

Groupthink - tomkin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

======
ddeck
One interesting case is the Yom Kippur War. Groupthink was broadly attributed
as a major factor in why the Israel Defence Force's intelligence unit failed
to foresee the surprise attack that started the war, despite very clear signs
leading up to it [1].

As a safeguard, the structure of the organization was changed significantly,
including the creation of a "devil's advocate" office, whose task is basically
to criticize assessments coming from the main group.

From a Brooking's Institution report [2]:

 _The devil’s advocate office ensures that AMAN’s intelligence assessments are
creative and do not fall prey to group think. The office regularly criticizes
products coming from the analysis and production divisions,and writes opinion
papers that counter these departments’ assessments. The staff in the devil’s
advocate office is made up of extremely experienced and talented officers who
are known to have a creative, “outside the box” way of thinking. Perhaps as
important, they are highly regarded by the analysts. As such, strong
consideration is given to their conclusions and their memos go directly to the
office of the Director of Military Intelligence, as well as to all major
decision makers._

 _The devil’s advocate office also proactively combats group think and
conventional wisdom by writing papers that examine the possibility of a
radical and negative change occurring within the security environment. This is
done even when the defense establishment does not think that such a
development is likely, precisely to explore alternative assumptions and worst-
case scenarios._

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War#Lead-
up_to_the_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War#Lead-
up_to_the_surprise_attack)

[2]
[http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2007/...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2007/10/intelligence%20kuperwasser/10_intelligence_kuperwasser.pdf)

~~~
seclorum
>> they are highly regarded by the analysts.

I'm seeing an attack vector ..

------
greenyoda
Reminds me of my favorite demotivational poster:

[http://www.despair.com/meetings.html](http://www.despair.com/meetings.html)

(Also:
[http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html](http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html))

------
FlailFast
I think we can all agree this is a problem in the startup world. But in doing
so, we'd all be suffering from Groupthink.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Don't forget that without any groupthink at all, there wouldn't be any
startups.

------
znowi
"I know I will be downvoted for this..." is a good example of a groupthink
environment :)

------
andyidsinga
yeeeaah, i'm going to go with everyone else on this one, and agree that
groupthink is bad.

;)

------
dodyg
JavaScript framework du jour

~~~
FlailFast
This makes me want to start a JavaScript framework called "Groupthink." It'll
basically be Golang syntax that somehow magically compiles to JS. (Full
disclosure: I actually kinda like Go)

~~~
dodyg
I am stuying Go right now using LiteIDE. So far so good.

------
moocowduckquack
When told there are only two options, always choose the third.

