How long before driverless cars will be for sale in the U.S. outside of big cities? I'm thinking of getting a new car but wondering if I should wait or lease because of the possibility of getting a driverless car in a few years.
Within four years, Google hopes to have the autonomous vehicles commercially available and citizens throughout the U.S. regularly riding in them, Urmson said.
Google Inc. threw the auto industry another curve ball Wednesday, saying its autonomous cars should be on public roads within five years without having to drive through a thicket of regulatory red tape.
Both sources are from 2015, the first one from january, second from last week. I think it unlikely (<10%) that they are going to overperfom by more than a single year, and very likely (70%) to take at least a year longer.
Remember, its not only a technological problem, but the inertia in a vast system. Insurance+lawmakers etc need to finish their side as well.
Elon Musk, someone who can reasonably called domain expert on innovative car systems, gives the same range:
The three-year estimate, Musk says, is when he thinks the technology will be ready. It could take longer for government regulations around the issue to go into effect. He acknowledged that it will take time for regulators to say "it's okay to go to sleep in the car" -- maybe another one to three years.
Note that I only looked up Musks opinion after I wrote the first part.
Is there any good nonfiction books on cryonics? All I could find is this one http://www.amazon.com/Freezing-People-Not-Easy-Adventures/dp/0762792957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441303378&sr=8-1&keywords=cryonics . I started to read it but it is more historical and autobiographical. Also, do you think there would be demand for a well researched book on cryonics for general audiences?
What is the best way to handle police interaction in countries you don't live in? In the US it is generally considered pretty wise to exercise your right to be silent extensively. Now obviously in some really corrupt places your just going to have to go along with whatever they want. But what about the different countries in Europe? My instinct would be to respectfully tell the officer I would like to call my embassy (and have that number with me!).
Can we use the stock market itself as a useful prediction market in any way? For example can we get useful information about how long Moore's law type growth in microprocessors will likely continue based on how much the market values certain companies? Or are there too many auxiliary factors, so that reverse engineering anything interesting from price information is hopeless?
My mum says eating raw oats is unhealthy. I like to sprinkle half a cup of raw oats on yoghurt. I looked it up and apparently raw oats can cause malabsorption of nutrients due to some chemicals that grains tend to have. I'm skeptical considering lots of nutritional research is sketchy. Should I avoid raw oats?
Is it useful to think about the difference between 'physically possible' i.e. obeying the laws of physics and possible to engineer? In computer science there is something like this. You have things which can't be done on a turing machine (e.g. halting problem). But then you have things which we may never be able to arrange the atoms in the universe to do, such as large cases of NP-hard problems.
So what about in physics? I have seen the argument that if we set loose a paperclip maximizer on earth, then we might doom the rest of the observable universe. ...
Are index funds still a good idea if you don't live in the US? In Australia for example, due to differences in things like capital gains tax rates, the existence of franking credits, tax exempt options like your main residence, and whatever else I'm not aware of, I'm not sure.
What's a minimalist, free, personal finance software to keep track of what I own, possess, am in invested in, spending my time and budgeting?
Is the "Spark of Intelligence" in somebody's eyes a meaningless phrase, or a description of an actual phenomenon?
(Personally I'm inclined to say it's an actual phenomenon; I have face blindness and have observed it, which before I made the connection to the literary phrase, described to others as a "light behind the eyes", with a thus-far 100% correlation with high intelligence.)
Could we ever get evidence of a "read-only" soul? I'm imagining something that translates biochemical reactions associated with emotions into "actual" emotions. Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself an atheist, but it seems to me that how strongly one believes in a soul that is only affected by physical reality is based purely on their prior probability.
What are the 'best buys' in warm fuzzies?
I want to satisfice my urges for the least cost. Perhaps there's a kind of GiveWell for warm fuzzies out there.
I feel like 'purchasing status' is part of my warm fuzzies calculation, which complicates things.
Perhaps buying coffees for people in line around me?
How does a rationalist determine the value of helping other people they don't know, i.e. why is QALY something worth maximizing? Is it an efficient and sustainable way of improving one's own quality of life because (a) humans have empathy built-in and (b) philanthropy is a socially rewarded meme?
Is a major advantage of capitalism that it gives people who are naturally born sociopaths (but highly functioning such that they'll gain considerable influence over people) something do in a game that has at least some rules.
Yes, it's Adam Smith's invisible hand at work creating incentives for highly self-interested people to take actions which better society.
In a society where government controls everything important, all ambitious sociopaths will aim for government functions.
I'm ashamed to ask but...is there a way I can do machine learning competitions on Kaggle...by just copy pasting code?
Which probability do you assign to the big bang having actually occurred? After all, we are extrapolating from a single point in time and only in the visible part of the universe in which we see things flying apart. Perhaps the movement is much more complex than that (e.g. a pulsing motion).
In the U.S., what happens to people who cannot survive without assistance (like people without the dexterity to feed themselves, or even people without the ability to keep a job or fill out paperwork) who do not have a family or the means to trade for help? What, physically, keeps them from starving to death?
At which point I no longer understand what do you mean by "cooperation".
"Not defecting." I imagine defection is a clearer distinction in your mind?
Huh? That, um, never happened except for once in the 1920s. I have no idea what are you talking about.
It happened multiple times. The 1920 were the initial collectivization period, which led to a famine. The mid 1930's had the first semi-capitalistic change, allowing privately-held sections of farmland. The Soviet government largely ignored the fact that most effort was concentrated on the privately-held sections initially, but gradually cracked down, causing harvests to decline again. In the 1950's, some of the privately-held sections were collectivized in a renewed collectivization effort (which also combined many of the farms), and immediately harvests started falling, so the Soviet government switched from "national" ownership of the farmers' products to a system in which the government paid the farmers for the harvests. Harvests went up again. The government, however, gradually reduced payments, which again, caused harvests to plummet. In the late 60's the privately held sections of farmland were expanded, and harvests increased again. In the 70's, a new system which was supposed to guarantee farmers a higher share of the profits for their work was instituted.
Yeah, this happened constantly. Every new Party Leader wanted to make communism work, and would roll out a new communistic farming approach. This approach would fail, and they'd put some kind of capitalism back in place, and farming output would increase again.
I don't think that was as routine as you seem to think. If your farmers collective grows wheat, who do you sell it to? It's not like there were any millers to whom one could come with a sack of grain...
What makes you think there weren't? The black market in the Soviet States was all-encompassing. The millers you came to were millers for the state, even, who didn't mind getting a little bit of money on the side. Corruption, in the Soviet, was not merely a way of life, it was often necessary to survive.
"Not defecting."
That implies the Prisoner's Dilemma context. I don't see how large and complex socioeconomic systems (e.g. capitalism) are -- or can be reduced to -- a Prisoner's Dilemma.
It happened multiple times. The 1920 were the initial collectivization period, which led to a famine. The mid 1930's had the first semi-capitalistic change, allowing privately-held sections of farmland.
Nope. The 1920's were a kinda-retreat from communism because Russia was uncertain it could survive -- see NEP. The forced collectivization came afterwards, ...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.