If there’s one thing i learned in my early philosophy classes, it’s the difference between illusion and reality is a desire to achieve meaningful change in others’ lives.
Illusion is for those who can’t stand a notion of doing service that benefits society, which is why it’s odd to see people pitch it as a service training tool.
It could also help clinicians to collaborate on treatments for patients, and make patients feel more involved and informed in the process. Doctors could view, feel and discuss the features of tumour cells, and show patients plans for a medical procedure.
I have to admit I make the same mistake. I keep imagining a VR tool based in history that presents the real world with an overlay to explain disinformation (e.g. when you see streets in Louisiana, it exposes the systemic racism and terrorism).
This is a real development with real street names:
Can you see better the plans for a… harm reduction procedure?
Then I look at history degree enrollment decline and figure very few people (certainly not a mass market) probably want to use the power of story-telling (illusion) to benefit others. Where’s the fun, money, social entry, etc in that?
There is so much proof now that Tesla is not intelligent, doesn’t learn, and is a scam based on short-cuts… it should come as no surprise they’re defining “good driver” with almost no data.
“If driving behavior is good for 7 days, beta access will be granted.” (The company began selling insurance in its home state of California in August 2019.)
After two years of selling insurance, Tesla will use its own insurance data from 7 days prior to a button being pushed by the driver to define whether that driver is “good”.
This obviously fails to use independent evaluation and gives the driver an obvious way to avoid being judged accurately. It’s just more proof Tesla has no intention of keeping roads safe.
It should be called “autocratic” driving.
More to the point here, look at these quotes from Elon Musk (in my latest presentation).
Then look at this quote, which is obviously full of lies.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called a previous version of FSD Beta software “not great,” cautioned Friday evening that FSD Beta now seems so good it can give drivers a false sense of security that they don’t need to pay attention to driving while FSD Beta is engaged, even though they do have to remain attentive and at the wheel.
And this is being turned into a message from the CEO that “seems so good it can give drivers a false sense of security”? It’s the CEO who is giving them this sense, and those who repeat his lies.
It’s completely disingenuous and obviously negligent of the company to even hint that the car is to blame for driver overconfidence, but it also goes back to the CEO arguing people will be killed if they are warned they might be killed.
Really tough questions come out of a report on a coup directly related to US military presence.
During the month-and-a-half that Special Forces trained the Guineans, U.S. troops met with Guinean Col. Mamady Doumbouya, who is now the self-appointed ruler of Guinea after his forces deposed former leader Alpha Condé, Azari said.
[…]
When asked how roughly 100 Guinean special operators could have left their base and made the four-hour drive to the country’s capital without the Special Forces team knowing anything about it, Azari explained: “Sept. 5 was considered a down day for both forces.”
It is possible that the Guineans left while the Special Forces team that was instructing them was asleep…
The reader should not be left hanging to go off and fill in the blanks on US military doctrine here. Objection to the coup is fine, yet why not put that objection into action… once they wake up, of course?
I’m kidding. Can we stop for a minute though and admit something sounds completely off? The forces were asleep? It would make some sense if I read that a mistake had been made, or an investigation will find source of errors… but this concept that it can be excused by sleep. Almost sounds like someone went golfing and when caught said “what, I like golf”.
If the US military is present and able, and it officially objects, does it have any foundation at all to interfere with a coup? It already was present and able on the principle that it’s training and modifying behavior. I get that legally it’s weak ground and would take a long while to move the levers.
Yet why only intervene in training capacity to stabilize and aid, instead of also intervening to stop a coup and actively stabilize? I’ve written about this before in terms of Hawaii, which is a pretty interesting case.
Presumably there’s an authorization switch that was flipped (e.g. Neutrality Act cited in Gambia) allowing operators to train, whereas now it won’t be flipped so authorization is lacking… (the people just trained aren’t going to depose themselves).
There is a $162 fine for not complying with occupant restraint laws.
Similarly, Alberta started with a lax approach to the COVID19 pandemic that sent it into a preventable death spiral. Their tune has completely changed now, albeit late yet again:
“The government’s first obligation must be to avoid large numbers of preventable deaths. We must deal with the reality that we are facing. We cannot wish it away. Morally, ethically and legally, the protection of life must be our paramount concern.”
The United States (including its Supreme Court) apparently has been more successful at defeating stupid attempts like Alberta’s to rule safety technology unconstitutional.
Seat belt laws have mainly been challenged as a violation of an individual’s constitutionally protected right to privacy and as an invalid exercise of a state’s constitutionally granted police power. These arguments have been rejected by the courts in Illinois, Iowa, and New Jersey, and also, we believe in New York. The North Carolina case unsuccessfully attacked the law on different grounds, e.g., that it represented involuntary servitude and slavery. The Montana case involved a declared “free” man’s unsuccessful assertion that he was not subject to any state or federal laws.
Ok, Montana might take the prize for being the dumbest take on freedom (obviously laws protect freedoms by encoding definitions of encroachment) but someone in North Carolina actually argued slavery?!
Leave it to a Carolinian to put forward an official argument that slavery is equivalent to putting on a seat belt.
I can’t bring myself to read the court documents for fear I’ll find someone writing down that slavery was just a way to protect slaves from being enslaved.
For some reason asking people to do what is easy and in their own best interests, as well as the interests of others, turns them into toddlers throwing tantrums.
How stupid and defiant do you have to be to go to the trouble to buy and put on a seat belt shirt when it has none of the advantages of seat belts, including ease of putting it on and taking it off?
Is it harder to put on a seat-belt or a t-shirt?
The fake seat-belt shirt really should make the wearer look like a crash test dummy and have a large organ donor form on the front and back. That at least makes it worth the effort of putting one on.
On second thought, what if the government mandated wearing a t-shirt with fake seat-belt graphic and people protested by putting on real seat-belts instead?
Michigan Rep. David Hollister received a letter likening him to Hitler.
New Yorkers complained in a similar fashion, although they invoked Russia.
Speaking of dictators and Russia, Ronald Reagan tried to block a NHTSA rule requiring passive restraints and was struck down by his Supreme Court in a unanimous decision.
Here’s a tragic data point to think about, given Ronald Reagan was clearly putting Americans needlessly into harms way:
…the one out of eight Americans who don’t wear their seat belts account for nearly two-thirds of all the fatal accidents…
