The law and self-driving cars

Robocar accidents (and AI and robotics in general) bring a whole new way of looking at the law. Generally, the law exists to deter and punish bad activity done by humans who typically knew the law, and knew they were doing something unsafe or nefarious. It is meaningless to punish robots, but in punishing the people and companies who make them, it will likely be the case that they did everything they could to stay within the law and held no ill will.

If a robocar (or its occupant or maker) ever gets a correct ticket for violating the vehicle code or other law, this will be a huge event for the team who made it. They'll be surprised, and they'll immediately work to fix whatever flaw caused that to happen. While software updates will not be instantaneous, soon that fix will be downloaded to all vehicles. All competitors will check their own systems to make sure they haven't made the same mistake, and they will also fix things if they need to.

As such, all robocars, as a group, will never get the same ticket again.

This is very much unlike the way humans work. When the first human got a ticket for an unsafe lane change, this didn't stop all the other people from making unsafe lane changes. At best, hearing about how expensive the ticket was will put a slight damper on things. Laws exist because humans can't be trusted not to break them, and there must be a means to stop them.

This suggests an entirely different way of looking at the law. Most of the vehicle code is there because humans can't be trusted to follow the general principles behind the code -- to stay safe, and to not unfairly impede the path of others and keep traffic flowing. There are hundreds of millions of drivers, each with their own personalities, motives and regard or disregard for those principles and the law.

In the robocar world, there will probably not be more than a couple of dozen distinct "drivers" in a whole nation. You could literally get the designers of all these systems together in a room, and work out any issues of how to uphold the principles of the road.

Much more here on the legal complexities surrounding self-driving cars.​ I find the topic more interesting than, say, the social implications of Google Glasses. More important, too.

Morality without religion

In his new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, de Waal challenges this theory, arguing that human morality is older than religion, and indeed an innate quality. In other words, religion did not give us morality. Religion built onto a pre-existing moral system that governed how our species behaved. 

de Waal's argument, which he has been making for years, is strengthened by the fact that recent research is starting to paint a better picture of the kind of cognitive processing that empathy requires. It turns out that empathy is not as complex as we had imagined, and that is why other animals are capable of it as well as humans. 

So if being moral is so easy, can we dispatch with religion altogether?

From Big Think.

But then anyone who has seen the great The Tree of Life​ already knew that empathy predated humans. Remember the dinosaur that spared the other dinosaur? Malick knew it before you did.

Trouble Will Find Me

​Pitchfork likes the new album by The National.

I haven't heard it yet, but for a few musical groups, I'll buy their albums sound unheard. Matt Berninger's vocalization is just so satisfyingly heart, like a hot beef stew on a chilly winter day.

The great stagnation of parenting

We’ve come a long way, as a species. And we’re better at many things than we ever were before – not just slightly better, but unimaginably, ridiculously better. We’re better at transporting people and objects, we’re better a killing, we’re better at preventing infectious diseases, we’re better at industrial production, agricultural and economic output, we’re better at communications and sharing of information.

But in some areas, we haven’t made such dramatic improvements. And one of those areas is parenting. We’re certainly better parents than our own great-great-grandparents, if we measure by outcomes, but the difference is of degree, not kind. Why is that?

The post includes a couple theories as to why the labor productivity of parenting has not increased.​

If you accept the premise that parenting is difficult to do well no matter how hard you try, it's worth reading the arguments put forth by Bryan Caplan in his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think, namely that you should chill out a bit and burn yourself out less trying to be a super-parent. You'll be happier and more stress-free, and your child will probably turn out the same.

(h/t to Tyler Cowen)​

Kobe vs MJ

"One of the biggest differences between the two stars from my perspective was Michael's superior skills as a leader," Jackson writes. "Though at times he could be hard on his teammates, Michael was masterful at controlling the emotional climate of the team with the power of his presence.  Kobe had a long way to go before he could make that claim. He talked a good game, but he'd yet to experience the cold truth of leadership in his bones, as Michael had in his bones."

“One of the biggest differences between the two stars from my perspective was Michael's superior skills as a leader. Though at times he could be hard on his teammates, Michael was masterful at controlling the emotional climate of the team with the power of his presence. Kobe had a long way to go before he could make that claim. He talked a good game, but he'd yet to experience the cold truth of leadership in his bones, as Michael had in his bones.”

"No question, Michael was a tougher, more intimidating defender," Jackson writes. "He could break through virtually any screen and shut down almost any player with his intense, laser-focused style of defense."

Those are excerpts from Phil Jackson's new book Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, coming out Tuesday, ​in which he compares Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan.

​This bit was especially revealing.

Jackson also revealed that the sexual assault charges levied against Bryant in 2003 temporarily clouded his outlook of the Lakers star. The situation "cracked open an old wound" because Jackson's daughter Brooke had been sexually assaulted by an athlete in college.

"The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. ... It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season," Jackson writes. "No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background."

I am definitely going to pick up that book. Too bad Phil Jackson hasn't coached more of our generation's leading players. I'd love his insight into, say, Lebron James or Tim Duncan.