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Groups never admit failure
211–220 of 370 posts
Re: Groups never admit failure
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need a tedious flamewar about predictable ideological talking points, regardless of what's in an article.
Again, dang, the article is flamebait . If you're going to remove something, start with the problem.
I don't think the article is flamebait. In fact it plainly isn't, because people have been having interesting conversation and reactions to it. It's possible to disagree, even strongly disagree, without getting sucked into generic tangents or flamewars. (I know you know this.)
Re: Groups never admit failure
#213Quoted post unavailable.
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. I'm not saying you're wrong, but these lead to reliably repetitive and tedious discussion, which is not on topic for a site focused on intellectual curiosity. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Separat…
so basically, no questioning of capitalism on HN, got it.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#214A 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 dictated by the fighter community? Fighter pilots have lamented the loss of "l'audace" for decades, but despite their bravado I don't think any of them really believe that they deserve absolute strategic primacy.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The A-10 is truly remarkable as are the drones. Meanwhile the F35 is an overpriced hangar queen that should never have been built (the F22 is a solid stealth plane). No.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-air-force-has-do...
FTA
> The billion-dollar question here is really whether or not developing another new fighter could result in an overall reduction in cost without creating a reduction in capability.
Since this is HN your bullcrap-meter should be going off here just as if somebody told you throwing away the the Linux kernel and rewriting it in Rust would improve performance, while reducing the number of CVEs - oh and this whole business would only take a year or two while maintaining ABI compatibility with existing packages.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#216there are a lot of funny passages in here, but this one really made me laugh: > 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. Ironically, for-profit entities are more sustainable than non-profit entities. They’re self-sustainable. You’re not out there with a begging bowl all the time. Tech, finance, and the automotive i…
The article starts with a shoddy overreach about group dynamics, countered by countless exceptions raised on this page where groups in fact self-correct.
Then it continues with a howler about the supposed "sustainability" of for-profit enterprise. The engine behind the success of marketplace capitalism is creative destruction! In a healthy marketplace for-profit entities must constantly compete to stay alive, and those that can't adapt die because they are not sustainable.
There's something to the idea that groups are reluctant to change course, but we aren't learning anything about it from this article, which chose to go down the path of ideological screed.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#217Earlier 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 "…
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…
I have the same mindset but I don't think you appreciate the effect it has on the broader team. Yes you might have a specific individual that avoids taking responsibility but in my experience everyone picks up on this. People have a very strong intuitive smell for this kind of stuff.
So in the longterm all someone does is burn leadership capital trying to pretend they're perfect. This isn't a viable strategy for succeeding in your career.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#218> 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 of hustler mindset puff pieces like this that often spout "insight" without really having an actual critical perspective, but don the air of "criticizing most people think" as if that makes them critical.
Ironically it's often due to a lack of seeing feedback, a mechanism of the same kind the author criticizes groups of! Or perhaps cognitive biases.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#219A 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…
There was a recent story about the Air Force trying to kill off one of their most cost effective aircraft, whether that's evidence of a "fighter mafia" or not is debatable, but it does show the USAF's proclivity for expensive high-tech over cost effective platforms.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-reaper-drone-retir...
Re: Groups never admit failure
#220Earlier 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.
Cities are major industrial centers. In the twisted logic of the generals at the time, destroying them wholesale was a legitimate way to strike at the military-industrial strength of a country