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Unfortunate thing for Tesla is we have the Affective Fallacy where if we like Tesla we overweight its benefits and underweight its errors.


What's the name for that fallacy where we do not know what went right, and we pessimize to assume the worst? I.E. How many times did Tesla prevent a crash? Assume none?


Don't know that it's a fallacy, it's more that the question you ask is impossible to answer - it's impossible to have a number for how many crashes were prevented. But we do have a number for crashes caused by. So we work off of that - if Telsa want's to argue they are safer, I'd love for them to devise some way to prove it, but I can't see that happening.


Forbes did this with stats. They concluded autopilot was not causing accidents.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/28/new-te...


It seems like comparing AP to anything but regular cruise control miles is not very fair and is going to inflate its safety.

From that link, it's pretty bad if it's not even clearly better at general "highway miles" than when it's off because people are least likely to use it at the times that are much more dangerous generally, such as merging onto and off the freeway.


Surely you're familiar with this? https://youtu.be/3mnG_Gbxf_w?t=7


You can figure out statistically if Teslas are systematically avoiding some types of accidents.


I think you can still try to be objective.

For example, I like tesla autopilot 1 (mobileye based) and found its behavior to be reasonable. I also know its limitations - it has only one camera - so I don't use it in edge-case scenarios.

I think model S display is good for turning settings on and off, but is bad for controlling any aspect of the car especially critical ones like headlights, climate control, door locks and more.

I think the newer model S/X cars are bad, replacing stalks with touch controls for the headlights, turn signals, horn and wipers. They get in the way of good driving.


After driving a newer model I have to disagree. I find it more efficient and natural, not sure why people stress over it. Getting used to yoke was way quicker than regenerative breaking.


Why precisely makes that a fallacy?


You're presupposing the conclusion.

If you didn't overemphasize the good parts and downplay the bad parts you might find out that maybe you shouldn't really like what Tesla is doing at all, or you'd have a legitimate reason to like Tesla.

What you shouldn't do is overemphasize the good parts so you can feel better about your decision to like Tesla. Then your conclusion has been fixed from the start and you're adjusting the facts to fit to avoid cognitive dissonance.




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