James_Miller comments on Historical examples of flinching away - Less Wrong

7 Post author: lukeprog 23 December 2011 09:41PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 24 December 2011 07:12:23PM *  0 points [-]

The sentence you quote and the sentence after "I disagree" support rather than contradict each other. (Not after the edit.)

Stalin could have felt that planning for a Nazi attack (which included talking about it because of the possibility of Nazi spies) would increase the odds of a Nazi attack.

Plus, I've read that Stalin had received lots of reports of invasions that proved to be false when the Nazi's didn't invade when the reports claimed they would and Stalin did have good reason to think that the U.K. was trying to plant false evidence of a Nazi invasion. Furthermore, Stalin might have reasonably concluded that it would be strongly against the Nazi's self-interest to invade Russia. Finally, I find it hard to believe that the extremely paranoid Stalin really didn't consider the possibility of a Nazi invasion. Might Stalin's critics be suffering from hindsight bias?

Comment author: gwern 24 December 2011 07:25:08PM 1 point [-]

I've edited to be clearer.

Might Stalin's critics be suffering from hindsight bias?

Yes. But until we have closely looked at it, I am content to take the subject-area experts at their word when they say it was a blunder by Stalin, much like I accept their word about other mistakes by Hitler and Churchill and in general.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 24 December 2011 08:40:32PM 0 points [-]

Also, it's not like Stalin trying to do something would help the matter. Marshal Timoshenko was struggling to increase Red Army's readiness regardless of Hitler's plans; every month spent in delusion meant a month well-spent by Timoshenko... Forcing the events could easily make the disaster even worse.