Do you really mean to tell me that the IRS uses an email system that keeps the only copy of a user's email on the user's PC, and the user's PC isn't backed up? In the era of records laws, retention requirements, etc?
But, see, it's not going to happen. At least not anytime soon, because it won't be as safe as you think it will be.. Do you have children? Ask yourself: Would you really put your child(ren), alone, in a driverless vehicle, and send them off to Grandma's house?
Ok, that's fair. If it's not as safe as I think it'll be, then I don't want it either, and you and I don't actually disagree at all. My entire argument is conditional and predicated on that. IF and only if automated transportation is significantly safer, I want it. If it's ridiculously safer, by which I'm thinking 10 to 100 times safer or more, yeah, I don't want you to have a choice. Or at least I want to be able to travel on a different set of roads than you do. Maybe you're the best driver ever, but I see plenty of idiots every day, and I see 3-5 accidents a week on my 20 mile, mostly interstate commute.
And yeah, absolutely I want to put my kids in a driverless vehicle if they have many fewer accidents per mile than I do. I don't see it as any different than putting my kids on a plane. I *feel* safer driving them. I'm in control. I trust me. Nevertheless, they're statistically less likely to die going from A to B on a commercial airliner, so I relinquish control and let them be a little safer.
I really don't see it as giving up mastery at all. I hope to get in a car someday and say "drive me to work", then take a nap or read a book. My car will still be absolutely my servant, I just won't have to help it out so much.
Actually, I have 3 dogs. I just don't let them chase people.
I hate to break it to ya, but you live in a world where your actions affect other people. It just doesn't work to say "I'm going to do what I want!" and have me say the same thing when we want opposing things. There has to be some compromise. Or someone has to lose. I don't know a better way to handle that than majority rule. To be clear, I'm not proposing some sort of dictatorial regime where I or someone else gets to make that choice for everyone. I think it should be a consensus. If and when enough people want human driven cars off the roads, yeah, I think it should happen.
Yes, you would. If you're hiring people, it's because you have some quantity of work you want performed, not because you have some quantity of money you need to spend. You're saying that you'd cut your staff by 1/3rd to maintain the same payroll. Well, you're either then choosing to sell 1/3rd fewer burgers, or you already have 50% more staff than you really needed.
What you may find is that having $15/hour people selling burgers means you need to charge more for them. Fine. That'll probably mean fewer people will buy your burgers. Fine. The question is whether that new equilibrium point will nullify the benefit of more money moving around in the economy. We'll see.
Well then, you Republicans and libertarian types should welcome this move.
I do! I used to be on the opposing side, believing as some do that if you raise minimum wages, that prices'll have to go up, and therefore demand will go down, and therefore unemployment will go up and nullify the benefit. Then I started running some numbers and found that prices would have to go up...a little, and demand would go down...a little. To my surprise, it looked like a net benefit to the economy.
That's all on paper, though. I think this is exactly the way to test it. Let some city or state volunteer to be the test bed. Do it. See what happens.
Because I truly believe someday cars like this will do a better job than I can, and will let me do things I'd rather do than drive.
Why do you want to give up your ability to choose, and more to the point, where do you get off thinking it's OK to take away MY or anyone else's ability to choose?
I think it's like smoking. I really don't care if you go home and smoke all you want, just don't make me do it with you. If we someday get to a point where there are 2 kinds of cars, automated ones that almost never get in accidents that are their fault, and conventional cars that crash as much as they do now, I don't get why we shouldn't phase out the dangerous ones.
I guess I see you as being like the annoying neighbor who thinks he has a right to let his dog run around off leash. So long as it stays in his yard, fine. When it chases or bites me, not fine. If you can keep your self-driven car from hitting anything else, fine. You can't.
Because it's awful, that's why. I can either drive myself in 30 minutes, or sit my butt on a series of 3 buses for an hour and a half, and that doesn't count the time walking to or from the first bus stop. Sometimes it's hot out, so I'd get to the office all sweaty. Sometimes it's cold out, so I'd be cold waiting at the bus stop. Getting in my own car and driving is just so far and away a better solution. That's why.
The solution is not to convince everyone that riding public transportation isn't actually pretty bad, it's removing the problems with private transportation. The only thing public transportation has going for it is that it's cheaper and better for the environment. So make cars cheaper and better for the environment.
This is actually pretty insightful. Yes, many, many people shouldn't be running their own generators. I can get a 20kW generator from the local home depot for $5,000, but it's probably not meant to run forever. I imagine one that is meant to deliver 20kW constantly costs more. And you have to fuel it. And hire someone to come fix it when it breaks. Clearly, that's a bad idea.
What if you already own a power company? What if you've already made the investment in generators and people who know how to run them? What if the cost of your operation is less than the power vendors (once you cut through all the hype)? What if you count the cost you'd incur by dismantling your expensive operation only to realize a few years later that you're actually spending more now and you have to go buy a bunch of generators and hire a bunch of people who know how to run them again, just to get where you started?
I know it's popular to point the finger at parents and say it's all our fault, but a metric ton of the bad things my kids learned, they learned in the public schools I'm compelled to send them to unless I can afford to send them to private schools, which I can't. They weren't taught these things at home. They were taught NOT to do a multitude of things at home, but kids don't always listen, or they'll listen to their peers, not their parents.
As a parent of teens, you also don't have 24x7 control over the kid. Sometimes they are at school. Really, the only way to exercise 24x7 control is lock them up, which would be abusive. If you don't do that, sometimes they're going to do things they wouldn't if you'd have been standing over their shoulder. Another problem is that if you're always standing over their shoulder, they never learn to act as a responsible individual because you're always there, coercing the "responsible" part.
I used to think like you, that parents should be held accountable for their childrens' misdeeds. Then I had kids and realized that you simply do the very best you can with your kids, and you hope like crazy that it's enough. The only sure way to avoid getting a huge bill like you propose would be for everyone to simply not have children.
Truly, this wouldn't be GM putting the buggy whip manufacturers out of business, it's GM expecting they can make everyone buy a buggy whip when they already own a car. I guess this is what we get for bailing out stupid companies rather than letting them die.
Quite near in time and space was the mass-murder committed by Anders Bering Breivik. in Utöya which killed 69 people. This was in a country were even the life-sentence is prohibited, Breivik was sentenced for 21 years.
Interesting. And you think we're the ones doing it wrong?
To be perfectly honest, I think we're both doing it wrong. A guy like Breivik should never see the light of day again. He's too much of a risk. Everyone he would be around deserves safety from him more than he deserves freedom. I'd generally rather not execute people just because sometimes we get the wrong guy. I think the state killing an innocent person is too great a price if what we're buying is vengeance or just not having to pay to house a criminal. Consider housing them the price of not executing the occasional wrong guy.
He'd have probably racked up more than $48,000 in donations from happy moviegoers who don't have to deal with people who are too lazy to walk outside if they have to reply to a text or take a call.
...the notion that if you can't make software bug free, you may as well not bother is just stupid on a scale that's hard to comprehend. I skimmed as much of that article I could stomach, but I'm done.
If we can't make cars crash proof, we may as well not make them safer. If we can't make people immortal, we may as well stop advancing medicine.
You know what? If you can't find perfect stories, you may as well stop posting junk like this.
This is mostly beautiful. I have reservations on #6. I'm ok with taking guns away from violent criminals. I don't think educating everyone is going to change the culture of idiots who walk around with a gun in their pants now waiting to shoot someone for "disrespecting" them or being in the wrong neighborhood. Giving them a gun course isn't going to un-Hollywoodize firearms.
My child was harassing another kid in school. It went on for months. The other kid didn't want to go to school anymore. It was a Big Deal. Finally, the parent called me because she wasn't successful in getting the school to stop it. I called the principal and asked basically "where the hell is your anti bullying policy" and got the same response. He didn't consider it bullying. As you said, "WTF?!?!?!?!". The first I'd ever heard of this was when the other parent called me. More parents need to get involved in schools. Show up at school board meetings. Read them the riot act when they need it. Campaign against the bad ones at election time and for the good ones.
Oh, and you can bet my kid stopped that crap that day.
Essentially I believe that it could be harmful for young babies/toddlers to have too many vaccines administered at the same time - 3 vaccines during the same office visit, for example. I can only imagine how many adults would opt for several shots at the same time.
This is exactly the problem. You believe that based on what? This adult would opt for several shots at the same time. Saves me another trip to the doctor and possibly another copay.
I'm surprised the amount of negativity the community has presented on this subject.
Irrationality can be very annoying. We have this amazing thing called science that lets us tease truth out of nature, and a vocal subset of the population wants to go back to the dark ages of superstition and fear. This is frustrating when the consequences are entirely predictable, and include helpless kids getting sick or dying.
But we need to find the cause for autism.
On that, I couldn't agree more. The Wakefields and McCarthys of the world have done incalculable harm in dragging us down this blind alley.
When my old MX-3 was new, it was nearly silent. I was in a parking lot and saw some friends of mine. I drove up literally within 2 feet of them before they heard me.
Internal combustion cars can be darn near silent, too. I'm not aware of any requirement that they make some minimum of noise. Even if there is, cars moving at speed may not be making enough noise for you to hear before they hit you.
They hop in their car, step on the gas, and rush off from a standstill. Sure, visually you can see it's a soft shoulder, but audibly, your brain hasn't bothered to think about dirt or gravel noises. The first sound most audiences associate with a fast departure like that is a squealing tire.
Yes, but why do people think that? Could it be because they've seen it on TV? Having driven cars pretty hard in my youth, they just don't do some of the things you guys make them do. You're filling in the sounds people expect to hear, but we only expect to hear them because someone else put them there before, causing us to hear them.
Fights are another example. Nobody sounds like that when they get hit.
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Absolute nonsense. It's might fraud if they tell you the odds are even. They don't.
Ironically, some of the worst odds you'll find are in state run lotteries.
Do you really mean to tell me that the IRS uses an email system that keeps the only copy of a user's email on the user's PC, and the user's PC isn't backed up? In the era of records laws, retention requirements, etc?
I read about this working in a medical research lab 20 years ago.
That's not profit, that's theft.
He spent $150,000 to make $10,000. What profit?
Ok, that's fair. If it's not as safe as I think it'll be, then I don't want it either, and you and I don't actually disagree at all. My entire argument is conditional and predicated on that. IF and only if automated transportation is significantly safer, I want it. If it's ridiculously safer, by which I'm thinking 10 to 100 times safer or more, yeah, I don't want you to have a choice. Or at least I want to be able to travel on a different set of roads than you do. Maybe you're the best driver ever, but I see plenty of idiots every day, and I see 3-5 accidents a week on my 20 mile, mostly interstate commute.
And yeah, absolutely I want to put my kids in a driverless vehicle if they have many fewer accidents per mile than I do. I don't see it as any different than putting my kids on a plane. I *feel* safer driving them. I'm in control. I trust me. Nevertheless, they're statistically less likely to die going from A to B on a commercial airliner, so I relinquish control and let them be a little safer.
I really don't see it as giving up mastery at all. I hope to get in a car someday and say "drive me to work", then take a nap or read a book. My car will still be absolutely my servant, I just won't have to help it out so much.
Actually, I have 3 dogs. I just don't let them chase people.
I hate to break it to ya, but you live in a world where your actions affect other people. It just doesn't work to say "I'm going to do what I want!" and have me say the same thing when we want opposing things. There has to be some compromise. Or someone has to lose. I don't know a better way to handle that than majority rule. To be clear, I'm not proposing some sort of dictatorial regime where I or someone else gets to make that choice for everyone. I think it should be a consensus. If and when enough people want human driven cars off the roads, yeah, I think it should happen.
Yes, you would. If you're hiring people, it's because you have some quantity of work you want performed, not because you have some quantity of money you need to spend. You're saying that you'd cut your staff by 1/3rd to maintain the same payroll. Well, you're either then choosing to sell 1/3rd fewer burgers, or you already have 50% more staff than you really needed.
What you may find is that having $15/hour people selling burgers means you need to charge more for them. Fine. That'll probably mean fewer people will buy your burgers. Fine. The question is whether that new equilibrium point will nullify the benefit of more money moving around in the economy. We'll see.
I do! I used to be on the opposing side, believing as some do that if you raise minimum wages, that prices'll have to go up, and therefore demand will go down, and therefore unemployment will go up and nullify the benefit. Then I started running some numbers and found that prices would have to go up...a little, and demand would go down...a little. To my surprise, it looked like a net benefit to the economy.
That's all on paper, though. I think this is exactly the way to test it. Let some city or state volunteer to be the test bed. Do it. See what happens.
Because I truly believe someday cars like this will do a better job than I can, and will let me do things I'd rather do than drive.
I think it's like smoking. I really don't care if you go home and smoke all you want, just don't make me do it with you. If we someday get to a point where there are 2 kinds of cars, automated ones that almost never get in accidents that are their fault, and conventional cars that crash as much as they do now, I don't get why we shouldn't phase out the dangerous ones.
I guess I see you as being like the annoying neighbor who thinks he has a right to let his dog run around off leash. So long as it stays in his yard, fine. When it chases or bites me, not fine. If you can keep your self-driven car from hitting anything else, fine. You can't.
Because it's awful, that's why. I can either drive myself in 30 minutes, or sit my butt on a series of 3 buses for an hour and a half, and that doesn't count the time walking to or from the first bus stop. Sometimes it's hot out, so I'd get to the office all sweaty. Sometimes it's cold out, so I'd be cold waiting at the bus stop. Getting in my own car and driving is just so far and away a better solution. That's why.
The solution is not to convince everyone that riding public transportation isn't actually pretty bad, it's removing the problems with private transportation. The only thing public transportation has going for it is that it's cheaper and better for the environment. So make cars cheaper and better for the environment.
I'm guessing you never worked for a hospital.
This is actually pretty insightful. Yes, many, many people shouldn't be running their own generators. I can get a 20kW generator from the local home depot for $5,000, but it's probably not meant to run forever. I imagine one that is meant to deliver 20kW constantly costs more. And you have to fuel it. And hire someone to come fix it when it breaks. Clearly, that's a bad idea.
What if you already own a power company? What if you've already made the investment in generators and people who know how to run them? What if the cost of your operation is less than the power vendors (once you cut through all the hype)? What if you count the cost you'd incur by dismantling your expensive operation only to realize a few years later that you're actually spending more now and you have to go buy a bunch of generators and hire a bunch of people who know how to run them again, just to get where you started?
As a parent of teens, no way.
I know it's popular to point the finger at parents and say it's all our fault, but a metric ton of the bad things my kids learned, they learned in the public schools I'm compelled to send them to unless I can afford to send them to private schools, which I can't. They weren't taught these things at home. They were taught NOT to do a multitude of things at home, but kids don't always listen, or they'll listen to their peers, not their parents.
As a parent of teens, you also don't have 24x7 control over the kid. Sometimes they are at school. Really, the only way to exercise 24x7 control is lock them up, which would be abusive. If you don't do that, sometimes they're going to do things they wouldn't if you'd have been standing over their shoulder. Another problem is that if you're always standing over their shoulder, they never learn to act as a responsible individual because you're always there, coercing the "responsible" part.
I used to think like you, that parents should be held accountable for their childrens' misdeeds. Then I had kids and realized that you simply do the very best you can with your kids, and you hope like crazy that it's enough. The only sure way to avoid getting a huge bill like you propose would be for everyone to simply not have children.
Truly, this wouldn't be GM putting the buggy whip manufacturers out of business, it's GM expecting they can make everyone buy a buggy whip when they already own a car. I guess this is what we get for bailing out stupid companies rather than letting them die.
What kind of idiot thinks clicking the Facebook like button DOESN'T tell your friends you liked something?
Interesting. And you think we're the ones doing it wrong?
To be perfectly honest, I think we're both doing it wrong. A guy like Breivik should never see the light of day again. He's too much of a risk. Everyone he would be around deserves safety from him more than he deserves freedom. I'd generally rather not execute people just because sometimes we get the wrong guy. I think the state killing an innocent person is too great a price if what we're buying is vengeance or just not having to pay to house a criminal. Consider housing them the price of not executing the occasional wrong guy.
He'd have probably racked up more than $48,000 in donations from happy moviegoers who don't have to deal with people who are too lazy to walk outside if they have to reply to a text or take a call.
...the notion that if you can't make software bug free, you may as well not bother is just stupid on a scale that's hard to comprehend. I skimmed as much of that article I could stomach, but I'm done.
If we can't make cars crash proof, we may as well not make them safer.
If we can't make people immortal, we may as well stop advancing medicine.
You know what? If you can't find perfect stories, you may as well stop posting junk like this.
SO much this. It's their one main job, and they habitually fail to do it.
This is mostly beautiful. I have reservations on #6. I'm ok with taking guns away from violent criminals. I don't think educating everyone is going to change the culture of idiots who walk around with a gun in their pants now waiting to shoot someone for "disrespecting" them or being in the wrong neighborhood. Giving them a gun course isn't going to un-Hollywoodize firearms.
My child was harassing another kid in school. It went on for months. The other kid didn't want to go to school anymore. It was a Big Deal. Finally, the parent called me because she wasn't successful in getting the school to stop it. I called the principal and asked basically "where the hell is your anti bullying policy" and got the same response. He didn't consider it bullying. As you said, "WTF?!?!?!?!". The first I'd ever heard of this was when the other parent called me. More parents need to get involved in schools. Show up at school board meetings. Read them the riot act when they need it. Campaign against the bad ones at election time and for the good ones.
Oh, and you can bet my kid stopped that crap that day.
This is exactly the problem. You believe that based on what? This adult would opt for several shots at the same time. Saves me another trip to the doctor and possibly another copay.
Irrationality can be very annoying. We have this amazing thing called science that lets us tease truth out of nature, and a vocal subset of the population wants to go back to the dark ages of superstition and fear. This is frustrating when the consequences are entirely predictable, and include helpless kids getting sick or dying.
On that, I couldn't agree more. The Wakefields and McCarthys of the world have done incalculable harm in dragging us down this blind alley.
When my old MX-3 was new, it was nearly silent. I was in a parking lot and saw some friends of mine. I drove up literally within 2 feet of them before they heard me.
Internal combustion cars can be darn near silent, too. I'm not aware of any requirement that they make some minimum of noise. Even if there is, cars moving at speed may not be making enough noise for you to hear before they hit you.
Yes, but why do people think that? Could it be because they've seen it on TV? Having driven cars pretty hard in my youth, they just don't do some of the things you guys make them do. You're filling in the sounds people expect to hear, but we only expect to hear them because someone else put them there before, causing us to hear them.
Fights are another example. Nobody sounds like that when they get hit.