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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Great Books of Failure - Less Wrong
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The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.
Subject: World War I.
Lessons: In the era before computers, you couldn't halt a war once the order was given because there were no pre-made logistical plans for halting a mobilization. The Germans over-tinkered with their battle plan and weakened it - if they'd stuck with their original plan they might have conquered France. Epic amounts of stupidity everywhere - it might have been the greatest parade of multisided folly in all human history.
It was an epic event. Did it have any higher a stupidity quotient than anything else at the time?
I suspect yes, given the actors and the stakes; but at any rate it may be one of the best-chronicled displays of multisided folly in human history.