Hello, I’m looking for the comment section and got lost, is this it?
The legal status quo is secondary to public perception, which—other than some technophile aficionados—is quite reserved. There’s too much male identity attached to driving, not only are cars used to show off status, but so is the driving style you use them with. As is often the case, people confuse a “autonomous cars are not for me” with “autonomous cars—what nonsense, should not be allowed!”, in part because they feel threatened their identity-generating toy could be devalued / taken away.
Secondly, the reaction to a robot (car) causing accidents—killing people (gasp) is vastly disproportionate in relation to human-caused killings that are accepted as part of the supposed fabric of nature/society. It is one of the main reasons why robotic surgery has such a hard time taking over—a surgeon “doing his best” yet the patient not surviving? A human tragedy, it may have been the patient’s time to go. A robot—with a much higher success rate—“killing” a patient? Outrage! Liability demands! A central figure that can be blamed (the manufacturer). It is comical how the makers of the da Vinci surgical system have to insist that every move is controlled by a physician, when certain aspects would work much better when automated.
And that is why Carthago should be destroyed. I’m sorry, what was this comment about? Ah well …
There’s too much male identity attached to driving, not only are cars used to show off status, but so is the driving style you use them with.
Obviously, this is quite cultural. Apparently in Stockholm (Sweden), only about one quarter (link in Finnish) of 18-year olds acquires a driving license, though many get one later on when life circumstances change. In the Helsinki region (Finland) as well, there has been a bit of a reported decline in the popularity of driving licenses among the young, though it’s unclear to what extent the statistics actually support this. In cities that have a good public transport system, people can easily grow up with the notion that owning a car simply isn’t necessary.
(I don’t have a license myself, and although I know many who do, I’ve never gotten the impression that not having one would be considered particularly unusual. Of course, my normal social circles are rather unrepresentative of the population at large.)
Yes of course. (Unfortunately, ) the benchmark culture inhibiting or furthering progress on such trends still seems to be the United States, where due to the distances involved, and the typically abysmal public transportation system, personal mobility by car is usually a central component of everyday life. It is in principle possible for such progress to emerge in, say, Japan, as it did in the mobile communications market. However, such progress has typically been insular. To truly make the jump to the “mainstream”, the canary in the coal mine has historically been the US.
To truly make the jump to the “mainstream”, the canary in the coal mine has historically been the US.
Well, at least if you measure “mainstream” by what’s mainstream in the US. ;) It wasn’t just Japan that pulled ahead with mobile communications, for example—back in 2000 the US was lagging badly behind most of Europe when it came to cell phones. And there are areas like banking services where it’s doing even worse—before I visited the US back in 2010, I think I had seen one or two cheques in my whole life, but in the US they were still in active use.
Why do you assume that banking services are worse if people still use checks? That seems like cultural parochialism. It isn’t like credit card and debit card transactions aren’t universally available, but check transactions are as well. It seems to be an added convenience the retail sector provides for those who want it.
Btw, this inspired me to ask someone I know why she still uses checks to pay for groceries. She said that she just likes using the little ledger in the checkbook to keep track of her spending. And (she says) it doesn’t take any longer really. You just sign the check, and most stores have a machine that fills out everything else for you.
(Quote from a later post, because I wanted to respond higher up in the thread...)
In reality, debit cards, credit cards, and charge cards are pretty much always available wherever checks are accepted.
One instance I can think of where this is not the case is rent payments, many (most?) of which are still done by check by default.
But in any case, the very fact that many poor Americans are underbanked (which you say leads them to prefer checks) demonstrates that the US banking system is inferior to the European, although this is probably more a result of bad overall regulation and market structure than being “behind” on technology. That said, I don’t think either system is especially innovative, except perhaps in the (sometimes unfortunate) sense of creating new financial products. If we want to find actual consumer banking innovation, it seems to be primarily occurring in the developing world, where we’re seeing things like microlenders, interesting savings products, phone-based money transfer (and the usage of airtime as an alternative currency), and so on.
First of all, I think it’s worth pointing out that this conversation is about innovation not whether one retail banking system is better. It is possible for a system to be more innovative while also having worse outcomes. For example, the US healthcare system lags in health outcomes in many ways, but is dominant in medical research publications, medical Nobel prizes (a solid majority of medical Nobel prizes have gone to US researchers in the last 30 years) medical device manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, etc.
But in any case, the very fact that many poor Americans are underbanked (which you say leads them to prefer checks) demonstrates that the US banking system is inferior to the European
You are just assuming that these people are bankless due to some unusual quality of American banks.The main reason I have heard for poor people avoiding banks is overdraft charges—something almost all banks in all countries have. It’s quite possible that America just has a more feckless underclass than most European countries, and they are bad at estimating when they will overdraw. For people like that, using cash would make a lot of sense. Or maybe America’s underclass has more cashflow problems because the US welfare system is oriented more toward in-kind services than cash transfers. Or maybe its just a weird subcultural thing that America’s underclass likes having wads of cash on hand.
That said, I don’t think either system is especially innovative, except perhaps in the (sometimes unfortunate) sense of creating new financial products. If we want to find actual consumer banking innovation, it seems to be primarily occurring in the developing world, where we’re seeing things like microlenders, interesting savings products, phone-based money transfer (and the usage of airtime as an alternative currency), and so on.
You are just assuming that these people are bankless due to some unusual quality of American banks. The main reason I have heard for poor people avoiding banks is overdraft charges—something almost all banks in all countries have.
This does not appear to be the case. Here’s a good overview from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. My personal guess is that the fractured nature of the US banking systems (many small local banks) results in uneven service quality and less caring about reputation from banks, as well as costs being higher per client, making poorer clients less profitable. In addition, Deloitte writes: “In the United States, many traditional bank competitors view the unbanked and underbanked segments as unattractive as their costs to serve are high and income generated low relative to more affluent segments. This is partially a reflection of a high-cost base and expensive and restrictive regulatory actions exacerbated by recent consumer legislation.”
It is not a case of the poor being better off without banking services or anything like that (as mention in the Fed article, and also here’s the World Bank for some international stats), it’s really just a case of poor provision. On the bright side, it seems like the situation is somewhat improving with prepaid cards being offered, which do not require a complicated application process, and which have no overdraft at all (if you think that’s important), with the one downside being that it seems like some of them may have unreasonable fees.
In the United States, many traditional bank competitors view the unbanked and underbanked segments as unattractive as their costs to serve are high and income generated low relative to more affluent segments.
You are very dishonestly misrepresenting your sources, and privileging your hypothesis. None of your sources actually claim that US bank practices are different. Deloitte does say that regulations (ceteris paribus) increase the cost of serving low-income people, but does not actually demonstrate that such costs are higher than they are in Europe. Furthermore, most of these regulations are designed to make banking more appealing to low-income people, since they decrease fees, and force banks to offer overdraft protection. Yes those costs make banks less likely to advertise to poor people, but also make bank use more attractive for poor people. And none of this demonstrates that bank behavior is different in the US—since European countries probably also have consumer protection laws. Deloitte never claims that US banks are more regulated on balance.
The World Bank source actually argues my point in my earlier response to you: that America’s poor people don’t use banks because 1. they have cashflow problems and 2. They don’t trust banks (i.e. a cultural problem). Both of those are characteristics of US poor people, not of US banks.
The Fed St. Louis report also supports my claim:
Some consumers are unbanked for a variety of reasons. These include: a poor credit history or outstanding issue from a prior banking relationship, a lack of understanding about the U.S. banking system, a negative prior experience with a bank, language barriers for immigrant residents, a lack of appropriate identification needed to open a bank account, or living paycheck to paycheck due to limited and unstable income.
You claim that I privilege my hypothesis, while your own hypotheses as originally stated were: 1) overdraft charges are scaring the poor away, 1a) maybe US poor are more “feckless”, 2) maybe US poor have less cash flow due to welfare being less cash-based, 3) maybe US poor prefer to use cash… and then you claim that Fed St. Louis supports you in that paragraph? Really? It mentions none of those things except insofar as one of the aspects of “negative prior experience” is overdraft charges (and by a very generous reading it could perhaps be argued that the “paycheck to paycheck” bit is somewhat similar to what you said). In fact, I went out of my way to search for “overdraft” specifically, as that was your primary hypothesis, and I found that fears of overdraft protection come up in surveys as minor factors for not having a bank account, and as fairly major factors among those who prefer prepaid cards to debit cards (which I mentioned).
In addition, I would appreciate it if in the future you would not assume that someone is being willfully dishonest unless you are absolutely certain of it. Having reread my previous post and re-skimmed the sources I cite, I do not see where I misrepresented them. Although I obviously did not write everything each of them said (and indeed I also read three or four other things I did not link at all), I believe my post is broadly in alignment with their intent.
Regardless, I find I have no interest in further discussing this topic with you, so this will be my last post.
This doesn’t seem to be true. I’ve confirmed that both the UK and France have overdraft fees. US banks also are required by law to offer overdraft protection (which is opt-in).
Because I’ve been told that the main reason for checks still being in use is the lack of convenient wire transfers, and having to bother with cashing out checks when e.g. getting your salary sounds a lot less convenient than just getting the money directly to your bank account. (Feel free to correct me in case my information’s mistaken.)
Because I’ve been told that the main reason for checks still being in use is the lack of convenient wire transfers
Most employers actually prefer to pay via direct transfer, and obviously the banks offer these services.
Again, it isn’t a case of the service not being offered, it is just that individuals are offered a choice, and some choose differently than you would. Why does that bother you?
It doesn’t; I was under the impression that it was a case of the service not being offered. Some folks from around here that I know have sold their products in webstores owned by American companies, and complained about those companies insisting on payment by check, which are a pain to get processed in our banks. But perhaps this just means that American companies aren’t good with international wire transfers, while being fine with domestic ones?
Cheques aren’t an added convenience to cards, cards and online payment are added conveniences that are slowly superseding cheques. In Britain, cheques are on the way out, although
not quite as fast as was once planned. Most shops no longer accept them.
Unless you’re making the purely semantic point that checks existed first (which is entirely obvious, irrelevant, and did not need to be pointed out), yes they are an added (i.e. additional) convenience offered over firms that do not accept them.
It is surprising that you would think accepting more payment methods is somehow worse than offering fewer.
It is surprising that you would think accepting more payment methods is somehow worse than offering fewer.
Additional security vulnerabilities, additional costs to implement and support possibly blocking new better approaches, additional complexity...
If checks had not yet been invented, and someone came to Europeans saying, ‘I have this new ultra-cool system of payment which involves trivially forged signatures on paper where the bank upon receiving it takes a photograph rather than store it on paper and where fraud may not be detected for days; also, you have to manually keep track of the balance and if you don’t and you write a check that bounces you’ll be fined by the bank and maybe also the person you wrote the check too; and did I mention that the security is so weak that people who want to distribute their checks far & wide like Don Knuth can’t do it because their bank accounts will be raided? Pls pay me $$$ for my kicking invention kthnxbai’, do you think they would greet him with open arms?
Yes checks have downsides, but they have upsides as well, which is why a substantial percentage of people prefer to receive them. You should read about this thing called “Revealed Preference.” For example, more than a fifth of black and Hispanic Americans don’t have checking accounts—usually because of bad experiences involving a overdraft fees. So being able to receive checks is a nice convenience for them.
Also with checks you avoid interchange fees, so there are advantages to merchants as well.
I strongly suspect that in Europe the number of “bankless” households is much smaller. My point, though, is that having check capabilities isn’t worse than not having them—unless you already happen to be living in a place where nobody prefers checks.
Your argument reminds me of this guy I know who always gets really mad that some people buy iPhones instead of Android phones. But… they’re technically inferior! Stop using what I don’t use!
You should read about this thing called “Revealed Preference.”
I take it that it did not occur to you that this was the point of my use of the reversal test on the European absence of checks.
My point, though, is that having check capabilities isn’t worse than not having them—unless you already happen to be living in a place where nobody prefers checks.
I reiterate the point about revealed preferences plus a reiteration of my list of costs to supporting checks.
In that case, you have misunderstood what my discussion with Kaj was about. He felt that the fact that checks were still in wide use in the United States implied that financial services in America lack modern conveniences.
I pointed out that the fact that an older medium is still accepted does not, in fact, imply that wireless transfer and debit card payments are not available. My argument was not that Europeans should adopt checks because they are superior, but that having check capabilities doesn’t actually mean modern conveniences are lacking, as he implied.
I pointed out that the fact that an older medium is still accepted does not, in fact, imply that wireless transfer and debit card payments are not available. My argument was not that Europeans should adopt checks because they are superior, but that having check capabilities doesn’t actually mean modern conveniences are lacking, as he implied.
Revealed preferences as applied here can only give a stalemate: Americans preferring checks and Europeans never using checks doesn’t tell us which is superior. Adding in the reversal test and noting that the European electronic systems came after rather than simultaneously with checks tells us that in a direct head-to-head comparison, checks lost in a large area of the world, and noting that they don’t offer them at all, apparently, tells us that there is a large burden or cost to supporting checks—in direct opposition to your rhetorical invocation of ‘how can additional options be bad?’. With the burden of supporting checks established, the situation now looks like one of path dependence or local optima traps: the Europeans were able to escape to a more efficient secure useful system of e-banking while the Americans continue to be trapped in a local optima because they cannot profitably shift to a e-banking system while also supporting the costs of the existing checking system.
Americans continue to be trapped in a local optima because they cannot profitably shift to a e-banking system while also supporting the costs of the existing checking system
If this claim was right, there would be lots of locations in which card readers are not available, but checks are accepted. In fact, you seem to be totally wrong about this bizarre claim. In reality, debit cards, credit cards, and charge cards are pretty much always available wherever checks are accepted. I’ve never been to a retailer that accepted checks but not cards.
Adding in the reversal test and noting that the European electronic systems came after rather than simultaneously with checks tells us that in a direct head-to-head comparison, checks lost in a large area of the world
The same argument could be used to claim that Los Angeles’ transportation infrastructure is more advanced than San Francisco’s. (LA used to have a light rail system, but later transitioned entirely to cars. SF kept light rail going, in addition to having cars).
If this claim was right, there would be lots of locations in which card readers are not available, but checks are accepted. In fact, you seem to be totally wrong about this bizarre claim.
It’s a good thing I never said that because it is indeed bizarre. Of course individuals may move closer to the better European optima, but the system as a whole remains in the optima. You may be able to use your debit card in plenty of places, but where’s the rest of the European style system? Can you trivially send money from account to account? Receive deposits in minutes or hours rather than multiple days? etc.
The same argument could be used to claim that Los Angeles’ transportation infrastructure is more advanced than San Francisco’s.
Would pass the reversal test. There are plenty of LAers who would welcome a light rail system, and googling I see there are active light rail projects.
There are counterexamples (e.g. renewable energy), but from the internet itself to MS, Intel, Google, FB, Sun, Cisco, IBM, the market and the market innovators (if not the manufacturing) were centered on the United States. Look at where those autonomous cars are developed, and by whom.
What are you thinking of that makes you so incredulous?
Look at where those autonomous cars are developed, and by whom.
In Germany BMV and Audi develop autonomous cars. In Japan Toyota develops them. The US carmakers don’t but Google does develop them.
The US is probably one of the countries where the price you have to pay when your car accidently crashes a pedestrian is highest.
If you want to bring a new techonlogy to market that’s likely to kill people by accident the US might be the worst place.
In Germany BMV and Audi develop autonomous cars. In Japan Toyota develops them. The US carmakers don’t but Google does develop them.
I think this has more to do with the fact that US automakers have major financial problems and thus can’t afford to spend large amounts of money on speculative research.
There are probably similar identity-creating elements in other countries, beyond cars.
Digressing a bit, I’m having a hard time comprehending the notion of assigning identity to anything beyond the way my own mind works. Doing that with a car seems completely insane, but as I said I’ve never even been close to that volume of mind-space, so I might be completely misunderstanding.
I’d like to understand what’s going on, though. Would anyone like to try explaining?
Identity is about your place and role in society, and car ownership feels like a role just as much as anything else, so I’m not sure what exactly about it is that you find confusing. (To me, the notion of only assigning identity to the way one’s mind works sounds a little weird.)
My place and role in society are.. just circumstances. Caring about them as ends, rather than means, seems weird to me.
When you put it like that, though..
At some point I read an article, and I think it was here on Lesswrong, about the types of people who survived WW2 camps. The main takeaway was that the survivors were primarily people who defined themselves in terms of their own mind and immutable attributes, rather than in terms of career, friends, etc.
The article also pointed out that such people are fairly rare, which if the common-case identities also includes items such as cars (I rather think it would) would help explain why common attitudes towards cars are as they are.
I don’t suppose you remember the article in question?
During the war, participants engaged in many adaptive and resilient behaviors such as trying to survive in family groups, Greene said. She found their stories often contained information about how they bartered for goods, exchanged favors, bribed guards and organized underground resistance units. Sixty-four percent remembered resolving to live, 50 percent recalled making friends, 55 percent turned to others or banded together, 50 percent found ways to get extra food and 48 percent cared for others. Greene found that although some Holocaust survivors reported feelings of anger and continuing disbelief in their old age, they also recounted that during their time in concentration camps they maintained personal bonds, made choices and “controlled their lives through their own special and sometimes secretive means.” For example, they set up governmental structure and schools, performed concerts and even wrote poetry. “An analysis of the interviews showed positive themes—even within the camps,” Greene said. “Survivors talked of making a conscious decision to go on living, celebrate life and think positively about themselves.”
Some interesting citations and facts:
Of those [child survivors] who were hidden among gentiles, quality of caretaking varied. Many were threatened with death if they did not behave, and one-sixth were sexually molested (Moskowitz & Krell)...One three-year-old appealed to an SS man to not kill her as she had good hands for work (Kestenberg 1990)...Magic was used to connect with parents. For instance, one child (Valent 1994) kept contact with her father through talking to him via the moon.
In his incredibly insightful book, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, Viktor Frankl noted that the people in the Nazi concentration camps fell into two groups. The first group consisted of the majority of those interned there, and they were people who defined themselves in terms of their social milieu: if you asked them who they were, they would say, “I am a doctor, a lawyer, a mother...” The second group consisted of a small minority of people who thought of themselves as existing completely independent of any label, any role, or any relationship they had with others, or with society.
When you entered a concentration camp, they took away you clothes, your profession, your family and even your name. For most people, that was the equivalent of taking away their very identity, and thus their will to live. As Frankel observed, it was mostly only the people in second, much smaller group, that survived.
Well, evolutionarily at least it would make a lot of sense to care about your role in society as an end. If the village can only support one smith, for instance, then you better focus your energies on being a damn good smith so that nobody else can replace you.
If the village can only support one smith, and you’re the smith, then if you’re not bloody incompetent you can probably do just fine for yourself as long as you make sure to take on an apprentice eventually (it needn’t be until later in life). Nobody else’s business is smithing, so you don’t have any competition, and as long as your goods perform reasonably well you’re pretty much set.
The legal status quo is secondary to public perception, which—other than some technophile aficionados—is quite reserved. There’s too much male identity attached to driving, not only are cars used to showoff status, but so is the driving style you use them with.
I think you substantially overestimate how important this is. As urbanization continues and suburbs empty out, cars simply become impossible for many people to support. Further, the car mystique is being attacked at the root: young people. As minimum wagesstagnate, teen unemployment continues to increase, insurance maintains its inexorable creep upwards, and additional obstacles put in the way of getting drivers’ licenses, teens literally cannot afford cars unless their parents buy them. It’s hard for anything to become part of your identity when you cannot obtain it.
Secondly, thereaction to a robot (car) causing accidents—killing people (gasp) is vastly disproportionate in relation to human-caused killings that are accepted as part of the supposed fabric of nature/society.
Certainly. This is one of the factors making me pessimistic in the short-run. Autonomous cars are simply too novel, and will be treated under a massive double-standard. But as the young people grow up and the statistics start to percolate through the old peoples’ heads, combined with the expected improvements in autonomous cars, the problem will abate. This may not have happened in your physician example, but then again, if taxi drivers had veto power over autonomous cars, it might not happen there either...
Kawoomba’s post spells out “weathehollowmen”, (“we the hollow men” it seems) and gwern’s spells out “lipsthatwouldkissformprayerstobrokenchips” (I suppose that means “lips that would kiss form prayers to broken chips”). I have no idea why though… Probably a quote from something.
It might be fair to point at that ygert did not in fact ask a question (perhaps ygert does not care for looking up references despite caring to ‘uncode’ hidden messages) and brilee might have thought that the bolding was a technical issue and didn’t think to look for a message which would be google-able..
By the way, shortly after posting my comment, I did in fact google it. I didn’t go back and comment again or edit my comment though, assuming that others who want to find out could google it themselves (and I was being lazy). Perhaps that was a mistake.
I don’t see how that changes my point. In Italy you need to be 18 before applying for a driving licence, so the fact that younger people don’t drive doesn’t mean much. Many teenagers ride scooters that their parents buy them, and a small, second-hand car isn’t much more expensive, so I guess they’d drive their parents’ car if they were legally allowed to.
Italy is incomparable in many ways to the USA; discussion of trends in the USA do not easily generalize to Italy, so I don’t really care about Italian scooters. My points were about the USA, and I believe they remain valid about the USA; and given the predominance of the USA in technological matters, the USA’s regulation and trends will matter most to the development of autonomous cars.
AFAIK the US is wealthier than Italy, so, if anything, I’d expect American adults to be more willing to buy cars to their children than Italian adults are. Am I missing something? (Probably, given that I’ve never been to the US; but what, exactly?)
Maybe cars cost more here. Maybe insurance costs more.
Wouldn’t that make it less likely for teenagers to buy their own cars, rather than more?
(Maybe I wasn’t clear. What I meant by “overwhelming exception” in the great^n-grandparent is that I’d guess that most of the teenagers who drive cars already are the ones who were bought cars by their parents. Were you implying that in the US until now there have been a large fraction of teenagers who buy their own cars?)
Those Atlantic articles seem like bogus trend pieces. The main evidence they cite is that the percentage of car sales to youth has declined—not surprising given the aging of the population in recent decades. As for the “suburbs empty[ing] out,” that isn’t actually happening. Suburban populations are still rising, just relatively slowly compared to the growth of cities.
And driverless cars are a boon especially to suburban areas, since they make commuting less annoying (and potentially, much faster).
Can you ROT13 that, it’s supposed to be a challenge. (Also, well done!)
I could say it was a harmless bit of levity, or that it’s nice to have some carrot (solving a puzzling problem) to go with the stick (pondering the legality of robotic cars, a niche subject). I could vaguely hint that such references are obliquely applicable in most any context, or that it was a stray thought, if that. I don’t really know. Maybe I have it all backwards.
EDIT: “Maybe I have it all backwards” and “Can you ROT13 that”, along with “I could vaguely hint” would have revealed “stage two complete”. Ah well. :-(
I did actually get it (bolded letters again, weren’t that hard to figure out), and considered a response, but never got motivated enough to post it. It would have been something like the following but I would hope to make it far less clumsy before posting it: “Amusement real enough. Though hidden Eliot reference eluded my own reading’s effectiveness—so took advantage google’s efficient search.”
As is often the case, people confuse a “autonomous cars are not for me” with “autonomous cars—what nonsense, should not be allowed!”
Sounds like you’re making this up. At least cite some examples. I have never heard anyone express anything like this attitude.
Yes there are some people who enjoy driving, and some of those people may even choose not to buy driverless cars. Even for driving enthusiasts, they might enjoy taking their car out for a pleasure drive somewhere, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy driving their same boring commute everyday. So even for most driving enthusiasts, they might enjoy having an autopilot mode in addition to a manual mode for fun driving.
But even if there are some purists, that doesn’t imply that they will try to ban it for everyone else. I’ve never heard of hot-rodders or muscle-car enthusiasts ganging up to ban Priuses because they feel they somehow “threaten their masculinity”.
Basically this sounds like familiar nerd paranoia—the evil macho jocks are trying to ruin everything.
As is often the case, people confuse a “autonomous cars are not for me” with “autonomous cars—what nonsense, should not be allowed!”
That particular claim I personally witnessed only once or twice—which counts for little. However, I’ve seen the more general pattern all too often: “I personally object to X, therefore X should be forbidden for everyone.” Gay marriage, abortion, THC, you name it. It’s rare to find a stance of (hyperbolically speaking) “I object to that activity, but I will fight to the death for your right to do it.”, or even to legally tolerate it. As such, even a priori (but based on the posteriors on many other issues) I’d expect for that pattern to apply to autonomous cars as well.
Instantiated to this instance: People who don’t want autonomous cars because they deem them unsafe, or because they prefer to drive their SUVs themselves, would not mind taking away the rights of others to use them. At least, that’s my claim.
(If someone feels strongly such a phenomenon does not exist and we find a good way to gather broader evidence, we could set up a bet, going to a charity of the winner’s choice.)
(If someone feels strongly such a phenomenon does not exist and we find a good way to gather broader evidence, we could set up a bet, going to a charity of the winner’s choice.)
I’m pretty sure that phenomenon does exist, but it seems unlikely to me that that’s what’s going on in this case.
People who don’t want autonomous cars because they deem them unsafe, or because they prefer to drive their SUVs themselves, would not mind taking away the rights of others to use them.
You realize that cars can kill/injure people other than their drivers?
Very well, I have a preference too, I prefer that people who kill small children receive the death penalty. Put the electric chair next to the kitchen, you follow your preference, and I’ll follow mine.
Looking at all your comments in this thread, it seems to me that you are. At the very least you don’t seem to have exerted any effort thinking about how to tell whether something is like chocolate or like baby-eating.
People who don’t want autonomous cars because they deem them unsafe, or because they prefer to drive their SUVs themselves, would not mind taking away the rights of others to use them. At least, that’s my claim.
Frankly, I’ve seen a lot more instances of people who prefer not to drive SUVs themselves attempting to take away the rights of those who do than the other way around.
Which would exactly be supporting my point of “I don’t like / object to X, so it should be forbidden for everyone!” I could have used your sentence just the same.
If you think of evidence that would contradict my claim, it would be people who oppose (or even just don’t like) X not wishing for X to be illegal.
A good counter example. It’s curious but heartening that a country as seemingly catholic as Italy still accepts the right of others to choose differently. As opposed to, say, Ireland.
Vegetarianism is another one—I don’t think many vegetarians wish eating meat was illegal.
It’s curious but heartening that a country as seemingly catholic as Italy still accepts the right of others to choose differently. As opposed to, say, Ireland.
Yep. When people complain of the Church’s influence in Italian politics, I tell them about Ireland (I studied there for a year), including stuff like alcohol sales being banned on Good Friday. (OTOH, the Church does have ridiculous privileges fiscally in Italy, among other things.)
What are you talking about? The vegetarians I’ve met vary widely in their stated reasons not to eat meat, with many of them being some variety of “I just don’t like it”.
Which would exactly be supporting my point of “I don’t like / object to X, so it should be forbidden for everyone!” I could have used your sentence just the same.
At this point your argument appears to be “I and people similar to myself like to force our preferences about cars down other people’s thoughts; therefore, so does everybody else”. Sounds like a case of psychological projection to me.
If you’ve “seen a lot of instances of people who prefer not to drive SUVs themselves attempting to take away the rights of those who do” you seem to have observed the same pattern I did. As for the “force our preferences about cars”, I do not know what you mean, since it’s not a topic I’m particularly invested in. Personally, I use whatever gets me from A to B comfortably and safe, signalling be damned.
Personally, I use whatever gets me from A to B comfortably and safe
I also like the as much ability to choose what point B is, not to mention, the ability to decide at B whether to go to C or back to A without planning out the whole trip ahead of time. This is why I prefer cars to public transportation.
I don’t think that it’s fair to say that most of the opposition against abortion comes from people not wanting to use it themselves. The rather think that’s inherently immoral. The same to a lesser extend for gay marriage.
Autonomous cars don’t seem to be in the same category.
Why haven’t these macho driving enthusiasts tried to ban chauffeurs or taxis? Why haven’t they organized against automatic transmissions or cruise control or parking assist, etc. Again, you just seem like a conspiracy theorist.
I’m reminded of an Irish guy who once said that using manual transmission is one of the three things all men should be able to do (the other two being using maps rather than asking for directions, and opening jars). (Not sure how serious he was.)
(Anyway, it’s cultural. In Italy, pretty much everybody uses manual transmission, regardless of their gender.)
Wow. I didn’t know that. (I would have assumed that deciding which gear is most efficient at a given speed was something machines would be better at than humans.) What’s it good for, then?
Automatics are easier to use and probably safer, since both hands can be kept on the wheel. The fuel efficiency reduction is (I think) mainly because of the energy used in the pumping of hydraulic fluid, not switching gears poorly.
Claim 1: There are reasons a lot of people do not themselves want to utilize autonomous cars. One of those reasons is their attachment to personally driving cars, what that self-signals and other-signals. There are other reasons.
Claim 2: People are prone to confuse “I do not want to use this because I feel threatened by it” with “I object to autonomous cars” with “This should be forbidden for everyone”. It makes sense, in a way, since with noone being allowed to do X / having X (in this case autonomous cars), there is less actual change to fear and less pressure to defend your individual aversion.
Your conclusion: I’m saying that macho driving enthusiasts try to ban chauffeurs or taxis. This is, of course, nonsense, since a culture that uses chauffeurs or taxis, which are humans, does not threaten the paradigm of “humans themselves control the driving”. Automatic transmissions are an absolute rarity e.g. in Europe (which we aren’t talking about), but even in the US do not trigger the “a machine is in control” angst. It does not follow that being afraid of losing control of the car means every small step along that way must be perceived that way. There is a qualititative difference between automatic transmissions, cruise control or parking assist and self-driving “enter your destination” type autonomous cars.
(What’s with the strawmanning, this isn’t Reddit.)
I didn’t misspell the word, so I’m not sure why you’re accusing me of that.
You obviously aren’t even reading my comments. You still have never explained why anyone would feel their own identity was threatened by someone else making a different decision about cars. Most new technologies are viewed with some concern at first. For some reason you are trying to make this about the evils of “male-identity,” instead of normal tech-wariness.
The obvious examples are all political, think “why anyone would feel their own identity was threatened by someone else making a different decision about X” with X being any of (more loaded—because they deal with identity-loaded issues) marriage, abortions, etc.
We seem to differ mostly about how important (not for functional, but signalling/identity—which I see as self-signalling—purposes) cars are to the average American. Is that correct? The market for fast luxury cars (Porsche et al) seems to indicate there is something not strictly functional going on. How many would buy an autonomous 911 versus one you drive yourself?
(Also, it would’ve been hard to quote “chaffeur” without having read the c, the h, the a, the f, another f, the e, the u and the r. I did miss a “u”, sorry for that. Still, 8 out of 9! Hopefully that’s settled then.)
We seem to differ mostly about how important (not for functional, but signalling/identity—which I see as self-signalling—purposes) cars are to the average American. Is that correct?
No, that is not the crux of our disagreement. I do disagree somewhat, but that is a side-argument.*
The main disagreement we have is rooted in this:
However, I’ve seen the more general pattern all too often: “I personally object to X, therefore X should be forbidden for everyone.” Gay marriage, abortion, THC, you name it.
and this:
The obvious examples are all political, think “why anyone would feel their own identity was threatened by someone else making a different decision about X” with X being any of (more loaded—because they deal with identity-loaded issues) marriage, abortions, etc.
Do you also think that liberals oppose guns, GMOs, and fission power plants out of a desire to protect their personal identities? Or do they actually have some reasons to be concerned?
You are really assuming the worst about the people you disagree with. I think the reason some people are wary of self-driving cars is that they are actually afraid of harm caused by self-driving cars. My position has the benefit of simplicity: people are saying what they mean. Your position is based on woo about gender identity and subconscious motivations.
Personally I disagree with the people who are afraid of self-driving cars.
I disagree with the dichotomy you’ve set up—not everything is about utilitarian function or signalling. Many car drivers enjoy their fast cars because they are fun—in the same way puzzles, action movies, drugs, roller coasters, and cooking are fun. Because of the kick of endorphins they get from going 150 mph, etc. But certainly signalling is also a major part of car decisions.
While I am claiming that A: “I personally do not like / object to X based on subconscious etc. reasons” leads to B: “X should be illegal” all too often, I am not claiming that B: “X should be illegal” necessarily implies A:”(...) because of subsconscious etc. motivations”.
Does that explanation help?
Do you also think that liberals oppose guns, GMOs, and fission power plants out of a desire to protect their personal identities? Or do they actually have some reasons to be concerned?
In part, yes. Nothing better for building group identity than a common enemy to rally against. There are legitimate actual reasons, but looking at protestors chaining themselves to train tracks to stop trains with fissile material, I’d doubt they are driven mostly by rational reasoning.
Personally I disagree with the people who are afraid of self-driving cars.
So do I. I’d be happy to be an early adopter.
I didn’t aim to set up an absolute dichotomy, I’ll reread my previous comments for clarity. It was merely a reason among many (two of which I expounded upon).
Hello, I’m looking for the comment section and got lost, is this it?
The legal status quo is secondary to public perception, which—other than some technophile aficionados—is quite reserved. There’s too much male identity attached to driving, not only are cars used to show off status, but so is the driving style you use them with. As is often the case, people confuse a “autonomous cars are not for me” with “autonomous cars—what nonsense, should not be allowed!”, in part because they feel threatened their identity-generating toy could be devalued / taken away.
Secondly, the reaction to a robot (car) causing accidents—killing people (gasp) is vastly disproportionate in relation to human-caused killings that are accepted as part of the supposed fabric of nature/society. It is one of the main reasons why robotic surgery has such a hard time taking over—a surgeon “doing his best” yet the patient not surviving? A human tragedy, it may have been the patient’s time to go. A robot—with a much higher success rate—“killing” a patient? Outrage! Liability demands! A central figure that can be blamed (the manufacturer). It is comical how the makers of the da Vinci surgical system have to insist that every move is controlled by a physician, when certain aspects would work much better when automated.
And that is why Carthago should be destroyed. I’m sorry, what was this comment about? Ah well …
Obviously, this is quite cultural. Apparently in Stockholm (Sweden), only about one quarter (link in Finnish) of 18-year olds acquires a driving license, though many get one later on when life circumstances change. In the Helsinki region (Finland) as well, there has been a bit of a reported decline in the popularity of driving licenses among the young, though it’s unclear to what extent the statistics actually support this. In cities that have a good public transport system, people can easily grow up with the notion that owning a car simply isn’t necessary.
(I don’t have a license myself, and although I know many who do, I’ve never gotten the impression that not having one would be considered particularly unusual. Of course, my normal social circles are rather unrepresentative of the population at large.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2bmqdnx5R1U#t=364s
Huh. Must be a countryside thing.
Yes of course. (Unfortunately, ) the benchmark culture inhibiting or furthering progress on such trends still seems to be the United States, where due to the distances involved, and the typically abysmal public transportation system, personal mobility by car is usually a central component of everyday life. It is in principle possible for such progress to emerge in, say, Japan, as it did in the mobile communications market. However, such progress has typically been insular. To truly make the jump to the “mainstream”, the canary in the coal mine has historically been the US.
But … but … how do you drive your Lamborghini?
Well, at least if you measure “mainstream” by what’s mainstream in the US. ;) It wasn’t just Japan that pulled ahead with mobile communications, for example—back in 2000 the US was lagging badly behind most of Europe when it came to cell phones. And there are areas like banking services where it’s doing even worse—before I visited the US back in 2010, I think I had seen one or two cheques in my whole life, but in the US they were still in active use.
Why do you assume that banking services are worse if people still use checks? That seems like cultural parochialism. It isn’t like credit card and debit card transactions aren’t universally available, but check transactions are as well. It seems to be an added convenience the retail sector provides for those who want it.
Btw, this inspired me to ask someone I know why she still uses checks to pay for groceries. She said that she just likes using the little ledger in the checkbook to keep track of her spending. And (she says) it doesn’t take any longer really. You just sign the check, and most stores have a machine that fills out everything else for you.
(Quote from a later post, because I wanted to respond higher up in the thread...)
One instance I can think of where this is not the case is rent payments, many (most?) of which are still done by check by default.
But in any case, the very fact that many poor Americans are underbanked (which you say leads them to prefer checks) demonstrates that the US banking system is inferior to the European, although this is probably more a result of bad overall regulation and market structure than being “behind” on technology. That said, I don’t think either system is especially innovative, except perhaps in the (sometimes unfortunate) sense of creating new financial products. If we want to find actual consumer banking innovation, it seems to be primarily occurring in the developing world, where we’re seeing things like microlenders, interesting savings products, phone-based money transfer (and the usage of airtime as an alternative currency), and so on.
Bitcoin.
I’m aware it exists, but its penetration is vastly lower than the things I mentioned, and its usefulness more dubious.
To me Kickstarter is just as innovative as Microlending.
Paypal is a recent invention and works much better than phone-based money transger with airtime as alternative currency.
First of all, I think it’s worth pointing out that this conversation is about innovation not whether one retail banking system is better. It is possible for a system to be more innovative while also having worse outcomes. For example, the US healthcare system lags in health outcomes in many ways, but is dominant in medical research publications, medical Nobel prizes (a solid majority of medical Nobel prizes have gone to US researchers in the last 30 years) medical device manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, etc.
You are just assuming that these people are bankless due to some unusual quality of American banks.The main reason I have heard for poor people avoiding banks is overdraft charges—something almost all banks in all countries have. It’s quite possible that America just has a more feckless underclass than most European countries, and they are bad at estimating when they will overdraw. For people like that, using cash would make a lot of sense. Or maybe America’s underclass has more cashflow problems because the US welfare system is oriented more toward in-kind services than cash transfers. Or maybe its just a weird subcultural thing that America’s underclass likes having wads of cash on hand.
I agree with this.
This does not appear to be the case. Here’s a good overview from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. My personal guess is that the fractured nature of the US banking systems (many small local banks) results in uneven service quality and less caring about reputation from banks, as well as costs being higher per client, making poorer clients less profitable. In addition, Deloitte writes: “In the United States, many traditional bank competitors view the unbanked and underbanked segments as unattractive as their costs to serve are high and income generated low relative to more affluent segments. This is partially a reflection of a high-cost base and expensive and restrictive regulatory actions exacerbated by recent consumer legislation.”
It is not a case of the poor being better off without banking services or anything like that (as mention in the Fed article, and also here’s the World Bank for some international stats), it’s really just a case of poor provision. On the bright side, it seems like the situation is somewhat improving with prepaid cards being offered, which do not require a complicated application process, and which have no overdraft at all (if you think that’s important), with the one downside being that it seems like some of them may have unreasonable fees.
Well, that went off-topic.
You are very dishonestly misrepresenting your sources, and privileging your hypothesis. None of your sources actually claim that US bank practices are different. Deloitte does say that regulations (ceteris paribus) increase the cost of serving low-income people, but does not actually demonstrate that such costs are higher than they are in Europe. Furthermore, most of these regulations are designed to make banking more appealing to low-income people, since they decrease fees, and force banks to offer overdraft protection. Yes those costs make banks less likely to advertise to poor people, but also make bank use more attractive for poor people. And none of this demonstrates that bank behavior is different in the US—since European countries probably also have consumer protection laws. Deloitte never claims that US banks are more regulated on balance.
The World Bank source actually argues my point in my earlier response to you: that America’s poor people don’t use banks because 1. they have cashflow problems and 2. They don’t trust banks (i.e. a cultural problem). Both of those are characteristics of US poor people, not of US banks.
The Fed St. Louis report also supports my claim:
You claim that I privilege my hypothesis, while your own hypotheses as originally stated were: 1) overdraft charges are scaring the poor away, 1a) maybe US poor are more “feckless”, 2) maybe US poor have less cash flow due to welfare being less cash-based, 3) maybe US poor prefer to use cash… and then you claim that Fed St. Louis supports you in that paragraph? Really? It mentions none of those things except insofar as one of the aspects of “negative prior experience” is overdraft charges (and by a very generous reading it could perhaps be argued that the “paycheck to paycheck” bit is somewhat similar to what you said). In fact, I went out of my way to search for “overdraft” specifically, as that was your primary hypothesis, and I found that fears of overdraft protection come up in surveys as minor factors for not having a bank account, and as fairly major factors among those who prefer prepaid cards to debit cards (which I mentioned).
In addition, I would appreciate it if in the future you would not assume that someone is being willfully dishonest unless you are absolutely certain of it. Having reread my previous post and re-skimmed the sources I cite, I do not see where I misrepresented them. Although I obviously did not write everything each of them said (and indeed I also read three or four other things I did not link at all), I believe my post is broadly in alignment with their intent.
Regardless, I find I have no interest in further discussing this topic with you, so this will be my last post.
I have never had any interest in discussing this with you. I did so merely as a courtesy for someone who seemed to have an interest.
Customer protection laws in Europe don’t allow banks to operate the same way with overdraft charge as banks can operate in the US.
This doesn’t seem to be true. I’ve confirmed that both the UK and France have overdraft fees. US banks also are required by law to offer overdraft protection (which is opt-in).
Because I’ve been told that the main reason for checks still being in use is the lack of convenient wire transfers, and having to bother with cashing out checks when e.g. getting your salary sounds a lot less convenient than just getting the money directly to your bank account. (Feel free to correct me in case my information’s mistaken.)
Most employers actually prefer to pay via direct transfer, and obviously the banks offer these services.
Again, it isn’t a case of the service not being offered, it is just that individuals are offered a choice, and some choose differently than you would. Why does that bother you?
It doesn’t; I was under the impression that it was a case of the service not being offered. Some folks from around here that I know have sold their products in webstores owned by American companies, and complained about those companies insisting on payment by check, which are a pain to get processed in our banks. But perhaps this just means that American companies aren’t good with international wire transfers, while being fine with domestic ones?
Cheques aren’t an added convenience to cards, cards and online payment are added conveniences that are slowly superseding cheques. In Britain, cheques are on the way out, although not quite as fast as was once planned. Most shops no longer accept them.
I’m sure the US will catch up.
Unless you’re making the purely semantic point that checks existed first (which is entirely obvious, irrelevant, and did not need to be pointed out), yes they are an added (i.e. additional) convenience offered over firms that do not accept them.
It is surprising that you would think accepting more payment methods is somehow worse than offering fewer.
Additional security vulnerabilities, additional costs to implement and support possibly blocking new better approaches, additional complexity...
If checks had not yet been invented, and someone came to Europeans saying, ‘I have this new ultra-cool system of payment which involves trivially forged signatures on paper where the bank upon receiving it takes a photograph rather than store it on paper and where fraud may not be detected for days; also, you have to manually keep track of the balance and if you don’t and you write a check that bounces you’ll be fined by the bank and maybe also the person you wrote the check too; and did I mention that the security is so weak that people who want to distribute their checks far & wide like Don Knuth can’t do it because their bank accounts will be raided? Pls pay me $$$ for my kicking invention kthnxbai’, do you think they would greet him with open arms?
Yes checks have downsides, but they have upsides as well, which is why a substantial percentage of people prefer to receive them. You should read about this thing called “Revealed Preference.” For example, more than a fifth of black and Hispanic Americans don’t have checking accounts—usually because of bad experiences involving a overdraft fees. So being able to receive checks is a nice convenience for them.
Also with checks you avoid interchange fees, so there are advantages to merchants as well.
I strongly suspect that in Europe the number of “bankless” households is much smaller. My point, though, is that having check capabilities isn’t worse than not having them—unless you already happen to be living in a place where nobody prefers checks.
Your argument reminds me of this guy I know who always gets really mad that some people buy iPhones instead of Android phones. But… they’re technically inferior! Stop using what I don’t use!
I take it that it did not occur to you that this was the point of my use of the reversal test on the European absence of checks.
I reiterate the point about revealed preferences plus a reiteration of my list of costs to supporting checks.
In that case, you have misunderstood what my discussion with Kaj was about. He felt that the fact that checks were still in wide use in the United States implied that financial services in America lack modern conveniences.
I pointed out that the fact that an older medium is still accepted does not, in fact, imply that wireless transfer and debit card payments are not available. My argument was not that Europeans should adopt checks because they are superior, but that having check capabilities doesn’t actually mean modern conveniences are lacking, as he implied.
Revealed preferences as applied here can only give a stalemate: Americans preferring checks and Europeans never using checks doesn’t tell us which is superior. Adding in the reversal test and noting that the European electronic systems came after rather than simultaneously with checks tells us that in a direct head-to-head comparison, checks lost in a large area of the world, and noting that they don’t offer them at all, apparently, tells us that there is a large burden or cost to supporting checks—in direct opposition to your rhetorical invocation of ‘how can additional options be bad?’. With the burden of supporting checks established, the situation now looks like one of path dependence or local optima traps: the Europeans were able to escape to a more efficient secure useful system of e-banking while the Americans continue to be trapped in a local optima because they cannot profitably shift to a e-banking system while also supporting the costs of the existing checking system.
If this claim was right, there would be lots of locations in which card readers are not available, but checks are accepted. In fact, you seem to be totally wrong about this bizarre claim. In reality, debit cards, credit cards, and charge cards are pretty much always available wherever checks are accepted. I’ve never been to a retailer that accepted checks but not cards.
The same argument could be used to claim that Los Angeles’ transportation infrastructure is more advanced than San Francisco’s. (LA used to have a light rail system, but later transitioned entirely to cars. SF kept light rail going, in addition to having cars).
It’s a good thing I never said that because it is indeed bizarre. Of course individuals may move closer to the better European optima, but the system as a whole remains in the optima. You may be able to use your debit card in plenty of places, but where’s the rest of the European style system? Can you trivially send money from account to account? Receive deposits in minutes or hours rather than multiple days? etc.
Would pass the reversal test. There are plenty of LAers who would welcome a light rail system, and googling I see there are active light rail projects.
The downside is, cards aren’t as useful for doing this.
Given the recent history of technological innovation, WTF are you talking about?
There are counterexamples (e.g. renewable energy), but from the internet itself to MS, Intel, Google, FB, Sun, Cisco, IBM, the market and the market innovators (if not the manufacturing) were centered on the United States. Look at where those autonomous cars are developed, and by whom.
What are you thinking of that makes you so incredulous?
In Germany BMV and Audi develop autonomous cars. In Japan Toyota develops them. The US carmakers don’t but Google does develop them.
The US is probably one of the countries where the price you have to pay when your car accidently crashes a pedestrian is highest. If you want to bring a new techonlogy to market that’s likely to kill people by accident the US might be the worst place.
I think this has more to do with the fact that US automakers have major financial problems and thus can’t afford to spend large amounts of money on speculative research.
From the context in the grandparent it seemed like you were arguing against the notion that the US is the early adapter.
Sorry if I was unclear.
There are probably similar identity-creating elements in other countries, beyond cars.
Digressing a bit, I’m having a hard time comprehending the notion of assigning identity to anything beyond the way my own mind works. Doing that with a car seems completely insane, but as I said I’ve never even been close to that volume of mind-space, so I might be completely misunderstanding.
I’d like to understand what’s going on, though. Would anyone like to try explaining?
Identity is about your place and role in society, and car ownership feels like a role just as much as anything else, so I’m not sure what exactly about it is that you find confusing. (To me, the notion of only assigning identity to the way one’s mind works sounds a little weird.)
My place and role in society are.. just circumstances. Caring about them as ends, rather than means, seems weird to me.
When you put it like that, though.. At some point I read an article, and I think it was here on Lesswrong, about the types of people who survived WW2 camps. The main takeaway was that the survivors were primarily people who defined themselves in terms of their own mind and immutable attributes, rather than in terms of career, friends, etc.
The article also pointed out that such people are fairly rare, which if the common-case identities also includes items such as cars (I rather think it would) would help explain why common attitudes towards cars are as they are.
I don’t suppose you remember the article in question?
I can’t find that article here, on OB, or in my Evernotes.
Googling, this Holocaust meta-analysis http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/bul1365677.pdf only mentions defensive mechanisms post-Holocaust (focusing on denial); http://amcha.org/Upload/folgen.pdf & http://peterfelix.tripod.com/home/Psychopathology.pdf focused on treatment of survivors and any effects on their children & grandchildren.
Roberta Greene’s ‘resilience’ research sounds relevant, but from this summary http://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_releases/Utopian%20Spring%202009.pdf it sounds like it found the opposite—dependence on friends & family:
Some interesting citations and facts:
Here.
Yes, that’s it, thanks!
Now I can go on to actually read the book.
Well, evolutionarily at least it would make a lot of sense to care about your role in society as an end. If the village can only support one smith, for instance, then you better focus your energies on being a damn good smith so that nobody else can replace you.
And nope, afraid not.
If the village can only support one smith, and you’re the smith, then if you’re not bloody incompetent you can probably do just fine for yourself as long as you make sure to take on an apprentice eventually (it needn’t be until later in life). Nobody else’s business is smithing, so you don’t have any competition, and as long as your goods perform reasonably well you’re pretty much set.
At best you take a son as apprentice so that he can feed you when you are too old to work as smith.
I believe you are recalling a remark by Mike Darwin.
I don’t see any hits for ‘Holocaust’ on chronopause.com, and http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_user.php?u=mikedarwin turns up nothing useful for ‘Holocaust’ or ‘survivor’.
Anyways I recall the remark being an unjustified assertion.
It was a fairly long article, probably in PDF format. Does that sound right?
I remember seeing it in a LW comment or article, perhaps quoted from somewhere else.
Assuming you never what to leave the city.
Or mostly only visit similar cities.
No, I’m a student living in Berlin and I have no car but a driven license.
Airplanes and trains are decent possibilities to leave the city. Even carpooling provides a nice way to leave the city.
Or am willing to rent a car when I do.
You still need to have a driver’s license to do that.
I think you substantially overestimate how important this is. As urbanization continues and suburbs empty out, cars simply become impossible for many people to support. Further, the car mystique is being attacked at the root: young people. As minimum wages stagnate, teen unemployment continues to increase, insurance maintains its inexorable creep upwards, and additional obstacles put in the way of getting drivers’ licenses, teens literally cannot afford cars unless their parents buy them. It’s hard for anything to become part of your identity when you cannot obtain it.
Certainly. This is one of the factors making me pessimistic in the short-run. Autonomous cars are simply too novel, and will be treated under a massive double-standard. But as the young people grow up and the statistics start to percolate through the old peoples’ heads, combined with the expected improvements in autonomous cars, the problem will abate. This may not have happened in your physician example, but then again, if taxi drivers had veto power over autonomous cars, it might not happen there either...
Related reading: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-are-young-people-ditching-cars-for-smartphones/260801/
(unrelated) - I’m confused. Is there a reason why random letters are bolded?
Kawoomba’s post spells out “weathehollowmen”, (“we the hollow men” it seems) and gwern’s spells out “lipsthatwouldkissformprayerstobrokenchips” (I suppose that means “lips that would kiss form prayers to broken chips”). I have no idea why though… Probably a quote from something.
Doesn’t everybody know how to use Google yet? :-)
Which leads to a new trilemma on the existence of ignorance:
if a LWer hath not access to Google (the Internet), then from whence is he posting his question?
if a LWer hath access to Google and a desire to know, then for why his question?
if a LWer hath access to Google and desireth to know an answer and obtains it, then how did he post his question and not an answer?
QED, God is not omnipotent. Or something.
It might be fair to point at that ygert did not in fact ask a question (perhaps ygert does not care for looking up references despite caring to ‘uncode’ hidden messages) and brilee might have thought that the bolding was a technical issue and didn’t think to look for a message which would be google-able..
By the way, shortly after posting my comment, I did in fact google it. I didn’t go back and comment again or edit my comment though, assuming that others who want to find out could google it themselves (and I was being lazy). Perhaps that was a mistake.
Further evidence: population adjusted miles driven per year, normalized to 1971 levels
Peaked in 2005, currently back down to 1998 levels with little sign of the trend slackening.
Also, rising fuel prices. (This is more of an issue in Europe, especially Italy, than in the US, though.)
Overwhelming exception. Where I am, ISTM that most people in their early 20s drive a car, but few of them bought it themselves.
I was explicitly talking about teenagers.
I don’t see how that changes my point. In Italy you need to be 18 before applying for a driving licence, so the fact that younger people don’t drive doesn’t mean much. Many teenagers ride scooters that their parents buy them, and a small, second-hand car isn’t much more expensive, so I guess they’d drive their parents’ car if they were legally allowed to.
Italy is incomparable in many ways to the USA; discussion of trends in the USA do not easily generalize to Italy, so I don’t really care about Italian scooters. My points were about the USA, and I believe they remain valid about the USA; and given the predominance of the USA in technological matters, the USA’s regulation and trends will matter most to the development of autonomous cars.
AFAIK the US is wealthier than Italy, so, if anything, I’d expect American adults to be more willing to buy cars to their children than Italian adults are. Am I missing something? (Probably, given that I’ve never been to the US; but what, exactly?)
Maybe cars cost more here. Maybe insurance costs more. Maybe the culture frowns on scooters as replacements. Maybe a million things.
Wouldn’t that make it less likely for teenagers to buy their own cars, rather than more?
(Maybe I wasn’t clear. What I meant by “overwhelming exception” in the great^n-grandparent is that I’d guess that most of the teenagers who drive cars already are the ones who were bought cars by their parents. Were you implying that in the US until now there have been a large fraction of teenagers who buy their own cars?)
Yes. As far as I can tell, decades ago it was a lot more common for teenagers to buy cars, assisted by part-time jobs.
Those Atlantic articles seem like bogus trend pieces. The main evidence they cite is that the percentage of car sales to youth has declined—not surprising given the aging of the population in recent decades. As for the “suburbs empty[ing] out,” that isn’t actually happening. Suburban populations are still rising, just relatively slowly compared to the growth of cities.
And driverless cars are a boon especially to suburban areas, since they make commuting less annoying (and potentially, much faster).
Certainly. I think there’s multiple overlapping trends feeding the final results, but the cited stats could be purely cyclical or cherrypicked.
And the total population is still growing, which means a shift.
This can only happen after autonomous cars are accepted and widespread for ordinary driving, hence it doesn’t matter to my argument about acceptance.
Ubj vf gur GF Ryvbg ersrerapr eryrinag?
It seems an apt description of the people who are the subject of his first point.
Can you ROT13 that, it’s supposed to be a challenge. (Also, well done!)
I could say it was a harmless bit of levity, or that it’s nice to have some carrot (solving a puzzling problem) to go with the stick (pondering the legality of robotic cars, a niche subject). I could vaguely hint that such references are obliquely applicable in most any context, or that it was a stray thought, if that. I don’t really know. Maybe I have it all backwards.
EDIT: “Maybe I have it all backwards” and “Can you ROT13 that”, along with “I could vaguely hint” would have revealed “stage two complete”. Ah well. :-(
I did actually get it (bolded letters again, weren’t that hard to figure out), and considered a response, but never got motivated enough to post it. It would have been something like the following but I would hope to make it far less clumsy before posting it: “Amusement real enough. Though hidden Eliot reference eluded my own reading’s effectiveness—so took advantage google’s efficient search.”
Sounds like you’re making this up. At least cite some examples. I have never heard anyone express anything like this attitude.
Yes there are some people who enjoy driving, and some of those people may even choose not to buy driverless cars. Even for driving enthusiasts, they might enjoy taking their car out for a pleasure drive somewhere, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy driving their same boring commute everyday. So even for most driving enthusiasts, they might enjoy having an autopilot mode in addition to a manual mode for fun driving.
But even if there are some purists, that doesn’t imply that they will try to ban it for everyone else. I’ve never heard of hot-rodders or muscle-car enthusiasts ganging up to ban Priuses because they feel they somehow “threaten their masculinity”.
Basically this sounds like familiar nerd paranoia—the evil macho jocks are trying to ruin everything.
That particular claim I personally witnessed only once or twice—which counts for little. However, I’ve seen the more general pattern all too often: “I personally object to X, therefore X should be forbidden for everyone.” Gay marriage, abortion, THC, you name it. It’s rare to find a stance of (hyperbolically speaking) “I object to that activity, but I will fight to the death for your right to do it.”, or even to legally tolerate it. As such, even a priori (but based on the posteriors on many other issues) I’d expect for that pattern to apply to autonomous cars as well.
Instantiated to this instance: People who don’t want autonomous cars because they deem them unsafe, or because they prefer to drive their SUVs themselves, would not mind taking away the rights of others to use them. At least, that’s my claim.
(If someone feels strongly such a phenomenon does not exist and we find a good way to gather broader evidence, we could set up a bet, going to a charity of the winner’s choice.)
I’m pretty sure that phenomenon does exist, but it seems unlikely to me that that’s what’s going on in this case.
You realize that cars can kill/injure people other than their drivers?
You seem to be confusing “I don’t like X” with “I object to X”. The following two examples should help illustrate proper usage:
I don’t like chocolate.
I object to baby eating.
Just because you, personally, object to eating babies, doesn’t mean you have any right to say whether eating babies should be forbidden to others!
Very well, I have a preference too, I prefer that people who kill small children receive the death penalty. Put the electric chair next to the kitchen, you follow your preference, and I’ll follow mine.
(With apologies to Charles James Napier.)
I’m not confusing those, I claim those are all too easily confused in the general population.
Looking at all your comments in this thread, it seems to me that you are. At the very least you don’t seem to have exerted any effort thinking about how to tell whether something is like chocolate or like baby-eating.
Frankly, I’ve seen a lot more instances of people who prefer not to drive SUVs themselves attempting to take away the rights of those who do than the other way around.
Which would exactly be supporting my point of “I don’t like / object to X, so it should be forbidden for everyone!” I could have used your sentence just the same.
If you think of evidence that would contradict my claim, it would be people who oppose (or even just don’t like) X not wishing for X to be illegal.
As I think I already mentioned once, that’s a very common (maybe the majority) stance in Italy about abortion.
A good counter example. It’s curious but heartening that a country as seemingly catholic as Italy still accepts the right of others to choose differently. As opposed to, say, Ireland.
Vegetarianism is another one—I don’t think many vegetarians wish eating meat was illegal.
Yep. When people complain of the Church’s influence in Italian politics, I tell them about Ireland (I studied there for a year), including stuff like alcohol sales being banned on Good Friday. (OTOH, the Church does have ridiculous privileges fiscally in Italy, among other things.)
Who the hell is downvoting everything, anyway?
Given their stated reason for not eating meat, a reasonable argument could be made that this behavior is hypocritical.
What are you talking about? The vegetarians I’ve met vary widely in their stated reasons not to eat meat, with many of them being some variety of “I just don’t like it”.
At this point your argument appears to be “I and people similar to myself like to force our preferences about cars down other people’s thoughts; therefore, so does everybody else”. Sounds like a case of psychological projection to me.
If you’ve “seen a lot of instances of people who prefer not to drive SUVs themselves attempting to take away the rights of those who do” you seem to have observed the same pattern I did. As for the “force our preferences about cars”, I do not know what you mean, since it’s not a topic I’m particularly invested in. Personally, I use whatever gets me from A to B comfortably and safe, signalling be damned.
I also like the as much ability to choose what point B is, not to mention, the ability to decide at B whether to go to C or back to A without planning out the whole trip ahead of time. This is why I prefer cars to public transportation.
I don’t think that it’s fair to say that most of the opposition against abortion comes from people not wanting to use it themselves. The rather think that’s inherently immoral. The same to a lesser extend for gay marriage.
Autonomous cars don’t seem to be in the same category.
Why haven’t these macho driving enthusiasts tried to ban chauffeurs or taxis? Why haven’t they organized against automatic transmissions or cruise control or parking assist, etc. Again, you just seem like a conspiracy theorist.
I’m reminded of an Irish guy who once said that using manual transmission is one of the three things all men should be able to do (the other two being using maps rather than asking for directions, and opening jars). (Not sure how serious he was.)
(Anyway, it’s cultural. In Italy, pretty much everybody uses manual transmission, regardless of their gender.)
I assume Europeans use manual because the automatics decrease fuel efficiency and fuel is usually twice as expensive in Europe.
Wow. I didn’t know that. (I would have assumed that deciding which gear is most efficient at a given speed was something machines would be better at than humans.) What’s it good for, then?
Automatics are easier to use and probably safer, since both hands can be kept on the wheel. The fuel efficiency reduction is (I think) mainly because of the energy used in the pumping of hydraulic fluid, not switching gears poorly.
Funny.
Again, as clearly as I can:
Claim 1: There are reasons a lot of people do not themselves want to utilize autonomous cars. One of those reasons is their attachment to personally driving cars, what that self-signals and other-signals. There are other reasons.
Claim 2: People are prone to confuse “I do not want to use this because I feel threatened by it” with “I object to autonomous cars” with “This should be forbidden for everyone”. It makes sense, in a way, since with noone being allowed to do X / having X (in this case autonomous cars), there is less actual change to fear and less pressure to defend your individual aversion.
Your conclusion: I’m saying that macho driving enthusiasts try to ban chauffeurs or taxis. This is, of course, nonsense, since a culture that uses chauffeurs or taxis, which are humans, does not threaten the paradigm of “humans themselves control the driving”. Automatic transmissions are an absolute rarity e.g. in Europe (which we aren’t talking about), but even in the US do not trigger the “a machine is in control” angst. It does not follow that being afraid of losing control of the car means every small step along that way must be perceived that way. There is a qualititative difference between automatic transmissions, cruise control or parking assist and self-driving “enter your destination” type autonomous cars.
(What’s with the strawmanning, this isn’t Reddit.)
I didn’t misspell the word, so I’m not sure why you’re accusing me of that.
You obviously aren’t even reading my comments. You still have never explained why anyone would feel their own identity was threatened by someone else making a different decision about cars. Most new technologies are viewed with some concern at first. For some reason you are trying to make this about the evils of “male-identity,” instead of normal tech-wariness.
The obvious examples are all political, think “why anyone would feel their own identity was threatened by someone else making a different decision about X” with X being any of (more loaded—because they deal with identity-loaded issues) marriage, abortions, etc.
We seem to differ mostly about how important (not for functional, but signalling/identity—which I see as self-signalling—purposes) cars are to the average American. Is that correct? The market for fast luxury cars (Porsche et al) seems to indicate there is something not strictly functional going on. How many would buy an autonomous 911 versus one you drive yourself?
(Also, it would’ve been hard to quote “chaffeur” without having read the c, the h, the a, the f, another f, the e, the u and the r. I did miss a “u”, sorry for that. Still, 8 out of 9! Hopefully that’s settled then.)
No, that is not the crux of our disagreement. I do disagree somewhat, but that is a side-argument.*
The main disagreement we have is rooted in this:
and this:
Do you also think that liberals oppose guns, GMOs, and fission power plants out of a desire to protect their personal identities? Or do they actually have some reasons to be concerned?
You are really assuming the worst about the people you disagree with. I think the reason some people are wary of self-driving cars is that they are actually afraid of harm caused by self-driving cars. My position has the benefit of simplicity: people are saying what they mean. Your position is based on woo about gender identity and subconscious motivations.
Personally I disagree with the people who are afraid of self-driving cars.
I disagree with the dichotomy you’ve set up—not everything is about utilitarian function or signalling. Many car drivers enjoy their fast cars because they are fun—in the same way puzzles, action movies, drugs, roller coasters, and cooking are fun. Because of the kick of endorphins they get from going 150 mph, etc. But certainly signalling is also a major part of car decisions.
While I am claiming that A: “I personally do not like / object to X based on subconscious etc. reasons” leads to B: “X should be illegal” all too often, I am not claiming that B: “X should be illegal” necessarily implies A:”(...) because of subsconscious etc. motivations”.
Does that explanation help?
In part, yes. Nothing better for building group identity than a common enemy to rally against. There are legitimate actual reasons, but looking at protestors chaining themselves to train tracks to stop trains with fissile material, I’d doubt they are driven mostly by rational reasoning.
So do I. I’d be happy to be an early adopter.
I didn’t aim to set up an absolute dichotomy, I’ll reread my previous comments for clarity. It was merely a reason among many (two of which I expounded upon).
Alright, mind addressing my comment now?
I added some.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUuBXCEWOhc