Na, the key imo is having good feedback loops and properly aligning the incentives with the objectives
Groups never admit failure
261–270 of 370 posts
Re: Groups never admit failure
#262I wonder what academia (sociology, anthropology) says about the issue. Any pointers?
Re: Groups never admit failure
#263What immediately come to my mind is companies. When they made mistake they tend to have a specific person to take the blame and apologize. If it's too much, then that particular somebody would (be forced to) resign or get fired. And then life within the company goes on normally as if nothing happened.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't Hamas an example of the opposite dynamic--of becoming less fanatical? Yes, Hamas leads violent, armed protests from the Gaza Strip. But there's arguably been less violence compared to the armed conflicts they induced on and across the Lebanese border. Once they began to independently govern (not withstanding lack of Israeli recognition) the Gaza Strip they had to soften their stance somewhat, similar to the PLO…
> not withstanding lack of Israeli recognition Israel recognizes Gaza (as something else than Israel at least.) It is mostly journalists (and internet forums) that conflates Gaza with an open air prison.
I think the OP meant that Israel doesn't officially recognize Hamas rule over Gaza (because Hamas is a terrorist organization, and it also doesn't recognize Israel). But Hamas de facto rules over Gaza, and as a result they have (slightly) moderated their behavior.
It's true that Israel does not consider Gaza to be Israeli territory, nor does it want to annex Gaza. And it hasn't actually occupied Gaza since Ariel Sharon as PM ordered the IDF to unilaterally withdraw, although Israel and Egypt do maintain a shared blockade of Gaza.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#265A 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…
it's a flying tank, not a fighter. it shouldn't even belong in the air force. ground troops love it, it should fly for the army with AF doing what AF usually does, which is flying fast, high and stealthy if possible.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#266A 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 love the A-10, but it is really only useful in places like Afghanistan where you have air superiority, combined arms, artillery, mobile infantry, and the enemy is farm boys with AK-47s.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should discontinue it, because man we do a lot of oppression of teenagers with AK-47s in the last 50 years. Really the US Military should have an "occupation and oppression" service branch if they were honest, with the counter insurgency, A-10s, helicopters, urban warfare infantry, snipers, drones, etc. It could be equipment that is 10 years old, or simply very cheap versions of more expensive stuff used by the branches that presumably exist to fight a peer state.
This post was brought to you in the spirit of "the war nerd".
But they'd never be that honest.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Reality is what you can't change" (Bazon Brock, Philosopher)
Re: Groups never admit failure
#268Earlier 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 "…
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.
Perfect description. I also see this happening in newly formed political parties over here in Europe, political parties that were marketing themselves at the beginning as "anti-system" (i.e. different compared to the old, established political parties) and such.
Initially they were attracting quite a diverse bunch, which is good imo, as political parties should represent swathes of the population as large as possible, but as the time progressed and as the disillusions started to show up their ranks got thinner and the only people left were the "more fanatical" ones, as you well put it. Unfortunately doing politics with "fanatical" people is very unproductive and border-line dangerous for the fabric of society.
Not sure if there's a way out of situations like these.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#269Earlier 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…
The survivability onion:
https://i.redd.it/33lz51812ko31.jpg
Gun anti-air(AA) is basically useless against jets at this point (they fly too high and fast). For missiles, you can't really evade them if you're in their kill zone (they can accelerate way faster and turn way tighter than a human can survive). Your hope to survive a missile is to either not be "seen" in the first place (whether that's radar, or at somewhat less far distances IR), or to be far enough away that you can run away from the missile until it runs out of energy (aka don't be in it's kill zone and have enough speed/energy to flee. Speed is energy is life in air combat, turning hasn't really mattered since the 60s and dogfighting is a meme since turning kills your energy which makes you even more susceptible to missiles).
Ground based AA has big problems with actually seeing planes from far enough away at this point due to the horizon, and the ability of planes to shoot anti-radar and/or loitering munitions from over the horizon against ground based AA. Plane based AA is obviously better due to being higher so the horizon is pushed further out, and not having to be immobile (think cruise missile saturation attack against a ground based AA site), but if you have inferior planes or munitions (eg. Russia vs US/NATO), then investing more heavily into ground based AA makes sense as you'd never be able to reliably have air superiority to protect your ground troops if you relied on plane based AA.
Stealth (low observability is a better term) plays a huge role at essentially reducing a radar's effective range (iirc estimates I've seen are that the F-35's stealth reduces the S400's effective range from ~140km against regular jets to ~35km against an F-35).
This has all ignored the datalink/networking going on between all these different systems to eg. extend radar coverage, or how afaik SAMs are usually run in "passive mode" and are constantly relocating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition#Initial_rol... is a good primer on how planes vs ground based AA can actually be planes with "cheap" missiles hunting SAMs). Also, in a peer/near peer conflict A-10s wouldn't be used even after achieving air superiority and destroying all the SAM sites, because they're too vulnerable to even cheap manpads or gun AA and can only be flown in areas with 0 anti air threat (which is why the airforce wants to drop them and get Super Tucanos that can do the same job of dropping a laser guided bomb at ~1/10 the flight cost).
Re: Groups never admit failure
#270So.... Ask contributors to any given group project what their contribution was. The total will almost always be >100%. Ask about share of blame, I reckon it will always be Organisational culture and group psychology tend to prop up such fallacies, allowing everyone to overestimate and underestimate their contribution to success and failure... these accumulate to organisational fallacies over time. Venkatesh Rao once called the lies cumulating as a result of this "organisational dark matter."
Lies beget lies. If a team is responsible for 180% of the success and 45% of the failure... something has to account for that. External factors played a role. Someone else failed. The project is actually more successful than it is. Etc.
A lot of group psychology is just this... ways of supporting group beliefs.