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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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There are of course substantial technical barriers to flying cars, but almost no one is even interested in trying to overcome them because the regulatory barriers to marketing them and getting the general public to be allowed to fly them are obviously insurmountable.

Here is where we get to the BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT part. Every couple years, I see another flying car concept from some start-up. Every couple years, it's technologically fucking absurd, because "there are of course substantial technical barriers to flying cars".

You have zero reason for anyone to believe that the core reason why we don't have flying cars is regulatory and not technological/cultural/practical, especially when I can see with my own two eyes that every proposal that comes up is obscenely whack from a technological/cultural/practical standpoint. Don't get me wrong, I'm no FAA-lover, and they would almost certainly get in the way, but they're the reason we don't have flying cars in the same way that Space Force is the reason we don't have aliens invading earth.

You have zero reason for anyone to believe that the core reason why we don't have flying cars is regulatory and not technological/cultural/practical, especially when I can see with my own two eyes that every proposal that comes up is obscenely whack from a technological/cultural/practical standpoint.

Of course they're "obscenely whack". The only people foolish enough to propose them are those who know nothing about the industry and thus the fact that the regulatory barriers are insurmountable.

If you want to fly you have to learn a bevy of arcane radio procedures, log every trip you take, follow various checklists every time you fly, get your aircraft maintained only by FAA-certified mechanics, have regular medical examinations, and more. And you still only can fly in good weather, which makes every trip a risk of being stranded. There's no market for a flying car, even if technical barriers were overcome, given those requirements.

Those were pretty much real-world constraints until automation developed enough to be a reasonable approach. This is very very very much directly in my domain of expertise. The good news is that the FAA has opened up to these sorts of "alternative navigation and control schemes". As an expert in the field, this reads to me very much as you just wishing that we lived in a different world, where this sort of technology was feasible a few decades ago, when it definitely definitely wasn't, regardless of what regulations existed/didn't exist.

If the FAA hadn't foreclosed it all at the start by freezing the technology in place with regulations we might indeed live in a different world already. If the NHTSA existed back when the model T was current, we might need checklists for driving cars and have regulations based on needing to turn a crank to start.

If you're going to just ignore everything I wrote, then we're probably not going to make any progress. Perhaps we could leave this tangent where it is, and you can actually specify your claim, so that we can determine whether this tangent is even meaningful to your actual claim. Or if, ya know, you're just whining about the world.

Or, of course, you could read what I wrote and actually respond to it. You could show your expertise in flight navigation and control, particularly with regards to automation technology. You could make an argument that actually competes with mine, in order to show that I have mistaken some points of fact or something. What is non-responsive is just pure imagination about hypothetical alternative realities, completely disconnected from any facts about the world.

If you're going to just ignore everything I wrote

I'm not ignoring it, I'm rejecting it. I'm saying requirements to fly an aircraft have frozen in place because FAA regs froze them in place.

I'm not going to argue about the specific regulations because that's implicitly accepting that the regulatory framework is a good thing, and I think it's a bad thing.

The Motte and Bailey. You Bailey your way to claims about the FAA and navigation automation, but then immediately retreat from defending it. You simply refuse to argue any specifics about any portion of the Bailey.

You retreat to a Motte of simply rejecting any epsilon of regulation ever, but refuse to acknowledge any actual claim that this position makes.

This is the quintessential form of reasoning that this place was made to reject.

No motte-and-bailey; slippery slope. I'm not going to argue about the specifics about any particular spot on the slippery slope because the main problem is that it is on the slippery slope.

Ok, so once we're epsilon onto a slippery slope, you're "not going to argue about the specifics". Got it. So, you could just respond to those comments by explicitly stating this, yes?

Do you hold this position for all possible claims of slippery slopes? Do you agree that gay marriage is just one more spot on the slippery slope to marrying dogs, and any argumentation about specifics is somewhere between fruitless and an entirely misguided endeavor? Or do you think there is room to discuss some sort of framework for claims of slippery slopes, that perhaps all slopes might not be equally slippery, or something along these lines? Or just nah to all that. "Gay marriage, slippery slope, dog marriage, QED." ?

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The good news is that the FAA has opened up to these sorts of "alternative navigation and control schemes".

Why has drone regulation gone in the opposite direction from opening up, then?

Drone regulation went from zero to some. We could debate the merits of specifics there, as well, but does anyone seriously hold that, after having gone from zero to some drone regulation, all innovation in drones is crushed to zero, that everything is doomed and that nothing can be saved?

In any event, drones have different concerns than manned aircraft. I wholly expect that a detailed discussion about the similarities/differences would be rich and fruitful, but what is not rich and fruitful is observing that drone regulation has gone from zero to some and concluding that it must be impossible that the FAA is opening up to alternative navigation and control systems for manned aircraft, especially since the conclusion is factually false.

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