If all else fails, why can't the occupant push the "Computer, please stop at the earliest safe location" button?
Probably in most cases that would work... but not if when the occupant is asleep, or not in the car (i.e. the car is coming back from dropping someone off at the airport).
Seriously, why wouldn't Police be allowed to pull over autonomous vehicles?
I think the question isn't so much "would the police be legally allowed to do it" as "how would a policeman actually go about doing it"?
Will the car be programmed to watch for lights and a siren and pull itself over when it 'sees' them? Or would the policeman need to send a special "pull over" signal on a remote control? Etc.
Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet.
You're right, of course -- but the denialist side wins the argument anyway, because now we're no longer discussing global warming, we're discussing a politician's history and alleged misdeeds instead. Any discussion that ends up on a completely different topic counts as a tie, and ties count as a win for the status quo.
Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried
I understand you can also make a pretty good livelihood getting grants from those who want the idea of global warming to go away. In fact, I think it's safe to say the Chevrons and Exxons of the world will pay your hypothetical opportunistic scientist a lot more than the average University could -- after all, oil companies make a lot more profit, and a lot more to lose if people start taking the issue seriously.
I guess you have never seen west Texas... And for that matter, lots of other places currently not very nice to live in that will be much nicer in a warmer and wetter world.
Perhaps the climate will be nicer in those places... but that pleasantness will be largely cancelled out by the presence of all the desperate refugees with no more houses to live in or food to eat.
It takes a lot of time and money to (re)build a coastal city, and it's not like you can just pick up the city's buildings and move them all whenever the coastline moves.
A nice suggestion but I doubt the ISS would, in it's present configuration, withstand the needed acceleration to leave Earth Orbit.
I wonder what the minimum acceleration needed is to lift the ISS out of Earth Orbit?
My (naive) mind is telling me that any acceleration at all would be sufficient, if it was applied consistently in the right direction, over a long enough period... but I'm probably wrong about that:^)
Of course, in civilised nations, if we want "eco", we buy a small turbo diesel
And of course in *really* civilized nations, we ride a bike. A decent commuter bike can be had (used) for a less than $1000 (sometimes even for free), it requires no rare earths to build, and your only fuel cost is the price of the food that you were going to eat anyway.
[Agnstics are] also the easiest to covert because they don't have any preexisting learned dogma to counter.
I'm not sure this is true in general. It would depend on why the person is agnostic. If he's agnostic simply because he's never given religious issues any thought, you might have a point.
If, on the other hand, he's agnostic because he's used to doing his own reasoning and requires solid evidence before accepting extraordinary claims as true, that would make him more difficult to convert than a member of a competing religion(*), who is already in the habit of believing things solely on another person's say-so.... in that case the hard work of convincing the person not to question unproven religious claims has already been done for you; all you have to do is convince them that your religious authority is more authoritative than their current one)
(*) For the purposes of this post, I'm going to classify atheism as a "competing religion".... at least it is for atheists who "believe" there is no God primarily because Dawkins or someone else they respect said so. Atheists who admit that they can't prove the non-existence of God (but nevertheless consider God's existence so unlikely that they can't give the idea any credence) are not technically atheists, they are agnostics who like to argue;^)
No. Communism is an economic ideology centered around common ownership of the means of production. Atheism is a philosophical outlook defined by a lack of belief in the existence of God. The two belief systems are independent of each other, and it's perfectly possible to be a religious communist or a secular capitalist. In fact, I'd say China is increasingly becoming the latter.
You can hate on "government motors" all ya want - They did a great job on this one, and unlike the haters, I'm getting that bailout money back in the form of something pretty darn cool.
Also it should be noted that GM is once again the world's largest seller of automobiles. So it would appear the bailout had its intended effect -- instead of a gaping hole where GM used to be, we now have a successful domestic auto company.
forcing them to be SURE that they don't cause an eruption.
I don't think any amount of liability can force a company into infallibility. Or to put it another way, the problem isn't just when they do things they aren't sure about, it's also when they do things they are sure about, and it turns out they were wrong.
Think about it, if the driverless cars that are definitely coming are proven to be safer than human driven cars, which I suspect they will be, how will any government justify letting us drive?
That will definitely happen. Right after they ban smoking and drinking (after all, tee totaling is proven safer, so how can they justify letting us smoke and drink?)
Many of those that really would rather buy more efficient vehicles can't afford them, and are stuck with older ones, so the economists would just be hurting the poor.
One possible solution: raise gas taxes, and use the money to subsidize efficient vehicles so that the poor can afford to buy them. Now you've helped the poor, because they can spend less on their next car and also spend less on gas to run it.
Where I live, SUVs are all over. But, it makes more sense. Adverse conditions favor SUVs.
So buy a fuel-efficient SUV. They do exist.
An economist, you would think, would say people buy what they want.
An economist would also say that people buy what they can afford, which is not always the same thing.
Shit happens, right? So you are not going to honor this contract? Fine, will meet you in the court room.
Of course they will honor the contract. Specifically, they will honor part of the contract that says "this contract is invalidated if the customer deliberately sabotaged the vehicle".
Yeah, I totally hate it when people try to hold public officials to higher standards.
I should point out that a lot of people who are involved in accidents suffer from short-term memory loss regarding the time immediately before the trauma.
Furthermore, recalling an event is not like retrieving a file from a computer, it is an active process of reconstruction, where some details may be accurately recalled, while others are pulled in via inference or conflation with other (similar) events. That is why eyewitnesses are so notoriously unreliable in court -- it's very common for people to "remember" things that didn't actually happen.
Okay, my point is: politician jokes aside, it's entirely plausible that the governor did indeed honestly "remember" putting on his seat belt and driving under the speed limit, and therefore was not lying when he said that. Memory is faulty, especially after you've been badly shaken up.
Yes, that is my estimation of what Obama's thought process might have been. Did it sound like I was joking?
"Yeah, I will go ahead and sign this law despite the fact that parts of it are absolutely terrible. I will do it so that my political opponents will not have any ammunition (from the reasonable parts of the bill) to use against me."
I don't mean to break your heart, but yes, this is how politicians think. All of them. People who do not think this way are not politicians (at least, not for long), because they do not get elected or re-elected. Perhaps you've heard the saying that "politics is the art of compromise"? That's what it means -- if you want to succeed in politics, you have to compromise.
Really? If things are clearly this bad, it is time to dissolve it all and start over. Hopefully with the same principles such as the inalienable right to self determination (Freedom!).
The risk of dissolving it all and starting over is that you'll end up with something even worse that we have now. Keep in mind that when the existing government has been resolved, there's a power vacuum and it only takes one ambitious strongman to step in, grab the nukes, and declare himself Dictator for Life (tm). So be careful what you wish for.
What do you consider "excellent" in this regard? If you mean that Paul does in fact always stick rigidly to his rhetoric and never lets the facts play a role in his decision making, I'd say that's a terrible quality in a leader. An effective leader needs to be able to realize when his ideology is not going to cut the mustard in the real world, and adapt. (For an example of what happens when leaders can't or won't adapt their ideology to work in the real world, see North Korea)
If, on the other hand, you mean that Paul in fact does make political compromises when necessary... then good for him, but of course that's what every other (sane) politician does also.
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How about a tension-leg platform that is made to be lighter than air by large rigid balloons that contain a vacuum?
That way no unobtainium is needed
Except for the unobtanium that you'll be constructing the balloons out of.
Will we be raising taxes to pay for all of this cool space stuff, or just putting it on the credit card as usual?
If all else fails, why can't the occupant push the "Computer, please stop at the earliest safe location" button?
Probably in most cases that would work... but not if when the occupant is asleep, or not in the car (i.e. the car is coming back from dropping someone off at the airport).
Unless the cop plans to either (1) Inspect it for malfunction/damage, or (2) Impound it, I don't see any reason to physically stop the vehicle.
You're not a Toyota customer, are you? ;^)
Seriously, why wouldn't Police be allowed to pull over autonomous vehicles?
I think the question isn't so much "would the police be legally allowed to do it" as "how would a policeman actually go about doing it"?
Will the car be programmed to watch for lights and a siren and pull itself over when it 'sees' them? Or would the policeman need to send a special "pull over" signal on a remote control? Etc.
On what planet is pig blood harmful to a river?
Fertilizer runoff is a major problem in rivers.
Pig blood is essentially fertilizer.
Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet.
You're right, of course -- but the denialist side wins the argument anyway, because now we're no longer discussing global warming, we're discussing a politician's history and alleged misdeeds instead. Any discussion that ends up on a completely different topic counts as a tie, and ties count as a win for the status quo.
Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried
I understand you can also make a pretty good livelihood getting grants from those who want the idea of global warming to go away. In fact, I think it's safe to say the Chevrons and Exxons of the world will pay your hypothetical opportunistic scientist a lot more than the average University could -- after all, oil companies make a lot more profit, and a lot more to lose if people start taking the issue seriously.
I guess you have never seen west Texas... And for that matter, lots of other places currently not very nice to live in that will be much nicer in a warmer and wetter world.
Perhaps the climate will be nicer in those places... but that pleasantness will be largely cancelled out by the presence of all the desperate refugees with no more houses to live in or food to eat.
It takes a lot of time and money to (re)build a coastal city, and it's not like you can just pick up the city's buildings and move them all whenever the coastline moves.
A nice suggestion but I doubt the ISS would, in it's present configuration, withstand the needed acceleration to leave Earth Orbit.
I wonder what the minimum acceleration needed is to lift the ISS out of Earth Orbit?
My (naive) mind is telling me that any acceleration at all would be sufficient, if it was applied consistently in the right direction, over a long enough period... but I'm probably wrong about that :^)
Of course, in civilised nations, if we want "eco", we buy a small turbo diesel
And of course in *really* civilized nations, we ride a bike. A decent commuter bike can be had (used) for a less than $1000 (sometimes even for free), it requires no rare earths to build, and your only fuel cost is the price of the food that you were going to eat anyway.
[Agnstics are] also the easiest to covert because they don't have any preexisting learned dogma to counter.
I'm not sure this is true in general. It would depend on why the person is agnostic. If he's agnostic simply because he's never given religious issues any thought, you might have a point.
If, on the other hand, he's agnostic because he's used to doing his own reasoning and requires solid evidence before accepting extraordinary claims as true, that would make him more difficult to convert than a member of a competing religion(*), who is already in the habit of believing things solely on another person's say-so.... in that case the hard work of convincing the person not to question unproven religious claims has already been done for you; all you have to do is convince them that your religious authority is more authoritative than their current one)
(*) For the purposes of this post, I'm going to classify atheism as a "competing religion".... at least it is for atheists who "believe" there is no God primarily because Dawkins or someone else they respect said so. Atheists who admit that they can't prove the non-existence of God (but nevertheless consider God's existence so unlikely that they can't give the idea any credence) are not technically atheists, they are agnostics who like to argue ;^)
Communists are, technically, atheists.
No. Communism is an economic ideology centered around common ownership of the means of production. Atheism is a philosophical outlook defined by a lack of belief in the existence of God. The two belief systems are independent of each other, and it's perfectly possible to be a religious communist or a secular capitalist. In fact, I'd say China is increasingly becoming the latter.
They'll still end up bankrupt if they can't do any better than this.
Don't worry, they're doing okay.
You can hate on "government motors" all ya want - They did a great job on this one, and unlike the haters, I'm getting that bailout money back in the form of something pretty darn cool.
Also it should be noted that GM is once again the world's largest seller of automobiles. So it would appear the bailout had its intended effect -- instead of a gaping hole where GM used to be, we now have a successful domestic auto company.
I'm sure there will be something huge that we never see coming and once it's there, we'll wonder how we ever lived without it.
Cthulu?
forcing them to be SURE that they don't cause an eruption.
I don't think any amount of liability can force a company into infallibility. Or to put it another way, the problem isn't just when they do things they aren't sure about, it's also when they do things they are sure about, and it turns out they were wrong.
Which one is the real failure?
Why limit ourselves to just one? Can't we all be real failures, each in our own special way?
Think about it, if the driverless cars that are definitely coming are proven to be safer than human driven cars, which I suspect they will be, how will any government justify letting us drive?
That will definitely happen. Right after they ban smoking and drinking (after all, tee totaling is proven safer, so how can they justify letting us smoke and drink?)
Many of those that really would rather buy more efficient vehicles can't afford them, and are stuck with older ones, so the economists would just be hurting the poor.
One possible solution: raise gas taxes, and use the money to subsidize efficient vehicles so that the poor can afford to buy them. Now you've helped the poor, because they can spend less on their next car and also spend less on gas to run it.
Where I live, SUVs are all over. But, it makes more sense. Adverse conditions favor SUVs.
So buy a fuel-efficient SUV. They do exist.
An economist, you would think, would say people buy what they want.
An economist would also say that people buy what they can afford, which is not always the same thing.
Shit happens, right? So you are not going to honor this contract? Fine, will meet you in the court room.
Of course they will honor the contract. Specifically, they will honor part of the contract that says "this contract is invalidated if the customer deliberately sabotaged the vehicle".
Yeah, I totally hate it when people try to hold public officials to higher standards.
I should point out that a lot of people who are involved in accidents suffer from short-term memory loss regarding the time immediately before the trauma.
Furthermore, recalling an event is not like retrieving a file from a computer, it is an active process of reconstruction, where some details may be accurately recalled, while others are pulled in via inference or conflation with other (similar) events. That is why eyewitnesses are so notoriously unreliable in court -- it's very common for people to "remember" things that didn't actually happen.
Okay, my point is: politician jokes aside, it's entirely plausible that the governor did indeed honestly "remember" putting on his seat belt and driving under the speed limit, and therefore was not lying when he said that. Memory is faulty, especially after you've been badly shaken up.
How on earth does this get to be a criminal offense rather than civil one?
It probably doesn't, but lawyers are paid to write scary cease and desist letters, not accurate ones.
What. The. Fuck. Are you serious? Seriously?
Yes, that is my estimation of what Obama's thought process might have been. Did it sound like I was joking?
"Yeah, I will go ahead and sign this law despite the fact that parts of it are absolutely terrible. I will do it so that my political opponents will not have any ammunition (from the reasonable parts of the bill) to use against me."
I don't mean to break your heart, but yes, this is how politicians think. All of them. People who do not think this way are not politicians (at least, not for long), because they do not get elected or re-elected. Perhaps you've heard the saying that "politics is the art of compromise"? That's what it means -- if you want to succeed in politics, you have to compromise.
Really? If things are clearly this bad, it is time to dissolve it all and start over. Hopefully with the same principles such as the inalienable right to self determination (Freedom!).
The risk of dissolving it all and starting over is that you'll end up with something even worse that we have now. Keep in mind that when the existing government has been resolved, there's a power vacuum and it only takes one ambitious strongman to step in, grab the nukes, and declare himself Dictator for Life (tm). So be careful what you wish for.
Actually, his record in this regard is excellent.
What do you consider "excellent" in this regard? If you mean that Paul does in fact always stick rigidly to his rhetoric and never lets the facts play a role in his decision making, I'd say that's a terrible quality in a leader. An effective leader needs to be able to realize when his ideology is not going to cut the mustard in the real world, and adapt. (For an example of what happens when leaders can't or won't adapt their ideology to work in the real world, see North Korea)
If, on the other hand, you mean that Paul in fact does make political compromises when necessary... then good for him, but of course that's what every other (sane) politician does also.