[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.