Author Topic: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.  (Read 333199 times)

LadyVamp

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #880 on: April 01, 2014, 02:25:45 AM »
Yup/// I'll have skynet get right on that...  8)

We actually do something like that where I work.  We provide Linux VMs setup to mimic our production site for testing code.  It's quite impressive with a full stack having 20 different VMs.  Full api into our ordering system for whenever our devs decide they want an automated tester site to drive testing.  We can build from templates or from scratch using chef scripts and a rhel iso setup for netboot at the minimum.  But thankfully it's not self aware...yet.
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Illusionss

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #881 on: April 01, 2014, 03:29:34 AM »
Just like we miss the thousands of switchboard operators, the tens of thousands of people in the calculating pool, the hundreds of thousands of people in the typing pool, the telegraph operators, coaling station employees, pony express riders, and manual typesetters.  Think of how much more infallible the ice box was than the modern refrigerator.  As long as the ice delivery guy kept coming, the only thing that could break was the hinge on the door.  And if everyone had to post on the internet through stenographers, just imagine the increase in grammatical accuracy and the decrease in impulsive flame wars.

None of these automated things have the capability to launch 250 or so people into flaming, screaming death or to cause a 200-car pileup on your nearest freeway. Lack of pilots and drivers could certainly do that, because computers are not exactly self-aware and there will be no human in the driver's seat to keep an eye on things. Of course, we have pilots and drivers with malicious intent NOW. But EVERYthing being on autopilot is going to make it soooooooooooooooo much easier to complete tasks of mass destruction.

Sure someone could hack my car. But why bother, when soon we will be able to hack the nearest jumbo-jet. Now there is some mayhem worth doing! One car is not worth bothering with. But hacking a locomotive hauling a bunch of cars loaded with chlorine, passing through a large metropolitan area....? Worth doing, and criminals -are- going to do it.

We will all be watching all this from our cardboard boxes, or blue plastic tarpaulins huddled under the nearest overpass, because lets automate everything right? Jobs are for weaklings. What the 1% forgets is, if no one has a job we wont be able to buy their products - and I will laugh when it happens.

The 1% has this idea that they will just replace the defunct American middle class with the rising Chinese middle class, so who cares if we hunt the US middle class to extinction right? Hah! China ain't letting them anywhere NEAR that market. See: present tariffs and exclusions. So in the end they will lose anyways. Their automated trucks, planes and trains will be driving to nowhere.

Looking forward to playing City of Titans to get my mind off all this. And hopefully at least one private CoX server, 'cause I'm still missing it bad.

Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #882 on: April 01, 2014, 04:40:45 AM »
Sure someone could hack my car. But why bother, when soon we will be able to hack the nearest jumbo-jet.
Sorry to disappoint you again, but we can already do that also.  Current commercial passenger jets are already so automated there's no more automation to add.  If you ask them to, they can take off and land themselves.  Its the rules that prevent that from happening, not the lack of technology.

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None of these automated things have the capability to launch 250 or so people into flaming, screaming death or to cause a 200-car pileup on your nearest freeway. Lack of pilots and drivers could certainly do that, because computers are not exactly self-aware and there will be no human in the driver's seat to keep an eye on things. Of course, we have pilots and drivers with malicious intent NOW. But EVERYthing being on autopilot is going to make it soooooooooooooooo much easier to complete tasks of mass destruction.
Estimates are that over 10,000 people die due to alcohol related traffic accidents and over 1500 due to fatigued drivers every year.  About 3000 people died during the 9/11 attacks.  Preventable traffic accidents already generate a death toll comparable to a 9/11-level attack every three months.  If a terrorist organization used automation to kill as many people as the 9/11 attacks did, each and every year, that would be a 75% lower death toll than currently occurs on US highways due to stupidity.

Automation isn't perfect by any means, and I know that better than most.  But the notion that the problem with automated driving cars is hackers causing mayhem on the roads is not a particularly salient risk analysis.

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What the 1% forgets is, if no one has a job we wont be able to buy their products - and I will laugh when it happens.
The 1% doesn't sell products, and will probably ironically be the primary group of people still hiring human drivers if automated driving technology became pervasive.

Harpospoke

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #883 on: April 01, 2014, 02:51:25 PM »
Just like we miss the thousands of switchboard operators, the tens of thousands of people in the calculating pool, the hundreds of thousands of people in the typing pool, the telegraph operators, coaling station employees, pony express riders, and manual typesetters.  Think of how much more infallible the ice box was than the modern refrigerator.  As long as the ice delivery guy kept coming, the only thing that could break was the hinge on the door.  And if everyone had to post on the internet through stenographers, just imagine the increase in grammatical accuracy and the decrease in impulsive flame wars.

Also, unless your primary vehicle is a 1978 Datsun, people can already hack your car.
That was what I was going to say.

We typically only look at possible downsides and ignore the benefits of new things.   We always get the doom predictions.   Sure the buggy whip makers went out of business when cars showed up, but lots of new jobs were created to take their place.

Harpospoke

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #884 on: April 01, 2014, 02:54:32 PM »
None of these automated things have the capability to launch 250 or so people into flaming, screaming death or to cause a 200-car pileup on your nearest freeway. Lack of pilots and drivers could certainly do that, because computers are not exactly self-aware and there will be no human in the driver's seat to keep an eye on things. Of course, we have pilots and drivers with malicious intent NOW. But EVERYthing being on autopilot is going to make it soooooooooooooooo much easier to complete tasks of mass destruction.
Pessimistic. 

The reason we have traffic jams and traffic deaths now is because people are not smart.   Self driving cars will reduce deaths to a minuscule amount (of course the media will report on the 3 deaths per year and ignore the fact that we no longer have 30,000 a year) and get rid of traffic jams.

Aggelakis

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #885 on: April 01, 2014, 07:28:43 PM »
Lack of pilots and drivers could certainly do that, because computers are not exactly self-aware and there will be no human in the driver's seat to keep an eye on things.
There are self-driving cars in the southwest. They have NEVER gotten into an accident that didn't involve the human in the driver seat taking hold of the wheel.

Think about that for a few minutes.
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Eoraptor

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #886 on: April 01, 2014, 07:36:53 PM »
Twenty years ago I would be on the other side of the argument, trusting far more a human to ake the decisions behind the wheel. but computers are getting very good at data analasys, while humans are getting stupider and stupider and I wouldn't trust many f them to pilot a tricycle, let alone a three thousand pound automobile.
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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #887 on: April 01, 2014, 08:31:50 PM »
Please bear in mind, I'm not saying for a fraction of a second that we should stop, slow, or oppose this trend.  The improvements in manufacturing and later in traffic will generate GIGANTIC increases in real wealth (in manufacturing are ALREADY doing so) -- I'm saying that this change will be large and fast ENOUGH that we NEED to make some kind of economic change to accommodate it before it completely breaks our economic system. (and we'd better get started).

In effect, we are going to transform the occupation of a large percentage of our people to be no more inherently productive than the occupations of those who have inherited sufficient affluence that they don't need to work for a living.  I THINK we are going to have to legally define our citizens (speaking U.S. here) as "Investors" in the economy.  As folks make LOTS of new money here due to the stability of our economy and society, we're going to have to charge them for that stability. 

And pay the "investors" dividends in the form of assured minimum income funded by taxes because they won't be able to get jobs.
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Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #888 on: April 01, 2014, 08:49:59 PM »
Twenty years ago I would be on the other side of the argument, trusting far more a human to ake the decisions behind the wheel. but computers are getting very good at data analasys, while humans are getting stupider and stupider and I wouldn't trust many f them to pilot a tricycle, let alone a three thousand pound automobile.
Automated driving is less about judgment and more about technical capability.  It is extremely rare for a human driver to be given a life or death choice requiring the exercise of human judgment to perform the proper maneuver.  It is far more likely that a human drive is given a situation requiring extraordinary action from a limited number of options, often just one: breaking suddenly to avoid a collision for example.  And even more likely is simply executing the normal act of driving in a straight line within the traffic lane without losing concentration or attention span and while not physically or mentally impaired.  I would not expect a computer to correctly judge what critical option to take when confronted with a dangerous situation with limited information and no obvious logical options.  But I don't expect a human being to do so either: I expect the human to do the wrong thing almost every time in that situation, and statistically they do not disappoint me.

Its true that we often hear about trained pilots making extremely good judgment calls and exercising skill far beyond what current automation is capable of to save the lives of aircraft passengers.  I would not board an aircraft that I did not believe had a skilled pilot in command.  But its also true that the number one cause of air travel casualties is pilot error.  What's more, in most of those cases the cause was not a pilot incorrectly responding to an emergency condition.  It was a pilot making a stupid mistake in a situation that was otherwise routine, and suitable for automation.  The worst aviation disaster in terms of aircraft passengers killed was caused by an impatient pilot attempting to take off without explicit clearance to do so, causing that aircraft to collide with another plane on the ground killing almost 600 people.  This was a skilled, experienced, veteran pilot who nevertheless made the kind of stupid mistake that is completely inexcusable, in spite of attempts to partially blame the crash on "communication misunderstandings."

MWRuger

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #889 on: April 01, 2014, 08:56:01 PM »
It will take a pretty impressive PR campaign to convince people to give up control of their cars. If you make it optional, it will change nothing as one goober playing the fool will kill the benefits. It goes against our very nature to turn control of our fate over to someone or something else. We only do it when we have no choice or don't realize what we are doing. I think it would have to be mandatory.

Not sure if you could get legislation passed to make this work. Gun registration couldn't be passed with a majority of Americans supporting it. That would easily save countless lives lost to gun violence.

Also, it puts a huge burden on people in lower income brackets who can't afford a new self-driving vehicle. With mobility in most cities very limited when you don't own your own car, that's likely to create a whole class of people with little to no physical mobility.

The civil engineering aspects are immense. How many miles of roads would have to be upgraded to work with these vehicles? In an era when we can't get the money together to keep our current infrastructure in place and functioning a modification of this type would be very difficult to sell. What about roadways that are essentially rural or unpaved?

You can't look just at the tech or even the economic aspects. A change like this would have vast implications for our society as a whole. I think it would take decades to make this happen and a huge amount of capital. I think when we have to start dealing with the effects of climate change we will have little time and money for a project like this, technically feasible or not.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 09:10:55 PM by TheDevilYouKnow »
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Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #890 on: April 01, 2014, 09:01:31 PM »
Please bear in mind, I'm not saying for a fraction of a second that we should stop, slow, or oppose this trend.  The improvements in manufacturing and later in traffic will generate GIGANTIC increases in real wealth (in manufacturing are ALREADY doing so) -- I'm saying that this change will be large and fast ENOUGH that we NEED to make some kind of economic change to accommodate it before it completely breaks our economic system. (and we'd better get started).

In effect, we are going to transform the occupation of a large percentage of our people to be no more inherently productive than the occupations of those who have inherited sufficient affluence that they don't need to work for a living.  I THINK we are going to have to legally define our citizens (speaking U.S. here) as "Investors" in the economy.  As folks make LOTS of new money here due to the stability of our economy and society, we're going to have to charge them for that stability. 

And pay the "investors" dividends in the form of assured minimum income funded by taxes because they won't be able to get jobs.

On another forum, I posted a theory in response to another theory regarding the economy of Star Trek.  Combining their theory with my theory, the basic premise was that in Star Trek, the reason that people claim "money doesn't exist" and yet there does seem to be some sort of economy happening is that on Earth (and many planets of the Federation) the only limited commodity is energy.  With replication technology and ubiquitous computing basic living needs can be trivially met if only you have enough energy.  And because Earth's government produces and incredibly surplus of energy, it can in effect "grant" to its citizens an allowance of "energy credits" that every individual can use to cover the basics of living.  Because of that, there's no need for money and no need for mandatory employment.

What drives the system is people's desire to do more than what the allowance can cover.  If you want to explore the galaxy, you have to work on a starship: your energy allowance won't allow you to construct a space vessel usually.  If you want to have organically grown food as a lifestyle choice, you have to become a farmer.  Or get it from a farmer, perhaps by trading some other skill.

The problem with this type of economic system, in terms of trying to make it work in the real world, is two-fold.  First, it requires a level of technical sophistication and surplus resources that we don't currently have.  Second, it was able to be established throughout the planet because its ideological competitors were decimated in a nuclear war.  How you get there from here without both of those triggers occurring I'm not sure.

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #891 on: April 01, 2014, 09:09:36 PM »
Arcana,

You should try James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear which posits a very similar make up. Here the traded commodity is skill. Pretty good book. It basically has the exact triggers you suggest with a nuclear war and a remote colony with a sophisticated tech system. Very libertarian in som eways but don't let that put you off. A very good read!
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Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #892 on: April 01, 2014, 09:10:29 PM »
It will take a pretty impressive PR campaign to convince people to give up control of their cars. If you make it optional, it will change nothing as one goober playing the fool will kill the benefits. It goes against our very nature to turn control of our fate over to someone or something else. We only do it when we have no choice or don't realize what we are doing. I think it would have to be mandatory.
1.  You don't have to convince people to give up control of their own cars.  You just have to convince them its in their best interests to force everyone else to give up control of their cars.

2.  The Department of Transportation just issued a new rule mandating rear view camera systems in all new cars manufactured after May 2018.  If the technology proves effective and will save lives, its possible to mandate it.

3.  You could still make it optional and have it be effective.  Insurance companies could offer discounts for confirmed use of it.  People who choose to drive manually would face higher liability and higher insurance costs.  And accident rates would still go down if most people choose to use it, even if one goober doesn't and kills someone.  One goober can't possibly kill 10,000 people in a single year to make up the difference.

Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #893 on: April 01, 2014, 09:15:17 PM »
Arcana,

You should try James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear which posits a very similar make up. Here the traded commodity is skill. Pretty good book. It basically has the exact triggers you suggest with a nuclear war and a remote colony with a sophisticated tech system. Very libertarian in som eways but don't let that put you off. A very good read!

Will look for it, thanks.

Its worth noting, in the context of this thread, that when I first outlined my vision on the official CoH forums for an MMO design that placed an emphasis on having single player "private servers" as the modular building block of a larger MMO space some of these thoughts were in the back of my mind.  In effect, the way that would work would be there was some minimum level benefit players could get automatically from the single player experience, but what made the system work was the network effect benefits that could only be achieved by actually using the network.  Part of the engine that drove it was the exchange of content between MMO "islands" that would be mediated by a system I outlined but didn't specify (because a complete specification would be complex to consider).

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #894 on: April 01, 2014, 09:17:34 PM »
The problem with this type of economic system, in terms of trying to make it work in the real world, is two-fold.  First, it requires a level of technical sophistication and surplus resources that we don't currently have.  Second, it was able to be established throughout the planet because its ideological competitors were decimated in a nuclear war.  How you get there from here without both of those triggers occurring I'm not sure.

Not to mention the fact that in Star Trek, most people we see, even non-Starfleet, want to do something - I think it'd be more likely that with a surplus of energy / resources, most people would sit around and play video games on the holodeck all day.

I've also always thought that the nature of Star Trek's post-scarcity economy would only be achievable following the massive wars we hear referenced, and I don't think it's worth it.
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JanessaVR

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #895 on: April 01, 2014, 10:07:46 PM »
All I can say is that I'm not giving up manual control of my car, whatever the trend to do otherwise is.  In fact, I'm looking at possibly going the "classic car" of some sort route specifically to avoid all of these lovely new Big Brother features.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 11:36:27 PM by JanessaVR »

Arcana

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #896 on: April 01, 2014, 10:14:59 PM »
Not to mention the fact that in Star Trek, most people we see, even non-Starfleet, want to do something - I think it'd be more likely that with a surplus of energy / resources, most people would sit around and play video games on the holodeck all day.
Holodeck operations are probably expensive.  You can't live in one on your energy credit allowance, unless you work to earn more.


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I've also always thought that the nature of Star Trek's post-scarcity economy would only be achievable following the massive wars we hear referenced, and I don't think it's worth it.

My theory was that Earth was unique, and the Federation's economic system relatively unique by extension, because of Earth's peculiar history.  At the end of WW3, before any significant recovery of economic or political systems was really established, a maverick invents warp drive with a bunch of parts from Radio Shack.  And that alone would be a footnote in history except he attracts the attention of the Vulcans.  They are curious enough, and concerned enough, about humans to intercede.  Within one generation of first contact, with the help of the Vulcans, a proto-government/economic system is formed based on interstellar trade, almost unlimited off-world resources, and almost unlimited energy.  And all you have to do to join this new society is allow them to give you free energy, food, and housing, and contribute whatever you can to help rebuild Earth.  In effect, the proto-Federation government hangs a "free beer" sign and watches first North America, then most of the rest of the world say "sign me up."

If Earth had developed like Vulcan, rebuilt their society for hundreds of years, then advanced to interstellar travel and a resource surplus economy, those unlimited resources would come with the baggage of whatever social structures were in place to control them.  On Vulcan, it was the proto-Surak world order.  On Earth, if it happened now without a slate-wiping war, it would likely be some western capitalist system that ended up on top controlling those resources.  Although there's an outside chance a country like China, that uses capitalism like a garden tool but doesn't practice its religion, could end up the big winner as well.

I once read someone that said words to the effect that the first country to invent space elevators, with all that technology implies, would also be the last.  With low cost to space capability, space-based solar power becomes a reality, asteroid mining becomes cost effective, and you have almost free energy and almost free resources, relative to the current constraints.  There will be no second place.

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« Reply #897 on: April 01, 2014, 10:43:28 PM »
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Estimates are that over 10,000 people die due to alcohol related traffic accidents and over 1500 due to fatigued drivers every year.  About 3000 people died during the 9/11 attacks.

3000 people dying on 9/11 is not relevant. They died due to malice, not pilot error. Hacks will happen because of malice as well.

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There are self-driving cars in the southwest. They have NEVER gotten into an accident that didn't involve the human in the driver seat taking hold of the wheel.

How many self-driving cars are there? Is this a considerable sample size? I'm thinking, probably not compared to all the other cars on the road. I would be interested to see the performance records of, say, 1000 driverless cars in Manhattan at rush hour over a six-month period, not out in the White Sands Missile Range or wherever. Plenty of room out in the West to avoid other cars! :) I have been there and seen it - driving is so fun there. But I digress.

What I am imagining is millions of driverless cars, and I just do not believe that they'll all be perfectperfectperfect. Of course "millions" might be a misnomer, because everything will be automated and maybe 10% of the population will actually have a job to be driving TO.

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The 1% doesn't sell products

They own the companies that DO sell products. From what I have seen, they're not real concerned with giving back, or making sure that our society can sustain itself in a healthy, peaceful fashion; they're too busy comparing societal anger over the considerable tax breaks they enjoy to..... Kristallnacht. *MASSIVE EYEROLLING HERE*

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #898 on: April 01, 2014, 11:54:39 PM »
Also, it puts a huge burden on people in lower income brackets who can't afford a new self-driving vehicle. With mobility in most cities very limited when you don't own your own car, that's likely to create a whole class of people with little to no physical mobility.

Except that the tech also makes possible fleets of automated gypsy cars in Zipcar like arrangements.   You don't need your own car, you pay a small monthly fee and some car picks you up and drives you whenever you want.
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Arcana

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Re: I've been there :)
« Reply #899 on: April 01, 2014, 11:58:41 PM »
They own the companies that DO sell products.
You're really missing the point.  The "1%" you refer to, who are really more the 0.1% of wealth holders, do not sell things, mostly do not known companies that sell products, and would remain the 0.1% even if they stopped earning wages of any kind, assuming at the moment they actually do.  Mark Zuckerberg does not sell any product, does not own any company that sells an actual product, and earns exactly one dollar a year.  Part of the reason there are less of certain kinds of manufacturing jobs is because people don't want those things anymore.  The majority of the US economy is service-based, and most of the "1%" don't make anything, they make their money on services.  And even if they stopped earning that money, they already *have* most of the money.

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What I am imagining is millions of driverless cars, and I just do not believe that they'll all be perfectperfectperfect.
You are expressing yourself on an automated system connected to an automated system managed by a set of automated systems.  Without those imperfect automated systems, you would be expressing yourself to a crowd of eight people from a literal soap box.

And claiming they won't be perfect is a strawman.  We don't expect automation systems to be perfect, just better than the alternatives.  That's why those death you think are irrelevant are relevant.  We don't need perfect, we just need better than the alternatives.  And the current situation would be horrifying if it wasn't so common so as to be invisible.  More people are killed by just foolish human automobile drivers in the United States than are killed by all the automation systems everywhere on Earth.  If automated driver technology failed at one hundred times the rate of aircraft autopilots, we would still save tons of lives a year with driver automation.  Hundreds would die due to automation errors.  Thousands would live that currently die.  I'll make that trade every day and twice on Sunday.  The notion that its better if thousands are killed by imperfect humans than hundreds are killed by imperfect computers is viscerally abhorrent.

This is not to say mistakes haven't been made in the past with regard to automation, particularly rushing to automate processes that were not well understood in the first place.  There's as much hubris in engineering as anywhere, as any fault analyst will tell you.  Engineering rules often are only updated when people die: thus the aphorism "code is written in blood."  I am by nature a cautious designer and implementer of technology.  However, historically speaking the luddites have always been wrong, and will likely always be wrong.  Things are rarely as good as the optimists claim, but they are never, ever, ever as bad as the doomsayers predict.  Consistently betting on the optimists will cost you most of your money.  Betting consistently on the pessimists will cost you all of your money.  The best strategy is to ignore the optimists and bet against the pessimists whatever they say.  Do that, and you break the bank every time.