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It's a thought experiment. A spherical cow that demonstrates that simply measuring the aggregate death count is lossy, it assumes that the proportion of pedestr

It's a thought experiment. A spherical cow that demonstrates that simply measuring the aggregate death count is lossy, it assumes that the proportion of pedestrian deaths where the pedestrian is at fault remains the same in both situations which is not true, so I draw a picture which makes that glaring distinction. We need to know the details of these deaths to know which scenario is preferable. Here, reverse my scenario, the autonomous vehicles only ever kill people who jump out in front of them. That's preferable, no? Then why is the inverse not worth addressing?

grecy 3y ago
I strongly disagree with your premise. Current situation: 125 people are killed every single day Future autonomous situation: 100 people are killed every single day I don't care who they are, what they were doing or why they were killed. The details of their deaths are no important. Saving 25 lives per day is clearly the right thing to do. Hint: Imagine all of these people are your family and friends. Do you want to keep having 125 of them die every day, or only 100? Does it matter if they're being run over as pedestrians or slammed into by drunk drivers or simply sliding off the road on ice? Of course it doesn't, saving 25 of them every day is the only thing that matters.
- kbenson 3y ago
  > The details of their deaths are no important. Saving 25 lives per day is clearly the right thing to do. I think it's clear that if we were talking about saving 125 people 90 years old or older or 100 children, the clear choice is to save the children, from almost any rational point of view. Even just from a societal health or utility standpoint, children are worth more than people that are statistically close to death anyway at a societal level. If that premise is acceptable, and if we accept that switching to self driving might change the demographics of who dies in accidents, then it's important to quantify not just whether it saves more people or not, but what people, in case that shifts matters. > Hint: Imagine all of these people are your family and friends. Do you want to keep having 125 of them die every day, or only 100? I would rather lose both my parents than one of my children. I don't know a single parent that would feel otherwise. Additionally, there's also the possibility that like adding extra lanes of traffic to a freeway can make traffic jams worse, self driving cars could increase deaths per capita while reducing deaths per trip, by promoting a lot more car travel (by either allowing current non drivers to drive or increasing time current drivers spend in the car).
  - grecy 3y ago
    > I think it's clear that if we were talking about saving 125 people 90 years old or older or 100 children, the clear choice is to save the children, from almost any rational point of view. Even just from a societal health or utility standpoint, children are worth more than people that are statistically close to death anyway at a societal level. That assumes that the people currently being killed on the roads are "less valuable" than the people that would be killed on the roads by autonomous systems. There is no evidence to prove that, it's purely hypothetical.
    - kbenson 3y ago
      Yes, there is no evidence. The point I was trying to make is that gathering that evidence and knowing what is happening is important. It's not enough to just assume any drop in deaths is automatically better than previously, when what we're talking about is a drastic change in how the overall system operates. Im not arguing that autonomous cars will be worse, I'm just arguing there is the possibility for them to be worse in non-obvious ways, and you prior arguments seemed to ignore that. We should not be so blinded by a single metric that we fail to understand what's really going on. To are many cases of that in technological advances, legislative change, and societal shifts, that we aren't aware of until long after the additional damage has been done.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    That's an absurd concern. Children are already the most at-risk on our roads right now, with humans behind the wheel. We're already living your nightmare. The rise of autonomous vehicles isn't going to increase the likelihood of basketballs accidentally bouncing into the street. Nor will it cause a wild swing in the demographic mix of people using pedestrian crossings. By the time they're widely deployed, autonomous vehicles aren't going to be a little bit safer than the average human driver. They will have to be superior by at least one order of magnitude. As in, the number of deaths per million miles at least 10X lower than the human average. I think one order of magnitude is the least we should demand. I would consider it a rather low bar. I suspect that it'd need to be more like two orders of magnitude in order to retain sufficient community consent. So if that's the threshold of acceptability, then we'd be talking about slashing deaths by 90% or possibly even 99%. Either way, autonomous vehicles could kill children exclusively and they'd still be safer around children than human drivers.
- simondotau 3y ago
  Effectively it's a version of the trolley problem. Do you do nothing and 125 people die per day or do you pull a lever and 100 people die per day? Would you pull that lever? I would.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    I would want to understand the differences in who it would kill. If not pulling the lever, 70 of those are suicides, and if pulling it only 10 are, you're actually killing more people by pulling the lever, and potentially subjecting unwilling participants to continued suffering. But my main point is that it is a machine pulling the lever or not. Once you deploy such a machine we are all subject to it's cold calculation. We should go the extra mile to make sure the world we live in winds up being better and not just assume less deaths = better outcome.
    - simondotau 3y ago
      To be clear, my use of 125 and 100 is only to mirror the post I was replying to. Expressed as a trolley problem I would choose that trade-off. As a real world proposition no society would, and certainly no autonomous vehicle operator would — for precisely the reason you state. We don't like robots which kill people. As I've said elsewhere, I don't expect any autonomous driving system to be anything less than 10X safer than human drivers, or one order of magnitude. And I don't think there could ever be a durable social warrant for autonomous vehicles unless they're at least 100X safer, or two orders of magnitude.[0] Given a minimum expectation of being 10X safer, and given that drivers don't get to choose the demographics of people who place themselves in harm's way near our roads, it is statistically unfathomable that autonomous vehicles could ever be net more dangerous for any demographic. -- [0] If anything I feel that's too conservative and three orders of magnitude might be closer to the threshold at which societies would tolerate autonomous cars. Road deaths in the USA are in the order of 40,000 annually. Three orders of magnitude still means 40 deaths per year. That's plenty enough to keep the press aroused and erect.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  You can reject my premise, but it is sound. If self driving cars only ever killed people that jumped in front of them deliberately, that's a resounding success, that means they never accidentally kill anyone. So if self driving cars swerve more efficiently to avoid hitting suicides but are worse at stopping at a crosswalk for children, thats an abysmal failure, they accidentally kill people more than humans do. Your take - that any amount of decrease in death is sufficient - is excessively reductionist because it doesn't actually measure how much safer the car is than a human driver. For it to be a reliable measure we have to accept the premise that the same proportion of pedestrian deaths will be due to deliberate action or negligence of the pedestrian, an unfounded premise, much more absurd than mine, and one that ignores the ruthlessness with which machines execute their instructions. Your hint attempting to emotionally sensationalize your argument does nothing to make it more convincing.

grecy 3y ago

I strongly disagree with your premise. Current situation: 125 people are killed every single day Future autonomous situation: 100 people are killed every single day I don't care who they are, what they were doing or why they were killed. The details of their deaths are no important. Saving 25 lives per day is clearly the right thing to do. Hint: Imagine all of these people are your family and friends. Do you want to keep having 125 of them die every day, or only 100? Does it matter if they're being run over as pedestrians or slammed into by drunk drivers or simply sliding off the road on ice? Of course it doesn't, saving 25 of them every day is the only thing that matters.

kbenson 3y ago
> The details of their deaths are no important. Saving 25 lives per day is clearly the right thing to do. I think it's clear that if we were talking about saving 125 people 90 years old or older or 100 children, the clear choice is to save the children, from almost any rational point of view. Even just from a societal health or utility standpoint, children are worth more than people that are statistically close to death anyway at a societal level. If that premise is acceptable, and if we accept that switching to self driving might change the demographics of who dies in accidents, then it's important to quantify not just whether it saves more people or not, but what people, in case that shifts matters. > Hint: Imagine all of these people are your family and friends. Do you want to keep having 125 of them die every day, or only 100? I would rather lose both my parents than one of my children. I don't know a single parent that would feel otherwise. Additionally, there's also the possibility that like adding extra lanes of traffic to a freeway can make traffic jams worse, self driving cars could increase deaths per capita while reducing deaths per trip, by promoting a lot more car travel (by either allowing current non drivers to drive or increasing time current drivers spend in the car).
- grecy 3y ago
  > I think it's clear that if we were talking about saving 125 people 90 years old or older or 100 children, the clear choice is to save the children, from almost any rational point of view. Even just from a societal health or utility standpoint, children are worth more than people that are statistically close to death anyway at a societal level. That assumes that the people currently being killed on the roads are "less valuable" than the people that would be killed on the roads by autonomous systems. There is no evidence to prove that, it's purely hypothetical.
  - kbenson 3y ago
    Yes, there is no evidence. The point I was trying to make is that gathering that evidence and knowing what is happening is important. It's not enough to just assume any drop in deaths is automatically better than previously, when what we're talking about is a drastic change in how the overall system operates. Im not arguing that autonomous cars will be worse, I'm just arguing there is the possibility for them to be worse in non-obvious ways, and you prior arguments seemed to ignore that. We should not be so blinded by a single metric that we fail to understand what's really going on. To are many cases of that in technological advances, legislative change, and societal shifts, that we aren't aware of until long after the additional damage has been done.
- simondotau 3y ago
  That's an absurd concern. Children are already the most at-risk on our roads right now, with humans behind the wheel. We're already living your nightmare. The rise of autonomous vehicles isn't going to increase the likelihood of basketballs accidentally bouncing into the street. Nor will it cause a wild swing in the demographic mix of people using pedestrian crossings. By the time they're widely deployed, autonomous vehicles aren't going to be a little bit safer than the average human driver. They will have to be superior by at least one order of magnitude. As in, the number of deaths per million miles at least 10X lower than the human average. I think one order of magnitude is the least we should demand. I would consider it a rather low bar. I suspect that it'd need to be more like two orders of magnitude in order to retain sufficient community consent. So if that's the threshold of acceptability, then we'd be talking about slashing deaths by 90% or possibly even 99%. Either way, autonomous vehicles could kill children exclusively and they'd still be safer around children than human drivers.
simondotau 3y ago
Effectively it's a version of the trolley problem. Do you do nothing and 125 people die per day or do you pull a lever and 100 people die per day? Would you pull that lever? I would.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I would want to understand the differences in who it would kill. If not pulling the lever, 70 of those are suicides, and if pulling it only 10 are, you're actually killing more people by pulling the lever, and potentially subjecting unwilling participants to continued suffering. But my main point is that it is a machine pulling the lever or not. Once you deploy such a machine we are all subject to it's cold calculation. We should go the extra mile to make sure the world we live in winds up being better and not just assume less deaths = better outcome.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    To be clear, my use of 125 and 100 is only to mirror the post I was replying to. Expressed as a trolley problem I would choose that trade-off. As a real world proposition no society would, and certainly no autonomous vehicle operator would — for precisely the reason you state. We don't like robots which kill people. As I've said elsewhere, I don't expect any autonomous driving system to be anything less than 10X safer than human drivers, or one order of magnitude. And I don't think there could ever be a durable social warrant for autonomous vehicles unless they're at least 100X safer, or two orders of magnitude.[0] Given a minimum expectation of being 10X safer, and given that drivers don't get to choose the demographics of people who place themselves in harm's way near our roads, it is statistically unfathomable that autonomous vehicles could ever be net more dangerous for any demographic. -- [0] If anything I feel that's too conservative and three orders of magnitude might be closer to the threshold at which societies would tolerate autonomous cars. Road deaths in the USA are in the order of 40,000 annually. Three orders of magnitude still means 40 deaths per year. That's plenty enough to keep the press aroused and erect.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
You can reject my premise, but it is sound. If self driving cars only ever killed people that jumped in front of them deliberately, that's a resounding success, that means they never accidentally kill anyone. So if self driving cars swerve more efficiently to avoid hitting suicides but are worse at stopping at a crosswalk for children, thats an abysmal failure, they accidentally kill people more than humans do. Your take - that any amount of decrease in death is sufficient - is excessively reductionist because it doesn't actually measure how much safer the car is than a human driver. For it to be a reliable measure we have to accept the premise that the same proportion of pedestrian deaths will be due to deliberate action or negligence of the pedestrian, an unfounded premise, much more absurd than mine, and one that ignores the ruthlessness with which machines execute their instructions. Your hint attempting to emotionally sensationalize your argument does nothing to make it more convincing.