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Groups never admit failure

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#311

Post by redis_mlc »

renewiltord wrote: post #132
Symmetry wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The WSJ had a piece many years ago about this happening to the Muslim Brotherhood as the moderate members, who were more visible and accessible, were arrested forcing the group to become more fundamentalist. Found that interesting. "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems..." I never did validate if that claim about the Muslim Brotherhood stood the test of time but I found the thing interesting in the m…

> moderate members

Since the Koran is called "the perfect word of god", there is no possible moderation. Reform in Islam means returning to the literal Koran (7th century fundamentalism), ad infinitum.

Calling any Muslim a "moderate Muslim" is an insult, and will get you killed in many countries.

You will not see any debates of the Koran online with Muslims because any non-literal interpretation is blasphemy, punishable by death. (Immediately debates turn into ad hominem attacks to deflect from flying horses, child brides, sex slaves, etc.)

All of the reported crimes in the recent caliphates were approved by the Koran, but the Western media and left has gagged itself.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#312

Post by ClumsyPilot »

hef19898 wrote: post #256
cabalamat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Yes, and also the furtherance of the careers of the top people.

And the less actual stuff said organization has to do, the worse it gets.

The better is gets - more time for career manoeuvring

Re: Groups never admit failure

#313

Post by q-base »

WalterBright wrote: post #148
kashyapc wrote: post #89

Earlier 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.

It seems to miss the mark in other regions, but here in Denmark that is considered a bullseye joke :)

Re: Groups never admit failure

#314

Post by mehdim »

The link between "groups never admit failure" and "non-profit organizations are not sustainable by design" is a little bit too direct and non relevant.

Lots of non-profits make revenues, selling stuff with customers, they just don't pay dividends by design and re-invest everything. So what he says does not apply.

And again, even foundations are at least oriented to hear feedbacks from donators who are their "customers". So it does not apply here.

The only valid point is that yes, group never admit failure as a whole, but the post should have stopped after this

Re: Groups never admit failure

#315

Post by watwut »

Fnoord wrote: post #274
ancode wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure it took two tries also

Blaming WWI entirely on Germany is myopic, and is in part what set the social unrest in the Weimar Republic in the first place. The huge debt was put on Germany, and they were heavily dependent on loans. When the US economy crashed in 1929, they were done for. If Germany did not take the full blame for WWI, WWII arguably never happened. Because someone like Hitler wouldn't have been able to rise to power via a massiv…

That is hard to prove contrafactual. The Germany still lost WWI which was massive sticking points for them. The "stab in the back" myth would existed either way, because Germany being having super militarized culture could not admit loss.

The revolution in Bavaria would still happened. And still irk right wing. The democracy would still be rejected and Weimar Republic would still be one massive mess.

Hitler did not gained power just because of social issues.

(And also, less importantly, had Germany won the WWI, they had plans to ask other countries for large reparations. It is not like those were something unheard of at that time.)

Re: Groups never admit failure

#316

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

Autonomous drones will be either useless, or equally dangerous to everyone. FoF is gonna be a crapshoot

Re: Groups never admit failure

#317

Post by ClumsyPilot »

cnlevy wrote: post #281
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.

They have enough rockets equipped with ASAT weapons to destroy the Starlink satellites ? All 40 000 of them (planned, about 2500 already in orbit)? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/12/spacex-prepares-for-air-forc...

Shooting down just a few dozen satellites will produce kessler syndrome, there will be no satellites or spacecraft for anyone for decades.

Also, you don't even have to shoot them, there is jamming

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Re: Groups never admit failure

#319

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #198
bsder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You take more losses and run out of manpower - its a finite resource

Re: Groups never admit failure

#320

Post by hef19898 »

native_samples wrote: post #303
hef19898 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Academics mostly got it right, media thrived on conflict and false-balance while politics, especially German politics, were more concerned about elections than anything else.
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