Hacker News Reader

My strategy was: minimise casualties to kids, people and then pets. If the choice is between equal damage to pedestrians or passengers then pedestrians take precedence. All else being equal don't intervene.

View on HN

This was my exact algorithm. Like GP said, it was jarring to read a bunch of conclusions that never entered my mind, and were a function of which examples they contrived.

My reasoning about pedestrians is that they didn't sign up for self-driving, the people in the car did.

I get this point of view too, but my problem with it is that it is based on a series of prejudices (kids are more valuable than adults) and not some fundamental ethical principle. Maybe I just like things that in theory tidy up nicely and practicality is a better approach, but I think ethical decisions should be able to be fundamentally summarized in principle without relying on specifics of the situation unless they fundamentally change the scenario in some way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com