...and considering how they have to deal with a much more complex environment...

Actually, the environment in which an aircraft operates is significantly simpler than that in which a ground vehicle must operate. There's a reason why aircraft autopilots existed decades ago and we still don't really have automotive "autopilot."

Even if you couldn't track wallet IDs to specific people, doesn't Bitcoin suffer from the equivalent of an "analog hole"? When Bitcoins are converted into real goods or services, someone is going to notice, and eventually that "notice" is going to get back to the revenue collection agency of whatever government controls the area.

Electricity is much MUCH cheaper than gas.

I always see this argument - but what happens when an entire nations' worth of people transition from gasoline to electricity? Dramatically increased electricity demand is going to push up the price of electricity. I'd estimate that in the long run energy prices will be pretty close to a wash.

Consider this: my current residential electric usage for my wife and I runs about 6kW-hr/day. Assuming 20% gasoline efficiency and 100% electric transportation efficiency, this amounts to about 1 gallon of gasoline per day, or the equivalent of about 30 gallons of gasoline a month. This is probably a very generously low estimate for average household gasoline consumption. So if we traded all gasoline for electricity, we're looking at something like doubling the electricity demand.

While the grid itself can handle this, what will the spot prices for energy do if we double the demand for electricity producing source material?

I thought he was talking about his pet fish...

But isn't the difference you describe between frequentistic (sic) and Bayesian the difference between an event truly governed by probability versus one of confidence in a prediction, respectively?

Ultimately, I think my original post failed to convey that my frustration is in what I see as confusion between the concepts of probability of an event occurring and confidence bands in a prediction.

To be specific: you can't have better than 50% confidence in a prediction on a single coin flip because coin flips are random. Asteroid paths are not random, however, so the confidence in a prediction really could reach 100% (maybe not in a mathematical sense, but in a practical do-I-need-to-get-an-escape-plan sense). This is perhaps a better statement of what I meant by "it will hit or it will not."

You can always turn a deterministic problem into a probabilistic one if enough variables are hidden. But this doesn't mean that the underlying mechanics of the situation are necessarily probabilistic.

The gasoline example you gave above is inherently probabilistic, because you do expect that, given the same perceived initial conditions many times, the outcomes would vary each time the "experiment" is carried out.

When it comes to orbital mechanics, the variability comes not in being inherently unsure of what will change, but from a known error based on number and quality of measurements. This is why the probability of collision numbers change over time - they are really confidence numbers, not probability of occurrence numbers. No matter how many times you measure a fair die roll, the probabilities will always come up the same.

More measurements won't help you with a coin toss, quantum mechanics, or your gasoline example, because it's not possible to gain enough measurements (or in QM's case, there is strong evidence that no such parameters even exist to measure in the first place).

Do statements like "The coin has a 1 in 2 chance of coming up heads" also bother you?

No, because a (proverbial) coin flip is a probabilistic event.

Am I the only one that gets terribly frustrated by statements like "the asteroid has a 1 in X chance to hit earth"?

There's no probability here - the asteroid either will or will not hit. Why can't they say just say this is the measure of uncertainty in the curve fit rather than a "chance to hit"?

Of course, it doesn't know about special conditions like construction or weather.

Does anyone know of any articles that talk about how these autonomous automobiles cope with weather? In the area in which I live rain can even obscure lane markers (lines are invisible when the roads are wet. I blame the paint choice.) And what about snow, when the road itself can be invisible?

Unless the autonomous automobiles depend on some other means of roadway analysis, I see weather as being a fairly large issue. Is GPS actually accurate enough to determine position within a lane?

You're still missing the point.

I happen to agree with you that being told you can't see a loved one in the hospital can cause suffering, but I wouldn't call it a human rights violation.

If every social issue starts getting labeled a "rights violation" then that term has no meaning any more, and society will really suffer.

Thanks for supporting my thesis: You forgot to answer the real first question though.

By what system or justification do you define "basic human and civil rights" in the first place? Why is the definition you believe more correct than any other definition? How can you prove it? Does your world view even require that you need to prove it?

Without objectivity, there are only attempts to force people to conform to opinions, and that, in my opinion, is the worst violation of "human rights" that can exist.

The presence of legislation that allows two men or two women to marry each other has no impact on me or my heterosexual marriage.

Actually, there is always an effect on a belief system when a society changes its views on whether that belief system is acceptable or not. I'm not addressing any particular belief system here - it's just a fact that there is no such thing as "no impact" in such a social construct.

If you are in the group that holds a belief and the greater society says that belief is not acceptable, then you do suffer for it.

So the first question in any given social issue is often: is it better to accept one particular belief at the expense of another? I would say there is a deeper question that we should be asking first instead: by what standard should a society evaluate the merits of any particular belief?

Be careful! If your standard by which beliefs are evaluated is subjective, "What I think" soon trumps "What society thinks" and it all falls down.

I still have yet to see a rational explanation of why we should expect to see uniform involvement of people with characteristic X across all activities Y.

Put another way: just because the general population has a makeup of a certain distribution, why do we assume some activity Y with a distribution different to that global distribution indicates some kind of undesirable situation?

I do agree that in some cases the difference is due to some kind of discriminatory behavior, but in others its just simply due to differences in interest. Has either situation been confirmed in this case?

This entirely. When a MakerBot can start making things out of engineering materials capable of handing meaningful loads and temperatures (metal and ceramic, perhaps some high-performance plastics) then we have something.

I'd also like to see a MakerBot that can produce more general consumer goods, such as shoes, clothing, and other tools.

Of course, if many people have a general-purpose micro factory in their homes, then much of the world economy will be in for a new shock - and commodities prices and raw materials shipping industries will be quite interesting.

...all people must have access without charge...

This statement implies taxes are not considered a "charge," workers installing and maintaining the infrastructure don't get paid, or a combination of the two.