good for her. nonviolent obstruction of a commercial endeavor she opposes, much like a sit-in. whether you agree with her perspective or not I think it is important to support her ability to protest in this way, though (as she is well aware) it may come with consequences.
Part of the idea of protesting like this is to elicit arrest. That's what civil disobedience is. It's not a coherent protest strategy if you factor enforcement out!
Ethical questions like this are a lot easier to discuss if you take for granted that people are acting in good faith.
If you truly cared that much about Amazon and truly felt library participation was so heinous that it ought be obstructed, I think a lot of people would be very skeptical and a lot of people would disagree with that perspective, but yes, those of us who believed you were acting earnestly would indeed appreciate you standing up for your principles in a way that was impactful but not violent.
There's less skepticism of sincerity here and more agreement with the fundamental concern here, but the respect for principle and action covers both, yes.
well yes. if you are OK with getting arrested and charged for demonstrating your political convictions, I support your nonviolent protest. this isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is.
It's civil disobedience, at least once she refused to step aside when told to do so by the police officer. (I don't know if she was breaking the law by obstructing the robot.) So yeah, I would say there is nothing inherently wrong with you obstructing the entry of the local library -- provided you are willing to be peacefully arrested.
That doesn't mean that I agree with your right to obstruct entry into the library, nor does it mean that I agree with your reasons for blocking entry to the library. I also suspect that the courts would reject your reasoning.
While picket lines sometimes devolve into an unlawful blockade such as a right of way obstruction, or aggravated trespass that is very much _not_ what picket lines are, nor how they work.
I'd say that this would bring up a bigger issue: why would Uber Eats be in the business of using robot couriers to deliver vital medications? Sandwiches or non-essential goods? Sure, I can understand this maybe, bracketing societal issues that these machines represent.
Prescription medications are controlled. If this robot is damaged or destroyed, the patient may not get their insulin at all without further authorization from their doctor or their insurance company. Those logistical issues are much thornier than a retired professor blocking a delivery robot.
I'm not missing your point. I'm pointing out that it's an appeal to extremes that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Why insulin? Why not have the robot deliver premature babies from a regional hospital to a central hospital, on a battery powered NICU that only has 30 minutes of battery power?
So medically urgent the slowest delivery option available is selected? I mean, I kinda get the idea of trying to win an argument online but have some dignity yeah?
Insulin delivery is too important to be left to sidewalk robots that are easily stolen, blocked, destroyed (esp. in Philly), or otherwise prone to failure for technical, new technology reasons.
The protestor assumes nothing more than that these are Uber Eats robots. Getting your Big Mac without moving your ass off the couch doesn't have quite the same moral status as having insulin delivered.
If you need insulin for emergency purposes, call fucking 911, please for the love of god, don't manage your medical emergencies with app based delivery couriers.
> Marvin, 78, said she's not sure how many times she's blocked the path of these robots, which hit the streets of Philadelphia in March. The University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus has made a practice of it to protest "corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line." Her past encounters have circulated online. The Wednesday incident was the first time, however, that the police got involved.
> Officers approached Marvin after she'd been there "quite a long time," she said. They asked her to step aside and let the robot complete its delivery. When she repeatedly refused, they arrested her for disorderly conduct.
Good. I want delivery robots to be able to operate in public, I don't want people like Marvin to be blocking them because they disapprove of the concept of delivery robots or think it's bad that they're displacing human jobs, and I think that a disorderly conduct arrest is an eminently reasonable response from the criminal justice system.
> Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she's doing.
The first amendment doesn't and shouldn't protect interfering with reasonable delivery robot use of the public streets; indeed the law should protect the rights of operators of delivery robots to have their robots deliver items to customers without interference. The criminal justice system should absolutely incarcerate her if she publicly intends to continue interfering with delivery robots.
What about the robot's interfering with my ability to operate in public? Perhaps you've never been at an intersection where one of these things has either died in the middle of the road or is having some kind of malfunction and is inhibiting traffic or commerce. I don't see anyone saying the criminal justice system should incarcerate the CEO of Uber Eats for incalculable damages to society.
In before "there is a difference between a robot accidentally blocking traffic and this woman blocking the robot intentionally" - No the fuck there isn't. If these robots can't be even circumnavigate a stationary elderly woman, or act reliably then they don't belong on the streets and anyone who put them there is acting criminally and negligently about the risks and harms.
And what about the person's right to continue without being obstructed?
It's a standoff. She's literally just standing there. She doesn't move out of her way to let the robot pass - but neither does the robot move to let her pass!
So why should she be the only one arrested and incarcerated? Why not arrest the robot for the same crime?
Sidewalks are for humans to walk on, not dedicated travel corridors for commercial robots. If those robots can't play nice and yield to pedestrians, then they don't belong on the sidewalk.
Because the robot is operating normally and not particularly trying to obstruct her or any other person; whereas she is deliberately interfering with the robot because she has a political grievance against delivery robots and thinks it is good to interfere with their normal operation. The law should absolutely make a distinction between those two things when regulating what sorts of physical movement on the public street constitute a crime.
You are making a lot of assumptions about both her and the robot's intentions.
Who's to say the robot hasn't been given bad-faith programming to never yield to assert dominance? What if the human had been blind or in a wheelchair, unable to move out of the way?
Yes; I'm assuming that the paragraph in the linked article:
> Marvin, 78, said she's not sure how many times she's blocked the path of these robots, which hit the streets of Philadelphia in March. The University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus has made a practice of it to protest "corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line." Her past encounters have circulated online. The Wednesday incident was the first time, however, that the police got involved.
is basically accurate.
I don't think the robot has actually been given bad-faith programming to never yield to assert dominance, because I don't think that's something that would be possible to reliably program into present-day robots. I think that the robot is probably programmed to stop moving if it detects an obstacle in front of it, which is only a problem if someone like Marvin who openly states that they have an ideological problem with a corporation using delivery robots deliberately interferes with them on the street.
If a human is blind or in a wheelchair and unable to move, that shouldn't be a crime; but also it should be a reason for people nearby, or perhaps the cops, to help them move, in part so that they stop blocking the sidewalk. And if a person who is blind or in a wheelchair deliberately stays put in the sidewalk blocking it for other peoples' use despite offers to help them move; then they are committing the same kind of crime as Marvin and should be arrested on the same charge.
The robot was absolutely free to go around her, I truly don't see how what she did was illegal. The next time my kids are out doing sidewalk chalk and the mail carrier walks by, should the kids be arrested for obstructing mail delivery?
If your kids are making a point of getting out their sidewalk chalk to block the way of the mail carrier every time they see one, because they have a political grievance against the post office and want to do everything in their power to interfere with mail delivery, then yes they should be arrested for this. This is quite possibly already a federal crime, in fact.
1A says she is free to protest human workers by getting in their way in public. Do you think picket lines are illegal? Why is this different because they're robots?
Picket lines that actually block other people from crossing instead of trying to persuade them not to? Yes. Use of threats, physically blocking, or just general impediment? Yes.
Not only does it violate state law (e.g. obstruction of free movement, interference with a business open to the public, false imprisonment, and assault are all offenses here in California depending on the facts), but it also violates NLRA rules.
The Moscone Act that recognizes picketing federally also makes clear that this is not OK.
> It is not the intent of this section to permit conduct that is unlawful including breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, the unlawful blocking of access or egress to premises where a labor dispute exists, or other similar unlawful activity.
If someone is bothering me, I don't care if they claim to be doing it in the name of a political protest or not, I just want them to stop. And if they don't stop then I want the criminal justice system to compel them to stop, if necessary with violence (the cops arresting someone is absolutely an act of violence, one that I completely approve of in many cases).
Your claim is that if someone is bothering you then they should be arrested?
I dunno about you, but that's not really how I want our society to work.
As other people have point out, the robot could have navigated around the blockage. Just as you could walk away from someone bothering you without getting the police involved lol.
> Your claim is that if someone is bothering you then they should be arrested?
No, my claim is that people who violate public order laws in the public street should be arrested even if they claim that the reason it's important for them to violate those public order laws is because they're protesting something and a protest won't be effective unless it annoys people. I want that to not be an effective defense against getting immediately arrested and physically removed from the scene by cops.
I might agree with you to some extent. At the same time, I find your apparent desire to immediately weaponize the police against protestors fairly disturbing. "Immediate" arrest and physical removal should not be the default first response in a situation like a peaceful protest.
If it's an actual peaceful protest, that just involves people advocating for something in the public commons that doesn't disrupt the ability of anyone else to the use the public commons, then sure this is a reasonable point. I was responding to the person who said sarcastically "Yea, protest should happen where it doesn't bother anyone. Right.", who would likely not find that kind of actually-peaceful protest likely to be effective.
And I do actually want immediate arrest and physical removal to be the default first response in a situation like an effective protest. I do not want people to get away with disrupting the public commons and then claiming that they were justified in doing so because they were carrying out a protest. Indeed, I want the police to immediately arrest and physically remove anyone at all who is disrupting the public commons. The police are a weapon, and I want that weapon used effectively against people who disrupt the public commons, so that the public commons can be usable by everyone.
You've been repeatedly posting abusive comments and other comments that break the guidelines. This needs stop if you want to keep participating here. We have to ban accounts that keep posting like this after they've had fair warning. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
These things should not be allowed to use sidewalks. They are a disturbance and annoyance taking space away from humans walking, chatting, etc.
I don't think that saving delivery jobs is the main issue, these jobs didn't even exist a few years ago and their working conditions are anyway quite bad. It's a bigger social question why deliveries are getting so common nowadays across many countries including also different parts of Europe. I already find delivery scooters unseemly and they often drive recklessly. Ramping up this stuff even more will just lead to more social isolation, and with that conflict and generally low-trust societies.
I wonder if there is some kind of city tax on these robots. You certainly shouldn't be allowed to just put an unlimited number of these things on the sidewalks and push the negative externalities on everyone else. Same way you need permits for drones, which are also a visual pollution and potential constant privacy invasion. Cars on the road are already taxed, not sure about these.
>I wonder if there is some kind of city tax on these robots.
No, it's the state law that permits these robots. The operator obtains a permit from the state and as far as I can tell, if there are any costs they are in the permit itself, not in taxes on each unit.
I don't think they're saying they're confused about the psyche of individual people electing for delivery.
The "social question" to explore is about how so many people collectively came to see leaving the house, interacting with others humans, and setting aside work or idle distractions as bad things to be bought off with cash that we had to work to earn.
We know that people like delivery and we know that people don't like the alternatives I mention above, but that wasn't always the case and it's probably worth slowing down to think about what change and whether that might correlate with other concerns.
Ah, that one is easy. These services would have been popular in the past had they existed, but they didn't. There were no apps and no immigrant slave labour. Now that these things exist, the services exist and have become popular. Turns out people like others doing stuff for them. For example, maids. Who wouldn’t want to have one if they could pay for her?
Suitably cheap labor and the opportunity to hire them has almost never not been available, but industrial-society middle class people who could otherwise afford it long found it to be a luxury to indulge in only occasionally (family pizza night, a cleaning service before the big party, etc) -- not because of unavailability or inaffordability but because class-culture norms acknoweledged it as irresponsible, wasteful, and foolish.
It would be embarrassing largesse to have somebody make a $7 iced coffee and then have somebody else deliver it for another $5. It would be like going to the grocery store in a tuxedo. You might be able to afford it, you might own a tuxedo, but it was just seen as sort of an absurd class theater.
Those norms have changed radically in the last couple decades, and not just on this matter.
Apps have made things so much easier. You get a list of restaurants and you choose your order. You know what restaurants are available, no need to know their phone numbers, you have the menu, the prices, no more waiting for them to pick up the phone or understand you in the noisy restaurant over the phone. If the experience sucks the app will reimburse you.
And immigrant slave labour has made it all affordable.
A delivery robot has much fewer externalities than your typical delivery person. In a lot of big cities, the person delivering your order will typically be using an illegal e-bike or scooter, flagrantly disobeying traffic laws, and completely uninsured. Oh and good luck enforcing any judgements on them, since they look nothing like the ID used to register for the app.
This is a major reason I actively want human delivery people to be replaced by robots, I expect that in the long run the negative externalities of the sorts of people who in practice do delivery work are greater than the negative externalities of delivery robots.
Humans can't be scaled as fast as robot deployments. A few are okay but there is no limit to it. A person has to live somewhere and even illegal immigration isn't fully frictionless.
I think autonomous cars will also cause problems because currently if nobody is driving it, it has to stay parked. When it becomes autonomous, you can send it on errands or even to just drive around and try to grab a better parking spot etc. It will mean more humanless cars filling up roads, leading to a feeling of an inhuman ghost town.
If delivery people are causing as many problems as you describe, then it seems trivial to get police to rock up to a food delivery place and just start arresting anyone with illegal vehicles etc.
In reality, the illegal e-motorbikes and scooters cause less issues than cars, but they are visible and it's become popular to demonise them, despite them reducing congestion and being far less dangerous in collisions and producing far less pollution (e.g. tyre wear particulates).
If a new part of this arrest is that the robots are considered to be pedestrians, I wonder what the police would do if the professor replayed the exact same circumstances with a friend in place of the robot?
Decide one of them is delivering something, run into each other at the exact same spot, and call the police to resolve it?
I do this whenever possible. I honestly don't understand why these aren't constantly vandalized. I just wanna peacefully protest them like this ex prof, but there's plenty of folks out there who'd like a free meal that's rolling by in a beach cooler that stops when you stand in its way.
Cars occupy public spaces where more efficient modes of transport have already been mostly driven out, while delivery robots conquer additional public space.
Heh, you got me there. But, it seems like the only legal way to make them unreliable. Have considered turning it upside down, covering or spraying it with paint, or just straight up picking it up and putting it in my van and driving it out to the middle of nowhere, but pretty sure I'd only be able to pick off a few of them before I picked up serious charges.
Mebe could design a sort of cattle guard like snare to embed in my driveway that passes humans, but eats hoverboard wheels.
Preventing this from happening, so we can have reliable robot delivery service, is the point of having an institution of police that can carry out disorderly conduct arrests.
Personally reliable robot delivery service is not a priority for me. Especially when these things already negatively impact the communities they are placed in, take up limited public space, are duel purpose domestic surveillance devices, and are in general an eye sore.
Is it not enough that we've blanketed the country in concrete and asphalt, we've also got to inundate our crosswalks and side walks with thousands of delivery robots and whatever else, and then give them deference? Where the hell are the people supposed to go?
I understand that the ideal human for capitalism is one that sits inside their $6000 a month 10'x10' unipod, never leaves and consumes non-stop, but this is not what I want out of life. I applaud anyone working against these efforts using non-violent protests.
Amen, our fast food deliveries should only be made by humans with questionable immigration status in leased Priuses, and then only so efficiently that they forego bathroom breaks
It is fantastic that someone is defending the noble long-standing profession of Door Dash driver. Its long history and entry path for long careers in delivery driving are fundamental to the strong middle class of this country.
Let's continue this process and protest the use of other automation like commercial dishwashers and street sweeping trucks. After all, they are displacing vitally important jobs.
Now that the cops have helped her get the message out, by arresting her, would a better approach be to go up to the robot, say "Hi, I'm giving these out for free today, if you don't want one, let me know," put a bag over the camera pod, and leave? It seems like her time is too valuable to waste actually blocking the robot.
I think that actually would be much more likely to result in a charge that would be harder to defend against, by intentionally interfering with someone else's property in a more physical/touch way. computer programmers are among the ones who mistakenly that think a charade where you pretend like you might think the robot can respond and say "no thanks" (and weren't really giving them out for free to anyone else) is a legal defense. The law does not work that way.
I look forward to running into you and getting one for free, just to clear up any concern I hereby give you advance permission to put it over my head when I don't respond to your question! So long as you don't tie it shut after and put me in the back of a van or anything like that, just a dainty easily removed placement.
If you truly believe that by giving free bags to the burrito robot, the law compels me to give them to everybody, then I'll give you one gladly, for that is a sweet fantasy.
You couldn't do that to a mute person, an infant or someone's pet, what makes you think it's legal. At least if it was a mute person you could try to claim you didn't know they were a mute, with a robot it's straightforward that you blinded it on purpose because you knew it couldn't respond.
Ah, the problem here is you presumably aren't a corporation and therefore likely didn't consider contributing monetarily to the prosecutor's campaign funds. This is how you get your interests considered by the state.
I don’t agree with her stance, but it’s absurd to call standing in the sidewalk “disorderly conduct.” I hope the judge sees it that way too and dismisses the charge.
There may be no self-driving wheelchairs today, but they will probably exist in a year or two. If/when they do exist, and a self-driving wheelchair were returning to its owner's home after being repaired or tuned up, would it be OK for a pedestrian to block its path, since it's not human nor currently carrying a human?
No there won’t be. They have vans that drop them off for people already.
And just to humor your ridiculous argument: yes it’s okay to do that. Stop wasting the little space there actually is for pedestrians with this unnecessary garbage.
It might be immoral, but certainly not illegal. But, what if the person it was driving to was planning to use it to commit crimes?! Then would it be okay?
And what if Superman was needed to save the world but he was immobilised by a chunk of kryptonite and this selfish protester was blocking the self-motorised claw machine that he’d reprogram (well, his agents would reprogram) into an improvised kryptonite removing device?
Just because something is physically on the sidewalk doesn't mean it is a "sidewalk user".
If you ask me that thing is an autonomous motor vehicle, and as such belongs on the road and its use of the sidewalk is illegal. Just like it would be if its larger Waymo cousin tried to drive there.
Besides, that robot is also blocking and refusing to go out of the way of the human. There are no laws regulating who has to yield on a sidewalk, so good luck figuring our which one is in the wrong.
(2) An individual with a mobility-related disability on a self-propelled wheelchair or an electrical mobility device operated by and designated for the exclusive use of an individual with a mobility-related disability.
I'm sympathetic to her cause; these robots are a waste of space, poorly designed and behaved - the ultimate bad neighbor as you walk down the street. I do believe that delivery robots are inevitable, and I welcome them when they come - but these are not that, and the combination of fees and fines should keep the current model off the streets.
Jaywalking only became a crime because of lobbying from automobile companies. Are you really surprised in who is getting criminalized here now with delivery bots?
good for her. nonviolent obstruction of a commercial endeavor she opposes, much like a sit-in. whether you agree with her perspective or not I think it is important to support her ability to protest in this way, though (as she is well aware) it may come with consequences.
Part of the idea of protesting like this is to elicit arrest. That's what civil disobedience is. It's not a coherent protest strategy if you factor enforcement out!
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Ethical questions like this are a lot easier to discuss if you take for granted that people are acting in good faith.
If you truly cared that much about Amazon and truly felt library participation was so heinous that it ought be obstructed, I think a lot of people would be very skeptical and a lot of people would disagree with that perspective, but yes, those of us who believed you were acting earnestly would indeed appreciate you standing up for your principles in a way that was impactful but not violent.
There's less skepticism of sincerity here and more agreement with the fundamental concern here, but the respect for principle and action covers both, yes.
well yes. if you are OK with getting arrested and charged for demonstrating your political convictions, I support your nonviolent protest. this isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is.
It's civil disobedience, at least once she refused to step aside when told to do so by the police officer. (I don't know if she was breaking the law by obstructing the robot.) So yeah, I would say there is nothing inherently wrong with you obstructing the entry of the local library -- provided you are willing to be peacefully arrested.
That doesn't mean that I agree with your right to obstruct entry into the library, nor does it mean that I agree with your reasons for blocking entry to the library. I also suspect that the courts would reject your reasoning.
That is how picket lines work, yes.
While picket lines sometimes devolve into an unlawful blockade such as a right of way obstruction, or aggravated trespass that is very much _not_ what picket lines are, nor how they work.
As long as you agree with the consequences of that (You'll be arrested quickly), sure why not?
What if the robot was delivering insulin? Would it be such a noble act then?
Not saying I disagree in principle, but the protestor assumes a lot of knowledge.
I'd say that this would bring up a bigger issue: why would Uber Eats be in the business of using robot couriers to deliver vital medications? Sandwiches or non-essential goods? Sure, I can understand this maybe, bracketing societal issues that these machines represent.
Prescription medications are controlled. If this robot is damaged or destroyed, the patient may not get their insulin at all without further authorization from their doctor or their insurance company. Those logistical issues are much thornier than a retired professor blocking a delivery robot.
I think you're missing my point. It's not that it's an Uber eats robot today.
But also diabetic hypoglycemia is a thing too, which could be the case for the person ordering. For the sake of argument.
I'm not missing your point. I'm pointing out that it's an appeal to extremes that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Why insulin? Why not have the robot deliver premature babies from a regional hospital to a central hospital, on a battery powered NICU that only has 30 minutes of battery power?
The argument is unlikely.
It would be incredibly irresponsible to trust the delivery of medication to an unreliable robot.
Never had a pizza show up late from a person?
Key word was "unreliable", not "robot".
Nice try, but the reality is this was just somebody's burrito. And if it were my burrito, I wouldn't be the least bit mad.
I'll bet the person protesting would be of the opinion that it should be delivered by a person regardless of what it was.
Regardless there is a stark difference between medication, which is necessary, and hot prepared meals, which are a luxury.
Are there food delivery robots that deliver insulin?
You're assuming you know what it's carrying. For that matter, the food may be medically urgent for this person.
It may have carried arms for a terrorist! That woman may be a hero!1!
Schrödinger's Robot Carrier. It's simultaneously carrying weapons for terrorists and life saving medication.
Or life saving medication for a terrorist.
Maybe it's medically urgent for this woman to express her frustration at the robots? Maybe it's her only outlet
it would be irresponsible for us to assume otherwise!
It’d be more than a bit stupid to order that via Uber Eats then, wouldn’t it?
So medically urgent the slowest delivery option available is selected? I mean, I kinda get the idea of trying to win an argument online but have some dignity yeah?
Americans gave up dignity many, many years ago.
Insulin delivery is too important to be left to sidewalk robots that are easily stolen, blocked, destroyed (esp. in Philly), or otherwise prone to failure for technical, new technology reasons.
There is no way in a cold hell that fucking UberEats would ever be brave enough to accept the liability necessary for that to be a thing.
Insulin... to children.
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Reasoned argument.
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The protestor assumes nothing more than that these are Uber Eats robots. Getting your Big Mac without moving your ass off the couch doesn't have quite the same moral status as having insulin delivered.
If you need insulin for emergency purposes, call fucking 911, please for the love of god, don't manage your medical emergencies with app based delivery couriers.
Well, if some of these “libertarian” or “capitalist” HN commenters did that, by their own logic, the outcome would be rationally indisputable.
Apparently these robots are classified as pedestrians in Philly. This is a huge mistake, they should be the same as bicycles
> Marvin, 78, said she's not sure how many times she's blocked the path of these robots, which hit the streets of Philadelphia in March. The University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus has made a practice of it to protest "corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line." Her past encounters have circulated online. The Wednesday incident was the first time, however, that the police got involved.
> Officers approached Marvin after she'd been there "quite a long time," she said. They asked her to step aside and let the robot complete its delivery. When she repeatedly refused, they arrested her for disorderly conduct.
Good. I want delivery robots to be able to operate in public, I don't want people like Marvin to be blocking them because they disapprove of the concept of delivery robots or think it's bad that they're displacing human jobs, and I think that a disorderly conduct arrest is an eminently reasonable response from the criminal justice system.
> Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she's doing.
The first amendment doesn't and shouldn't protect interfering with reasonable delivery robot use of the public streets; indeed the law should protect the rights of operators of delivery robots to have their robots deliver items to customers without interference. The criminal justice system should absolutely incarcerate her if she publicly intends to continue interfering with delivery robots.
What about the robot's interfering with my ability to operate in public? Perhaps you've never been at an intersection where one of these things has either died in the middle of the road or is having some kind of malfunction and is inhibiting traffic or commerce. I don't see anyone saying the criminal justice system should incarcerate the CEO of Uber Eats for incalculable damages to society.
In before "there is a difference between a robot accidentally blocking traffic and this woman blocking the robot intentionally" - No the fuck there isn't. If these robots can't be even circumnavigate a stationary elderly woman, or act reliably then they don't belong on the streets and anyone who put them there is acting criminally and negligently about the risks and harms.
And what about the person's right to continue without being obstructed?
It's a standoff. She's literally just standing there. She doesn't move out of her way to let the robot pass - but neither does the robot move to let her pass!
So why should she be the only one arrested and incarcerated? Why not arrest the robot for the same crime?
Sidewalks are for humans to walk on, not dedicated travel corridors for commercial robots. If those robots can't play nice and yield to pedestrians, then they don't belong on the sidewalk.
You don't have that right! All sorts of things can obstruct your walk.
Because the robot is operating normally and not particularly trying to obstruct her or any other person; whereas she is deliberately interfering with the robot because she has a political grievance against delivery robots and thinks it is good to interfere with their normal operation. The law should absolutely make a distinction between those two things when regulating what sorts of physical movement on the public street constitute a crime.
You are making a lot of assumptions about both her and the robot's intentions.
Who's to say the robot hasn't been given bad-faith programming to never yield to assert dominance? What if the human had been blind or in a wheelchair, unable to move out of the way?
Yes; I'm assuming that the paragraph in the linked article:
> Marvin, 78, said she's not sure how many times she's blocked the path of these robots, which hit the streets of Philadelphia in March. The University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus has made a practice of it to protest "corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line." Her past encounters have circulated online. The Wednesday incident was the first time, however, that the police got involved.
is basically accurate.
I don't think the robot has actually been given bad-faith programming to never yield to assert dominance, because I don't think that's something that would be possible to reliably program into present-day robots. I think that the robot is probably programmed to stop moving if it detects an obstacle in front of it, which is only a problem if someone like Marvin who openly states that they have an ideological problem with a corporation using delivery robots deliberately interferes with them on the street.
If a human is blind or in a wheelchair and unable to move, that shouldn't be a crime; but also it should be a reason for people nearby, or perhaps the cops, to help them move, in part so that they stop blocking the sidewalk. And if a person who is blind or in a wheelchair deliberately stays put in the sidewalk blocking it for other peoples' use despite offers to help them move; then they are committing the same kind of crime as Marvin and should be arrested on the same charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
She admitted that her intention was to block the robot and she took actions in furtherance of that, and that she wasn't trying to pass the robot.
The robot was absolutely free to go around her, I truly don't see how what she did was illegal. The next time my kids are out doing sidewalk chalk and the mail carrier walks by, should the kids be arrested for obstructing mail delivery?
If your kids are making a point of getting out their sidewalk chalk to block the way of the mail carrier every time they see one, because they have a political grievance against the post office and want to do everything in their power to interfere with mail delivery, then yes they should be arrested for this. This is quite possibly already a federal crime, in fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
Depends, did they actually block mail delivery and did they do it on purpose in your hypothetical?
1A says she is free to protest human workers by getting in their way in public. Do you think picket lines are illegal? Why is this different because they're robots?
> Do you think picket lines are illegal?
Picket lines that actually block other people from crossing instead of trying to persuade them not to? Yes. Use of threats, physically blocking, or just general impediment? Yes.
Not only does it violate state law (e.g. obstruction of free movement, interference with a business open to the public, false imprisonment, and assault are all offenses here in California depending on the facts), but it also violates NLRA rules.
(e.g. a recent labor case found repeated 1 to 4 minute "inadvertent" blockages unlawful -- https://www.laborrelationslawinsider.com/2018/02/the-nlrb-si...)
The Moscone Act that recognizes picketing federally also makes clear that this is not OK.
> It is not the intent of this section to permit conduct that is unlawful including breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, the unlawful blocking of access or egress to premises where a labor dispute exists, or other similar unlawful activity.
> 1A says she is free to protest human workers by getting in their way in public.
I am not a lawyer but I don't know if the first amendment allows you to block access from others to things. Some things similar to this are covered in this ACLU blog post: https://www.aclu-il.org/news/when-else-can-government-regula....
Picket lines that completely obstruct are illegal generally.
Yea, protest should happen where it doesn't bother anyone. Right.
If someone is bothering me, I don't care if they claim to be doing it in the name of a political protest or not, I just want them to stop. And if they don't stop then I want the criminal justice system to compel them to stop, if necessary with violence (the cops arresting someone is absolutely an act of violence, one that I completely approve of in many cases).
Your claim is that if someone is bothering you then they should be arrested?
I dunno about you, but that's not really how I want our society to work.
As other people have point out, the robot could have navigated around the blockage. Just as you could walk away from someone bothering you without getting the police involved lol.
> Your claim is that if someone is bothering you then they should be arrested?
No, my claim is that people who violate public order laws in the public street should be arrested even if they claim that the reason it's important for them to violate those public order laws is because they're protesting something and a protest won't be effective unless it annoys people. I want that to not be an effective defense against getting immediately arrested and physically removed from the scene by cops.
I might agree with you to some extent. At the same time, I find your apparent desire to immediately weaponize the police against protestors fairly disturbing. "Immediate" arrest and physical removal should not be the default first response in a situation like a peaceful protest.
If it's an actual peaceful protest, that just involves people advocating for something in the public commons that doesn't disrupt the ability of anyone else to the use the public commons, then sure this is a reasonable point. I was responding to the person who said sarcastically "Yea, protest should happen where it doesn't bother anyone. Right.", who would likely not find that kind of actually-peaceful protest likely to be effective.
And I do actually want immediate arrest and physical removal to be the default first response in a situation like an effective protest. I do not want people to get away with disrupting the public commons and then claiming that they were justified in doing so because they were carrying out a protest. Indeed, I want the police to immediately arrest and physically remove anyone at all who is disrupting the public commons. The police are a weapon, and I want that weapon used effectively against people who disrupt the public commons, so that the public commons can be usable by everyone.
> Marvin, 78, said
"I've got a terrible pain in the diodes all down my left side. Life, don't talk to me about life!"
[flagged]
You've been repeatedly posting abusive comments and other comments that break the guidelines. This needs stop if you want to keep participating here. We have to ban accounts that keep posting like this after they've had fair warning. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Thanks
These things should not be allowed to use sidewalks. They are a disturbance and annoyance taking space away from humans walking, chatting, etc.
I don't think that saving delivery jobs is the main issue, these jobs didn't even exist a few years ago and their working conditions are anyway quite bad. It's a bigger social question why deliveries are getting so common nowadays across many countries including also different parts of Europe. I already find delivery scooters unseemly and they often drive recklessly. Ramping up this stuff even more will just lead to more social isolation, and with that conflict and generally low-trust societies.
I wonder if there is some kind of city tax on these robots. You certainly shouldn't be allowed to just put an unlimited number of these things on the sidewalks and push the negative externalities on everyone else. Same way you need permits for drones, which are also a visual pollution and potential constant privacy invasion. Cars on the road are already taxed, not sure about these.
>I wonder if there is some kind of city tax on these robots.
No, it's the state law that permits these robots. The operator obtains a permit from the state and as far as I can tell, if there are any costs they are in the permit itself, not in taxes on each unit.
Really you can't see why getting stuff delivered to your door is popular, or is this a rhetorical question
I don't think they're saying they're confused about the psyche of individual people electing for delivery.
The "social question" to explore is about how so many people collectively came to see leaving the house, interacting with others humans, and setting aside work or idle distractions as bad things to be bought off with cash that we had to work to earn.
We know that people like delivery and we know that people don't like the alternatives I mention above, but that wasn't always the case and it's probably worth slowing down to think about what change and whether that might correlate with other concerns.
Ah, that one is easy. These services would have been popular in the past had they existed, but they didn't. There were no apps and no immigrant slave labour. Now that these things exist, the services exist and have become popular. Turns out people like others doing stuff for them. For example, maids. Who wouldn’t want to have one if they could pay for her?
You might want to check your priors.
Suitably cheap labor and the opportunity to hire them has almost never not been available, but industrial-society middle class people who could otherwise afford it long found it to be a luxury to indulge in only occasionally (family pizza night, a cleaning service before the big party, etc) -- not because of unavailability or inaffordability but because class-culture norms acknoweledged it as irresponsible, wasteful, and foolish.
It would be embarrassing largesse to have somebody make a $7 iced coffee and then have somebody else deliver it for another $5. It would be like going to the grocery store in a tuxedo. You might be able to afford it, you might own a tuxedo, but it was just seen as sort of an absurd class theater.
Those norms have changed radically in the last couple decades, and not just on this matter.
Apps have made things so much easier. You get a list of restaurants and you choose your order. You know what restaurants are available, no need to know their phone numbers, you have the menu, the prices, no more waiting for them to pick up the phone or understand you in the noisy restaurant over the phone. If the experience sucks the app will reimburse you.
And immigrant slave labour has made it all affordable.
A delivery robot has much fewer externalities than your typical delivery person. In a lot of big cities, the person delivering your order will typically be using an illegal e-bike or scooter, flagrantly disobeying traffic laws, and completely uninsured. Oh and good luck enforcing any judgements on them, since they look nothing like the ID used to register for the app.
This is a major reason I actively want human delivery people to be replaced by robots, I expect that in the long run the negative externalities of the sorts of people who in practice do delivery work are greater than the negative externalities of delivery robots.
> the sorts of people who in practice do delivery work
And what sort of people might that be?
Humans can't be scaled as fast as robot deployments. A few are okay but there is no limit to it. A person has to live somewhere and even illegal immigration isn't fully frictionless.
I think autonomous cars will also cause problems because currently if nobody is driving it, it has to stay parked. When it becomes autonomous, you can send it on errands or even to just drive around and try to grab a better parking spot etc. It will mean more humanless cars filling up roads, leading to a feeling of an inhuman ghost town.
If delivery people are causing as many problems as you describe, then it seems trivial to get police to rock up to a food delivery place and just start arresting anyone with illegal vehicles etc.
In reality, the illegal e-motorbikes and scooters cause less issues than cars, but they are visible and it's become popular to demonise them, despite them reducing congestion and being far less dangerous in collisions and producing far less pollution (e.g. tyre wear particulates).
Is it customary to tip these delivery devices?
I suggest they should be tipped on their back.
This lady has my full support.
Here's the relevant criminal code for disorderly conduct in Philly, if anyone wants to play armchair lawyer:
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/philadelphia/latest/ph...
This is also relevant: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/75/00.001.00...
It classifies a delivery robot as a pedestrian, so she was impeding pedestrian traffic.
Maybe it's Bluesky selection bias, but it feels like are a large chunk of social science professors are essentially full-time political activists.
This one is retired, so I suppose they could be protesting full time. Someone certainly has to in this lawless age.
you got the causality wrong. political activists become social science professors
If a new part of this arrest is that the robots are considered to be pedestrians, I wonder what the police would do if the professor replayed the exact same circumstances with a friend in place of the robot?
Decide one of them is delivering something, run into each other at the exact same spot, and call the police to resolve it?
If robots are pedestrians you just need to convince ICE they are not true Americans
I do this whenever possible. I honestly don't understand why these aren't constantly vandalized. I just wanna peacefully protest them like this ex prof, but there's plenty of folks out there who'd like a free meal that's rolling by in a beach cooler that stops when you stand in its way.
Is it not better for takeout food to be traveling this way than by car?
Cars occupy public spaces where more efficient modes of transport have already been mostly driven out, while delivery robots conquer additional public space.
I don't want a creepy remote control beach cooler filming me period.
I'm not sure blocking it is gonna make it film you less.
Heh, you got me there. But, it seems like the only legal way to make them unreliable. Have considered turning it upside down, covering or spraying it with paint, or just straight up picking it up and putting it in my van and driving it out to the middle of nowhere, but pretty sure I'd only be able to pick off a few of them before I picked up serious charges.
Mebe could design a sort of cattle guard like snare to embed in my driveway that passes humans, but eats hoverboard wheels.
Preventing this from happening, so we can have reliable robot delivery service, is the point of having an institution of police that can carry out disorderly conduct arrests.
Personally reliable robot delivery service is not a priority for me. Especially when these things already negatively impact the communities they are placed in, take up limited public space, are duel purpose domestic surveillance devices, and are in general an eye sore.
Is it not enough that we've blanketed the country in concrete and asphalt, we've also got to inundate our crosswalks and side walks with thousands of delivery robots and whatever else, and then give them deference? Where the hell are the people supposed to go?
I understand that the ideal human for capitalism is one that sits inside their $6000 a month 10'x10' unipod, never leaves and consumes non-stop, but this is not what I want out of life. I applaud anyone working against these efforts using non-violent protests.
Amen, our fast food deliveries should only be made by humans with questionable immigration status in leased Priuses, and then only so efficiently that they forego bathroom breaks
Why are those the only two options in your mind?
It is fantastic that someone is defending the noble long-standing profession of Door Dash driver. Its long history and entry path for long careers in delivery driving are fundamental to the strong middle class of this country.
Let's continue this process and protest the use of other automation like commercial dishwashers and street sweeping trucks. After all, they are displacing vitally important jobs.
People have been delivering pizza since... well since pizza was invented probably.
It's only recently that companies like doordash turned it into gig faux contractors.
Now that the cops have helped her get the message out, by arresting her, would a better approach be to go up to the robot, say "Hi, I'm giving these out for free today, if you don't want one, let me know," put a bag over the camera pod, and leave? It seems like her time is too valuable to waste actually blocking the robot.
I think that actually would be much more likely to result in a charge that would be harder to defend against, by intentionally interfering with someone else's property in a more physical/touch way. computer programmers are among the ones who mistakenly that think a charade where you pretend like you might think the robot can respond and say "no thanks" (and weren't really giving them out for free to anyone else) is a legal defense. The law does not work that way.
I understand the point you're trying to make, but I'm a lion tamer and I have plenty of bags to give away.
I look forward to running into you and getting one for free, just to clear up any concern I hereby give you advance permission to put it over my head when I don't respond to your question! So long as you don't tie it shut after and put me in the back of a van or anything like that, just a dainty easily removed placement.
If you truly believe that by giving free bags to the burrito robot, the law compels me to give them to everybody, then I'll give you one gladly, for that is a sweet fantasy.
No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
You couldn't do that to a mute person, an infant or someone's pet, what makes you think it's legal. At least if it was a mute person you could try to claim you didn't know they were a mute, with a robot it's straightforward that you blinded it on purpose because you knew it couldn't respond.
What's to stop someone from going full Gallagher, just going to town with a 16lb sledgehammer, on these things?
They have cameras, presumably livestreaming back to the mothership for that exact reason.
Why would that stop someone?
People usually don't like sitting in jail for destruction of property. Having videotaped evidence of your crime tends to rapidly lead to that.
I have crystal clear full 1080p video of a burgler stealing several items from my garage.
When the police arrested him, six months later for another crime, the prosecutor decided not to pursue my case because of insufficient evidence.
Anecdotal, for sure. But it's no guarantee that it being on video means prosecution.
Ah, the problem here is you presumably aren't a corporation and therefore likely didn't consider contributing monetarily to the prosecutor's campaign funds. This is how you get your interests considered by the state.
OK lets say that 10 different delivery services use these robots and they block the sidewalks then would they be allowed to block human traffic?
I don’t agree with her stance, but it’s absurd to call standing in the sidewalk “disorderly conduct.” I hope the judge sees it that way too and dismisses the charge.
Standing in the sidewalk, and refusing to get out of the way of another sidewalk user.
I mean, I could block a wheelchair user by standing in a cut-out, too. Is that OK?
A wheelchair user is a person. Uber’s property is not.
They're both classified as pedestrians under Pennsylvania law.
If an empty self-driving wheelchair were on its way to pick up its owner, would it be OK for a pedestrian to block its way?
There are no self-driving wheelchairs, let alone ones driving outside.
And in what world is it possibly driving around empty? Where's the owner, crawling around on the floor for fun?
There may be no self-driving wheelchairs today, but they will probably exist in a year or two. If/when they do exist, and a self-driving wheelchair were returning to its owner's home after being repaired or tuned up, would it be OK for a pedestrian to block its path, since it's not human nor currently carrying a human?
No there won’t be. They have vans that drop them off for people already.
And just to humor your ridiculous argument: yes it’s okay to do that. Stop wasting the little space there actually is for pedestrians with this unnecessary garbage.
It might be immoral, but certainly not illegal. But, what if the person it was driving to was planning to use it to commit crimes?! Then would it be okay?
And what if Superman was needed to save the world but he was immobilised by a chunk of kryptonite and this selfish protester was blocking the self-motorised claw machine that he’d reprogram (well, his agents would reprogram) into an improvised kryptonite removing device?
Just because something is physically on the sidewalk doesn't mean it is a "sidewalk user".
If you ask me that thing is an autonomous motor vehicle, and as such belongs on the road and its use of the sidewalk is illegal. Just like it would be if its larger Waymo cousin tried to drive there.
Besides, that robot is also blocking and refusing to go out of the way of the human. There are no laws regulating who has to yield on a sidewalk, so good luck figuring our which one is in the wrong.
Wrong. https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/75/00.001.00...
> "Pedestrian." Any of the following:
(1) An individual afoot.
(2) An individual with a mobility-related disability on a self-propelled wheelchair or an electrical mobility device operated by and designated for the exclusive use of an individual with a mobility-related disability.
(3) A personal delivery device.
And California has a law declaring that bees are fish.
Just because you legislate something doesn't make it true, and the law can be changed at any time.
I'm against them too, except ... in case someone is not physically capable to go out and get dinner.
If I was sick at home, I would be very angry at that professor.
We've already ceded so much public space to vehicles and now we must give up the last walkable slivers to commercial robots. Fuck them.
Needs to be more people blocking these robo-scabs.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112963
I'm sympathetic to her cause; these robots are a waste of space, poorly designed and behaved - the ultimate bad neighbor as you walk down the street. I do believe that delivery robots are inevitable, and I welcome them when they come - but these are not that, and the combination of fees and fines should keep the current model off the streets.
Is this the new "dog bites man"?
and yet no-one is arrested when these things block pedestrians
Or when, for example, Waymo blocks my ambulance or public transit.
THIS. They are so fucking slow, and drive straight down the center blocking the whole sidewalk.
Jaywalking only became a crime because of lobbying from automobile companies. Are you really surprised in who is getting criminalized here now with delivery bots?
And for good reason too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea