Fuzzy
| Posted by Chill on 07 Mar 2010 at 02:41 pm |
Why Toyota is having problems figuring out what is wrong.
I know most auto makers use so-called “fuzzy logic” controllers in their cars. Incredibly complicated, and incredibly variable in their behavior based on hundreds of sensor readings a second. If the runaway car problem is even happening at all (which I have my doubts about — after all, scientific studies showed with near 100% confidence that there were no medical problems from silicon breast implants despite the sensationalistic press coverage and lawsuits), it’s probably due to some runaway condition related to sensor readings being slightly unexpected that only happens every 100 billion miles driven.
So, basically, unfixable.
People can floor the gas and be 100% sure they floored the brake. People can have the car go out of control, throw it in neutral, have the car accelerate anyway, and have the carmaker–a publicly traded company, therefore a psycopath–deny that it happened.
I have no idea what’s going on in these cases. Probably several different things, with no clear way to separate them.
Strange that the human nervous system is much more likely to malfunction — at least in modern situations — when it’s most vital that it doesn’t.
the human nervous system was always a jerry-rigged (whew) thing. Recognizing objects and reacting is just a king of half-assed thing in general. Better to overreact and run than to underreact.
I’ve got relatives who are 100% convinced that somebody put razor blades in halloween candy. I tried to use that as an example of something that “everybody believes and isn’t true”, but it didn’t work, because they started arguing with me that it did happen, they done seen it with their own eyes, on the news.
Never actually happened. Anywhere. Ever.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp
I used to do software consulting for a company about object recognition. About the best we’ve got right now, with 100 million transistors and the best software you can write, is picking up a tennis ball if you know you’re watching a tennis game.
4 billion years of evolution counts for some shit.
My family believed as gospel in the razor blade story. Probably still does. Most people are very low-information and evidence is basically meaningless.