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Groups never admit failure

nav.al

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#191

Post by krapht »

1cvmask wrote: post #185
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 truly remarkable as are the drones. Meanwhile the F35 is an overpriced hangar queen that should never have been built (the F22 is a solid stealth plane). https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/10/why-nothing-even-the-air... Meanwhile corporates are groups and when they fail we call it creative destruction in Schumpeter's words or nowadays disruption.

> The A-10 is truly remarkable as are the drones. Meanwhile the F35 is an overpriced hangar queen that should never have been built (the F22 is a solid stealth plane).

No.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#192

Post by failuser »

ryderfast wrote: post #119
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?

Sure, but US is was not facing modern anti-air in Iraq and Afghanistan regular Iraq forces were destroyed in 2003. On the other hand, a Reaper drone is perfect to bomb a wedding that’s not protected by AAA

Re: Groups never admit failure

#193

Post by [deleted] »

xpe wrote: post #153
azinman2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Groups never admit failure

#196

Post by [deleted] »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #157
VLM wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Groups never admit failure

#197

Post by colechristensen »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #65

there are a lot of funny passages in here, but this one really made me laugh: > If you want to change the world to a better place, the best way to do it is a for-profit because for-profits have to take feedback from reality. Ironically, for-profit entities are more sustainable than non-profit entities. They’re self-sustainable. You’re not out there with a begging bowl all the time. Tech, finance, and the automotive i…

>Tech, finance, and the automotive industry are three great examples of for-profit industries that are almost always insulated from feedback from reality and are constantly "out there with a begging bowl."

And with all three what's missing is competition.

When you get big enough competition stops existing and quality stops mattering for a very long time. You can only fail because you're awful at what you do when you're small. Get big enough and you can just buy out anybody better than you.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#198

Post by thaumasiotes »

bsder wrote: post #44
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…

> It took a huge number of casualties before high command got it that charging into machine guns does not work. Well, there was a nice posting here (hopefully someone will find it) about WWI and that 1) stasis was effectively inevitable and 2) you do have to charge the enemy occasionally or you can't maintain your stasis (it prevents them from moving their artillery forward). Edit: Thank you, malcomwhite. https://aco…

It goes further than that. Charging into machine guns does work! It works fine. Offense won a little over 50% of the time, making it better than defense.

The problem, as identified in the post, is that although your charge usually succeeds, you end up taking ground that your pre-charge offensive barrage has made impossible to hold. And then you lose that ground.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#200

Post by thaumasiotes »

pphysch wrote: post #181
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…

One of the best contemporary counterexamples, and incidentally one of the largest organizations in the world by official membership, is the Communist Party of China. A lot of Mao Zedong's policies are viewed as mistakes by the Party , including the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Heck, Mao himself publicly admitted that the GLF was a mistake for which he takes responsibility. Yet the CPC, as an organizati…

> A lot of Mao Zedong's policies are viewed as mistakes by the Party, including the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Heck, Mao himself publicly admitted that the GLF was a mistake for which he takes responsibility.

My impression, from talking to modern Chinese people, is that the Cultural Revolution is viewed as a mistake, and the Great Leap Forward is not. The Great Leap Forward is viewed as having suffered from inclement weather.

I tend to suspect that this reflects current party orthodoxy.

> There are a lot of reasons for this, not least China having 5000 years experience with running civilization-scale groups.

That would make the comparison groups Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. Plus a much weaker argument for Pakistan.

How formidable are those governments, compared to the government of China?

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