It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life.
Generally speaking, it is easier to pinpoint X thing led to Y tragedy than to quantify the tragedies that would have happened without X. It is incredibly hard to show what did not happen but "should" have. Even if you can get it straight in your own mind, good luck proving it to the world.
People are living longer and child mortality is down. We don't really celebrate that. We just complain about overpopulation and how we are destroying the environment.
When Iraq lit oil wells on fire on its way out of Kuwait, they were expected to burn for months and be a global environmental disaster. When crack teams from around the world converged and put them out far faster than expected, it was not celebrated with the same degree of fervor that it had originally been decried as a disaster.
Y2K was also predicted to be a global catastrophe. It was quietly prevented and gets remembered as "Those fools who ever thought this was a big deal!"
If self driving cars could reduce mortality compared to current rates and we were confident of that, waiting until it is perfected before releasing it means accepting ongoing deaths that don't have to happen. It's not uncommon for people to feel that new tech needs to be perfected while missing the fact that it may be a big improvement over the current status quo without being perfected.
I don't really know anything about self driving cars. I have mixed feelings about replying to your comment because I don't actually know how I feel about this particular issue. But the thought process you are putting forth is both common and not very pragmatic.
I guess a pithy rebuttal would quote some saying about the perfect being the enemy of the good. But I think that leaves out a lot of important points.
Generally speaking, it is easier to pinpoint X thing led to Y tragedy than to quantify the tragedies that would have happened without X. It is incredibly hard to show what did not happen but "should" have. Even if you can get it straight in your own mind, good luck proving it to the world.
People are living longer and child mortality is down. We don't really celebrate that. We just complain about overpopulation and how we are destroying the environment.
When Iraq lit oil wells on fire on its way out of Kuwait, they were expected to burn for months and be a global environmental disaster. When crack teams from around the world converged and put them out far faster than expected, it was not celebrated with the same degree of fervor that it had originally been decried as a disaster.
Y2K was also predicted to be a global catastrophe. It was quietly prevented and gets remembered as "Those fools who ever thought this was a big deal!"
If self driving cars could reduce mortality compared to current rates and we were confident of that, waiting until it is perfected before releasing it means accepting ongoing deaths that don't have to happen. It's not uncommon for people to feel that new tech needs to be perfected while missing the fact that it may be a big improvement over the current status quo without being perfected.
I don't really know anything about self driving cars. I have mixed feelings about replying to your comment because I don't actually know how I feel about this particular issue. But the thought process you are putting forth is both common and not very pragmatic.
I guess a pithy rebuttal would quote some saying about the perfect being the enemy of the good. But I think that leaves out a lot of important points.