They are testing their garbage in dense urban areas. Too many times their vehicles just stop in the middle of the road.
If it rains, vehicle stops.
If the light is out, vehicle panics and stops.
Somebody puts a cone on the hood, vehicle panics.
If a single variable not accounted for in their algorithms shifts beyond expected range, it fucking panics.
So much money dumped/wasted into “autonomous personal vehicles”. How about we invest in making our cities more pedestrian, bike, and public transportation friendly? Let’s move people more efficiently rather than further digging ourselves into this hole.
Cruise's valuation of $30 billion will get you 12 miles of subway in NYC [1], hardly the public transit revolution necessary to make autonomous driving redundant.
I don't hate public transit or anything, I cycle and subway in NYC all the time, but the level of investment the US needs in public transit is an order of magnitude above the amount that investors have spent on autonomous driving.
>How about we invest in making our cities more pedestrian, bike, and public transportation friendly?
There are tons of companies that would love to help (get paid to) build out public transit infrastructure in cities. You think any major city would have trouble attracting bids to build tram systems, subways, or even buy more busses?
Look at your local leaders, how many of them are pro-public transit? How many of them have a long history of blocking projects because they want to "preserve neighborhood character" or some other lame excuse?
An advanced country is one where as many people as possible can go where they want, when they want, as cheaply as feasible. In the US, autonomous vehicles are the best bet for facilitating this in urban areas.
This is true - where I live only the relatively wealthy can afford close enough to schools to cycle to them. Anyone on a regular salary has to drive in.
Do you think the potential future where humans are freed from doing anything for their transportation (no driving, no pedaling, no steering, no danger, no waiting in traffic, etc) is worth some short term pain while we develop the tech? Was the pain and suffering during the industrial revolution days that have led to our current high tech world worth it? (I'm not just asking this rhetorically, I'm really interested in what you or somebody who agrees with you thinks about these things).
Alternatively if you reject the premise of those questions that this is a necessary phase to pass through to get to the other side, what do you think the impact on progress would be if no "real world" training opportunities were allowed for these companies? Do you think they'd be hampered and progress would take longer, and what would the impact of that be?
> Do you think the potential future where humans are freed from doing anything for their transportation (no driving, no pedaling, no steering, no danger, no waiting in traffic, etc) is worth some short term pain while we develop the tech? Was the pain and suffering during the industrial revolution days that have led to our current high tech world worth it?
Or more succinctly: "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Sorry, eggs [regular people].
Ends justify the means thinking leads to some dark places (e.g. what kind of medical-technological progress would we be able to make if it was possible to do testing on humans like we do on animals?).
> Or more succinctly: "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Sorry, eggs [regular people].
I'm not trying to make a statement or a point with the question. The original question is all that is part of the question. Please don't try to read more in than what is there.
> Ends justify the means thinking leads to some dark places.
For sure, but if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be nomadic people. Maybe life satisfaction then was higher, but certainly life expectancy wasn't. Just the death rate of babies and women alone was pretty dangerous.
> For sure, but if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be nomadic people. Maybe life satisfaction then was higher, but certainly life expectancy wasn't. Just the death rate of babies and women alone was pretty dangerous.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. Giving self-driving car companies free reign to cheaply experiment on the public is not the same as "avoid[ing] any and all pain" or avoiding all technological progress.
> You're presenting a false dichotomy. Giving self-driving car companies free reign to cheaply experiment on the public is not the same as "avoid[ing] any and all pain" or avoiding all technological progress.
I'm not presenting a dichotomy at all (unless you think the spectrum is binary and is only zero pain or non-zero pain, which I don't), let alone a false one. I'm not talking about just self-driving car companies. This is a broader philosophical discussion about technology in general, and how much pain is tolerable for progress. If you believe zero is tolerable in the case of self-driving, then do you believe that in general for all tech? If not, why is self-driving so different?
Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of self-driving cars is a world where humans don't have to labor for their transportation?
Edit: to clarify because people seem incapable of non-binary thinking, I'm not making an argument that Cruise (or any other tech company or car company or whatever) should be able to have "free reign to cheaply experiment on the public." That's not something I said or implied. I don't think they should and I think this California decision is probably a good one. There, can we talk about the higher philosophical issue now?
> I'm not presenting a dichotomy at all (unless you think the spectrum is binary and is only zero pain or non-zero pain, which I don't)
Then why are you saying things like "if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be nomadic people"? That seems pretty binary to me.
> This is a broader philosophical discussion about technology in general, and how much pain is tolerable for progress.
No, it's about who bears that pain. Is it the public or the investors? Obviously the investors and their apologists would prefer to externalize as much as the cost ("pain") as possible onto the public, and shame the public into accepting it.
> Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of self-driving cars is a world where humans don't have to labor for their transportation?
That's actually an irrelevant distraction, especially if for someone who rejects ends-justify-the-means logic. Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of unrestricted and unethical experimentation on humans is a world where many more diseases are cured and life is greatly extended (for some, at least)?
> Then why are you saying things like "if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be nomadic people"? That seems pretty binary to me.
Good question and thank you for the opportunity to clarify. My position/current opinion is that practically nothing in life can be done without some sort of pain or "harm" to self or another person. For example if the standard was "no harm", then there's no way we could have cars or motorized transport, or even bicycles for that matter. That doesn't mean that any and all pain is acceptable (that would be the binary view), but that basically it's a question of balance, not one of binary "yes" or "no."
> No, it's about who bears that pain. Is it the public or the investors? Obviously the investors and their apologists would prefer to externalize as much as the cost ("pain") as possible onto the public, and shame the public into accepting it.
I don't agree that is what the broader discussion is about, but I would certainly agree that "who bears that pain" is highly relevant to any concrete example, and certainly humans are much more accepting/tolerant of damage/harm that they don't personally have to bear. I would agree that investors should not be unilaterally making decisions on what harm is acceptable.
> That's actually an irrelevant distraction, especially if for someone who rejects ends-justify-the-means logic. Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of unrestricted and unethical experimentation on humans is a world where many more diseases are cured and life is greatly extended (for some, at least)?
This is a interesting point, and one I'll continue to think on. My initial reaction is that ends-justify-the-means isn't/shouldn't be binary either. Some level of ends-justify-the-means is necessary for nearly everything unpleasant we do in life. For example, I just cleaned the toilet (which I hate doing) because the ends justify the means: if I don't clean it, it will get disgusting, and having a clean toilet is great so I make the sacrifice.
That said, the broader understanding and common meaning of ends-justify-the-means is absolutely one I reject and I suspect we agree fully on: There are potentially great ends that don't justify unethical means. An example of ends-justify-the-means would be the Unabomber justifying his terrorism because on the other end would be a better world. I find that horrifying and very, very wrong.
> Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of unrestricted and unethical experimentation on humans is a world where many more diseases are cured and life is greatly extended (for some, at least)?
I would not disagree with that, and I would agree that this is not on its surface a good reason to do the experiments. I think the non-binary part comes in on how we define "unethical" however. To some people unethical would include allowing dying cancer patients the option to try potentially life saving but still experimental drugs. To me, very little is unethical so long as the person is a capable adult, is fully informed on the process, has the ability to withdraw at any time, and provides full consent. There are quite a few people who would disagree with that however, so in practice I think we still end up at the spectrum rather than the binary.
I disagree on the endpoint. I think active transit is healthy for humans, and removing it causes people to need to excercise deliberately much more — and people don’t, causing obesity and a ton of health concerns. Walking 2-3km a day would be great for most people, and much better than sitting in an auto-pod.
Would it then also be better if people had to churn their own butter? Obviously not. Exercise is fantastic and should be encouraged. I think nothing would do more to facilitate human-powered transportation (walking and biking) than replacing distracted and dangerous human drivers with attentive and safe autonomous ones.
We should talk about para transit for the few people who cannot walk (or push their wheelchair) 2-3km/day. However this is a minority of people. As you say most people would be better off if they did move 2-3km more/day.
Do you think the patients who got incorrect blood test results from Theranos should suck it up and not complain because all progress is good progress, even if some people have to get sacrificed along the way?
Obviously not. That's an absurd question that's not even remotely based on what I stated or implied anywhere, let alone the question you responded to. This feels more to me like it's directed at some sort insane strawman who lives in an imaginary world of binary thought where everything is either fully good or fully evil, but if I'm wrong and this question is in good faith, I would encourage you to read the existing sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38004007
> Too many times their vehicles just stop in the middle of the road.
The problem in this case happens to be that the AV tried to pull over instead of stopping in the middle of the road, so not sure this is a great criticism to make.
They are testing their garbage in dense urban areas. Too many times their vehicles just stop in the middle of the road.
If it rains, vehicle stops.
If the light is out, vehicle panics and stops.
Somebody puts a cone on the hood, vehicle panics.
If a single variable not accounted for in their algorithms shifts beyond expected range, it fucking panics.
So much money dumped/wasted into “autonomous personal vehicles”. How about we invest in making our cities more pedestrian, bike, and public transportation friendly? Let’s move people more efficiently rather than further digging ourselves into this hole.