[sqeaky]

Yes, yes we want them.

Idiotic things like this in the article miss the point:

> And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our politicians

We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our politicians suck).

The article also has stupid shit like:

> The truth is, no one knows for sure how many lives could be saved by driverless cars, because data on the role of human error in crashes is incomplete and misleading

Human error is the cause for all accidents, barring freak accidents like sinkholes and tornadoes (both hitting my state recently :( ). This one is so simple to reason about. Think about the cause of any accident, even the ones where clearly some technology failed. Even a rear-end caused by brake failure is the fault of the driver for ignoring his dashboard and not fixing the car often enough.

A self-driving car can and will refuse to drive if the brakes go back (provided all the sensors don't go bad at the same time too). A self driving will have unlimited patience for slowness. A self driving car will never be drunk or drive tired.

[protomyth]

>> And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our politicians

> We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our politicians suck).

No doubt. Why in the heck would I need a politicians to vote and discuss such a thing? We decide and they get their butts in gear getting the regulations to work or we vote them out of office. They are supposed to represent the will of the people, not be our parents.

[maxerickson]

Government mandates have done a lot to drive other safety features. Many people didn't start wearing seatbelts until it was a ticket:

http://blog.esurance.com/seat-belt-history/

[sqeaky]

I like how the article uses the economic argument:

> Yes, jobs will be created by these new cars, but many will be lost.

Every time a company, economy, nation or empire doesn't follow the route that saves more human effort they are outcompeted (or conquered) by those who do.

This is as much an argument against self driving cars as much as it is an argument against automation in principle. We need to figure how to handle 40% unemployment when all those truckers lose their jobs. Either Basic income, subsidized jobs, or some kind of discussion to figure out what happens next. Because self driving cars will be part of it unless there is an apocalypse.

Holy crap! I a cannot finish this unresearched technophic clickbait piece of drivel. It is making me dumber as I read it.

[r00fus]

> Every time a company, economy, nation or empire doesn't follow the route that saves more human effort they are outcompeted (or conquered) by those who do.

The economics of slavery seem to be an effective rebuttal to your point, unless slaves are put in the role of automaton (and not human).

[sqeaky]

Really its not unless you somehow stop counting them as people. People have high maintanence costs whether or not they are a slave. Slaves also revolt. Beasts of burden and Robots (so far) cannot revolt.

Also you miss out on a large portion of the person's output if they are slave. There are very few slave inventors.

[r00fus]

Slave inventors - 5 high-profile counterpoints: http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/02/11/5-inventions-by-ensla...

I'd say the only reason they were "missed out" is because of the politics of slavery.

The entire basis that efficiency of human effort is competitively dominant relies on a definition of human as only the "humans benefiting from automation" leaving out those who don't benefit out of the equation.

[sqeaky]

You must be trolling to seriously compare the creative disruption automation causes to real human loss slavery causes.

Compared to the non-slave inventors the list of slave inventors is disproportionately tiny. A few anecdotal people don't hold muster to waves of people innovating. I can point to single companies with hundreds of inventors.

In the long run automation benefits everyone, even the people who temporarily lose their jobs. Those people are encouraged to get back into the work force and to do the best they can even they have less work to do because of some new tool. Slaves were sometimes killed for not working hard enough. If slaves invented a labor saving device they got non of the benefit and instead any value increase was entirely given to the slave's owner. Employees can choose who to work for and choose their conditions, slaves cannot. Employees can try see their obsolescence coming and go to school, shift careers or fight it, slaves can only do as they are told.

[esja]

"Human error is the cause for all accidents"... because until now, only humans have driven cars.

Once computer programs are driving cars, this will change.