[atotic]

NYT mentioned NWS staffing shortage, but did not say this was connected to body count: "The office is also one of several left without an overnight forecaster, but on Friday, it stayed open and was sufficiently staffed for the night, issuing 11 tornado warnings. It was “all hands on deck,” Mr. Fahy said."

[casefields]

That's because no one can make that conclusion definitively yet. They want your brain to assume that connection. Conspiracy theorists are the kings at this psychological trick.

[throw0101d]

> That's because no one can make that conclusion definitively yet.

There's a problem here though: if things do eventually deteriorate (which, admittedly, there is a change will not happen), it may be too late to fix things.

If things get broken they are broken, and in this case you have risk of people's lives. And the people who did the jobs that were fired have probably moved on because they have bills to pay. If you can realize your mistake quickly enough, you can fix it quickly. This is what happened when the Very Stable Geniuses fired the folks who maintained US nuclear weapons:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130613

Perhaps instead of l33t h4ck3rz in DOGE they should hire carpenters or woodworkers: people who, instead of a mantra of "move fast and break things", live more by "measure twice and cut once". Some measure of where the (alleged) waste is could be useful before cutting.

[sanderjd]

I agree that DOGE is bad. But I also think it's unhelpful to claim evidence of a bad outcome directly caused by what they've done. It muddies the water and bolsters people who want to argue that people are only criticizing them out of bias.

If it's true that they got all the tornado warnings out because they were able to be "all hands on deck" for a night they knew would have high risk, then I think this just isn't the example of DOGE getting people killed that the article wants it to be.

I fully believe that understaffing these offices could get people killed. But we don't need to claim it did until it does.

And that doesn't mean we should wait for something awful to happen to criticize the risky situation!

[Abimelex]

That's mostly the thing with safety measurements. If they are there you do not recognize them and if they are missing and something happens it's hard to proof if it would have changed anything.

Have a look on "Heuristics That Almost Always Work" https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa...