The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)

FWIW this is my go to source for the story: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video It's brief and fairly entertaining.

I rarely recommend videos but this one in re: Jaywalking is funny and informative: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video I was telling a coworker about this once and he didn't believe me, but it was basically a deliberate and successful attempt at mass social engineering through domestic propaganda. We went from vilifying reckless drivers as "speed demons" to vilifying pedestrians as "jays" (yokels or hicks.)

The crazy thing is, and forgive me if you've heard this before, this insane situation is the result of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street", Peter D. Norton link

Yeah, this. Perfect example, our crazy car-based transportation network was popularized by a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign, we went from vilifying "speed demons" to vilifying "jaywalkers" because "they" told us to: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street", Peter D. Norton link If we can convince people that it's their own fault for getting hit by cars, we can do anything.

That's originally the result of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign, cf. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video If we did it once for cars we could do it again agin 'em.

The two things are orthogonal. Item: humans driving huge machines on every street is and always has been totally insane. The reason we do it is because of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign. No really. See: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video You can see the origin of the situation from this extraordinary film shot just before the 1906 Earthquake: "San Francisco, a Trip down Market Street, April 14, 1906" link You can see that horses, horse-drawn wagon and carts, and pedestrians could and did mix together in the public way. There are also early automobiles, and the problem is obvious: cars accelerate faster than horses. Already we can see reckless driving by cars that is only possible due to their ability to accelerate quickly! BTW, just for the record, cars themselves are generally awesome. It must be said. Cars are cool. It's only when we use them as mass-transportation and/or mix them with non-car-driving people (bikes, pedestrians, etc.) that it becomes mad. - - - - Ergo, safe automatic automobiles can't come soon enough! - - - - However, none of the above justifies using random people without their consent as test dummies in an open-air testing facility for massive, fast robots. That's also insane. - - - - To me it seems obvious that you do two things: 1) Start with slow light robots! Build a nerf foam golf cart that is limited to 5mph and get that working reliably. Going straight for Knight Industries Two Thousand right out o

First, where is the data? Second, yeah, it's bananas to test large, fast, heavy robots on public streets. The only reason we let it happen is because the robots look like cars. Third, it's bananas to have large, fast, heavy vehicles everywhere mixed in with all the other traffic. The only reason we let it happen is a mass-marketing campaign (see "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video ) Here is a film "a Trip down Market Street" recorded in San Francisco on April 14, 1906, just before the Great Earthquake. The source of the problem is clear: cars accelerate much faster than horses. link

I just want to take a moment to remind everybody just how insane car travel is as a mode of transportation. Sure, it's convenient , but at what cost!? Air pollution, tire particle pollution, covering the Earth with asphalt, etc. Also, and this is gruesome so brace yourself, car travel causes incredible amounts of human suffering. Car collisions cause something like 40,000 fatalities per year just in the USA. In fact, more Americans have died in car crashes than in all the wars we've fought. I call it the "Mayhem Lottery". Anyone can play, little kids, old people, pregnant women, everybody. And the tickets cost nothing, all you have to do is be near a street. (Sometimes cars will even crash into buildings. People have been killed by cars while sitting in their own homes watching TV!) Now the weird, bizarre thing about this state of affairs is that it is the result of a successful mass-marketing campaign! When cars were first introduced people complained of reckless drivers ("Speed Demons"), the car companies and the government got together and created a deliberate plan to change public attitude (about being run down in the street by car drivers), they actually coined the term "jaywalker" to describe people using the street in the traditional fashion (pedestrians.) It sounds nuts, because it is, yet it really happened: cf. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video - - - - Edit to add: You can see the trasition period in the "a Trip down Market Stre

If it helps, it's the result of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign. I usually point to "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video for the story. We can see what traffic was like just as motorized carriages began to mix with pedestrians and horses. Here is "San Francisco, a Trip down Market Street, April 14, 1906" upscaled and colorized: link You can see that, at low speeds and modest density, carriages and pedestrians flow together just fine. Although I'm sure there were still lots of accidents, everyone is more-or-less sharing the space. You can already see the problem brewing: horseless carriages can accelerate much faster than horse-drawn carriages.

Car drivers and passengers should wear helmets. Car travel is the most dangerous thing most people do regularly. It's only normalized due to a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video

> I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars, etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we have now. Yes, friend, and when we have those so will I. Those (as yet still fictional) robot cars (and can we PLEASE call them "auto-autos"!?) are not the problem. - - - - > Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are killers. ... Yes, and it's arguably fucking crazy that we let them do that. The whole reason is a deliberate campaign to normalize the carnage: "speed demons" were replaced by "jay walkers" and now more people (in the USA) have been killed by cars than by all the wars we've fought. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video Anyhow, "people kill people so my robots should be allowed to kill people too." Is not a valid argument IMO.

This is something I ponder pretty often, and I think the best you can say is that there are causal loops . Certainly, planned media campaigns seem to cause (in some but not all cases) large shifts in mass behavior. (E.g. Bernays getting women to smoke cigarettes[1], or pedestrians being removed from the streets to make way for automobiles by deriding them as "jaywalkers" and then criminalizing the until-then ancient and universal custom[2].) On the other hand, as much as I don't like to "blame the user" I can't help but feel like we have personal responsibility for our behavior. E.g. on the individual level it feel to me like a "cop out" to say, e.g. advertising made me eat this junk food and get fat (or whatever.) In any event, if you want to study this sort of thing using formal symbolic systems, you have to use systems that can handle causal loops, i.e. Cybernetics: link [1] I view Edward Bernays as a mass murderer for his largely successful efforts in this regard: link link [2] The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video