4 ms·

This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance. In high school there was only a handful

by loceng 5y ago

This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance. In high school there was only a handful of things I learned that were actually useful, outside of social experiences. One of them was a teacher who taught business and law classes. In a business class he shared with us, first saying he could probably get fired for telling us this, but that if we had good ideas, new we had a good idea for a business, then instead of going to university and getting $40,000+ into debt over 4 years - get a job and/or apprenticeship and work on your idea. At the end of that 4 years he suggested you'd be in a much better position than those who went into higher education; of course it depends on what someone's goals are. In law class he gave an example: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time. Of course AI deciding when to do it when it may not yet be accounting for the whole or an adequate enough of environment does add questions, and because it's not critical to self-driving, I believe it's a good idea to not allow it until that conversation can be thoroughly hashed out, as well as the technology much more thoroughly tested and evolved. Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment.

gpderetta 5y ago
Similarly airplane pilots should not wait for instructions from the tower if they can clearly see that the way is clear. Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage There is nuance. Pilots are the final authority when it comes to the safety of the craft, and you're in the clear if your actions were justified. With self driving cars, we're discussing where the boundaries are and when the vehicle's decision can take precedence over coarse legal code (as occurs with human drivers every day). https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.3 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.3 (14 CFR § 91.3 - Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.) (private pilot who has deviated from ATC commands in GA aircraft and had to fill out a written report over a cup of coffee)
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    Of course! And you should definitely run a red light if staying were you are would put you or other in dangers. I'm commenting about running a red light just because the road seems otherwise clear.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    Is "it saved me five seconds" sufficient justification for disregarding ATC commands? That's the only justification we have here for making rolling stops.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  Bad analogy. When driving, there is no "Tower" with an overarching view of your situation.
  - loceng 5y ago
    And most of the sky for a pilot is a blind spot as planes they can't currently see can intersect they could easily and quickly collide.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      Car drivers also have blind spots. See the Constant bearing, decreasing range problem for example.
  - kfarr 5y ago
    In that case, you could say it's even more important for all individual agents to adhere to a set of clear and predictable rules.
jjulius 5y ago
>This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance. That's why rolling stop laws don't always end up with you getting a ticket. I was pulled over a year or two after first getting my license for executing a rolling stop. The cop reminded me what I'd done, recognized that I was a dumb kid and a relatively new driver, told me to cross my heart and promise I'd never do it again, and let me go. Enforcement is circumstantial and nobody's going to follow that rule if they're not aware that they could get in trouble for it. >In law class he gave an email: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time. Many such stop lights exist because they provide a safe space to cross the road for pedestrians. In fact there are a few such lights near me in long stretches of road, among woods, that allow people walking through trails in the woods to cross the road. I stop at those lights every single time. Why? Because I don't know if someone has crossed yet. Could be that it's a family trying to cross the street, and they had to go back to the trail to corral a kid that wandered the other way and they'll be crossing the street in a second. Or, it could be a group of people - some of them have crossed, others are shortly behind and will be coming out in a second. The point is that, often, I don't know what is or isn't there. And unless I know, I'm going to stop. >Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment. Happy now?
- loceng 5y ago
  > Happy now? Morale has improved, the beatings can stop. You're right, and it's the same with jaywalking - it's usually only enforced or a fine or charge laid if the action causes a collision or harm. In the example I gave there wasn't pedestrian crossing as part of the example, and in it you also stop at the light first. In your scenario it sounds like there are blind spots too, whereas I guess I left out some language, like the road was in a desert with full visibility everywhere. Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light [where legal], so that you can stop quickly enough if you see past the blind spot that traffic is coming.
notreallyserio 5y ago
> Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment. If you must know, I downvoted you because you whines about downvotes. Sure, I'm lazy, but at least I don't cry about internet points.
- loceng 5y ago
  And you're being naive or arrogant enough at this moment to think this is "cry[ing] about internet points." Maybe brainstorm as to what the actual implications of the dopamine hit/easy reward to downvote/suppress content is vs. simply having an upvote mechanism, and then share your thoughts and I'd be happy to get into a conversation with you. It doesn't sound like you've spent the time to actually extrapolate to the full consequences of the downvote mechanism. Your response here though is one prime example as to why downvotes for most content types shouldn't exist. That you spent the tiny effort to click downvote to react to what you perceived as my "whining" - that that was a strong enough trigger or annoyance for you emotionally says more about your emotional regulation than the content of what I said, likewise by actually commenting you outed yourself or rather shared your actual qualitative reaction/response - so now there's an opportunity for a conversation, to broaden or enhance your understand or perhaps get educated by seeing things more from my perspective. Don't you think having a qualitative response vs. a single quantitative digit changing to suppress content in an algorithm is more valuable to you, to society? P.S. Upvoted you for commenting. Now maybe your comment won't be at the bottom, interesting how the "worst" or less valuable or lowest quality [qualitative] comments naturally make their way to the bottom - without requiring the downvote mechanism, isn't it? P.P.S It'd be neat if HN/dang would offer a parallel view of posts, and then in the actual thread view, have 2 columns of comments - one not influenced by downvotes, and the other as the status quo - so people can start to experience and contrast; because AFAIK downvotes/upvotes aren't available in the API, so a third-party can't develop this? I'd certainly develop this system if HN's API could facilitate it.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
I agree this is worth a conversation so here is mine. I think the law as-is is already ambiguous enough (due to its complex nature) that our society waste huge amount of energy and resources arguing about its meanings. Anything that can be "rigidly" defined (and therefore enforced) with little downside* is a win in my book, purely from a practical perspective. * Just like in this particular case (rolling stop), the "downside" of enforcing full stop compared to a subjective "safe rolling stop" is close to none. And about the spirit of the law, to me it's pretty simple: if an illegal practice works better in this regard than the "legal" alternative, sure, we should seriously consider if we need to punish people doing so. But in most of cases people bringing this in, both practices are perfectly aligning with the spirit of the law. Paired with the practicality argument above, there isn't much point to allow rolling stop as it doesn't make the road "safer" than full-stop. Also, as someone coming from a country that doesn't have stop sign, people are spoiled and don't know how genius this idea is. In an ideal world where everyone follows traffic law and pay full attention to the road all the time, stop sign isn't really needed. However, people are not machine. The whole points of stop sign is to force these distracted drivers to pay attention at intersections, even if only out of fear of getting a ticket. This kind of "foolproof" safety technique is not as excessive as it may look like at the first glance. Therefore, I'd argue having people full stopping is exactly the spirit of stop sign.
- loceng 5y ago
  Okay, so safety wise let's say that's figured out. People and planners also like to take into account flow of traffic, and throughput wants to be maximized, you may then conclude that there are safe circumstances where rolling stops have practically no safety concerns - and if AI can become amazing enough [let's say there are 100,000 baseline safety experiments that need to be conducted/passed] to account for and catalogue those scenarios, then we could arguably loosen restrictions in at least some contexts.
  - thrdbndndn 5y ago
    I agree if AI were dominant in driving in future, it could be loosen. But for now I'd say they should still follow the same rule as the human driver.
lamontcg 5y ago
You're just encouraging the normalization of deviance. "Everyone does it". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o You can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll be tired and do it and clobber a pedestrian you didn't see because "you were tired" (so its not your fault, even though it 100% is). Stop thinking the way you do and stop being one of the 88% of American drivers who think they're above average. Follow the goddamn rules because you're not 99.99% perfect and its the .01% that is going to hurt someone else. And "I see the police doing it all the time" clearly isn't the right moral barometer, if you haven't been paying attention.
- loceng 5y ago
  No, but you're attempting to put words into my mouth. You're making assumptions too, it seems, of what scenarios I believe it's safe for rolling stops to occur - or what state a person will be in when they're doing it. For example, I don't drive when I'm very tired, and whether I am tired at all or not, if weather conditions or if traffic conditions Maybe we shouldn't allow airplanes to been flown anymore because "you can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll" crash? I wonder if you're convoluting different rules, like your assumptions, and not differentiating that different rules are more serious than others - giving the same weight to less serious rules than those that are more serious. E.g. Speeding through a red light during rush hour is different than a pedestrian jaywalking - yet both are illegal. And before someone comes in to say a jaywalker can't do the same damage as a vehicle, here's my personal story: I was riding my bicycle, going a normal speed, vehicles parked along the side as they were allowed to - and the perfect scenario for a collision occurred: a tall, strong man walked out into the street - looking the opposite direction first - from behind a box van with no windows, and stepped right into my path with no time for me to put my breaks on. I crashed into him - he didn't actually move - and I had whiplash, my jaw slammed shut, I bite the right side tip of my tongue 80% off in a deep cut, and multiple teeth were split and chipped; him and his girlfriend didn't stay around, they actually laughed about it as they walked away, and I was in shock - and in pain - and so I didn't realize I should have called the police.
  - 5y ago
heleninboodler 5y ago
I agree strongly with your overall sentiment, but you're quite wrong on this: > I think every reasonable person would answer that they would [run the red light in the middle of nowhere]. I tend not to do it. Not because I have some overinflated worship of the letter of the law, but simply because it doesn't matter to me. If I'm in a hurry, I'll probably blow through it, but by default, probably not. Edit: I also agree that you're being downvoted simply because people disagree with you or your style. It's something I'm getting somewhat tired of on HN. I think they need some concrete guidance on what's acceptable to downvote and try to keep it as much to "rules violations" as possible, because it's increasingly being used as a disagreement flag lately, in my observation, which is just unhealthy.

by loceng 5y ago

gpderetta 5y ago

Similarly airplane pilots should not wait for instructions from the tower if they can clearly see that the way is clear. Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage There is nuance. Pilots are the final authority when it comes to the safety of the craft, and you're in the clear if your actions were justified. With self driving cars, we're discussing where the boundaries are and when the vehicle's decision can take precedence over coarse legal code (as occurs with human drivers every day). https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.3 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.3 (14 CFR § 91.3 - Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.) (private pilot who has deviated from ATC commands in GA aircraft and had to fill out a written report over a cup of coffee)
- gpderetta 5y ago
  Of course! And you should definitely run a red light if staying were you are would put you or other in dangers. I'm commenting about running a red light just because the road seems otherwise clear.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Is "it saved me five seconds" sufficient justification for disregarding ATC commands? That's the only justification we have here for making rolling stops.
anonymousiam 5y ago
Bad analogy. When driving, there is no "Tower" with an overarching view of your situation.
- loceng 5y ago
  And most of the sky for a pilot is a blind spot as planes they can't currently see can intersect they could easily and quickly collide.
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    Car drivers also have blind spots. See the Constant bearing, decreasing range problem for example.
- kfarr 5y ago
  In that case, you could say it's even more important for all individual agents to adhere to a set of clear and predictable rules.

jjulius 5y ago

>This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance. That's why rolling stop laws don't always end up with you getting a ticket. I was pulled over a year or two after first getting my license for executing a rolling stop. The cop reminded me what I'd done, recognized that I was a dumb kid and a relatively new driver, told me to cross my heart and promise I'd never do it again, and let me go. Enforcement is circumstantial and nobody's going to follow that rule if they're not aware that they could get in trouble for it. >In law class he gave an email: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time. Many such stop lights exist because they provide a safe space to cross the road for pedestrians. In fact there are a few such lights near me in long stretches of road, among woods, that allow people walking through trails in the woods to cross the road. I stop at those lights every single time. Why? Because I don't know if someone has crossed yet. Could be that it's a family trying to cross the street, and they had to go back to the trail to corral a kid that wandered the other way and they'll be crossing the street in a second. Or, it could be a group of people - some of them have crossed, others are shortly behind and will be coming out in a second. The point is that, often, I don't know what is or isn't there. And unless I know, I'm going to stop. >Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment. Happy now?

loceng 5y ago
> Happy now? Morale has improved, the beatings can stop. You're right, and it's the same with jaywalking - it's usually only enforced or a fine or charge laid if the action causes a collision or harm. In the example I gave there wasn't pedestrian crossing as part of the example, and in it you also stop at the light first. In your scenario it sounds like there are blind spots too, whereas I guess I left out some language, like the road was in a desert with full visibility everywhere. Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light [where legal], so that you can stop quickly enough if you see past the blind spot that traffic is coming.

notreallyserio 5y ago

> Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment. If you must know, I downvoted you because you whines about downvotes. Sure, I'm lazy, but at least I don't cry about internet points.

loceng 5y ago
And you're being naive or arrogant enough at this moment to think this is "cry[ing] about internet points." Maybe brainstorm as to what the actual implications of the dopamine hit/easy reward to downvote/suppress content is vs. simply having an upvote mechanism, and then share your thoughts and I'd be happy to get into a conversation with you. It doesn't sound like you've spent the time to actually extrapolate to the full consequences of the downvote mechanism. Your response here though is one prime example as to why downvotes for most content types shouldn't exist. That you spent the tiny effort to click downvote to react to what you perceived as my "whining" - that that was a strong enough trigger or annoyance for you emotionally says more about your emotional regulation than the content of what I said, likewise by actually commenting you outed yourself or rather shared your actual qualitative reaction/response - so now there's an opportunity for a conversation, to broaden or enhance your understand or perhaps get educated by seeing things more from my perspective. Don't you think having a qualitative response vs. a single quantitative digit changing to suppress content in an algorithm is more valuable to you, to society? P.S. Upvoted you for commenting. Now maybe your comment won't be at the bottom, interesting how the "worst" or less valuable or lowest quality [qualitative] comments naturally make their way to the bottom - without requiring the downvote mechanism, isn't it? P.P.S It'd be neat if HN/dang would offer a parallel view of posts, and then in the actual thread view, have 2 columns of comments - one not influenced by downvotes, and the other as the status quo - so people can start to experience and contrast; because AFAIK downvotes/upvotes aren't available in the API, so a third-party can't develop this? I'd certainly develop this system if HN's API could facilitate it.

thrdbndndn 5y ago

I agree this is worth a conversation so here is mine. I think the law as-is is already ambiguous enough (due to its complex nature) that our society waste huge amount of energy and resources arguing about its meanings. Anything that can be "rigidly" defined (and therefore enforced) with little downside* is a win in my book, purely from a practical perspective. * Just like in this particular case (rolling stop), the "downside" of enforcing full stop compared to a subjective "safe rolling stop" is close to none. And about the spirit of the law, to me it's pretty simple: if an illegal practice works better in this regard than the "legal" alternative, sure, we should seriously consider if we need to punish people doing so. But in most of cases people bringing this in, both practices are perfectly aligning with the spirit of the law. Paired with the practicality argument above, there isn't much point to allow rolling stop as it doesn't make the road "safer" than full-stop. Also, as someone coming from a country that doesn't have stop sign, people are spoiled and don't know how genius this idea is. In an ideal world where everyone follows traffic law and pay full attention to the road all the time, stop sign isn't really needed. However, people are not machine. The whole points of stop sign is to force these distracted drivers to pay attention at intersections, even if only out of fear of getting a ticket. This kind of "foolproof" safety technique is not as excessive as it may look like at the first glance. Therefore, I'd argue having people full stopping is exactly the spirit of stop sign.

loceng 5y ago
Okay, so safety wise let's say that's figured out. People and planners also like to take into account flow of traffic, and throughput wants to be maximized, you may then conclude that there are safe circumstances where rolling stops have practically no safety concerns - and if AI can become amazing enough [let's say there are 100,000 baseline safety experiments that need to be conducted/passed] to account for and catalogue those scenarios, then we could arguably loosen restrictions in at least some contexts.
- thrdbndndn 5y ago
  I agree if AI were dominant in driving in future, it could be loosen. But for now I'd say they should still follow the same rule as the human driver.

lamontcg 5y ago

You're just encouraging the normalization of deviance. "Everyone does it". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o You can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll be tired and do it and clobber a pedestrian you didn't see because "you were tired" (so its not your fault, even though it 100% is). Stop thinking the way you do and stop being one of the 88% of American drivers who think they're above average. Follow the goddamn rules because you're not 99.99% perfect and its the .01% that is going to hurt someone else. And "I see the police doing it all the time" clearly isn't the right moral barometer, if you haven't been paying attention.

loceng 5y ago
No, but you're attempting to put words into my mouth. You're making assumptions too, it seems, of what scenarios I believe it's safe for rolling stops to occur - or what state a person will be in when they're doing it. For example, I don't drive when I'm very tired, and whether I am tired at all or not, if weather conditions or if traffic conditions Maybe we shouldn't allow airplanes to been flown anymore because "you can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll" crash? I wonder if you're convoluting different rules, like your assumptions, and not differentiating that different rules are more serious than others - giving the same weight to less serious rules than those that are more serious. E.g. Speeding through a red light during rush hour is different than a pedestrian jaywalking - yet both are illegal. And before someone comes in to say a jaywalker can't do the same damage as a vehicle, here's my personal story: I was riding my bicycle, going a normal speed, vehicles parked along the side as they were allowed to - and the perfect scenario for a collision occurred: a tall, strong man walked out into the street - looking the opposite direction first - from behind a box van with no windows, and stepped right into my path with no time for me to put my breaks on. I crashed into him - he didn't actually move - and I had whiplash, my jaw slammed shut, I bite the right side tip of my tongue 80% off in a deep cut, and multiple teeth were split and chipped; him and his girlfriend didn't stay around, they actually laughed about it as they walked away, and I was in shock - and in pain - and so I didn't realize I should have called the police.
- 5y ago

heleninboodler 5y ago

I agree strongly with your overall sentiment, but you're quite wrong on this: > I think every reasonable person would answer that they would [run the red light in the middle of nowhere]. I tend not to do it. Not because I have some overinflated worship of the letter of the law, but simply because it doesn't matter to me. If I'm in a hurry, I'll probably blow through it, but by default, probably not. Edit: I also agree that you're being downvoted simply because people disagree with you or your style. It's something I'm getting somewhat tired of on HN. I think they need some concrete guidance on what's acceptable to downvote and try to keep it as much to "rules violations" as possible, because it's increasingly being used as a disagreement flag lately, in my observation, which is just unhealthy.