Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

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And who's to determine what the purpose was?

"The street finds its own uses for things."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome

One can invent the cooking knife to help with all sorts of cutting tasks in cooking, and now they'll be held responsible if people decide to use those knives for murder? That's silly.

That's the problem with outlawing tools and tech instead of directly going after evil people. One ends up inconveniencing, penalizing, or even making criminals out of law abiding people, while the criminals just keep on circumventing.

Hey, all Internet kiddie porn is distributed using networks and computers. Time to outlaw those! Think that's silly? I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it. If we're not careful, we might end up in a world only consisting of locked down DRM-laden devices. Oh hey, we're not that far away from that either!

>I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it.

It will be a great day when human drivers are banned. Humans can't handle driving, and they cause 40,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Computers will be able to do this far better.

But your analogy isn't very good. Assuming we have driverless cars in the future that really are extremely reliable and safe, then I don't see what argument you can possibly make to allow human drivers, other than "I like driving". The interest of public safety clearly overrules your interest in being in control of your own car like in the "old days", just like the interest in public safety prevents you from flying your private airplane in controlled airspace without proper radio equipment, transponder, ATC clearance, etc.

However, all kinds of valid arguments can be made against a DRM-laden internet with devices you don't control. There's tons of things people simply wouldn't be able to do (such as write their own software) in such a world. The actual harm caused by the present state of things really isn't very much, if anything (can it be quantified?), the proposed solution doesn't really seem like it'll fix the supposed problems (they had drugs and stuff before the internet after all), and the proposed solution would impose giant costs on society. By contrast, driverless cars (at least the hypothetical ones assumed above) would fix a big problem, and would have very few downsides I can see.

It will be a great day when human drivers are banned. Humans can't handle driving, and they cause 40,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Computers will be able to do this far better.

Sure!...if we all actually owned our machines and the government wasn't using the mechanisms through large corporations to spy on us and control us. The thing is, many people in the government and large corporations are going to try and do just that, because it is in their short term interest to do so.

Assuming we have driverless cars in the future that really are extremely reliable and safe, then I don't see what argument you can possibly make to allow human drivers, other than "I like driving".

"I like driving," should be enough. Maybe there should be certain regions where you can still do it, but busy city highways would be restricted. In any case, it's not so much driverless cars that are the problem, so much as cars that are controlled by powerful organizations with interests that aren't the individual and individual autonomy and freedom of movement being taken away in a practical sense.

The actual harm caused by the present state of things really isn't very much, if anything (can it be quantified?)

This is how tyranny generally goes. At first, the Soviets were bright eyed and idealistic about the project of building a new society. Heck, even Germany in the late 1930's was like this, with progressives in the USA singing the praises of the "progressive" policies and energy of the new regime.

By contrast, driverless cars (at least the hypothetical ones assumed above) would fix a big problem, and would have very few downsides I can see.

No disagreement, again. The question is, will this eventually be implemented in a way where everyone is going to report in to Big Brother and ask permission to take a trip?

> I don't see what argument you can possibly make to allow human drivers, other than "I like driving"

Why not? Let them drive like they want. At least until the crash/accident is imminent. Then the car takes over and prevents harm...

Right now, it's the other way around. Car drives itself, then the human is supposed to jump in.

At least in the US, the police departments are reliant upon traffic tickets for funding. Just saying, get rid of human drivers, cops aren't gonna get paid!

I am going to laugh the day AI drivers need to get a license and or can get points from their license taken for traffic violations :D and the human has to pay for it

>I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars.

I don't know about that. Human driven cars provide police an excuse to stop and question almost anyone they want, as well as lots of revenue from traffic tickets.

Your argument does apply to some other objects though.

New legislation and regulations happen at glacial speeds. Even if everyone was on board and the tech was ready today, which is not the case, I would not expect it to happen very soon.

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