No. I’m going to judge my prediction by the number of deaths, not days (or weeks, or months. Years would really mess with my idea of what’s going on.)
Insignificant: Less than 20,000. If single battles in the American Civil War are larger than this entire conflict, then the sides must not have been fighting very hard.
Total War: I would normally say millions. I expect that the original prediction did not actually mean that? So, I’ll say the other side was right if it’s over a hundred thousand. More right than me at above 50,000. Of course, I’m also wrong if Russia surrenders.
There’s a lot of fog of war right now. I think anyone who’s changed their mind about the events in Ukraine based on new data is being silly. Hopefully we’ll have real data, and not just war propaganda in the not too distant future.
Russia says it’s winning easily, but is taking its time to avoid civilian casualties. Ukraine has a paradoxical stance where it’s winning easily, but if Germany (or X) doesn’t give it (Something) (Right Now) it’ll cave instantly. There’s pretty much no neutral observers.
I sort of expected more and clearer information. I think that was a mistake on my part. Ukraine and Russia are both incredibly untrustworthy, so I shouldn’t have based that part of my expectations on typical wars.
In general I’d like for the facts to speak for themselves, and would like to avoid debating definitions too heavily? I’m displeased that I’m turning a simple and symmetric single sentence statement into several paragraphs of text, but think people are updating way too strongly on either the wrong evidence or on unreliable evidence that should be ignored.
These numbers are absurd, in my opinion. 10s of thousands of military dead is massive numbers in a modern context. You cannot compare 1800s warfare to modern war, people literally lined up in a square and shot at each other until half of them were dead/injured back then. And due to crap med tech tons of injured didn’t survive. Modern conflicts have MUCH MUCH lower death ratios.
America finished the conquest of Iraq with like 150 dead(granted Iraqi army folded). Over the course of the whole occupation(2003-2011) America lost around 4500 soldiers. If Russia loses like 1000 soldiers before taking over Ukraine that’s absolutely brutal resistance.
Iraqi force’s losses were much higher, but still not over 20k during the invasion. Keep in mind there WAS a lot of resistance. The invasion took like a month or something, so wasn’t just a trivial walk through the country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Yemeni civil war isn’t even at 20k yet after 8 years, as far as I can tell
I think 20k combined military civilian deaths in the next 2 weeks would be absolutely massive resistance and probably the bloodiest war in decades.
The real question to me is if the Ukrainians are holding all major cities by the end of this week. At that point substantial military aid from the EU will be steadily flowing in through the west and it becomes a lot less clear how Russia makes progress. Mass bombardment of cities… doesn’t do anything if people are angry and stubborn enough to keep fighting.
I can see arguments as to why some people would feel cheated at 20 thousand. I wouldn’t agree. People have gotten too used to fake wars, and are too willing to call just about anything total warfare.
I don’t think the modern warfare thing is enough to change anything. World War two was pretty deadly. Vietnam had millions of deaths.
I should be clear I was thinking all deaths caused by the war, on both sides, civilian and military. The question is how hard the Ukrainians will fight, not how effectively. My general perception is that Iraq is not generally considered to have fought hard for Saddam? I even based my 20,000 figure partially on Saddam.
In any case, the specific definition isn’t that important. I propose that the casualties will be lower than the other side thinks, for reasons of their model being wrong in a way that becomes obvious when looking back on data that does not yet exist.
Care to specify over what time horizon you expect(ed) it to fold?
No. I’m going to judge my prediction by the number of deaths, not days (or weeks, or months. Years would really mess with my idea of what’s going on.)
Insignificant: Less than 20,000. If single battles in the American Civil War are larger than this entire conflict, then the sides must not have been fighting very hard.
Total War: I would normally say millions. I expect that the original prediction did not actually mean that? So, I’ll say the other side was right if it’s over a hundred thousand. More right than me at above 50,000. Of course, I’m also wrong if Russia surrenders.
There’s a lot of fog of war right now. I think anyone who’s changed their mind about the events in Ukraine based on new data is being silly. Hopefully we’ll have real data, and not just war propaganda in the not too distant future.
Russia says it’s winning easily, but is taking its time to avoid civilian casualties. Ukraine has a paradoxical stance where it’s winning easily, but if Germany (or X) doesn’t give it (Something) (Right Now) it’ll cave instantly. There’s pretty much no neutral observers.
I sort of expected more and clearer information. I think that was a mistake on my part. Ukraine and Russia are both incredibly untrustworthy, so I shouldn’t have based that part of my expectations on typical wars.
In general I’d like for the facts to speak for themselves, and would like to avoid debating definitions too heavily? I’m displeased that I’m turning a simple and symmetric single sentence statement into several paragraphs of text, but think people are updating way too strongly on either the wrong evidence or on unreliable evidence that should be ignored.
These numbers are absurd, in my opinion. 10s of thousands of military dead is massive numbers in a modern context. You cannot compare 1800s warfare to modern war, people literally lined up in a square and shot at each other until half of them were dead/injured back then. And due to crap med tech tons of injured didn’t survive. Modern conflicts have MUCH MUCH lower death ratios.
America finished the conquest of Iraq with like 150 dead(granted Iraqi army folded). Over the course of the whole occupation(2003-2011) America lost around 4500 soldiers. If Russia loses like 1000 soldiers before taking over Ukraine that’s absolutely brutal resistance.
Iraqi force’s losses were much higher, but still not over 20k during the invasion. Keep in mind there WAS a lot of resistance. The invasion took like a month or something, so wasn’t just a trivial walk through the country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Yemeni civil war isn’t even at 20k yet after 8 years, as far as I can tell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present)
I think 20k combined military civilian deaths in the next 2 weeks would be absolutely massive resistance and probably the bloodiest war in decades.
The real question to me is if the Ukrainians are holding all major cities by the end of this week. At that point substantial military aid from the EU will be steadily flowing in through the west and it becomes a lot less clear how Russia makes progress. Mass bombardment of cities… doesn’t do anything if people are angry and stubborn enough to keep fighting.
I can see arguments as to why some people would feel cheated at 20 thousand. I wouldn’t agree. People have gotten too used to fake wars, and are too willing to call just about anything total warfare.
I don’t think the modern warfare thing is enough to change anything. World War two was pretty deadly. Vietnam had millions of deaths.
I should be clear I was thinking all deaths caused by the war, on both sides, civilian and military. The question is how hard the Ukrainians will fight, not how effectively. My general perception is that Iraq is not generally considered to have fought hard for Saddam? I even based my 20,000 figure partially on Saddam.
In any case, the specific definition isn’t that important. I propose that the casualties will be lower than the other side thinks, for reasons of their model being wrong in a way that becomes obvious when looking back on data that does not yet exist.