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I didn't think I had to clarify, but here we are. We were talking specifically about the "moral compass" of the car in (rare) situations where it had to choose

I didn't think I had to clarify, but here we are. We were talking specifically about the "moral compass" of the car in (rare) situations where it had to choose between my life and others. When it comes to those situations, I think it should always choose to protect my safety. But I guess I'll qualify my original statement: "within reason".

the8472 10y ago
> I think it should always choose to protect my safety. Well, your thinking might be irrelevant. Let us assume the following points: - we live in a democracy with self-interest driven voters. - most commonly the victims in accidents are pedestrians, not occupants of the vehicle. measured by frequency and severity - not every citizen is a car-user (even in an autonomous-vehicle world). e.g. some may prefer bicycles, especially children From that we can conclude it is in every citizen's interest that cars do not prioritize occupants of the vehicles, because even if the car takes evasive maneuvers (deprioritizing the occupants) the overall trade-off matrix will still be in favor of the occupant. This arises because we're not actually dealing with a the trolley problem but with more complex continuous variables where 100%-confidence of 100%loss (death) is only an extreme point. Additionally not every citizen will have any interest at all in being protected while inside a car because they're always outside the car. Thus the overall interest of the citizens will be to prioritize pedestrians over car occupants. And this being the majority view means means cars with selfish behavior will banned. Also note that in this scenario your own self-interest aligns with that of everyone else when you're outside a car. It only mismatches while you're inside a car. But in the end this is all a storm in a teacup. When a system gets to a point where it has to make such tradeoffs then you already failed. And ideally this happens very very rarely. So you just end up shifting 0.0001% risk factors around. There are more important things.
inimino 10y ago
Driving up onto the curb at speed could injure you. Is it better to hit a child who just ran out into the road because that better protects your safety? Who gets to write the "within reason" code?

the8472 10y ago

> I think it should always choose to protect my safety. Well, your thinking might be irrelevant. Let us assume the following points: - we live in a democracy with self-interest driven voters. - most commonly the victims in accidents are pedestrians, not occupants of the vehicle. measured by frequency and severity - not every citizen is a car-user (even in an autonomous-vehicle world). e.g. some may prefer bicycles, especially children From that we can conclude it is in every citizen's interest that cars do not prioritize occupants of the vehicles, because even if the car takes evasive maneuvers (deprioritizing the occupants) the overall trade-off matrix will still be in favor of the occupant. This arises because we're not actually dealing with a the trolley problem but with more complex continuous variables where 100%-confidence of 100%loss (death) is only an extreme point. Additionally not every citizen will have any interest at all in being protected while inside a car because they're always outside the car. Thus the overall interest of the citizens will be to prioritize pedestrians over car occupants. And this being the majority view means means cars with selfish behavior will banned. Also note that in this scenario your own self-interest aligns with that of everyone else when you're outside a car. It only mismatches while you're inside a car. But in the end this is all a storm in a teacup. When a system gets to a point where it has to make such tradeoffs then you already failed. And ideally this happens very very rarely. So you just end up shifting 0.0001% risk factors around. There are more important things.

inimino 10y ago

Driving up onto the curb at speed could injure you. Is it better to hit a child who just ran out into the road because that better protects your safety? Who gets to write the "within reason" code?