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> Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. I'm specifically talking about the current development of self-dri

> Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. I'm specifically talking about the current development of self-driving cars. I'm not sure why you thought I was generalizing to all activity among all industries. > This is just so egregiously unrelated to reality that I do not have the time resources to even start to reply. My mouth is agape that someone would think this. What's weird about it? Again, we're not talking about solving some hypothetical future problem, in which case I would agree with you about being hyper-cautious and safe. Tens of thousands of people die every year right now. Where is your mouth-agape-level concern for those people? When a disease like Ebola breaks out, sometimes an experimental drug is used, earlier than would normally happen. This is not because we are collectively giving in to greedy companies wanting to destroy all government regulation, it's because we recognize that the dire need for a solution sometimes outstrips the need for caution. Here is a recent example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x Do you disagree with this kind of response for serious disease breakouts, or does 40,000 deaths a year just not count as sufficiently dire? Would 100,000 breach that threshold? 500,000? If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill. > it logically and obviously extends to self-driving cars without any need for some onerous debate. That's what I'm challenging, and I'm doing so on the basis that right now, things seem to be going fairly well. One person has died, which is very regrettable, but compared to the absolute mountain of corpses our usage of cars has created in general? It's obvious to me what's more important.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> "If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill." I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree, and it worries me that people would naively use the rate of auto deaths under current circumstances as a justification to allow self-driving technology development to proceed unregulated. It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree Why? > It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it. I mean, if you're not willing to explaining your reasoning, then yes I suppose that's true. Although I think part of why you may feel that way is that, based on one of your earlier comments, you seem to think I'm some kind of libertarian who's just generally opposed to regulation. I'm not; if anything I'm more of a social democrat. I just think that in this particular case, things are different from normal for a new, potentially dangerous technology. My reasoning on the above point is fairly simple and straightforward: 1. The status quo for SDC development has been relatively minimal regulation. Even California mostly just makes companies report some basic data. 2. Most companies seem to be taking safety very seriously as it is, such that injuries and deaths have been rare. Only one death, and from a company widely acknowledged as ethically-challenged. 3. Given 2, it seems like the number of deaths that you'd avoid with greater regulation is very low, simply because, well, very few people are dying as it is. 4. Conversely, letting humans drive cars has resulted in an enormous number of people dying each year. 5. Given 3 and 4, slowing down SDC development with greater regulation seems likely to indirectly kill many, many more people than the status quo of minimally-regulated development will kill. Are you expecting Waymo to, any day now, start rampaging around cities and killing people by the dozens? What does the scenario look like where SDC development kills more people than human drivers currently kill? You didn't address my analogy with disease outbreaks; why not? You've done a good job arguing for the importance of regulation in general. You haven't done a good job arguing for why you think greater regulation in this particular scenario will avoid killing more people than the current setup kills.
notahacker 8y ago
Tens of thousands of people die from specific medical problems without us deciding that non-consenting ordinary citizens should be human guinea pigs for risky speculative attempts to test the efficaac of possible prophylactics. I'm really not sure why you think autonomous cars would or should be treated any differently. Especially when the evidence from the current development of self driving cars is that a self driving car killing someone results in an entire testing programme to be suspended for months, possibly permanently, whilst the company is excoriated for taking unnecessary risks and is considerably less likely to develop a commercial application of SDVs as a result. It also shows that SDVs kill at a higher rate than non-SDVs even with human backstops, which is a much better test of whether they will actually save lives than "does a handful of test vehicles kill as many people as a few hundred million humans"

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> "If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill." I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree, and it worries me that people would naively use the rate of auto deaths under current circumstances as a justification to allow self-driving technology development to proceed unregulated. It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree Why? > It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it. I mean, if you're not willing to explaining your reasoning, then yes I suppose that's true. Although I think part of why you may feel that way is that, based on one of your earlier comments, you seem to think I'm some kind of libertarian who's just generally opposed to regulation. I'm not; if anything I'm more of a social democrat. I just think that in this particular case, things are different from normal for a new, potentially dangerous technology. My reasoning on the above point is fairly simple and straightforward: 1. The status quo for SDC development has been relatively minimal regulation. Even California mostly just makes companies report some basic data. 2. Most companies seem to be taking safety very seriously as it is, such that injuries and deaths have been rare. Only one death, and from a company widely acknowledged as ethically-challenged. 3. Given 2, it seems like the number of deaths that you'd avoid with greater regulation is very low, simply because, well, very few people are dying as it is. 4. Conversely, letting humans drive cars has resulted in an enormous number of people dying each year. 5. Given 3 and 4, slowing down SDC development with greater regulation seems likely to indirectly kill many, many more people than the status quo of minimally-regulated development will kill. Are you expecting Waymo to, any day now, start rampaging around cities and killing people by the dozens? What does the scenario look like where SDC development kills more people than human drivers currently kill? You didn't address my analogy with disease outbreaks; why not? You've done a good job arguing for the importance of regulation in general. You haven't done a good job arguing for why you think greater regulation in this particular scenario will avoid killing more people than the current setup kills.

notahacker 8y ago

Tens of thousands of people die from specific medical problems without us deciding that non-consenting ordinary citizens should be human guinea pigs for risky speculative attempts to test the efficaac of possible prophylactics. I'm really not sure why you think autonomous cars would or should be treated any differently. Especially when the evidence from the current development of self driving cars is that a self driving car killing someone results in an entire testing programme to be suspended for months, possibly permanently, whilst the company is excoriated for taking unnecessary risks and is considerably less likely to develop a commercial application of SDVs as a result. It also shows that SDVs kill at a higher rate than non-SDVs even with human backstops, which is a much better test of whether they will actually save lives than "does a handful of test vehicles kill as many people as a few hundred million humans"