This MIT article tells me something I already knew as a cyclist.
"Most people want to live in in a world where cars will minimize casualties… But everybody wants their own car to protect them at all costs."
I have noticed that!
But let’s not dwell on that issue. Rather let us use it as an example of what’s going on with the current state of the art of autonomous cars. All this tepid trolley problem philosophizing is getting tedious. You know what else has philosophical implications involving the trolley problem? Trolleys. And if a mine needs some mine carts I’m guessing the miners spend very little time worrying about the exotic situations where this tool could get into ethical quandaries.
I’m starting to think that all this attention on the moral dimensions of extremely unlikely situations is a type of mental fatigue that prevents people from doing the truly difficult thing, actually making this robotic technology feasible. The really interesting lever you should wonder about pulling is the one that makes lidar drop in price. Etc.
I used to read Hacker News. A lot. I think the best way to describe why I suddenly stopped would be to say that the reasons were similar to why I’m going to stop reading "news" about autonomous car trolley problems.
UPDATE 2018-10-26 If you’re into trolley problems and autonomous cars, here is some empirical data on this subjective topic.