Hacker News Reader

Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

It was:

> > "Acting unexpectedly" is one of the aspects that makes dealing with mentally ill people anxiety-producing.

> Wat.

The "Wat" probably refers to the fact that this seems unrelated. Dealing with mentally ill people is anxiety-inducing because they act unexpectedly... so what? Lots of things are unexpected. They shouldn't all be drawn into the analogy that says "well, that thing, plus a load of other things, can induce anxiety, therefore that thing should be tarnished with the same brush as all of those things."

People drive in unexpected ways all the time. Of all the criticisms to level at them, "the thing you're doing plus a load of other stuff can induce anxiety" probably isn't top of the list.

View on HN

This makes me think of people that change two lanes very quickly to be able to turn at that next corner. We all see them, they piss us off through their bad planning but in the end I don't think an autonomous vehicle would ever try this, depending on programming of course.

Would also be nice to see all incidents, not just injury incidents to see what kind of unexpected "mistakes" these cars are making

It shouldn't, simply because it always knows where it's going well ahead of the lane change.

>Dealing with mentally ill people is anxiety-inducing because they act unexpectedly... so what? Lots of things are unexpected.

I think you're understating it.

Mentally ill people act far off the cuff. If I'm walking outside, people can behave unexpectedly (but within the parameters of behavior that doesn't make me anxious).

Imagine: stopping instantly to bend over and tie one's shoes or to look at a storefront. Taking up multiple spaces on the sidewalk. Dropping an item that causes a loud noise. All of these are unexpected movements that require a reaction.

However, if somebody screams about CIA conspiracies or has very erratic mannerisms, that would create more anxiety.

So, apparently their point is that AI behavior on the roads might be more jarring than normal jackass human behavior on the roads.

I am not painting them with the same brush, I'm drawing an analogy to help people understand the context better. In this case, public policy will dictate to what extent AVs are allowed on public roadways. That, in turn, is dictated by trust. I'm pointing out that "trust" may be incompatible with "unpredictability." I'm not sure what throughline you're drawing, but you seem overly hung up on the use of the word "anxiety," and it's causing you to miss the real point.

So to put a finer point on it, people need to acknowledge that public trust is necessary to wide-scale adoption of AV tech. Plenty of psychological research shows how we aren't intuitively wired to understand statistics. So all the bleating about statistics may be necessary, but not sufficient, to get wide-scale adoption of AVs on public roadways.

> seem overly hung up on the use of the word "anxiety,"

It wasn't just the word anxiety; that's a mischaracterisation, and another psychology-adjacent misstep with "hung up on". Your point wasn't great, or at least was very poorly articulated, and that's what caused me to "miss the real point". You seem to have clarified it with this comment, so my challenge to your original point seems to have helped.

Apologies if you think it was a mischaracterization. I was trying to figure out why you missed (what I consider) a pretty straightforward connection between theory-of-mind and predicting behavior. In retrospect, using a term like "mentally ill" is too loaded of term and distracts people from making that point because it can be triggering. I still think its a valid point, though, and plenty of people seemed to follow it just fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com