This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is there an estimate for how many of die within the first few hours of the hurricane ?
If most people die on impact, then there isn't much point to organizing an extraordinary response 2 days later. It'll make lives less miserable, but those who were going to die have already died.
There's a lot of controversy about even measuring how many people die from a hurricane at all. Hurricane Maria very famously had a long serious of upscaled estimates for almost a full year, because studies pioneered the use of excess death methologies to measure the total impact of a hurricane, and this lead to a 20x difference in estimates.
((Which stopped happened not long after))
But the lower-end estimates of immediate or near-immediate deaths in recent days reflect, to a large extent, American society's ability to bring very high levels of assistance fairly quickly. And a lot of these tools have optimized for coastal areas, and/or are difficult to apply in this particularly mountainous area.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean there's definitely not an estimate for how many would die without ordinary emergency response efforts. We're talking about basic food-clean water-medicine issues for a very large group of people, there will be many deaths if responses are too delayed among the elderly or otherwise frail.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, it seems easy to avoid death from hurricanes. If the broad path of the hurricane is known, then the city should be able to evacuate within a couple of days.
Dunno if this one is an exception, but I believe hurricanes are routine occurrences in this region. Neighboring cities should be able to preemptively provide shelter to the fleeing populace. 5-10 stadiums can hold ~200-500k people. The west coast deals with wildfires, and routinely evacuates entire cities with no reported deaths.
The economic damage is another story. But loss of human life should be avoidable.
NHC had predicted the Karina would make landfall near New Orleans, about three days in advance of its actual landfall on August 29. Sandy's exact landfall (in New Jersey on October 29) and the storm surge threat were solidly predicted about four to five days in advance.
In either case, broad predictions were made a full week in advance and precise impact zones were predicted with 3 days to go.
What am I missing here? Surely the death toll should have been a lot lower ?
In the case of Helene, it got all the way into parts of western North Carolina that haven't had flooding of this magnitude since 1916 and absolutely do not routinely experience this type of disaster. I believe they have a lot more experience with snowstorms.
If we were talking about the eastern half of the state this would be very different.
That's rare!
I can see why the locals might not have evacuated in time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At the risk of sounding insensitive, do you know anything about this hurricane? Evacuating the entire "broad path" of the hurricane would mean evacuating an area about 600 miles long and 200 miles wide that includes several major cities such as Tallahassee, Charlotte, and Atlanta. Evacuating at least 10 million people potentially hundreds of miles on short notice isn't exactly easy, or even desirable.
No, they aren't. Asheville is in the western part of North Carolina, at least 250 miles from the nearest coastline.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link