“But in the end, the loser got his revenge.” It may be just survivorship bias, since all the "losers" that are really "lost" in history are nowhere to be found

“But in the end, the loser got his revenge.” It may be just survivorship bias, since all the "losers" that are really "lost" in history are nowhere to be found. In the story of your reference, Wudi did not choose to destroy the work of Sima Qian, which he can do easily if he want to, and happened a lot in Chinese history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_o.... Sima Qian may be just a lucky guy enough to get his work passed on and that's all.