Self-Driving Cars - Heaven or Hell

[pbrower2a]

(07-09-2018, 01:21 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-08-2018, 08:13 PM)Galen Wrote:

(07-08-2018, 10:32 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2018, 03:32 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-07-2018, 12:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Self-driving cars will make travel, especially long-distance travel. less expensive. With fewer collisions they will have lower insurance rates. They will allow people with such conditions as narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and epilepsy to drive. -- well, more technically, take a car. They will allow people to command a car after those people are no longer fit to drive. They will lead to fewer traffic tickets for speeding, red-light violations, and stop-sign violations. 

The problem is who controls the software and so ultimately controls the car.  You might want to consider what

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/artic...ital-lives

Richard Stallman has to say about such things.  Then there is the little matter of vulnerabilities that exist in all software that could be used by the malicious.

As usual pbrower is incapable of thinking beyond the obvious.

I know your philosophical position -- that we are all vulnerable to liberal bunglers, so we might as well have faith in a market unaccountable to anyone except those who own and manage the assets because such people truly know what they are doing. Well, Meyer Lansky and John Gotti both knew what they were doing, and they did what they did very well. Need I remind you of the Russian Mafia, masters of economic crime. I prefer to avoid dealings with people strongly motivated to hurt, humiliate, or exploit me. I am convinced that a complete reversion to unregulated economics is nearly certain to lead to something like the Planet Mongo (the Flash Gordon universe), basically feudalism with high technology. Does jus primae noctis operate there? It may or may not have under feudalism.

You idiot, it has nothing to do with liberal bunglers.  It is about whether or not someone else gets to control property that you paid for.  It is all about giving others power over your ability to travel because unless you control the software you do not control the car.  In the final analysis the programmer has ultimate control over the software and do you trust him and the people he works for?  Given the tendency of the human race to abuse any form of power this seems like a really bad idea.

Try thinking for a change.

Word: Technonarcissism.  

Man, I'd never, ever get a Tesla or other magical mystery machine car because:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/25/t...-3-circus/
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/...il.107480/

And how much would it cost to install powering stations in say, Oklahoma?  I'd reckon too much.  We proles can't afford the things anyway.  I suppose Trump would have to get the coal industry going again to produce enough power for the things.

I also don't want to be a product because I know all of that software has built in spyware.  Like anything else, like Google which I don't use, I demand to be paid for my data. Since I don't get paid now, Big Tech is firewalled out of my computer because I get nothing, nada, zilch in payments! That's how Neoliberalism works. No money for me = no money for Big Tech.  Same for FaceFuck.  I demand a $500.00/month check from Facefuck before I use it.

Galen -- I suggest that you use the words moron, imbecile, and idiot in the once-recognized psychological categories. Idiot: IQ 30 ir less. Imbecile: 31-50. Moron -- 51-70.  Current terms are "profoundly mentally impaired". "trainable mentally impaired" and "educable mentally impaired. The educational system is obliged to deal with such. You don't hurt my feelings by ridiculing my alleged low intelligence; I laugh at you for that.

...Ragnarok:

Technology and the legal process or social policy usually work together. The job that I have used to not require that I have a computer. Now I need one just to get assignments, even if the computer is nothing more than a smart phone. Note well that a smart phone is a more powerful computer than the mainframes in use as late as the 1970s in Big Business. Two box-store retailers encourage people to apply for jobs on-line. The government has been issuing the so-called "Obamaphones" so that people on welfare wil find applying for a job far easier. That may have helped cut the unemployment rate by matching people in impoverished sections of large urban areas with jobs otherwise hard to fill in the suburbs that those poor people cannot afford to live.

I do not have a problem with technology that helps people live better, more enriching lives. All technologies have changed the world, often in unexpected ways, if the technology is a reject. (Note that most innovations end up unused because they do nothing to improve life). Cheap stoneware by Wedgwood changed people's dining habits. Railroads allowed people to travel farther on land to meet marriage partners and allowed people in peasant villages to marry outside of their villages so that they were no longer marrying fourth-cousins as a norm. Automobiles greatly changed dating habits, even allowing people to find places in which to fornicate without detection. Antibiotics may have been the difference between the Allies and Japanese winning in the Pacific Theater because the attrition rate for Japanese soldiers was far higher.  The British created the far most advanced computer of the time to read the German naval code and prevent the German navy from tightening the noose around Britain  that would have starved Britain into surrender. High fidelity allowed people to turn living rooms into concert halls -- and one needs  hi-fi equipment to hear performances of Rostropovich of Bach's cello suites -- or the hits of the Beatles. It's a matter of taste, and not technology now. A smartphone or tablet and headphones are now adequate. Radio and television? Enough said.

To get the fullest use of a computer, one must make some compromises -- like subscribing to material behind a paywall or allowing sites to put cookies that offer click0bait. There might be suggestions, so that if you purchase a complete sets of string quartets of Beethoven and Shostakovich on Amazon.com you might get the suggestion that you might look into getting complete sets of string quartets by Mozart, Haydn, Dvorak, and Bartok -- or the symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich. But in the days when retail salespeople were in fact salespeople and not order-takers, that was part of the business.

As there was a snake in the Garden of Eden (in the myth), there are figurative snakes on the Wen... I don't have to go into detail. Maybe Donald Trump won the 2016 election because he better used technology (if without scruple, as is his wont in business dealings).

OK, so just because a couple can drive a flivver into the back woods and fornicate does not mean that their proposed fornication is a good idea. Watching mindless television is a complete waste of time. Connecting to child porn is illegal, and using the Web to reach neo-Nazi or ISIS sites is grossly unwise. All in all we need to inculcate conscience even before we cultivate the intellect, for a brilliant person with no morals (think of Josef Goebbels and Mao Zedong) can do great harm to Humanity. Islamic Jihad, which merged with al-Qaeda, was known as the "Engineers' Cult" because its way of thought fit the rigid black-and-white thinking characteristic of engineers. Aum Shinrikyo attracted some physicians and scientists who did the worst and got hanged for that. A moron with a solid moral compass is useful for doing work that is a challenge to that person and sheer drudgery to someone smarter. A brilliant person with no moral compass can easily become a sadist or terrorist.

I look at the positives of self-driving vehicles... and the big one is that they will greatly reduce vehicle collisions and consequent deaths and crippling injuries. I can see them changing patterns of driving -- like allowing people to travel while asleep. But we already have computers in cars -- computers that can warn us of such things as not putting the gas cap back or of driving on underinflated tires. O have cruise control which allows me to pay attention to the road instead of to the speedometer -- and using it I may have avoided some traffic tickets. All technologies have their problems. It's up to us to use any new technologically-created abilities and possibilities wisely. Just because a man can send a picture of his 'manhood'  to a fourteen-year-old girl does not make it wise or even lawful.

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