We have a thing called the Supreme Court which decides such things. They did make such a decision, and it is not "Any law which does so is automatically void."

We have pictures of 5000m wide lava tubes on the moon? Link, please? I never heard of that. Pretty cool if it's true.

You have it exactly backwards. We don't know that they're there at all. All the study claims is that it's possible for them to exist because gravity alone wouldn't collapse them. GP is right, there are other things that might collapse them. You're also sort of right. IF they exist after all this time, it's pretty darn certain they're structurally sound.

Do they exist, though? We don't know.

Foolish, IMO. My ex has a friend who was about to cross the street, made eye contact with an older gentleman who motioned to her that it was ok to cross, then promptly hit her when she tried. Turns out he never saw her and the gesture she thought was telling her it was ok to cross had nothing to do with her at all.

IF self-driving cars work as planned, they'll always notice you. They'll never (ok, nearly never, aka less than a comparable human driver) hit you. If they aren't provably better than human drivers, they shouldn't be allowed on the roads, and I daresay in this litigious society, never would be.

Anti: blah, blah, blah, self-driving cars will never be good enough, they're unsafe, they don't think!!!!!1111 Panic!!!1111
Pro: Yes, they're wonderful and never distracted and will be better than puppies and rainbows!!!!!11111

It's really simple. People who want it to work are trying to make it work. If you antis are right, they won't be good enough and they'll never be much more than a curiosity. If you pros are right, they'll be provably better and the anti argument will be simply refuted by saying "Look at the data."

Really? It needs an iPhone?! That's comical. I don't want an iWatch (or whatever they call it) because I already have an iPhone and it's in my hands often enough that I don't need to strap a small one around my wrist. I don't even like the iPhone much anymore. It was outstanding when it was the new kid on the block, but now there are others just like it (and in some ways better) and iPhones have developed their own stupid, annoying problems, just like every other piece of technology.

I'm expecting a flop, too. Don't need, don't want, won't buy.

The turbocharger doesn't extract energy and turn it into shaft power. The turbocharger uses energy in the exhaust to spin a compressor (aka turbocharger) which shoves more air into the engine, which lets you burn more gasoline. That's where the power comes from.

Try it. I have. Yes, there's thinking. You have a toolbox of techniques, and so does your opponent. During the fight, you're testing what in your toolbox works against them, and learning what they have that works against you, then you're trying to compensate. You're trying to deceive, making your opponent try to defend the wrong shot so the one you actually throw hits them.

Yeah. There's thinking. It's not exactly chess, but it's far from two guys just punching each other.

I trained in boxing for a year and a half. I've been a runner for 20+. The cardio output required in boxing is significantly higher than running. That's where the "healthy" bit comes in. If you've never tried it, you have absolutely no idea what incredibly good shape you have to be in to compete.

Yes, I grant that getting punched in the head hard is not good, but other spotrs have their risks as well. I used to rock climb a lot. The risk profile there is that you're pretty likely to never get injured, but if you do, there's a decent chance it's going to be really bad.

Everything has risks. I'm against decrying one activity because YOU don't like it's risk profile. If you don't find it acceptable, don't do it. I loved rock climbing tremendously, and I'd have hated for someone to take it away from me because they thought it too risky. Certainly, I talked to enough people who felt it was too risky. I'm not going to take boxing or MMA from those who find it an acceptable risk, and neither should you. We should, however, be up front with people about the risks and let them make an informed choice.

No, I don't.

Then again, dropping my kid off at school this morning I saw one parent almost crash into another at 5mph because they weren't paying attention. It's not like I feel safe now.

Irrational people call for irrational things. ;-)

if every car was self-driving next year and the death toll in the USA was 20,000 dead people, that there'd be lots of lawsuits as the great macro-level reduction in deaths was objected to on a micro-level.

Yeah, probably. I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of preemptive legislation that made it so that you have to show some kind of negligence, not just that somebody died in a self-driven car. I think it's not unlike medicine as a discipline. Your doctor can't guarantee you'll survive, can't guarantee he won't make a mistake, but you're way, way better off with medical care than without.

You are misunderstanding what "solved" means. In order for a computer driver to be a viable replacement for a real driver, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be as good or better than a human driver.

In order to make the safety-conscious market happy, I'd argue that it has to be some multiple better. If we can prove that autonomous cars would result in cutting traffic accidents/injuries/deaths by 50%, 80%, 90%, at some point resisting them becomes stupid.

So you would have to register your autonomous vehicle only on specific routes you have 'taught' it first.

Driving on the road isn't the problem, it's driving on the road and not hitting the deer that just ran into it, or avoiding the knucklehead who just swerved into your lane because he's drunk.

If it was just a problem of navigating between A and B while staying inside the painted lines, it'd be a much easier problem.

I can't wait for everyone to have one. Not a big fan of driving myself anyway, but I'm sick of the everyday accident on the way to work, or traffic slowed down because ONE jackass is screwing around on his phone and doing 50 in the 65 mph zone.

I swear I see that every day. If people can't be bothered to actually drive their cars, and that's a demonstrable fact for some, fine, give me (and them) autonomous cars.

This would be true if everyone died by getting T-boned. A lot of people die due to things like heart disease. In fact, a lot more people die of heart disease than traffic accidents.

So no, it's not futile at all.