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I'm a fan of driverless cars but I enjoyed 'jellicle's take. Applied in their most selfish mode, driverless cars could really suck. Sharing cars might work for

I'm a fan of driverless cars but I enjoyed 'jellicle's take. Applied in their most selfish mode, driverless cars could really suck. Sharing cars might work for people currently using taxis, but 1) why aren't they using taxis right now already, and 2) there are things people like having in their own car. Car seats are a big example for families. And LATCH doesn't work anywhere near as good as it does on paper.

apsec112 13y ago
Re taxis, right now you have to pay for the human driver's wages, and for the driver's medallion. This makes taxis much more expensive. Re car seats, obviously if there's a lot of demand for them, driverless car companies will pre-install them on some of their fleet. This is a bit of a tangent, but also, Selfishness Does Not Work Like That. When you look at a totally "selfish" part of the economy (eg. consumer electronics, or sports cars), it often works beautifully efficiently - every year, we get better stuff for less money. When you look at "selfless" parts (eg. education, health care), they are often giant clusterfucks. Are there exceptions? Certainly. But one can hardly say it's axiomatic that "selfishness" = "bad". (Re healthcare, yes, in America it's unusually bad, but in Germany/Canada/Switzerland/etc. the price we pay per suffering alleviated still keeps going up and up and up.)
- jtsnow 13y ago
  Having a driverless car pull up with a child seat littered with food in various states of digestion and other bodily fluids is not my idea of the future. Considering some adults can be more unsanitary than children, it seems we may also need a way to automate the cleaning of interiors.
  - secabeen 13y ago
    Yup. Unfortunately, easily cleanable interiors are not generally compatible with attractive luxury interiors. Why do taxis have plasticy seats? Because it's easy to clean them.

apsec112 13y ago

Re taxis, right now you have to pay for the human driver's wages, and for the driver's medallion. This makes taxis much more expensive. Re car seats, obviously if there's a lot of demand for them, driverless car companies will pre-install them on some of their fleet. This is a bit of a tangent, but also, Selfishness Does Not Work Like That. When you look at a totally "selfish" part of the economy (eg. consumer electronics, or sports cars), it often works beautifully efficiently - every year, we get better stuff for less money. When you look at "selfless" parts (eg. education, health care), they are often giant clusterfucks. Are there exceptions? Certainly. But one can hardly say it's axiomatic that "selfishness" = "bad". (Re healthcare, yes, in America it's unusually bad, but in Germany/Canada/Switzerland/etc. the price we pay per suffering alleviated still keeps going up and up and up.)

jtsnow 13y ago
Having a driverless car pull up with a child seat littered with food in various states of digestion and other bodily fluids is not my idea of the future. Considering some adults can be more unsanitary than children, it seems we may also need a way to automate the cleaning of interiors.
- secabeen 13y ago
  Yup. Unfortunately, easily cleanable interiors are not generally compatible with attractive luxury interiors. Why do taxis have plasticy seats? Because it's easy to clean them.