There are also some examples of anti-sleepwalk bias:
World War I. The crisis unfolded over more than a month. Surely the diplomats will work something out right? Nope.
Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. Surely some of Hitler’s generals will speak up and persuade Hitler away from this crazy plan when Germany has not even finished the first part of the war against Britain. Surely Germany would not willingly put itself into another two-front war even after many generals had explicitly decided that Germany must never get involved in another two-front war ever again. Right? Nope.
The sinking of the Titanic. Surely, with over two and a half hours to react to the iceberg impact before the ship finished sinking, SURELY there would be enough time to get all of the lifeboats safely and calmly loaded up to near max capacity, right? NOPE. And going even further back to the decision to not put enough lifeboats on in the first place...SURELY the White Star Line must have a good reason for this. SURELY this means that the ship really is unsinkable, right? NOPE.
The 2008 financial crisis. SURELY the monetary authorities have solved the problem of preventing recessions and smoothing out the business cycle. So SURELY I as a private trader can afford to be as reckless as I want and not have to worry about systemic risk, etc.
It is not quite clear to me whether you are here just talking about instances of sleepwalking, or whether you are also talking about a predictive error indicating anti-sleepwalking bias: i.e. that they wrongly predicted that the relevant actors would act, yet they sleepwalked into a disaster.
Also, my claim is not that sleepwalking never occurs, but that people on average seem to think that it happens more often than it actually does.
There are also some examples of anti-sleepwalk bias:
World War I. The crisis unfolded over more than a month. Surely the diplomats will work something out right? Nope.
Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. Surely some of Hitler’s generals will speak up and persuade Hitler away from this crazy plan when Germany has not even finished the first part of the war against Britain. Surely Germany would not willingly put itself into another two-front war even after many generals had explicitly decided that Germany must never get involved in another two-front war ever again. Right? Nope.
The sinking of the Titanic. Surely, with over two and a half hours to react to the iceberg impact before the ship finished sinking, SURELY there would be enough time to get all of the lifeboats safely and calmly loaded up to near max capacity, right? NOPE. And going even further back to the decision to not put enough lifeboats on in the first place...SURELY the White Star Line must have a good reason for this. SURELY this means that the ship really is unsinkable, right? NOPE.
The 2008 financial crisis. SURELY the monetary authorities have solved the problem of preventing recessions and smoothing out the business cycle. So SURELY I as a private trader can afford to be as reckless as I want and not have to worry about systemic risk, etc.
It is not quite clear to me whether you are here just talking about instances of sleepwalking, or whether you are also talking about a predictive error indicating anti-sleepwalking bias: i.e. that they wrongly predicted that the relevant actors would act, yet they sleepwalked into a disaster.
Also, my claim is not that sleepwalking never occurs, but that people on average seem to think that it happens more often than it actually does.