I don't believe he was a fool, thus I **personally** believe he had an idea it would exist in perpetuity, or at any rate be hard to change later.
Then why would he have proffered his famous suggestion?
It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.