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Comment by ycombinete | Hacker News Reader

It would be easier to take your opinions seriously if they weren’t contradicted by events happening right now; events which match Brzezinski’s “outdated nonsense” from the 90s perfectly.

You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today.

Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!

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Predicting the future is hard, specially if you think in 20-30 years forward. But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. A lot of development happened in the middle that could had turned things in different directions. Also, beware of hindsight bias.

Anyway, it is not just one data point what matters. What comes after in his predictions and how adjusted is to what happens in reality (without creative accounting, like with Nostradamus predictions) may tell how right that was.

> you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses.

Your whole NATO core staff been voicing this in unison for 2 decades in a row, only for Western politicians to dismiss it. Lookup my other posts today, and especially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790

Yesterday, I read your comment, but it is now flagged. Can I read more about that stuff on a subreddit or website?

> But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses.

I somehow doubt that he made the range of varied and contradictory predictions necessary to make this hypothesis correct. I don't know what to call this muddled assertion that so many people seem to be making about hindsight bias or survivorship bias. It's like a bias towards claiming bias, which seems absurd to me. Is everyone just hunting for places where they can use some witty sounding assertion that they saw someone else use and so they're incorrectly applying it everywhere with little discrimination?

Comparing him to Nostradamus is kind of grotesque.

He wasn't hallucinating, pinning the tail on a donkey or trying to hit a piñata blindfolded.

The creative accounting was done by others. They say that Nostradamus "predicted" this because they choose what they read, when they read, and apply it to particular situations that fit, and not to others that don't, being aware of that or not. There is a bunch of cognitive biases around that, with fancy names like selection bias or Texas sharpshooter fallacy, to name a few.

It may not be for this case, I just point out that you should be aware of the possibility.

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