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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

> 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 it doesn't follow that this causes a "schism"

Isn't Y-Combinator all about failing fast and pivots? Funny to see such a silly notion here of all places.

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Probably more correct to say that: "A group never admits they are wrong about the core identifying belief that defines the group"

Groups admit being wrong about non-core beliefs all of the time. But of course if you look at the core belief that actually categorizes whether you are in the group or not, then it cannot admit being wrong or else it ceases to exist.

Having said that, I think the author is really making a silly point to say that a group defined by a core belief CANNOT admit that its core belief is wrong. Kind of obvious when expanded to its more verbose form.

I'm thinking about how Germans post-WW2 generally were greatly embarrassed for their mistakes during the war. Of course, it probably helps that the former government was removed and many of the officials put on trial.

Now that is something that is true for people as well as groups. That's why it's so important to be careful how you assign your identity.

Without it the blog post is less interesting. Having listened to Naval on Clubhouse he's extremely confident in everything he says (/said on Clubhouse, which was largely political/covid/government/society/extremely broad categories). For people to find you interesting, unfortunately you usually need to project such confidence even if it's not technically true.

> Without it the blog post is less interesting.

I disagree.

When I see the author's exaggeration and overconfidence, coupled with a lack of examples, I stop reading. It reminds me of driving by a paper mill. Memorable, yes, in the wrong sort of way. I'll remember to avoid it in the future.

I don't dig the writing. I find it uninteresting and unpersuasive. An author does not have to exaggerate to be interesting. Even a dry scientific article can punch you in the face. Isn't that interesting? Perhaps impact and exaggeration are inversely related. Perhaps become exaggeration is easy and overused.

There is a time and place for exaggeration, sure. However, a skilled writer has many varied tools: metaphor, details, humor, and much more.

There isn't one formula to good writing, certainly, but what I'm seeing here misses the mark.

typo fix above: become -> because

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.

The Rationalist community in particular is very good at rationalizing.

You are welcome to share a couple of prominent examples.

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 organization of millions of individuals, didn't implode and remains as formidable as ever.

There are a lot of reasons for this, not least China having 5000 years experience with running civilization-scale groups.

> 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.

My impression, from talking to modern Chinese people, is that the Cultural Revolution is viewed as a mistake, and the Great Leap Forward is not. The Great Leap Forward is viewed as having suffered from inclement weather.

I tend to suspect that this reflects current party orthodoxy.

> There are a lot of reasons for this, not least China having 5000 years experience with running civilization-scale groups.

That would make the comparison groups Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. Plus a much weaker argument for Pakistan.

How formidable are those governments, compared to the government of China?

The CCP under XiaoPing Deng creates indeed a schism. It no longer takes communism seriously. Its legitmacy comes from economic growth, rather than from whatever Mao cared.

It creates a schism among Western "leftists" -- which, surprise, are completely irrelevant to internal affairs of The People's Republic of China.

Just yesterday I stumbled on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace Doesnt sound like Mao was that hot on admitting failure.

How about we read his actual words, spoken to a gathering of Party officials?

> I have committed two crimes, one of which is calling for 10,700,000 tons of steel and the mass smelting of steel. If you agreed with this, you should share some of the blame. But since I was the inventor of burial puppets, I cannot pass on the blame: the main responsibility is mine.

Read the whole thing for a little treat at the end.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-work...

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.

I think there's also the difference between admitting failure and admitting failure publicly. Lots of groups will admit failure internally, but there's often not a good reason to admit failure publicly, because your adversaries will use it against you.

The article isn't about PR though. It's more about internal admissions of failure.

If you want to challenge the YC orthodoxy ask if it's worth giving up 7%. I know people who chose to do YC and didn't. And honestly, the YC-attending guys were steered away from the idea that would make them a billion-dollar company. Only when they disregarded the YC advice and moved on could they prosper.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm rate-limited here. Yes, I meant that their current valuation is $1+ billion. They abandoned the path that YC suggested - no success down that road - to get here.

And did they prosper? There's a cosmic sized gap from a billion dollar idea and actually obtaining a billion dollars.

Sports teams. Many admit failures collectively. Not always for sure, depending on the circumstances, but it happens very frequently. Small group though.

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