, unfortunately you usually need to project such confidence even if it's not technically true.
> Without it the blog post is less interesting.
I disagree.
When I see the author's exaggeration and overconfidence, coupled with a lack of examples, I stop reading. It reminds me of driving by a paper mill. Memorable, yes, in the wrong sort of way. I'll remember to avoid it in the future.
I don't dig the writing. I find it uninteresting and unpersuasive. An author does not have to exaggerate to be interesting. Even a dry scientific article can punch you in the face. Isn't that interesting? Perhaps impact and exaggeration are inversely related. Perhaps become exaggeration is easy and overused.
There is a time and place for exaggeration, sure. However, a skilled writer has many varied tools: metaphor, details, humor, and much more.
There isn't one formula to good writing, certainly, but what I'm seeing here misses the mark.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#154I've got an amateur interest in nuclear disasters, and I've noticed an echo between TMI and Fukushima... in both cases, the plants were substantially mismanaged by the electric company, who seemed more interested in downplaying and covering up the issues than in solving them, even as the emergency continued.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#155Great article!
On and individual level people often won't admit to mistakes either. There is a great book called:
Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts
Re: Groups never admit failure
#156>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…
Well, Germany had to be made to do that. We had to remake the nation into one that has changed its dogma from "we were right" to "we were wrong". The fact that the populace accepted it is awesome, actually, but it needed to be done to them.
Pretty sure it took two tries also
Re: Groups never admit failure
#157A 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 ascendancy of drones and the usefulness of the A-10 Its really a popularity problem in that there is a doctrine of "we need something survivable in BVR and active ADA" but we don't like talking about that situation as much as pew-pew A-10s are cool and we always plan to fight the last war where there was no BVR or ADA threat (not after the first few days...) Inevitably we will someday go up against an opponent…
what are "BVR-proof and ADA-proof weapons systems". Are there planes that can survive being shot at by air defence? Or can evade missiles ? (Is this "stealth" as the answer? If so it seems the war is based on the targetting / anti-targetting arms race?)
I am not trolling - just asking as it does seem that all the advantages are with cheap missiles hunting expensive planes (a very similar situation to naval warfare I believe)
I think I am asking for a good primer on modern warfare ... I suspect it is a contentious subject.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#158> 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.” What would this look like? 100% of members all announcing it at the same time? A simple majority? Just a single leader, or board? Because if it’s the lea…
Put another way: “We” didn’t think anything. There is no such thing as a group changing its mind because a group doesn’t have a mind. Each member thought something, probably something slightly different even when they largely agreed, and very often they completely disagreed with one another.
The Naval and Balaji type folks often seem tricked into thinking that organizations are actually atomic entities simply because we talk about them as if they are. They’re abstractions. Abstractions over groups of people who are each individually as complex as you and I are. Easy to forget sometimes!
Re: Groups never admit failure
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably that can be a useful insight in some specific circumstances as you describe, but it falls flat as a generalization. Allow me a snark: maybe a group of venture capitalists (many of whom call themselves "angels") might not admit a mistake. But many groups (not as grandiose as the military, though) jolly well admit and own up non-trivial mistakes. I participate in several open source projects over 13 years now.…
I have yet to make a mistake, but when I do I plan on publicly admitting it.
> I have yet to make a mistake
For some carefully chosen definition of mistake.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#160A 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 "…
> I think the essay is strongly written — never is a strong word — but it resonated with me because of a personal experience.
I struggle to hear someone use "never" and other absolutist language—as the author does—and imagine they are likely to admit a mistake as well. I think it can depend on how certain a group is, or as you mention, how the certain ones drive the less certain ones out of the group. I can imagine if there are people in a group who say "always" "never" "the best" "the worst" a lot, then yes, the more doubtful ones may leave and the group may become even more convicted in their rightness.
However, I don't think every group follows that path, possibly not having such people clinging to certainty or even if they do, the ones with more humility working together to downgrade the hubris.
Secondly, if you can't tell, I can feel quite frustrated when people speak with such certainty, and I'm grateful and impressed that you seemed able to look past that in the author's writing.