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> The Netherlands has about one car per two people That is not the relevant metric. The important metric is how many trips does the average dutch take by car t

> The Netherlands has about one car per two people That is not the relevant metric. The important metric is how many trips does the average dutch take by car that could be taken by some more efficient mode? Lots of people in European cities have cars but use them only on the weekend. Or they use the car to go to work on the outskirts of the city, but manage to use public transportation when going to a football match for a night out. Lots of families have only one car when in the US it would be only possible to live if each adult had their own car, etc. > You didn't even remotely address anything I said. You are right, I didn't. Because to me holding self-driving cars as the panacea that is going to solve the issues in the US is ridiculously naive. It is an illusion created by the corporations that are not interested in actually solving the problem and just want to push out more cars, keep people addicted to broken lifestyles and over-consumption. And is backed by short-sighted technologists that see the world through their nerd lenses and don't stop to think if there are better, lower-tech ways to improve everyone's lives.

aetherson 4y ago
Nobody held driverless cars as a "panacea" to anything that's completely something you made up. Let's just review this whole conversation: 1. I suggested to a poster who wanted to blame the whole Cruise problem on the garbage truck that garbage trucks do in fact have to block lanes. 2. You then jumped in and said that American should "just" reinvent itself so that cars weren't a big deal. You left it implicit why that was relevant here, but I think I understand you to believe that driverless cars are an unimportant technology. 3. I pointed out that "just" changing the fundamental mode of transit across all of America is in fact a tall order. 4. And then you've gotten less and less responsive to actual points until you get to here where you're now suggesting that driverless cars aren't a panacea, which is an argument nobody made. To affirmatively restate my points: 1. Driverless cars, to be successful, must deal with a lot of messy road conditions, not just the 99% case. 2. If driverless cars do at some point cross the above line and genuinely become equal to or greater than the median human driver, I think they will be an important technology that will improve people's lives -- in both the United States and very significantly (if possibly somewhat less so) in Europe. 3. Driverless cars are plausibly on a much shorter timeline than remaking all of America's physical transportation/density infrastructure, and plausibly much less overall expensive than remaking all of America's physical transportation/density infrastructure. 4. Investment in driverless cars is non-rival to other changes to America's physical transportation/density infrastructure.
- rglullis 4y ago
  The argument that I am making is simple: the more you push for self-driving cars, the more you are pushing to a car-centric system and the farther you are getting from better, more sustainable solutions. It is not just that is not a panacea, it is that it is a bad medicine.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    I suspect that you will find that your opinions are just not shared, and that people -- everywhere, including in places that you imagine to be ideologically aligned with you -- generally find that driverless cars make their lives better on the margin, if good driverless cars start to exist.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      That is way too low of a bar. All else being equal, even I would say that my life would be marginally better if self-driving cars existed. The question is whether people value this more than the benefits of not being car-dependent. You might think that these are not connected, but they pretty much are. Taking that in consideration, I could bet that only a minority would be willing to accept the trade-off.
      - aetherson 4y ago
        Nope, that's not the question. You asserted -- all of one post up -- that driverless cars are "bad medicine" that make life worse. If in fact they improve people's lives, then great. And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever, then that's fine too. Again these things are non-rival.
        rglullis 4y ago
        They are "bad medicine" if considered as a solution for the public transportation issues in North America, yes. It's not the technology that I am against, it's the fetishism that the tech will be so amazing that it can justify all the shit that people are putting up with now, and not looking at more important problems that if solved could eliminate the need for the tech in the first place > And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever That's just a really twisted way of saying that you don't mind sacrificing the commons if it means you get to play with cool gadgets. It's a lot easier for one individual to go and buy a driverless Tesla and think "oh, at least my car does not stay in a parking lot after my ride is done" than it is to go and promote actual change in urban planning to avoid car dependency in the first place. But because you are (presumably) on the top of the pyramid, you don't actually care about it. > Again these things are non-rival. At the first order, it may seem like that. But after we see the interaction of these apparently-orthogonal policies (e.g, zoning laws and public infrastructure) and their inconsistent implementations the problems become very clear. It is hard to argue only with hypotheticals, but I could bet that if driverless cars became a reality tomorrow, cities would be worse in 10 years than they are today.

aetherson 4y ago

Nobody held driverless cars as a "panacea" to anything that's completely something you made up. Let's just review this whole conversation: 1. I suggested to a poster who wanted to blame the whole Cruise problem on the garbage truck that garbage trucks do in fact have to block lanes. 2. You then jumped in and said that American should "just" reinvent itself so that cars weren't a big deal. You left it implicit why that was relevant here, but I think I understand you to believe that driverless cars are an unimportant technology. 3. I pointed out that "just" changing the fundamental mode of transit across all of America is in fact a tall order. 4. And then you've gotten less and less responsive to actual points until you get to here where you're now suggesting that driverless cars aren't a panacea, which is an argument nobody made. To affirmatively restate my points: 1. Driverless cars, to be successful, must deal with a lot of messy road conditions, not just the 99% case. 2. If driverless cars do at some point cross the above line and genuinely become equal to or greater than the median human driver, I think they will be an important technology that will improve people's lives -- in both the United States and very significantly (if possibly somewhat less so) in Europe. 3. Driverless cars are plausibly on a much shorter timeline than remaking all of America's physical transportation/density infrastructure, and plausibly much less overall expensive than remaking all of America's physical transportation/density infrastructure. 4. Investment in driverless cars is non-rival to other changes to America's physical transportation/density infrastructure.

rglullis 4y ago
The argument that I am making is simple: the more you push for self-driving cars, the more you are pushing to a car-centric system and the farther you are getting from better, more sustainable solutions. It is not just that is not a panacea, it is that it is a bad medicine.
- aetherson 4y ago
  I suspect that you will find that your opinions are just not shared, and that people -- everywhere, including in places that you imagine to be ideologically aligned with you -- generally find that driverless cars make their lives better on the margin, if good driverless cars start to exist.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    That is way too low of a bar. All else being equal, even I would say that my life would be marginally better if self-driving cars existed. The question is whether people value this more than the benefits of not being car-dependent. You might think that these are not connected, but they pretty much are. Taking that in consideration, I could bet that only a minority would be willing to accept the trade-off.
    - aetherson 4y ago
      Nope, that's not the question. You asserted -- all of one post up -- that driverless cars are "bad medicine" that make life worse. If in fact they improve people's lives, then great. And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever, then that's fine too. Again these things are non-rival.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        They are "bad medicine" if considered as a solution for the public transportation issues in North America, yes. It's not the technology that I am against, it's the fetishism that the tech will be so amazing that it can justify all the shit that people are putting up with now, and not looking at more important problems that if solved could eliminate the need for the tech in the first place > And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever That's just a really twisted way of saying that you don't mind sacrificing the commons if it means you get to play with cool gadgets. It's a lot easier for one individual to go and buy a driverless Tesla and think "oh, at least my car does not stay in a parking lot after my ride is done" than it is to go and promote actual change in urban planning to avoid car dependency in the first place. But because you are (presumably) on the top of the pyramid, you don't actually care about it. > Again these things are non-rival. At the first order, it may seem like that. But after we see the interaction of these apparently-orthogonal policies (e.g, zoning laws and public infrastructure) and their inconsistent implementations the problems become very clear. It is hard to argue only with hypotheticals, but I could bet that if driverless cars became a reality tomorrow, cities would be worse in 10 years than they are today.