Re:The Texas electric grid failure was a warm-up
by roenxi on Saturday January 22, 2022 @08:38AM
(#30036489)
> No, I said that someone would "swoop in and profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos". You even fucking quoted me saying it!
If someone has stabilised the crisis then it isn't really a problem for the consumers. In this case, stabilising the crisis involves keeping the grid up and running in an emergency situation. There isn't any point sitting around thumbtwiddling watching a brownout happen, electricity grids often operate at speeds measured in either Hertz or 15 minute windows.
> isn't this definitionally a strawman? Why bother with this?
It'll help you explain yourself if you have some hints about how I am reading your comment. If I just say "explain further" to someone then it is unclear what they need to expand upon. Plus it makes my position clearer and I enjoy typing.
And the dude's comment isn't something I feel a need to answer. I'm not arguing in favour of the Texas electricity providers, I'm arguing that "they've got an incentive to give up and let the grid go dark" is a pretty extreme guess, is probably wrong and at a minimum needs real evidence to support it. Maximum profit probably isn't achieved if the grid goes down. It is much more likely that the incentives align to keep the grid running 24-7-365 with a high tolerance for outlier events and this outage was just run of the mill incompetence in the face of change.
If someone has stabilised the crisis then it isn't really a problem for the consumers. In this case, stabilising the crisis involves keeping the grid up and running in an emergency situation. There isn't any point sitting around thumbtwiddling watching a brownout happen, electricity grids often operate at speeds measured in either Hertz or 15 minute windows.
> isn't this definitionally a strawman? Why bother with this?
It'll help you explain yourself if you have some hints about how I am reading your comment. If I just say "explain further" to someone then it is unclear what they need to expand upon. Plus it makes my position clearer and I enjoy typing.
And the dude's comment isn't something I feel a need to answer. I'm not arguing in favour of the Texas electricity providers, I'm arguing that "they've got an incentive to give up and let the grid go dark" is a pretty extreme guess, is probably wrong and at a minimum needs real evidence to support it. Maximum profit probably isn't achieved if the grid goes down. It is much more likely that the incentives align to keep the grid running 24-7-365 with a high tolerance for outlier events and this outage was just run of the mill incompetence in the face of change.