The US bombing escalation in Vietnam.
(On a related note, something similar occurred with the Millennium Challenge 2002- the Red team used unexpected tactics to pull off unexpected early victories against the simulated US forces, so the general running the war game 'refloated' the sunk ships, then forced both sides to use prescripted plans of action, ignoring the unexpected initial events.)
(On a related note, something similar occurred with the Millennium Challenge 2002- the Red team used unexpected tactics to pull off unexpected early victories against the simulated US forces, so the general running the war game 'refloated' the sunk ships, then forced both sides to use prescripted plans of action, ignoring the unexpected initial events.)
It's a little more complicated than that, or so I read. After the unexpected happened, the various generals - including the one in charge of the Red team - decided that the rest of the exercise would lose a lot of its value if they continued from the point they had arrived at (with much of the "U.S." forces unable to participate in the simulated landing) and collectively decided to hit the reset button to see what would happen in that part of the exercise.
Well, yeah, that was General Pace's justification. But the Red team was then forced to use a pre-set strategy for the rest of the exercise, which was restrictive enough that its commander, General Paul Van Riper, outright resigned midway through. He later said that "We were directed... to move air defences so that the army and marine units could successfully land. We were simply directed to turn [air defence systems] off or move them... So it was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be." He also later explicitly compared General Pace's thinking to that of the Defense Department under McNamara, which is why I brought it up.
World War II seems to have some possible examples. Many Jews who didn't think about escaping until it was too late, because it was too horrible to believe. Neville Chamberlain thinking he could appease the war away. Possibly Stalin's reaction to Hitler's invasion:
Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[145] However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.
Hitler's delusions of a German victory toward the end of the war. The Japanese holdouts.
These are the first things I thought of, anyway, although it now occurs to me that comparing your audience to Hitler would have some rhetorical drawbacks.
although it now occurs to me that comparing your audience to Hitler would have some rhetorical drawbacks.
Upvoted for comedy.
I remember someone claimed that many Jews put off making plans to leave Germany because they had pianos, and pianos are hard to move. Basically the piano created an Ugh Field around the idea of moving.
"someone claimed Jews X" is pretty much the standard of evidence the Germans used (I know you don't mean it this way of course)
"someone claimed Jews X" is pretty much the standard of evidence the Germans used (I know you don't mean it this way of course)
And if Hitler did it it must be bad! (On the subject of 'standard of evidence'...)
Well aware of the Hitler fallacy, it's quite common among (us) Jews. "Someone said Y X" is still a shitty standard of evidence to begin with. Considering that people are not emotionally neutral to Jews in general hearsay is even worse. In this case the undercurrent of meaning is quite possibly "greedy Jews woud rather die than part with their pianos". I suspect that Daniel is too refined of a person to catch that; it's still not epistemically hygienic.
"Someone said Y X" is still a shitty standard of evidence to begin with. [...] it's still not epistemically hygienic.
Most people just say "Y X". Explicitly saying "Someone said Y X" is relatively good epistemic hygiene, because it communicates something about the evidence for the claim, not just the claim itself.
Agreed, it's better than "Y X", but still relatively worthless, especially when someone is looking for quotable examples for an article. Repeating stories like this is sum negative since it adds social proof to things of very low probability. This is what I meant by hygiene.
I think we have to be careful to avoid hindsight bias when thinking of examples of this. For example, it is quite possible that Jews who chose not to leave Nazi Germany before Kristalnacht were in fact acting perfectly rationally. Certainly Weinberg makes a reasonable case that they were acting rationally in this essay (and yes, I realise that he has plenty of reasons to try to justify himself, but that doesn't change the fact that it's possible he made a sensible decision).
I don't disagree at all. Also, the millions of Jews in areas subject to Nazi control had an enormous variety of differing constraints and circumstances.
No matter what, in order to find an unambiguous example of "motivated skepticism with grave consequences" from history (rather than in the context of an academic experiment), Luke is going to have to do his homework. First, the rational course of action has to be demonstrably certain. As you correctly point out, hindsight bias is a real problem. Second, Luke has to show that the actor not only behaved irrationally, but specifically suffered from "motivated skepticism," rather than some other form of irrationality.
You would need a control group of other people at the time who made the 'correct' decision due to lack of a certain bias to indicate the bias was present.
The Japanese holdouts.
I seem to recall that Japanese soldiers were especially trained to fight to the bitter end because failure against the Americans was the worst thing imaginable, etc. Can anyone point me to decent historical documentation of this, if this is indeed what happened?
Many of them committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner or surrender there are many articles and such on the war in the pacific theatre and almost all of them mention that. Although the ones with veterans interviews would be most helpful.
I've read -- and this may be pure anecdote -- that false claims about how the American forces were treating prisoners of war may have contributed to that.
I guess the value system can be more important here. They had an order and they did what they were ordered.
Look at http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/soldiersurr_2.htm - the soldier surrendered immediately after receiving the order to do so read by his cmmander, but ignored all evidence of Japanese defeat before that.
The fall of Dan Rather.
His rise to fame was in the days when a few broadcast TV channels and the local newspaper was The News to almost everyone. By 2004, he was an established and powerful elder statesman-type at CBS. To make a long story short, his people were given a set of documents that seemed to substantiate what would have been a scandal regarding George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard. Rather went with the story. Almost immediately, a lot of people -- especially bloggers -- noticed that the documents not only looked like fakes, but really amateurish, silly fakes.
At this point, Rather could have cut his losses. He could have gone on the air and said, "Folks, I'm really sorry. We were lied to, and we retract the whole story. My staff and I would never deliberately try to deceive you, our viewers, but we just didn't check this story out properly ahead of time. Ultimately, I'm the boss, so it's my responsibility. I deeply regret the error, and I personally promise that this will never happen again." This would have been extremely embarrassing, but Rather had a lot of stature, and if he handled it well, he might even have gained some respect.
But no, he decided to double down.
Would you consider the actions of Stanislav Petrov an example of flinching away? It seems like there might be historical examples of where flinching has overwhelmingly beneficial consequences, if I understand flinching away right.
No, because he was updating on the evidence. If the satellites had detected a full launch of thousands of US missiles and Petrov had delayed launching, that would have been flinching away.
Wikipedia says:
Petrov later indicated the influences in this decision included: that he was informed a U.S. strike would be all-out, so five missiles seemed an illogical start,[1] that the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy, and that ground radars failed to pick up corroborative evidence, even after minutes of delay.
Apparently there was a bit of reasoning that went into ignoring what seemed to be a strike, so it wasn't flinching away dramatically. I suppose the point is that while flinching away is bad, you also can be overly impulsive, and history gives us examples of both. This, of course, does not say we should not continue to advocate against flinching away.
Also note that if US strike were a real five-missile strike, the retaliation would still be possible. Even half of the USSR stockpile was enough to level all the major military bases and industrial cities. If USSR "retaliated" to something that was not a real first strike... Let's just say that Petrov chose the cheaper risk.
There's a natural cluster of "flinching away from the evidence because it makes you uncomfortable", and that cluster does not include what Petrov did.
The subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 seems like an obvious example, as is every other bubble. Warnings get ignored because "this time it's different".
To be fair, there often is always someone warning of a bubble. As the famous quote goes, economists have predicted 9 out of the last 5 recessions. The problem is picking out who to listen to. (On the other hand, I don't have detailed knowledge about whether there are more warnings from more reputable sources than usual before actual bubbles).
This post by Noah Millman is a good discussion of the role "flinching away" played in causing the Eurozone crisis, the Iraq War blunder, and the housing bubble. The examples might be too politically controversial for pedagogical use, but it is a worth reading, thought-provoking article. Excerpt:
What these situations have in common is not arrogance – the assumption that, of course, whatever we do will work out and, if it doesn’t, well, that’s a problem for the little people, not for us. It’s insecurity. Dissenters weren’t dismissed because they were upstarts and nobodies who weren’t worth listening to – they were dismissed because if they were right then what were we going to do? If Greece wasn’t really meeting the criteria for EU membership, then what on earth are we going to do about it? Better not to see what they are up to. If housing valuations are wildly out of line with fundamentals, then what are we supposed to do to keep consumption up? And what are we going to do about the mountain of new, unstable mortgage debt? Better not to countenance the possibility of a nationwide housing correction. If invading Iraq is only going to make us weaker, then how are we supposed to establish that we are in control of events in the region?
Larison thinks that ideological thinking is what causes a refusal to accept threatening facts. I think that has the arrow of causation backwards: threatening facts are what prompt a turn to ideological thinking as a way of getting said facts out of the mental frame. And it is an insecure mind – insecure of its own judgment, or its own expertise, or its own authority, or what-have-you – for whom facts are threatening things.
"If a superintelligent AI is going to take over the world eventually, then what on Earth are we going to do about it?"
I recently read a book on Richard Sorge, a German Communist who pretended to be a Nazi and spied on the Japanese for Moscow. He had acquired a large amount of information indicating that Germany was preparing for an invasion of the Soviet Union, and was attempting to secure Japanese support for this invasion. His reports were viewed by Stalin and his cabinet, but Stalin refused to believe that his good buddy Hitler would betray him (I believe he referred to Sorge as "a little shit"). This was a bad decision.
It's even worse than that- Barton Whaley's definitive history of pre-war Soviet intelligence, Codeword "Barbarossa", identifies no less than 84 separate warnings Stalin had.
A few months ago when EU leaders insisted that it was unthinkable that Greece would ever leave the euro.
It could, but I bet for all historically significant flinching away examples you could find someone who thought they could benefit from the flinching.
Also the purpose is basically "if we pretend it can't happen it's less likely to happen." But surely this is the motivation behind most flinching examples.
Also the purpose is basically "if we pretend it can't happen it's less likely to happen." But surely this is the motivation behind most flinching examples.
I disagree. The unusual nature of banking and finance is explicitly recognized and dealt with: you can't throw a rock in the fractional-reserve banking literature without hitting someone talking about self-fulfilling prophecies and the usefulness of central banks having printing presses enabling them to make credible commitments and so on and so forth. This is not the case in most fields and so definitely not the motivation behind most flinching examples.
(eg. Stalin ignoring Hitler's build-up is not an example of optimism being a self-fulfilling prophecy but possibly entirely the opposite, a self-defeating prophecy - the lack of Soviet reaction encouraging the German plans.)
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?
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.
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.
Check out the comments on Ugh Fields, a lot of LWers shared their own experiences with 'flinching away.'
Field Marshal von Bock had under his command one and a half million men, but his panzer divisions were weakened by the lack of replacement tanks and spare parts. When he assembled his commanders on the eve of the offensive, he set 7 November (the anniversary of the Russian Revolution) as the deadline for surrounding the Soviet capital. The ambitious Bock longed to be known as the conqueror of Moscow.
The Stavka, meanwhile, had been expecting a German offensive against Moscow ever since Army Group Centre had halted in mid- August. Stalin had sent General Yeremenko to organize armies into a new Bryansk Front, while two other fronts, Western and Reserve, were prepared to protect the capital. Yet in spite of these precautions, Yeremenko's forces were taken by surprise when, early on the morning of 30 September, Guderian's panzer Schwerpunkte struck their southern flank out of an autumnal mist. The sun soon broke through, making a warm, clear day, ideal for the offensive. The Germans had nothing to fear from the air. At that moment, less than five per cent of Red Army aviation in European Russia still survived.
During the first days of October, the offensive went perfectly for the Germans, with the panzer groups and Field Marshal Kesselring's Second Air Fleet working closely together. Yeremenko asked the Stavka for permission to withdraw, but no permission was given. On 3 October, Guderian's point units on the right reached the city of Orel, 125 miles behind Yeremenko's lines. Surprise was complete. As the leading panzers raced up the main street past trams, passers-by waved to them, assuming they were Russian. The Red Army had not even had time to prepare charges to blow up the important arms factories. On 6 October, Yeremenko and his staff narrowly escaped capture by German tanks soon after midday. All communications were lost. In the chaos of the following days, Marshal Budenny, supposedly commanding the Reserve Front, even lost his headquarters, and Yeremenko, who was badly wounded in the leg, had to be evacuated by air.
Soviet leaders in the Kremlin at first refused to acknowledge the scale of the threat. On 5 October, a fighter pilot reported a column of German panzers a dozen miles in length, advancing rapidly up the road to Yukhnov, not much more than a hundred miles from Moscow. Even when another pilot was sent out on reconnaissance and confirmed the report, the Stavka still refused to believe it. A third pilot was sent out, and he too confirmed the sighting. This did not stop Beria from wanting to arrest and interrogate their commander as a 'panicmonger', but it finally succeeded in galvanizing the Kremlin.
Stalin called an emergency session of the State Defence Committee. He also ordered General Zhukov, who had brutally invigorated the defence of Leningrad, to fly back immediately.
--STALINGRAD, Antony Beevor
General Custer attacked an Indian village on the Little Bighorn River despite reports from his scouts that the village was larger than any of which they had heard.
Possibly the Type 93:
In the early surface battles of 1942–43, Japanese destroyers and cruisers were able to launch their torpedoes from about 20 km (11 nmi; 12 mi) at the unsuspecting Allied warships attempting to approach to gun range. The American, Australian, and New Zealand warships were expecting enemy torpedoes to be fired at less than 10 km (5.4 nmi; 6.2 mi), their own typical torpedo range. The many torpedo hits suffered by Allied warships in such engagements led their officers to the belief that these torpedoes had been fired from Japanese submarines operating in concert with the surface warships. On rare occasions stray very long-range Type 93s struck ships much further away than their intended targets, leading the Allies on occasion to suspect their ships had been mined. The capabilities of the Type 93 went mostly unrecognized by the Allies until one was captured intact in 1943.
There were many opportunities to figure out that the Japanese torpedoes had much, much range of Allied ones, but the inference that torpedo hits were all from hidden submarines rather than superior technology may have been reasonable. Apparently, it took until after a torpedo was captured to figure it out.
The frustrations provoked quarrels between commanders. A majority
- General Heinz Guderian was the most outspoken - despaired of Hitler's diversions. Moscow was not only the capital of the Soviet Union, they argued, it was also a major centre for communications and the armaments industry. An attack on it would also draw in surviving Soviet armies to their final destruction. The Führer, however, kept his generals in order by exploiting their rivalries and disagreements. He told them that they knew nothing of economic matters. Leningrad and the Baltic had to be secured to protect essential trade with Sweden, while the agriculture of the Ukraine was vital to Germany. Yet his instinct to avoid the road to Moscow was partly a superstitious avoidance of Napoleon's footsteps.
Army Group Centre, having secured Smolensk and encircled the Soviet armies beyond it at the end of July, was ordered to halt. Hitler sent most of Hoth's panzer group northwards to help the attack on Leningrad, while 'Panzerarmee Guderian' (the new designation was a typical Hitlerian sop to a disgruntled but necessary general) was diverted southwards to act as the upper jaw of the great Kiev encirclement.
Hitler changed his mind again early in September when he at last agreed to Operation Typhoon, the advance on Moscow. Yet more time was lost because Hoth's panzer divisions were still engaged in the outskirts of Leningrad. The forces for Operation Typhoon were not finally ready until the very end of September. Moscow lay just over 200 miles away from where Army Group Centre had been halted, and little time remained before the period of autumn mud, and then winter. When General Friedrich Paulus, Haider's chief planner for Barbarossa, had raised the question of winter warfare earlier, Hitler had forbidden any mention of the subject.
--STALINGRAD, Antony Beevor
Irrationality by Sutherland had some good military examples, particularly about Pearl Harbor and some wwII European operations, IIRC the culprit there was Gen. Montgomery.
I recommend looking for examples to the "nodding donkey"/"lackey" Wilhelm Keitel and the "lapdog" Ernst Bush - both thought of rather poorly by their colleagues in the Wehrmacht, as evidenced by their nicknames. One good quote I can't find was a series of remarks by Busch while he was presiding over the destruction of Army Group Centre, the most severe German defeat of WWII ("destruction" is the word ubiquitously associated with the debacle, there are over 300,000 hits for "destruction of army group centre/center" combined - which is still far fewer than the number of soldiers the Germans lost in the series of battles).
In many cases where Hitler gave orders and those orders led to military disaster, there were debates among officers between those arguing that following the orders will/would lead to success and those arguing it will/would lead to failure, and these are cited in German memoirs and other sources. Towards the end of the war, there was ever less plausible uncertainty through which one could believe the orders sound, even in the inherently uncertain environment of war. Busch was mostly trying to rationalize what he was told aloud, according to the recollection of the witnessing officer...I don't remember where I read this. But anyone who has read about Operation Bagration might want to jog their memory.
I'm looking for historical examples of "flinching away," so I can illustrate the concept to others and talk about motivated cognition and leaving a line of retreat and so on.
The ideal example would be one of motivated skepticism with grave consequences. Like, a military commander who shied away from believing certain reports because they implied something huge and scary was about to happen, and then the huge and scary thing happened and caused great damage. Something like that.
What examples can you think of?