facts

I can’t freaking wait for driverless cars

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They’re safer. They’ll kill fewer cyclists. They’re more energy efficient. They reduce the need for parking space. I, for one, cannot wait for our self-driving overlords. And it turns out they’ll be pretty good for the trucking business too–

Driverless trucks are coming. In the near future, they will still need drivers, and they may dramatically improve their job:

Besides being able to nap and relax in the cab while Otto does the driving, says Berdinis, drivers could use the time away from the wheel to catch up on trucking’s heavy paperwork, locate a “backhaul” load that would pay for the return trip, chat with family and friends, learn a second trade, or run a business. “And while they’re doing it, the drivers are still getting paid for driving,” he says.

This is not all good news, though. Once the country gets comfortable with the idea, there will probably be a swift and traumatizing death of the trucking profession. And so my excitement for the safer world we’ll live in day to day on the road must be tempered. Every massive leap in technology means a lot of personal anguish as yet another class of job disappears. So I can’t freaking wait, but many people very much can.

The Things I Know

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I am a fact motivated person. Maybe fact isn’t the right word–I naturally connect trivia to other trivia. I compulsively share them. I’m trying to connect with people like someone might talk about sports, or new diets, or astrology.

If I am having a conversation, there’s often a flare up of something I’m reminded of. It could be a metaphor or a scientific principle, or a story I heard on a podcast. I call it ‘bus stopping.’ My thoughts are a bus on a big, dark metropolitan bus network, that when I’m talking, will suddenly light up and the bus will stop at 30 bus stops at once. I can’t help myself from talking about the bus stops as they come up.

I’ve come to accept bus stopping in myself, and understand it’s not for everyone. Those people who don’t like it should run from a conversation with me because I can’t stop it. My loving family has a cruel impression of me, pointer finger up, droning about the beauty of mathematics. You know you’re something if there’s a caricature of you.

But I like these bus stops, and like describing them. I also have recently learned about meta-knowledge from “On Being Certain” by Robert A Burton (bus stop!), or how we know that we know something, what is that feeling like. These facts and trivia are lying dormant in my mind, until someone triggers the bus network, and I remember all that I know.

I’ve started to list some of these bus stops in my notes. and will start to write little blurbs about them. Map out the bus network.