Too many gadgets in new vehicles?

Paul Marx said:
As I wrote many pages ago, more automation will mean less suffering
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That’s true in a limited set of circumstances, viewed with blinkers preventing broader insight. Automation is also used to limit people’s options and access, control unanticipated creative progress and transfer of power, and thereby direct people’s money (predictably enough) to those who control the automation in a runaway process that increases their power still more. I don’t call those overriding aspects promotion of human welfare, and for sure I will have a better life for avoiding automation where I feel it doesn’t benefit me personally. Others in the remaining free societies will do the same, and that will hopefully in due course maintain competition and limit consolidation of power through automation. I hope this in particular with respect to government automating and controlling our lives as a monopoly supplier of automated services, or via heavy regulation as per this thread, versus them simply providing a level playing field. I’m not looking forward to world adoption of Chinese societal philosophy.
 
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Paul Marx said:
Writing that an automated car had a defect leading to the death of a motorcyclist whilst dozens more were being killed by defects in car drivers is like pointing out that an electric car is burning whilst thousands of petrol cars are burning.

It's biased.
Defects in automated programs can be improved, not so defects in humans.

As I wrote many pages ago, more automation will mean less suffering.

Paul
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There was no defect ....... the car was working perfectly as intended .......... The problem was in the way the car was / is configured .........

 
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It’s worth bearing in mind that repeated sarcasm and insults are not an effective substitute for a reasoned response, and diminish credibility. I’m sure others here have become accustomed to it and learned to ignore the source. I’ll work harder on that.
 
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Paul Marx said:
That's a defect in configuration.
Paul
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But it was decided that flawed configuration was ok to be incorporated into a motor vehicle that anyone could use on the highway .........

In the FortNine video it mentions that Tesla later deleted the radar ( cheapness ) .... and were reluctant to install a superior system ie Lidar ( cheapness ) ..........

Without the radar , there is no way the forward facing camera can tell the car how far away an object in front really is ..........

These are not defects in configuration , these are carefully considered decisions taken to maximise profit ......

The Tesla AutoPilot system is programmed to switch off a second before impact ......... So who ends up facing the manslaughter charge ........ Elon or the bloke behind the wheel ?

Again , not a defect in configuration ......... just a cynical way of avoiding responsibility for the marketing of a flawed system ..........

These AI systems are designed to learn , learn , and learn again from data collected from each car ....... thus eventually incorporating increased knowledge and hazard detection with each update ...........

The problem is , motorcyclists are paying the price with their lives as Tesla slowly iron these problems out .........
 
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It seems the US and China are in a technology arms race with as little thought for where things are headed, analogous to the nuclear arms race of last century. Once China cracks extreme UV lithography and can make their own chips, I do wonder if we’ll see a collapse of the US tech giants and the ensuing bun fight that will lead to. Pension meet toilet.
 
It`s heartening to witness the increasing incidents ( in the USA ) of AI chiefs and leaders such as Eric Schmidt being booed offstage by college students and graduates during their presentations ..........

It seems these kids can see more clearly than any of us the negative way AI is going to affect their futures .......


That`s not to say that Eric Schmidt is the Devil Incarnate ........ although it is said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions ..........
 
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Silvaire said:
It’s worth bearing in mind that repeated sarcasm and insults are not an effective substitute for a reasoned response, and diminish credibility. I’m sure others here have become accustomed to it and learned to ignore the source. I’ll work harder on that.
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Do.
And stop when the subject is automation conjuring up views on European or Chinese society, you'll be all the more credible.
In fact all your posts on this thread are no more than a succession of political statements expliciting without any possible doubt your world view, or Weltanschauung as they used to say around here.
It's an oft repeated political mantra in a part of US society that's unable to reason except in terms of them and us.

You're very lucky that the moderators on this forum contrary to what you write above are very liberal.
Paul
 
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rocketonarail said:
But it was decided that flawed configuration was ok to be incorporated into a motor vehicle that anyone could use on the highway .........

In the FortNine video it mentions that Tesla later deleted the radar ( cheapness ) .... and were reluctant to install a superior system ie Lidar ( cheapness ) ..........

Without the radar , there is no way the forward facing camera can tell the car how far away an object in front really is ..........

These are not defects in configuration , these are carefully considered decisions taken to maximise profit ......

The Tesla AutoPilot system is programmed to switch off a second before impact ......... So who ends up facing the manslaughter charge ........ Elon or the bloke behind the wheel ?

Again , not a defect in configuration ......... just a cynical way of avoiding responsibility for the marketing of a flawed system ..........

These AI systems are designed to learn , learn , and learn again from data collected from each car ....... thus eventually incorporating increased knowledge and hazard detection with each update ...........

The problem is , motorcyclists are paying the price with their lives as Tesla slowly iron these problems out .........
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I totally agree, but nothing new.
Motorcyclists have always paid with their lives as all minorities do.
Not that I'm at all satisfied with that situation.
Paul
 
Paul Marx said:
Do.
And stop when the subject is automation conjuring up views on European or Chinese society, you'll be all the more credible.
In fact all your posts on this thread are no more than a succession of political statements expliciting without any possible doubt your world view, or Weltanschauung as they used to say around here.
It's an oft repeated political mantra in a part of US society that's unable to reason except in terms of them and us.

You're very lucky that the moderators on this forum contrary to what you write above are very liberal.
Paul
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You just can't help yourself can you Paul?
 
Paul Marx said:
There's a foul stench blowing in over the Atlantic.
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Across the North Atlantic, winds generally blow from the west to the east, forming the prevailing westerlies in the mid-latitudes .

The convergence of these systems creates a strong, consistent westerly wind belt that stretches from western Europe across the North Atlantic toward the eastern seaboard of North America.
 
It was 99 years ago that Anne Saville , Leslie Hamilton and " Dan " Minchin were blown off course by the prevailing westerlies whilst trying to reach Newfoundland in the fog and the dark in their Fokker monoplane " St Raphael " ......... The idea was for her to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic East to West ( Upavon to Ottawa ) but those pesky prevailers , pitch black and a dense fog bank meant they probably drifted off course , ran out of fuel ........ and ended up in the sea .........

On the other hand ....... If they crash landed in Labrador ( the other possibility ) ...... then she would have achieved her ambition ...........

After Ottawa , they intended to fly down the Hudson to New York and sell off autographed dollar bills at $10 each in order to help finance the trip .....

Hamilton had second thoughts about the whole thing which manifested itself by him throwing up behind one of the Upavon hangers just before takeoff ......... but it was too late to back out now ..............


Those were the days , when gadgets were a compass and the stars ...........
 
The first time I flew the Atlantic, West to East, Wichita, Kansas to Goose Bay, Labrador. Then Goose Bay to Keflavik, Iceland and on to London Stansted. Looking out of the cockpit window, at 40,000 ft. as I passed over Northern Canada, I couldn't, for quite some time, see any evidence of human existence on the terrain below. Being so used to flying in Europe, it was chilling to recognise that the chances of making it to any civilised area, alive, in the event of being forced down, was lower than the chance of winning the lottery jackpot four weeks running.

Canada.jpg
 
I had done some orienteering in really intense terrain using a paper map and compus bearing; we were trying for an intersection on a dirt track and found the track but missed the intersection by a couple of ks so when I was talking to a couple of mates about navigating while flying light aircarft i mentioned being a couple of degrees off and how easy missing an airfield in the bush might be. Didn't seem to worry them; this was ages before GPS as well. Being lost while flying would worry me a bloody lot.
 
Minchin and Hamilton were both ex WW1 fighter pilots ......... By the mid-twenties Minchin was a pilot for Imperial Airways , and Hamilton made a living as a sort of flying taxi service around Europe for the rich and famous ........ ( short hops overland ...... nothing like crossing the Atlantic ... ) ......

Hamilton and Saville ( who had married into Eastern European aristocracy ) were also keen air-race competitors ......... ( basically going round and round in circles at a local airfield ) ....... and it was Saville who talked the other two into it .........

St Raphael was basically a flying bomb ........... loaded with so much fuel that Upavon personnel were laying bets on whether it would actually get airborne ........ Everyone expected the plane to hit Jenners Firs at the end of the grass runway before it even left the ground , but Minchin managed to clear the treetops with a few feet to spare ........

Due to the fuel load the plane wasn`t able to gain more than a few hundred feet in the air ........ It was spotted flying over Filton Airfield where the engine had been serviced ........ then along the Welsh coast and then over Ireland ..........

Last sighting was in mid- Altantic at night when a ship flashed an ( Aldis ? ) signal and the plane ( almost certainly the St Raphael ) responded .........

That was the last time it was seen ........


Hamilton was something of a media celeb at the time ........ Crowds were waiting at Newfoundland for the arrival of the plane ....... and waiting and waiting before finally giving up hope and going home ........

There was speculation in the papers that Hamilton would reconcile with his estranged wife on his arrival in New York ........
 
Ex Formula One champion Graham Hill was a keen pilot .........

By the mid-seventies he was running his own race team and was flying his plane with two or three of his team crew on board back from France heading for Elstree airfield in North London .........

It was November , dark and wet ......... It was thought that as Hill approached Borehamwood from the air he mistook the streetlights of Barnet below for Elstree ..... ( It was wet , dark and miserable remember ) ..... and Arkley golf course just beyond as Elstree airfield .........

Therefore he started to descend , clipped the trees of the golf course ....... and crashed killing all on board .........

Not sure about navigation aids or air control protocol with a small private plane back in the `seventies ....... but seeing Elstree isn`t Heathrow , and he wasn`t flying a 747 ........ then maybe they were pretty rudimentary back then , if they existed at all ..........
 
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Graham Hill was flying a homemade (illegal), unapproved instrument approach into fog at night while flying a Piper Aztec that had been deregistered from the US but never registered elsewhere. Neither his instrument rating night nor night rating were current, despite departing on an instrument flight plan. Later on a visual approach was the only approved approach to the airport, not unusual then or now, but would have been impossible due to poor visibility and low cloud ceiling. Notwithstanding the legalities he should have diverted somewhere else.

What would have been different today is that such a foolhardy pilot would have been more likely to get away with it due to GPS, which allows one to create and fly an illegal, homemade instrument approach more easily. It would also be easier for anybody to see on the internet that the plane was deregistered (you could do it in 5 minutes on the FAA website) but this had no bearing on the accident.

This accident is still discussed today (particularly in the UK) as an example of hazardous attitudes. A very few people still do this kind of thing in countries where approved instrument approaches at small airports aren't widespread, and I'm sure Graham Hill would have used the tools now available to do an illegal approach and try to get home, but its very dangerous then or now. I also understand it cost Hill's estate a lot of money.
 
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