NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF • Hacker News Board

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#201

Post by EGreg » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #183

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting, because this is how your response sounded to me. Is there no dogma about how everyone should group together and take back the means of production? There is a very large, prominent movement about this response to capitalism. My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory. Every time people banded together to take the means of pro…

Ok, well, as long as we're on the subject of the distinction between theory and practice I'm not worried that unionizing Amazon warehouses will bring about a new USSR. I've worked union jobs and I've worked non-union jobs: the union jobs paid better and came with better benefits than their non-union equivalents. QED.

But don’t you know that organizing labor and giving safety nets like universal health insurance to people leads directly to shortages, breadlines, massive government repression and the entire population eating their cats?

Everyone should be aware of the TTV of these activities (“Time to Venezuela”) and refrain from unionizing.

Anyway, unionizing will only hasten the R&D investments to replace human labor. We should instead have an automation tax on the corporations and have a UBI. We won’t need unions or minimum wage laws. Even then, though, the UBI will always be less than what the corporations would spend on people. But we have to get that in place before demand human labor drops like a stone, and the governments simply won’t care about mass unrest because they’ll control everyone with surveillance, drones and new laws.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#202

Post by EGreg » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:39 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #162

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not thinking through what you’re talking about, unfortunately that’s typical. Think about it, how can there be a “SHORTAGE of jobs”, when we have over 8 billion people on this planet? Are we running out of people in general? No. Is everyone employed and happy? No. So we are short of the kind of increasingly mythical people with 20 years experience in some tech that came out yesterday, we’re short of people wit…

Your reasoning seems logical at first glance so I can understand why you would come to your conclusions. History shows you to be wrong. It doesn't take a high IQ to use a machine to hugely increase your productivity. And in some cases the machine is easier to operate. I'll take a car over a horse any day. Salaries for low skill jobs in the US are going up. UPS drivers now get paid close to $200k. The labor shortage i…

Past results are not an indicator of future performance. There is no economic law that guarantees human labor will always be in demand. 70 years ago one man could sustain an entire household on one paycheck, his work was valued and the company man worked decades until he got a pension. Today, both sexes work long hours just to afford a tiny apartment, they have to switch jobs every couple years and even started doing the gig economy on the side to get by. Until robots replace them.

Sure, some humans will be more productive, but then we’ll need less of them. And with AI, it’s easier to just have the AI learn the new “irreplaceable” skills much faster than retraining millions of humans.

Horses and oxen were very useful throughout history, until the car and tractor was invited. Today the number of horses and oxen is at an all-time low. No amount of unionizing by horses would change that.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#203

Post by __s » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:42 PM UTC

pirate787 wrote: post #149

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The realization a self-driving car is not infinitely exciting is how bubbles pop. This particular bubble was formed mostly by Tesla hyping up the coming of their fleet of millions of robotaxis that will turn every other car immediately obsolete, “like owning a horse”, and Teslas will 100x in price, and Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. And all that, over a product they still can’t ship (and won’t)…

Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…

How was it a Luddite take? Luddites argued that robots undercut quality by offering a price that couldn't be competed with, but ultimately with an inferior product. The person you're replying to is suggesting humans are unskilled apes incapable of competing with robots on both price & quality

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#204

Post by lr4444lr » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:43 PM UTC

Diffusion3166 wrote: post #197

Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis: 0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability. 1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company. 2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorp…

My wife lost 2 close relatives to accidental vehicular death. She's thrilled.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#205

Post by EGreg » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:45 PM UTC

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #199

ForHackernews wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, well, as long as we're on the subject of the distinction between theory and practice I'm not worried that unionizing Amazon warehouses will bring about a new USSR. I've worked union jobs and I've worked non-union jobs: the union jobs paid better and came with better benefits than their non-union equivalents. QED.

Unionized Amazon warehouses are the strongest kick in the butt that Amazon needs to automate this entire union out of existence. Once again. See Hollywood. Strike. “No AI” said the signs. Result? Studios amping up AI hiring like crazy. Humans are into humans. But capitalism isn’t, that much. It doesn’t care about what substrate it’s made of. Its soul is made of money. Unions make things better for workers in the shor…

“Humans are into humans. But capitalism isn’t, that much.”

I wish more people on HN would understand this. Capitalism isn’t your friend. It give you short term wins but in the end, the negative externalities can add up hurt everyone including the vast majority of those who were winning initially.

At first, in all transactions, A and B win at the expense of C. Ancaps only look at A and B being better off. But in the end, almost everyone is a C, and the externalized costs add up for them all.

We need to switch to a more sustainable system before it’s too late. Capitalism’s negative externalities are also destroying the environment and running up an ecological credit card that future generations will have to pay.

“The bill always comes due!” - Mordo (great philosopher)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#206

Post by mannykannot » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:46 PM UTC

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #181

ForHackernews wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds to me like you're repeating dogma, but even if it's true, that's fine by me. I'd rather my union steward was getting rich (for some low value of 'rich') than my CEO. Only one of them is on my side.

It’s interesting, because this is how your response sounded to me. Is there no dogma about how everyone should group together and take back the means of production? There is a very large, prominent movement about this response to capitalism. My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory. Every time people banded together to take the means of pro…

> My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory.

Your socio-economic theory is at odds with what happened in the so-called western world over the last three centuries, but to understand why, one would need to step away from over-generalizing just the most dramatic parts of history, and study the boring bits as well.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#207

Post by FredPret » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 12:48 PM UTC

So many things that were the preserve of the ultra-rich made it's way to the masses thanks to technology finding ways to make it cheaper.

- music in your house

- new clothes that fit you at least sort-of-well

- ice in your kitchen

- travel

- communication at speed and over large distances

- access to a lots of literature

- and now, chauffeur-driven cars

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#208

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

rufus_foreman wrote: post #196

ForHackernews wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have a labor shortage, or do we have a shortage at the wages companies are prepared to pay? There's a largely unexamined assumption built into capitalism that there exists a market clearing wage where humans will be incentivized to provide labor and owners will reap a profit. But what if that assumption is breaking down? My most "valuable" skill is writing software, but it may soon be the case that ChatGPT 9 ca…

"A shortage, in economic terms, is a condition where the quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied at the market price" -- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortage.asp We have a labor shortage. Economists don't assume that markets will clear. There are many reasons why they often don't. Given that wages are about as high as they have ever been in our lifetimes, and unemployment is about as low as i…

Why keep stressing about wages being high? Do you people not understand basic inflation? At any point in time wages will always be highest they’ve ever been. In many places in the US, three years ago $100 bought you a week’s worth of food. Now it buys you a day’s worth. Maybe two.

Even in poor countries food has 3x in prices in two years.

Jobs are high because everyone has to work, wife, husband, even children in some cases, and many people take two jobs. While more and more don’t ever register at the bureau so they fall off the system. That’s your utopia?

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#209

Post by checkyoursudo » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #184

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not thinking through what you’re talking about, unfortunately that’s typical. Think about it, how can there be a “SHORTAGE of jobs”, when we have over 8 billion people on this planet? Are we running out of people in general? No. Is everyone employed and happy? No. So we are short of the kind of increasingly mythical people with 20 years experience in some tech that came out yesterday, we’re short of people wit…

> Is everyone employed and happy? No Relatively speaking, it’s the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. Of course it’s hard to measure happiness and we’ll never be perfect but we have greater safety, lower violence, more food, more work, etc etc. I wonder if people had succeeded in stopping the tractor because it displaced workers. Of course it displaced workers. Workers who now do more valuable work. Or…

I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity.

We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head).

Your points about safety, violence, money, etc, are all good, and there are many other really positive things about the present, for sure, but it is not clear to me that we are absolutely better off than at any time in the past.

There were some bad times, and there is too much nostalgia by well-off people for past times when they were well-off while most others were not.

I think that things are in general pretty good right now. Modern medicine alone makes me prefer to live now than wish I were some scruffy medieval peasant. We should recognize that we have paid a huge price for how we live now, and that price might not have been worth it. I don't know how we judge one way or the other.

Anyway. I wish I could see the stars. I wish there was still real wilderness. I wish that PFAS weren't almost literally everywhere. I wish farmers selected for flavor rather than size or density. Etc.

Now, the 1990s! That was the best time in human history. ;)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#210

Post by martinald » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #198

taurath wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? The end customer experience is nearly identical to having a quiet driver. A taxi is still a taxi. Someone having their own self driving car would be a big change. Being able to not own a car because of cheap shared self driving vehicles would be intere…

The exciting part to me would be the cost. If about 50% or taxi fares to to the driver, add some more expenses for more capital in the car and other measures you're looking at a totally different price point where it becomes more economical for things like commuting. And there would eventually be other efficiencies when cars are more designed as driverless that could theoretically drive the cost even lower.

Actually, this is the biggest problem and what government needs to be focussing more on.

If the price drops 50% (or more) then you will have a huge surge in demand for cars. This will cause much more congestion than we currently have which will become completely intolerable.

Really we need to see some tax applied to miles driven by all vehicles which pushes this up and suppress demand - maybe it could only apply to robotaxis at first (would probably be much more palatable politically as well). This could then be used to spend on public transit, so you don't see a huge dropoff in ridership of public transit to robotaxis.