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Groups never admit failure

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Re: Groups never admit failure

#361

Post by rstuart4133 »

kashyapc wrote: post #89
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…

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've seen mature groups of contributors and maintainers admit, and articulate, really difficult mistakes in public.

And do it right here on HN. Just the other day a member of the Python core team said the Python2 to Python3 transition was be a never to be repeated mistake.

> Granted, these are small groups ranging from six to twenty-ish.

And big groups do it too, apparently. In community groups I'm in saying things like "we tried this but it didn't work" is a regular occurrence. They make for entertaining, self depreciating war stories, letting newbies know things aren't judged too harshly around here.

In fact it happens so often, I wondering if all the posts here saying "of yes - that's right" is some sort of group confirmation bias at work. I wonder if it will be self correcting - and the group later come to the conclusion it was wrong.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#362

Post by oshiar53-0 »

>I realized this was because there was no objective feedback. Because there is no loss—it’s all social profit—they couldn’t fail.

>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.

Why would it be the "best"? Non-profit organisations do have many other ways to have their performance validated and evaluated from "reality" transparently and objectively, just like e.g. a public company.

Sure, non-profit is not sustainable and legally binding etc etc, but the author doesn't provide concrete reason that a specific organisation model serves best for "building a better world." I'm not arguing that non-proft is the "best," but a foundation may receive funding and/or grants from a consortium of various non-profit and for-profit organisations, individuals, and etc.. This does not necessarily make the foundation itself "for-profit." The foundation could operate under critical scrutiny of stakeholders.

If anything, I'd blame the lack of transparency to interested parties (e.g. donors) as the main factor of organisational failure. This applies to both for-profits and non-profits.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#363

Post by nelgaard »

I once knew a man that was campaigning against a proposed metro line because he feared it would be too noisy, harm the environment, scar his neighborhood, etc. One day he organized a walk along the entire proposed path of the new metro line. At the end of the walk, they discussed it and to his own surprise he came to the conclusion that actually it was not that bad after all. His anti-metro group did of course dissolve. I had a lot of respect for him.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#364

Post by hnfong »

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…

I think the author was implicitly referring to loosely organized groups instead of dictatorships. In groups with strong leaderships, instead of being like a "group", they are more like a bunch of organized people following a (small number of) leader(s), in which case the risk of schism is less pronounced.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#365

Post by kashyapc »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #361
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've seen mature groups of contributors and maintainers admit, and articulate, really difficult mistakes in public. And do it right here on HN. Just the other day a member of the Python core team said the Python2 to Python3 transition was be a never to be repeated mistake. > Granted, these are small groups ranging from six to twenty-ish. And big groups do it too, apparently. In community groups I'm in saying things…

> And do it right here on HN [...] And big groups do it too, apparently [...]

Indeed; all this is old news for anyone who has worked in open source communities for a decent chunk of time (say, six years at least). It's the "angels" that are disconnected from real world that tend to stretch a small observation into a sweeping generalization, in the name of "insight". The cynic in me says, "they're doing it for the clicks and brand-building."

Re: Groups never admit failure

#367

Post by d0mine »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #319
thaumasiotes wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is a myth that attackers lose more people

Re: Groups never admit failure

#368

Post by thaumasiotes »

d0mine wrote: post #367
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is a myth that attackers lose more people

It's also a myth that losing more people is what matters. Wars are won and lost on morale. Losses have their effect through their impact on morale long before they start to restrict your fundamental capabilities.

Compare the quote attributed to Ho Chi Minh:

You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first.

He won and we lost. It's not because we took more casualties.

Re: Groups never admit failure

#369

Post by justsaying9 »

native_samples wrote: post #305
failuser wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Re: Groups never admit failure

#370

Post by Animats »

scarier wrote: post #214
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…

>Now, the US military is struggling with the "Fighter Mafia", which tends to run the USAF despite the ascendancy of drones and the usefulness of the A-10. Duuuuude, the Fighter Mafia was active in like the '60s and '70s, and some of its members were involved in the design of the A-10 (in line with their strong advocacy against multirole aircraft). Do you have any evidence that current USAF strategic policy is dictate…

some of its members were involved in the design of the A-10 (in line with their strong advocacy against multirole aircraft).

That was John Boyd, the fighter jock's fighter jock. He pushed for both the F-16, for air-to-air combat, and the A-10, for after the F-16 has cleared the sky.

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