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Groups never admit failure

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#351

Post by skinkestek »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #350
skinkestek wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, you wrote it in a very clear way. I think we should note though that the Egyptian blockade of Gaza seems far stricter than the Israeli one (which just seems to control that weapons and things that can easily be used to create weaponry or tunnels aren't brought in).

> things that can easily be used to create weaponry Just to be clear, this means items like food, paper and any and all electronics. Israel maintains a strict calorie limitation on Gaza, because Hamas turns any excess into rockets. Of course, this doesn't actually deter Hamas that much, because they care about shooting at Israel more than they care about the health of the population, and so a huge portion of the popu…

> Just to be clear, this means items like food, paper and any and all electronics.

You'll find that if you look behind Hamas approved sources (not Israeli propaganda, but local sources in Gaza) you might get a mlre nuanced view.

> and so a huge portion of the population of Gaza is chronically malnourished.

The problem in Gaza does not seem to be the supply of food but the distribution. Hamas is notoriously corrupt and evil as written about in length by their own. To them I guess it is even beneficial if their people us malnourished when journalists and UN officials arrive.

Besides: Hamas needs only to start behave civilized, start imprisoning the violent ones instead of sending grants to martyrs and you will probably find Israelis a lot more cooperative vs now when they openly say they want to destroy Israel.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#352

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #346
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More losses than what? Again, offense was slightly favored over defense, which is the only relevant comparison if you're trying to evaluate the claim "charging into machine guns doesn't work".

The only relevant comparison is manpower losses of the two sides, and every assault cost a lot more men to the attacker than the defender. The attacker has to have a massive concentration of manpower and numerical superiority.

If this were not true, no one would setup defences.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#354

Post by madaxe_again »

Fnoord wrote: post #278
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…

Would you say, in hindsight, that your partner was the wrong fit for you?

As the business developed, certainly - however in the early days our mutual antagonism served us well - every decision was challenged, and his ying to my yang meant that we got off to a roaring start. Unfortunately in latter years, this became more of an impediment than a boon, as I ended up spending a majority of my time disentangling situations he refused to even acknowledge the existence of. I can fight an uphill battle with gusto, but when it was against my own ally, it became utterly demoralising.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#355

Post by kbelder »

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. :)

Pournelle's "Iron law of bureaucracy" comes close...

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#356

Post by thaumasiotes »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #352
thaumasiotes wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More losses than what? Again, offense was slightly favored over defense, which is the only relevant comparison if you're trying to evaluate the claim "charging into machine guns doesn't work".

The only relevant comparison is manpower losses of the two sides, and every assault cost a lot more men to the attacker than the defender. The attacker has to have a massive concentration of manpower and numerical superiority. If this were not true, no one would setup defences.

> The only relevant comparison is manpower losses of the two sides, and every assault cost a lot more men to the attacker than the defender.

OK, we've established that you're eager to declaim on a subject you never actually bothered learning anything about:

>> Consider: at the Somme (1916), the British and French attacked and the Germans defended; the allies took 620,000 losses, inflicted 445,000 (a ratio of about 4:3 favoring the defender) and got basically nowhere.

>> At Verdun (also 1916), the Germans attacked and the French defended; the Germans took 355,000 losses to the French’s 400,000 (a ratio of 7:8 favoring the attacker) and got basically nowhere.

>> Over the whole of the German Spring Offensives (1918), the Germans took 688,341 casualties and inflicted 863,374 (a ratio of about 3:4, again favoring the attacker), knocked huge salients in the allied lines, didn’t break through and thereby lost the war.

>> I think here it is worth really noting how high the defender’s casualties are in these battles; I keep noting this but I want to stress: defenders suffered high casualties in trench warfare. Being on the defensive operationally did not save you any more than being tactically on the defensive did. You were just as likely to be killed in your trench by an enemy shell or grenade as you were on the offense machine-gunned trying to cross no man’s land. If the latter holds a larger place in the Anglophone consciousness (e.g. 1917 and Gallipoli) that has more to do with the British and Commonwealth forces being more often on the attack than the defense, not on the casualty implications of attacking or defending.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#357

Post by dredmorbius »

posix86 wrote: post #294
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…

At least some of the examples might be explained by _new groups_ taking over _old brands_, no? This would result in the group seemingly change its beliefs, when in reality, it has been replaced. Take the cathlic church. Say some people realize that the geocentrism is wrong. You have the option of either splitting off and starting something from scratch; or, if you have the option, you launch a coup, and replace the p…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490893

Re: Groups never admit failure

#359

Post by greenie_beans »

the christian church has lasted for a very long time, which would contradict his main point. i can already predict the rebuttal about the church causing harm, but if you wanna raise that point, you should acknowledge the harm caused by for-profit ventures.

also, the first part of the argument brought to mind a few for-profit jobs i’ve worked for, places with the group problem he identifies.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#360

Post by aaron695 »

noobermin wrote: post #218
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…

This is such an ignorant perspective, it really makes me mad. Literally a google search will provide hosts of examples of groups admitting they were wrong and ironically many for-profit companies not admitting they were wrong. It's amazing how someone can be ignorant of history, make a pronouncement that justifies their priors and think they have reached some sort of enlightenment. There is this whole constellation o…

People say it's on Google when they are ignorant on a topic.

If you want to be believable you should give examples.

That would open you up to being incorrect though. And you might have to admit you are wrong.

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