alt Hacker NewsYou’ve picked an interesting example, as driving a car, even with all safety precautions, is pretty much the most dangerous activity we do on a daily basis. Yet somehow we decide that the benefits outweigh the risks.
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In case of driving the stakes are equally high for everyone on the road. Can we say the same for an agent?
Having an agent is like forever having a genius intern who'll almost always do the perfect job for you. But there is non-zero chance that they'll also come up with quirky solutions and execute those with confidence and no follow-ups. You don't grant the intern production access and hope they check with you.
I don't think the corporate equivalent of "dog ate my homework" flies, if the dog ate your files and your production DB if you are unlucky.
Yes, but we usually use cars as a means to an end. Have you ever met a manager who setup gasmaxxing policies and criticized employees for doing their job instead of driving?
Not really. That decision was taken for you, (I’m presuming you live in the US) by the American car industry and their paid of politicians. Your cities used to have beautiful public transport until it was dismantled.
Unfortunately in Europe the German car industry similarly has a lot of power, hence why their shitty rail network fuck up the whole continents.
I take the train and tram.
> Yet somehow we decide that the benefits outweigh the risks.
More like malicious lobbying and incompetence made it impossible in many places to use any other form of transportation, despite there being safer, faster, cheaper, and healthier ways to move around. Which come to think if it makes this a rather nice analogy for the current situation... :)
The example wasn't "driving a car". The benefits of putting your feet up on the dashboard do not outweigh the risks, at least not where there is actual traffic. I don't think I saw a single person doing that in real life, ever.
It's a completely different story. For cars, it happened because of relentless pressure from the auto lobby. It took years of propaganda from oil companies, car makers etc. to make us think the road is for cars [1]. We demolished and rebuilt entire cities to accommodate cars, partly because they gutted the public transport sector [2]. This made our infrastructure so hostile to our own bodies that we have no choice but to use cars now. We bought their products because they forced them down our throats. There is nowhere near that kind of pressure behind the adoption of... oh dear lord.
[1] https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2022/06/how-lobbyis...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...