> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.
A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.
This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area?
> Eliminating cars doesn’t eliminate the need for infrastructure for moving goods.
Burying other last mile utilities that waste less land was not insane when real estate was a fraction as valuable as now and engineering technology was worse.
When I see bad faith arguments like this I earnestly worry that maybe sometimes I do the same and just don’t recognize it.
Did you read my comment about the cost of laying fiber being far different from the cost of digging truck-sized tunnels and make a conscious choice to pretend I was making a nonsense argument about diesel-powered fiber, or did you construct this strawman without realizing it?
I don't think you are trying to look at it rationally but simply in terms of priors where sprawl has cost an immense amount of resources. A tunnel where 2 pallets can cross is not much larger than a sewer, fits bellow a pedestrian/emergency vehicle system and is more valuable than a larger tunnel because it can never be DoT approved.
I wonder how many people such an automated freight system would kill per year, compared to cars in the same cities. Once we have some numbers, you would probably reconsider the use of "insane" there.
Sure. In 2022, 672 pedestrians were killed by large trucks. How many of those do you believe happened in say New York City? And how many of those do you think you could eliminate with this hypothetical tunnel system? And how much will this hypothetical tunnel system cost?
New York has about 300 pedestrian deaths total from all vehicles every year. So my guesstimate is that if you eliminated all of the trucks from New York City, you might save 50 lives a year, max. I would also guesstimate that it would probably cost well north of $50 billion to create this tunnel system to connect all of the major buildings in New York City. So we’re looking at about $1 billion per life saved. I bet you could save more than one life per billion if you put that money somewhere more useful.
> What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?
What are you intending to accomplish with your snarky and condescending tone?
it is not possible to eliminate the risk from the absolute requirement to move heavy bulk stuff, through and in citys.
roads need work, big things break and fail ,wherever they are, new stuff gets built, again, precisly, wherever, it gets built.
civil engineering is completly mature,and wildly boreing,and will dry your eyes out.
much of the cannon is millenia old, with fuck all room to "inovate"
and what works in one place, is a total fail somewhere else.
what is more is that the ancient world is littered with the ruins of civilisations and citys, that did fail, and in every case part or all of that failure was to overextend, undermaintain, there infrastructure, or worse, jump to some new flashy thing that then fails, spectacularly.
having walked through those ruins, and marvled at there engineering and planning of infrastructure, and also become a keen reader of all things civil or infrastructure engineerin, and also aircraft engineering, where the most important concept is up front, "failure mode", I have no respect for sudden ideas, and approve of what China has done to prohibit un educated comentary on infrastructure development and implimentation.
"influencer engineering" by way of "saftey"
Nitpick: it is one life per year for the billion invested. Which after the typical metro infrastructure lifespan of a century is actually viable because the cost for a working-age US life in medical and other contexts is probably around the $10mn ballpark.
(Assuming financing happens cheaply by the federal state rather than via PPP grift; and assuming that $50bn is the number, which in NYC is an underestimate by a factor of at least five…)
That’s a really good point. This is all very back-of-the-envelope, but if the total cost per life saved were 10 million it gets into the ballpark of sane.
But as you noted this 50 billion is likely a major underestimate (for comparison the recently built SR-99 tunnel in Seattle cost 1 billion per linear mile and connects to approximately zero buildings via elevators). NYC covers 300 square miles and estimates are that there are upwards of a million buildings across 120k city blocks.
How much will those robots cost? How many will we be able to make within the next 30 years?
How will they be autonomous considering bipedal operation in random environments is MUCH, MUCH harder that full self driving for cars on public roads? And that's just moving around, we're talking about actual judgement to do a human job that requires reasoning and practical skills.
Jetson type robots are a pipe dream at this point. I don't expect to have a robot maid within my lifetime.
Let's be realistic and not plan society today around scifi fantasies, please.
We're probably lacking 80% of the basic science needed for autonomous robot maids.
Right. My comment wasn't about maids from the Jetsons. General purpose robots are not soon. But for more specific tasks we've come very far in the last decade.
Warehouse automation is a reality today. Package delivery is also, just not broadly across the US. But it is very much happening right now.
Specifically my comment was about package delivery, which appears to be around the corner for most major cities, and already in place in several major cities around the world.
For indoor delivery, you don't really need Atlas. A 4 wheeled "full self drive" can fairly easily navigate cubicles and press elevator buttons. It's really not that crazy, and doesn't require any reasoning whatsoever. Basic preprogrammed pathfinding borrowed from any modern video game works fine for this. I don't think you need any advanced AI, let alone AGI.
Also perhaps worth mentioning in Chicago is Lower Wacker Drive.
It's a split-level street, more-or-less with local traffic on the surface and with through traffic at the subterranean level. It's a quick way to get through the area.
And beneath parts of that that is an road I've heard referred to as Lower Lower Wacker. This is almost entirely the realm of delivery and service vehicles (except for a time in fairly recent years when those darned kids were using it for drag racing at night).
It's all crazy-expensive to build anything like underground local delivery rail and underground roadways.
(But the stuff at the surface is crazy-expensive, too, and often can't be expanded horizontally without demolition of the very buildings that it seeks to benefit.
But expanding down? Sometimes, yeah -- that can happen.)
> Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it.
Recent anthropological and archaeological research is challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of hard work were separated by long periods of light work and rest.
> Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day
This statement is technically correct if you let the word “many” do the heavy lifting and ignore the people doing the work (slaves, etc)
Claiming that average life in the past was easier is just false, though. If it was easier to shelter, feed, and clothe yourself in the past then those methods wouldn’t have disappeared. You’d be able to do them now if you wanted to. Easier than before, in fact, because you can walk to the store and buy some wood instead of chopping down trees by hand and letting them dry for a few seasons before building, and so on.
Average person took long time off work to travel to visit far away friends? Call me sceptical, because this is provably untrue for pretty much any period and place we have actual resources about.
I don’t know what research they saw, but the claim was mainstreamed by the popular book “Sapiens”. The author romanticized past life and made claims that life was leisurely until agriculture came along and made us all miserable as we toiled working the soil. Before that we supposedly relaxed all day as our food was easy to catch and we didn’t have to build anything because we were always on the move. There are some very obvious problems with that statement that will be easily spotted by anyone who has ever done any hunting or camping.
Since this is generating revenue for NYC, you can't consider whether this tax is good or bad in a vacuum though. The alternatives are a different tax with its own effects, or more debt, or less spending. (In this case, the revenue goes to the MTA.) Any opportunity costs due to less traffic are at least partially offset by opportunity costs you aren't having to pay somewhere else.
I walked away with that page open, glanced at the "Is it time to rewrite sudo in Zig?" post, and clicked to see the comments because I thought it was real :')
I heard one of the founders interviewed on the Hard Fork podcast[1] (which confusingly is primarily concerned with AI, rather than crypto.) I went in with very negative expectations, but came away with a positive impression and optimism that they might be onto something. As you say, AI is not core to the project. Instead, the focus is on using technology to facilitate individualized learning. It is true that teachers are 'replaced', but by humans whose job it is to keep the students focused and motivated, rather than to convey information.
>Instead, the focus is on using technology to facilitate individualized learning. It is true that teachers are 'replaced', but by humans whose job it is to keep the students focused and motivated, rather than to convey information.
I have good news for you. Tell your kids to get into a few fights, or get caught smoking weed in school too many times. They will be sent to an "alternative school" as punishment that uses this same insight - let the kids sit in front of a computer all day "learning" while a teacher nags them to quit falling asleep. In fact, they can do it for around 6 hours a day, three times better than this charter.
I've had the same opinion since I was a TA. Most of the stuff the students learned was from the textbook. The value the instructors provide should above all be the motivation , the enthusiasm and the instilment of meaning into what the students are learning.
The videos are more subtle and it's not apparent in every frame. Look for things in the background snapping into and out of focus, weird textures appearing on Will's head and neck, and people's faces looking unnaturally sharp at the edges, while their skin is uncannily smooth (sort of like Max Headroom.)
I understand the point he's making: New cars are much safer than old cars, and the average person is driving a car that is 12 years old, while new cars are bought primarily by the wealthy. However, that seems like a natural consequence of two things that are very good for everyone. First, cars are lasting much longer than they used to, which lowers the lifetime cost of ownership. Second, cars have gotten much safer in the last fifteen years. As long as these trends continue, the safety gap will exist, but I think everyone would still prefer cars keep getting safer and more reliable.
First, cars are lasting much longer than they used to
I see cars on the road that are barely holding it together and probably wouldn't pass safety (or emissions) inspections if they were required to. The point is, there are other possibilities. First, safety features of older cars don't always work like new. Second, people might be driving old, unsafe, cars because it's all they can afford. Even in a recent trip to Italy, I was talking to someone complaining about this exact thing. This is not good.
I think it's a shame that we can't add new safety features into older cars.
I feel like there's very little engineering reasons why we can't, and it's mostly regulatory hurdles, that removes any economic incentives to do so.
I've recently read an article about what constitutes the right balance of regulations when it comes to aviation safety, and that while regulations have made modern planes extremely safe, overly stringent rules are also preventing planes from adopting modern safety features.
I feel like there's very little engineering reasons why we can't...
It's not an engineering problem. One could cut new holes in the front bumper of an old car, add forward-facing radar, tack on a display and a computer to drive it all, et voila! Now you have collision avoidance! Except even in volume, you've probably spent more than the car is worth (labor will be the killer, not hardware), or enough that the person whose economics dictate an older car can't afford the upgrade.
Lane keeping? I don't even want to think about what that retrofit would involve.
I understand your premise, but I think the missing part of the cost function here, especially when it comes to safety, is the price of a human life. The US government has actually quantified it, and I think when we account for that it’s probably worth it. Though where exactly that money would come from is a problem.
Similarly, we know certain preventative medical treatments are costly but save money for the system as a whole when universally applied, yet we still don’t do it.
>Except even in volume, you've probably spent more than the car is worth (labor will be the killer, not hardware), or enough that the person whose economics dictate an older car can't afford the upgrade.
I'm not sure why that needs to be the case. Open Pilot is essentially a working aftermarket kit, but they can't sell the whole kit legally, only the hardware.
There are older cars that have the same safety features as new ones but those cars are still expensive. I don’t remember any super novel safety feature that came up in last 10 to 15 years. Especially ones that could be just added to any car. Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.
Besides that older cars are less safe because they are old not because they lack safety features.
That airbag 15 years old might or might not work. You have 300k kilometers driven there will be rust here and there.
Open Pilot essentially created an aftermarket advanced adaptive cruise control that works better than most brands outside of Tesla. They just can't sell it legally as a whole package, so you buy the hardware, but the software is open source.
The difficulty of modifying the body, is mostly a financial decision I think. The body is by-and-large optimized for assembly rather than repair and modifications - that's why body shops charge an arm and a leg.
> Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.
Yep, and I think that's the problem. Cars should be designed in a way that you can make this kind of safety upgrades. There's little technical reason why with a more modular body and platform, the manufacturer can't design a new crumple zone for retrofit, run finite element analysis, and crash test it.
They may need to rethink fundamentally how mass-market cars are made, like using more fasteners instead of welding in the body and frame, or using plastic instead of sheet metal when they are not necessary, like for the body panels.
That old malfunctioning airbags should be able to be replaced easily.
But then it would incentivize the customers to keep their old cars instead of buying new ones.
You either know a lot about designing cars or you know nothing about it.
My guess is you know nothing about it based on malfunctioning airbags that should be possible to be replaced easily.
Airbags are one action components so until they fire up you don’t have certainty. You might check electrical connections or replace them „just in case”. Yes airbags might not be good after 15 years and I don’t think anyone who is driving 15yo car has money or is willing to spend money on replacing them.
On the flip side, I bought an used 08 Sprinter van over the previous, more reliable generation, mainly for the side airbags. It turned out the one I bought didn't have them.
It was a $120 option, and most buyers opted out. A few years later they were made mandatory.
This is such a wonderfully unlikely story. The museum, known for its dinosaur displays, was drilling a borehole in its parking lot as part of a building improvement project. The 5cm borehole happened to go straight through the spine of a small dinosaur.
A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company