Excellent point why automated driving will be better for long drives where people tend to zone out.

I had a dodge durango (huge SUV) from 1998 to 2005 and it was rear ended while stopped at a red light ("I thought the light had changed") AND front ended when the person in front of me at a red light put their truck into reverse and peeled into me (apparently decided they wanted to make a left turn).
I was also rear ended in a brilliant blue element (smaller SUV) when cars behind me had an accident and the air bag stunned the driver.
I was also rear ended in a white toyota after sitting at a red light for at least 10 to 15 seconds by 3 drunken young idiots in a truck.

It's not that your car is black. It's that they are idiots.

Three of the times I was rear ended were by trucks. I often observe passenger truck drivers being complete idiots on the road. Especially the larger trucks.

Watched the linked video. It makes it very clear.

The google car comes to a normal stop at a safe distance. The car behind it doesn't even slow down at all and has at least 4 car lengths to do so.

Something was going on with the other driver. They spilled their coffee, were doing their makeup, or most likely- were on their cell phone- perhaps even texting or reading a text for bonus points.

It's still not their fault. The person behind was too close and failed to control speed.

In this case tho- the video clearly shows the other car doesn't even slow down. I'm guessing they were on a cell phone.

In this case also, the google car has been at a complete stop for a couple seconds before it is hit by the other car and it's behind another car at a proper distance and it's at a red light.

Absolutely. And likely less than half the population is capable of that high skill work even IF you paid for training.

And many of those who can and do train- find a new system eliminates their position before they cover their training costs.

We need inexpensive focused training.

But even so- half the population has below average intelligence.

To be more precise tho...about 12% are capable of doing the high skilled labor- 3% are grossly overqualified for most "high" skilled labor. On the flip side of lower intelligence/impulse control/etc. 15% are barely functional and at least 17% are not functional enough to do high skilled labor even with a lot of help.

32% of the not so smart population could do a lot of damage if they are left to starve.

What you say is correct. And beside the point.

Robots (despite the recent DARPA challenge which made them look incapable) are rapidly replacing a certain class of human workers.

Automation is replacing another class.

Both are happening faster than people can earn enough to retrain.

And that was the key challenge of the luddites. They didn't want to stop the machines- they wanted training on the new machines and the owners (capital) refused. So many of the luddites died homeless of exposure and starvation- pretty much as they correctly assessed. And the next generation forgot about them and closed ranks.

Robots are rapidly replacing jobs which simply require that you have eyes and hands and can perform a manual tax.

Automation is replacing jobs where you follow any kind of predictable procedure.

Will all jobs go away? Never. But we already see decreasing workforce engagement by working age citizens from 16 to 67. It's masked by the way they do the numbers for unemployment, but the reality is that the number of working age citizens who can't find work has risen for the last 15 years.

If we shared the wealth via some kind of basic income- we'd probably fine. But instead, all that extra productivity benefit is filtered to 10% (and really 2%) of the population who then says "get a job" to the people they won't hire. Hungry people get violent. There is a direct correlation between low employment and lack of benefits in 2nd world countries. We need to address the issues in the 1st world before we have mass riots.

It's much cheaper to provide assistance ($19k) vs imprison people ($31k) annually.

Quality of life has been dropping for 30 years. Food quality is down- we are burning up the soil to raise food at this rate. it can't replace the minerals and vitamins that we used to get in our food.

You can still get food like they used to sell in supermarkets. It just costs $5 for a tomato and $12 for hamburger.

Perhaps humans will adapt to poor quality food.

Travel time from home to work has increased as have working hours. We essentially passed a sweet spot back in the 1970s and it's been getting frog in the stewpot worse since then.

Robots COULD be great. But so far the trend is for a tiny percentage of the population to get good paying jobs in exchange for 60 to 80 hour weeks.

Until india and china catch up to the west and wages normalize, we probably won't share the benefits of higher robot productivity. Which will eventually mean civil unrest and poor quality of life for over half the population who can't find work. Not everyone is trainable or above average intelligence.

Manufacturing jobs have dropped every year since robots were introduced while productivity has risen.
http://cdn.theatlanticcities.c...
http://www.technologyreview.co...

They've been replaced with terrible low paying service jobs.
Wages have been stagnant for 80% of those who have jobs since shortly after robots were introduced. Robots are not the only cause- but they sure didn't help.

While the unemployment rate is finally tightening up some- that's because so many have completely left the work force. Participation of working age citizens age 16 to 67 has dropped continuously for the last 14 years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Who paid for this article? The robot manufacturing companies?

It is in everyone's best interest to allow the person who thought to request that particular period a short grace period before making the information public.

30 to 90 days maximum then make it public. It's not in the public's best interest to have access the same day as the person who put up ten grand to request the information. The end result will be that the public gets less information and the government will grow more corrupt given a cloak of secrecy.

They are already playing games with FOIA request to try to crush them.

Two of the other games are to charge a rate as if their highest paid staff was doing the work when it was really being down by lowgrade employees and providing 10x to 1000x the information request to raise the cost and to bury requester.

I can see we just disagree. I think you have some points but you are missing the big picture of the end result.

Any large concentration puts the minority at a disadvantage. I know white male nurses who work in otherwise completely female and multi-racial departments and they are horribly discriminated against.

The problem is not white males per se. It's that there are so many of them and they are so young that they have reached a critical mass where bad behavior against minorities has arisen.

That kind of behavior is built into our genes. WIth mild prompting children who otherwise look the same will group into different eye color groups and come to think of certain traits being associated with certain eye colors. So it's a constant struggle to avoid racism: i.e. the belief that every member of a group automatically has certain traits, sexism, etc. When a larger group does this, it often abuses it's superior position at the expense of one or more minority groups.

They don't publish every public record and have no intention of doing so. They ONLY publish records for free once someone has paid to see them.

As the others say, this is a very pointed attack on FOIA requests.

It works differently when an individual owes a few million compared to a corporation that owes 10's of millions.

I extends to much more trivial products than submarines. Greece was lent money so it could continue to purchase german products so that employment would remain high in Germany. Germany was essentially giving Greece money to buy german products. In reality, it's a very expensive form of welfare.

Don't "loan" money to people without the ability to pay it back.

This money was gone a decade ago and many saw it then. You will probably never get back more than 66 euro per person- if that.

From the greek perspective-live misery the rest of their lives and sell away all their national treasures permanently was what was at stake. It was really a "peaceful" conquest by germany and the wealthy. I'd have said "screw that" too.

That's only 12,000 miles a year.

Before I retired, I only worked 12 miles away and I easily hit 18,000 a year miles.

I'd love an electric vehicle or hybrid but 12,000 seems low. 15,000 to 18,000 seems more reasonable.