You know, someone made a real cavalier sounding remark about how you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette. I replied to that with saying, basically, I understand that attitude for making peace with training deaths in the military but I don't think it's justified for driverless cars. I tried to make it clear later that part of the difference in my mind is that people die in military training because people are being trained to do dangerous things. But if you are training a driverless vehicle, there's really no reason that absolutely has to involve endangering anyone's life.

And, wow, has that gotten tons of push back while people go to great lengths to frame me like I'm some extremist lunatic. Meanwhile, the person cavalierly brushing off training deaths is making rather extreme comments about how driverless vehicles can completely replace all human drivers, etc and most people are not arguing with that. No, I am the one being argued with.

It's starting to look to me like people are basically looking for some silly reason to argue with me in specific. Because I really did not assert a lot of the stuff being hung on me here.

Again, yes, if we can save 40k lives. That's a very big if. It assumes a 100% reduction in mortality. That implies that you expect driverless vehicles to not merely be better than human drivers, you expect them to be perfect and to have flawless performance.

And it's that sort of ridiculous unstated assumption that has me rolling my eyes and going "Wow, people on HN sure are just looking for crazy reasons to argue with me." Because I don't think that's a remotely defensible position.