6 ms·

The "humans are the bugs" fallacy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18447674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18447674 What's next? Walls on sidewalks

The "humans are the bugs" fallacy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18447674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18447674 What's next? Walls on sidewalks? Computers are not smart or dumb. They are machines. Anthropomorphizing them ("self") is foolish.

pedrocr 7y ago
My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers and that already causes accidents. There are ways to help that be less of an issue that also helps self-driving become possible. But instead we accept those ridiculous risks when driving ourselves and yet expect to hold self-driving to a much higher standard while also complaining if it's not aggressive enough in traffic. That may very well turn self-driving into AGI but that's a choice not a characteristic of the problem. You're attacking a strawman. I'm not saying the solution to self-driving is to change the environment completely to make the problem trivial (i.e., walls on sidewalks). I'm saying that some of the poorly defined and even worse enforced rules of driving could be worked on and that would help self-driving as well. How much would be enough to bring it out of being AGI I'm not sure, but it would definitely help.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  We have plenty of rules already. Rules get broken. The more enforcement approach is a road to China.
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    I personally don't think enforcing rules around roundabouts so I don't have the near-death experience I had the other day "a road to China". I actually love driving myself and don't particularly care about self-driving technology. But as far as I can tell it's not even possible for me, a reasonably fit human, to drive in way that prevents those risks. If we are not willing to tackle that and at the same time expect airliner reliability from self-driving cars then we've defined the problem as impossible.
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      Consider your half example, how do you propose to do that?
      - pedrocr 7y ago
        The rule already exists but is not enforced. If tickets were issued for not following it in the cases where the rule is ignored at low speed routinely it would be less likely to happen at high speed with risk of life. All the infrastructure and manpower as well as most of the rules are already in place. We just choose to ignore it routinely and then it's no surprise AGI is required to do self-driving within that mess.
        jakeogh 7y ago
        I wasn't asking if the (unmentioned) rule existed, I'm asking how do you propose to enforce it?
        pedrocr 7y ago
        By writing tickets to offenders in the cases where an officer witnessed the ofence? I thought that part was implicit. These are not cases where we need more policing or resources. Just rules that have been chosen to not be enforced and a few others that should be written. You don't need a police state to have better rule following. Just actually enforce the rules in the cases you catch and behavior changes much more broadly.
        jakeogh 7y ago
        Right. Except we are talking about corner cases where pre-programmed computers on wheels kill people. Merely better rule following does next to nothing, and that's expected. The idea that we can follow rules to make computers on wheels "work" is false, unless one wants to go the China route where near-everything is monitored and punishment is extracted automatically (and even then... it still wont work).
- bluedino 7y ago
  >> My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers I haven't been in an accident in over 15 years
  - herewulf 7y ago
    I had never been in an accident in 22 years of driving a vehicle until several months ago when I was rear-ended while sitting at a red light, in bright, mid-day, dry conditions. My car was the only one at the light even. This extremely poorly driving (or distracted?) human is presumably still out there on the roads somewhere.

pedrocr 7y ago

My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers and that already causes accidents. There are ways to help that be less of an issue that also helps self-driving become possible. But instead we accept those ridiculous risks when driving ourselves and yet expect to hold self-driving to a much higher standard while also complaining if it's not aggressive enough in traffic. That may very well turn self-driving into AGI but that's a choice not a characteristic of the problem. You're attacking a strawman. I'm not saying the solution to self-driving is to change the environment completely to make the problem trivial (i.e., walls on sidewalks). I'm saying that some of the poorly defined and even worse enforced rules of driving could be worked on and that would help self-driving as well. How much would be enough to bring it out of being AGI I'm not sure, but it would definitely help.

jakeogh 7y ago
We have plenty of rules already. Rules get broken. The more enforcement approach is a road to China.
- pedrocr 7y ago
  I personally don't think enforcing rules around roundabouts so I don't have the near-death experience I had the other day "a road to China". I actually love driving myself and don't particularly care about self-driving technology. But as far as I can tell it's not even possible for me, a reasonably fit human, to drive in way that prevents those risks. If we are not willing to tackle that and at the same time expect airliner reliability from self-driving cars then we've defined the problem as impossible.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Consider your half example, how do you propose to do that?
    - pedrocr 7y ago
      The rule already exists but is not enforced. If tickets were issued for not following it in the cases where the rule is ignored at low speed routinely it would be less likely to happen at high speed with risk of life. All the infrastructure and manpower as well as most of the rules are already in place. We just choose to ignore it routinely and then it's no surprise AGI is required to do self-driving within that mess.
      - jakeogh 7y ago
        I wasn't asking if the (unmentioned) rule existed, I'm asking how do you propose to enforce it?
        pedrocr 7y ago
        By writing tickets to offenders in the cases where an officer witnessed the ofence? I thought that part was implicit. These are not cases where we need more policing or resources. Just rules that have been chosen to not be enforced and a few others that should be written. You don't need a police state to have better rule following. Just actually enforce the rules in the cases you catch and behavior changes much more broadly.
        jakeogh 7y ago
        Right. Except we are talking about corner cases where pre-programmed computers on wheels kill people. Merely better rule following does next to nothing, and that's expected. The idea that we can follow rules to make computers on wheels "work" is false, unless one wants to go the China route where near-everything is monitored and punishment is extracted automatically (and even then... it still wont work).
bluedino 7y ago
>> My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers I haven't been in an accident in over 15 years
- herewulf 7y ago
  I had never been in an accident in 22 years of driving a vehicle until several months ago when I was rear-ended while sitting at a red light, in bright, mid-day, dry conditions. My car was the only one at the light even. This extremely poorly driving (or distracted?) human is presumably still out there on the roads somewhere.