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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 ali

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
      And you're back to fighting against a strawman. Nobody fetishized anything, except for you. Also, you have no idea what my positions are about zoning or land use or infrastructure, as I haven't mentioned them.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        Thinking that overall quality of life can be improved just by some future technology is already a fetish, if you consider that there are low-tech ways that can achieve better results today. It's this apathy that my original comment wanted to point out, and it was not a personal attack against you.

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
    And you're back to fighting against a strawman. Nobody fetishized anything, except for you. Also, you have no idea what my positions are about zoning or land use or infrastructure, as I haven't mentioned them.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Thinking that overall quality of life can be improved just by some future technology is already a fetish, if you consider that there are low-tech ways that can achieve better results today. It's this apathy that my original comment wanted to point out, and it was not a personal attack against you.