Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Survivorship Bias...an Insidious Enemy

<< < (2/2)

TaoPhoenix:

Hmm. To me this topic doesn't seem to be so hard in a certain aspect. I don't read any of the "stories of great people". I read more of "reports of the times" books. I tend to read more "historical survey" articles on the web. That has the benefit of an analytical writer attempting to figure out why someone won and someone else lost.

40hz:
You often see this notion enshrined in the misapplication of the "modelling success" strategy. And also in a trend that is now becoming popular with politicians where an argument gets made that "We need (as a people) to get beyond fixing blame and revisiting what we did wrong, and instead focus our attention and build on what we did right."

After a catastrophic state-wide power outage following tropical storm Irene in 2011, the governor of my state - with much reluctance - finally consented to convene a commission to look into why it took anywhere from 4 to 7 days to restore electricity following the storm. This happened only when there was sufficient public outcry over the fact that the two local power companies had drastically reduced their road crew staffing by a factor of something like 50% in the years leading up to  the storm. These companies had been allowed (with the blessing of the PUC) to go over to a "cooperative"or "shared" multi-state model that would theoretically allow them to provide the same level of response with less manpower on a "share the road crews" arrangement. It was an idea that might have worked had the storm not hit (as hurricanes and tropical storms generally do) a multi-state area.

The public outcry eventually became loud enough (and the political downside obvious enough) that the governor was unable to return any favors to the utility lobby. So he, with much fanfare, ordered a "full investigation."

When the governor finally (after several delays) stepped forward to discuss what the investigation had found and recommended, he prefixed his speech with a comment that the purpose of this meeting was "not to fix blame" but rather to focus on "what was done right."



A few years later, when we got hit with Hurricane Sandy, it was almost as bad.

Is anybody really surprised? :-\

superboyac:
no it is not surprising.  And the effects of these kinds of decisions/attitudes are causing a lot of suffering to a lot of people that may not even think are being affected.

Stoic Joker:
When hurricane Frances/Fay (I forget) hit here we were out of power for 7 days. Many people were complaining about the power being out that long. I however having wandered around a bit to get an idea of the true scope of the damage...was actually impressed that they got the power on as fast as they did. But then again I helped out the situation in my own (it's probably a misdemeanor) way...and consider myself to be lucky ;)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page