Goldstein: Midnight In Paris
On Friday, terrorists attacked the city of Paris. One hundred and twenty nine people were murdered, and hundreds more injured.
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On Friday, terrorists attacked the city of Paris. One hundred and twenty nine people were murdered, and hundreds more injured.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Though Voltaire never actually wrote this famous line — Beatrice Evelyn Hall did — seldom has there been a more important time in the flow of our national discourse to open a column with these words.
Self-driving cars are fast becoming a reality. While the safety ramifications of these cars are generally considered positive because of the unpredictable irrationality of human driving, there are moral questions about their potential actions. What if the car was confronted with the choice between killing five pedestrians or ramming into a wall, saving the five but killing its passenger? A recent paper published in the science journal arXiv deals with this topic — similar to the trolley problem that poses the more passive killing of five against the active killing of one — concluding that manufacturers and psychologists will have to collaborate on instituting proper guidelines for the cars’ actions in such a scenario. If this conclusion sounds unsatisfactory, it’s because it is. It gives us no insight into what the car should do if confronted with this choice.
In the past week, nearly 20 Israelis have been shot and stabbed — some to death — as Palestinian shooting attacks and rock-throwing at innocent passersby have once again become the norm. There are imams and Arab political leaders who praise the terrorists, brandishing knives at rallies and prayer. Some Palestinians praise what looks like another Intifada. There are banners hung up to honor the “heroes” who murder men, women and children in cold blood; the so-called “martyrs” who use their cars and knives to kill as many Israelis as they can; their “brave” comrades who fight their unholy war. There has been no substantive apology for the barbaric actions of these violent criminals.
Google decries villainy in its famous motto, “Don’t be evil,” and Apple stays true to the spirit of its former “Think Different” slogan, but the United States Congress can now do no better than “maybe we won’t shut down this week.” The cavalier way in which our present Congress operates stands in stark contrast to the world of our contemporary science and technology companies, where limits are constantly tested and surpassed. Whereas our legislature is stuck in the past, the visionaries that lead the country’s most promising industry are rocketing into the future.