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I always love an Internet take. Currently, Americans spend about 100 billion hours driving every year, which is about 11 million man-years. If you can't see t

I always love an Internet take. Currently, Americans spend about 100 billion hours driving every year, which is about 11 million man-years. If you can't see the transformative impacts of freeing up that much time for people to enjoy any other activities, whether it be doing work, reading a book, sleeping, or eating chicken nuggets, then I honestly have no idea what to say.

mrbadguy 3y ago
It might be easier to free up some of those man-years by planning and constructing towns/cities such that people don’t have to drive in them, than developing self driving cars. The two things aren’t even mutually exclusive, you could have a happy, mostly non-car based existence, and then supplement it with a self driving car on the occasion that you really need it (assuming it’s ever achieved).
- jlmorton 3y ago
  If you solution begins with "throw away 100 trillion dollars in built-up infrastructure," the idea probably isn't very good.
  - mrbadguy 3y ago
    Ha! Maybe not, at the scale of the US it might well be intractable. That said, the Netherlands made such a transition over the 80’s and 90’s so it is possible to some degree. You do need a population willing to undergo the transition though. And it’s not something that’s done overnight of course. I just found it somewhat ironic that instead of considering alternatives, people would rather hold out for self driving cars, which may never happen, to reduce time wasted in driving.
Gibbon1 3y ago
I first had that thought when carpooling with a coworker that listened to Rush Limbaugh. One time we're in stop and go traffic and he's ranting about how liberals are coming for your car because they hate freedom. I thought I don't feel very free right now. Before the damn'demic had the thought that the reason people commute long distance is partly because company VIP's all like to live a) close to work. b) next to each other. Which due to suburbanization forces everyone else to commute. This seems like an incredible waste of societies resources whose costs are born by poor and middle class people. I think the whole work from home thing is a rebellion against that basic unfairness.
jrflowers 3y ago
This makes sense. Why didn’t the man in the car attempting to do a 70mph u turn on a freeway consider the possible saved man hours for society? If you think about it getting misted because your car plows into oncoming traffic is actually not that bad because some day others will be able to pay $15,000 for DLC in their car that unlocks “road head”. It’s basically on the same level as antibiotics or the Haber-Bosch process in its necessity for the flourishing of mankind
- jlmorton 3y ago
  You can try to minimize it all you want, but indeed it would be transformative. Somehow, when we build a $2 billion Central Subway in San Francisco, through some of the very densest neighborhoods in all of America, with a realized daily ridership of ~3,000, there are no jokes about how unimportant the train is compared to fertilizer.
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    > You can try to minimize it all you want Far too many people are so selfish that they get hung up on questions like “Could this cause death or grevious bodily harm to me or others on the road?” and do not have the ethical fortitude or wherewithal to focus on “What could the abstract concept of ‘transformative’ mean at an unknown point in the future?” > there are no jokes about how unimportant the train is compared to fertilizer. This is a good point. There is basically no meaningful difference between a self driving Tesla and a train. The only explanation for why you don’t hear people discussing the myriad times that commuter trains veer into traffic or otherwise behave in dangerous and unpredictable ways must be collective ignorance and hypocrisy.
    - jlmorton 3y ago
      Your original assertion that I took issue with was that "self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec egos." I'll happily admit there are problems with autonomous vehicles today, and that is not what I dispute. What I dispute is that autonomous vehicles are not important. And of course they are. They would free up more human time than any other invention on the horizon. However, to the non sequitur point about safety, we are not designing a system from scratch. The existing system has two million crashes per year in the US alone. If the new system has one million crashes, that's a massive improvement. > There is basically no meaningful difference between a self driving Tesla and a train. The only explanation for why you don’t hear people discussing the myriad times that commuter trains veer into traffic or otherwise behave in dangerous and unpredictable ways must be collective ignorance and hypocrisy. Once again, you've quickly switched the point to something different. The question was if an astronomically expensive train that carries a mere 3,000 riders a day is also worthy of derision, since few people use it, and all it does is replace walking, freeing them up to play Wordle during their commute.

mrbadguy 3y ago

It might be easier to free up some of those man-years by planning and constructing towns/cities such that people don’t have to drive in them, than developing self driving cars. The two things aren’t even mutually exclusive, you could have a happy, mostly non-car based existence, and then supplement it with a self driving car on the occasion that you really need it (assuming it’s ever achieved).

jlmorton 3y ago
If you solution begins with "throw away 100 trillion dollars in built-up infrastructure," the idea probably isn't very good.
- mrbadguy 3y ago
  Ha! Maybe not, at the scale of the US it might well be intractable. That said, the Netherlands made such a transition over the 80’s and 90’s so it is possible to some degree. You do need a population willing to undergo the transition though. And it’s not something that’s done overnight of course. I just found it somewhat ironic that instead of considering alternatives, people would rather hold out for self driving cars, which may never happen, to reduce time wasted in driving.

Gibbon1 3y ago

I first had that thought when carpooling with a coworker that listened to Rush Limbaugh. One time we're in stop and go traffic and he's ranting about how liberals are coming for your car because they hate freedom. I thought I don't feel very free right now. Before the damn'demic had the thought that the reason people commute long distance is partly because company VIP's all like to live a) close to work. b) next to each other. Which due to suburbanization forces everyone else to commute. This seems like an incredible waste of societies resources whose costs are born by poor and middle class people. I think the whole work from home thing is a rebellion against that basic unfairness.

jrflowers 3y ago

This makes sense. Why didn’t the man in the car attempting to do a 70mph u turn on a freeway consider the possible saved man hours for society? If you think about it getting misted because your car plows into oncoming traffic is actually not that bad because some day others will be able to pay $15,000 for DLC in their car that unlocks “road head”. It’s basically on the same level as antibiotics or the Haber-Bosch process in its necessity for the flourishing of mankind

jlmorton 3y ago
You can try to minimize it all you want, but indeed it would be transformative. Somehow, when we build a $2 billion Central Subway in San Francisco, through some of the very densest neighborhoods in all of America, with a realized daily ridership of ~3,000, there are no jokes about how unimportant the train is compared to fertilizer.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  > You can try to minimize it all you want Far too many people are so selfish that they get hung up on questions like “Could this cause death or grevious bodily harm to me or others on the road?” and do not have the ethical fortitude or wherewithal to focus on “What could the abstract concept of ‘transformative’ mean at an unknown point in the future?” > there are no jokes about how unimportant the train is compared to fertilizer. This is a good point. There is basically no meaningful difference between a self driving Tesla and a train. The only explanation for why you don’t hear people discussing the myriad times that commuter trains veer into traffic or otherwise behave in dangerous and unpredictable ways must be collective ignorance and hypocrisy.
  - jlmorton 3y ago
    Your original assertion that I took issue with was that "self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec egos." I'll happily admit there are problems with autonomous vehicles today, and that is not what I dispute. What I dispute is that autonomous vehicles are not important. And of course they are. They would free up more human time than any other invention on the horizon. However, to the non sequitur point about safety, we are not designing a system from scratch. The existing system has two million crashes per year in the US alone. If the new system has one million crashes, that's a massive improvement. > There is basically no meaningful difference between a self driving Tesla and a train. The only explanation for why you don’t hear people discussing the myriad times that commuter trains veer into traffic or otherwise behave in dangerous and unpredictable ways must be collective ignorance and hypocrisy. Once again, you've quickly switched the point to something different. The question was if an astronomically expensive train that carries a mere 3,000 riders a day is also worthy of derision, since few people use it, and all it does is replace walking, freeing them up to play Wordle during their commute.