Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Please don't. I don't think anyone in the linked article or in this thread is lying. I think they all have real experiences to relate and we should listen to them. Given that, can you please retract your needlessly inflammatory accusation of gaslighting? Thanks.

All I'm saying is that my experience makes it very clear that what problems remain with this technology are resolvable ones. Consumer cars are going to drive themselves. Period. And given existing evidence, it seems reasonably clear to me that Tesla is going to get there first (though I wouldn't be shocked if it's Waymo, Cruise seems less like a good bet).

And given that interpretation, I find the kind of grousing going on in this thread unhelpful. If I show you a bug in your iPhone, would you immediately throw it out and declare that no one could possibly market a smartphone? That's how this thread sounds to me.

View on HN

> All I'm saying is that my experience makes it very clear that what problems remain with this technology are resolvable ones. Consumer cars are going to drive themselves. Period. And given existing evidence, it seems reasonably clear to me that Tesla is going to get there first (though I wouldn't be shocked if it's Waymo, Cruise seems less like a good bet).

Perhaps I'm unreasonably dense, but I do not see the link (direct or otherwise) between 'it works well for me under the following circumstances' and 'it will work well for (almost) everyone, under all (reasonable) circumstances'. The former can be true, without any guarantee of the latter. Given all the hyperbole and promises that have been made thusfar, it's hardly surprising that folks are inclined to be skeptical, particularly if their own experiences are as poor as many in this thread indicate.

What I do agree with is that cars are going to be allowed to drive themselves, irrespective of how well they can do it, because the politicians and the bureaucrats apparently are unable to resist the siren song of 'progress'. That much we've seen in SF with Cruise among many other plraces. Whether this is a good thing is a different question entirely...

Jules Verne predicted space flight decades before technology made it possible.

In 1903, New York Times predicted that airplanes would take 10 million years to develop (https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-imp...).

Many people who saw the first actual flights from Wright brothers dismissed them as a parlor trick that will not amount to anything practical.

Technology has a long history of exponential improvements. At first it improves slowly and then suddenly.

Sure, everyone (not just Tesla) was expecting self-driving to happen by now. It didn't happen yet.

I share the OP's perspective that the maturity of self-driving is already so high that it's a matter of time for it to become viable to deploy at scale.

The initial DARPA challenge was Wright's brother. We're closer to a plane that can travel halfway over Atlantic. Not quite there yet but it's just a matter of time until it can cross it.

> needlessly inflammatory

> As I see it our choice is either to celebrate the advent of new technology or hide behind comment vote buttons trying to pretend that it isn't.

> For me, I'm happier watching it than I would be being a luddite. I'll take my downvotes now, thanks.

Pot, meet kettle.

I think the fact that my post now sits flagged and invisible, yet you're still commenting on it, more or less bears out the point I was making. I'm genuinely sorry you took offense, really I am. I thought that was fairly gentle, honestly. It was intended to be a fun way to point out the tribalism at work here. But... something are maybe just too fun to hate?

Let me repeat: I love my car. I'm not here to hate. I'm here to try to explain how great this thing is. Really, you have no idea how fun it is to have a robot drive you around town. And, comments like yours and the rest here make it clear that you're really missing out on that kind of joy in your rush to hate.

Call a friend and get a ride in an FSD beta car. You really might change your mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com