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I am saying we all go out into a chaotic world every day and face technology which companies have put into the world for their own profit-seeking motive which i

by zaroth 8y ago

I am saying we all go out into a chaotic world every day and face technology which companies have put into the world for their own profit-seeking motive which is just as likely (if not significantly more-so) to kill us as a self driving car. This has nothing to do with sacrafice. The government necessarily makes life and death trade-offs in setting regulatory hurdles. It’s entirely unconvincing to argue that the beta driver assistance and beta self-driving technology should be banned from roads because it can’t guarantee someone won’t die. Because in fact automobiles are killing over a million people per year. Self driving automobiles are responsible for exactly 1 of those 1.25 million deaths, and driver assistance technology have contributed to about a dozen more. What is indisputably moving fast and killing people are... people driving cars. The singular solution to this ongoing bloodbath may be only a few years away. But you seem to want millions of people to continue dying because of a misappropriated Facebook slogan? I’m not a big fan of populist outrage in the best of times, but when it seeks to perpetuate the status quo of 1.25 million annual auto fatalities I think we owe it to ourselves to elevate the discussion to the point where you are actually considering the implication of your proposed solution. Every year you shift the self-driving adoption curve you are killing hundreds of thousands of people. But in the real world today this technology could arguably share the blame for about dozen deaths. Should the government ban the technology from public roads and force companies like Tesla to recall their existing functionality? There’s a hysterical appeal to emotion be made, but nothing close to a cogent logical argument. If anything, government should be pushing self-driving requirements harder than carbon limits. Instead of municipalities claiming they are going to be banning gas engines by 2030 they should be claiming they will ban steering wheels. The steering wheel is far, far deadlier.

Semirhage 8y ago
I am saying we all go out into a chaotic world every day and face technology which companies have put into the world for their own profit-seeking motive which is just as likely (if not significantly more-so) to kill us as a self driving car. Whataboutism is a shitty argument, although it almost pales next to the other fallacies you engage in later in your post. The whole thing is a dishonest deflection of strawman arguments, false dichotomies, and more. Do you have a financial stake in this, or is it just an ideological position?
- zaroth 8y ago
  That’s not whataboutism - I’m saying it’s the job of elected government to make exactly these determinations even when actual lives hang in the balance, and in fact many thousands of regulations make these sorts of risk/reward trade offs in all sorts of ways in our daily lives. Most of them are in fact significantly more risky than allowing self-driving cars on the road in return for significantly less potential reward. My point is primarily that the claim like “I didn’t consent to share the road with this nascent technology” — as if that means the technology should not be allowed — is not actually how our society functions. We don’t actually get to veto technology that minutely increases our risk of injury when we venture out in the world. I’m surprised to see your ad hominem attacks and accusation of shilling. You’re relatively new here so please allow me point out that kind of response is against HN guidelines.
  - Semirhage 8y ago
    Shilling is a very different thing from just being biased because of a personal stake in something. Shilling is dishonesty, bias is just human. I know you’re not shilling, I’m asking if you might be biased due to a personal stake, or ideology. Are you?
    - zaroth 8y ago
      > Shilling is dishonesty, bias is just human. I know you’re not shilling... But in fact your previous post asserted; >> The whole thing is a dishonest deflection... It seems like you’re trying to walk back your previous statement without apology or actually turning away from continued ad hominem attacks.
      - Semirhage 8y ago
        Call me paranoid, but this is the second time you’ve decided to cherrypick my comments and play the victim rather than just saying “nope, no personal financial or ideological stake.” I’ll ask again, do either of those apply to you?
gascan 8y ago
Nobody here is calling for a flat ban of all self-driving technology. You are tilting at strawmen. The blowback here is in reaction to what appears to be objectively bad software. Irresponsibly bad. Maybe even negligently bad. Look to drug trials & the FDA. We take risk to test possibly life-saving drugs. But, we don't let just any whackjob take his unproven mad science experiment to clinical trial and inject people with mantis DNA.
- zaroth 8y ago
  We’re talking about whether it’s reasonable to beta test self-driving tech on public roads, and the relative risk of slowing down the advancement of self-driving technology (this is what is meant by “shifting the adoption curve to the right” — as in, seeing widespread adoption of self-driving further into the future). I don’t think it’s a strawman at all to observe that greater regulations and restrictions on public testing will delay wide-spread self driving. Nor is it unreasonable to surmise a multi-year shift in the adoption curve could cost millions of lives. I mean, argue that public mistrust of the technology due to sensationalization of the highly public (yet rare) failures is more likely to delay rollout worse than stricter regulations. There’s a reasonable rebuttal I could engage with! But what I got instead was... mantis DNA?
  - gascan 8y ago
    A reference to my favorite mad inventor: "Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts." -Cave Johnson The strawman is you're the only one talking about banning self-driving test mules from the road.

by zaroth 8y ago

Semirhage 8y ago

I am saying we all go out into a chaotic world every day and face technology which companies have put into the world for their own profit-seeking motive which is just as likely (if not significantly more-so) to kill us as a self driving car. Whataboutism is a shitty argument, although it almost pales next to the other fallacies you engage in later in your post. The whole thing is a dishonest deflection of strawman arguments, false dichotomies, and more. Do you have a financial stake in this, or is it just an ideological position?

zaroth 8y ago
That’s not whataboutism - I’m saying it’s the job of elected government to make exactly these determinations even when actual lives hang in the balance, and in fact many thousands of regulations make these sorts of risk/reward trade offs in all sorts of ways in our daily lives. Most of them are in fact significantly more risky than allowing self-driving cars on the road in return for significantly less potential reward. My point is primarily that the claim like “I didn’t consent to share the road with this nascent technology” — as if that means the technology should not be allowed — is not actually how our society functions. We don’t actually get to veto technology that minutely increases our risk of injury when we venture out in the world. I’m surprised to see your ad hominem attacks and accusation of shilling. You’re relatively new here so please allow me point out that kind of response is against HN guidelines.
- Semirhage 8y ago
  Shilling is a very different thing from just being biased because of a personal stake in something. Shilling is dishonesty, bias is just human. I know you’re not shilling, I’m asking if you might be biased due to a personal stake, or ideology. Are you?
  - zaroth 8y ago
    > Shilling is dishonesty, bias is just human. I know you’re not shilling... But in fact your previous post asserted; >> The whole thing is a dishonest deflection... It seems like you’re trying to walk back your previous statement without apology or actually turning away from continued ad hominem attacks.
    - Semirhage 8y ago
      Call me paranoid, but this is the second time you’ve decided to cherrypick my comments and play the victim rather than just saying “nope, no personal financial or ideological stake.” I’ll ask again, do either of those apply to you?

gascan 8y ago

Nobody here is calling for a flat ban of all self-driving technology. You are tilting at strawmen. The blowback here is in reaction to what appears to be objectively bad software. Irresponsibly bad. Maybe even negligently bad. Look to drug trials & the FDA. We take risk to test possibly life-saving drugs. But, we don't let just any whackjob take his unproven mad science experiment to clinical trial and inject people with mantis DNA.

zaroth 8y ago
We’re talking about whether it’s reasonable to beta test self-driving tech on public roads, and the relative risk of slowing down the advancement of self-driving technology (this is what is meant by “shifting the adoption curve to the right” — as in, seeing widespread adoption of self-driving further into the future). I don’t think it’s a strawman at all to observe that greater regulations and restrictions on public testing will delay wide-spread self driving. Nor is it unreasonable to surmise a multi-year shift in the adoption curve could cost millions of lives. I mean, argue that public mistrust of the technology due to sensationalization of the highly public (yet rare) failures is more likely to delay rollout worse than stricter regulations. There’s a reasonable rebuttal I could engage with! But what I got instead was... mantis DNA?
- gascan 8y ago
  A reference to my favorite mad inventor: "Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts." -Cave Johnson The strawman is you're the only one talking about banning self-driving test mules from the road.