• Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    You tell your car explicitly where to go, when to start, when to stop, when to accelerate and when to slow down.
    Sounds like actual driving to me.

    • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      True, but controlling the transmission gave me an extra layer of sensation, a more direct involvement in the process. It’s a matter of degrees. Plus, there are levels of finesse one gains.

    • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      You can ride in a taxi and you won’t be the driver even if the actual driver is patient enough to let you tell him explicitly when to start, stop, etc.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          But that’s my point - commanding isn’t the same thing as driving. If you’re the passenger in a taxi, you can be commanding but you’re clearly not driving. If you have a car with an automatic transmission, you’re still driving in most ways (you steer, brake, etc.) but you’re no longer the driver of the transmission; you’re just the commander of it.

          • Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            If you have a car with manual transmission then you have additional control over modes of the engine. But it’s not the essence of driving, because you can have control over mode of the engine of washing machine, for example.
            Key component of driving is control over route and speed of a car. And you still have it with automatic transmission.

          • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’d go so far as to say you aren’t the commander of the transmission. The programmer who designed the shifting algorithm controls it.