Tag Archives: responsibilities

Self-Driving Cars

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This Luddite remains strongly opposed to letting robots drive me around. However, the software that runs one version of a robot car, that package “guiding” Tesla’s latest iteration of its Full-Self Driving car, version 13.2, is a vast improvement of past efforts, according to BARRON’S.

Absent from the testing, though, at least as publicly reported, is how well 13.2 handles random (and frequent) traffic violations by the cars of other drivers that would endanger the occupants of the FSD or pedestrians or other vehicles. Such violations include the relatively minor, such as speeding; as well as the more dangerous wobbly bicycle(s) and inattentive bicyclists; pedestrians darting, at the last moment even, in front of the FSD in his last ditch effort to cross the road; crossing traffic running the red light or stop sign; oncoming traffic deciding to make a left turn at the last moment; the list is extensive.

Other risks are mostly in the residential neighborhood: the toddler in front of a parked car at the last moment darting into the street and the small pet under that parked car making the last moment dart into the street.

Many of those situations are difficult enough for a human driver to answer, often too difficult and the collision occurs.

Any robot-driven car needs to be able to handle those random situations at least as well as any experienced human driver.

Then there’s the classic moral paradox, usually cast in terms of a railroad exercise regarding which track to be switched to given the certainty of some measure of death regardless of the choice. Those choices occur on roads with cars and trucks, also, and they’re often badly handled by the human drivers involved. What can we expect from robot software?

To repeat: I remain strongly opposed to letting robots drive me around. The software involved is improving, but enough so? What constitutes sufficient improvement? At the least, satisfactory handling of the above situations.

Is She Confused?

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Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, opined in his Res ipsa loquitur blog that US Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D) is mistaken about our Constitution. She did, after all, have a few things to say during the just concluded vote for a House of Representatives Speaker concerning the status of the USVI (and other territories) in our nation. She demanded, in those remarks, the “right” of territorial delegates to vote on matters before the House.

This body and this nation has [sic] a territories and a colonies problem.

And

I note that the names of representatives from American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia were not called, representing, collectively, 4 million Americans. Mr Speaker, collectively, the largest per capita of veterans in this country.

As Turley noted in the body of his essay,

The language of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous. Absent an amendment to the Constitution, only states may vote on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

He also cited the relevant clause of our Constitution, Art I, Sect 2:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch in the States Legislature.

Plaskett, a duly qualified and certified lawyer, isn’t at all mistaken; she’s acting quite deliberately. She’s all too typical, too, of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contempt for and disregard of our Constitution, canonically illustrated by ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) announcement that if Congress would not do as he told it, he would exercise his pen and telephone to bypass or overrule it, and by soon-to-be ex-President Joe Biden’s (D) lack of concern for the unconstitutionality of his student loan “forgiveness” scheme with his serial cancelations of those loans. Party’s attitude is one that reaches back at least as far as the then-Democratic Party’s head, Woodrow Wilson, who insisted that our Constitution was obsolete, in the way, and needed to be put aside in favor of his party’s Technocrat-centered “leadership.”

Indeed There Is

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River Page, writing for The Free Press last Sunday, objected to any proliferation of “Tiger Moms.” However, she’s wholly misinterpreted the concept of and the goals of tiger moms.

There are more important things in life than making a six-figure salary and going to Yale goes her subheadline. She concluded her piece with this:

There’s no point in living in a prosperous country if you can’t enjoy it[.]

The one is not the aim of tiger moms, and the other isn’t possible without achieving their goal. Vivek Ramaswamy, of DOGE, has laid out the situation, using the H-1B visa debate as the backdrop.

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

He added, as paraphrased by Page, that tech companies prefer to hire foreigners—and their offspring—because the children of native-born Americans don’t work hard enough.

That’s what tiger moms are working against, and we need more of them, not the coddled snowflakes of too many of our current offspring and their children.

That more important thing, toward which tiger moms try to raise their children, is a work ethic that prides work and that produces the overriding satisfaction of a job well done. The self respect that comes from that is what powers full enjoyment of leisure time and the full enjoyment of the plethora of leisures available in a prosperous country.

Indeed, there isn’t a prosperous country without the work required to produce, maintain, and defend it. Six-figure salaries fall out of all of that; they aren’t the goal of any of that. Neither is going to Yale instead of any other school. Students get out of their higher education institution—whichever it is, and it need not be a so-called elite school—what they put into it, and what they put into it is what they learn to put into it during their pre-school and K-12 years. That’s where tiger moms earn their stripes and the respect of us otherwise average Americans, their peers.

Sulk on the Sidelines

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Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) has decided to take her marbles and go home in a snit. Not literally, she’ll remain, formally, a Republican, but

she won’t sit on committees or caucus with the House Republican Conference for the time being and will instead focus on working with the new “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency” caucus on cutting spending.

She says, in so many words,

I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing[.]
I do not need to be involved in circuses.

She’s not far wrong about the circus aspect, especially with the ego-driven Chaos Caucus continuing its knee-jerk obstructionism. Quitting the game, though, instead of staying in it, doing her best to reduce, if not eliminate, the circus aspect, is the move of a coward.

Pushing the DOGE spending cuts—whatever they are; so far, all we have is news outlet claims—all by her august self is a move borne of self-important arrogance. Demanding things be done her way or she’ll go sulk in her room is not the definition of leadership governing; it’s just more personal aggrandizement.

She doesn’t want to be just one voice in the cacophony. However, with her ducking out, she’s left the serious caucus with one less voice for functional governance.

Spartz is betraying her constituents.

She’s also contributing to Progressive-Democratic Party continued control of the House, given the Republican Party’s miniscule majority, and the Chaos Caucus’ preference for that over compromise with their fellow Republicans. That’s another betrayals of her constituents.

Blame Someone Else

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Safeway is closing one of its San Francisco stores due to concerns about high crime rates and employee and customer safety in that store’s neighborhood. Oh, the hue and cry.

The Reverand Erris Edgerly, for instance, is crying foul.

It’s obvious the community has been struggling, but to just up and leave without calling a meeting, with no alternative for groceries, is upsetting. There was no community outreach at all.

It’s obvious that the crime rate in Edgerly’s community has been out of control for quite some time and the safety of his community members has been in the wind for all that time. From that, it’s just as obvious that community “leaders,” like the good Reverand, have contributed nothing useful to mitigating the situation (in truth, the city has done nothing, also, but that doesn’t excuse the community’s “leaders”).

Outreach would have been just more chit-chat and worse than pointless: advance notice of the store’s closing would have been too likely to trigger an accelerated spate of break-ins and lootings, exposing the store’s employees and customers to even more danger in that end game.

Maybe the Edgerlys of the neighborhood should look in a mirror to find some of the folks with whom to…outreach.