Tom Friedman's interview with MBS nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opi
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Replying to @sagar__dubey
Sorry, but that's a poor line of argument. It's like compiling clips of a weather reporter saying "it will rain" over decades to argue it won't rain tomorrow. Rebut the actual case that there's reform on.
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That’s a poor analogy, unless the confident forecast of rain was for a desert place like Riyadh where rain is very unlikely.
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My point is, there's an actual problem to engage about the "weather" today. Just referencing a history of coverage is to damn by association. Sheds no light on the situation today. Sure we share 97% genome with chimps. Tell me about the 3%.
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I get your point but in Tetlockian terms there’s a lot of value in seeing the larger dataset and judging the quality of the prediction: of the 20-odd times the NyT has claimed meaningful reform is happening in Saudi, they have never been right
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Having lived through a bunch of those news cycles I do think there's something different this time. MBL is not that special, yet another image-managed princeling, but the conditions he's navigating are (low oil prices, Russia, surging renewables, climate change...)
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Many of those factors have been around before (oil prices) or for a while (climate change). Arguably their confluence may be new. I’d argue Iran/Shi’a tensions are a significant causal factor. The article informed us little about any of them though.
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In general, due to the overall weirding of the last 2 years, I think any arguments of the form "this is a 70 year pattern" are suspect and red-flagged for me.
You can no longer assume a "normal" pattern for anything. "This time it's different" has been correct too often lately

