Maybe the Satoshi of November 2008 is not the same person as the satoshi here...
"Don't use this patch, it'll make you incompatible with the network, to your own detriment."
It would be meaningless. Clearly, Satoshi is dead afraid that his bomb would be removed. Of course this is bullshit because jgarzik would, in practice, never mine a block above 1 MB. So he wouldn't be "to his own detriment", be "incompatible with the network" most of the time.
The impression I got from that little exchange is that Satoshi thought Jeff didn't realise he'd be forking himself off the network unless everyone else used the patch as well and thought it would be a good idea to point that out. It was probably a fairly sensible idea to avoid a situation where half the network would obliviously run the patch and half didn't run it, thereby splitting the network and making a complete mess.
To continue: Satoshi's narrative of "let's keep small blocks as long as we can, later we'll switch to big blocks, but first we have to trick people in this thing while it is small", and his code example, would have prompted, if he were honest, to indeed, include this if statement:
"small blocks until block number X". The fact of not having included this, even while he was saying that one COULD do it that way, and given all comments, indicates he wasn't being serious here. You can say: "hey, but Satoshi couldn't know how bitcoin would evolve, at what pace, so he didn't want to commit anything" ; but then, he didn't back away from programming an emission curve over 140 years, without knowing how it would evolve either. If you feel secure enough to program an emission curve, you for sure can program a block size limit. In any case, it doesn't hold water: "a constant in the protocol one should change later" is not easier to change than "an if statement one could change later". Both are protocol changes. In as much as you claim that you put in the constant "only temporarily, and you guys should remove it later", you can just as well commit that "temporary" aspect in an if statement right away ("and if deemed still to early, you guys should modify it later"), putting your code where your mouth is. He didn't.
So the Satoshi in 2010 clearly wanted it to be a permanent thing, knowing that it would give huge problems at a certain point in time, totally contradicting his November 2008 statements, but claiming otherwise, that it is only temporarily and doing lip service to his 2008 statements at the same time. Because the OBVIOUS response, in agreement with his own statements, and with all premonitory remarks, would have been to put an if statement in the code. He even says so, and he doesn't. He only shouts at the guy that wanted to remove it, he tells us that one should put an if statement, and he keeps a constant "to be modified by an if statement later".
Again, the "narrative" of keeping blocks small
wasn't Satoshi's. Satoshi merely went along with the idea after hearing what must have been some pretty convincing arguments. In many ways, it's a shame we'll never get to see all the communications exchanged between Satoshi and Hal Finney, given their historical significance and the tremendous impact those conversations had on how this has all unfolded over time. It's also likely Satoshi didn't envision themselves withdrawing from the community when they did, effectively exiling themselves and going into hiding. There's no way they could foresee the WikiLeaks donations thing in advance, which was clearly a catalyst in prompting Satoshi's decision to leave. So it's entirely possible Satoshi did have plans to alter it later, when it became the contentious issue it eventually did. When Satoshi left, blocks were still nowhere near their full capacity, so it could well have been something "on the back burner". But sadly we'll probably never know for sure.
I certainly don't get the impression it was anything malicious on Satoshi's part, though. That's a bit of a stretch.