Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

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I can second this recommendation. The first interview he did, he was a bit rusty as a interviewer but the 3 followups was great, he did his homework. All 4 are good tough, I'm not sure it is helpful for "international relations" of today as much as good to understand history from multiple perspective. I think they are a good foundation on "how to think/see perspective in things", but history always have hindsight so practicing that is a bit harder.

There's also Decoding Geopolitics Podcast (full content is paywalled) since he talks with actual experts. There's ofc US bias in experts, and usually actual experts can be kinda boring to listen to initially.

But experts in international politics seems to disagree on a lot of stuff, and when one big thing happens it seems like a new face always momentarily pop up (John Mearsheimer, Peter Zeihan etc, for Ukraine war). A good rule of thumb seems to be to not get too fixated by one voice.

Its refreshing to hear some experts being able to healthily disagree, such as Mearsheimer & Sach in this[1] for example. That should be the take away from Sarah Paine interview too, she's good at making clear what she can & can't say for sure. Contrast that with say Zeihan. [1] https://youtu.be/uvFtyDy_Bt0?feature=shared

There seem to be at least two kinds of experts. First, there are those who have actually worked as foreign ministers, presidents, chiefs of armed forces, heads of intelligence services, and in other similar positions. Their expertise comes from direct participation in events and first-hand knowledge of how things work. Carl Bildt, Alex Younger, Ben Hodges, Radoslaw Sikorski are people like this.

Then there are the kinds of experts like Mearsheimer and Zeihan, who are little more than avid book readers. They are often wildly off track without understanding it, because they have no real experience to ground them.

The second kind is best avoided.

The 2 posts you are replying to are about professor Sarah Paine (with one parenthetical reference to Mearsheimer and Zeihan).

Professor Paine has never "actually worked as foreign ministers, presidents, chiefs of armed forces, heads of intelligence services, and in other similar positions", but she has studied the Russian language and Russian culture, and has made a career at the Naval War College in studying and writing on Russia's security policy and situation.

Should we avoid her, too?

"Having studied the Russian language and culture extensively" seems relatively modest compared to having negotiated the withdrawal of Russian forces from Europe (Bildt) or having led the MI6 (Younger). It's like taking programming advice from someone who has only read biographies of famous computer scientists and never actually worked on a software project with others.

I suspect there's value to both your perspective and GP's insofar as both can help understand international affairs in the present day. The "avid book readers" vary widely in quality but are more likely to write down what they've learned; as someone who doesn't know enough to discern the quality from the trash, I guess I'm asking whose writings are worth the effort.

Oh, and thank you both.

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