5 ms·

That approach was not incredibly effective in New Orleans in 2005.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
It's not incredibly effective for the disasters that happen, no. It still may be the right approach, though. There are many possible disasters. Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. We don't have enough time and resources to prepare for all possible disasters. So we put more effort into preparing for the most likely ones, and sometimes one of the less likely ones gets us. Note that there are more "less likely" scenarios than there are "more likely" ones. Also note that, after a disaster has occurred, it suddenly seems very probable, which makes it look like we mis-evaluated which risks were likely. On the other hand, sometimes we really do mis-evaluate or under-prepare. It's hard, in advance, to get the balance right. And even if we did, after a disaster we say "yeah, should have seen that one coming".
- the_gastropod 6y ago
  Using Texas as an example again: 10 years ago, 1M+ Texans lost power due to unusually cold temperatures. Last week, the same thing happened. This wasn't some unpredictable event. It just wasn't considered sufficiently profitable to prepare.
  - shakezula 6y ago
    Which is a really solid argument for why we maybe shouldn't put profit first when it comes to things like our energy grids.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Well, its just that people who made the decision are not paying for all the business disruption, productivity and health damages (including deaths) they caused. For some reason if you mop the floor without the "wet" sign, you could be liable, but if you let the whole powergrid collapse twice, you bear no fault
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Yup. Money is a surprisingly good metric for these things, but it's how you count money that matters. That a power grid can collapse due to a predictable natural event tells us that the accounting we use here is wrong, as it doesn't correctly allocate costs of failure.
- Hammershaft 6y ago
  The cost of a company not preparing for a catastrophe is hugely externalized, resulting in a lopsided risk equation that represents a market failure. In texas, the cost of that market failure can be measured in preventable deaths, none of which private energy companies needed to account for when managing risk. In the event of a solar flare knocking out national power for months, the cost could be the collapse of modern civilization. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Losses, and culpability of guilt (responsibility) should follow profits. Doing enough to be prepared and attempt to avoid preventable failures should be built into market players not going to jail or bankruptcy.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  > Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. Most of the time preparing for most disasters has a few common features to it. - Food - Power - Transportation - Housing/Shelter These are common issues with every single possible disaster that can happen. So instead of preparing for "every disaster possible", you need to prepare for the outcome of "every disaster possible." These four things can reduce lives lost by a significant amount, and as a 21st century society we need to limit our growth to the point where we're keeping up with the potential disaster situation, less we regress a thousand years because we didn't. So no you're absolutely wrong. You don't need to plan for disasters at this scale. You plan for the outcomes of it.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    OK, but... take power, for example. Ensuring power after a Carrington Event is completely different from ensuring power after cold weather in Texas. Not completely different because of scale; completely different because the intersection of the solutions is very close to the empty set. So, while your "consequences" approach has a lot of merit, what you have to do to handle the consequences still depends significantly on what the cause of the problem was. Which brings you back to preparing for multiple scenarios. (I'll give you this, though: It may be fewer scenarios than a cause-based approach.)
    - njarboe 6y ago
      If you do any camping you can easily be prepared for most disasters that happen when it's not winter. Buy some serious sleeping bags and you could be ready for disasters in winter also.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Carrington Event does have overlap with EMPs, if I understand my physics correctly, so there's at least an overlap with military concerns, which is tied to unlimited budget.
      - bordercases 6y ago
- projectileboy 6y ago
  You make good points. Please consider, however, that historically those decisions have not been made on relative likelihood, they’ve been made based on who we didn’t care about. New Orleans is a prime example - experts had warned for decades about what would happen if NO were to be hit by a cat 5.

It's not incredibly effective for the disasters that happen, no. It still may be the right approach, though. There are many possible disasters. Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. We don't have enough time and resources to prepare for all possible disasters. So we put more effort into preparing for the most likely ones, and sometimes one of the less likely ones gets us. Note that there are more "less likely" scenarios than there are "more likely" ones. Also note that, after a disaster has occurred, it suddenly seems very probable, which makes it look like we mis-evaluated which risks were likely. On the other hand, sometimes we really do mis-evaluate or under-prepare. It's hard, in advance, to get the balance right. And even if we did, after a disaster we say "yeah, should have seen that one coming".

the_gastropod 6y ago
Using Texas as an example again: 10 years ago, 1M+ Texans lost power due to unusually cold temperatures. Last week, the same thing happened. This wasn't some unpredictable event. It just wasn't considered sufficiently profitable to prepare.
- shakezula 6y ago
  Which is a really solid argument for why we maybe shouldn't put profit first when it comes to things like our energy grids.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Well, its just that people who made the decision are not paying for all the business disruption, productivity and health damages (including deaths) they caused. For some reason if you mop the floor without the "wet" sign, you could be liable, but if you let the whole powergrid collapse twice, you bear no fault
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Yup. Money is a surprisingly good metric for these things, but it's how you count money that matters. That a power grid can collapse due to a predictable natural event tells us that the accounting we use here is wrong, as it doesn't correctly allocate costs of failure.
Hammershaft 6y ago
The cost of a company not preparing for a catastrophe is hugely externalized, resulting in a lopsided risk equation that represents a market failure. In texas, the cost of that market failure can be measured in preventable deaths, none of which private energy companies needed to account for when managing risk. In the event of a solar flare knocking out national power for months, the cost could be the collapse of modern civilization. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
- mjevans 6y ago
  Losses, and culpability of guilt (responsibility) should follow profits. Doing enough to be prepared and attempt to avoid preventable failures should be built into market players not going to jail or bankruptcy.
aaomidi 6y ago
> Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. Most of the time preparing for most disasters has a few common features to it. - Food - Power - Transportation - Housing/Shelter These are common issues with every single possible disaster that can happen. So instead of preparing for "every disaster possible", you need to prepare for the outcome of "every disaster possible." These four things can reduce lives lost by a significant amount, and as a 21st century society we need to limit our growth to the point where we're keeping up with the potential disaster situation, less we regress a thousand years because we didn't. So no you're absolutely wrong. You don't need to plan for disasters at this scale. You plan for the outcomes of it.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  OK, but... take power, for example. Ensuring power after a Carrington Event is completely different from ensuring power after cold weather in Texas. Not completely different because of scale; completely different because the intersection of the solutions is very close to the empty set. So, while your "consequences" approach has a lot of merit, what you have to do to handle the consequences still depends significantly on what the cause of the problem was. Which brings you back to preparing for multiple scenarios. (I'll give you this, though: It may be fewer scenarios than a cause-based approach.)
  - njarboe 6y ago
    If you do any camping you can easily be prepared for most disasters that happen when it's not winter. Buy some serious sleeping bags and you could be ready for disasters in winter also.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Carrington Event does have overlap with EMPs, if I understand my physics correctly, so there's at least an overlap with military concerns, which is tied to unlimited budget.
    - bordercases 6y ago
projectileboy 6y ago
You make good points. Please consider, however, that historically those decisions have not been made on relative likelihood, they’ve been made based on who we didn’t care about. New Orleans is a prime example - experts had warned for decades about what would happen if NO were to be hit by a cat 5.