I’d forgotten that people could also lobby in favor of things I want!
I mostly shared this because I so identified with the bolded sentence.
That whole first paragraph is stolen straight from Scott Alexander. (http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/09/links-516-linko-de-mayo/)
Google, Ford, and Uber just created a giant lobbying group for self-driving cars
A who’s-who of carmakers, technology companies, and ride-sharing startups are joining forces to pressure the federal government on the issue of self-driving cars. Ford, Google, Uber, Lyft, and…
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Do you personally really want a self-driving car?
Personally, yes. I would also be fine with self driving cars on demand.
I love the idea of self-driving cars, so long as they're optional. If history is any indicator, it will start optional and will be forced on everyone not long after…
I don't want anyone else killing me by driving their own vehicle. So, I do hope its forced on everyone at some point.
I don't want anyone else killing me by doing anything. However, life is not safe. I assume you're already familiar with the Benjamin Franklin quote about giving up liberty for safety, and I assume it's lost on you…
Everyone, even you, is willing to trade some amount of their own liberty and some amount of others liberty for some amount of safety.
There's wide swaths of things where 90%+ of the population agrees giving up their or others liberty for safety is the right thing to do.
There's wide swaths of things where 90%+ of the population agrees giving up their or others liberty for safety is NOT the right thing to do.
There's some subset of subjects where there is no substantial agreement, and its in this subset of subjects where one side or the other is eager to claim the other side doesn't understand what it means to give up liberty for safety.
I get motion sickness when trying to read while someone else drives. I get really bored on a bus. I enjoy driving, I am sitting there anyway. It is a cool idea, but would I pay an extra $1,000 for the option that I would never actually use?
There should be an optional VR video game console so those who really like driving can be driving some sort of Gran Prix with a Formula One car. Now, that could be fun, team racing?
+Dee Leggett 🙂
+Scott Montague I doubt there will be anything like mandatory, universal (either regulatory, or just because you can't buy "manual" cars) self-driving cars in our lifetime, so I wouldn't worry.
However, I think advancing technology and norms always leaves some subset of people behind. That's pretty unfortunate, I realize.
When cars became prevalent there was probably some portion of the public who didn't or couldn't use them for whatever reason…and those people got left behind if only because the automobile offered too many advantages to not adopt wholesale.
Another example is my in-laws. The internet is a completely foreign concept to them. They don't understand it, they don't want it, it confuses them. I mean, they would make a great comedy skit at how unaware they are of the way the internet works and its norms.
They can get by OK without it because they live in a rural area, but, in say 20 years, I can't imagine anyone functioning as part of our society without substantial usage of the internet.
So you are saying I am stuck in the horse-and-cart days 😉
Perhaps… but I just don't see the benefit of self-driving.
"Calling" my car from the parking lot, maybe…
Driving around the block all day long because I can't find parking, maybe…
Borrow a car, maybe
Stopping the pulsing action on the highway, maybe
Running as a train to get more cars through a green light, maybe
But a self driving car while I am sitting there doing something else, doesn't hold enough value to me.
So you are saying I am stuck in the horse-and-cart days
No, that's not exactly my point…or at least its not my point in some denigrating manner. The examples I gave were just to demonstrate that new technologies often offer lots of value to the majority of the population while at the same time not offering any value to a small portion of the population. Because of network and scaling effects, this new technology causes some older technology, that that this small portion of the population depends upon, to disappear.
Sorry, I was trying to make a joke at my expense…
+Scott Montague Well, I figured that was likely, but I wanted to be sure it was apparent I wasn't criticizing you. Talking on the internet is hard!