Lol apparently reasoning by analogy is first principles to him -- see human drivers using only vision therefore no lidar somehow being "first principles".
Maybe I missed it, but I've never seen him claim that using only vision is "first principles" thinking. However, relying only on vision can make sense once you realize that roads and signage and everything is literally designed around vision. Any system that does not prioritize vision cannot deal with unexpected obstacles, like new signage. If your vision is good enough to see obstacles and understand signage, the added usefulness of lidar relative to the cost seems pretty low, and if you don't have vision and have only lidar, then your system will not be flexible enough, and if you have lidar and vision, then your system will be more expensive than a system without lidar.
But no, roads are not designed with just vision in mind. Designers use tecture not just for grip but to help communicate things to the driver. There's many subtler ones, but the most obvious one is the grooves you often find on the edge of highways that are used to warn you if you're veering off. This vibrates the car and creates a loud noise. That's two more senses that you're constantly using while driving even if you don't recognize it. Sure, I wouldn't rely on smell, but it is also a useful sense for some diagnostics and may help in some edge cases. But my point is that we're not just vision based creatures. You think about vision more, but the others are very important.
> Designers use tecture not just for grip but to help communicate things to the driver. There's many subtler ones, but the most obvious one is the grooves you often find on the edge of highways that are used to warn you if you're veering off.
This is a red herring. None of these feedback mechanisms existed for decades of driving. The core problem of driving is vision and everything else is just gravy. If lidar can't solve all of the vision issues, which it can't, then it makes perfect sense to ask whether vision can cover lidar's purposes and thus whether having both is actually useful. Focusing on lidar is ignoring the core issue.
> Sorry, I want to make sure I understand you correctly.
My claim was pretty obviously about intentional multisensory feedback design of roads.
> I think we're done here because you need to get an EKG as soon as possible.
You're right, we are done because you seemingly can't understand the incredibly simple point that you can drive if you lack all other senses except sight, but you cannot drive if you have all of your other senses except sight, and that this means something pretty critical about the importance of sight over all other senses.
Let's get something out of the way, just to make sure we're able to continue. Do you agree that his tweet saying lidar can be inaccurate and mess up results compared to cameras only is idiotic? Do you think Elon really believes that tweet?
If so, do you think he's stupid? Do you think he thinks sensor fusion is a grand unsolved problem his cracked engineers can't implement?
I absolutely agree vision is very very important, given the roads + signage are designed for humans using their eyes among other factors.
Do I think we should take the abilities of human drivers with eyes as the gold standard for what we can achieve with autonomous vehicles? No, and I doubt he does either, but his ego can't backtrack. In fact, I'm pretty sure he finally accepted radar.
Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.
Also, I'm not aware of anyone going or championing full lidar. It was only musk who (apparently) believes more than one type of sensor is a negative.
What really gets me is that musk, the man who's proven just how good he is at scaling & supply chain, somehow didn't think lidar wouldn't dramatically come down in cost.
My most charitable interpretation is that he really saw the value in gathering as much data about driving as fast as possible, and the best way to do that was to build a bunch of cars with just cameras.(Smart) Somewhere along the way he got annoyed or jealous of the lidar-incorporating companies that were doing quite well with autonomy. Then some ego thing happened and he got ahead of his skis and said vision-only is the best(dumb) and his ego/brand value won't let him take it back.
I admire the hell out of musk based on his output, so I choose to believe that he can't possibly be stupid enough to not understand sensor fusion.
Oh back to the original subject. If he's never said that vision-only is first principles, I apologize for the misinformation. But you have to admit that the "reasoning" of saying humans can drive with vision only therefore no other sensors is quite firmly outside the realm of first principles, which is his m.o.
> Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.
And let's make sure we get this right. Humans use more than vision when driving. Touch and sound are essential components to driving. While you could drive without these senses that doesn't mean they aren't important.
Elon's understanding of "first principles" is "the first thought that came into my head". Unfortunately this is a common, and growing, bastardization of the phrase.
Lol, I would be a little more cynical and say "the first thought that comes to my head that justifies my business decisions (which I can never show any ounce of doubt over)"
I don't know what exactly Musk said on the topics you raise, I only know that he did say something like vision being the core problem and that lidar can't solve that problem (nor can any combination of other sensors we currently have). It makes sense to focus on vision and to question the value add of lidar, because if you can solve vision then many other sensors are redundant.
Maybe it can't be solved using current tech, who knows, but saying that fully autonomous driving in our current world isn't achievable without vision is a correct position. I have no opinion on anything else.
Which is such a naive assumption too! Do you not feel the road? Listen to the road? I mean you might not think you do the latter but I bet if you closed your eyes you could get a decent estimate of how fast you are going.
