My understanding is he basically had a strong thesis, with many details
Thanks, now I’m curious how he got into this epistemic state to begin with, especially how he determined 1 and 2 on your list. My current guess is that he focused too much on things that he could easily see and things that fit into his framework, like Putin being strategic and measured in the past, and Russia’s explicit reform efforts, and neglected to think enough about other stuff, like corruption, supply problems, Putin being fooled by his own command structure.
It’s too bad that nobody in rationalist circles seems to have done much better than mainstream intelligence/geopolitical analysts (who were also too optimistic for Russia). Perhaps the best one could have done was to follow OS (open source) intelligence analysts on Twitter, who were at least quick to update once Russian under-performance became apparent, early in the war. But that unfortunately means we can’t depend much on foresight for future geopolitical events.
Thanks, now I’m curious how he got into this epistemic state to begin with, especially how he determined 1 and 2 on your list. My current guess is that he focused too much on things that he could easily see and things that fit into his framework, like Putin being strategic and measured in the past, and Russia’s explicit reform efforts, and neglected to think enough about other stuff, like corruption, supply problems, Putin being fooled by his own command structure.
It’s too bad that nobody in rationalist circles seems to have done much better than mainstream intelligence/geopolitical analysts (who were also too optimistic for Russia). Perhaps the best one could have done was to follow OS (open source) intelligence analysts on Twitter, who were at least quick to update once Russian under-performance became apparent, early in the war. But that unfortunately means we can’t depend much on foresight for future geopolitical events.