

Greybeard Stories: The Unwise Update - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/TheUnwiseUpdate.html?HN

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jacquesm
Is the military really that rigid on not questioning your superiors orders?

Assuming that a higher placed always knows better seems to be a pretty weird
position, at some point domain specific knowledge starts to apply and you
would expect a more bi-directional flow of information.

You might explain the 'why' of something without being asked and follow up
with a 'do you foresee any issues with that?' to avoid mistakes like that one
in the story.

~~~
gaius
Doctrine in all the major Western militaries is to specify orders in terms of
the outcome, and push decision making as far down the chain of command as
possible - to the "strategic corporal":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War>

However there are times when an order really does need to be obeyed
immediately without question, because there simply isn't time for anything
else. The problem here was the officer didn't know which was which.

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_delirium
Seems to indicate that there's often a balance between codification and
informality. If your codified practices miss something important that
_should've_ been formalized (but of course you can't formalize everything),
it's sometimes nice if people give enough informal reasons to each other in
even routine communication so that it's possible for someone to notice, "wait,
_that's_ why you want this?"

