I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now.
I'm sure it'll be possible some day, but I'm not positive that it'll be possible in the general case before we reach the Singularity. And when we get there self-driving cars are going to be a small side-effect of this unprecedented revolution.
I can't help to draw a parallel between these threads about self-driving cars where many people are saying that it's basically a done deal and we just need to wait a few years, and that thread I read a few hours ago about the Boing 737 Max re-certification being delayed once more. I know it's a bit of a fallacy to treat HN has a singular entity but when I read the threads about the 737 the consensus in here is that "it's a death trap and I'll never fly one of these planes ever again" but at the same time we're totally optimistic that the industry will have perfected self-driving technology in our lifetimes? The industry has been cutting corners on planes that cost a fortune and didn't manage to make them safe to operate in unobstructed airspace because of a minor sensor dysfunction but they're totally gonna nail the incredibly complex task of operating a 1+ton vehicle at highway speeds in much less controlled environment?
I can totally see an ever-increasing amount of driver assistance in the future. But fully autonomous driving everywhere at all times? I'm really not so sure.
I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now.
There's a certain similarity but I don't know any paper that actually gives any assure that self-driving is going to ever be possible. The only theory is "we will prevent extraneous factors and then calculate".
So is that different to fusion power? We know how to build automobiles, and we know how to trigger nuclear fusion, but in both cases we are struggling to build the technology to harness these powerful forces in a safe and convenient way.
> If something appears “impossible” to you... there’s no information there about whether it is possible.
I agree that an argument from personal incredulity is generally not a good one. But that doesn't mean we can't demonstrate that things are very unlikely to happen. E.g., there's good reason to think that perpetual motion machines are impossible.
It's also important to realize that "possible" in a colloquial sense often doesn't mean "having an non-zero chance of happening before the heat death of the universe". When people are asking whether self-driving cars are possible, they clearly are asking with implicit constraints on where, when, and how.
In that context, we can have quite a lot of information about how possible something is. E.g., Elon Musk predicted that Tesla would have one million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020. Rodney Brooks, AI expert and iRobot founder, thinks that's impossible, and I agree. https://rodneybrooks.com/predictions-scorecard-2020-january-...
> Everything that is possible today... used to be “impossible”.
That's a tautological argument. Obviously things that happened were possible by definition, but you're not accounting for all the things that were actually impossible which never happened and will never happen.
It seems like interested and substantial arguments happen arguments happened around what might or might not 10-30 years from now. Travel to other stars once was considered no more impossible than travel other planets and living on other planets used to be considered not much harder than traveling to them. We now can actually travel to other planets and we know now how dependent on earth-gravity, how hard it is to traverse the distances between stars and so-forth.
Which is to say, no, you're simply wrong, we haven't really progressed from everything impossible to something things possible. Just as technology has progressed very unevenly, our ideas of possibility have gone from a lot of things sort-of possible to something things quite possible and other relatively more unlikely.
The difference is SDC taxis are already in operation in the wild. Maybe it's only in a small part of Phoenix but its happening right now. Full SDCs in all developed high density urban areas will probably be a thing in this decade and the next decade for sure.
I'm sure it'll be possible some day, but I'm not positive that it'll be possible in the general case before we reach the Singularity. And when we get there self-driving cars are going to be a small side-effect of this unprecedented revolution.
I can't help to draw a parallel between these threads about self-driving cars where many people are saying that it's basically a done deal and we just need to wait a few years, and that thread I read a few hours ago about the Boing 737 Max re-certification being delayed once more. I know it's a bit of a fallacy to treat HN has a singular entity but when I read the threads about the 737 the consensus in here is that "it's a death trap and I'll never fly one of these planes ever again" but at the same time we're totally optimistic that the industry will have perfected self-driving technology in our lifetimes? The industry has been cutting corners on planes that cost a fortune and didn't manage to make them safe to operate in unobstructed airspace because of a minor sensor dysfunction but they're totally gonna nail the incredibly complex task of operating a 1+ton vehicle at highway speeds in much less controlled environment?
I can totally see an ever-increasing amount of driver assistance in the future. But fully autonomous driving everywhere at all times? I'm really not so sure.