[i_like_apis]

I’m reminded of one of my favorite sayings:

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

You may want to ignore that this this comes from Donald Rumsfeld (he has some great ones though: “unknown unknowns …”, etc.)

I think about this a lot when working on teams. Everyone is not perfectly agreeable or has the same understanding or collective goals. Some may be suboptimal or prone to doing things you don’t prefer. But having a team is better than no team, so find the best way to accomplish goals with the one you have.

It applies to systems well too.

[roughly]

Rumsfeld's got some great quotes, most of which were delivered in the context of explaining how the Iraq war turned into such a clusterfuck, and boy could that whole situation have used the kind of leadership Donald Rumsfeld's quotes would lead you to believe the man could've provided.

[rovolo]

JFYI, the "Unknown Unknowns" quote is from before the invasion (2002-02-12). It was deflection on whether there was evidence of Iraq building WMDs or of cooperating with e.g Al Qaeda.

> Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.

> Rumsfeld: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

> And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are ...

https://archive.ph/20180320091111/http://archive.defense.gov...

[el_nahual]

I haven't read the transcript of this conversation in a long time, but thank you for sharing it.

The sophistry of his argument is extreme.

Yes, of course there are always "unknown unknowns"-- but the statement "there is no evidence that Iraq is supplying WMDs to terrorists" is not a statement made in a vacuum, in which all permutations of known/unknown are equally likely.

[jkern]

It really is jarring that this is about the actual justification for a war, and his response basically boils down to "well we don't know they haven't done it or if they might in the future".

[marcosdumay]

If I remember it correctly (it was a long time ago), he never fully supported the war. It didn't take a genius to notice that the goals set by the presidency were (literally) impossible and not the kind of thing you do achieve a war.

But whatever position he had, Iraq turning into a clusterfuck wasn't a sign of bad leadership by his part. It was a sign of bad ethics, but not leadership. His options were all of getting out of his position, disobeying the people above him, or leading the US into a clusterfuck.

[mickdeek86]

Rumsfeld personally advanced the de-baathification directive - the lynchpin of the clusterfuckery - all on his own, and he certainly would have known to expect the 'unexpected' results to be similar to de-nazification. This was absolutely his choice. Another point you have (unintentionally?) brought up is the dignified resignation option. While it is often a naive, self-serving gesture, we can reasonably imagine that the Defense Secretary publicly resigning over opposition to a war during the public consideration of that war, might have had some effect on whether that war was started. I want to like him too, with his grandfatherly demeanor and genuine funnyness ("My god, were there so many vases?!") but, come on.

[js2]

I don't think you remember correctly:

> In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#Military_decis...

[earthboundkid]

As history, this is completely incorrect, but beyond that, if you don’t believe in the mission of the President in committing an act of war, you have a responsibility to resign, and it can’t be bracketed as “bad ethics”.

Anyway, another historical point besides what the other commenters have said is that Rumsfeld believed in “transformation” which meant you could do more with less in modern war. He was totally wrong about it.

It wasn’t his fault Turkey didn’t let the US attack from the north, but other than that, the fuck up is his responsibility, among others.

[Miraste]

There's a distinction missing here. Rumsfeld's Transformation idea was correct with regard to the invasion, which was one of the most successful invasions in history, period. No one has ever taken over such a large country, so far away, so fast, with so few troops, before or since.

The occupation afterward was where the clusterfuck came in, and (somehow) none of the preparation had been directed toward that.

[eru]

Funny enough, if you go by what's written in the US constitution, their president can't actually go to war.

But thanks to enough loop holes, they can get into 'special military operations' (to misappropriate a recent term).

[meepmorp]

At no point in US history was it ever the case that every military operation was considered a war, nor that a war declaration would be necessary and/or appropriate to conduct such operations. What's more, Congress has frequently and explicitly given the President authority to conduct large scale military operations and held oversight hearings, etc. of the execution of those operations - all without formal declarations of war; Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan being prime examples of this.

Calling them "special military operations," poor taste aside, especially with a focus on the formal process used, ignores the fact that all of those conflicts were entered and conducted with the full knowledge and involvement of Congresss.

[dragonwriter]

> Rumsfeld's got some great quotes, most of which were delivered in the context of explaining how the Iraq war turned into such a clusterfuck

If by “explaining how” you mean “deflecting (often preemptively) responsibility for”, yes.

[froggit]

> If by “explaining how” you mean “deflecting (often preemptively) responsibility for”, yes.

There's no reason to think you can't do both of those with the same statement.

[dragonwriter]

Abstractly, sure.

I’m characterizing what I recall Rumsfeld concretely doing, not what is abstractly possible for one to do.

[xapata]

> could've

If someone is 83.7% likely to provide good leadership, how would you evaluate the choice to hire that person as a leader in the hindsight that the person failed to provide good leadership -- was it a bad choice, or was it a good choice that was unlucky?

(Likelihood was selected arbitrarily.)

[hluska]

Like everything in politics, I think this is a function of what team you cheer for. If your goal was to come up with an excuse to invade Iraq, that person was an excellent choice. If you’re on the other team, what a clusterfuck.

Then you add in a party system and it gets more complicated. Realistically, you don’t get to be the United States Secretary of Defense (twice) if you’re the kind of person who will ignore the will of the party and whoever is President.

[eru]

Is that number (publicly) known when you hire the person?

If yes, you just evaluate the choice based on that probability (and other things you knew at the time), not on the actual outcome.

Prediction markets are one way to make these kinds numbers known.

[xapata]

No, the likelihood is unknown, but the hiring process includes a model to estimate it. Of a sort.

[whatshisface]

>quotes would lead you to believe

[moffkalast]

Could've at least given them some motivational quotes.

[hluska]

I like to remind myself that very few people reach positions of great power after mediocre lives. Rather there’s a thread of talent that runs through government.

Once they’re in, the predilections that led to power often rear their dark long tails. But they’re all (even the ones I disagree with) talented.

[patmcc]

They're talented at getting into power, and may be talented at any number of other things.

They're not always talented at the things we may want them to be, unfortunately. And that's true of both the ones I agree and disagree with.

[coldtea]

>I like to remind myself that very few people reach positions of great power after mediocre lives.

You'd be surprised.

"Reaching positions of great power after mediocre lives" is the very art of career politics.

[roughly]

Politics is fundamentally the art of convincing people of things - usually “vote for me.” That is the only skill that acquisition of high office is evidence of. Many politicians have more skills than just than that, but the mere fact of having acquired high office tells you nothing more about a person than that they’re particularly good at politics.

[oDot]

Every time I hear the name Rumsfeld, I am reminded of the time when, for over 10 minutes, he refused to deny being a lizard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_34tqxAjA

[i_like_apis]

Haha. Thanks for sharing that. Rumsfeld definitely has a sense of humor.

He’s also one of the best candidates for that type of conspiracy theory. His career history is flabbergasting.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#Corporate_conn...

In addition to all the Bohemian Club, RAND corp, defense and government posts, in the 70s the guy was a CEO in the pharmaceuticals and electronics industries, was a director in aerospace, media and tech.

Definitely the type of resume that lets the imagination run wild with, “… wait, was he a lizard person …?”

[fuzztester]

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

https://www.google.com/search?q=no+battle+plan+survives

[fuzztester]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder

Moltke's thesis was that military strategy had to be understood as a system of options, since it was possible to plan only the beginning of a military operation. As a result, he considered the main task of military leaders to consist in the extensive preparation of all possible outcomes.[3] His thesis can be summed up by two statements, one famous and one less so, translated into English as "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" (or "no plan survives contact with the enemy") and "Strategy is a system of expedients".[18][8] Right before the Austro-Prussian War, Moltke was promoted to General of the Infantry.[8]

[roughly]

I’m reminded of the Eisenhower line: “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

[fuzztester]

Good one indeed.

Apropos of Eisenhower, there is an incredible (fiction) book by Larry Collins, called Fall from Grace. It is about a brilliant long term plan and actions by British and French secret services to deceive the Germans about where the final Allied invasion would happen on the shores of France near the end of WWII. According to the novel, the ruse helped win the war.

Interwoven with a doomed romance.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fall+from+grace+larry+collin...

I read the full book some years ago, and it was gripping, though slow in parts.

[kaba0]

“No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one”

I heard it in this form.

[agrippanux]

Also Moltke: “no plan survives contact with the enemy”

[fuzztester]

Recursion.

   ...

         Recursion

[fuzztester]

Classic.

[sbuk]

Mike Tyson said it more simply: "Everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face."

[fuzztester]

Nope.

Let's juxtapose them and see:

Von Moltke:

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Tyson:

"Everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face."

Pretty much the same meaning, and Von Moltke's quote is three words shorter, so no, Tyson's quote is not simpler.

Also, Tyson was ungrammatical, IMO:

"Everybody" vs. "you" in the same sentence, referring to the same entity.

Grammar experts, correct me if I am wrong.

[sbuk]

It was midnight and a few beers after celebrating a birthday. I'm sorry I offended your grammatical sensibilities. But you really did go full orange site there, didn't you! I will admit to misquoting Mike Tyson; "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.", which I hope goes someway to restoring peace and order over a tiny, drunken grammatical slip-up.

[fuzztester]

Oh, I wasn't offended at all. I am not one of these Oxford comma type of people (I think that was a trend on Twitter a while ago). I have no idea what that means, except maybe it is about grammatical correctness, and I am not going to google it. :)

I was just being a little pedantic for fun. I don't do that often.

So peace and order was not even disturbed, at least for me.

Enjoy.

[fuzztester]

BTW, looks like you could deploy my new SaaS at the end of your above comment, for great good:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064183

[fuzztester]

BTW, what is "orange site"?

I googled it and at least the top few links don't seem relevant.

[rovolo]

This site's default theme is orange.

[eru]

Simplicity isn't a function of number of words alone.

> Also, Tyson was ungrammatical, IMO:

> "Everybody" vs. "you" in the same sentence, referring to the same entity.

Seems perfectly understandable to English speakers. (And that's pretty close to how English grammar is defined by descriptive linguists.)

Have a look at http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/ for an exploration of these kinds of concepts.

[fuzztester]

Oh, it was perfectly understandable to me too, even though I am not a native English speaker (but I have been told by native speakers that my English is quite good).

"Everybody" seems to be in the third person and "you" is in the second person, so I thought it was a mismatch (since in the same sentence, etc.), and so was ungrammatical.

Let anyone tell me if I am wrong, would like to know.

And see my reply to sbuk, it was just in fun.

[eru]

Real world grammar is a lot more fluid and flexible, than just blindly following a bunch of fixed, mechanical rules.

The mechanical rules are just an imperfect attempt at capturing parts of the richness of real world language, or more precisely: language variants of different dialects and speakers.

Of course, there's a whole world of class markers overlaid here as well. If you want to sound middle-class educated in most of the English speaking world, you have to avoid "ain't" and say things like "It is I" or "Bob and I went shopping.", instead of the more natural "It's me!" or "Bob and me went shopping." That's what Emond calls 'Grammatically Deviant Prestige Constructions'. The whole point is that they aren't part of a naturally learnable variant of English, so they can only be acquired by schooling.

Most people who speak prestige-English over-generalise, and also say things like "She likes Bob and I.".

See fine.me.uk/Emonds/ for details.

[dizhn]

Most places have "they" instead of "you" in the quote.

[eru]

That works, too.

[fuzztester]

And anyway, simplicity, although I favor it a lot in my work, is not a virtue in itself. As for many, if not most issues, the answer is "It all depends.".

[tedunangst]

Mattis "the enemy gets a vote" is another good reminder of reality, although people get very angry about it. Useful in terms of security, privacy, DRM, etc.

[roughly]

I work in an area with particularly clever and motivated users, and this quote pops to mind now and again when I learn about some of the hacks they’re using to get around some of the more optimistically designed systems they’ve been provided.

[walterbell]

Product management outside the box.

[Buttons840]

I like a similar quote from Steven Pressfield:

“The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.”

This applies to ourselves more than our systems though.

[brookst]

I think it’s as applicable to systems. They are all imperfect, they all have flaws and broken parts that need fixing. And we have to use them.

[sainez]

Great point about working on teams. For the vast majority of tasks, people are only marginally better or worse than each other. A few people with decent communication will outpace a "star" any day of the week.

I try to remind myself of this fact when I'm frustrated with other people. A bit of humility and gratitude go a long way.

[prmph]

Hmmmm, I really don't think this is true all (or even most of) the time. It probably depends on the task at hand, but if leading small teams of all kinds has taught me anything, it's that I'd prefer a tiny team (or even one person) who is at least above average competence, and is reflective of the work they are doing, than several people of average or below-average competence.

It's eye opening how many people are outright lazy with thought, don't care about the joy of doing something well (apart from whatever extrinsic rewards are attached to the work). Many team members can actually produce negative value.

It seems that people who are really capable of (or care about) conscientious, original thought in problem solving and driving projects forward are few. Count yourself lucky if you get to manage one of these people, they can produce incredible value when well directed.

[eru]

Btw, excellent communication can also be the skill that makes a 'star'.

[eru]

> Great point about working on teams. For the vast majority of tasks, people are only marginally better or worse than each other. A few people with decent communication will outpace a "star" any day of the week.

Depends on what you are working on. Btw, good communication can also make someone a 'star' and elevate the whole team.

> I try to remind myself of this fact when I'm frustrated with other people. A bit of humility and gratitude go a long way.

That's good advice for most situations.

[bmurphy1976]

I think about this whenever a product lead talks about planning something, dumping it on the dev team, and saying it's the dev team's responsibility to figure out how to implement it. No wonder the part of the company that does this has a very contentious relationship with their product team and is overly oriented around metrics, having to constantly fight for resources and prove they don't have the bandwidth to take on projects.

Meanwhile our side of the org has a much more collaborative relationship with our product team. We have our issues for sure, but our relationships are sound. The feedback loop is tight and product pushes back on things as much as the dev team does. Product works with the dev team to figure out what we can do and stays with us to the end. There's much less tossing things over the fence and everybody seems happier.

[yardie]

I’m not sure who came up with it first but the nautical expression is, “you sail with the crew you have”

[i_like_apis]

Yeah I should have left the Rumsfeld part out because the conversation naturally got distracted. It isn’t accurate to attribute it to him. His was perhaps the most prominent recent version , but he was definitely paraphrasing an existing adage.

[makeitdouble]

I'm thinking about this quote for a while but have a hard time squeezing the meaning, or really the actionable part out of it.

The unknown unknowns quote brings the concept that however confident you are in a plan you absolutely need margin. The other quote thought...what do you do differently when understanding that your team is not perfect ?

On one side, outside of VC backed startups I don't see companies trying to reinvent linux whith a team of 4 new graduates. On the other side companies with really big goals will hire a bunch until they feel comfortable with their talent before "going to war". You'll see recruiting posts seeking specialists in a field before a company bets the farm on that specific field (imagine Facebook renaming itself to Meta before owning Oculus...nobody does that[0])

Edit: sorry, I forgot some guy actually just did that 2 weeks ago with a major social platform. And I kinda wanted to forget about it I think.

[coldtea]

This however is a retelling of centuries old proverbs and quotes (all the way to Roosevel's "do what you can, with what you have, where you are"), and "unknown unknowns" was a concept already familiar in epistemology, but also fields like systems theory, risk management, etc.

[bachmeier]

That's the right attitude for an employee. If management says something like that, look for a new job. It's not sustainable to compete with fewer resources than your opposition. There's a reason college sports is going through a passionate realignment right now.

[nostrademons]

The way to win with fewer resources than your competition is to convince them it's not a competition. Or even better, to not let them know you exist.

[batch12]

Sounds like he may have been a Shania Twain fan - "Dance with the One That Brought You" is the similar phrase I've heard

[dizhn]

Let's go back to the 70s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_the_One_You%27re_With

[KnobbleMcKnees]

That was Donald Rumsfeld!? I always assumed this came from some techie or agile guru given how much it's used as a concept in project planning.

[killjoywashere]

As a military officer who was watching CNN live from inside an aircraft carrier (moored) when he said that, being in charge of anti-terrorism on the ship at the time, it was absolutely foundational to my approach to so many things after that. Here's the actual footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REWeBzGuzCc

Rumsfeld was complicated, but there's no doubt he was very effective at leading the Department. I think most people fail to realize how sophisticated the Office of the Secretary of Defense is. Their resources reel the mind, most of all the human capital, many with PhDs, many very savvy political operators with stunning operational experiences. As a small example, as I recall, Google's hallowed SRE system was developed by an engineer who had come up through the ranks of Navy nuclear power. That's but one small component reporting into OSD.

Not a Rumsfeld apologist, by any means. Errol Morris did a good job showing the man for who he is, and it's not pretty (1). But reading HN comments opining about the leadership qualities of a Navy fighter pilot who was both the youngest and oldest SECDEF makes me realize how the Internet lets people indulge in a Dunning-Kruger situation the likes of which humanity has never seen.

https://www.amazon.com/Known-Donald-Rumsfeld/dp/B00JGMJ914

[sgarland]

> Google's hallowed SRE system was developed by an engineer who had come up through the ranks of Navy nuclear power

Wait, really? That makes _so much sense._ It also makes me upset that all of my attempts to sway other SRE orgs over to Nuclear Navy practices have been met with doubt.

- ex nuke submariner

[hliyan]

Amazing. Just looked it up. This document references the nuclear navy and civil nuclear power multiple times: https://sre.google/sre-book/lessons-learned/

[sgarland]

I’ve read much of that book, but apparently not that far. Thanks for linking.

[michael1999]

I'll support you there. In any sensible reading of Nuremberg, they all deserve to hang from the neck until dead. But the central moral failure was Bush. Letting Cheney hijack the vp search, and then pairing him up with Rumsfeld was a bad move, and obviously bad at the time. Those two had established themselves as brilliant but paranoid kooks with their Team B fantasies in the 70s, and should never have been allowed free rein.

[jacquesm]

Indeed, it is very well possible to be both brilliant and an ethically completely unhinged individual.

[eru]

> [...] the Internet lets people indulge in a Dunning-Kruger situation the likes of which humanity has never seen.

While we are at it, that infamous Dunning-Kruger study showed didn't even claim what people like to pretend it claimed. In addition the more nuanced claim they did make is not supported by the evidence they collected and presented in their paper. (Their statistics are pretty much useless, and as with any social science study, it has a small 'n' and it doesn't replicate.)

But the mythology 'Dunning-Kruger effect' is too good to pass up in Internet discussions, so it survives as a meme.

[killjoywashere]

I didn't know the names of Dunning or Kruger. I was a medical student who surveyed my classmates on their study habits and also asked them which quintile of the class they believed they stood in. My response rate was high enough that it was impossible to believe so few people from the bottom quintile had responded, and the upper 2 and 3 quintiles were impossibly overpopulated. That's how I learned about the effect. I didn't learn about Dunning and Kruger for several years after that, but when I did, oh boy, did the lights come one.

So, the current fashion of denouncing Dunning and Kruger doesn't jive with me. It was too obvious to discount and I had no idea of the concept when I saw it my own data. I think the misunderstanding has to do with the idea that it's about dumb people being dumb. It's about all of us. We all get it wrong. Even the smart ones. Paradoxically, the smart ones just get it wrong in the less desirable direction.

I think that academic fashionistas may be too clever by half here. Unless you have original data to back up a claim, the internet points aren't worth it. Focus on getting things right.

[twelvechairs]

It's from a post WWII psychological theory the 'Johari Window'. Rumsfeld brought the phrase into wider consciousness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window

[a_seattle_ian]

That it came from Donald Rumsfeld in the context of what we know now and what he surely knew then is why it's such a good quote. The words basically say nothing but are also true about everything. So it can implicit be a warning that there is probably some bullshit going on or someone has a sense of humor and is also warning people while also avoiding the subject - of course just my opinion. How people actually use it will depend what the audience agrees it to mean.

[KnobbleMcKnees]

The common use I'm referring to is similar to the OP, which is using it as a framework for assessing risk. In particular, aligning a team on the "known unknowns" is critical to building the confidence and alignment needed as a group to be able to deal with unquantifiable/inestimable risk.

[a_seattle_ian]

I just took a look at that wiki article for Rumsfeld's usage of the "There are unknown unknowns" and I had no idea that he barrowed this phrase to frame his arguments and I was only familiar with that context, unfortunately.

[midasuni]

And unknown unknowns is a great way to communicate with stakeholders too

[roughly]

Žižek has a followup to that quote:

"What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns," the things we don't know that we know."

I've found it's really critical during the project planning phase to get to not just where the boundaries of our knowledge are, but also where are the things we're either tacitly assuming or not even aware that we've assumed. An awful lot of postmortems I've been a part of have come down to "It didn't occur to us that could happen."

[waprin]

I really enjoy the concept of unknown knowns, but I don’t agree with your example, which is an unknown unknown.

To me the corporate version of the unknown known is when a a project is certainly doomed, for reasons everyone on the ground knows about, yet nobody wants to say anything and be the messenger that inevitably gets killed, as long as paycheck keeps clearing. An exec ten thousand feet from the ground sets a “vision” which can’t be blown off course by minor details such as reality, until the day it does.

Theranos is a famous example of this but I’ve had less extreme versions happen to me many times throughout my career.

Another example of unknown knowns might be the conflict between companies stated values (Focus on the User) and the unstated values that are often much more important (Make Lots of Money)

[roughly]

Yeah, you’re right. I was reaching for an example, but yours are much better and better capture the idea.

[cozzyd]

In the case of the Iraq war, the unknown knowns were probably key...

[59nadir]

I think unknown knowns are more easy to spot when teaching newcomers how the system works. Their questions will sometimes be about things we hadn't even considerered (at least in some time) to be the case, but when you have to spell everything out it is indeed the case. In terms of teaching unknown knowns are critical to identify and instead make known knowns so that everyone can end up with a mostly equal playing field.

As an example, there are a lot of unknown knowns that you accumulate over the years in certain lower level languages that need to be spelled out more clearly to someone who is coming at it as a later endeavor. It's entirely possible to spend all your time in a completely managed language nowadays and the concept of the stack, heap, etc., will be largely alien to you. These ideas and their limitations need to be spelled out clearly in order for someone to build the same knowledge base and intuition.

Unknown knowns are essentially endless in nature and extremely hard to find unless you have someone who simply doesn't know to basically fall into traps and guide you toward finding your hidden knowledge.

[munificent]

> An awful lot of postmortems I've been a part of have come down to "It didn't occur to us that could happen."

Would that not be an unknown unknown?

[roughly]

Usually there's a tacit assumption of how the system works, how the users are using the system, or something else about the system or the environment that causes that - it's not that the answer wasn't known, it's that it was assumed to be something it wasn't and nobody realized that was an assumption and not a fact.

[thfuran]

That's just an unknown unknown masquerading as a known known.