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Comment by abalone | Hacker News Reader

Let's analyze Tesla's statement here, because it's useful training in intellectual self defense:

"Our data shows..."

Note the use of the keyword data. This appears frequently in Tesla statements. It implies certainty and technical understanding.

"...that, when used properly by an attentive driver who is prepared to take control at all times..."

Interesting condition.

"...drivers supported by Autopilot are safer than those operating without assistance"

This is garbage logic. It's just saying any errors that aren't corrected by the driver are cases of "not using it properly." Of course the "data" will show improved safety if you exclude all the accidents.

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Much like the lauded “success” of the 12 step program. Those program all claim high success rates as long as you adhere to the rules of the program... which means not drinking/drugs. Eg “falling off the wagon” means you stopped following the program rules and so don’t generally count as a “failure”.

You could refactor the program to:

Step 1: do not drink/drugs

Would get the same 100% success rate.

You would be correct.

But by hiding the fact that that is all it is they get government support and funding. Many of the program are also used by churches to force adoption of their religion. Essentially people are required to undertake a 12 step program and one of the steps requires you to accept a higher power. The churches then claim that the “higher power” “could” just be a friend or some such in much the same way that an “intelligent designer” does not mean “god”, it could be anything. Anything at all.

Because many churches love abusing their power over other people (like missionary “doctors” who require patients in $country convert to Christianity to receive treatment)

Is it garbage logic?

Dev: "The compiler's automatic error checking didn't catch the array overrun in my code, resulting in a costly security breach!"

Compiler Vendor: "Our data shows that compiler diagnostics, when used by a skilled and conscientious programmer who is prepared to review and test his or her code, reduce software defects compared to no diagnostics, making software development safer."

Your examples are garbage logic because array overruns are so harmful that they should be hard errors. Of course, this requires a runtime cost, that can be elided in most cases by the compiler's optimizer. But even low level languages nowadays can be safe by default (see Rust) - the unsafe behavior should always be a conscious, well studied decision by the developer.

You’re comparing getting decapitated by a truck to an array overrun, which might be a sign your analogy is strained.

Tesla is facing a lawsuit (well, many lawsuits). They obviously aren't going to put out any sort of public statement that would show there's a chance Tesla is at fault. This is PR for PR's sake.

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