People dying is priced in, I'm afraid.
Every software buyer knows this is likely, but they don't really care, because they assume that it'll only kill Other People.
It's the same with the software in cars, banking systems, or production lines. Nobody wants to pay or wait, to have it properly designed and tested. They only ever want the beta, even at the risk of it driving them into a tree at 250 km/h.
For that matter we could make the speed limit 20 miles an hour and save 40-45,000 lives a year in the US. We don’t though. That would inconvenience everyone.
I was describing a software bug that results in a runaway.
The car suddenly speeds up on its own.
Yes. I’m making the point that safety is often a secondary consideration when it comes to connivence.
The difference though is that people can choose to go slower than the speed limit in the US. We generally don't punish going too slow (rare exceptions). That's not really true for a lot of the things we were talking about here. These issues are largely beyond any single person's control. It requires a shift in culture. That was my whole point.
We are carrying our approach to less meaningful systems into critical systems, and that's why we end up having disasters. We need to separate our systems and use a philosophy that makes sense in each context. The Windows a gamer uses may be the same as what runs 911 call centers and pretty much everything in my emergency department, but losing a gaming machine clearly matters less. So just firing out broken software as if every device is the same is a really dumb and broken model. Convenience may matter more to the gamer, but it doesn't for someone who isn't breathing. This is a massive issue beyond any single person or company.
Americans spend ~70,000,000,000 hours driving per year already, according to https://newsroom.aaa.com/2019/02/think-youre-in-your-car-more-youre-right-americans-spend-70-billion-hours-behind-the-wheel/
If the hypothetical 20 miles/hr policy only resulted in travel times doubling, that would be an extra 70 billion hours wasted, or just under 200,000 lives per year wasted (assuming 40 year remaining lifespan).
It would, in all likelihood, be much worse, because fatigue is implicated in more fatal crashes than speed already, without doubling travel times.
People suck at judging risks when making choices, but they attempt it sincerely because they have "skin in the game".
Individually more intelligent and better informed experts make everyone's choices for them even more poorly, because they have no skin in the game and are rarely/never held accountable for externalities.
Yeah, speed is unfairly blamed. Just look at how safe the German Autobahn is.
Fine. Whatever speed the impacts would not be fatal at. We could set that speed as the maximum speed. We don’t though. Because we accept that getting from point a to point b at the speeds we are accustomed to means x number of people will die.
If you go over a tall cliff on a hairpin bend at 1 mph, you're just as dead as at 200 mph.
There is no safe speed.
There is no safe.
There won't, and cannot be, perfect safety in anything short of a The Matrix pod.
Its not within our power.
What we can do is better-inform people to make their own choices, and judicially disincentivise behaviour that harms others.
That's what herd mentality is, hoping someone else gets picked off around the edges while you do nothing... Numbers... Shit strategy.
They don't understand that this doesn't work with software, like it does with hardware, because everyone has exactly the same item. 😂
That's why it's cheap! You only need to build one thing! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
EVERYONE HAS THE EXACT SAME THING, MOTHAFUCKAS! YOU ARE ALL SCREWED AT THE SAME TIME! SUCKS TO BE YOU, YOU MORONS!
(Sorry, just had to get that out. Ahem.)
Unfortunately, I think you're right. That's why I try to buy the alternatives whenever possible. That indeed usually means that I'm driving older vehicle models that tend to change very little and don't have the newest features. The same goes for my phones, computers, etc. Saves me sats and frustration though!
