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"That said, human life isn't sacred. It and everything else gets trades for dollars all the time." Wow. Uhm, slavery is illegal if you haven't heard. We made i

by mrj 8y ago

"That said, human life isn't sacred. It and everything else gets trades for dollars all the time." Wow. Uhm, slavery is illegal if you haven't heard. We made it illegal because life is sacred.

sologoub 8y ago
OP is probably referring to the fact that in wrongful death suits, society has put a very tangible financial number on the value of human life. This made it possible for corporations to make trade-off between profit and liability, giving the potential that someone could get enough profit to justify risking others’ lives. Punitive damages go part way to help prevent this, but not far enough to guarantee that it never happens. Had the society truly believed life to be sacred, I suspect we’d have very different business practices and penalties that are not limited to financial ruin.
- mrj 8y ago
  Well, unfortunately we also believe that corporations are sacred, so when bad things happen we shake our fists and collect a couple dollars. But the guilty corporation is never put to death. (Well, rarely ever..)
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
It's not that cut and clear. Yeah killing and maiming is bad but those things always (and will for the foreseeable future) happen at large scale and you have to be able to have a reasonable discussion about the trade-offs. "Well we can't guarantee we won't kill anyone in an edge case so let's all just go home" isn't an option. You can build a highway overpass with a center support on the median for X and there will by a small chance of someone crashing into it and getting killed. You could design one without a support on the median but it will cost Y (Y is substantially more than X). Now scale that decision to all overpasses and you've got a substantial body count. At the end of the day it's a trade-off between lives/injury and dollars.
- mrj 8y ago
  Agreed that their are trade-offs made, of course. But this society spends a ton of time trying to prevent all kinds of death. That's because life is sacred. It seems odd to argue that. Yeah of course we can't stop doing things, but it doesn't mean we don't try really hard to avoid killing people.
  - Diederich 8y ago
    > try really hard to avoid killing people Yes, and both Elon Musk as an individual and Tesla Motors as an organization agree. How they approach that idea is somewhat different from what we're used to though. Their basic assertions are (in my words): 1. Vision and radar based technology, along with current generation GPUs and related hardware, along with sufficiently developed software, will be able to make cars 10x safer. 2. How quickly total deaths are reduced is tied directly to how quickly and widely such technology is rolled out and used. 3. Running in 'shadow' mode is a good source of data collection to inform improvements in the software. 4. Having the software/hardware actually control cars is an even better source of data collection to accelerate development. 5. There is additional, incremental risk created when the software/hardware is used in an early state. 6. This is key: the total risk over time is lessened with fast, aggressive rollouts of incomplete software and hardware, because it will allow a larger group of people to have access to more robust, safer software sooner than otherwise would be possible. That last point is the balance: is the small additional risk Tesla is subjecting early participants to outweighed by how much more quickly the collected data will allow Tesla to produce a more complete safety solution? We don't know for sure yet, but I think the odds are pretty good that pushing hard now will produce more total safety over time. > life is sacred This is my background as well, and its an opinion I personally hold. At the same time, larger decisions, made by society, by individuals, and by companies, must put some sort of value on life. And different values on different lives. Talking about how much a life is worth is a taboo topic, but it's something that is considered, consciously or otherwise, all day, every day, by many people, myself included. Most every big company, Tesla Motors included,make decisions based on these calculations all the time. Being a 'different kind of company' in many ways, Tesla makes these calculations somewhat differently.

by mrj 8y ago

"That said, human life isn't sacred. It and everything else gets trades for dollars all the time." Wow. Uhm, slavery is illegal if you haven't heard. We made it illegal because life is sacred.

sologoub 8y ago

OP is probably referring to the fact that in wrongful death suits, society has put a very tangible financial number on the value of human life. This made it possible for corporations to make trade-off between profit and liability, giving the potential that someone could get enough profit to justify risking others’ lives. Punitive damages go part way to help prevent this, but not far enough to guarantee that it never happens. Had the society truly believed life to be sacred, I suspect we’d have very different business practices and penalties that are not limited to financial ruin.

mrj 8y ago
Well, unfortunately we also believe that corporations are sacred, so when bad things happen we shake our fists and collect a couple dollars. But the guilty corporation is never put to death. (Well, rarely ever..)

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

It's not that cut and clear. Yeah killing and maiming is bad but those things always (and will for the foreseeable future) happen at large scale and you have to be able to have a reasonable discussion about the trade-offs. "Well we can't guarantee we won't kill anyone in an edge case so let's all just go home" isn't an option. You can build a highway overpass with a center support on the median for X and there will by a small chance of someone crashing into it and getting killed. You could design one without a support on the median but it will cost Y (Y is substantially more than X). Now scale that decision to all overpasses and you've got a substantial body count. At the end of the day it's a trade-off between lives/injury and dollars.

mrj 8y ago
Agreed that their are trade-offs made, of course. But this society spends a ton of time trying to prevent all kinds of death. That's because life is sacred. It seems odd to argue that. Yeah of course we can't stop doing things, but it doesn't mean we don't try really hard to avoid killing people.
- Diederich 8y ago
  > try really hard to avoid killing people Yes, and both Elon Musk as an individual and Tesla Motors as an organization agree. How they approach that idea is somewhat different from what we're used to though. Their basic assertions are (in my words): 1. Vision and radar based technology, along with current generation GPUs and related hardware, along with sufficiently developed software, will be able to make cars 10x safer. 2. How quickly total deaths are reduced is tied directly to how quickly and widely such technology is rolled out and used. 3. Running in 'shadow' mode is a good source of data collection to inform improvements in the software. 4. Having the software/hardware actually control cars is an even better source of data collection to accelerate development. 5. There is additional, incremental risk created when the software/hardware is used in an early state. 6. This is key: the total risk over time is lessened with fast, aggressive rollouts of incomplete software and hardware, because it will allow a larger group of people to have access to more robust, safer software sooner than otherwise would be possible. That last point is the balance: is the small additional risk Tesla is subjecting early participants to outweighed by how much more quickly the collected data will allow Tesla to produce a more complete safety solution? We don't know for sure yet, but I think the odds are pretty good that pushing hard now will produce more total safety over time. > life is sacred This is my background as well, and its an opinion I personally hold. At the same time, larger decisions, made by society, by individuals, and by companies, must put some sort of value on life. And different values on different lives. Talking about how much a life is worth is a taboo topic, but it's something that is considered, consciously or otherwise, all day, every day, by many people, myself included. Most every big company, Tesla Motors included,make decisions based on these calculations all the time. Being a 'different kind of company' in many ways, Tesla makes these calculations somewhat differently.