5 ms·

This looks like a major screwup, rather than some kind of corruption as I interpreted the headline. The electrical generators couldn't meet the load, so they sh

This looks like a major screwup, rather than some kind of corruption as I interpreted the headline. The electrical generators couldn't meet the load, so they shed load by paying customers to go offline. This is standard grid management 101. Unfortunately some of that load was the machines that pumped gas to the generators. Oops. Classic positive feedback loop. My question is Why in the hell wasn't it somebody's job to ensure that fuel suppliers weren't on the load shedding list?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Lack of regulatory will.
- refurb 5y ago
  "But you are the regulator. I mean, you created these regulations that failed."
  - candu 5y ago
    It's a fair remark, but like any large organization, government isn't this single homogenous entity: it's a collection of groups with imperfect communication and sometimes conflicting / separate goals. (That doesn't make scenarios like this better, but it at least makes them understandable.)
    - washadjeffmad 5y ago
      If you've seen it happen once, you've seen it a million times. You start with earnest, driven people set out to solve a major problem long term, and then the vultures set in. They cripple the regulation so it's either worthless or exploitable in the name of compromise, and when they learn how to game it, they fight to lock it into place so they can continue to subvert it legally. This is how medical pricing in the US got to where it is, for instance.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brundolf 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- cryptoz 5y ago
  I repeated "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" blindly for years without really thinking about it much. I thought it was clever. But now I've come to realize I don't agree with it at all and I actually think it does a lot of harm. Bad people will do bad things and just make you think they are stupid instead of actively perpetrating evil acts. I think there is a lot of real harm done in this world that is done on purpose, i.e., actions that are meant to hurt people, and serve no other purpose - and these actions are dismissed by the 'enlightened' as mere stupidity, not worthy of serious discussion. Meanwhile, evildoers entrench and continue doing evil, under the guise of stupidity. I have personally dismissed many things as merely 'stupid' when it has later turned out to be an actual evil plot with the intent to harm. This has happened a lot recently, actually. I no longer support Hanlon's razor as anything useful and now often regard it as a red flag. I don't have a comment on this current article as it pertains to hanlon's razor, however. I'll sit this one out.
  - labster 5y ago
    I’d still say more harm is done by carelessness and people intending to do good than by people actually intending harm. It’s not like the choice is binary between stupidity and malice. The situation here is likely carelessness even more than stupidity, because running an electric grid is pretty complex. This was just a little... well, big detail they overlooked.
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    Mind giving some examples where it appears at first to be due to stupidity or carelessness but is in fact malice?
    - cryptoz 5y ago
      Well, Exxon knew about CO2 emissions from its products (and that they were causing global catastrophic climate change) but pretended they didn't know anything - they played dumb for decades while they cooked the world. Worse, while playing dumb about it, they tried to convince everyone in the world to join them in being 'stupid'. (funding climate change denial efforts, for example) Meanwhile, they produced as much atmospheric pollution as possible, maliciously, knowing the damage they were doing but pretending it was all a big misunderstanding. That's just one example. There are thousands, though. We could do one more I guess. Many Republicans in Congress are actively playing dumb about the insurrection, for another example. They say that it was just like a tour, they say that the real issue is "BLM destroying our cities" while ignoring that white supremacists stormed the capital and tried to kill our lawmakers and VP. People will call the rioters stupid and tell us they didn't know what they were doing. Sure. They knew what they were doing. They were trying to overthrow US democracy and murder our lawmakers. That is malice. They pretend it is stupidity and a looooooot of people go along with it. I honestly have a lot more. But here are two high-profile cases of obvious malice and wrongdoing while hiding under the guise of stupidity.
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Unless they run regular load shedding exercises, these things will always happen. (Anything you don't test will go wrong :-P )

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Lack of regulatory will.

refurb 5y ago
"But you are the regulator. I mean, you created these regulations that failed."
- candu 5y ago
  It's a fair remark, but like any large organization, government isn't this single homogenous entity: it's a collection of groups with imperfect communication and sometimes conflicting / separate goals. (That doesn't make scenarios like this better, but it at least makes them understandable.)
  - washadjeffmad 5y ago
    If you've seen it happen once, you've seen it a million times. You start with earnest, driven people set out to solve a major problem long term, and then the vultures set in. They cripple the regulation so it's either worthless or exploitable in the name of compromise, and when they learn how to game it, they fight to lock it into place so they can continue to subvert it legally. This is how medical pricing in the US got to where it is, for instance.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brundolf 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

cryptoz 5y ago
I repeated "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" blindly for years without really thinking about it much. I thought it was clever. But now I've come to realize I don't agree with it at all and I actually think it does a lot of harm. Bad people will do bad things and just make you think they are stupid instead of actively perpetrating evil acts. I think there is a lot of real harm done in this world that is done on purpose, i.e., actions that are meant to hurt people, and serve no other purpose - and these actions are dismissed by the 'enlightened' as mere stupidity, not worthy of serious discussion. Meanwhile, evildoers entrench and continue doing evil, under the guise of stupidity. I have personally dismissed many things as merely 'stupid' when it has later turned out to be an actual evil plot with the intent to harm. This has happened a lot recently, actually. I no longer support Hanlon's razor as anything useful and now often regard it as a red flag. I don't have a comment on this current article as it pertains to hanlon's razor, however. I'll sit this one out.
- labster 5y ago
  I’d still say more harm is done by carelessness and people intending to do good than by people actually intending harm. It’s not like the choice is binary between stupidity and malice. The situation here is likely carelessness even more than stupidity, because running an electric grid is pretty complex. This was just a little... well, big detail they overlooked.
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  Mind giving some examples where it appears at first to be due to stupidity or carelessness but is in fact malice?
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    Well, Exxon knew about CO2 emissions from its products (and that they were causing global catastrophic climate change) but pretended they didn't know anything - they played dumb for decades while they cooked the world. Worse, while playing dumb about it, they tried to convince everyone in the world to join them in being 'stupid'. (funding climate change denial efforts, for example) Meanwhile, they produced as much atmospheric pollution as possible, maliciously, knowing the damage they were doing but pretending it was all a big misunderstanding. That's just one example. There are thousands, though. We could do one more I guess. Many Republicans in Congress are actively playing dumb about the insurrection, for another example. They say that it was just like a tour, they say that the real issue is "BLM destroying our cities" while ignoring that white supremacists stormed the capital and tried to kill our lawmakers and VP. People will call the rioters stupid and tell us they didn't know what they were doing. Sure. They knew what they were doing. They were trying to overthrow US democracy and murder our lawmakers. That is malice. They pretend it is stupidity and a looooooot of people go along with it. I honestly have a lot more. But here are two high-profile cases of obvious malice and wrongdoing while hiding under the guise of stupidity.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

Unless they run regular load shedding exercises, these things will always happen. (Anything you don't test will go wrong :-P )