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Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

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Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#101

Post by [deleted] »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #100
charlief wrote: post #99

Thank you for this and it was highly informative, but the article's tone seems a bit apathetic to me. It is still tough for me to stomach even a little engineering pride in the immediate wake of a tragedy of this magnitude. I know the policies and procedures in place worked as they should for the earthquake's immediate damage, but what about the specific preparedness for the tsunami, which will be the largest cause o…

More can always be done. Confining your reaction to the emotional is uninformative and exactly the sort of panic that our media creates and is creating about this event. If you can't slip smoothly from being sad about the death and destruction to analyzing the disaster response dispassionately, that's your problem.

[deleted]

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#102

Post by pokjhnboi »

Klonoar wrote: post #87
cubicle67 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thanks was for Patrick's article

Thank. Fucking. God. ...that you pointed this out. Yes, yes it was.

Sorry - I thought you meant

"thousands of people were killed - but one person survived, therefore a miracle, therefore praise god"

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#103

Post by charlief »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #100
charlief wrote: post #99

Thank you for this and it was highly informative, but the article's tone seems a bit apathetic to me. It is still tough for me to stomach even a little engineering pride in the immediate wake of a tragedy of this magnitude. I know the policies and procedures in place worked as they should for the earthquake's immediate damage, but what about the specific preparedness for the tsunami, which will be the largest cause o…

More can always be done. Confining your reaction to the emotional is uninformative and exactly the sort of panic that our media creates and is creating about this event. If you can't slip smoothly from being sad about the death and destruction to analyzing the disaster response dispassionately, that's your problem.

I think a comprehensive discussion includes the large moral impact: causalities from tsunami. I believe the article was pretty apathetic to this matter, and the high-number of causalities may conflict with the premise that everything went as planned. You said more can always be done, but I would like to know what. I think it is pretty self-righteous to prioritize our media-distortion matters over this question. Perhaps I had poor choice of words, but I believe this does not entirely invalidate my point.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#104

Post by Helianthus16 »

charlief wrote: post #103
Helianthus16 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More can always be done. Confining your reaction to the emotional is uninformative and exactly the sort of panic that our media creates and is creating about this event. If you can't slip smoothly from being sad about the death and destruction to analyzing the disaster response dispassionately, that's your problem.

I think a comprehensive discussion includes the large moral impact: causalities from tsunami. I believe the article was pretty apathetic to this matter, and the high-number of causalities may conflict with the premise that everything went as planned. You said more can always be done, but I would like to know what. I think it is pretty self-righteous to prioritize our media-distortion matters over this question. Perha…

This post as a whole is not a comprehensive discussion of the quake. It is explicitly about the media distortion of the event. If your point is valid it remains off-topic.

Additionally, your language indicates you're still not grasping the problem we are examining. There is no "premise that everything went as planned." That is absolutely not his point at all. His point is that there is a hugely complex system that performed admirably, that emergency relief systems are a war against the unexpected.

I think it's pretty self-righteous to prioritize the decision-making that the Japanese will take care of on their over examining and controlling our own reactions, reactions based on a poor understanding of the emergency response and hysterical reporting.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#105

Post by [deleted] »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #104
charlief wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a comprehensive discussion includes the large moral impact: causalities from tsunami. I believe the article was pretty apathetic to this matter, and the high-number of causalities may conflict with the premise that everything went as planned. You said more can always be done, but I would like to know what. I think it is pretty self-righteous to prioritize our media-distortion matters over this question. Perha…

This post as a whole is not a comprehensive discussion of the quake. It is explicitly about the media distortion of the event. If your point is valid it remains off-topic. Additionally, your language indicates you're still not grasping the problem we are examining. There is no "premise that everything went as planned." That is absolutely not his point at all. His point is that there is a hugely complex system that pe…

[deleted]

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#106

Post by Helianthus16 »

[deleted] wrote: post #105
Helianthus16 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post as a whole is not a comprehensive discussion of the quake. It is explicitly about the media distortion of the event. If your point is valid it remains off-topic. Additionally, your language indicates you're still not grasping the problem we are examining. There is no "premise that everything went as planned." That is absolutely not his point at all. His point is that there is a hugely complex system that pe…

[deleted]

>I agree absolutely, but did this hugely complex system really perform admirably in the case of the tsunami?

Yes. I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but once again, your terminology indicates you're not grasping the problem. There is no perfect system, there will always be flaws.

In what sense is the system worthy of no admiration? Because that is what you are asking for: you're saying that a viewpoint that regards the loss of tens of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands as praiseworthy as somehow "apathetic" when really it's just realistic: things could have been much worse.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#107

Post by defen »

elptacek wrote: post #57
mechanical_fish wrote: post #11

English-language reporting on the matter has been so bad that my mother is worried for my safety. I can believe it. So, on the one hand, it often seems like HN spends way too much time absorbed with inside-baseball conversations on the design of social news. How do we keep social-media communities intelligent and informative? How do we prevent them from being constantly trolled, dominated by sugar-coated memetic fluf…

I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into. I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together t…

Japanese society is also ethnically homogenous (which increases trust and social capital - see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....), hierarchical, and strongly favors social harmony over individual expression. I'm not convinced that a country like the U.S. could be as well prepared as Japan seems to be. I'm not saying we couldn't eventually overcome a similar scale disaster, but I think Japan is always going to have us beat in the immediate to short term aftermath.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#108

Post by tghnjtghn »

6ren wrote: post #92
patio11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a linguist? I agree, I don't like it, and literally that post went through my head when I was re-reading prior to hitting publish. As a writer? It is zippy and communicative, more than "The nation of Japan has chosen, through its political process, to invest a large amount of its resource surplus into disaster preparedness even though some observers believe it has long-since passed the point of diminishing returns…

It's a nice line, btw is it literally true? It fits with Deming, quality and six-sigma. I ask, because Christensen claims that Japan success a few decades ago was because all their successful firms (Toyota, Sony, etc etc) began with disruptive innovations, that needed to be improved, with sustaining innovations. Aiming at quality works really well for this. He then says their recent hard times are because those disru…

I think the difference is that Japanese disruptive firms can engineer things like planes, ships, cars - US disruptive firms enable you to play games about birds on your cell phone.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#109

Post by elptacek »

defen wrote: post #107
elptacek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into. I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together t…

Japanese society is also ethnically homogenous (which increases trust and social capital - see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.... ), hierarchical, and strongly favors social harmony over individual expression. I'm not convinced that a country like the U.S. could be as well prepared as Japan seems to be. I'm not saying we couldn't eventually overcome a similar scale disaster, but I think J…

"...strongly favors social harmony over individual expression."

I like how you put that. It describes my experience with Switzerland as well. I remember the pros and cons of being an American ex-pat there -- it could be quite rigid at times. As I get older, however, my frustration with this dichotomy appears to be growing. Individual expression can get off my lawn.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#110

Post by hunterp »

hunterp wrote: post #98
mistermann wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to assume you are joking?

Not joking at all. The reason sustainables are not super popular is that they have high initial investment costs, and represent decentralized power. Unless you have a united force supporting them like the spanish government (Spain is one of the most sustainable countries) or the recent 10 billion dollar investment for offshore wind by South Korea, you are not really going to win the economic battle necessary to get u…

Since this thread started, Japan has now 3 failed reactors, and 1 approaching meltdown. I take that back. No government, private industry, etc, no matter how organized is equipped to handle nuclear energy at the scale they currently operate at. There are nuclear projects that operate on 1/100th the scale. And this represents a decentralization of power. I'm still not interested in nuclear power. There are so many lucrative, healthy, green, sustainable alternatives.
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