Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Groups never admit failure

nav.al

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 370 posts

Re: Groups never admit failure

#171

Post by 77pt77 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #102
derbOac wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reality is not a matter of perception, but humans' reaction to it is.

Until reality is inescapable.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#172

Post by Nasrudith »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #69
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…

After a large organization is structured, it's objective will shift to the survival of the organization itself when the original (legitimate) objective is made irrelevant by internal or external factors ("winning", or a change in the context that required the objective in the first place). I would expect an adage about this to already exist – if it doesn't, I'm claiming it. :)

The March of Dimes is an interesting counter-example. They went from a Polio cause to a premature infant one post-Salk.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#173

Post by _carbyau_ »

pvg wrote: post #123
Barrin92 wrote: post #111

>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…

we've done an okay job of correcting some historical mistakes I don't want to take anything from the generally commendable and impressive German efforts in that regard, as you say, over a period of several generations. At the same time, one has to acknowledge to get there, Germany was physically destroyed, its territory dismembered and occupied, it effectively ceased to exist as a sovereign state for a period, etc, e…

Interestingly though, a trip through germany revealed monuments to the atrocities they committed.

The general idea being that future peoples need to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#174

Post by dustintrex »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #147
irchans wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me that you include the Tech industry. I am familiar with bailouts for the auto and financial industry. In what way is the Tech industry "insulated from feedback"?

Venture capital is at its core a vehicle to shield businesses while they’re figuring out PMF — aka, figuring out how to turn ideas into money. At the scale that it operates at today it’s barely distinguishable from bailouts — I’m thinking of examples like Uber and WeWork.

The timescales are quite different though. A failing car factory can be propped up by government subsidies for decades; a Juicero will crash and burn in a year or two.

Uber and WeWork are outliers in that they provide what's clearly a useful and novel service, but it's still unclear how profitable they can be.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#175

Post by AussieWog93 »

lumost wrote: post #166
AussieWog93 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just presentations or even corporate culture in general. I sell second-hand goods online, and have found that explicitly describing any defect completely torpedoes the sales process. Having a photograph that shows it off clearly but saying nothing doesn't have that effect, though.

It’s the same bias, we’re so accustomed to sales pitches proclaiming perfection that an honest pitch sounds like the top of a disaster.

Honestly, I think it goes much deeper than that.

The more I learn about optimising the business for revenue, the more I come to understand that consumer-focused retail is essentially a socially acceptable form of prostitution.

We don't exist to solve a problem in peoples' lives, but to satisfy primal urges, indulge fantasies and make people feel powerful/special. The actual product you take home is just a souvenir.

Going back to GP's comment, I wouldn't be surprised if many corporate jobs could be looked at this way too.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#176

Post by normalocity »

I liked the first half of the essay - some interesting nuggets of some possible ideas, particularly the point about schisms forming rather than continued collective action once a group becomes large enough.

The last half sounds a little bit too much like the bias towards markets and profit motives and whatnot without question and without critique. There are plenty of dysfunctional for-profit orgs that don't allocate resources well, in spite of overwhelming feedback, from the market and elsewhere. The majority of for-profit orgs also have a sales team that is out there pounding the pavement trying to drive sales: it's not all, "Build it and they will come."

I don't buy that a successful company needs to be a mission either. That's very common thinking in the startup world, but not even close to representative of the whole.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#177

Post by geodel »

arch-ninja wrote: post #104
bartread wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Regarding Galileo affair from what I read it was church following scientific inquiry while Galileo was like trust me I know better because I am authority on this.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#178

Post by felipelemos »

dredmorbius wrote: post #68

The 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.

I understood that the principle claim is that groups never admit publicly that they were wrong. Maybe in reading to much into it, but it is the interpretation I've got. They can, and actually do change, but it is always a "path of victory". And in the few cases that they admit they were wrong is to gain an advantage or when they are forced to: To appear humble, to pivot to a trending opinion before the "other side" do (and usually after a huge pressure).

We have several examples of this: Microsoft with Linux (now Linux is trendy, they want to embrace the developers that code on Mac, and so on), Germany after WWII (decided by the allies in the Postdam conference), or any political party that ever existed.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#179

Post by geodel »

dredmorbius wrote: post #68

The 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…

I guess it was pretty clear that group views meant same people in that group over a period. What you are talking is simply about large organizations where many people or even generations of people have come and gone and obviously held different viewpoint.

Your comment is typical example of arguing over completely different point and then claim as counterexample to original argument.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#180

Post by pphysch »

notJim wrote: post #115
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.

The article isn't about PR though. It's more about internal admissions of failure.
Post reply on HN