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> Edit to add: "People kill people so robots should be allowed to kill people too." is a rotten argument, eh? No, that's not the argument. The argument is – h

> Edit to add: "People kill people so robots should be allowed to kill people too." is a rotten argument, eh? No, that's not the argument. The argument is – humans have killed other humans, so should we allow humans to still drive on the road? If yes, why? If not, why?

carapace 7y ago
I was going for rhetorical effect, but your question is a fair one. I wish we asked it of ourselves more often and in earnest. In my considered opinion, yes, cars are an insane method of mass transport† which have killed and maimed more people than war. I call our traffic systems the "Mayhem Lottery". > Road traffic accidents are the largest cause of injury-related deaths worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car#Safety We did it to ourselves, deliberately: > The very word jaywalk is an interesting—and not historically neutral—one. Originally an insult against bumptious “jays” from the country who ineptly gamboled on city sidewalks, it was taken up by a coalition of pro-automobile interests in the 1920s, notes historian Peter D. Norton in his book Fighting Traffic. “Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong,” he writes. “Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists’ claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership.” And so, where newspapers like the New York Times once condemned the “slaughter of pedestrians” by cars and defended the right to midblock crossings—and where cities like Cincinnati weighed imposing speed “governors” for cars—after a few decades, the focus of attention had shifted from marauding motorists onto the reckless “jaywalker.” https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/11/a-defense-of-jaywalking.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/11/a-defense-of-jaywal... So yeah, it doesn't make sense to let people pilot massive (often a ton or more) powerful (as a team of N horses) deadly machines down every freakin street (and can we talk about the paving of the world?) just to get from point A to point B at M mph. Not in a world that includes bikes and buses! Here's the sick punchline: for all that death and mayhem, and all the other costs and externalities of car transport, you don't gain anything, you just break even. In "Energy and Civilization A History" by Vaclav Smil he points out that, once you factor in all the time spent working to pay for the car you're doing no better than if you just walked everywhere. Cars literally are no better than walking, economically. (†Although I really like the machines themselves.)

carapace 7y ago

I was going for rhetorical effect, but your question is a fair one. I wish we asked it of ourselves more often and in earnest. In my considered opinion, yes, cars are an insane method of mass transport† which have killed and maimed more people than war. I call our traffic systems the "Mayhem Lottery". > Road traffic accidents are the largest cause of injury-related deaths worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car#Safety We did it to ourselves, deliberately: > The very word jaywalk is an interesting—and not historically neutral—one. Originally an insult against bumptious “jays” from the country who ineptly gamboled on city sidewalks, it was taken up by a coalition of pro-automobile interests in the 1920s, notes historian Peter D. Norton in his book Fighting Traffic. “Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong,” he writes. “Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists’ claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership.” And so, where newspapers like the New York Times once condemned the “slaughter of pedestrians” by cars and defended the right to midblock crossings—and where cities like Cincinnati weighed imposing speed “governors” for cars—after a few decades, the focus of attention had shifted from marauding motorists onto the reckless “jaywalker.” https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/11/a-defense-of-jaywalking.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/11/a-defense-of-jaywal... So yeah, it doesn't make sense to let people pilot massive (often a ton or more) powerful (as a team of N horses) deadly machines down every freakin street (and can we talk about the paving of the world?) just to get from point A to point B at M mph. Not in a world that includes bikes and buses! Here's the sick punchline: for all that death and mayhem, and all the other costs and externalities of car transport, you don't gain anything, you just break even. In "Energy and Civilization A History" by Vaclav Smil he points out that, once you factor in all the time spent working to pay for the car you're doing no better than if you just walked everywhere. Cars literally are no better than walking, economically. (†Although I really like the machines themselves.)