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An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

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Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#231

Post by kazinator »

gojomo wrote: post #156
kazinator wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the angle that when a human blocks passage for an extended period of time with their vehicle, it's almost always because the human is away from the vehicle: the human has deliberately parked where they are not supposed to and then walked away. When the computer does this, it's always "sitting" in the vehicle, and is not acting on a selfish intent: it's just carrying buggy/incomplete requirements. A hum…

But if the human-away-from-vehicle blocks things for minutes, while the temporarily-confused-AI has a remote-operator fix the issue in 30 seconds, or others in the area find another solution even faster than in the unattended-car scenario... isn't the advantage, given the actual weighted occurrences, still for the autonomous car?

If there is a man behind the curtain, it doesn't meet any reasonable definition of "autonomous".

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#232

Post by aetherson »

rglullis wrote: post #230
aetherson wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#233

Post by hamburglar »

jstanley wrote: post #217
hamburglar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no math in a calculator. It’s a pile of logic gates assembled in a way to appear to perform mathematical operations. An ALU has no “understanding” of arithmetic, it’s just a canned, finite set of inputs and outputs. Not an axiom to be found.

I expect the argument would go like: The pile of logic gates is an encoding of the axioms. The fact that it evaluates mathematical expressions correctly is both necessary and sufficient to show that it understands arithmetic. Therefore the calculator knows the axioms and understands arithmetic.

Except it doesn’t implement the axioms of math, it implements a crude facsimile of them for a certain subset of numbers, because what it’s really doing is a non-mathematical physical process.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#234

Post by hamburglar »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #219
hamburglar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no math in a calculator. It’s a pile of logic gates assembled in a way to appear to perform mathematical operations. An ALU has no “understanding” of arithmetic, it’s just a canned, finite set of inputs and outputs. Not an axiom to be found.

> It’s a pile of logic gates assembled in a way to appear to perform mathematical operations In what way is Boolean logic not maths?

If you want to argue that an ALU is performing “boolean logic” just because it’s made of logic gates, be my guest, but in my opinion that’s a bit like saying a bucket is “doing math” because if you put 5 rocks in and add 7 rocks, it’s smart enough to contain 12 rocks when you’re done.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#235

Post by rglullis »

aetherson wrote: post #232
rglullis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#236

Post by Gordonjcp »

rglullis wrote: post #227
Gordonjcp wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After that, just copy the playbook from the Netherlands The Netherlands has a ridiculously dense population and is completely flat. It's only a good model for other places with a ridiculous population density and pancake-flat geography. You couldn't apply the Netherlands model to, for example, Scotland.

Flatlands or not, it does not mean that cars are the only reasonable mode of transportation. Even if you insist of trying to solve a social problem with technology, it would make more sense for those living in hilly areas to push for electric bikes than self-driving cars.

I don't see what problem self-driving cars solve, either.

Electric bikes are too slow and inefficient, and require expensive hard-to-make components that depend on conflict minerals.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#237

Post by rglullis »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #236
rglullis wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatlands or not, it does not mean that cars are the only reasonable mode of transportation. Even if you insist of trying to solve a social problem with technology, it would make more sense for those living in hilly areas to push for electric bikes than self-driving cars.

I don't see what problem self-driving cars solve, either. Electric bikes are too slow and inefficient, and require expensive hard-to-make components that depend on conflict minerals.

Slow and inefficient compared to what? And what is the difference in battery technology from an E-Bike compared to Tesla?

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#238

Post by aetherson »

rglullis wrote: post #235
aetherson wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#239

Post by rglullis »

aetherson wrote: post #238
rglullis wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#240

Post by bcrl »

krisoft wrote: post #212
anyfoo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Runaway trucks are a very real problem, we even have emergency escape ramps in places where they are most common. There is usually no split second decision here: You have a comparable eternity to decide where you want your non-braking truck to end up. However you construe my particular example to be "ridiculous" under the additional constraints that you imposed on it yourself, you are looking at an instance where an…

> Runaway trucks are a very real problem Yes. And autonomous trucks are an engineering problem, not an abstract philosophical question. You can ask the question: “how is the autonomous truck going to know if it should slam into the petrol station or into the fruit stand?” And there is no good answer to that. Or you can ask: “How do we engineer autonomous trucks so the probability of a runaway incident is lower than e…

In the real world someone has to program the self driving system to make the decision about how to react. That is, there is a software team somewhere that is going to have to decide what behaviour to program into the system for the trolley problem. So, your statement that it is not an abstract philosophical question is patently false. Obligatory link to The Good Place making the trolley problem real here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRhrfhP5b4

It is hopelessly naive to think that these problems can simply be engineered away. In the real world failures happen in redundant systems. Air brakes are supposed to "fail safe", but in reality a host of factors contribute to accidents: how well a truck or trailer's brakes are maintained, engine state, speed, loading, temperature and grade all combine to make them fail. Trains have multiple braking systems, yet sometimes all 3 fail and a spectacular accident occurs.

In addition to all the traditional mechanical issues, self driving vehicles have tonnes of software failure modes that traditional cars do not. More importantly, those software issues are not well understood at this point in time.

If you want to better understand why software can't be trusted to Do The Right Thing, go back and read investigations analyzing failures of systems that have come before. The Therac-25 is good over here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

No system a human can build can be completely intrinsically safe. Mistakes by designers occur. Safety is a process that takes time and effort, and it will take decades for self driving cars to work out all the bugs.

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