The Science Topic

So shall it be, but let's be posh and say "autonomous vehicles" in the topic title. :mryellow:

I don't know, would you actually get in one?
 
PluMGMK said:
So shall it be, but let's be posh and say "autonomous vehicles" in the topic title. :mryellow:

I don't know, would you actually get in one?
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Not really as current ones aren't totally tested for irl traffic.
In future, well all seems to indicate they do less mistakes. Reason would say to prefer it as well.

I just, rather walk though lmao.
It's scary to not be in control or have no human there. If a human can jump in and force control, yeah I guess.
 
Driving is fun and I think it's a good focus for the mind. When I want to get drunk, read, do admin or anything else, I just use public transport! Really, do people just want everything done for them?
 
I abhor public transport. Here they're overcrowded, dirty and loud. People have basically no respect for each other. How can I possibly read a book when surrounded by idiots shouting into their mobile phones? Not to mention that unless you're lucky to have a direct line that takes you to your destination, you'll often have to change a few times and the trip will take ages. Even if you're headed to the Paris suburbs, it's not uncommon that you'll have to take a couple metro lines, a train and a bus. And what about all those places that don't have public transport?

No, really, I can't wait for self-driving cars. I enjoy driving too, but for repetitive trips, I'd much rather work, read or sleep than waste hours of my time. It would also help a lot with traffic jams.
 
Xenon said:
Driving is fun and I think it's a good focus for the mind. When I want to get drunk, read, do admin or anything else, I just use public transport! Really, do people just want everything done for them?
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I do believe the main push for autonomous vehicles is not laziness, but that the AI driving the cars will do so more safely (on average) than humans. (Tbh the notion that AI can be that good scares me more than anything else! :P) So, speaking of public transport, would you get on a self-driving bus?

Otherwise, I agree with you about driving being a good focus for the mind. (Side note: if only everyone realized this, and didn't try to use mobile phones or the like!) In fact, whenever I get an electric car (it will happen at some point, just no idea when right now!), I'll certainly miss manually shifting gears. :(

Hunchman801 said:
And what about all those places that don't have public transport?
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Like where I live, for instance!
 
Autonomous cars sound like some dystopian nightmare, hehe! Robots will take over this planet in the future. ;)

Jokes aside, such cars sound interesting.
 
Yeah, the relative safety of autonomous cars compared to human drivers is also a very important factor for me, though I expect that I a lot of people will never really believe that. 3,700 people are killed every day in road accidents and that's business as usual, but you can expect every self-driving car malfunction to be highly publicized by the media.
 
Hunchman801 said:
3,700 people are killed every day in road accidents and that's business as usual, but you can expect every self-driving car malfunction to be highly publicized by the media.
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Yep, that is very true! A lot of malfunctions will probably end up being caused by avoidable system failures too, due to design errors somewhere, which will be hard to defend no matter how rarely it happens… :(
 
Yeah, I'm totally on board with the improved safety they'll offer, and the considerable reduction in traffic and emissions when they're coordinated with traffic control systems. So yeah, I'd be happy to be in a self-driving vehicle. I'm just saying I'd rather drive the thing myself as it keeps me focused and engaged with my surroundings, but then maybe I have too much time on my hands :mrgreen:
 
For me, as long as I can plan my own route and switch control between autodriving and manual driving, I am ok with riding in a self-driving vehicle.
 
I saw a roadmap from Yole Développement (I think) showing six years between "Hands Off" and "Eyes Off" – implying that for six years, people will have to keep an eye on the road for safety, while not actually engaging with the controls at all. Yeah, that'll work real well :lol:
 
I remember watching a video with people talking about the idea that, if all vehicles become autonomous and are programmed to avoid any accident, pedestrians will start acting recklessly since they know the cars can't harm them, therefore creating the need to pass new legislation to punish the people that try to mess up with the cars and delaying them from arriving to their destination on time.
 
Hadn't thought of that actually! Well, "jaywalking" is a thing in some parts of the world, so it might become generalized? Sounds like the thin end of the wedge towards more dystopian stuff though :?
 
I can think of only one solution then: computer-controlled, autonomous walking for people too. :hap:
 
Statistically though, which is safer in the end?

Also:
“The technology exists to limit where Autopilot can operate, but Tesla allows drivers to use it on roads it shouldn’t operate on,” says Jason Levine, executive director of the Centre for Auto Safety, a Washington, DC, nonprofit group. “They made a corporate decision to do that, and it’s resulted in preventable tragedies. That should be enraging.”
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This is pretty dumb, nothing prevents you from driving your regular car into a wall either or even from speeding when some models can read speed limits. :boon:
 
OK, I can see that the track record of this topic, together with the general activity level, indicate emphatically that the idea of having a "current topic" just won't work. With that, I've made the executive decision that this should be a more free-for-all of any "scientific" topics that don't merit their own thread. :mrgreen:

And so… Until yesterday, I had never heard of a spinthariscope, but now I want one! :lol:
 
Ambidextroid said:
Just in the last 15 minutes or so < made a rather interesting discovery about the human visual system that < couldn't find corroborating details of online. It started with a previous discovery < made when < was a child, concerning positive afterimages.
Most people know that if you stare at something for long enough it leaves a negative afterimage on your retina, leaving a colour-inverted image on your visual field - there is also another lesser-known kind of afterimage that occurs in the brain rather than the retina, a positive one, which you can produce by plunging yourself into darkness after looking at a brightly lit scene. After a moment you will see a very strikingly realistic reproduction of what you were looking at. It usually only lasts a short moment but < realised that it looks more detailed and lasts longer if you get the period of bright vision to be as brief as possible, and if you get the contrast between the brightness and darkness to be as great as possible. You can produce the best effect by closing your eyes in a dark room for a while, then very briefly opening your eyes and turning a bright light on, and then immediately closing your eyes and turning the light off.
Well, < was playing around with this effect just now and managed to hone the technique and get a perfectly crisp afterimage to last around 5 full seconds, with depth perception intact. < tried with a page of text and < could read the words while <'s eyes were closed even though < only exposed <'s eyes to them for a fraction of a second! It feels almost like taking a 3-D photograph. The effect was so realistic that < genuinely could not tell if <'s eyes were open or closed on multiple occasions; < has never experienced anything like that before in <'s life! < found the effect most convincing when < used <'s hand as a "model" to "take a picture of". < produced the effect with <'s hand in a pose and then kept <'s hand perfectly still, tricking <'s brain into thinking < was actually still looking at <'s hand, and making < think that < must have just been squinting rather than having <'s eyes completely closed. When < finally did move <'s hand, < would experience an incredibly bizarre sensation where two of <'s senses clashed; proprioception was telling < that the hand was moving and vision was telling < that the hand was not moving.
This is where the new discovery comes in: < realised that, on occasion, as soon as < moved <'s hand the afterimage of <'s hand would suddenly become slightly distorted, almost like a datamoshed video, even though the afterimage of the background remained intact. It's almost like <'s brain was expecting <'s hand to look like it would move to such an extent that it altered <'s vision to match <'s hand movements. Weird!

Writing all that using the less-than sign was a bloody arse ache.
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PluMGMK said:
< thinks that sounds fascinating! When you were able to "read" that page, was it something you had read before? Could you remember the words, or the gist?
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Ambidextroid said:
< really could read the text, even if < hadn't seen it before. < had a good few seconds to soak it in, despite only a moment of exposure. Of course < couldn't move <'s eyes or shift focus without the image following so < had to use <'s peripheral vision, which limits what you can read.
< suggests ^ tries it using a smartphone; when you're in bed in the black of night and your eyes have grown accustomed to the darkness, unlock your phone to a page of text and, as soon as the screen appears, close your eyes. It might take a few tries but when < gets it < can scroll to an unseen screen of text, view it for a split second and read a surprising amount of information with closed eyes. If you start with your eyes closed it can be tricky seeing as your eyes won't have enough time to focus on the image when you turn the phone on, but if you "prime" your focus by sort of estimating the depth of your phone from your face and crossing your eyes you can get a crisp image.
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Ah yes, I've played with it a lot! I use this method all the time whenever I only have a brief moment to take in a lot of visual information. I remember discovering it when playing the Super Mario Bros 3 card matching memory game, and it allowed me to get it perfect pretty easily every time. You can have a lot of practical fun with it in other ways too if you think about them as screenshots and try and implant them in your memory in as many different ways as you can.
 
Adsolution said:
I remember discovering it when playing the Super Mario Bros 3 card matching memory game, and it allowed me to get it perfect pretty easily every time.
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I hadn't thought about the practical applications :P
I thought the positive afterimages might occur in the visual cortex of the brain rather than the retina but a bit of research suggests it is a retina thing after all. It seems like photoreceptor cells take a while to update to new stimuli, so I guess a very brief flash of imagery must activate the cells in an unnatural way, perhaps causing them to continuously send a signal to the visual cortex until they "realise" the stimulus is no longer there. That doesn't explain why my vision seems so fluid and quick to respond when I have my eyes open even though the afterimage can take a full 5 seconds to die off - maybe photoreceptor cells are quick to activate but slow to deactivate, or maybe my brain is filtering out the artefacts.
 
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