I think that Samo does have and offer a lot of detailed information, but he puts much or most of that behind a very expensive paywall, either the Bismark Brief or what he does for private clients. And that having worked up lots of details and a model that he presents as a key value add and brand, it becomes difficult to walk away from that special knowledge and model when events overtake the situation, making him slow to (publicly, anyway) update, but e.g. he did lose an actual $100 bet where he took much-worse-than-Metaculus odds on Russia winning by day 50, in a non-flashy context on Twitter, so I believe that he believed it at the time.
My understanding is he basically had a strong thesis, with many details, that:
Putin/Russia are a live player with a deep game plan.
Russia’s army was reformed and ready to go (an explicit Bismark Brief right before the war).
That a lot of our actions against Russia would only backfire (e.g. sanctions).
A belief that West are dead players and a general realpolitik approach that says that Ukraine is simply outgunned and outmatched here.
That Ukraine being so good at media was doubly suspicious—means they’re likely not good at real war (as opposed to my model, where good at anything makes you good in general) and also that they were focusing on the fake war at real war’s expense and thus were kind of fake, and also that we were very fooled.
When one has such an overdetermined position, both logically and motivationally, it’s hard to turn around. From his perspective, there’s a lot of reasons to hold the line from a personal-EV perspective, and not much reason to reverse course. It’s a tough spot.
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.
I think that Samo does have and offer a lot of detailed information, but he puts much or most of that behind a very expensive paywall, either the Bismark Brief or what he does for private clients. And that having worked up lots of details and a model that he presents as a key value add and brand, it becomes difficult to walk away from that special knowledge and model when events overtake the situation, making him slow to (publicly, anyway) update, but e.g. he did lose an actual $100 bet where he took much-worse-than-Metaculus odds on Russia winning by day 50, in a non-flashy context on Twitter, so I believe that he believed it at the time.
My understanding is he basically had a strong thesis, with many details, that:
Putin/Russia are a live player with a deep game plan.
Russia’s army was reformed and ready to go (an explicit Bismark Brief right before the war).
That a lot of our actions against Russia would only backfire (e.g. sanctions).
A belief that West are dead players and a general realpolitik approach that says that Ukraine is simply outgunned and outmatched here.
That Ukraine being so good at media was doubly suspicious—means they’re likely not good at real war (as opposed to my model, where good at anything makes you good in general) and also that they were focusing on the fake war at real war’s expense and thus were kind of fake, and also that we were very fooled.
When one has such an overdetermined position, both logically and motivationally, it’s hard to turn around. From his perspective, there’s a lot of reasons to hold the line from a personal-EV perspective, and not much reason to reverse course. It’s a tough spot.
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.