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Your points about climate change and other recent political developments are not relevant to understanding this situation at all. Your comment was an expression

• mannykannot 6y ago
  > Your points about climate change and other recent political developments are not relevant to understanding this situation at all. Well, it is certainly possible that they are irrelevant, but I see that you have given up any pretense of justifying that claim. On the one hand, given how badly your earlier attempts to make that case went, I can see why you would want to avoid another try. On the other, as the person making the claims has demonstrated such a poor record on critical thinking here, why would anyone just accept it? And these are claims, I may add, that you recently doubled-down on once again, as in this statement: >Far from my case being based on a fallacy so obviously wrong that it may not occur often enough to have a recognized name, the reality is that your reply suffers from one that is well known and quite common among your ilk: recency bias. The thing about parody is that it doesn't work if the premise is false! And what premise was behind this version of your claim of recency bias? Explicitly this: "the article actually discusses national winterization standards versus those of Texas, and points out both that other southern states have experienced power disruptions due to the cold, and that the national winterization standards are neither stricter than those of Texas nor strict enough to address the events of recent days." For one thing, I had only just before pointed out that the fact that multiple states were unprepared does not excuse any one of them. Secondly, what sort of claim could both be an example of recency bias, and be refuted by the statement of yours that I have just quoted? For example, if someone said "only Texas was affected", it would be refuted by that statement of yours, but it would simply have been a false statement about a recent event. That would not be recency bias! Your other basis for claiming recency bias is "Texas's separate grid dates back decades, and was driven by a conscious desire to optimize for the needs of manufacturing", but as Texas was free to respond to more recent warnings about the inadequacy of its energy infrastructure, its failure to do so at that time is, of course, more relevant than the facts you quote about a much earlier time. This is not recency bias!
  • solidsnack9000 6y ago
    The grids in the rest of the country are not particularly more robust than those of Texas or the south, so it's wrong to look to local political factors to understand the situation. The poor preparedness of the US grid is well known. The only reason to start talking about peculiar conservative beliefs is to drive partisanship enthusiasm and to sow division. It's a dishonest, cowardly act, and detracts from public dialogue.
    • mannykannot 6y ago
      Firstly, widening the scope does not alter the fact that the failure of many does not excuse the failure of any one of them. Secondly, none of them failed as badly as Texas. Most importantly, many other areas of the country have solved the biggest problems that occurred in the Texas debacle, those solutions are well-known in the industry, and experts have been telling Texas for a long time that it is not properly prepared. And when politicians start saying things like the debacle being preferable to federal regulation, it absolutely is reasonable to ask whether Texas' failure to heed the warnings of experts was overly influenced by ideological concerns, and that question clearly belongs in the public dialogue. As for calling this a "dishonest, cowardly act", that's the sort of rhetoric that most people give up after childhood. It is that, rather than the substantive issues that many knowledgeable people have been raising, which does not belong in public dialogue. You seem to be annoyed that this thread has demonstrated a complete failure of critical analysis on your part (a situation that your latest reply has done nothing to repair), but it is entirely of your own doing.
      • solidsnack9000 6y ago
        Almost none of what you're saying is true, here -- it's generalizations and false implication. Notice how you don't say which problems or which experts. Dishonesty is the sort of rhetoric... There are northern states with better winterization, but that is easily explainable with reference to the obvious difference in weather. Even given that, significant blackouts -- like the northeast blackout of 2003 -- have occurred in areas with quite a different political climate than Texas. The US grid has overall shown a low level of preparedness. And when politicians start saying things like the debacle being preferable to federal regulation, it absolutely is reasonable to ask whether Texas' failure to heed the warnings of experts was overly influenced by ideological concerns... The only winterization recommendations that would have made a difference for Texas came from within the Texas energy sector itself. What are you talking about, here?