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▲ bcvvvy a day ago

How you get somewhere is important and tools change how you get there.

You can drive 1000 miles and arrive at the destination on the highway quickly.

Or you can take the slow road and walk. You discover unrelated things, make new relationships, see the scenery, listen and smell what is around you and have time to contemplate things which may or not be related.

This particular tool economy robs us of all these things in the rush to the destination.

I'd sacrifice "progress" a little for some of the better bits of humanity.

▲jason_oster a day ago | parent | next [-]

Do you feel robbed of your scenic expeditions because vehicles and highways exist?

▲catlifeonmars 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not OP, but actually I do because I have been forced to live in places where it’s dangerous to walk and where all the scenic landscape has been replaced with asphalt.

I get your point in general, but I think vehicles are a poor analogy because in many ways they have changed the places we live for the worse (and yes I’ll concede occasionally for the better). It turns out we need places to park all of these vehicles and they compete for space with humans.

▲bcvvvy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really. I feel sad for the people who miss them.

▲signatoremo a day ago | parent [-]

That’s very narrow-minded. I love hiking and biking and exploring new places, meeting new people. I also appreciate that I can use the highway to get to the destination conveniently. Often so that I can enjoy the very experience I’d miss according to you.

▲scotty79 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The thing is that if you don't learn to drive some destinations are unachievable. And destination is more important than the journey unless you travel for pleasure or personal development.

▲bcvvvy a day ago | parent [-]

There are many more places you can't drive. I've walked to quite a few of them.

That analogy holds too.

▲paulddraper a day ago | parent [-]

To keep with the analogy, there are far more places you can feasibly drive to than walk to.

(And even more if you can combine them.)

▲wwweston 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your best argument is the 2nd sentence.

The first sentence is actually a much better jumping off point for the other side of the argument than yours, because the mistakes involved in the statement should set off alarm bells for people who've walked with mathematics.

What do you mean by "place"? What do you mean by "more"?

Are there more places as marked by real numbers between 0 and 1, or places as marked by integers? Could a machine that can count integers 1000000 times faster than people "visit" all those real places between 0 and 1? What would it mean to visit all the places between 0 and 1? Once the machine visited all of them how would it help people explore that territory?

What do the general ratios and rules between paths and areas mean about how much path it takes to cover an area?

The real world is quantized in way that math isn't, of course, but that's one way the analogy can lead you astray.

And even just keeping to the real world rather than math, it's not all about the sheer velocity with which you can cover an arbitrary distance metric. The primary bottleneck is less that velocity than the amount of time you have to direct to place scaled to your capacities. The car's velocity can let you trade some of that time for fast travel between farther places, and with a road network can arguably even increase a certain variety of places, but that's a very different statement than more places. And it's also a wall against attention to everything in between.

▲paulddraper 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Bro it’s not so complicated.

I can get to more places in my car (or someone else’s).

▲bcvvvy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲XTXinverseXTY a day ago | parent [-]

It's a pretty straightforward geometric argument, from your own analogy

I'm sure there's a coherent rebuttal but "That is plainly rubbish" isn't the reply I'd expect in good-faith discussion

▲bcvvvy a day ago | parent [-]

It's well in the realm of obvious, but possibly outside the realm of personal experience on your part.

I think pointing at Greenland for a start and asking you to think about the problem for a bit will lead to the same coherent view on the matter.

▲cwillu 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And how will you be getting to the island?

▲Dylan16807 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this about driving to an island? If you need a plane or boat to the island and still call that trip "walking", then someone can take a plane or boat to the island and rent a car and call it "driving" or "driving plus walking".

Or if you're just saying that a very good backpacker that happens to be in greenland can get more places by walking because of a lack of roads, that might be true. But for a normal person in a typical household, their walking range is not that big. If you're in the US or Europe the roads reach almost everywhere.

▲ a day ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲stevenhuang a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No one forces you to drive. You can still walk.

▲runarberg a day ago | parent | next [-]

They build cities around the car, they defund public transit, they close down rail lines, they build new housing a 5 km away from your closest grocery store, and 20 km away from any cafés and other cultural venues. Your job is located 50 km north of where you live, your partner’s job is 60 km in the other direction, and your child’s school is 10 km in the third direction.

They neglect to build sidewalks, and force you to walk 1-2 meters from cars racing at 70 km/h. With all the noise and high risk stressing you up to the level you just wanna scream.

stevenhuang: No one forces you to drive. You can still walk.

▲AmigoCharlie 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Don't tell me you dream of a maoist city where only bike is allowed and "car-brains" (as anti-automobile fanatics call us) are considered "enemies of the people" right?

▲RugnirViking 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

do you think, perhaps, that it might be possible to cool the discussion? that there might be some meaning located between the picture painted by the person you're replying to and your own?

or do you sincerely think that the only options available to us are "all cars banned" or the alternative posted by the person above?

▲simgt 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

TIL amsterdam, tokyo and barcelona are maoist cities

▲stevenhuang a day ago | parent | prev [-]

So drive then. You can also move. The point is there are options. Many cities have strong infrastructure and have embraced walk ability. If not driving is such a big deal to you, why not do something about it?

▲sassbadger 15 hours ago | parent [-]

You're arguing like an edge lord here. What he is saying is that you're effectively forced to drive. Not so difficult to understand. There are plenty of people fighting for change but because our political and economic landscape is captured by big business, it's not so easy.

▲defrost 15 hours ago | parent [-]

This is extremely location dependant.

Not everybody in the world is effectively forced to drive. Sure, maybe if someone has the misfortune to be an US city they have no other option but there are other places that are not like that and cities with good public transport and relatively low car usage.

▲sassbadger 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes but GP is describing basically the norm, while I'd argue the minority here lives in a public transport utopia like the Netherlands or Denmark. People generally have very few options outside car ownership, even in cities.

▲xigoi 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But it now takes 3 times as long because you constantly have to cross roads.

▲Vaushite a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's pretty well documented they deliberately made things impractically large distances apart and scrapped the idea of footpaths, to encourage car sales, paid for by car companies to your local city government several decades ago.

▲bcvvvy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

But Terry T said I have to drive or die.

Or has he changed his mind again.

▲dang a day ago | parent [-]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.