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The story a few days ago about a bicyclist doing a track stand confusing a google car, which in turn reverted to performing a sequence of seemingly excessively

by Jedd 11y ago

The story a few days ago about a bicyclist doing a track stand confusing a google car, which in turn reverted to performing a sequence of seemingly excessively safe manoeuvres, generated some fascinating responses. Most particularly an observation that we seem to be stuck in a 'perfect or nothing' mentality - whereas new technologies, even in their own niche, really don't need to solve all problems for all people. I guess because it feels like that attitude directly contradicts the sarcastic adage 'there's never time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over' (and myriad permutations) that generally encourage us to get it right on the first go so we do not have to waste time revisiting. Complaining about the 100% applicability of an otherwise fine analogy seems to, again, be missing the point here. Plus, HN readers are not the target audience for this kind of story. Aside: on a very recent trip to India, spending some time working in a very large, very new office (not retail) building, replete with fully functional lifts, it was fascinating to see each lift had a uniformed attendant that pressed buttons on request.

mschuster91 11y ago
> Aside: on a very recent trip to India, spending some time working in a very large, very new office (not retail) building, replete with fully functional lifts, it was fascinating to see each lift had a uniformed attendant that pressed buttons on request. I think this may be more of a "show off, we're rich and can afford service" attitude. Spoken from the POV of an European only hearing about India when there is another outsourcing, terrorism, gang-rape or caste-based case (like the two poor "untouchables" girls sentenced to being raped by a village court, because their brother had married and run off with a higher-caste girl), I think it's just symptomatic of the culture. Prove me wrong.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Well, since you asked ... It's my understanding that menial labor in India is expected to be cheap and so people wouldn't naturally interpret one extra worker as an extravagant show of wealth. I also read on Quora that Indian parking attendants will do nothing but press a button to generate your parking pass and give it to you, another example of pointless labor that doesn't seem very related to flouting wealth.
  - Jedd 11y ago
    Yes, it's almost definitely not showing off - though it may appear that way to outsiders. My understanding is that, as you observe, with labour being so cheap and a culture that values inclusiveness, this is the obvious course of action. In lots of non-western societies westerners will see inefficiencies and opportunities to replace human labour with fewer and better trained staff, or automated / mechanised systems. But this is to miss the point. The way I interpret it is a form of UBI - everyone(ish) has an opportunity for a modicum of income, with an underlying tacit agreement.
    - aianus 11y ago
      The difference between this and UBI is that these people have no time or opportunity to explore and possibly learn how to do something progressive. It's a gross waste of human potential.
      - Jedd 11y ago
        I totally agree with the sentiment, but remember that for each of us, as we look at other people(s) there's a breathtaking number of activities that we would consider wasteful. While I am not a huge fan of cultural relativism, I appreciate that there may be some validity in considering such things through that lens. Though it may just be hopefully healthy self-doubt. Academic exercise -- what differences would you imagine for transition to a UBI between, say, India with this kind of social norm, the UK or AU (as examples with a half-way decent welfare and some 'work for unemployment benefits' programmes), and the USA or Singapore (again as examples, with extremely modest welfare arrangements)?
- witty_username 11y ago
  I've NEVER seen a lift attendant in my urban life in India. Maybe's it's there on the old style lifts with black gates, idk.
logicallee 11y ago
Actually perfect or nothing is a nice standard. Did you know that the elevator was quickly adopted because its inventor[1] went to shows and cut the cable holding up the cab he was standing on? It was because he had a foolproof locking mechanism to stop free-fall, in use ever since. And it really is foolproof: a quick internet search reveals there has not been a single case of an elevator falling death in the history of elevators (EDIT: see replies[2]). (There is one exception I found, which was due to massive structural damage to a building, like a giant explosion, which also damaged the elevator. Check for yourself if you don't believe me.) [Almost] no elevator has ever fallen due to a snapped cable, in the history of elevators. (So even if you're afraid of heights you have no reason to be afraid of elevators, but maybe stop reading this comment here in this case.) This is why even highly sqeamish people or people afraid of heights don't mind standing in a locked elevator cab, being held up by a cable, and with ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred stories of empty space under them while the cable lifts them up and down. It's just a non-issue (due to height, I guess claustrophobia is a separate issue.) And this happens because the safety mechanism to keep elevators from falling is, well, perfect. The inventor of the elevator showed it, again and again, using his life. If it weren't the case, at least some people would feel very differently about elevators! As this case shows, a standard of "perfect or nothing" absolutely impacts public perception and fast adoption, and may even mold people's opinion for centuries to come. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis [2] I had done a quick Internet search, see replies for a few cases.
- kbenson 11y ago
  The 99% invisible podcast[1] actually went pretty deep into this topic in episodes 170 and 171, and they were excellent shows. I actually learned about the elevator showing off the safety of his elevators from another amazing podcast, Memory Palace. 1: http://99percentinvisible.org/ http://99percentinvisible.org/
- Jedd 11y ago
  Very interesting background - thank you. Are there any recorded deaths from self-driving cars at this time, I wonder? Pre-empting other people's responses of 'not enough data yet', or similar - at the time Otis felt it was necessary to demonstrate in this way, there was a perception of insufficient data also - lack of data is a truism for all new technologies.
Animats 11y ago
"The story a few days ago about a bicyclist doing a track stand confusing a google car, which in turn reverted to performing a sequence of seemingly excessively safe manoeuvres, generated some fascinating responses." Yes, I saw that. I'd like to see a technical response from someone at Google. Their system recognizes bicycles, and treats them as vehicles likely to make unusual maneuvers. So a bicycle starting to move into an intersection, however slowly, is treated as a fence against movement by the car, and the fence length is quite long and angled to allow for sharp turns by the bicycle. You can see this in some of their videos. Someone balancing on a bicycle, with small back and forth movements, will trigger that fence response. Google is being careful in their development, and conservative in their assumptions about other vehicle behavior. That's good at this stage. Their system would probably classify a child on a bike with training wheels or an old person on a big tricycle the same way as a standing balanced bicycle. They could certainly program the system to resolve such deadlocks by inching forward and honking, and eventually they probably will. Just as elevators deal with people blocking the door by buzzing and slowly closing the doors at low power. There's a paper on this: "Go Ahead, Make My Day: Robot conflict resolution by aggressive competition".[1] This has been a practical problem with robot carts which drive around hospital corridors carrying laundry and such. They need to be slightly pushy, or they get stalled trying to get through a busy corridor. [1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.6260 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.6...
- jdoliner 11y ago
  That story about the bicycle made me wonder if we're going to wind up with traffic deadlocks in the near future.
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    Traffic deadlocks are better than traffic 'dead' people which is what we get on the roads every year.
  - Animats 11y ago
    Probably not. The autonomous vehicles will work something out with each other. A more interesting possibility is that, since autonomous vehicles have to recognize bad driving, they'll probably be reporting it to a database somewhere. That data can then be sold to insurance companies.
prawn 11y ago
Seen lift attendants in US department stores. Any comment about them being able to aid with directions could apply to a large building too I imagine.

by Jedd 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago

> Aside: on a very recent trip to India, spending some time working in a very large, very new office (not retail) building, replete with fully functional lifts, it was fascinating to see each lift had a uniformed attendant that pressed buttons on request. I think this may be more of a "show off, we're rich and can afford service" attitude. Spoken from the POV of an European only hearing about India when there is another outsourcing, terrorism, gang-rape or caste-based case (like the two poor "untouchables" girls sentenced to being raped by a village court, because their brother had married and run off with a higher-caste girl), I think it's just symptomatic of the culture. Prove me wrong.

SilasX 11y ago
Well, since you asked ... It's my understanding that menial labor in India is expected to be cheap and so people wouldn't naturally interpret one extra worker as an extravagant show of wealth. I also read on Quora that Indian parking attendants will do nothing but press a button to generate your parking pass and give it to you, another example of pointless labor that doesn't seem very related to flouting wealth.
- Jedd 11y ago
  Yes, it's almost definitely not showing off - though it may appear that way to outsiders. My understanding is that, as you observe, with labour being so cheap and a culture that values inclusiveness, this is the obvious course of action. In lots of non-western societies westerners will see inefficiencies and opportunities to replace human labour with fewer and better trained staff, or automated / mechanised systems. But this is to miss the point. The way I interpret it is a form of UBI - everyone(ish) has an opportunity for a modicum of income, with an underlying tacit agreement.
  - aianus 11y ago
    The difference between this and UBI is that these people have no time or opportunity to explore and possibly learn how to do something progressive. It's a gross waste of human potential.
    - Jedd 11y ago
      I totally agree with the sentiment, but remember that for each of us, as we look at other people(s) there's a breathtaking number of activities that we would consider wasteful. While I am not a huge fan of cultural relativism, I appreciate that there may be some validity in considering such things through that lens. Though it may just be hopefully healthy self-doubt. Academic exercise -- what differences would you imagine for transition to a UBI between, say, India with this kind of social norm, the UK or AU (as examples with a half-way decent welfare and some 'work for unemployment benefits' programmes), and the USA or Singapore (again as examples, with extremely modest welfare arrangements)?
witty_username 11y ago
I've NEVER seen a lift attendant in my urban life in India. Maybe's it's there on the old style lifts with black gates, idk.

logicallee 11y ago

Actually perfect or nothing is a nice standard. Did you know that the elevator was quickly adopted because its inventor[1] went to shows and cut the cable holding up the cab he was standing on? It was because he had a foolproof locking mechanism to stop free-fall, in use ever since. And it really is foolproof: a quick internet search reveals there has not been a single case of an elevator falling death in the history of elevators (EDIT: see replies[2]). (There is one exception I found, which was due to massive structural damage to a building, like a giant explosion, which also damaged the elevator. Check for yourself if you don't believe me.) [Almost] no elevator has ever fallen due to a snapped cable, in the history of elevators. (So even if you're afraid of heights you have no reason to be afraid of elevators, but maybe stop reading this comment here in this case.) This is why even highly sqeamish people or people afraid of heights don't mind standing in a locked elevator cab, being held up by a cable, and with ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred stories of empty space under them while the cable lifts them up and down. It's just a non-issue (due to height, I guess claustrophobia is a separate issue.) And this happens because the safety mechanism to keep elevators from falling is, well, perfect. The inventor of the elevator showed it, again and again, using his life. If it weren't the case, at least some people would feel very differently about elevators! As this case shows, a standard of "perfect or nothing" absolutely impacts public perception and fast adoption, and may even mold people's opinion for centuries to come. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis [2] I had done a quick Internet search, see replies for a few cases.

kbenson 11y ago
The 99% invisible podcast[1] actually went pretty deep into this topic in episodes 170 and 171, and they were excellent shows. I actually learned about the elevator showing off the safety of his elevators from another amazing podcast, Memory Palace. 1: http://99percentinvisible.org/ http://99percentinvisible.org/
Jedd 11y ago
Very interesting background - thank you. Are there any recorded deaths from self-driving cars at this time, I wonder? Pre-empting other people's responses of 'not enough data yet', or similar - at the time Otis felt it was necessary to demonstrate in this way, there was a perception of insufficient data also - lack of data is a truism for all new technologies.

Animats 11y ago

"The story a few days ago about a bicyclist doing a track stand confusing a google car, which in turn reverted to performing a sequence of seemingly excessively safe manoeuvres, generated some fascinating responses." Yes, I saw that. I'd like to see a technical response from someone at Google. Their system recognizes bicycles, and treats them as vehicles likely to make unusual maneuvers. So a bicycle starting to move into an intersection, however slowly, is treated as a fence against movement by the car, and the fence length is quite long and angled to allow for sharp turns by the bicycle. You can see this in some of their videos. Someone balancing on a bicycle, with small back and forth movements, will trigger that fence response. Google is being careful in their development, and conservative in their assumptions about other vehicle behavior. That's good at this stage. Their system would probably classify a child on a bike with training wheels or an old person on a big tricycle the same way as a standing balanced bicycle. They could certainly program the system to resolve such deadlocks by inching forward and honking, and eventually they probably will. Just as elevators deal with people blocking the door by buzzing and slowly closing the doors at low power. There's a paper on this: "Go Ahead, Make My Day: Robot conflict resolution by aggressive competition".[1] This has been a practical problem with robot carts which drive around hospital corridors carrying laundry and such. They need to be slightly pushy, or they get stalled trying to get through a busy corridor. [1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.6260 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.6...

jdoliner 11y ago
That story about the bicycle made me wonder if we're going to wind up with traffic deadlocks in the near future.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  Traffic deadlocks are better than traffic 'dead' people which is what we get on the roads every year.
- Animats 11y ago
  Probably not. The autonomous vehicles will work something out with each other. A more interesting possibility is that, since autonomous vehicles have to recognize bad driving, they'll probably be reporting it to a database somewhere. That data can then be sold to insurance companies.

prawn 11y ago

Seen lift attendants in US department stores. Any comment about them being able to aid with directions could apply to a large building too I imagine.