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I seriously wonder if self driving cars will really ever happen given how little new car technology is absorbed particularly in less wealthy countries (ie count

by agentgt 11y ago

I seriously wonder if self driving cars will really ever happen given how little new car technology is absorbed particularly in less wealthy countries (ie countries in Africa). Given Africa's rate of population growth a random person picked in the future is probably going to be from that continent. I have serious doubts poor countries will have the infrastructure and/or resources needed to support self driving machines. That is future less than law abiding hacker (the author's term.. not mine) could probably avoid problems like this by moving to less wealthy nations.

sideshowb 11y ago
have you got a source for the Africa population growth vs rest of world? intuitively your stats seem unlikely.
- agentgt 11y ago
  I'm not sure about your intuition. Intuitively for me it seemed likely (Africa population growing fast) but for a long time I was educated falsely that population would flatten out for developing countries. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-will-soar-higher-than-predicted/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-w... A recent one here (just read this a week ago): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-population-will-soar-dangerously-unless-women-are-more-empowered/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-populatio... Population is a serious problem and for some reason people avoid and eschew it more than global warming or the phosphorus crisis (another one most people don't know about).
  - sideshowb 11y ago
    Interesting links, thank you.
xixi77 11y ago
(1) I'm not sure self-driving machines will actually need that much more infrastructure. For one, driver training would be less necessary, and car utilization could go up. (2) assuming they did require infrastructure, what does Africa's future population has to do with it? Random person does not matter (taking "random" as "uniform"), random car buyer does -- either they have enough cars which would make the infrastructure worthwhile, or they don't, in which case they can be safely ignored for all car-related purposes. It could be that (i) things like bad roads make things difficult for self-driving cars, while (ii) labor is very cheap and everyone who can afford a car can afford a personal driver. It would still mean a fairly small ratio of cars per capita, but I don't think anyone predicts that self-driving cars will ever completely replace human drivers :)
- agentgt 11y ago
  Africa's population was brought up because many dystopian novels/stories have an upper class (like 0.01%) who's rights are incredibly restricted but rewarded with resources/privileges where as the vast majority of the population can mostly do whatever they like but are given nothing. 1984 is a great example... there are many more examples. ie poverty and/or living off the grid = freedom. I guess when I read dystopian like things where this is the case I'm always begging the question... why don't the characters just move out of the restricted society (in some cases the story answers that but in many its not).

by agentgt 11y ago

sideshowb 11y ago

have you got a source for the Africa population growth vs rest of world? intuitively your stats seem unlikely.

agentgt 11y ago
I'm not sure about your intuition. Intuitively for me it seemed likely (Africa population growing fast) but for a long time I was educated falsely that population would flatten out for developing countries. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-will-soar-higher-than-predicted/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-w... A recent one here (just read this a week ago): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-population-will-soar-dangerously-unless-women-are-more-empowered/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-populatio... Population is a serious problem and for some reason people avoid and eschew it more than global warming or the phosphorus crisis (another one most people don't know about).
- sideshowb 11y ago
  Interesting links, thank you.

xixi77 11y ago

(1) I'm not sure self-driving machines will actually need that much more infrastructure. For one, driver training would be less necessary, and car utilization could go up. (2) assuming they did require infrastructure, what does Africa's future population has to do with it? Random person does not matter (taking "random" as "uniform"), random car buyer does -- either they have enough cars which would make the infrastructure worthwhile, or they don't, in which case they can be safely ignored for all car-related purposes. It could be that (i) things like bad roads make things difficult for self-driving cars, while (ii) labor is very cheap and everyone who can afford a car can afford a personal driver. It would still mean a fairly small ratio of cars per capita, but I don't think anyone predicts that self-driving cars will ever completely replace human drivers :)

agentgt 11y ago
Africa's population was brought up because many dystopian novels/stories have an upper class (like 0.01%) who's rights are incredibly restricted but rewarded with resources/privileges where as the vast majority of the population can mostly do whatever they like but are given nothing. 1984 is a great example... there are many more examples. ie poverty and/or living off the grid = freedom. I guess when I read dystopian like things where this is the case I'm always begging the question... why don't the characters just move out of the restricted society (in some cases the story answers that but in many its not).