Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mikeash

> automatic washing machine

Will happily flood the house if something goes wrong.

> automatic login

Frequently requires manually reentering credentials.

> automatic debit of monthly bills

Will happily send your life savings to the power company if they typo a couple of extra zeroes on your bill.

> automatic reply to emails

Notorious for massive screwups when people enable them without adequate controls, especially when multiple people on the same mailing list do it at the same time.

All of these examples seem to reinforce the idea that "automatic" does not mean "requires no human supervision."

View on HN

The day Tesla's helper requires as much supervision as my washing machine or bank or email client, maybe they can claim naivete. Today, it's a cavalier and underhanded marketing tactic.

You're exactly the kind of fanboy I accused you of being, btw. Proper rules of engagement on HN be damned: you're wasting everyone's time with goalpost-moving and dis-ingenuousness.

That's a little harsh, both in general and specifically here. I've observed 'mikeash to be relatively level-headed in his comments here, even against the general baseline of HN's usually quite high level of quality; while he does make occasional excursions into unreasonability, so do we all, and I think it's worth making allowances for such things in the cause of a process which, in my experience, generally results in a stronger understanding of an issue all around.

If you feel your time is being wasted, perhaps you may wish to consider making the choice to spend it otherwise. Were it I who felt that way, I might still hesitate to generalize from myself to everyone, no matter how justified I might imagine myself to be in so doing.

No, I quite like discussion forums. Learned a lot from them. I just like when the discussions are charitable and productive, and when people argue in good spirit.

It's easier to pick up on the hostility of a sharp barbed comment than the one in a smarmy, disingenuous one, that only insults by implication, but it's still there.

Asking where people get such impressions, then mocking the first few responses citing sci-fi with a "that's a bigger problem!", then getting some current day ones, and proceeding to very weakly deflect them with excuses that don't stand up to scrutiny, doesn't seem like someone interested in understanding a situation.

It seems like someone trying to preach their opinion, while disguising it as a learning process, taking advantage of this forum's predilection for politeness.

What exactly is wrong with saying "that's a bigger problem" when sci-fi examples are posted? I didn't say they were wrong, I just recoiled in horror at the idea.

Am I not allowed to express my reactions to new ideas now? Or is "that's disturbing" somehow considered to be an indication of dismissal or disagreement?

I don't find these current day examples to be at all compelling. You think my response consists of excuses that don't stand up to scrutiny, I think they point out how automation has traditionally never been fully autonomous. The "they're getting it from sci-fi movies" is a lot more convincing, just horrifying.

> Or is "that's disturbing" somehow considered to be an indication of dismissal or disagreement?

Actually, you said "It disturbs me that all the examples so far are science fiction." which (a bit out of context and ignoring the principle of charity) could be interpreted as a cursory dismissal along the lines of, "these examples are too ridiculous to consider further".

Even with the principle of charity, I find "they're getting it from sci-fi movies" to be an unfair summary of my point, but perhaps I'm doing a poor job making my case clearly.

Thinking on it, would it be fair to expect any example of an autopilot function on a car to be from a type other than science fiction or fantasy?

I see what you mean, sorry to have been unclear. I think you see what I intended now.

You probably can't find it on a car without getting into SF, but an excessively sophisticated autopilot on an airplane could probably fit into an otherwise non-SF movie. Like the example of Airplane! but played seriously. I just assumed that's the sort of thing people were talking about with the idea coming from entertainment, since "obviously" technology in an SF movie is going to be unrealistic.

There certainly are some similar misconceptions generated by movies not usually considered to fall into the category of SF. For example, I'd wager a lot of people think spy satellites really can read a license plate from orbit, or that silenced guns just make a soft "pew" sound.

> Will happily flood the house if something goes wrong.

It isn't supposed to flood the house. It is designed to be automatic. Meaning no supervision. Tesla's Autopilot isn't designed this way yet carries the name.

Let's keep going.

> Will happily send your life savings to the power company if they typo a couple of extra zeroes on your bill.

This has nothing to do with automatic payment being poorly designed. It is designed to pay the balance without your intervention...hence automatic.

> Notorious for massive screwups when people enable them without adequate controls, especially when multiple people on the same mailing list do it at the same time.

Depends on how it is implemented. There are usually more knobs to this feature and it is designed to have you program it. Based on programming, settings, etc, it will do whatever you set it to without you having to be there...hence automatic reply.

I'm not saying automatic bill pay is poorly designed, I'm saying it requires supervision to make sure it doesn't do anything stupid. We don't expect "autopay" to be foolproof, we expect it to handle the mundane stuff.

It is designed to be foolproof. It alerts you when banking details fail. It alerts when it makes a payment. The system also sends you a bill email before it even makes a payment a few weeks before in case you want to dispute charges. The system however is to pay bills, and when configured correctly, it does it without you having to intervene at all. Not sure why automatic bill pay requires humans to get involved.

Your bill and the automatic bill pay system are two different concerns here.

If it was designed to be foolproof, they wouldn't bother sending you emails before they make payments.

It works fine when the situation is good, and it can fail when it encounters troublesome situations in the real world. Since it operates in the real world, it needs some monitoring.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com