StoppedThoughts

I just read another article where the reporter informed us of the severe problems of a declining population.  This time an article about the low birth rate in South Korea.

To all reporters who write about this subject I say, “Talk to a retired person”.  These stories always mention the problems of taking care of the elderly, the lack of enough workers to support the care of the elderly, etc.

If you talk to a retired person you will learn that they do not become useless on the day after retirement.  In fact, many would like to keep working, but under changed circumstances.

Consider, a storybook career means, over many years, getting promoted, earning more money, being given more responsibility.  Then retirement.  There is no plan for easing the difficulty of a job.  So yes, it becomes too much, too many hours, too much stress, too inconvenient and so people retire.

But many, if not most, retired persons will tell you they would like to be able to work part time, maybe mentor, maybe consult.  They don’t want 40 or more hours, they don’t need the pay they were making, they don’t want a long commute, they don’t want dangerous or physically demanding work.  Does that mean they want to immediately go into a nursing home and be taken care of?  Of course not.

We, as a society, don’t even discuss how to best utilize our older workers.  In the past, when people lived in a small tribe or village, the elderly did not “retire”.  They shifted to doing what they could.  That might mean teaching the young, doing chores they could do without travelling for long times outside the village to hunt, gather, do agriculture.  The elderly continued to work until they truly could not.  But at age appropriate tasks.  Guess what?  We today are not different than those people of many years ago.  We elderly are fine with keeping busy, with working within our limitations.

What are the things we are told to stay healthiest in old age?  Stay active, stay social.  Duh, could that be achieved by part time work?  Of course.  Like in those tribes or small villages.  Stay engaged.  Why not age appropriate work loads?  Won’t that let our elderly be productive and as healthy as possible?  And yet we have no focus or even discussions on setting up such a society.  We do nothing to remove the barriers of finding suitable work for the elderly.  So we do end up with people having too little to do, too few social contacts, and resultant poor health.

The concept of retirement is a social construct.  Created at most 150 years ago.  So why do we let it become a “problem”?

My comments make sense for a developed nation such as our USA.  The other, larger, situation to consider is the failure to positively utilize the world’s poor who mainly live in the un-developed countries.  We need productive workers?  We waste the potential of about one-quarter of the world’s people, at least 2 billion.  Those in extreme poverty, roughly 1 billion, are not able to properly feed, to appropriately nourish, their children.  These are children who don’t get enough calories, and definitely don’t get the necessary micro-nutrients, to physically develop fully.  Their bodies and brains are substandard.

Many who are given the chance to develop physically are not given the education to become useful in a modern economy.  How good of an education do you think the children receive when their school does not even have running water, let alone a toilet?  For example, the average number of school years attended in India is about 7 years.  That means only schooling from 6 yrs old to 13 yrs old.  That’s the AVERAGE.

I am surprised when I hear yet another pundit saying that countries like South Korea, Japan, and the USA need to have a higher birth rate.  So let’s say couples in those countries all try and get pregnant.  It will be over 20 years before those children are through higher education and can provide the kind of economic benefit that the pundits say is needed.  Can’t we also have a discussion about how to improve nutrition and education for some of the 2 billion who do not have the chance of reaching their potential as Human Beings?  Are those pundits racist?

The number of people worldwide who have college degrees is around 7% of the whole population.  What about the other 7 billion people on our planet?  Are none of them capable of getting a college degree?  Is having more babies really the solution?

In your “Talk Nerdy” podcast discussion with Angela Saini you spoke definitively that there are not mental or trait differences between the different races of people.

We identify races by their external appearances.  Clearly there have been divergent evolutions that led to differences in external appearance.  Those “external” appearance differences are actually due to underlying tissue and structural differences which we see as the “external”.

As there are, then, internal physical differences between races, and the brain and associated organs are physical structures, there simply must be some mental or trait differences.  It seems absurd to claim otherwise.  There is no magical rule of nature that says evolutionary changes do not affect brain and behaviors.  In fact, we know that evolution does affect those things, or else we would not have modern humans.

Per your objections, there are consequential problems with how people perceive and use this information.  The problem is not whether or not there are differences, but how that affects an individual’s interaction with others.

First, it is generally acknowledged that we humans are not intuitively very good at understanding statistics.  In this case, the concepts involved are averages,  deviations from the average, and distribution of those deviations.

For the sake of an argument, let’s assume that Race A, on average, is 5% better at spelling than Race B.  So upon meeting a person of Race A, will they be a good speller?  The correct answer is that we have no way of knowing.  The average for Race A tells us nothing about an individual. 

Just as adult height varies from less than 3 feet to over 8 feet, the variation within a population is far greater than a 5% average difference.  The spelling aptitude differences among the members of a race are very, very large. The statistics are straight forward, but we are not good at grasping just how simple that is.

Another example, a second grade teacher gets a class of 20 kids each year and 10 are Race A and 10 are Race B.  Will Race A kids not have to work as hard on spelling?  Again, the answer is we have no way of knowing.  The average race difference says nothing about individuals.  If the teacher has 30 classes over their career, will they see that difference in spelling ability?  And again, no way of knowing.  The knowledge about an average race difference of 5% tells us nothing.

To be correct, the average difference tells us nothing as long as there are many millions of people of Race A and Race B.  If Race B has a population of, say 1000, then there would be a likely probability of seeing that difference in 300 of their children.

Over the lifetime of a person of Race A of working with, being friends with, or simply encountering people of Race B, the knowledge of a 5% average difference in spelling ability is completely useless information.

There is a second problem with how we humans might perceive information about average race differences.  And that is our cultural beliefs about what are the most important traits.

What if I tell you in the example above that while Race A is 5%, on average, better at spelling, that Race B is 5%, on average, better at math.  You probably at least subconsciously had been believing that Race A was a little better.  But now that you know Race B is better in math?

What’s more important, spelling or math?

Well that depends, doesn’t it, on what you value in life.  Here’s another way of looking at this.

Suppose you must choose the future of the human race.  Let’s say that people will be chosen who will be the first generation of the future of humans, and that humans will exist for not just another 100 years, or 1,000 years, but 500,000 years.  (For reference, if we count the beginning of agriculture as a marker of modern humans, then we have been around for about 14,000 years.)

You must choose between these 2 people:

1) Elon Musk

2) A married Dad with 2 children who loves his family and is loved in return, who works part time as an electrician and part time in a Bob Marley tribute band.

What does it mean to be a human?  What are your values? 

Does working 60 hrs per week mean you are a “better” example of humanity? 

Does coaching the little league baseball team mean you are “better” person?  What if you coach, but you abuse your spouse?

From the earliest writings we know people have been trying to work out what it means to be human.  Take a moment and realize that what society seems to give as an answer may not actually be what you believe and value.  Do you want to judge others based upon a popular, but perhaps inaccurate, belief?

I believe there are differences between races.  What those differences are or how large they are I have no idea.  I can tell you that those differences have no significance to our lives.  Individuals are just that, individual, unique, not defined by their race, where they were born, by their parents, …

P.S.

I have written this in a blog because Cara does not make public an email address.  She is on Twitter and Facebook and other social media, none of which are suitable for a something of this length.  I would be delighted if Cara somehow got the link to this and read it, but statistically speaking, not a chance.

On a personal note, the choice of a person was a trick question.  The obvious choice is the one who is a Representative in the state legislation – the wife/mother.

Immigration is a serious issue. It is an issue for all countries. With the world population growing and climate change affecting how people live, millions of people will want or need to move during the next decades. And millions of those will want or need to cross country borders.

Farming and food production are already being affected by too little or too much rain and higher peak temperatures compared to past normals. We have seen massive damage to businesses and homes here in the U.S. due to flooding. Although we don’t hear as much about other countries, there are severe weather and rising sea level problems affecting millions (if not billions) of people throughout the world. And when resources get scarce, and life gets hard, violence and even wars occur, providing another reason for people to move.

Research suggests it will only get worse in the coming decades. Both climate change and population growth will increase. The U.S. may not be affected as much as other parts of the world. But it is a world problem that affects all nations. Europe has already seen millions of immigrants fleeing wars and violence.

I am deeply disappointed that our leaders, on both sides, are not talking about the long term. The U.S. leaders should, at the least, have people looking into and projecting immigration patterns and coming up with ideas about how to deal with millions of desperate people. If we are only talking about the current conditions at our southern border, we are being very short sighted.

For all of the political fighting about our border with Mexico, it is really not going to make a lot of difference one way or the other. Those options are still being discussed within our existing immigration laws. Those options only make sense for a small piece of what should be a comprehensive look at our immigration policies and future planning. What if instead of a caravan of 10,000 a group of 500,000 are sitting outside our border and demanding entry?

I can’t tell anyone else how to feel. I can say that it is normal to want security, to want to protect what we have and our opportunities. It is also normal to have empathy for others. I have both sets of feelings. I remember that no baby gets to choose where they are born. I feel lucky to have won that lottery by being born a U.S. citizen. I don’t want to give up my life. But I also don’t want to have millions of people forced, through no fault of their own, into desperation while we just watch.

What should we be discussing about immigration? Here are a couple of my ideas, but the point is that our smart people should be coming up with ideas, doing a little “outside the box” thinking.

Of course a starting point is to review our current immigration policies with regard to the numbers allowed and how we process and handle requests and asylum requests. It sounds like we are underfunded and quite inefficient in dealing with the paperwork itself. We are a nation of over 330 million people. Certainly we can figure out how to deal with 10,000 or 100,000 people. We have football stadiums that seat close to 100,000 people that manage to provide bathrooms and food – we know how to handle a large group of people.

Broader thinking would have us be proactive. If very large numbers of people are displaced, what can we do to help them stay in their own country or work with other countries to find a place for them. Financial analysis might find that it is well worth spending our dollars to build housing, to fund business startups, to work toward a more stable situation for citizens of other countries before they become refugees.

Here’s a simple example of being proactive. When the news covered the 10,000 person caravan as it crossed from Honduras into Mexico on its way to the U.S. border, I wondered why we couldn’t immediately start dealing with these people rather than wait until they got to our border. What if we paid Mexican officials to start gathering information, even filling out U.S. paperwork if it looked like it might be applicable. For those who would not have a chance of being accepted into the U.S. let them know right away. Make it clear that walking across Mexico was not the solution. Wouldn’t that have been more humane and efficient at the same time?

That human migration will become a very large problem seems obvious. I have read far more emphatic opinions, referring to a tremendous problem with massive uprisings and massive suffering. For the last couple of decades researchers seemed to settle on a prediction of world population peaking around 12 Billion. Now I see more mentions of between 10 and 12 Billion. We are at 7.5 Billion now. But what I don’t read is what will cause the growth to stop. One can hope it’s not because so many people have to suffer and die due to lack of resources, made much worse by climate change. I’m afraid I cannot share in that hope. Tell me I’m wrong, tell me how we avoid it.

A quote from a science magazine, “The great mission of science is, directly or indirectly, bettering the world.”

Of course. Advances in science and technology are talked about as “improving” our lives. Making things “better”. Leading to a better “quality” of life. Often by making life “easier” or “saving time”.

If lives have been getting “better” with the advances in knowledge and learning over the last hundreds if not thousands of years, then lives in the past were, by definition, “worse”. How many people today would be happy living without all of our advancements, in a time 100 years or as far back as 4,000 years such as the ancient Greeks? Very few of us, if anybody, would choose to go back in time to live. Many people might casually reply they “would rather die than live like that”.

The present, the now, the current state of science and technology, continue to change. We continue to “move forward”. Science continues, technology continues, and will in the future. So 200 years in the future life will be much “better”, right? And the people then will look back and wonder about our “worse” lives. Will they recoil at the thought of going back to our time and living? Will those future people flippantly state that they would “rather die than live like that”?

Is that how we view our lives today, as just a wasted experience on the long timeline of human lives getting “better”? Don’t we live, laugh, love, work? Are large numbers of people committing suicide because they can’t wait for the next science or technology breakthrough? Did the ancient Greeks suffer from mass suicide because life wasn’t enjoyable?

How did human life ever get this far? Once humans were conscious and able to ponder their conditions (some suggest as long ago as 20,000 years) why didn’t they all just give up and die? If you doubt that the people 3,000 years ago could have deep and profound thoughts, then you haven’t read the ancient Greeks, like Homer, Thucydides, Herodutus, and the philosophies of Plato, Socrates, and so many others.

I really hope that you think our lives are worth living today. That we can be comfortable, happy, even joyous, and satisfied. And many who are working on advancing science and technology love that work, would never want to give that up. But it’s the journey, not the destination, if you stop to really think about it. Not that reaching the destination, getting out a new product, seeing a science experiment confirm a theory, isn’t thrilling, because we do crave accomplishments. But is it really the “thing” that is desired, or could achieving some other “thing” have been as satisfying?

If there is such as thing as a good-enough life, given some state or snapshot of science and technology, how do we know? What do we use as criteria, as reasons, for saying that we have reached some basic condition of giving every person the ability to be fully human? Is having clean water, basic sanitation, enough food, communities, education, rights and freedoms enough? What if science progression came to a screeching stop? Would that be a catastrophe, or could we adjust our thinking to accept that really things are OK?

Personally, if we couldn’t be OK with our lives now, I’d call it pathetic to be so enthralled with what may be coming in the future that we can’t appreciate today. So again, I have to ask, if Science is the Answer, What is the Question?

Every now and then a Letter to the Editor pops up in my local paper providing “proof” of the existence of God. Then some days later someone will counter with saying the first auther is ignorant and if they just understood more Science…

Really, both letters are a waste of words because neither will ever influence the other side. Here are some mistakes the letter writers are making and a way to begin a dialogue.

In one letter “proving” God, the author stated he accepted that the Big Bang happened. His argument was, in the most simple terms, that to create something from nothing could only have been done by God. The later letter responded stating that if the first author read more Science that he would see that there is a scientific explanation for the Big Bang.

To the atheist, you are incorrect. Science cannot, and never will, be able to totally explain the Big Bang. The best Science can do is provide explanations of what happened very shortly after the Big Bang started. Science does not even try to explain what conditions were like before. And cannot explain what initiated it. There can never be a Science proof of “why” the Big Bang occurred. Impossible to know, there can be no evidence from before the start of the creation of the Universe.

Of course, stating that God created the Big Bang is simply substituting one mystery for another mystery. Who created God? How did God come to exist? If there was nothing, where was God before she started the creation of the Universe? If God has always been, what was she doing before the creation of everything? Saying that one unknown, the Big Bang, was caused/started by another unknown, is no “proof”. Sure, we could provide an explanation for how God came into existence. Maybe it was the cosmic Sandwich that created God. Why? Well so God could create People who would come to love sandwiches, creating Happiness for the cosmic Sandwich. Rationally that doesn’t help at all in proving God exists.

Logic, and hence “proof”, must always start from something known, or what is referred to as a “given”. It does not work to start assuming the thing you want to prove is already proven. Can’t prove God exists by assuming that God exists. To me I find it surprising that someone could fail to realize that others might question how God came to exist. I’ll get back to that because I have given that some thought.

There is no way to logically “prove” that God exists. If you believe, then it is a personal belief. That’s the reason it is called Faith. You cannot prove or force someone else to believe. So don’t try. Instead, be happy to proclaim that you have Faith, and be happy if others listen to what God means to you and the role of God in your life. Just leave me to my own beliefs.

The mistake the atheist makes is in stating that their opinion represents Science and only Science. And uses that as justification for denigrating the Believer. True, God does not exist. But, with 100% certainty, Religion does exist. The science minded person is missing something if they have not considered why Religion exists, why the majority of humans who have ever lived have believed in God or gods. To discount Religion as faulty thinking is to miss so much about what it means to be Human, and the history of humanity. And yet atheists commonly seem to disregard the fact of Religion.

Mr. Atheist, do not simply discount the person of Faith who expresses their own beliefs. Understand that you can learn something about people. Something very, very real. Something scientific. Otherwise you would be like a physicist who only believes and accepts what he can learn in his lab. Real world observations are valuable and informative.

Religion is real. Many very intelligent people have believed in God. Especially many of the smartest people of the last millenia. There have been many that today would be called Scientists, who simply could not fathom that God was not real. It was such an ingrained part of their culture. Thinking about that, it is not so surprising that a letter writer today could fail to even consider asking the question, “How did God come into existence?”. I know I have, many times, learned something or been shown a new perspective and thought, “Wow, I never would have thought of that”.

Once a couple of high school age boys knocked on my door and wanted to tell me about their religion. They were doing some of their missionary service. I let them know my disagreements with what they said. After a while one of the boys, a bit emotionally, expressed that he believed in God and how good that made him feel. I dismissed that. That was a mistake on my part. Not that I needed to relate to him or ask to hear more, but he was expressing his personal faith, and I should have acknowledged that. It was what he felt, and hence perfectly real for him.

This is a rant about looking for planets outside our solar system (exoplanets).

Listening to a science podcast, an annoyingly happy scientist was talking about the new TESS satelite and the search for more planets in our galaxy and how they might detect life on remote planets. Yeah, I get it. You are paid well to pursue your dream job. Of course you sound chipper and like you are on drugs that I clearly don’t have access to. Do you ever think about the rest of us who, generally speaking, do not glow when describing their jobs?

There are 2 reasons I’m not thrilled with this kind of research.

First.

Usually a science experiment goes something like this. You have an idea of achieving some kind of result. This is meaningful to you. You set up conditions and either get the result you expect, or if not, you have the chance to learn something new that might lead you toward your goal.

When I first heard about using space telescopes to detect planets, by seeing the slight dimming as a remote planet passed in front of its sun, I kind of wondered why this was a big deal. Anyone who knows much about our solar system and our galaxy is certainly not surprised that there are other planets. It was expected. So yes, kind of nice to get some proof, but why the big excitement as more and more are detected?

Well, maybe the scientist who made those first detections knew that they would be trying to detect life in the future. I think it’s a long shot, not like our telescopes can zoom in on a planet ala Google Earth and see how many houses have swimming pools in the backyard. No, these are planets way, way, way out there. But after listening to numerous podcasts, I get that they might detect the presence of some chemicals, like oxygen, in the atmosphere of some planet. Maybe.

There are 3 possible outcomes of looking for life on those far away planets. There is no other life, which means looking is a waste of time and resources. There is non-intelligent life, which they find hints of, such as oxygen in the atmosphere and maybe signs of water. This would just be a guess, cannot prove that planetary chemical actions aren’t responsible for an atmosphere. In which case it’s interesting, but what do we do next? And finally that we see signs of an advanced civilisation, and what do we do next, how do we know for sure?

I don’t hear anyone talking about what we would do next. The closest planet detected is more than 4 light years away. The first earth sized planet not too close or too far from its sun that was detected is more than 500 light years away. So let’s go way optimistic and say that some life is suspected about 5 light years away. So we send a probe to confirm? No known technology would get it there faster than 500 years. What if there is a possible civilization 500 light years away – yeah, takes 500 years for a message we send to get there, another 500 years for them to respond. And don’t get me started on the discussion about how other intelligent life will either be friendly or want to destroy us. Because if they think like us, they may worry we will want to destroy them, so safest to attack first. Therefore we should never broadcast where we are. Lot’s of people actually talk about these things.

So basically all of the hype about finding planets and possibility of life are a big tease. None of us will be around should anything come of it. There do not seem to be any next actions based upon the outcome of this current experiment. What about faster than light travel? All of the very, very, very smart scientists who study such things, say that won’t ever happen. Well, they don’t want people to hate them so they say there is always a chance. But no. It will never happen. We’ll see flying pigs spewing marshmallows from their butts before faster than light travel happens.

Second.

Why search now? Why search for life when we can’t really know if we have found it? This is typical of our frustratingly short term thinking. In 200 years we might have humans exploring and staying extended times out in our solar system. Rather than building more and more expensive telescopes launched from Earth, people might be able to build a telescope elsewhere that is far larger than scientists would dare think of today. And then look for life. Not that we’d be able to prove much, but a better chance if we are already in space. In the time span of humanity, why can’t we wait a few hundred or more years to stare at far away planets?

I think the answer to why now is a simple case of catching the public’s interest and hence funding and hence fun jobs for those lucky enough to land them. Waste of money. Manipulative of the public. Bad science.

Finally, I don’t care if experts say they are safe, I’m not eating those marshmallows.

Imagine you could travel back in time and find some great great great …. great grandparents of yours from 200 years ago who are in their 30’s with a family.

You want to tell them all about your life and the things that our modern society has.

You tell them about the overall wealth, how so many have houses that are big, have running water – cold and hot! – have heat and cooking devices that don’t use wood and there is no smoke in the house, air conditioning/cooling devices, refrigerators, lights that don’t smoke and can be on or off instantly, paint for the outside of the house and the inside available in many, many colors.

You tell them about cars, motorcycles, trains, airplanes. And about radio, TV, Internet, telephones, cell phones, video chatting. You can talk and even see people from nearly anywhere around the world. Every day you talk with your sister who lives a thousand miles away, and you get pictures of her kids all the time.

You tell them that all kids go to school, with free school from 5 years to 18 years of age. Then there are 100’s of colleges where young adults can study a huge range of subjects. And jobs, hardly anyone has to work at farming since there are amazing machines that do most of the work. There are so many job opportunities other than farming it’s hard for anyone to know them all.

You tell them about medical care. Pills to take to help or cure many problems. The ability to defeat nearly all infections, allowing surgeons to fix internal parts of the bodies. Medical care is so good that once you have lived to be in your 30’s, you can expect to live to be in your 80’s. Many people live into their 90’s and some beyond 100. Of courses eye glasses are common, but so are alterations of the eyes so vision is perfect without eye glasses. You don’t mention things like artificial hearts or robotic prosthetics because, well, that just seems like too much to take in.

You tell them about the markets where people can buy, cheaply, food of unbelievable variety. You can get grapes and lettuce and tomatoes even in the middle of winter. Meats are cut up into sizes for cooking for a family meal, no need to ever kill or butcher an animal again. Beef, chicken, pork, sausages, milk, cheeses, the list is huge, all available at the market.

You tell them about the clothing, so many colors, so many fabrics, so many styles, all in any size to fit anyone. Hats, shoes, coats, clothing for winter, summer, spring, and fall, all different.

You tell them for leisure time entertainment there are books on every subject of every type, magazines, movies, so many that no one could partake of more than a tiny percentage of what is available.

Once your ancestral relatives have a chance to absort even a little bit of what you have told them, they will believe that you live in utopia.

They will expect you to tell them next that everyone is happy. No one ever goes hungry. Nobody ever has to sleep outside or in the hay in a barn with the animals. And if something unfortunate does happen to someone, there are so many people to help and provide resources so no one suffers more than they have to.

They will expect you to tell them there is almost no crime, little need for legal counsel or courts. Almost no sheriffs, no need for prisons. They expect to hear, of course, there are no more wars, no violence. They grasped some of what you said about the ability to communicate quickly and to many so if someone was acting violently, or wronged someone else, people would know about it and take care of the problem very quickly.

As your words sink in, they understand that no one has to work sunrise to sunset. The basic needs are so easily met by the vast wealth of resources of the future that all people have lots of leisure time. And everyone must have so much time for family and friends. And art! And music! My goodness, people must be able to pursue their dreams, able to see other parts of the world without dangers. You said people could travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles in a day? That must make anything possible!

How do you explain that you don’t live in utopia?

I don’t understand the statement, “Guns don’t kill, people do”. What does that mean? It’s not an accurate statement because of course guns don’t kill, bullets cause the damage. And to be more precise, bullets don’t kill, they damage organs and when an organ ceases to perform its function, the person may die.

Yes, I get that a person must operate the gun for someone to be killed (well, usually). However, guns make it much easier to kill. Sure, people kill others in other ways like knives, poisons, explosives, or ramming with a vehicle. But guns are, by far, the easiest. To kill with a knife or sword requires some skill and physical strength. If the person being attacked is stronger or quicker, the attacker may well be the one who is injured. Dealing with poisons requires knowledge, access to the materials, and access to the person to kill. Explosives also require knowledge and access. A gun and bullets can be purchased at any of thousands of stores and requires little training to know how to aim and shoot. With minimal training, successfully killing someone might be difficult, but still much more likely than attacking with a knife with minimal preparation.

I have read in the newspaper about drive-by shootings in our city. I have never heard of a drive-by knifing, or drive-by poisoning. Guns are simply easier. And we people are all about doing things the easy way. There are a small number of bow and arrow deer hunters. Most deer hunters choose to hunt with guns. Why use guns if they are not more likely to result in a kill?

Many people are concerned about self-protection at home. They worry about someone breaking in, such as a burglar. So what do those concerned people do? They buy guns. Why? Why not keep a sword in the bedroom? How about a panic button next to the bed that, which when hit will call 911 with a recorded message and at the same time automatically close and lock the steel reinforced bedroom door? Concerned people buy guns because they believe that the presence of a gun will greatly increase their chances of being able to kill an intruder.

With a gun, someone can be killed. Without a gun, not very likely. Pretty simple to understand as shown by the number of people who own guns for self-protection. Would anybody show up for a gunfight with a sword? What does that say about the role of guns? Remember that scene in Indiana Jones where he showed up for a sword fight with a gun?

So if you are a person who likes guns, likes hunting, has fun at the gun range, worries about self-protection, or maybe feels very strongly about the individual right to own a gun, then say that. Use words like those. That would be communicating. That would be saying something with meaning.

When would they honk? If they honked, would they have a range of honks, the short beep, the medium honk, the loud and prolonged “laying on the horn” honking? Would a self-driving car honk at another self-driving car, or only when humans are present?

Someday on a summer evening, a group of kids will be playing basketball or baseball or soccer on a residential street. There might be only a couple of dozen homes further down the street which dead-ends.

Someone living down the street calls for a ride from a self-driving car service. The car drives toward the home and encounters the kids playing in the street. Of course the car is programmed to stop well before getting close to the kids. And so the car waits. But the kids see that no one is in the car, and they have learned the car won’t run them over, so they just continue their game.

What happens now? There is no one in the car to ask the kids to move, or maybe explain that the driver will just cruise by against the sidewalk away from them to get by. How long does the self-driving car sit there? Does it honk? What if the kids ignore a honk? Does the car call police? Don’t the police have more important things to do? Perhaps the person who called for the car to pick them up is handicapped and cannot easily go out of the house and check out what is happening a block or 2 down the street. The handicapped person simply calls the car company and complains. What then?

How many people does it take to rob the occupants of a self-driving car?
Answer: 3
One to stand in front of the car, one to stand behind the car, one to aim a gun at the occupants and take their wallets. The car will be programmed to never run anyone over. Virtually impossible to imagine a situation where running over someone would be warranted. Won’t happen.

Self-driving cars might be fine if they only have to deal with other self-driving vehicles. Do we suddenly outlaw all human driven vehicles? What about motorcycles? Mopeds? Bicycles? Pedestrians? Off-roading, jeep trails, ATVs? Going to stop people from driving their vehicle on roads to get to and dirt roads?

The problem with self-driving cars is they will need to interact with humans. That will not go smoothly in all cases. And there will be public outcry when it goes badly.