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Groups never admit failure

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#301

Post by hef19898 »

elabajaba wrote: post #269
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somewha…

Last time I talked with people heavily involved in future air combat, the scenarios were as follows:

Stealth vs. stealth -> most likely to end in a dog fight, fighters wont be able to engage each other at longer distances

Stealth vs. conventional -> most likely stealth gets a shot from BVR on the conventional aircraft, AVACS and the conventional fighter running under EMCOn change that, as soon as the stealth fighters fired the first shots, any surviving conventional fighters will engage again in dog fights

Conventional vs. conventional -> pretty much the same as above, only that both sides will get some shots before distances are closed

If anything, I understood dog fights will become again more prevalent due to stealth.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#302

Post by hef19898 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #286
elabajaba wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somewha…

I cannot help, when looking at the peer-v-peer model, to be reminded of acoup.blog's excellent analysis of WWI stalemate. The concepts put forward of "knocking out the opponents SAM capability and achieving air dominance" might not work so well when the opponent is trying to do exactly the same thing. This is just a uneducated thought so please comment but it interests me. Its unlikely either side will throw 100% of…

Yeah, the problem is, IMHO, that modern AA capabilities are way cheaper then the air dominance hardware you to throw at the AA to break it. That's why stealth is so important, because you can get close. As is saturation with, e.g., drones. I always wondered how often the USAF would throw multi-billion dollar worth of hardware and multi-millions and multi-decades worth of training at a specific target. Especially over enemy air space, where you won't recover personnel or hardware. I always feared that if anything in a hot war between nuclear powers one side might be tempted, or forced, to resort to tactical nukes. Or powers decide to just not do it for financial reasons.

Joke was that Red Baron style wood and cloths bi-planes would be an alternative once the top notch hardware is expended. Easy to build, easy to maintain and pilot training is faster and cheaper as well.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#303

Post by native_samples »

hef19898 wrote: post #254
madaxe_again wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

That happens all the time. I think I am slowly getting the point of the story about Casandra. People that realize issues, voice them and raise them be properly addressed are almost never heard. Especially when these issues go against whatever group think narrative is in place. Those people also are the scapegoats when the bad things they predicted actually do happen. Because, hey, they knew it. So why didn't they do…

This pretty much sums up the last two years of fighting COVID.

Governments/media/academics: we will solve the problem by doing X.

Sceptics: that won't work / isn't working / hasn't worked.

Governments/media/academics: it isn't working because of the unbelievers.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#304

Post by Eelongate »

ArnoVW wrote: post #272
Eelongate wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Evaporative cooling

I think he meant to write heating. Because the moderate (slow) parts leave, keeping the 'hot' members.

He meant to write cooling; the moderate (warmer) parts leave, leaving the fanatical 'cold' members. I agree that 'fanatical=cold/moderate=warm' seems a little backwards, but it's that way and not the other because it's an analogy to a real physical process, while evaporative warming doesn't exist.

From 2007: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling_(atomic_ph...

Re: Groups never admit failure

#305

Post by native_samples »

failuser wrote: post #187
starfallg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? Was Dresden a military target? Most major German cities were reduced to rubble.

Theoretically yes, because it was "a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort".

It's worth remembering that at this time precision munitions didn't exist. Attempting to bomb a factory was largely worthless, especially at night and under enemy fire. It was really just about dropping as many bombs as possible over a wide area and hoping that somehow, some of them would get kinda near the actual targets. The fact that most wouldn't was taken for granted.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#306

Post by nradov »

sroussey wrote: post #250
nradov wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MQ-9 Reaper is cost effective for counter insurgency missions but it requires reliable high-bandwidth remote control data links to operate. In any conflict with a peer adversary they will shoot down the communications satellites and jam other links, making such drones mostly useless.

Which is why they will become autonomous…

Perhaps someday, but for now that's science fiction. Autonomous vehicles can only perform a very narrow range of missions.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#307

Post by osullivj »

Similarly "all political careers end in failure" [1]. Why? Because, to succeed in politics is to achieve power. And leaders who achieve high office never willingly relinquish it. The excess of self belief that propelled them to the top prevents them seeing their own faults. Hence the greatest value of democracy (IMHO), which is not to chose govts, but to remove them. Term limits are a good idea for the same reason. Exercise for the reader: contrast with autocracies. There are many recent confirmatory examples: Blair, Brown, Trump, May, Sarkozy, Netanyahu. I can only think of two examples of democratic leaders voluntarily leaving office in recent years: David Cameron in 2016 after losing the Brexit vote, and Nelson Mandela, after a single term as president.

[1] Enoch Powell

Re: Groups never admit failure

#308

Post by cies »

> A group will never admit they were wrong.

Did you consider Asia? Whole departments apologize, and promise to do better next time. Under pressure, yes, but still they do.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#309

Post by native_samples »

dahart wrote: post #114
akdor1154 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The relevant example here is Europe, not Germany. Germany regrets Hitler because Europe split, but the allies defeated it and then imposed their world view on the losers. The Nazis that disagreed were hung, imprisoned, killed or committed suicide. If Hitler had won this thread could have looked very different.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#310

Post by native_samples »

jancsika wrote: post #62

> 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.” Is this supposed to be satire? The Linux kernel mailing list is full of admissions from most of the subsystem maintainers talking about past failures. In…

They admit some failures that are not core to the group's existence.

A better example for Linux would be a failure to admit that GPLd / non-stable driver API killed any chances for Linux to succeed on the desktop. Even though theoretically everyone in that community wants desktop Linux to succeed they won't give up their core beliefs to allow it, with the result that the desktop remains dominated by Microsoft and Apple. Meanwhile the Linux world has its own driver schism in the form of Android, which has changed how drivers work totally in project Treble to be user-space and more microkernel oriented.

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