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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> "People are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus." He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike.

I don't see how violence or vandalism of property is ever justified. Not to mention the fact that pelting self-driving cars with rocks or trying to run them off the road puts others in danger as well.

What I don't understand about these modern day Luddites is why what's considered today's technology is okay but any technological advances beyond this point is harmful. Why not attack washing machines and dishwashers? Surely forcing people to get their clothes washed by hands would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

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That doesn't really address the concerns in the article though - your quote is from a book about Google buses, a separate issue (but one mentioned in the article). One couple said their son was nearly hit by a car. Another person said the decision to test in their area felt unilateral.

This is pretty similar to how people reacted when cars showed up about a hundred years ago, and for good reason - drivers now kill half a million people a year, 30,000-40,000 of those in the US, disproportionately affecting people walking and cycling. We have evidence that self-driving cars are safer than human-driven cars, but we _also_ have evidence of "Tesla drivers pretending their half-assed version of self-driving is safe" and "self-driving car kills pedestrian" and no driver to face the consequence for this. More than a few of the touted designs for cities that self-driving cars enable are an utter hellscape for people who like walking, cycling, or motorcycling, and cars already destroyed our cities once.

Personally, I'd rather live in a place with no cars of any sort. Barring that, I'd actually prefer self-driving cars (they do seem safer) with massive restrictions on speed, noise, etc. But I can understand these people's concerns and just calling them Luddites doesn't really help.

> More than a few of the touted designs for cities that self-driving cars enable are an utter hellscape for people who like walking, cycling, or motorcycling, and cars already destroyed our cities once.

I don't follow. How are cities designed for self-driving cars hellscape? You admit that self-driving cars would likely lead to an objectively safer conditions for others, so what's the downside? They would also likely lead to higher utilization, more fuel efficiency and less traffic since much of traffic is due to human error. Protocols are also much easier to program and enforce than with human driven cars (e.g. people parking in bike lanes, double parking, stopping in unsafe zones to allow passengers to exit).

You're not going to get rid of cars. It's nice to say you prefer walking and biking and such, but the fact is that that's mostly a luxury of being wealthy and having the ability to live in a location where you can access your place of work and other facilities easily. If you're living in a rural area or a less expensive suburb of a large city, you rely on other forms of transportation such as a car or public mode of transportation (e.g. bus or subway). There are also those that have mobility issues that would be greatly inconvenienced by your insistence of a car free world.

Cities shouldn't be designed for cars. If anything, it should be the other way around.

Additionally, the idea of living directly in a city to be a luxury really destroys the justification of a "city" in the first place, in my opinion. The whole idea of suburbs throughout human history was the luxury of not being in a city, but thanks to that mentality + the Baby Boom, modern cities are now glorified business parks.

> Cities shouldn't be designed for cars. If anything, it should be the other way around.

I think that would be easier to do with self-driving cars as opposed to human driven cars for the reasons I mentioned in the parent post

> Cities shouldn't be designed for cars. If anything, it should be the other way around.

Sounds like a perfect being the enemy of the good issue. Whether or not cities are designed for cars is separate from 'should the cars be self-driving'. That sort of hairshirt anti-harm reduction has a poor track record.

> The whole idea of suburbs throughout human history was the luxury of not being in a city, but thanks to that mentality + the Baby Boom, modern cities are now glorified business parks.

That isn't true actually historically it was the reverse where the outskirts of the city were where the poor went, especially when it meant being outside of the protection of city walls! We are just seeing the trend reverse itself.

Engineers seem to be promoting the idea that cars can use communication to replace the signals drivers get from their enivironment. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel... mentions bombing through intersections at full speed for instance. Make that the norm and eventually cycling or walking will be outlawed (or too deadly to try).

I get your point and have even gone and stood on paint to protect bike lanes. But I lack any faith in lawmakers to care about any mode other than driving.

>The trouble started, the couple said, when their 10-year-old son was nearly hit by one of the vehicles while he was playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.

I would be angry, too. The prospect of self-driving cars excites me, but I can totally understand not wanting your neighborhood to become the testing grounds for this new tech. Uber and Tesla's mishaps in the self-driving space understandably color the public's perception of Waymo's far more responsible efforts to date.

Yes.

I'm very eager to get to the point where we have self driving cars, even though I'd be categorized as an enthusiastic driver (daily driver is a h-pattern 5-speed, racing experience including championship wins, etc.).

That said, if they were beta-testing in my neighborhood and actually hurt my kid or likely even a neighbors, they'd have a hard time keeping their cars running in the area.

"Move fast and break things" is only valid in a few limited contexts, and is particularly invalid in any potentially fatal context. I understand the need for realistic data, but, their industry has already killed someone beta testing (yes Uber. not Google, but...)

I understand the sentiment, but I'd take the word of those who harass random Waymo drivers with a grain of salt.

> your neighborhood

They own the house, not the right of way in front of it.

People who think they own the road are why we need self driving cars.

I don't see how violence or vandalism of property is ever justified.

Under any circumstances, ever? That seems rather extreme.

Anyway, people aren't arguing against technology here, but on an unwanted externality (extra traffic) with no persons around to provide accountability or mitigate the negative aspects with positive ones (like stopping for lunch to cause money to circulate longer in the longer economy). Centralized automation siphons money away in small quantities from many places and leads to a glut of it elsewhere, driving up prices and rents there.

Please quit with the Luddite arguments, which are a misleading diversion from this well-defined economic issue.

If you don't like something I'm doing, settling the issue with violence is fine by me. But be warned, my gang is better at violence than you are.

People who are scared or angry do not dwell on justification.

Political and corporate brands know this very well — we are not at all rational beings and any approach based on only “making a logical case for...” is insufficient. We believe we’re rational (the premises of the enlightenment) but are not.

Also, please consider how many people are employed in transportation and see themselves broke and homeless before you compare self driving cars to washing machines. Housewives were never paid to exclusively and only wash clothes. Completely different scenario.

These are people who, like luddites, see the end of their lives as they know it.

From a comment below, on Luddites:

> The group was protesting the use of machinery in a "fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labour practices.

> Also, please consider how many people are employed in transportation and see themselves broke and homeless ...

> These are people who, like luddites, see the end of their lives as they know it.

I agree it's a different scenario but how much of a fraction is that? I doubt it's very large. Literally millions of new employees in this field have been created thanks to companies like Uber, I doubt most were in the transportation business beforehand and had jobs doing something else, and once driverless cars are more common most won't be in transportation afterwards either. Most people can find new jobs, and most people in the industry already are probably there as a consequence of "I need a new job" rather than being born and bred for this one thing they can do that a machine will now take over.

I don't think Uber means what you mean by the word employee, just like the case recently all over reddit where TomTom stopped "lifetime" updates to a two year old GPS unit.

how much of a fraction is that? I doubt it's very large

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" only exists in Star Trek, and Silicon Valley. In the rest of the world, every life has value.

Considering I don't subscribe to such a simplistic philosophy that can't be the driving point of my questioning at all, your response makes no sense. Furthermore such a philosophy does not originate in Star Trek, SV is more individualistic and self-centered than most of the world (and I don't even live there anyway nor have any desire to), and life having value does not imply that all lives are the same value or that you can't perform addition on the values.

Needs are relative. I suspect society as a whole will be better off when no one loses a child to drunk drivers, asleep drivers, or elderly drivers who have impossibly slow reflexes due to age related factors. Self driving cars make those things a reality.

Except, of course, for the lives of people killed by the status quo technology. Fuck them, right?

And when Henry Ford made vehicles to the middle class, did all who sold horses and horse carriages forever go jobless? Nope. They did what most people did and retrained and got new jobs. More technology often creates higher paying (skilled) jobs, which people can be retrained to do.

The washing machine works for you. The self-driving car, even assuming they're for sale and you can afford one, fundamentally operates at the whim of its remote overlords. And you're not going to get run over by someone else's washing machine.

> I don't see how violence or vandalism of property is ever justified

I welcome your commitment to unilateral disarmament, end of gun ownership, disarmament of the police &c. /s

What if my upstairs neighbour's washing machine overflows with water and drips all over my home? My son nearly had his foot taken off by a drier that was bouncing about in my apartment's common area. We should ban driers.

I don't want any of my neighbours to have washing machines. I didn't agree to this. They should ask permission.

> Why not attack washing machines and dishwashers? Surely forcing people to get their clothes washed by hands would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Because "cars are taking jobs" isn't what is being protested here.

From the article: "The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles."

To be fair, we should separate what the protesters are protesting and what the reporter says is part of a general debate. NYT does not get to say why people are protesting, though it helps them drive a narrative if people reading the article can't tell the difference.

They deliberately conflate vandalism with general debate, and unfortunately it is then up to us to be smart enough to not lump them together like they did. The formula is usually to take shocking story/reaction, humanize it at a micro level, talk to so-called expert who may have written a book, have expert give general reasoning at a macro level, and then watch readers confuse micro and macro.

Also:

> The trouble started, the couple said, when their 10-year-old son was nearly hit by one of the vehicles while he was playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.

> “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses.

People protest for all sorts of reasons. bko's point is not relevant to every protester.

"why not attack washing machines and dishwashers?" ...thats going to happen with smart appliances eventualy, and the movement to desmart appliances is growing. it will keep electrical engineers in business developing smart actuation workarounds for appliances

sorry its not a sweet thing to hear, but the default coupling of intense data , and physical surveillance with smart products is a pitfall, and people are backlashing against it. I am one of those people that circumvent smart appliances back to sane mode and i make a killing financially from it.

I'm interested in hearing more about what you do. Can you expound on it?

i think this might be shadow banned, but FWIW, i use PIC and ALU to bypass smart controlls at the hardware level so old men and women, who dont want smart appliances get a hardware version that is locally contained. physically i fabricate a new control panel or console, manufacture the "digital over analogue" dials and keypads, and replace the smart hardware.

You're not hellbanned but sometimes you have to click on the timestamp of the comment to reply to it. Sounds like a great small business gig; there's probably also a market for people who had smart devices that became crippled when the parent company shut down.

yup there is its a good side gig, im a softie tho, so i take it easy on markup and billing...im barter friendly , as out here things and materials are nearly good as cash.

It warms my heart to know that this is happening out there. How can a potential customer get in touch with you?

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