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> Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopil

> Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different. If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 feet of altitude and huge glide ratios and nearly empty skies do wonders. In a car your average car-to-car separation in rush-hour traffic is a few seconds along the line of motion, and perhaps less sideways. If you're not on the freeway you might be a jerk of the wheel and half a second from a head-on collision. Now you might say that the technical capabilities of both systems are the same, but nobody really cares about that. They care that it can meet some criteria that they already have in their head and they aren't going to go to school for 5 years to understand that it's not the autopilot's fault that their kid enabled in bad circumstances and died, they're going to sue Tesla to hell and back. And judges and juries will quite likely be sympathetic.

mikeash 10y ago
Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end. I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely appropriate. I'm not terribly interested in the legal aspects of it, I'm just curious where everyone got this idea that "autopilot" implies autonomy (if in fact everyone does have that idea, which I'm not sure about), and I strongly disagree with your assertion that using "autopilot" to describe Tesla's system is "torturing language," given that using "autopilot" to describe a simple wing-leveling system is perfectly acceptable.
- msandford 10y ago
  I can call a bicycle an gyroscopically-stabilized carbon-neutral human transportation device but that doesn't somehow make it fancier. It just sounds fancier. I have argued that when people hear the word "autopilot" they think that it's very advanced. You argue that technically, something that just keeps the wings level is also an autopilot. I agree! I just disagree that the average person would know enough about the finer points of what a particular word actually means versus what just about everyone thinks it means. Finally I would argue that if just about everyone thinks that a word means a particular thing, that's what it means. It might technically be incorrect, but words are just noises that people say to convey an idea from one brain to another. If you know what someone meant well enough to correct them, they probably used the word correctly. Here's a major news website reporting on what an autopilot is and is not in the wake of the germanwings crash about a year ago. It maintains that autopilots on commercial jets (what people tend to think of when you say "airplane" or "flight"). This was the 3rd or 4th google hit for the phrase "what is an autopilot" http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can-and-cant-do.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can...
  - mikeash 10y ago
    That CNBC article seems to be supporting my position, not yours. It's quite clear that autopilot is an aid, not an autonomous pilot substitute, and that the pilot still handles certain parts of the flight and must be ready to take over if something happens. Unless your point is that everyone thinks autopilot means more, and this article is correcting that notion? I fully agree that if just about everyone thinks a word means something, then it means something. I'm not trying to argue based on some technicality. What I am arguing is: 1. I'm not at all sure that this understanding of "autopilot" is as ubiquitous as you say it is. 2. Even if that understanding is nearly ubiquitous, I can hardly fault someone for using "autopilot" to mean something simpler if they are doing so because they are familiar with actual autopilot systems and are naming by analogy to the systems, not to popular understanding of the term. 3. If people really do all think that "autopilot" means a fully autonomous system, the fact that no such thing is found on real airplanes means that they're a bunch of idiots, and I'd really like to know where that idea came from.

mikeash 10y ago

Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end. I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely appropriate. I'm not terribly interested in the legal aspects of it, I'm just curious where everyone got this idea that "autopilot" implies autonomy (if in fact everyone does have that idea, which I'm not sure about), and I strongly disagree with your assertion that using "autopilot" to describe Tesla's system is "torturing language," given that using "autopilot" to describe a simple wing-leveling system is perfectly acceptable.

msandford 10y ago
I can call a bicycle an gyroscopically-stabilized carbon-neutral human transportation device but that doesn't somehow make it fancier. It just sounds fancier. I have argued that when people hear the word "autopilot" they think that it's very advanced. You argue that technically, something that just keeps the wings level is also an autopilot. I agree! I just disagree that the average person would know enough about the finer points of what a particular word actually means versus what just about everyone thinks it means. Finally I would argue that if just about everyone thinks that a word means a particular thing, that's what it means. It might technically be incorrect, but words are just noises that people say to convey an idea from one brain to another. If you know what someone meant well enough to correct them, they probably used the word correctly. Here's a major news website reporting on what an autopilot is and is not in the wake of the germanwings crash about a year ago. It maintains that autopilots on commercial jets (what people tend to think of when you say "airplane" or "flight"). This was the 3rd or 4th google hit for the phrase "what is an autopilot" http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can-and-cant-do.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can...
- mikeash 10y ago
  That CNBC article seems to be supporting my position, not yours. It's quite clear that autopilot is an aid, not an autonomous pilot substitute, and that the pilot still handles certain parts of the flight and must be ready to take over if something happens. Unless your point is that everyone thinks autopilot means more, and this article is correcting that notion? I fully agree that if just about everyone thinks a word means something, then it means something. I'm not trying to argue based on some technicality. What I am arguing is: 1. I'm not at all sure that this understanding of "autopilot" is as ubiquitous as you say it is. 2. Even if that understanding is nearly ubiquitous, I can hardly fault someone for using "autopilot" to mean something simpler if they are doing so because they are familiar with actual autopilot systems and are naming by analogy to the systems, not to popular understanding of the term. 3. If people really do all think that "autopilot" means a fully autonomous system, the fact that no such thing is found on real airplanes means that they're a bunch of idiots, and I'd really like to know where that idea came from.