I feel like there is a lot of noise in this thread. We'd do well to avoid any further mention of Hitler. But the first exchange with Lumifer was good.
What is Good Judgment Project saying? Maybe I should get around to actually participating...
One place to start might be looking at freedom indices and yes, you can see that Russia is basically a dictatorship now.
An analogy that comes into my head is Brezhnev and the Czechoslovakia invasion.
I feel like there is a lot of noise in this thread.
Indeed. But it is still way better than what a similar topic would have generated on reddit or elsewhere.
An analogy that comes into my head is Brezhnev and the Czechoslovakia invasion.
Right, it used to happen every 12 years like a clockwork after the Soviets "liberated" Eastern Europe in 1944: 1956 Hungary, 1968 Czechoslovakia, 1980 Poland and Afghanistan. And by 1992 there was no more Soviet Union. In retrospect, I should have expected that another invasion is not out of the question.
Some of the comments on the link by James_Miller exactly six months ago provided very specific estimates of how the events might turn out:
James_Miller:
Me:
"Russians intervening militarily" could be anything from posturing to weapon shipments to a surgical strike to a Czechoslovakia-style tank-roll or Afghanistan invasion. My guess that the odds of the latter is below 5%.
A bet between James_Miller and solipsist:
I will bet you $20 U.S. (mine) vs $100 (yours) that Russian tanks will be involved in combat in the Ukraine within 60 days. So in 60 days I will pay you $20 if I lose the bet, but you pay me $100 if I win.
While it is hard to do any meaningful calibration based on a single event, there must be lessons to learn from it. Given that Russian armored columns are said to capture key Ukrainian towns today, the first part of James_Miller's prediction has come true, even if it took 3 times longer than he estimated.
Note that even the most pessimistic person in that conversation (James) was probably too optimistic. My estimate of 5% appears way too low in retrospect, and I would probably bump it to 50% for a similar event in the future.
Now, given that the first prediction came true, how would one reevaluate the odds of the two further escalations he listed? I still feel that there is no way there will be a "conventional battle" between Russia and NATO, but having just been proven wrong makes me doubt my assumptions. If anything, maybe I should give more weight to what James_Miller (or at least Dan Carlin) has to say on the issue. And if I had any skin in the game, I would probably be even more cautious.