The handicap of familiarization
My brother types fast as do so many people today. If he makes a mistake in the preceding word, he immediately uses the backspace to erase off the entire word and then types the word all over again. He does not, for instance, use the arrow keys to go to the second letter of the word to change it and correct the mistake; he just has to redo the typing part. I do the same; perhaps you do it too. And, in contrast is the other aspect:
Usually, I am particular about correctness (and other things) while writing – which means no spelling or grammatical mistakes. After writing, I typically go over the text to see if there are any inadvertent mistakes. And then, I post what I have written. Therefore, it is frustrating to see a typo slip off into the post after all this work. It happens with others too. In today’s interesting write up, the author tells us why our intelligent brains still miss out on our own typos and why we retype the words we made mistakes in:
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/
Robot cars with adjustable ethics settings
Ethics is a tricky subject. While driving a car, if you have only two options – collision would result in five people’s death and a swerve to the right would kill one person – which option would you choose? What if cars came equipped with ethics’ options – if you didn’t swerve to save the five people, for example, the car would take control and by itself swerve and kill just one person instead. Even if it saves five lives, the death of one person is still an act of killing; who is responsible for that one person’s death – you or the car manufacturer? This is the question that the author of this article begins with and then he goes on to talk about giving options to the customer to choose an ethics’ setting – value your own life more than that of others, minimize legal costs, value others’ lives more etc. – and its possible implications.
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/heres-a-terrible-idea-robot-cars-with-adjustable-ethics-settings/
