The small joys today thread (a bit of Yang for FoA Yin of late)

You know it’s not just tech bros, right? They have real actual ethicists and philosophers working on these systems to deal with these kinds of issues

Yes mate, but having spent the last 7 years in philosophy departments, that doesn’t make me feel any better, tbh.

1 Like

What ya gonna do about it Dr Kento?

SJ: Mini baby Kumo. Congrats Keith!

3 Likes

don’t u start 8mm u grub

Start calling you Dr Allen…

have u seen the good place it’s really good it’s got the sheila from voronica mars she’s funny they do filosophy

Philosophy Department at the University of Woolloomoolloo?

“Fixie confuses driverless car”

When this reads “foofy porteur bike confuses driverless car” FOA crew will really be in trouble…

Probably could do with a separate thread, but Australia is just too large in area for cars to go away any time soon. City tolls like London might incentivise more to use other modes.

HMC, IMO mentioning the trolley problem just gets people thinking about the overall issue of coding values into autonomous systems. I don’t know your specific issues with it. But I’m interested in what other ways you would outline that problem.

True, but the vast majority of people live and work in dense urban areas. Congestion charging (with raised funds going directly to public transport) is one way to deal with this. Make it too expensive to drive to the city, while simultaneously improving and reducing costs of public transport and you’re onto a winner.
Keep the car for that trip to the beach on the weekend or the drive out to Dubbo. Get the bus to work, ride to school, walk to the shops.

Good in theory, not always in practice. I’ve been a long-time visitor to Singapore - of all places, a place where you’d reckon this would work. Over 20 years I’ve been there somewhere north of 50 times and have seen a lot of changes, including: the introduction of inner city tolls; the expansion of inner city tolls (prices and zones); and massive investment in public transport infrastructure (PT there is also very cheap). It’s also hellishly expensive to buy and own a car there, through the COE system and massive tariffs on vehicle imports. Alongside this, population hasn’t increased hugely yet the roads there are MORE congested than ever, with all the attendant problems that brings. There are particular local dimensions to car ownership (it’s a status thing, alongside cash, condos, clothes and cards) but the people have voted with their dollars - they want their cars and screw all the common sense and good feels.

Beijing (where I have been only once) did it different. It has a blanket ban on internal-combustion vehicles for personal transport in the inner city, now there is a plethora of one and two person electric vehicles tooling around all over the place.

It’s not an easy problem and I’m not an urban planner. In Melb, anecdotally at least, the small sample of people I know around my 'burb that have given up driving to the city for work have given it up because of the Melb City Council’s parking levy - folks don’t see marginal imposts on the costs of driving as dead money, but they fucken hate paying through the nose to park all day.

soz, was being facetious and not explaining myself, it’s true.

You’re right of course, the trolley problem is an easy way to approach the ideas at stake. That said, having taught the trolley problem in various guises for 5 years now, it’s also dispiriting to see a lot of moral issues reduced to binary thought experiments. These thought experiments have a specific history, and emerged in very particular, niche academic literature for the purposes of (what I think is) pretty uninspiring moral debates in the 60s and 70s.

The problem when these thought experiments, and you see this with the kids who are first introduced to it, is that it imports a lot of pretty simplistic approaches to moral questions. In particular the trolley problem is used to discuss utilitarianism (ie. the moral thing to do is that which brings about the best consequences) which it’s fair to say has its supporters, but a shitload of problems. The problem arises is that when ppl criticise utilitarianism by highlighting its serious moral issues, proponents take this to be a strength of the theory (ie. its generalisable, very simple). Whereas I take this to be a serious problem, but you see more and more (in particular in corporate culture) this is seen as an advantage.

TL;DR the trolley problem is symptomatic (just imo) of a very poor moral and ethical framework, which is utilised to great effect by corporate programming. It’s no coincidence that the only real binary moral code (utilitarianism) is the most attractive to the binary nature of coding. Do we want to important all moral decisions to systems that have been coded on assumptions that are ambiguous or even deeply problematic?

Not discounting the fact that autonomous cars are probably safer than humans, but this I not the only issue at stake. And when it is reduced to that debate, I think we are the poorer for it.

1 Like

expert in Marxism provided its clear that it’s wrong.

SJ: Email from AusPost that my Wiggle order is coming today. Last scan point was “Onboard for delivery today”
NSJ: Onboard for delivery in NORTH GEELONG (delivery address of Sydney NSW 2000).

EDIT: SJ: Actually turned up. Yay.

Thursday nite - played in a band, for the first time, ever. Popped my rock cherry bangin’ out some Acca Dacca on the sticky stage carpet at Richmond’s iconic Corner Hotel.
(it was a surprise ‘secret’ parent band at my son Rory’s Rock Academy gig, one song only. I just play a little guitar at home to amuse myself/decompress/torment my family but a mate pressed me into it and fuck yeah it was fun).

#sayyestothethings.
#feelthefearanddoitanyway

1 Like

Captain and the Commuters. Seminal gig.

1 Like

Did Tenille enjoy it?

Scared off someone that’d broken into my dad’s neighbour’s car this morning. got up for a pee at 5am & just happened to glance out the window that overlooks the street & saw someone rifling around in their car. opened the window & yelled “OI”, which caused them to shit the bed & sprint off down the street. don’t think anything was taken thankfully.

SJ - their car was behind mine, but i have a noisy alarm & the flashing blue light on the dash must’ve worked as a deterrent.

you have flashing blue light but no snork?!?!