I don't understand the part about Stalin's advice. What was Stalin saying would happen if you ignored anecdotes? How do you figure he was talking about the value of anecdotes?
He was talking about undertaking large activities (war for example) that would kill hundreds of thousands of people could be tolerated politically by a populace in a way that a single murder might cause an outrage. The large numbers make the horror abstract. It's easier for people to relate to a story about a specific individual.
The quote (and variations) are quite famous, it might be apocryphal, but I think it is true. Hearing about hundreds of thousands of people massacred in a foreign land doesn't hit home when you are reading about far away.
That's why reporters (New York Times style)try to weave in illustrations and stories about individuals even when discussing a larger trend.
Funny thing, I always took this quote as Stalin cynically remarking on exactly OP's point: people overweight anecdotes by thousands to millions of times their actual worth as Bayesian evidence.
The quote (and variations) are quite famous, it might be apocryphal, but I think it is true. Hearing about hundreds of thousands of people massacred in a foreign land doesn't hit home when you are reading about far away.
That's why reporters (New York Times style)try to weave in illustrations and stories about individuals even when discussing a larger trend.