Via Machines Like Us I came across this demonstration by Audi of a car that will, by itself and without a driver, find a parking space in a parking garage and park itself and then return to you at the entrance when you call it.
It looks kind of creepy and it reminded me of this prank where the people working at a fast-food drive thru are surprised to see a driverless car pull up.
As driverless cars get added to the other things in our lives that operate without a visible human behind it, I was wondering how our intuitive sense of agency (that inanimate objects need an animate agent to make them move) will become changed as people get used to the idea that science can give more and more objects the illusion of being under the control of unseen people.
Will people become so used to the idea that technology can create the illusion of agency that they will start to assume the opposite of what our intuition has long told us, and begin to think that there must be a rational scientific explanation for what seems mysterious?
That would be a good thing.
Perhaps we need to rewrite Clark’s third law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) to become: For a sufficiently advanced civilization, magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Very true and very clever!
I don’t think so. I think people will see the computer more and more as an intelligent, independent agent--which has been intelligently designed to boot. It won’t make undirected Nature seem any more capable of creating order or complexity on its own on an intuitive level.
Thank god for creating robotic cars. At least our heavenly father gives us an escape from the boring, plodding, errorful task of driving cars in the mindless gehenna of modern traffic laws.
I don’t recall where I heard it, but I always enjoyed the contrapositive form: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Exactly. Because we create design from the top down we believe that the universe works the same way. In the words of Dan Dennett:
Of course it is counterintuitive, but it’s the way the universe works.
I get the feeling that it would be more likely to reinforce their ideas of a designer.
Acolyte of Sagan
“I get the feeling that it would be more likely to reinforce their ideas of a designer.”
I agree. That car has no driver…I don’t understand…ergo god.
So which part of this car is the seat of its soul? And what happens to its spirit if you unplug it?
Barry Gehm. I have a collection of corollaries.
How can you tell magic from science?
Clarke’s Three Laws
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.” -- Foglio 20081205
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.” Niven
“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.” Gehm
“Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.” Stanley
Any sufficiently advanced and reliable magic is indistinguishable from technology.
“Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from God.” Shermer
@thebookofdave, the answer to your second question is obvious. If it was a good car, it goes to car heaven, and gets lots of lube jobs and premium gas and can zoom all it wants on traffic-free roads. If it was a bad car it goes to car hell, where a mechanic called Luke does awful things to it with a wrench for all eternity.
yes. This also explains why humans have evolved a love of repetitive ritual. A person who wants to sing a song or dance a dance can also want to learn a technology. Maybe weave a net or haft an axe or make some other useful thing or follow some useful process even if he or she has NO IDEA WHAT SHE’S DOING.
When we get robotic cars then it will no longer be necessary to own a car. Subtract the cost of the taxi driver and the taxi ride becomes cheaper than owning a car.
Drink as much as you want at the bar, press the car icon on your iPhone and a car goes to your GPS coordinates and takes you home.
Notice that as the car pulls away it looks like its going to hit the kerb -- interesting place for an edit. Also I wouldnt like to be stuck behind it : makes my 96 year old granny look like a racing driver.
I noticed that too and wondered about it. Also, I was not sure how it would distinguish between reserved parking spots and open ones.