New business opportunities due to self-driving cars

The problem with comments like Lumifer's is not that they are incorrect. It's that they create a bad incentive structure for content creators.

That's a very interesting opposition to set up :-D

First, let's take it as black-and-white. If I call a top-level post stupid and I'm "not ... incorrect", then let me point out that the incentive structure is entirely right: I don't want content creators posting stupid stuff and I doubt many people would prefer to see more stupid posts on LW.

If we take it more reasonably as a trade-off, it certainly exists -- both in the let's-pick-polite-expressions dimension and in the let's-avert-out-eyes-and-say-nothing dimension. However the principle stands -- you want to provide negative incentives to stupid posts.

In general, I think we have a bigger disagreement. Your approach to "content" is that of a consumer -- you want other people to feed you tasty bits of content. My approach is different. I find considerably more value in discussion (especially a spirited one) than in the posts themselves. From my point of view, most of the "content" is in comments, not in posts, and being able to participate in the give-and-take makes the conversation even more worthwhile.

As I said several times I dislike the high-priesthood view of science and I dislike the high-priesthood view of forums as well. I am not particularly interested in having a few high-status people bestow their wisdom upon me in exchange for adoration.

I am also not interested in providing incentives for any content. There are places on the 'net with LOTS AND LOTS of content -- Facebook, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. etc. If you want "content", go there: LW will never be able to compete. From LW I want specific and highly filtered content -- that's what makes LW special and interesting. If LW gets filled with half-assed stream-of-consciosness ramblings about random stuff, well, I don't think it will work out well :-/

Anyone who posts to LW is doing free labor in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the community's beliefs.

First, that's false. Second, some of these attempts are... counterproductive.

But the cost of nasty comments like Lumifer's can be quite high

Show me the data.

If I was selling a product you could spray on an online community to prevent anything from growing there, I would name it Lumifer.

Ah, how cute! Tell you what, when you startup gets to the MVP stage, ping me and we'll discuss the brand name licensing terms :-P

Well said.

To be fair, I didn't expect this to be voted very high. Not in these times. I was basically writing this down to have a public record of the talk I gave, and to look back at this years later and see how I did predicting things.

I do see your larger point though. I was clearly motivated to produce this by the large and friendly crowd at the European Less Wrong Community Weekends, where most people go by Crocker's Rule and give way better feedback than Lumifer is able to. The little extra effort of writing down would have been worth it even if all the comments would have been Lumifer level quality. If LessWrong was the only place I put these ideas, the current environment here would indeed not feel very much worth the work of spelling them out in the first place.

I was criticising the criticism of this post.

I feel like you're taking all of this way too seriously.

Fix the "RECENT ON RATIONALITY BLOGS"

I agree although i do not dislike Lumifer's comments in general, just the overly negative ones.

contemporary car design is driven by law-mandated safety requirements

I don't know about your country but in mine (Germany) the car industry has so much influence they basically write their own laws. (That's how we got those safety requirements: They're defense against cheaper cars from abroad.) If their business model stops being focused on general use cars, the laws will change very quickly.

a general-purpose car will spend less time sitting in a parking lot doing nothing while waiting for someone to require it

Sure! Not a problem if its TCO is pretty low. Most of those more specialized vehicles will be cheaper than general purpose cars, because they have sharply reduced capabilities. A great number of them will be pretty small, just enough to carry a single person or (in an even smaller, windowless car) a piece of cargo. Others will have to require paying a premium, but they'll mostly be doing things general purpose cars cannot do, like transport a horse.

Side note: Some of those specialized cars will also be sold, not rented. I imagine rich parents gifting their seven year olds their own car. And as soon as someone makes what is basically just a bed on wheels, a small minority of people will live in those things.

The doctor doesn't come to your house first because her time is more valuable than yours

That's a good point. So maybe it starts with hairdressers.

Of course offering services at home will be most attractive to those who are new to their field and haven't sunk costs into an office.

and second because it's hard (=expensive) to bring along all the nurses and assistants and the medical equipment that she has around her office.

Most doctors need very little equipment most of the time. Some types of doctors (psychiatrists, dermatologists) need very little equipment period.

The cost of a driver is a minor component of the cost of renting large, expensive, luxury things. Taking it out will not make them suddenly affordable.

The main cost is insurance and autonomous vehicles means that one drops hard. The lack of a driver mostly means you can rent things out in a very large operating radius.

And, by the way, who will unload, set up, dismantle and load back into the self-driving truck all these jacuzzis and huge sound systems?

Most of the things never leave the "truck". The vehicle is built around them, on a standardized flat chassis. Some of them will have staff, sure. For example, you'd have a bartender if you were renting out a highly specialized mobile bar that has casks of twenty different excellent whiskeys and might be popular with bachelor parties.

Also, about the "stuff that previously only millionaires or billionaires would afford" that your median-income person would be able to rent if only you take the truck driver out of the equation -- literally nothing comes to my mind.

Alright. I'll leave it at that.

They are called caravans or camper vans or RVs. They exist. Have you tried renting them? They are quite expensive to rent, much more so than hotel rooms.

You're simply wrong about rental RVs: their prices are not much more expensive than hotel rooms anymore. (They do remain more expensive than small rental cars.) Check for yourself at places like http://www.apollorv.com/ . They'll get cheaper by going electric (like all cars will) due to less moving parts and less repairs. They'll get cheaper again by going autonomous (like all cars will) due to less mass for the driver cab and less accidents. So even if it was just self-driving RVs, they'd be an opportunity to disrupt stationary hotels.

But RVs are lower class than most hotel rooms, they're cramped, they're optimized for carrying lots of supplies and they have kitchens. A lot of people wouldn't want to use an RV even if it was half the price of a typical hotel room. If you have a self-driving RV and you want to really tear into the market share of stationary hotels, you throw out the kitchen and most of the cupboards and put in the best bed that you can make fit and a great entertainment system.

" for a large number of people, driving is their only reason not to drink or do drugs" -- that's, um, wrong. I have no idea how you came up with such nonsense.

Couple of years in psychiatric research.

no such thing as a "sailing license" (in most countries that I know of)

So you don't know a lot of European countries? I don't know a lot of non-European ones, so you may be right this isn't a factor there.

renting sizeable boats is quite expensive

Exactly. And why? Because the risk of accidents, and the insurance to cover that, is a larger cost factor than with cars. And the main advantage of vehicle autonomy is the sharply reduced number of accidents.

Recreational boating doesn't want fully autonomous boats, anyway

Maybe many don't. But recreational divers and anglers and people who just need to get across the water will be happy with it.

commercial shipping already uses autopilots and still finds out that it needs people to run ships

Yes but it needs way fewer people. If you charter a yacht now, you have a crew of at least 5 people. With an autonomous yacht, you can go down to one crewmember who mostly cleans the place, and maybe a cook.

Renting a self-driving truck is not going to be cheaper than renting a regular truck

Your assertion is ludicrous. Yes it will be cheaper, and a lot. The self-driving truck doesn't need to carry all the mass that the driver needs, including fragile points of failure such as windows, it doesn't have mandatory stop times, it gets into way fewer accidents, it basically cannot be stolen. If you don't think a self-driving truck company can undercut a traditional trucking company, I hope you don't run a trucking company.

You make excellent points. I hadn't even heard of SnapGoods, NeighborGoods etc.

I'm imagining it not as a peer to peer service, but more along the lines of a car rental company that owns a fleet of things it rents out.

I think you're right about the need to build a significant customer base rather quickly. My guess is that it might be feasible to first offer big expensive things that people don't usually own already, like a fancy jacuzzi, a top end VR rig, a complete "wedding size" soundsystem and a bouncy castle. And once you're known for those, work your way down into more normal consumer goods, guided by the requests of your first customers.