Historian’s Fallacy

“They should’ve seen this disaster coming.”

You commit the historian’s fallacy when you judge a past decision as obviously wrong by using information that wasn’t available at the time. It confuses hindsight with what was knowable then. This fallacy stems from hindsight bias—after we learn an outcome, it feels like it was predictable all along.

Although the name suggests it’s about judgments of historical figures, it’s more common with recent events. People often say someone “made a bad call” simply because things turned out poorly, even if they acted rationally with the information they had. For example, scientific guidance often changes as data improves. A later update doesn’t mean the earlier decision was careless; it means evidence changed.

Note: The claim “They should’ve seen this coming” isn’t always a fallacy. It depends on whether people at the time had enough information to reasonably see it coming. Like all informal fallacies, context matters.

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