3 ms·

Interesting point, but not really relevant to my argument. What's most interesting about these IDF anecdotes is that you have one ex-soldier completely dismiss

Interesting point, but not really relevant to my argument. What's most interesting about these IDF anecdotes is that you have one ex-soldier completely dismissing behaviour that another ex-soldier admits to. That pattern can generalize to any org, regardless of volunteer / non-volunteer selection. I.e. they can't both be right. One of them is over-generalizing. EDIT> I.e. saying "No one in org X is doing Y" is much less likely (given an individual's limited personal experience) than saying "someone in org X is probably doing Y".

endtime 15y ago
The OP said "Org X has property P." You responded with "Org Y does not have property P, and Org Y is like Org X." I claim the second half of that - that things that are true about the IDF are likely to be true about the US military - cannot be assumed. Even ignoring the significant cultural differences between the two countries, there are differences in the demographics the militaries themselves are composed of.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  So at the risk of pedantry ... I was making a claim about large organizations that depend on loyalty, not even specifically military organizations. So, the specific difference between military organizations and cultures are neatly excluded. The pattern (of which I gave a specific example) is: Person X in large org Y claims something is true for ALL members of org Y, based on X's personal experience. I submit that humans being what they are and organizations being what they are, it's more likely that there are bad behaviours that are tolerated in sub-organizations of Y even if they violate the officially stated rules. TL;DR Without perfect knowledge it's better to assume that something somewhere is going wrong than to assume that nothing anywhere is going wrong. A lot of science, engineering and process control basically boils down to this. Why do we forget it when dealing with human systems?
  - endtime 15y ago
    Behavior/discipline will necessarily be noisier in a conscripted organization than in a self-selected volunteer organization. I don't think you can generalize that away.

endtime 15y ago

The OP said "Org X has property P." You responded with "Org Y does not have property P, and Org Y is like Org X." I claim the second half of that - that things that are true about the IDF are likely to be true about the US military - cannot be assumed. Even ignoring the significant cultural differences between the two countries, there are differences in the demographics the militaries themselves are composed of.

JabavuAdams 15y ago
So at the risk of pedantry ... I was making a claim about large organizations that depend on loyalty, not even specifically military organizations. So, the specific difference between military organizations and cultures are neatly excluded. The pattern (of which I gave a specific example) is: Person X in large org Y claims something is true for ALL members of org Y, based on X's personal experience. I submit that humans being what they are and organizations being what they are, it's more likely that there are bad behaviours that are tolerated in sub-organizations of Y even if they violate the officially stated rules. TL;DR Without perfect knowledge it's better to assume that something somewhere is going wrong than to assume that nothing anywhere is going wrong. A lot of science, engineering and process control basically boils down to this. Why do we forget it when dealing with human systems?
- endtime 15y ago
  Behavior/discipline will necessarily be noisier in a conscripted organization than in a self-selected volunteer organization. I don't think you can generalize that away.