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Dec 22, 2023·edited Dec 22, 2023

Fascinating article, with lots to discuss, but I want to focus on a common misconception:

"An average 16-year-old learns to drive in about 50 hours."

This is a massive misunderstanding.

A human learns to navigate the world for 16 years, then applies driving as a layer on top of that, adapting experience from activities like walking, biking, and riding in vehicles then applying that experience to this new context. You can't put a baby in a coma for sixteen years, wake them up, and expect them to do anything, let alone learn to drive.

In that context, 50 hours is just long enough to learn the novel parts of driving, like how the pedals feel and when to check the mirrors.

With that in mind, that comparison overestimates human ability by quite a bit.

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A very astute point.

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