A much better writeup than your original review of just "End Times".
One note: "Turchin’s discussion of the history of military prediction in End Times and in his recent blog posts convinced me that anyone who had decent data, such as the United States Government intelligence agencies tasked with analyzing these things, should have been able to predict that Ukraine had a low probability of success before the war actually began, and should have known that Ukraine was definitely going to lose by late 2022. Anything to the contrary stated by any high U.S. Government official is an intentional falsehood. "
This is much too generic and broad a statement. Among other things: an assumption is made that the US Government, its intel agencies, the analysts within these agencies, the appointed executives overseeing them, etc etc are actually interested in truth or good analysis. GIGO works for a computer but does not work for people much less organizations.
In fact, I would posit the opposite: it has been stated by credible people such as Ray McGovern, that the CIA under Brennan morphed from a results based focus to a politics based focus - specifically that Brennan was far more interested in pandering to American politicians' interests than presenting truth and good analysis.
To me, this is simply another form of consequence from elite overproduction: when any one or group of elites is eminently replaceable due to massive oversupply, the benefits of demonstrating integrity are dramatically eroded.
A much better writeup than your original review of just "End Times".
One note: "Turchin’s discussion of the history of military prediction in End Times and in his recent blog posts convinced me that anyone who had decent data, such as the United States Government intelligence agencies tasked with analyzing these things, should have been able to predict that Ukraine had a low probability of success before the war actually began, and should have known that Ukraine was definitely going to lose by late 2022. Anything to the contrary stated by any high U.S. Government official is an intentional falsehood. "
This is much too generic and broad a statement. Among other things: an assumption is made that the US Government, its intel agencies, the analysts within these agencies, the appointed executives overseeing them, etc etc are actually interested in truth or good analysis. GIGO works for a computer but does not work for people much less organizations.
In fact, I would posit the opposite: it has been stated by credible people such as Ray McGovern, that the CIA under Brennan morphed from a results based focus to a politics based focus - specifically that Brennan was far more interested in pandering to American politicians' interests than presenting truth and good analysis.
To me, this is simply another form of consequence from elite overproduction: when any one or group of elites is eminently replaceable due to massive oversupply, the benefits of demonstrating integrity are dramatically eroded.