If I search for say 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers' feel free to make some of the results to places to buy it. I'm sure they already do, probably in the ads I've blocked. But anyway, sure, weight the search results in favour of some store that sells whatever record that's on, or whatever. I'm fine with that.
I'll just search for 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers torrent' if I wish to download it. And if you fuck with those search results, well... then you're not a very good search engine any more, because then you are ignoring what I'm searching for and showing me what you want me to search for instead... And then I go elsewhere.
I had a glance at the wikipage you link to, and from what I see his feats are... "staying warm".
No, that seems to be it. Sure, in some contexts he does it while climbing mountains and running marathons, but really all he does is maintain bodyheat better than most.
Living in Sweden where I on a yearly basis face temperatures from around -25C in the coldest heart of winter to around in the heat of summer 35C, I know quite a lot about dealing with body temperature... Especially since it so happens that I, presumably like this Hof guy, is rather naturally inclined to the cold. I have an easier time dealing with strong cold than strong heat. But the main thing I've noticed is... it's habit. Practice. It's not a supernatural thing or anything esoteric, it's just a two part puzzle.
First part, physical conditioning. If you are used to cold, you're used to cold. You burn more energy to heat yourself up, so you have to have a good metabolism, eat well, and all that yahoo... but there's nothing supernatural about it, just common biology.
Second part, mind over matter. This sounds like something mysterious to most people, but everyone does it ALL the time. Just distract yourself from a discomfort, be it pain, cold, heat, or whatever. As long as it isn't a direct emergency signal your mind can be made to temper it, in some cases even ignore it completely. This isn't mysterious, isn't strange, and I dare say most psychologists, psychiatrists, and probably also everyone in neuroscience could teach some basic examples of it even to a small child in about five minutes.
In other words it's about as natural as breathing.
To compare Wim Hof well, you should compare him to people like the olympian athletes, who are at the peak of what we as humans can do (with the aid of some artificial help, in some cases.) To compare him to old anecdotal fairy tales of mystic powers is doing him a great disservice... even if he does it himself. More importantly it's doing YOU a great disservice, since you are indeed limiting yourself by not having a realistic view of the world.
And the snowman was also quite clearly not completely there when he made the suggestion that this very rare and apparently undiagnosed condition would account for 5-10% of people in a random group. The point is moot, the amount of people so afflicted is so small that it wouldn't make a statistical blip in a study like this.
Your point is moot. That might be the case for the one in a million that has such an issue, but that's not statistically significant.
Unless you are suggesting that 5-10% of a randomly selected group suffer from this or other very rare and apparently undiagnosed and unnoticed deficiencies or allergies, all reacting to the exact same very well controlled inert substances.
I had to stop and think for a while about all the sides of that issue. It's definitely a complicated one. Here's how I see it...
No.
First, technically we are not allowed to break the traffic laws even during labour and such, which means we should still be legally limited by the speed limits and all such things. An automated car should in theory be able to drive very close to these legal limits, and it will of course be doing so under all circumstances because there is no point in an automated car that isn't driving as efficiently as it can. There might be an "econo-mode" for the greenfreaks to enjoy, or even cars built entirely to drive as energy efficiently as possible - these particular models might have overrides for more aggressive driving, but that's something for that particular developer to decide on, nothing that is inherent to this type of car.
Second, those that are allowed to break the speed-limit, i.e. cops and medics and such, have their own vehicles, that will be built to different specifications... Perhaps even all manual ones, or eventually they as well automated. At some point in the future I'm guessing the ambulance won't even need to turn much heading down the road, because all the other cars will automatically go out of its way as efficiently as possible, without either party slowing down.
Now, if I look into the looking glass that far forward, I see ambulances no longer existing. Why? Well, because if you call 911 they'll check your stats or whatever, and if they deem you have to go in you get told to go get in your car, the operator remotely confers ambulance status to your car, tells it whether to avoid bumps and so on, what hospital to go to, and so on... and off it goes. Hell, far enough into the future they might even just remotely flag down the nearest car if someone drops in a public place.
To conclude, at this point in the development there is no point in a "get there faster" button, because it will always get there as fast as is legally possibly, which is as fast as you're allowed to get there. If you want to get there faster you meet up with emergency services along the way, this is standard legal practice - that I admit isn't practised much... but still. And if such a button eventually comes into existence, there is no reason to have it locally. You should have to call up emergency services and justify your need for it BEFORE the function activates.
No, the maths doesn't make my hypothesis illogical, not when you count the fact that these are no 300,000 consecutive miles from start to stop regardless of incidents. These are 300,000 miles interrupted by a lot of human overrides as soon as a situation came along that they didn't believe the car could handle, such as roadworks, parades, or whatever.
And no, I don't think I've done 300K miles, but I'm in the same order of magnitude, without a crash as well, so I'm doing pretty decently - be it skill or good fortunes. But this isn't a contest between me and google's car, I'm far from the best driver in the world. The last few years I have barely touched a car. This is a contest between human problem solving and processing skills, and computer skills... and that's a fight that the computer wins hands down... as long as it understands all the variables. That's the rub. Humans have evolved to react to the unexpected, to categorize things into threat or friend, to read situations they have never encountered in a way that no computer can - to this day. We're getting there, sure, but we're not there yet.
When google clocks 300,000 miles in that thing during regular commutes with some guy asleep in the back seat, then I'll be impressed and say it's better than even the best human drivers. As long as they are overriding it in all the situations where certain unexpected things can happen (they don't mind some unexpected things, cars drifting into lanes and such is easy for them), well as long as they keep doing that I'll stick with saying it's a hell of an awesome project, and I still want one. But it's not a better driver than a good human driver yet. Not for ALL situations, and thus not for driving in general.
First off, to the people you are referring to it wouldn't matter if they were actually shocked and burned or whatever. They do that for fun. Secondly, they don't find it fun when it happens to them non-consensually, e.g. because their system was hacked. Which is what this thread is about - the porn thread you'll find higher up.
As for whether it matters if the sensations are caused by the stimuli - no it doesn't. Your body still reacts to pain whether it's real or not. if you perceive you are being shocked or burned, then that's what your body will react to. That's a horrible power to put in the hands of someone with access to your computer.
I agree with you to some degree, but I don't agree with how many events of unexpected things happen, and the types. Defensive driving is a really good start, and it'll keep you reasonably safe from the exact sort of thing that a computer would be good at handling. However there are more things than cars on the road, and more unexpected things than collapsed bridges that can happen. At one point I had to stop for what I thought was a traffic accident, turns out a hot air balloon had landed in the middle of the road. Does google's car look up? If it does, could it interpret what it saw enough to predict what was going to happen?
A lot of things are just collision detection, granted, but then a lot of things are predicting areas where collisions might happen. Google's car won't know that your neighbour has five kids and no sense to teach them to not run blindly into the road, for instance. Google's car might spot a ball crossing the road and slow down, but will it spot a kite? A paper airplane? Soap bubbles?
I love the idea of a computerized car, and certainly think that they are smart enough today to handle freeway driving. Hell, the cars we can build today would easily handle all driving if we only changed out all cars at once and rebuilt all streets to keep pedestrians off them or to assigned areas, but of course that won't happen... In my estimation, the unexpected situations as the situation lays today, would mean that a computer would stop people falling asleep causing accidents, but instead cause them in a lot of other cases. Now this is completely just my opinion based on nothing but my experience on the road as a driver, as a pedestrian, and my experience with tech and its benefits and limitations... So if you don't agree then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
No I'm basing it on a very thorough understanding of how computers work - within a set of parameters. Computers can not handle the unexpected unless they are programmed for that eventuality, with some exception here for the rising field of machine learning and AI, which as of yet is not at the level of an average human being when it comes to assessing information outside of their pre-defined parameters. It's getting there, sure, but it's not there yet.
And as I informed the other guy below/above, this thread of the conversation was in reference to the computers performance versus the absolute best drivers - a class I'm definitely not included in. Of course had you bothered to actually read the conversation before jumping in you'd have seen I've already discussed that common assumption at length. ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038597&cid=40944209 )
I think you are totally right that the only fair assessment is more miles, although of course if we truly want a fair assessment then those miles would be without human intervention - which would lead google's car to quickly fail. To date they specifically switch to manual mode in any troubling situations, because they are full aware (and do not hide) that the technology is not quite there yet for unexpected situations. Or to put it differently - they also agree with me.
A glove that makes me feel sensations is great and all, but I do hope it comes with some pretty heavy security limitations and so on... Wouldn't want some hacker to get access to my machine and burn my hand, or shock it, or even just cause extremely unpleasant sensations to it as a form of blackmail or just for kicks. Sure, "just take it off"... not so easy if both your hands are spasming because you feel they are stuck into a fire or something.
You already ceded my point, how nice of you. "that could well eclipse all but the tiniest sliver of the driving population."
Yes. That was, as I pointed out, the sliver we were talking about here.
Did you intentionally misunderstand that the quotes listed were part of a conversation, or are you really that eager to argue that you don't even care? The crudeness at the end would imply the latter, and to that I just say... have fun. As shown above you agree with what I was saying, so I have no need to stay around. Go trolling if you are a glutton for verbal punishment.
You apparently missed the part where the comments in question - this whole part of the thread actually - is specifically referring to the good drivers, the top few percent if you so wish. To summarize the progression for you:
"It's way better than *average* but in no way better than -all-, there's plenty of people who've driven for decades and never had any accident whatsoever."
"[...] of course you are right that there are some good drivers who never cause an accident, and of course these are better drivers than an automated car."
"I don't think there's really any justification to say that."
"Well, the issue here lies in the unexpected. The unexpected does happen, quite a lot, and unless the cars AI can handle this better than a human driver it is not a better driver."
True, thanks for calling me on that. I have a tendency to misuse the word average. Bad me, bad bad. Of course I meant and should have said "in the top 50% of drivers", as it is phrased in the quote right after the paragraph you commented on.
"For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%"
Yeah. Except if it's that automated we'll probably be sitting backwards since that's safer from a crash perspective, and the windows will likely be tinted or blacked out as to not give people motion sickness.
Well, my memory might be a bit hazy about what I was doing, but from what I recall I was walking in train tunnels. Not to get to the other side, but because it was a big dark hole in the mountain, and that's pretty damn cool when you're an exploring child.
And no, I had no idea of workman's pockets or such brilliant things at the time, but I knew the train was running on top of rails that was taller than I was if I laid down, and trains don't tend to have things hanging down past the "bottom of the wheel" level. At least those trains didn't, I suppose I can't speak for trains everywhere. So just getting down on the ground as close to the wall as possible was safe enough... Then of course I learned about workman's pockets, safety rooms, and so on.
I think you're missing the point, it's not about objective skill, but rather the fact that 80% think they are better than average. In reality 50% is better than average, 50% is worse than average. That means 30% of people at the very least, overestimate their skills. It's called illusory superiority, and you can check it out on wikipedia, it's a basic cognitivie bias. It even quoted the studies I referred to.
"For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability
You can also read the article on the Dunning-Kruger effect. "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
My definition of a good driver is one that doesn't get into accidents, and that can handle an unexpected situation quickly and correctly. Whether they obey traffic laws is more about whether they are a good citizen or not, and that's a different argument, however staying within the traffic laws (i.e. lowering speed around schools) prevent accidents, and is as such a trait of a good driver.
Whether you are indeed a good driver is irrelevant to the fact that a lot of people judge themselves as to be better than they are. It's after all not the individual that matters when we're talking about the group as a whole.
I disagree, there are plenty of situations which are both expected and dangerous. Like for instance getting into a hunk of metal and speeding down the freeway at over 100kph. Making a left turn on a country road is dangerous. Passing another car is dangerous. Doing anything but crawling around a corner when you don't know what's on the other side is dangerous... Of course people assume the road continues, and most of the time it does. It's that one time in a million that there's a tree over it, or a gay pride parade crossing it, or a kamikaze bumblebee does an elaborate star wars recreation with a wasp and two birds on the hood of your car...
You say two thirds of those who die in Norwegian traffic do so because they stray from their lane into oncoming traffic or off the road. I'm sure numbers are similiar here in Sweden. That proves my point. These are expected dangers, we know these happens all the time, we can be prepared for them... but they still get to us, they still kill some of us. Your argument is that if googe's car stops these 2/3ds of deaths, then that's a good thing. I totally agree.
As long as it doesn't fail to react to those unexpected situations, and causing 2/3ds more deaths there instead.
Excellent points, which I've been making all over this discussion over and over again. However in this particular thread we were discussing the very top percent of drivers, the ones that are in fact really good drivers. That includes having a quick reaction time and the experience and skill to choose the best course of action in an unexpected situation.
I was never saying all humans were better than automated cars, in fact I've spent some time arguing the opposite - if all cars were automated then the average driving skill is increased, simply because machines are better at those 95% of use cases.
The fact that a good human driver would be better than an automated one in 100% of the fringe cases is as you said, irrelevant - but since it's brought up often by the opposition to automated transport it has to be acknowledged and admitted.
The real problem with that argument is that study that showed that 80% of drivers considered themselves an above average driver, or whatever the exact numbers were. Most people think they are much better drivers than they are. The vast majority of mediocre drivers will indeed think that they are in that small percent that should be allowed to disable the automatic control because they'd do a better job at it. That's the real danger to automated vehicles in the future.
Oh that's okay, they'll just stop selling you the parts and start leasing you the rights instead. Sign the EULA, and if you don't pay your fees every time you use your brakes they'll re-possess those brake-lines they fixed.
Hey, it worked for the film industry, the music industry, and so on.
Okay, unexpected things that doesn't include hitting or being hit by things... Hmm.
At one point I was driving down the road, when the road disappeared.
Sure, it didn't literally disappear, it just so happened that it re-located about 30 feet downwards in an instant due to an unfortunate passionate meeting between a boat and a support pillar holding the bridge I was about to cross up. I guess they really liked each other, or whatever, but all the same I was definitely surprised, there was nothing for me to hit but rock bottom and by the time any computer would have seen that it would have been too late, and nothing was about to hit me.
It's possible their car could handle this situation, but that depends largely on how perfectly they can detect every inch of road. From what I've heard they go mostly by road markings and such, which means that in such a situation they'd have to switch to manual control. Hopefully in time to avoid a nosedive into the amorous steel behemoths below.
Children running into the road is childs play - a clear collision avoidance. How about children jumping over you? There I was driving down a narrow "alleyway" between two walls/brick fences that were just barely high enough that I couldn't see over them, and all of a sudden a bunch of teens on bikes fly over the road over and infront of me. I slowed down, and that was pretty lucky because the last guy didn't make it. Granted that's collision avoiding, but would google's car have been slowing down for things flying above it? Can it tell that this is kids on bikes that might crash, or a ball that might be followed (if it's above you and thus not in your direct path), rather than a dove or flying squirrel with a death wish and a meth addiction?
I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is simple - being a good driver is not just about not bashing into things and avoiding things bashing into you, it's about avoiding putting yourself in a position where you can't stop. It's about avoiding the scene of the potential accident completely, not about behaving competently once you are already there.
Well, the issue here lies in the unexpected. The unexpected does happen, quite a lot, and unless the cars AI can handle this better than a human driver it is not a better driver. I've driven more than a few laps around the planet so far in my life, and I can tell you that unexpected situations are really common. Proving your other point however, the two near accidents I've been is was once when I was young and dumb and showing off, and once when I was really tired and zoned out for a moment. I recovered in time, but of course an automated car wouldn't have had these problems.
On the other hand an automated car would have likely crashed in a few hundred other situations I've encountered, that after having reacted and averted the danger have left me going "huh, what the FUCK just happened?"
So I believe it's possible to give the fair assessment that a good driver is a better driver than an automated one, simply because that's the nature of driving. Unexpected situations. Once we get to the point where all roadway traffic is automated and controlled in unison, then the unexpected situations will be near null, and thus automation will win... But as they taught us in basic physics... "This is only true in a perfect vacuum, without any outside interference."
Actually I think most authors are happy to be paid at all. A few write for fame or money, this is true, but writing is not the typical careerchoice for anyone looking to get rich or famous. Most people write because they love telling stories, because they get a kick when people read their stories and tell them how good they are, or just because they can't stop writing.
Some of these people go on to be rich and famous... and some of those people who do, end up writing a bunch of crap evermore because they have now gotten used to the money and fame and are more interested in producing income than content... But these people are the exceptions. The vast majority of what you find written was written because someone wanted to write it, or because they wanted you to read it.
Even if they made charging more than the physical production cost of a book illegal, books would still exist - granted there would be a lot less twilight and 50 shades of grey out there, but... I can't say that worries me too much. Most of what I read these days are from non-famous authors anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If I search for say 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers' feel free to make some of the results to places to buy it. I'm sure they already do, probably in the ads I've blocked. But anyway, sure, weight the search results in favour of some store that sells whatever record that's on, or whatever. I'm fine with that.
I'll just search for 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers torrent' if I wish to download it. And if you fuck with those search results, well... then you're not a very good search engine any more, because then you are ignoring what I'm searching for and showing me what you want me to search for instead... And then I go elsewhere.
I had a glance at the wikipage you link to, and from what I see his feats are... "staying warm".
No, that seems to be it. Sure, in some contexts he does it while climbing mountains and running marathons, but really all he does is maintain bodyheat better than most.
Living in Sweden where I on a yearly basis face temperatures from around -25C in the coldest heart of winter to around in the heat of summer 35C, I know quite a lot about dealing with body temperature... Especially since it so happens that I, presumably like this Hof guy, is rather naturally inclined to the cold. I have an easier time dealing with strong cold than strong heat. But the main thing I've noticed is... it's habit. Practice. It's not a supernatural thing or anything esoteric, it's just a two part puzzle.
First part, physical conditioning. If you are used to cold, you're used to cold. You burn more energy to heat yourself up, so you have to have a good metabolism, eat well, and all that yahoo... but there's nothing supernatural about it, just common biology.
Second part, mind over matter. This sounds like something mysterious to most people, but everyone does it ALL the time. Just distract yourself from a discomfort, be it pain, cold, heat, or whatever. As long as it isn't a direct emergency signal your mind can be made to temper it, in some cases even ignore it completely. This isn't mysterious, isn't strange, and I dare say most psychologists, psychiatrists, and probably also everyone in neuroscience could teach some basic examples of it even to a small child in about five minutes.
In other words it's about as natural as breathing.
To compare Wim Hof well, you should compare him to people like the olympian athletes, who are at the peak of what we as humans can do (with the aid of some artificial help, in some cases.) To compare him to old anecdotal fairy tales of mystic powers is doing him a great disservice... even if he does it himself. More importantly it's doing YOU a great disservice, since you are indeed limiting yourself by not having a realistic view of the world.
And the snowman was also quite clearly not completely there when he made the suggestion that this very rare and apparently undiagnosed condition would account for 5-10% of people in a random group. The point is moot, the amount of people so afflicted is so small that it wouldn't make a statistical blip in a study like this.
Your point is moot. That might be the case for the one in a million that has such an issue, but that's not statistically significant.
Unless you are suggesting that 5-10% of a randomly selected group suffer from this or other very rare and apparently undiagnosed and unnoticed deficiencies or allergies, all reacting to the exact same very well controlled inert substances.
This is a government project we're talking about here. Don't expect them to hand you the lube.
I had to stop and think for a while about all the sides of that issue. It's definitely a complicated one. Here's how I see it...
No.
First, technically we are not allowed to break the traffic laws even during labour and such, which means we should still be legally limited by the speed limits and all such things. An automated car should in theory be able to drive very close to these legal limits, and it will of course be doing so under all circumstances because there is no point in an automated car that isn't driving as efficiently as it can. There might be an "econo-mode" for the greenfreaks to enjoy, or even cars built entirely to drive as energy efficiently as possible - these particular models might have overrides for more aggressive driving, but that's something for that particular developer to decide on, nothing that is inherent to this type of car.
Second, those that are allowed to break the speed-limit, i.e. cops and medics and such, have their own vehicles, that will be built to different specifications... Perhaps even all manual ones, or eventually they as well automated. At some point in the future I'm guessing the ambulance won't even need to turn much heading down the road, because all the other cars will automatically go out of its way as efficiently as possible, without either party slowing down.
Now, if I look into the looking glass that far forward, I see ambulances no longer existing. Why? Well, because if you call 911 they'll check your stats or whatever, and if they deem you have to go in you get told to go get in your car, the operator remotely confers ambulance status to your car, tells it whether to avoid bumps and so on, what hospital to go to, and so on... and off it goes. Hell, far enough into the future they might even just remotely flag down the nearest car if someone drops in a public place.
To conclude, at this point in the development there is no point in a "get there faster" button, because it will always get there as fast as is legally possibly, which is as fast as you're allowed to get there. If you want to get there faster you meet up with emergency services along the way, this is standard legal practice - that I admit isn't practised much... but still. And if such a button eventually comes into existence, there is no reason to have it locally. You should have to call up emergency services and justify your need for it BEFORE the function activates.
I feel that the fact that people modded this funny really proves that this is a valid concern.
No, the maths doesn't make my hypothesis illogical, not when you count the fact that these are no 300,000 consecutive miles from start to stop regardless of incidents. These are 300,000 miles interrupted by a lot of human overrides as soon as a situation came along that they didn't believe the car could handle, such as roadworks, parades, or whatever.
And no, I don't think I've done 300K miles, but I'm in the same order of magnitude, without a crash as well, so I'm doing pretty decently - be it skill or good fortunes. But this isn't a contest between me and google's car, I'm far from the best driver in the world. The last few years I have barely touched a car. This is a contest between human problem solving and processing skills, and computer skills... and that's a fight that the computer wins hands down... as long as it understands all the variables. That's the rub. Humans have evolved to react to the unexpected, to categorize things into threat or friend, to read situations they have never encountered in a way that no computer can - to this day. We're getting there, sure, but we're not there yet.
When google clocks 300,000 miles in that thing during regular commutes with some guy asleep in the back seat, then I'll be impressed and say it's better than even the best human drivers. As long as they are overriding it in all the situations where certain unexpected things can happen (they don't mind some unexpected things, cars drifting into lanes and such is easy for them), well as long as they keep doing that I'll stick with saying it's a hell of an awesome project, and I still want one. But it's not a better driver than a good human driver yet. Not for ALL situations, and thus not for driving in general.
Huh. My top two driving rules are
1) Everyone on the road is an idiot.
2) That includes you, sometimes.
I find that mindset has made me slow down and look twice more often, and it's kept me out of a few accidents.
First off, to the people you are referring to it wouldn't matter if they were actually shocked and burned or whatever. They do that for fun. Secondly, they don't find it fun when it happens to them non-consensually, e.g. because their system was hacked. Which is what this thread is about - the porn thread you'll find higher up.
As for whether it matters if the sensations are caused by the stimuli - no it doesn't. Your body still reacts to pain whether it's real or not. if you perceive you are being shocked or burned, then that's what your body will react to. That's a horrible power to put in the hands of someone with access to your computer.
I agree with you to some degree, but I don't agree with how many events of unexpected things happen, and the types. Defensive driving is a really good start, and it'll keep you reasonably safe from the exact sort of thing that a computer would be good at handling. However there are more things than cars on the road, and more unexpected things than collapsed bridges that can happen. At one point I had to stop for what I thought was a traffic accident, turns out a hot air balloon had landed in the middle of the road. Does google's car look up? If it does, could it interpret what it saw enough to predict what was going to happen?
A lot of things are just collision detection, granted, but then a lot of things are predicting areas where collisions might happen. Google's car won't know that your neighbour has five kids and no sense to teach them to not run blindly into the road, for instance. Google's car might spot a ball crossing the road and slow down, but will it spot a kite? A paper airplane? Soap bubbles?
I love the idea of a computerized car, and certainly think that they are smart enough today to handle freeway driving. Hell, the cars we can build today would easily handle all driving if we only changed out all cars at once and rebuilt all streets to keep pedestrians off them or to assigned areas, but of course that won't happen... In my estimation, the unexpected situations as the situation lays today, would mean that a computer would stop people falling asleep causing accidents, but instead cause them in a lot of other cases. Now this is completely just my opinion based on nothing but my experience on the road as a driver, as a pedestrian, and my experience with tech and its benefits and limitations... So if you don't agree then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
No I'm basing it on a very thorough understanding of how computers work - within a set of parameters. Computers can not handle the unexpected unless they are programmed for that eventuality, with some exception here for the rising field of machine learning and AI, which as of yet is not at the level of an average human being when it comes to assessing information outside of their pre-defined parameters. It's getting there, sure, but it's not there yet.
And as I informed the other guy below/above, this thread of the conversation was in reference to the computers performance versus the absolute best drivers - a class I'm definitely not included in. Of course had you bothered to actually read the conversation before jumping in you'd have seen I've already discussed that common assumption at length.
( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038597&cid=40944209 )
I think you are totally right that the only fair assessment is more miles, although of course if we truly want a fair assessment then those miles would be without human intervention - which would lead google's car to quickly fail. To date they specifically switch to manual mode in any troubling situations, because they are full aware (and do not hide) that the technology is not quite there yet for unexpected situations. Or to put it differently - they also agree with me.
A glove that makes me feel sensations is great and all, but I do hope it comes with some pretty heavy security limitations and so on... Wouldn't want some hacker to get access to my machine and burn my hand, or shock it, or even just cause extremely unpleasant sensations to it as a form of blackmail or just for kicks. Sure, "just take it off"... not so easy if both your hands are spasming because you feel they are stuck into a fire or something.
You already ceded my point, how nice of you. "that could well eclipse all but the tiniest sliver of the driving population."
Yes. That was, as I pointed out, the sliver we were talking about here.
Did you intentionally misunderstand that the quotes listed were part of a conversation, or are you really that eager to argue that you don't even care? The crudeness at the end would imply the latter, and to that I just say... have fun. As shown above you agree with what I was saying, so I have no need to stay around. Go trolling if you are a glutton for verbal punishment.
You apparently missed the part where the comments in question - this whole part of the thread actually - is specifically referring to the good drivers, the top few percent if you so wish. To summarize the progression for you:
"It's way better than *average* but in no way better than -all-, there's plenty of people who've driven for decades and never had any accident whatsoever."
"[...] of course you are right that there are some good drivers who never cause an accident, and of course these are better drivers than an automated car."
"I don't think there's really any justification to say that."
"Well, the issue here lies in the unexpected. The unexpected does happen, quite a lot, and unless the cars AI can handle this better than a human driver it is not a better driver."
Does that clear things up for you?
True, thanks for calling me on that. I have a tendency to misuse the word average. Bad me, bad bad. Of course I meant and should have said "in the top 50% of drivers", as it is phrased in the quote right after the paragraph you commented on.
"For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%"
Yeah. Except if it's that automated we'll probably be sitting backwards since that's safer from a crash perspective, and the windows will likely be tinted or blacked out as to not give people motion sickness.
Well, my memory might be a bit hazy about what I was doing, but from what I recall I was walking in train tunnels. Not to get to the other side, but because it was a big dark hole in the mountain, and that's pretty damn cool when you're an exploring child.
And no, I had no idea of workman's pockets or such brilliant things at the time, but I knew the train was running on top of rails that was taller than I was if I laid down, and trains don't tend to have things hanging down past the "bottom of the wheel" level. At least those trains didn't, I suppose I can't speak for trains everywhere. So just getting down on the ground as close to the wall as possible was safe enough... Then of course I learned about workman's pockets, safety rooms, and so on.
Exploration is awesome.
I think you're missing the point, it's not about objective skill, but rather the fact that 80% think they are better than average. In reality 50% is better than average, 50% is worse than average. That means 30% of people at the very least, overestimate their skills. It's called illusory superiority, and you can check it out on wikipedia, it's a basic cognitivie bias. It even quoted the studies I referred to.
"For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%"
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability
You can also read the article on the Dunning-Kruger effect.
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
My definition of a good driver is one that doesn't get into accidents, and that can handle an unexpected situation quickly and correctly. Whether they obey traffic laws is more about whether they are a good citizen or not, and that's a different argument, however staying within the traffic laws (i.e. lowering speed around schools) prevent accidents, and is as such a trait of a good driver.
Whether you are indeed a good driver is irrelevant to the fact that a lot of people judge themselves as to be better than they are. It's after all not the individual that matters when we're talking about the group as a whole.
I disagree, there are plenty of situations which are both expected and dangerous. Like for instance getting into a hunk of metal and speeding down the freeway at over 100kph. Making a left turn on a country road is dangerous. Passing another car is dangerous. Doing anything but crawling around a corner when you don't know what's on the other side is dangerous... Of course people assume the road continues, and most of the time it does. It's that one time in a million that there's a tree over it, or a gay pride parade crossing it, or a kamikaze bumblebee does an elaborate star wars recreation with a wasp and two birds on the hood of your car...
You say two thirds of those who die in Norwegian traffic do so because they stray from their lane into oncoming traffic or off the road. I'm sure numbers are similiar here in Sweden. That proves my point. These are expected dangers, we know these happens all the time, we can be prepared for them... but they still get to us, they still kill some of us. Your argument is that if googe's car stops these 2/3ds of deaths, then that's a good thing. I totally agree.
As long as it doesn't fail to react to those unexpected situations, and causing 2/3ds more deaths there instead.
Excellent points, which I've been making all over this discussion over and over again. However in this particular thread we were discussing the very top percent of drivers, the ones that are in fact really good drivers. That includes having a quick reaction time and the experience and skill to choose the best course of action in an unexpected situation.
I was never saying all humans were better than automated cars, in fact I've spent some time arguing the opposite - if all cars were automated then the average driving skill is increased, simply because machines are better at those 95% of use cases.
The fact that a good human driver would be better than an automated one in 100% of the fringe cases is as you said, irrelevant - but since it's brought up often by the opposition to automated transport it has to be acknowledged and admitted.
The real problem with that argument is that study that showed that 80% of drivers considered themselves an above average driver, or whatever the exact numbers were. Most people think they are much better drivers than they are. The vast majority of mediocre drivers will indeed think that they are in that small percent that should be allowed to disable the automatic control because they'd do a better job at it. That's the real danger to automated vehicles in the future.
Oh that's okay, they'll just stop selling you the parts and start leasing you the rights instead. Sign the EULA, and if you don't pay your fees every time you use your brakes they'll re-possess those brake-lines they fixed.
Hey, it worked for the film industry, the music industry, and so on.
Okay, unexpected things that doesn't include hitting or being hit by things... Hmm.
At one point I was driving down the road, when the road disappeared.
Sure, it didn't literally disappear, it just so happened that it re-located about 30 feet downwards in an instant due to an unfortunate passionate meeting between a boat and a support pillar holding the bridge I was about to cross up. I guess they really liked each other, or whatever, but all the same I was definitely surprised, there was nothing for me to hit but rock bottom and by the time any computer would have seen that it would have been too late, and nothing was about to hit me.
It's possible their car could handle this situation, but that depends largely on how perfectly they can detect every inch of road. From what I've heard they go mostly by road markings and such, which means that in such a situation they'd have to switch to manual control. Hopefully in time to avoid a nosedive into the amorous steel behemoths below.
Children running into the road is childs play - a clear collision avoidance. How about children jumping over you? There I was driving down a narrow "alleyway" between two walls/brick fences that were just barely high enough that I couldn't see over them, and all of a sudden a bunch of teens on bikes fly over the road over and infront of me. I slowed down, and that was pretty lucky because the last guy didn't make it. Granted that's collision avoiding, but would google's car have been slowing down for things flying above it? Can it tell that this is kids on bikes that might crash, or a ball that might be followed (if it's above you and thus not in your direct path), rather than a dove or flying squirrel with a death wish and a meth addiction?
I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is simple - being a good driver is not just about not bashing into things and avoiding things bashing into you, it's about avoiding putting yourself in a position where you can't stop. It's about avoiding the scene of the potential accident completely, not about behaving competently once you are already there.
Well, the issue here lies in the unexpected. The unexpected does happen, quite a lot, and unless the cars AI can handle this better than a human driver it is not a better driver. I've driven more than a few laps around the planet so far in my life, and I can tell you that unexpected situations are really common. Proving your other point however, the two near accidents I've been is was once when I was young and dumb and showing off, and once when I was really tired and zoned out for a moment. I recovered in time, but of course an automated car wouldn't have had these problems.
On the other hand an automated car would have likely crashed in a few hundred other situations I've encountered, that after having reacted and averted the danger have left me going "huh, what the FUCK just happened?"
So I believe it's possible to give the fair assessment that a good driver is a better driver than an automated one, simply because that's the nature of driving. Unexpected situations. Once we get to the point where all roadway traffic is automated and controlled in unison, then the unexpected situations will be near null, and thus automation will win... But as they taught us in basic physics... "This is only true in a perfect vacuum, without any outside interference."
Actually I think most authors are happy to be paid at all. A few write for fame or money, this is true, but writing is not the typical careerchoice for anyone looking to get rich or famous. Most people write because they love telling stories, because they get a kick when people read their stories and tell them how good they are, or just because they can't stop writing.
Some of these people go on to be rich and famous... and some of those people who do, end up writing a bunch of crap evermore because they have now gotten used to the money and fame and are more interested in producing income than content... But these people are the exceptions. The vast majority of what you find written was written because someone wanted to write it, or because they wanted you to read it.
Even if they made charging more than the physical production cost of a book illegal, books would still exist - granted there would be a lot less twilight and 50 shades of grey out there, but... I can't say that worries me too much. Most of what I read these days are from non-famous authors anyway.