MathiasZaman comments on Humans can drive cars - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Apprentice 30 January 2014 11:55AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (86)

Comments (86)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: MathiasZaman 30 January 2014 03:33:43PM 2 points [-]

I'm occasionally still amazed that traffic works as well as it does. I must say I'm hesitant at using this example to claim that people are more capable than you might think. Driving is just something humans happen to be competent at. There are plenty of things roughly as complicated as driving a car that people aren't surprisingly good at.

This also reminded my of something people said at the latest meetup. At least two people told me they had deliberately tried to get more scared of driving, because they had noticed they had less fear in a car than on a plane despite planes being safer.

Comment author: Randy_M 30 January 2014 04:20:06PM *  7 points [-]

Driving is just something humans happen to be competent at.

I don't think it is pure chance, since it was designed in iterations around human capabilites.

Comment author: Stefan_Schubert 30 January 2014 05:24:11PM *  1 point [-]

Indeed. The problem of driving has been set up by car designers so that it should be easy for us to solve it. By contrast, the problem of creating a safe AGI has not been set up so that it should be easy for us to solve (if you don't believe that there is a God who has made this the best of all possible worlds that is...). So I don't think the analogy works. If you want to make an argument making use of human past performance, it would be better to use examples of problems (that we've solved) that weren't set up by us (e.g. moon-landing, relativity theory, computers, science in general, etc).

Comment author: Apprentice 30 January 2014 06:42:15PM 1 point [-]

(e.g. moon-landing, relativity theory, computers, science in general, etc).

Or nuclear weapon design. Chicago Pile-1 did work. Trinity did work. Little Boy did work. Burster-Able failed - but not catastrophically. Who knows if whatever the North Koreans cobbled together worked as intended - but it doesn't seem to have destroyed anything it wasn't supposed to. No-one has yet accidentally blown up a city. That's something. Anyway, I'll edit the post.

Comment author: CronoDAS 31 January 2014 03:20:02AM *  1 point [-]

I'm occasionally still amazed that traffic works as well as it does. I must say I'm hesitant at using this example to claim that people are more capable than you might think.

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/01/ritual-of-streetcorner-brins-exercise.html

Go do Brin’s Exercise... I command you! Go to a street corner, preferably one with a very busy four (or twelve!) way stop signage, where people must negotiate traffic rules every second, with little hand-flicks and nods. Do a slow 360. Notice all the things that are working! The quiet and efficient courtesies, the technologies, the tiny acts of honesty and cooperation. The hidden competence of a myriad professionals that make all the switches turn on time and fill the restaurants with food. Do not let a patch of one square degree pass your view without comment, or noticing something that you took for granted, before! If you finish the turn having counted less than a thousand miracles, start over!

Comment author: DysgraphicProgrammer 03 February 2014 08:10:35PM 0 points [-]

at least two people told me they had deliberately tried to get more scared of driving,

I don't know about other people, but when I am scared, my driving gets worse. I start over thinking everything. I obsess about whether that guy at the drive way is just creeping forward, or if he's going to suddenly zip in front of me. Then fail to notice the guy right in front of me.

Comment author: Apprentice 30 January 2014 04:13:21PM 0 points [-]

I'm occasionally still amazed that traffic works as well as it does. I must say I'm hesitant at using this example to claim that people are more capable than you might think.

I actually agree. I'm not sure what lesson to draw from the fact that humans can drive. But it's interesting that so many of you seem to share my intuition that this is surprising or counterintuitive.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit