On the live stream we keep streaming and recording even after the show is over. You can watch this on YouTube, in the video podcast or find the full MP3 in the patreon treasure chest. Today’s conversation kicked off a full blown continuation on the debate over self-driving cars and the ethics of whether they should protect the passenger at all costs or act to save the most amount of people whether they are passengers or not. We clipped out that conversation and provide it here as a bonus track.
4 thoughts on “DTNS 2793 POST SHOW”
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Do I want my car to sacrifice my life to save ten? No.
Ask anyone to name ten people they would be willing to die for. Then ask if they would die for ten random strangers.
May God have mercy on those strangers.
Wow. I really hope Woody’s opinions aren’t those of the masses. Self-sacrifice is not exactly a new concept, and I hope it’s not as uncommon as he thinks it is.
I wanted to put my 2 cents in on the self driving car debate. Justin has a good point in saying self driving cars will be safer for everyone. The main problem I have with Tom’s argument that the car will have to decide between the life of its passengers or 10 other people is how will the car know? Are the 10 people pedestrians? Are they in another self driving vehicle in communication with the first and says, “Hey, I’m carrying 10 people.”? Does the autonomous vehicle recognize a school bus? Is the school bus empty? What if the driver of the car is a medical researcher whose work is the closest to curing cancer than ever before,,,should his life be more important because his death would endanger millions of people? Where’s the computing power to make this decision coming from? (Will we be driving around in a Super Computer case mod?) The cars should be made to protect the passengers within it. That is how we make cars now, to protect the passengers. The safety of everyone will increase with the use of autonomous vehicles. Keep the two main purposes of the car the same; conveyance and safety of the passengers.
These are all good points but they still avoid the ultimate question.
There are ways to know in some situations.
For instance. One motorcycle to the left and one to the right both with passengers in sidecars. The self-driving car is following a flatbed truck with heavy machinery that begins to fall off. The only option for the self-driving car is to be hit and kill the passenger or swerve to the right or left and kill the motorcyclists.
Yes we’d like to think this is rare and it probably is. But there are other possible scenarios where the car will know how many lvies or at stake for various reasons.