[marquis-chacha]

I have a fair number of "shall not be infringed" friends (pro 2nd amendment, perhaps to a fault. I make no judgement calls here). An argument I've heard from them goes along the lines of: "yes, we could perhaps reduce things like school shootings and accidental gun deaths with stricter anti-gun legislation. But that comes at the expense of our American freedoms, and a couple of lives simply isn't worth it."

Which sounded pretty harsh to me at first, but when you think about it, thats effectively the same as the HN narrative: "yes things like the PATRIOT act could reduce terrorism, but it comes at the expense of our American freedoms, and a couple of lives simply isn't worth it."

And now for these cars: "yes removing Autopilot could reduce car crashes, but it comes at the expense of our American (?) freedoms (maybe freedom to drive/technically innovate/something else entirely), and a couple of lives simply isn't worth it."

One additional trend I haven't personally witnessed, but I hear about, is that when in some freak accident "a couple of lives" includes the life of someone who one of these gun guys, PATRIOT guys, or car guys knows, their opinion flips.

[tonyedgecombe]

It's often presented as a loss of freedom when in reality it's a tradeoff in freedoms. One group might loose the freedom to carry a gun whilst another group gains the freedom to be safe at school.

[salawat]

That may be how one wants to present it, but it's disingenuous.

There is no freedom from danger or "freedom to be safe". Therefore one party has sacrificed something of value to placate a sentimental imagining that amounts to nothing to the other side. That isn't a trade. That's loss. No agency is gained by that arrangement. It's the equivalent of legislative/rhetorical marketing language. Sounds nice, but ultimately empty.

Safety is a function of the inhabitants of an environment's ability to mitigate threats. If the environment is full of disarmed people, then the person who brings the gun anyway faces nil resistance.

No one is safe. No one has agency to counter the threat, and there is nothing to show for the sacrifice of the right except the ill will of those who recognize the physical, realistic (read: pragmatic) implication of the act, and disagree in the first place. Which, ironically, decreases safety even further.

Tech like Autopilot is actually kind of the reverse of the gun debate. It's an active development that increases complexity creates new problems, and decreases agency since everything then gets bound by "Autopilot safety is a must." The argument is made that automating the task with a machine must make the thing safer, because every act of automating things up to now through a machine has made things safer, which is just an inductive fallacy if I ever heard one.

Sometimes the things you don't do mean as much if not more than the things you do. A point oft overlooked, and lamented by the "Do as I say not as I do" parent.

Anyway. That was a fun tangent.

[tonyedgecombe]

There is no freedom from danger or "freedom to be safe". Therefore one party has sacrificed something of value to placate a sentimental imagining that amounts to nothing to the other side.

The freedom to walk down the street without risk of being shot is not sentimental. Presenting it as so is disingenuous.

Safety is a function of the inhabitants of an environment's ability to mitigate threats.

The evidence shows that isn't working.

[DuskStar]

> > Safety is a function of the inhabitants of an environment's ability to mitigate threats.

> The evidence shows that isn't working.

No, the evidence actually shows that that does work - gun free zones are home to something like 99% of all mass shootings, and school shootings with a prepared police officer or teacher carrying a weapon tend not to make the news because they don't hit the level of 'mass shooting' in the first place.

And then there's the debate about whether forcing terrorists to choose a methodology other than guns is even a good idea in the first place - I'd rather have ten mass shootings killing ~4-6 people each than a single repeat of Oklahoma City.

[salawat]

With all due respect, I disagree. What the evidence lays bare is that there is a massive difference in what individual members/collective groups of society interpret as a threat, and thereby find worthy of attempts to mitigate. It also stands that until recently, violence had been on a downward trend.

On the collective front for example, the anti-arms crowd sees a citizen exercising a right as a threat. The pro-arms side sees the anti-arms's willingness to engage in rhetoric to dismantle a fundamental right as a threat to the overall underpinnings of civil society. The pro-arms is not innately threatened by the bearing of arms, or refusal to do so, but by enforced asymmetric eligibility to bear arms without a darn good reason. This is the basic blueprint for any major X/!X or an X/!(X&&Y) divide [I think I got the truth table right there].

On the individual front, things get even more diverse.

A gang member sees a rival gang member on his turf as a threat, but the "civie" right next to them sees neither as a threat until the violence starts, and they have no defense.

A harassed/abused/ostracized child generalized the infliction of suffering by members of their peer group to the rest of humanity, making everyone a threat.

An oppressed/marginalized population feels threatened by their oppressors.

A previously oppressed/marginalized populations feels threatened by their previous oppressors

That's what I mean by there is no positive "agency" or "essence" to the "freedom to be safe". The state of safety is accidental to the circumstance. As long as there is an agent willing to break any civil consensus in such a way as to cause harm, the best move is for everyone to possess the most effective means of causing harm, but to refrain from employing it. This protects and perpetuates civil society, without creating "soft target" situations where no resistance can be offered to a violator of the peace.

I respect your right to the view that there is some positive existence to the freedom to be safe. However, at most I'll acknowledge the legitimacy of a claim to the right to live a life in the pursuit of Safety to be semantically and grammatically capable of bearing significance and recognizable meaning; in parity with the recognition of the purpose of a government to secure for its' People the right to Life, Liberty. and the pursuit of Happiness as proscribed to in the United States.

Pursue, by all means, but finding/catching it is far from guaranteed, and depriving others of what brings them Safety will inevitably set the stage for violent conflict, even when done through civil means.

However, I digress, and fear this interesting diversion may have long overstayed it's welcome, and it certainly was not my intent to turn this thread so far off topic. I just had a moment of clarity enabling me to formulate an articulation of an observation that has hitherto resisted my attempts to elucidate.

[dsfyu404ed]

It seems like wherever we trade away freedoms the thing we're supposed to be getting in return never materializes.

Benjamin Franklin has a particularly relevant quote on this subject.

[Tomte]

Do you really know what Benjamin Franklin said, and what the context was?

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said#.U...

[tonyedgecombe]

Well, when it comes to guns you haven't traded away any freedoms, quite the opposite so far.

[dsfyu404ed]

>you haven't traded away any freedoms, quite the opposite so far.

We did in '34, '68 and '86. And then there's all the states that are still waiting for SCOTUS to tell them what "shall not be infringed" means.

In my state I have to pay hundreds of dollars and rely on the discretion of the local police in order to bear any semi-modern arms and that's just the tip of the iceberg. If that's not infringement I don't know what is.

[Rapzid]

Schools are already incredibly safe though.

[benjohnson]

In my opinion - the freedom codified in the 2nd amendment to let citizens to overthrow an oppressive and unjust government.

[_ea1k]

You make a number of fair points, IMO, and people are often too quick to dismiss arguments like this.

Having said that, this case is a bit special, IMO. By your own logic, this comes down to a cold calculation of how many crashes (and deaths) are acceptable. To the regulating agencies, the # is likely relative to other vehicles regardless of AutoPilot. So if AutoPilot is not demonstrably less safe than the others, why regulate it out of existence?

So far, such evidence simply doesn't exist. And honestly, the Tesla effect magnifying every incident doesn't make it better. Tesla is far from the only vehicle with systems like this on the road.