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To: D-fendr

You can go on and on but they get sillier and sillier as you go. The simple fact of the matter is software has been solving Trolley Problems for 40 years. And the basic solution is ALWAYS THE SAME (and BTW is also the path YOU should take): go the path of longest time because it gives the most opportunity for the situation to resolve itself. It’s not that big a deal. In reality 99% of the people in the world go their entire lives without running into a real world Trolley Problem, and without knowing anyone that did either. So in reality humans DON’T make these, because they simply never have to. We TALK about them, often incessantly, but we don’t actually do them. And on the off chance we do, it’s so bang bang fast we don’t even know we made the decision (and of course don’t even have the information for your most silly example, how are we supposed to know there are killers in the car, by the time you’ve counted heads you’ve probably already hit them).

So your self driven car will almost certainly go its entire life without it either, so using it as an objection is pointless. You might as well be asking what the self driving car will do when a Man From Mars teleports onto the hood, because the answer is the same: that situation won’t come up. So stop obsessing on things that won’t happen. You are more likely to win the lottery than ever face a trolley decision, with you or your car driving. And you’re not going to win the lottery.


41 posted on 08/17/2017 4:41:11 PM PDT by discostu (Things are in their place, The heavens are secure, The whole thing explodes in my face)
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To: discostu
software has been solving Trolley Problems for 40 years. And the basic solution is ALWAYS THE SAME (and BTW is also the path YOU should take)

The Trolley Problem is a moral paradox presenting a moral dilemma. It hasn't been 'solved.' The "path you should take" is determined by human decision when confronted with an ethical dilemma.

Software doesn't "solve" the problem. It implements the solution its designers choose. It takes the decision out of the human's, in this case the driver's, hands.

Your answer does not remove ethics and value judgements from driving, it merely changes who determines them.

45 posted on 08/18/2017 7:18:51 AM PDT by D-fendr (Deus non alligatur sacramentis sed nos alligamur.)
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