I submitted this piece to HN because it exemplifies how useful falsehoods can permeate a free society. We laugh at North Korean propaganda, and rightly so. But if a well informed Russian watched <i>Thirteen Days</i>, I'm sure he would find it a laugh-inducing example of American nationalist indoctrination.<p>All of us think we know the story, but few Americans have ever had occasion to consider some basic questions, such as: Why was it acceptable for America to place nuclear missiles near Russia, but not for Russia to respond by placing nuclear missiles near America?<p>The Cuban Missile Crisis also offers a humbling illustration of how American democracy rarely passes accurate judgment on the performance of the president. No matter how many justifications or excuses one makes for Kennedy's choices, there remains one inescapable fact: He brought the world as close to nuclear annihilation as it has ever come.<p>The successful "quarantine" that hagiographies of J.F.K. recount as his greatest diplomatic achievement almost destroyed the world, when American destroyers began dropping depth charges near a Soviet submarine in international waters. The submarine's captain ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo, and his decision was affirmed by the sub's political officer — which normally would be enough to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon.<p>Why wasn't the world transformed into a sphere of radioactive ice? Pure Serendipity. The commander of the Soviet flotilla happened to be present on the submarine, and he was able to convince his comrades to stand down.<p>Thus, the man we owe our lives to is not Kennedy, our national icon, but rather a guy named Василий Архипов, whom most Americans will never hear about. I named my cat "Vasili" in his honor.<p>Sometimes, when I'm petting him, I think about the constant gulf between perception and reality that I have witnessed firsthand. How often do we think that the right people receive credit or blame when software breaks or corporations implode? Why would we expect verism to prevail in even higher stakes domains, like world history?<p>I stand by what I wrote a couple years ago: "[T]he highest entropy fields are also the ones with the highest stakes for society. For example, what were the consequences of American intervention against the Central Powers in World War I? They are difficult to fathom precisely because they were so immense. The problem is a combination of 'causal density' and 'holistic integration.' The more variables a decision affects, the harder it is to untangle the resulting chain of cause and effect. And if its consequences are far reaching, then there is rarely an opportunity to perform controlled experiments.<p>Thus, the experts who offer opinions about the momentous issues of our times are precisely those in whom we should have the least confidence. Their fields may appear prestigious because they involve matters of global importance, but there is a corollary decrease in the reliability of their insights."