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I don't know about the guys take on Iran, but I came across his channel a long time ago regarding some predictions on things I work with + I think Ukraine war?

I don't know about the guys take on Iran, but I came across his channel a long time ago regarding some predictions on things I work with + I think Ukraine war? And it was so handwavy and "cherry picking stats to fit a narrative" style of reasoning, it was hard to take him seriously when many predictions were proven wrong and not even sound. Granted, most YouTube analyst channels with ~=>500k subscribers usually do deploy exaggerated claims or "one parameter to explain everything" narrative (Zeihan, Varoufakis, Mersheimer, William Spaniel) so you should take their infotainment with a grain of salt. Current trendy buzzword is "Realism" and "Game Theory" so those two term are mired with wish washy handwaving. Usually, just like tech stuff, the actually valuable insight is not found in the blogs but the source material they refer to, because they have nuances.

ifyoubuildit 8mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer One of your "YouTube analysts" is a professor that developed one of the schools of realism, so maybe that's why he's using that "buzzword". Edit: and varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece. I have no idea if he was any good at it or not, but your characterization is a little silly either way. Would they be more credible to you if they gave 2 minute soundbites in between advertisements for drugs and gold on cable news?
- NalNezumi 8mo ago
  Maybe I should've added a line break between the sentence. I'm fully aware of prof Mearsheimers credential, and what realism is. I'm also aware that the biggest proponent of realism with the most power at hand, was Henry Kissinger. Not the brightest shining beacon. Their worldview is funny. A self fulfilling prophecy kind of take that is most often used to justify heinous behavior by saying "well everyone is doing it" and take a selective look at history and deriving some universal theory of international politics. So I think the "using one parameter to explain everything" is an apt description of him. A hallmark of pop social science gifter pattern is when they try to apply that one thing to everything. Mearsheimer isn't (wasn't?) that until the podcast fame inevitably asked questions to him that is outside his expertise and audience capture, inevitably, kicked in Edit: indeed. He was finance minister during the Greek financial crisis. With your appeal to authority Fallacy, Lizz Tuss should still be taken seriously because she was UK prime minister (that was out lasted by a lettuce). I like Varoufakis. He's at least consistent. His technofeudalism observation have some merit. But still his analysis comes from a limited scope, and (he's open about this) colored heavily by his communist stance. The point was: All those expert often have a compelling analysis, but the nuance is often lost in the medium such as YouTube. It's better to dive in to the nuance, critically examine it, and then listen broadly and repeat.
  - ifyoubuildit 8mo ago
    Yeah, I guess I zeroed in on the YouTube part and missed the one parameter part, which I'm not really qualified to speak to. I happen to think audio/video (basically lectures and dialogues) is a fine part of the toolkit for learning. I was reading it as "look at these dumb tiktok'ers" or something like that, which seems like it would be selling at least those 2 quite a bit short.
jvican 8mo ago
I agree with you. I followed him out of curiosity for one or two months, watched about 10 of his videos. He seems to have a good intuition, but he gives weak and often cherry-picked reasonings, to the point that many of his takes are completely unreliable. For a channel called Predictive History, he made too many weirdly precise explanations and predictions that turned out to be wrong. Then, he'd look over the old failed ones to find new ones. That being said, I'd say his macro level analysis is directionally correct, as well as his read on the incentives of each party involved. Watch his lectures, but be skeptical and double check everything he says, because he does indeed make factual mistakes... some of them are caught in the comments by other viewers, some are not obvious.
- NalNezumi 8mo ago
  I agree with your more thought out assessment of the channel. I stil think the effort of trying to predict history (trying to understand causal patterns and extrapolate) is a valiant effort, and don't want to write his entire channel off. So I can't comment on his Iran take until I've seen it. But yes, everyone makes mistakes and that just shows we don't have some universal theory for predicting history, so one shouldn't get obsessed with one school of thinking, but try it out, find its limits, and be open to other school of thoughts too.

ifyoubuildit 8mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer One of your "YouTube analysts" is a professor that developed one of the schools of realism, so maybe that's why he's using that "buzzword". Edit: and varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece. I have no idea if he was any good at it or not, but your characterization is a little silly either way. Would they be more credible to you if they gave 2 minute soundbites in between advertisements for drugs and gold on cable news?

NalNezumi 8mo ago
Maybe I should've added a line break between the sentence. I'm fully aware of prof Mearsheimers credential, and what realism is. I'm also aware that the biggest proponent of realism with the most power at hand, was Henry Kissinger. Not the brightest shining beacon. Their worldview is funny. A self fulfilling prophecy kind of take that is most often used to justify heinous behavior by saying "well everyone is doing it" and take a selective look at history and deriving some universal theory of international politics. So I think the "using one parameter to explain everything" is an apt description of him. A hallmark of pop social science gifter pattern is when they try to apply that one thing to everything. Mearsheimer isn't (wasn't?) that until the podcast fame inevitably asked questions to him that is outside his expertise and audience capture, inevitably, kicked in Edit: indeed. He was finance minister during the Greek financial crisis. With your appeal to authority Fallacy, Lizz Tuss should still be taken seriously because she was UK prime minister (that was out lasted by a lettuce). I like Varoufakis. He's at least consistent. His technofeudalism observation have some merit. But still his analysis comes from a limited scope, and (he's open about this) colored heavily by his communist stance. The point was: All those expert often have a compelling analysis, but the nuance is often lost in the medium such as YouTube. It's better to dive in to the nuance, critically examine it, and then listen broadly and repeat.
- ifyoubuildit 8mo ago
  Yeah, I guess I zeroed in on the YouTube part and missed the one parameter part, which I'm not really qualified to speak to. I happen to think audio/video (basically lectures and dialogues) is a fine part of the toolkit for learning. I was reading it as "look at these dumb tiktok'ers" or something like that, which seems like it would be selling at least those 2 quite a bit short.

jvican 8mo ago

I agree with you. I followed him out of curiosity for one or two months, watched about 10 of his videos. He seems to have a good intuition, but he gives weak and often cherry-picked reasonings, to the point that many of his takes are completely unreliable. For a channel called Predictive History, he made too many weirdly precise explanations and predictions that turned out to be wrong. Then, he'd look over the old failed ones to find new ones. That being said, I'd say his macro level analysis is directionally correct, as well as his read on the incentives of each party involved. Watch his lectures, but be skeptical and double check everything he says, because he does indeed make factual mistakes... some of them are caught in the comments by other viewers, some are not obvious.

NalNezumi 8mo ago
I agree with your more thought out assessment of the channel. I stil think the effort of trying to predict history (trying to understand causal patterns and extrapolate) is a valiant effort, and don't want to write his entire channel off. So I can't comment on his Iran take until I've seen it. But yes, everyone makes mistakes and that just shows we don't have some universal theory for predicting history, so one shouldn't get obsessed with one school of thinking, but try it out, find its limits, and be open to other school of thoughts too.