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).
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