Original in Spanish: La batalla que todos ven mal y nadie discute
Today it seems I need the hive mind a lot.
I can’t recall the name of a battle that is used to exemplify one of those situations where everyone realizes it’s a bad decision but nobody dares say it out loud. Emperor’s-new-clothes style.
It might appear in “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence”, but I’m not sure.
I’m not talking about Russian advisors not daring to warn the bear-rider that his fly is down lest they earn themselves a polonium coffee. I mean something very old that has nothing to do with fear or coercion, but with inertia and biases.
How annoying when my synapses go astray.
(Facebook, 2022-04-07) EDIT (2026-08-24): Solved. It was the Charge of the Light Brigade (Balaclava, October 25, 1854): an ambiguous order from Lord Raglan, every officer on the ground seeing that charging down that valley was madness, nobody daring to question it, and some 600 riders heading straight into the Russian guns. It does appear in “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence”. Tennyson’s poem exists because nobody questioned the order: Theirs but to do and die.