<story><title>Groups never admit failure</title><url>https://nav.al/failure</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;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.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now that is a useful insight.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacing the CEO.&lt;p&gt;This has come up a few times in military history. &amp;quot;L&amp;#x27;audace, toujours l&amp;#x27;audace&amp;quot; was a WWI French slogan. It took a huge number of casualties before high command got it that charging into machine guns does not work. Courage does not help. In WWII, a big change was discovering that battleships are not useful once the enemy has torpedo bombers. The resistance of the battleship admirals was overcome by Congress, not the Navy. Congress ordered that the captains of aircraft carriers must be qualified to fly aircraft. Sidelining the &amp;quot;Gun Club&amp;quot; took major political effort.&lt;p&gt;Now, the US military is struggling with the &amp;quot;Fighter Mafia&amp;quot;, which tends to run the USAF despite the ascendancy of drones and the usefulness of the A-10.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kashyapc</author><text>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 &lt;i&gt;venture capitalists&lt;/i&gt; (many of whom call themselves &amp;quot;angels&amp;quot;) might not admit a mistake.  But many groups (not as grandiose as the military, though) &lt;i&gt;jolly well&lt;/i&gt; admit and own up non-trivial mistakes.&lt;p&gt;I participate in several open source projects over 13 years now. And as &lt;i&gt;jancsika&lt;/i&gt; mentions in this thread, various times I&amp;#x27;ve seen mature groups of contributors and maintainers admit, and &lt;i&gt;articulate&lt;/i&gt;, really difficult mistakes in public.  Granted, these are small groups ranging from six to twenty-ish.  Still, it takes courage and wisdom to do it gracefully.</text></comment>
<story><title>Groups never admit failure</title><url>https://nav.al/failure</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;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.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now that is a useful insight.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacing the CEO.&lt;p&gt;This has come up a few times in military history. &amp;quot;L&amp;#x27;audace, toujours l&amp;#x27;audace&amp;quot; was a WWI French slogan. It took a huge number of casualties before high command got it that charging into machine guns does not work. Courage does not help. In WWII, a big change was discovering that battleships are not useful once the enemy has torpedo bombers. The resistance of the battleship admirals was overcome by Congress, not the Navy. Congress ordered that the captains of aircraft carriers must be qualified to fly aircraft. Sidelining the &amp;quot;Gun Club&amp;quot; took major political effort.&lt;p&gt;Now, the US military is struggling with the &amp;quot;Fighter Mafia&amp;quot;, which tends to run the USAF despite the ascendancy of drones and the usefulness of the A-10.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bell-cot</author><text>Similar to the &amp;quot;Gun Club&amp;quot; (and also in the U.S. in the WWII era) was the Bomber Mafia - convinced that lots of long-range heavy bombers could win any war:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomber_Mafia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomber_Mafia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They were profoundly resistant to reality (such as sustained &amp;quot;unsustainable&amp;quot; loss rates in un-escorted daytime bomber attacks on Germany), or even ideological compromises (such as long-range fighter escorts for those bombers)...up to the point where the en-mass sacking of mafia members, or massive &amp;quot;de-emphasis&amp;quot; of their branch of the armed forces were clear and present dangers.</text></comment>