Gongol.com Archives: February 2021
February 21, 2021
Does the trolley problem really apply to self-driving cars?
MIT Technology Review promoted a story with the clickbaity comment "Who should a self-driving car kill?". It's certainly fair to have a broad debate about how to empower computers to address complex decisions, and it's important to realize that there are cultural assumptions about those decisions that may lead to different answers depending upon who's doing the programming. But it's also important to avoid getting too wrapped up in the most granular of decisions when it comes to matters like the safety of autonomous vehicles. There are usually better answers available than strict binary choices -- like jumping a curb sometimes.
"Obsessive views and brittle temperaments"
"Obsessive views and brittle temperaments", as Kieran Healy describes it, is an elegant filter. It captures a lot of people who quite often have interesting things to say, but to whom the conscientious reader does not owe undivided attention nor unswerving loyalty. The obsessiveness and brittleness aren't exclusive provinces of the left nor of the right -- we see plenty of them from people of all stripes.
