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> By and large the law already has an answer Not really, morality =/= legality. I don't want legal self driving cars, I want moral ones. Laws will always be

> By and large the law already has an answer Not really, morality =/= legality. I don't want legal self driving cars, I want moral ones. Laws will always be an imperfect implementation of morality. Do self driving cars have to respect the laws of countries that don't respect the rights of minority groups? Should self driving cars in Saudi Arabia prefer to hit women? Legality isn't an escape hatch that absolves you of the moral implications of your actions.

M_Grey 10y ago
It isn't, but we're talking about people who are thoughtless and casual in the defense of their own life and health, and choose to jaywalk, not women, or minority groups of some kind. Morally speaking, I find it difficult to fall on the side of people who place the burden of keeping them alive on society at large, out of sheer carelessness. “Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” -Heinlein
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 10y ago
  You're actually talking about people who do casually defend their own life and health, by choosing to walk. In actual urban cities (eg NYC, Chicago, Boston), pedestrians are quite capable of informally navigating with cars, crossing at any point of a street rather than waiting for some preposterous "walk light" (and possibly even being expected to push a filthy button to activate it!?). Streets are a shared resource for many types of users, so it is certainly not a given that a single type of traffic should be given utmost blind priority. That kind of thing is an explicit policy decision, and is currently reserved for the few "controlled access" highways. I think it will be quite unfortunate if the west coast style of "oblivious" driving becomes calcified as code and exported to the rest of the world. Self-driving cars actually represent an opportunity to roll back this fallacious attitude that "streets are for cars", as a self-driving car is much more attentive and will not tire of being vigilant. For example, if your automatic car cannot gauge whether a crossing pedestrian intents to cross in front of or behind it and make a slight speed adjustment (as said pedestrian has already done, and as current human drivers are expected to do), then it deserves to come to a quick stop and wait there like an idiot until you upgrade it to competency. In line with the original article, I think this whole subject is an utter red herring and an amazing illustration of how the media can manufacture its own concern over a topic just to fill pages. The thought experiment is specifically called the "trolley problem" because trolleys run on discrete tracks and stop slowly. In the real world braking and turning have basically the same avoidance distance, accelerating does not save you from accidents, and people are never expected to drive off cliffs to avoid pedestrians.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    The reality, as someone who has lived in all three of those cities, is that pedestrians are adept at making cars navigate them, because they can. It's not that crosswalks (which are ubiquitous in those cities) are somehow burdensome, they just have shit to do and know that drivers don't want to hit them. These are the same people who just walk into the street without even looking, while on their cell phones.
    - mindslight 10y ago
      > These are the same people who just walk into the street without even looking, while on their cell phones. Obviously the bad actors are going to stand out to you. There are many more people who are attentive when they informally cross, but they blend into traffic and are forgotten about. I don't know what to do about the recent phenomenon of people spaced out on their phones, but I'm pretty sure changing traffic laws so drivers can explicitly hit them is not a good answer. (crosswalks aren't burdensome, but the idea that pedestrians should only ever cross in them is, by construction. Why should a pedestrian be made to walk an extra block to simply cross a regular ubiquitous street, when they do not depend on the abstraction that would necessitate it? The "highway revolts" took place for good reason, and changing every street into a controlled access road would essentially resume that damage)
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        Why should they be made to walk an extra block? So that they don't die. A fact that should be increasingly relevant as the reigns are slowly handed over to computers.
        mindslight 10y ago
        The need to "not die" is a result of a deliberate policy choice, which you're obscuring by making it seem like the pedestrian is the only one choosing. If we're talking about metaphorical "reigns" meaning control of society, then we definitely should not be handing these over to computers. The goal should be for computers to be responsible to people [0], rather than people being controlled by computers. Otherwise, we are abdicating are own right to exist. [0] True independent AI would function as its own agent. But I would categorize that as a new "person".
- darkerside 10y ago
  Does that include the stupidity of a child chasing a ball into the street? Or a non-native, who fails to understand local jaywalking laws or customs? It certainly seems to include a mentally disabled person who might wander into the road. Seems callous.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    How often, in places where there is a great deal of traffic, do children get hit chasing their balls? How often are mentally disabled people wandering around alone, when they're so disabled they can't work out a crosswalk and a red or green light? How often are non-natives struck and injured in these situations? I ask, because I become immediately suspicious when someone tells me, in so many words, "To think of the children."
Symmetry 10y ago
Everybody should do what they think is right. But if the government is going to impose limits on the behavior of people, it should do that through laws.
- timon999 10y ago
  Right - but laws should be based on moral considerations. You can't claim that a certain moral problem is solved just because there is a law that applies to it.
joshuaheard 10y ago
All laws are moral. However, immoral actions may be lawful. This is because laws are basically the fixed set of moral rules for society, while there may be other moral rules not generally agreed upon. I agree with the author, as long as the cars obey the law, there should be no problem.
- coderzach 10y ago
  > All laws are moral. However, immoral actions may be lawful. Are you saying that there is no such thing as an immoral law? It sounds like from your comment that you're saying: There may be immoral things you can do legally, but legality provides a "base" morality. Women must keep their face covered in public, Jim Crow laws, etc.
  - joshuaheard 10y ago
    Laws and morals change, and sometimes they are not concomitant. I am speaking of an ideal equilibrium where the law is the manifestation of universally agreed-upon morals. In this case, some may have higher morals than the law requires, but to violate the law would be immoral per se.
- sid-kap 10y ago
  Reminds me of something from Aristotle, although he said the converse: > ...evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts... > But since unfair and the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from its whole (for all that is unfair is unlawful, but not all that is unlawful is unfair)... –Nicomachean Ethics, Book V

M_Grey 10y ago

It isn't, but we're talking about people who are thoughtless and casual in the defense of their own life and health, and choose to jaywalk, not women, or minority groups of some kind. Morally speaking, I find it difficult to fall on the side of people who place the burden of keeping them alive on society at large, out of sheer carelessness. “Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” -Heinlein

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 10y ago
You're actually talking about people who do casually defend their own life and health, by choosing to walk. In actual urban cities (eg NYC, Chicago, Boston), pedestrians are quite capable of informally navigating with cars, crossing at any point of a street rather than waiting for some preposterous "walk light" (and possibly even being expected to push a filthy button to activate it!?). Streets are a shared resource for many types of users, so it is certainly not a given that a single type of traffic should be given utmost blind priority. That kind of thing is an explicit policy decision, and is currently reserved for the few "controlled access" highways. I think it will be quite unfortunate if the west coast style of "oblivious" driving becomes calcified as code and exported to the rest of the world. Self-driving cars actually represent an opportunity to roll back this fallacious attitude that "streets are for cars", as a self-driving car is much more attentive and will not tire of being vigilant. For example, if your automatic car cannot gauge whether a crossing pedestrian intents to cross in front of or behind it and make a slight speed adjustment (as said pedestrian has already done, and as current human drivers are expected to do), then it deserves to come to a quick stop and wait there like an idiot until you upgrade it to competency. In line with the original article, I think this whole subject is an utter red herring and an amazing illustration of how the media can manufacture its own concern over a topic just to fill pages. The thought experiment is specifically called the "trolley problem" because trolleys run on discrete tracks and stop slowly. In the real world braking and turning have basically the same avoidance distance, accelerating does not save you from accidents, and people are never expected to drive off cliffs to avoid pedestrians.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The reality, as someone who has lived in all three of those cities, is that pedestrians are adept at making cars navigate them, because they can. It's not that crosswalks (which are ubiquitous in those cities) are somehow burdensome, they just have shit to do and know that drivers don't want to hit them. These are the same people who just walk into the street without even looking, while on their cell phones.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    > These are the same people who just walk into the street without even looking, while on their cell phones. Obviously the bad actors are going to stand out to you. There are many more people who are attentive when they informally cross, but they blend into traffic and are forgotten about. I don't know what to do about the recent phenomenon of people spaced out on their phones, but I'm pretty sure changing traffic laws so drivers can explicitly hit them is not a good answer. (crosswalks aren't burdensome, but the idea that pedestrians should only ever cross in them is, by construction. Why should a pedestrian be made to walk an extra block to simply cross a regular ubiquitous street, when they do not depend on the abstraction that would necessitate it? The "highway revolts" took place for good reason, and changing every street into a controlled access road would essentially resume that damage)
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      Why should they be made to walk an extra block? So that they don't die. A fact that should be increasingly relevant as the reigns are slowly handed over to computers.
      - mindslight 10y ago
        The need to "not die" is a result of a deliberate policy choice, which you're obscuring by making it seem like the pedestrian is the only one choosing. If we're talking about metaphorical "reigns" meaning control of society, then we definitely should not be handing these over to computers. The goal should be for computers to be responsible to people [0], rather than people being controlled by computers. Otherwise, we are abdicating are own right to exist. [0] True independent AI would function as its own agent. But I would categorize that as a new "person".
darkerside 10y ago
Does that include the stupidity of a child chasing a ball into the street? Or a non-native, who fails to understand local jaywalking laws or customs? It certainly seems to include a mentally disabled person who might wander into the road. Seems callous.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  How often, in places where there is a great deal of traffic, do children get hit chasing their balls? How often are mentally disabled people wandering around alone, when they're so disabled they can't work out a crosswalk and a red or green light? How often are non-natives struck and injured in these situations? I ask, because I become immediately suspicious when someone tells me, in so many words, "To think of the children."

Symmetry 10y ago

Everybody should do what they think is right. But if the government is going to impose limits on the behavior of people, it should do that through laws.

timon999 10y ago
Right - but laws should be based on moral considerations. You can't claim that a certain moral problem is solved just because there is a law that applies to it.

joshuaheard 10y ago

All laws are moral. However, immoral actions may be lawful. This is because laws are basically the fixed set of moral rules for society, while there may be other moral rules not generally agreed upon. I agree with the author, as long as the cars obey the law, there should be no problem.

coderzach 10y ago
> All laws are moral. However, immoral actions may be lawful. Are you saying that there is no such thing as an immoral law? It sounds like from your comment that you're saying: There may be immoral things you can do legally, but legality provides a "base" morality. Women must keep their face covered in public, Jim Crow laws, etc.
- joshuaheard 10y ago
  Laws and morals change, and sometimes they are not concomitant. I am speaking of an ideal equilibrium where the law is the manifestation of universally agreed-upon morals. In this case, some may have higher morals than the law requires, but to violate the law would be immoral per se.
sid-kap 10y ago
Reminds me of something from Aristotle, although he said the converse: > ...evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts... > But since unfair and the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from its whole (for all that is unfair is unlawful, but not all that is unlawful is unfair)... –Nicomachean Ethics, Book V