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The_Lion comments on Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread) - Less Wrong Discussion
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We should take the outside view and look at other governments that had "crazy" ideologies and ask if the leaders of these governments really believed these ideologies. The Nazi leaders were mostly sincere in their beliefs, as were many but not all of the communist leaders (Lenin and Trotsky certainly were true believers in what they professed, while Mao and Stalin were probably cynical opportunists.) My guess is that most of the Christian European monarchs who claimed a divine right to rule really did believe that they were God's instruments.
The Great Leap Forward increased Mao's power in the sense that it gave him much more control over of the lives of Chinese citizens, although it did cause him to lose favor among the Chinese elites.
Surely Mao didn't intend that outcome, and would have tried to avoid it if he had foreseen it.
Or is his failure to foresee the outcome merely evidence he was a bad planner? Did his ideology say anything he tried would succeed as long as his goals were correct? After he achieved a bad outcome, did he therefore modify his ideology to account for it?