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Monday, September 26, 2011

What Kind Of Day Has It Been

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1 comment:

Bret said...

"And yet the joke was somehow lost on us over the last four years as we (rightly) let other debates get in the way, from the long silly distraction of wondering who was actually in charge (answer: Putin, of course) to the disputes over whether to believe Medvedev's talk of modernization. Even despite these last few months, when it became clear that Putin would come back, we managed to be surprised all over again when it actually happened."

I love these leads that imply that something that literally everyone saw coming was somehow unpredictable. They weren't necessarily as obvious, but plenty of people saw the warning signs of the "shocking" Egypt revolution. Plenty of people predicted elements of the "shocking" financial crisis, and that was a once in a generation event.

But this is like being shocked that the sun rose in the east. I don't believe for a second that someone like Julia Ioffe is surprised at this, and I really have no idea what "debates" she is talking about. I don't think you can really call it a debate over the earnestness of the modernization program when the only ones on the other side of it are Putin and Medvedev.

I suppose this is illustrative of some larger question about incentives for sensationalization or the unwillingness of experts to make concrete predictions, but the beginning of that article is just dumb.