Not to go off on a tangent, but I think gun control is a useful example of what I’m talking about: it’s so easy to make people fight bitterly over minutia while ignoring the core philosophical questions entirely (government monopoly on violence, civilian relationship to government, civilian disarmament),

All I see online is people (poorly) discussing these questions. The government doesn’t have a monopoly on violence or even legal violence, but someone always brings it up. If you really think this junk isn’t being discussed, I’d like to know what you’re even reading.

Each step will be fairly uncontroversial until at some point we’re all comfortable with the thing and someone only wants to make it mandatory for some small segment of drivers, which itself will not draw much controversy because classic non-AI cars with manual transmissions and such will only be in the realm of enthusiasts and collectors.

Yeah see here you go again, arguing it is inevitable that we’ll have to accept some junky AI driving with tradeoffs.

It’s obviously the view of auto manufacturers (and especially auto manufacturers that masquerade as tech companies) that this is the future of transit for people, but who knows what the future holds?

They’ve been at it for more than a decade and it still sucks.