The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars

Post by CM30 » Sun, May 22, 2016, 3:30 PM UTC

kenshaw wrote: post #52

Tiktaalik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposing autonomous cars actually drive extremely safely and this results in them going 20 km/h under the speed limit. Are drivers going to be happy about the length of their commute increasing while regular car drivers (due to human recklessness) wiz by in the left lane at 130 km/h? I think you'd see a lot of human drivers get frustrated and turn off the AI.

Actually, I'd predict the opposite -- that people will purposefully start to increase their commute times and tell the car to "take the scenic route." People are frustrated with commuting because they have to be mentally engaged doing it. When that's no longer a requirement, people will watch movies/tv, read books / news articles, do their makeup/prep their hair, give each other massages/have sex, play video games, e…

Depends what they're commuting for. A lot of businesses want you to be there even day at 9pm on the dot, no exceptions. For people working at companies like this, minimising their daily commute is basically essential, since their bosses will not negotiate on things like start times, end times and the amount of work done in the day.

Do people really want to lose their remaining time with their family just to spend it commuting and doing the same stuff they could be at doing at home in the car? How about losing their sleep in the morning because their car takes longer to get them to work than it used to?

Some people might want to roll straight out of bed and into their offices/workplace. A lot of others would rather minimise the time spent going to/leaving work and spend it in their own home doing stuff they want to be doing.

Post by Eric_WVGG » Mon, May 23, 2016, 12:37 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #64

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #59

I loved that this article focused on the peculiar de facto morality that has evolved around car culture. I quit driving about fifteen years ago, primarily get around on bicycle with the occasional train or Uber. You really need to get locked out of a car for a while to appreciate the weird sense of entitlement that drivers get. When the streets are full of cars and traffic is slow, well that’s just a fact of life, yo…

As a driver I often feel cyclists are reckless in how they ride in busy city streets. I have seen guys entering the path of a speeding car with no regard to his safety. Cyclists are not protected and I am acutely aware of the risks around them, and that makes me nervous. As a cyclist, I am afraid to take these risks, so I keep to sidewalks and parks. Unfortunately, when I walk on sidewalks I often feel threatened by…

I get that there are lousy cyclists, and I am truly embarrassed by them. But that is no excuse for drivers to behave recklessly around them.

w/r/t the notion that cyclists sharing a sidewalk with pedestrians (a practice I would never condone) is "just as bad" as drivers sharing the road with cyclists, that's just stupid. A two ton machine can kill people. Pedestrians being killed by cyclists is nearly unheard of. It happened once in Central Park last year and the event was so extraordinary that bicycle blogs were talking about it for weeks.

Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars

Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars