Considering how bloody obvious that outcome seems to be, it amazes me how some educated people just flat out don't get it.

Or rather, it would amaze me, if I weren't fully aware of the human mind's ability to perform complex mental gymnastics in order to come to a predetermined conclusion, level of education notwithstanding.

Sure, and next we can talk about economics assuming that there really is such a thing as a free market.

Or, let's not, since "most unlikely circumstance possible" is a really shitty basis for the sake of any argument.

Which creates liability for the company that wrote the code, because it can and will be construed that the car was designed to intentionally harm someone, and it doesn't matter that it was intentionally avoiding someone else.

Which is why I agree with OP that such a system is never going to be implemented. Not by anyone who doesn't want to be sued into oblivion.

Equally, send my regards to Carnac the Magnificent, since you seem capable of channeling him.

So... yes, then.

Kind of like how representative democracy died off when we all got smart phones, right?

No, dude, sadly middlemen will always exist, adding no value to things but taking your money anyway.

As a student of history, I lack that faith in the ability of the human species to, at any point, stop being selfish douchebags. But I do, occasionally, hope that I'm mistaken.

I've always maintained that the extinction of the human race would be the best thing that could possibly happen to the environment.

That's a much more workable concept than fundamentally changing the way humans have behaved since probably before we became humans.

Unless you want to live in an echo chamber, trolls are just something you have to learn to deal with. Besides, there's no such thing as an "anti-dickhead premium," because no matter what, if you're having a discussion with any significant group of people, it's pretty much guaranteed one of them is going to have a different enough opinion that you're going to want to stick that "troll" label on them.

Sure. We also should, instead of paying farmers to throw away crops, have those crops shared with people who don't have enough food. But we don't.

Hence the reason I don't buy into the 'all-robot-workforce-utopia' nonsense - it won't work for the same reason communism won't work, that is the fact that there's always someone who will gleefully step on every throat they find to get an advantage over other people.

Well, then that's comforting... or something....

No, he didn't say any of that, actually.

Oh, and FYI, if you want to be taken seriously, learn proper spelling and mechanics.

So, since we're being charged by the bit now, and the government is taking my bits (that we pay for) off the pipe and replacing them with their bits (that we also pay for)... wouldn't that imply that these "state actors" should be on the hook for at least part of our ISP usage bills?

At that point, I just hope they understand the difference between right and wrong (and that you shouldn't do "wrong" things) more than anything.

And yet, when I took my 6 year old nephew hunting last year, I had to explain how death works when he asked, "But won't the deer just respawn?"

So, anecdote for anecdote, we just broke even.

FWIW, I'm guessing the difference is, you're at least a decent parent, whereas my in-laws are abject fucking morons whose idea of discipline equates to 'how loud can I scream at my kid.'

Of course, the apparently high number of 'abject fucking moron' parents seems to give some weight to my hypothesis.