[chermi]

Let's get something out of the way, just to make sure we're able to continue. Do you agree that his tweet saying lidar can be inaccurate and mess up results compared to cameras only is idiotic? Do you think Elon really believes that tweet?

If so, do you think he's stupid? Do you think he thinks sensor fusion is a grand unsolved problem his cracked engineers can't implement?

I absolutely agree vision is very very important, given the roads + signage are designed for humans using their eyes among other factors.

Do I think we should take the abilities of human drivers with eyes as the gold standard for what we can achieve with autonomous vehicles? No, and I doubt he does either, but his ego can't backtrack. In fact, I'm pretty sure he finally accepted radar.

Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.

Also, I'm not aware of anyone going or championing full lidar. It was only musk who (apparently) believes more than one type of sensor is a negative.

What really gets me is that musk, the man who's proven just how good he is at scaling & supply chain, somehow didn't think lidar wouldn't dramatically come down in cost.

My most charitable interpretation is that he really saw the value in gathering as much data about driving as fast as possible, and the best way to do that was to build a bunch of cars with just cameras.(Smart) Somewhere along the way he got annoyed or jealous of the lidar-incorporating companies that were doing quite well with autonomy. Then some ego thing happened and he got ahead of his skis and said vision-only is the best(dumb) and his ego/brand value won't let him take it back.

I admire the hell out of musk based on his output, so I choose to believe that he can't possibly be stupid enough to not understand sensor fusion.

Oh back to the original subject. If he's never said that vision-only is first principles, I apologize for the misinformation. But you have to admit that the "reasoning" of saying humans can drive with vision only therefore no other sensors is quite firmly outside the realm of first principles, which is his m.o.

[godelski]

  > Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.

And let's make sure we get this right. Humans use more than vision when driving. Touch and sound are essential components to driving. While you could drive without these senses that doesn't mean they aren't important.

Elon's understanding of "first principles" is "the first thought that came into my head". Unfortunately this is a common, and growing, bastardization of the phrase.

[chermi]

Hell yeah humans use more!

Lol, I would be a little more cynical and say "the first thought that comes to my head that justifies my business decisions (which I can never show any ounce of doubt over)"

[naasking]

I don't know what exactly Musk said on the topics you raise, I only know that he did say something like vision being the core problem and that lidar can't solve that problem (nor can any combination of other sensors we currently have). It makes sense to focus on vision and to question the value add of lidar, because if you can solve vision then many other sensors are redundant.

Maybe it can't be solved using current tech, who knows, but saying that fully autonomous driving in our current world isn't achievable without vision is a correct position. I have no opinion on anything else.