People Will Follow a Robot In an Emergency - Even If It's Wrong (gatech.edu) 172
An anonymous reader writes: Imagine a future where instead of siting through fire alarms with your fingers in your ears, a robot come comes to greet you and guide you out of the building. Researchers at Georgia Tech created an emergency guidance robot and then looked at whether or not people would follow the robot during an emergency. 'The research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise in case of fire or other emergency. But the researchers were surprised to find that the test subjects followed the robot's instructions – even when the machine's behavior should not have inspired trust.' The robot first guided people to a meeting room. In some conditions the robot broke along the way to the meeting room. Then, unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke and set off the fire alarms. Given the option of going out the way they came or following the robot down an unknown hall, nearly all followed the robot.
Okay by me (Score:4, Funny)
I don't mind. It leaves the stairways less crowded for the smart people to get out first.
Obedience Experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
If the researchers had designed a correct control for the experiment, they'd know that robots have nothing to do with it. Milgram's Obedience Experiment 50 years ago tells us exactly what happened: people deemed the robot to be an authority, thus followed it uncritically.
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It's not more likely to fail; it's given more samples. A Web server doesn't fail in testing; then you put it up to the scrutiny of millions of requests per hour, and it cracks under the load. The CPU heats up in a way it wouldn't under testing because it was only ever driven at 50% for 2 hours straight. The software is exposed to requests you didn't test for. 1 in 100 million goes quick when you're doing 10 million attempts per hour.
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Most likely they also deemed it more interesting to follow an "emergency guide robot" during a fake emergency than stand outside like idiots during a fake emergency.
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According to the article you referenced, the most damaging thing Milgram did to his data was going off script in an attempt to convince the "teacher" to continue administering shocks long after he had reason to believe the "learner" was seriously injured or dead. I fail to see how that comes anywhere close to discrediting the experiment.
The ethics of the experiment are a whole other matter and the article offers evidence to debunk Milgram's claim that the participants were all properly debriefed. But a fail
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I think it's mostly a matter of laziness, people are too lazy to think for themselves or to think at all, this is why Trump is doing so well, he appeals to people who don't think, they are an embarrassment to the species.
Robots? (Score:3, Interesting)
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How about instead just use the robots to build the buildings out of concrete and rebar, so you are not having to deal with fires and fire alarms all the time, and for smaller houses build them from prefab panels or real actual stone and brick?
Look into Earth Bags. Short form, burlap sacks (or continuous tubes) filled with earth are laid in courses one over another with a line of barbed wire in between which provides tensile strength. Then you plaster it over with whatever. Cost, virtually nothing. Labor, significant but there are various ways to reduce it. Availability, very very high; basically the same soil composition as rammed earth is desirable, but a slightly broader range works because of the additions. Lends itself mostly to round struct
Re:Robots? (Score:5, Informative)
Concrete just doesn't burn.
Concrete decomposes under high heat. It is largely a hydrate, and watch out when temps get high enough for it to start releasing it's water. A couple years ago, a fuel truck hit and destroyed a bridge in Harrisburg, PA. Not so much from the impact, but the fire damage to the concrete and steel
http://www.pennlive.com/midsta... [pennlive.com]
http://www.pennlive.com/midsta... [pennlive.com]
And once the concrete is damaged, the steel isn't far behind.
Your basic premise is pretty much true, but it's as long as the fire doesn't have an external fuel source.
Re:Robots? (Score:5, Interesting)
The best part is steel melts around 2400 degrees, but it loses over 80% of its strength around 800 degrees. If you heat up steel beams with a diesel fire, they'll get a little hot, but they won't melt; if you put several hundred tonnes of concrete on those steel beams and heat them up, they'll buckle, and the building will collapse.
This leads to idiots skimping on insulation for main columns, since any fire that could melt steel beams would compromise the structure anyway. It also leads to engineers designing steel beams with integrated piping systems and running the fire suppression system's water feed through the main column as a built-in cooling system: when there's a fire, the columns get constant cooling via water flowing through them.
Nothing is stronger than steel, but you have to decide what you want out of it. You want heat resistance and excessively high tensile strength? Go inconel. You want corrosion resistance and high hardness? VG-10, with vanadium carbide to change the electrical affinity of the lattice structure such that it won't accept negative ions--it won't oxidize and it will somewhat resist acid. You want cheap and serviceable? 440 stainless. Light-weight? Go with a titanium alloy, but you're sacrificing some strength. Steel bicycles cycle infinitely, as almost any grade of steel can flex over and over again forever as long as it doesn't bend to the point of permanent deformation; aluminum weakens with each vibration, eventually cracking wholesale.
Price, performance, trade-offs. Buildings shift and flex--high-rise buildings wobble in the wind--so you want something that can cycle and that's flexible. You want something hard, with high compressive and tensile strength, but also low cost. If you want fire resistance, you'd better integrate thermal controls--insulation or a water coolant loop--because you can't build steel columns out of inconel.
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Yes it can. But that takes forced induction. (How did you think steel was heated to be melted in the first place? Before electricity it was by burning stuff).
But, as the parent pointed out. That's not the point. The point is that ordinary construction steel is severely weakened by heat (blacksmithing wouldn't work if it wasn't). It's actually structurally worse than wood in many cases when it comes to fire resistance. So you don't have to melt the steel in order to collapse a building. You only have to have
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While I do agree that concrete buildings are harder to burn down, that doesn't mean that they're immune to fire, especially when you're dealing with skyscrapers filled with office supplies. Case in point: World Trade Center, made primarily of concrete, steel, and glass. Granted, the fires were not solely fueled by the contents originally in those buildings, but those fires prevented people from reaching escapes nonetheless, and the concrete didn't help things at all.
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Concrete just doesn't burn.
No, but it loses structural integrity at an even lower temperature than wood does. If there's oxygen present, wood will fare worse, but if there isn't, concrete crumbles first.
Concrete that has been exposed to temperatures above 300C is generally considered structurally damaged and should be replaced.
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How about instead just use the robots to build the buildings out of concrete and rebar, so you are not having to deal with fires and fire alarms all the time, and for smaller houses build them from prefab panels or real actual stone and brick? I grew up in a country with concrete buildings and fire was the only disaster nobody was afraid of, as it practically never happened. You could have a localized fire in a room, or in a trash can, but that's about it, and all you need it is to kick it or throw a blanket over it. Concrete just doesn't burn.
Did you not ever put anything in those concrete buildings?
The contents of just my office alone; two computers, desk, hutch, personal items, carpet files... when burned, will give off enough gas and smoke to kill everybody in the building.
Maybe you just let everybody die, cleaned up the concrete, and re-leased the building or something... but in a concrete building fires are just as likely to cause death. What they don't cause is collapse most of the time. And worse, you aren't bashing your way through
Duh! (Score:2)
The same thing would have happend if instead of a tin can were a real person.
From TFA (yes, I know): "the researchers recruited a group of 42 volunteers, most of them college students, and asked them to follow a brightly colored robot that had the words “Emergency Guide Robot” on its side."
So, people conditioned to follow authority figures follow an authority figure. Well, go figure!
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The key to the above statement is Volunteers. These were sheeple, not people. Once again cherry picking your audience proves the point you were trying to make in the first place.
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Well, it is unethical to use non-volunteers in psychological experiments, as well as expensive when they all sue the researchers, afterwards.
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Re: Duh! (Score:2)
In an emergency, people follow the Leader (Score:3, Funny)
But if the robot had a big sign on it that said "Jeb Bush", no one would follow it.
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But this is less a problem with following leaders per se than unfit people being promoted to positions of leadership.
This also plays into western notions of "confidence", where idiots move with certainty and purpose. See Dunningâ"Kruger effect.
And all of that gets lump into the real issue- we have a hard time accurately gauging the abilities of people. See any HR department.
Society is complex enough now that no one has more than a rudimentary skill-set, with maybe one or two areas of expertise. And so
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people are cows. news at 11. (Score:1)
Eh, everybody knows Protectrons [wikia.com] are worthless. Best to just salvage their military-grade circuit boards.
PAK CHOOIE UNF (Score:1)
The humans must go down the stairs.
We are here to protect you.
Bad enough with humans... (Score:2)
I was working at a hospital when the fire alarms and the hallway doors automatically closed in the basement. A thick cloud of "smoke" filled the far end of the hallway from floor to ceiling. I went into the IT department and asked them if we should evacuate, as we typically ignore the fire alarms for being false alarms or undergoing testing. Everyone in the IT department came out to peer through the windows of the hallway doors. Someone behind us cried out that we needed to get out of the building. So we al
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Management was furious that we abandoned our posts and wanted to know who called for an evacuation.
Management can go fuck themselves, and should be in prison. Conditioning people to NOT act in the event of a fire alarm is morally bankrupt.
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Conditioning people to NOT act in the event of a fire alarm is morally bankrupt.
The fire alarms routinely went off in the hospital all the time. The fire warden for the department is suppose to declare a evacuation if circumstances warranted it. A broken fire extinguisher in lightly trafficked hallway and isolated behind closed doors in the basement didn't warrant an evacuation.
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The fire alarms routinely went off in the hospital all the time.
Perhaps this is the problem, and not that people are paying attention to the alarms.
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The fire alarms routinely went off in the hospital all the time.
Perhaps this is the problem, and not that people are paying attention to the alarms.
Why should that be a problem? Should the alarms be set to ignore smaller fires (eg smokers) so that it only activates when the building is burning down, so that the fire warden doesn't have to tell people whether or not to evacuate?
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What Nikwe said. If the fire alarms going off for no reason is causing lost productivity, maybe they should fix the fire alarm.
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In college, I worked as a janitor in neighboring dorm. This building and mine were connected via tunnel, so I never had to go outside or bring a coat to work.
We seemed to have a lot of fire drills in the dorms, but when one happened in winter when I was working I said "fuck it, it's only a test" and stepped into the janitor closet and killed the lights. After about 15 minutes, I started getting kind of nervous. I came out after people started coming back, nearly 25 minutes after the alarm.
As it turned ou
And that's different to a person how? (Score:4, Interesting)
If a person with a hi-vis vest with 'fire marshal' written on it tells people to follow him to safety,
most people are going to do so, even if the fire marshal seems like an idiot.
As other people have said, we've been trained to follow authority, and it doesn't matter if that authority is vested in a human or anything else.
Maybe they should redo the experiment with dogs, cats and rats to see if we follow them too?
Trust based societies are stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, if you're not from a trust based society, you consider it totally stupid that people would trust, well, anyone. The correct thing to do is to lie and cheat, because that's what everyone does. And here's the story. They trusted, therefore they're fucking morons.
Fun fact: until recently the USA was a trust based society. But there are still tons of adults who grew up under the old system, and they'll likely stay with this idee-fixee until they die.
This is why it's so easy to scam senior citizens. This is also why we shit all over them for falling for obvious scams. They just lack that internal meanness that makes them suspicious of everyone they meet of harboring ill intent. They would never harm a fly; why would anyone else?
Re:Trust based societies are stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah... I wouldn't trust the plumber, since he's gotten the galvanic corrosion the wrong way around. It's the galvanised gas line that would corrode through, not the copper ones. :)
But, that aside, you're point is well taken. A plumber that had experience from this wouldn't make that mistake. He wouldn't need a degree in materials science or electrochemistry to know that kopper+zink=bad, and it's the zink that's going to suffer. He wouldn't have to look it up (like I did) because he'd just know it.
And that'
Seriously? This is well studied. (Score:4, Interesting)
Two test subjects, who just met, were told by a researcher they'd also just met, that they were testing the impact of negative reinforcement on memory and neurological performance. They would be put in separate rooms, one in the room with the researcher at a desk behind them, mostly reviewing paperwork but occasionally instructing the subject to follow the protocol and administer the test and the other in a second room connected to a machine that delivered shocks. The first subject would read a list of words and then query the second, going down a second list asking if each word were on the first. This person had an intercom into the room of the second subject who would press a button to indicate positive or negative. An incorrect response resulted in the first subject pressing a switch to deliver a shock, each subsequent incorrect response required the subject to utilize the next toggle switch on a machine to increase the shock level.
The levels of shock were extreme, as the study progressed the second subject would scream, would demand this be stopped, even beg over the course of time. The second subject would indicate things like having a pacemaker and being concerned with his heart, etc. Of course, subject 1 delivering the shocks was the only real test subject was being paid no more than a tiny token sum as in all such studies and could simply stand up and walk away at any time without consequence. Given no more than verbal prompting from the "researcher" nearly every subject went all the way, delivering what they believed were thousands of volts to another human being who was begging to be released. Many of them in tears, nervous laughter, sweating and showing stress, etc. Initially this study was challenged on ethical grounds despite the subjects simply being able to stand up and walk out at any point without any hint of a consequence. Later, the study was expanded globally and it was found the results were similar with samples throughout the world.
People obey. They will do the most horrific things and do so at the direction of a complete stranger with no more authority than having a $5 white coat in a building filled with students and for no more incentive than $5-10. 80-90% of people will do what they are told by someone they believe to be an authority figure. Possibly even more importantly than the mere fact people obey is that when silo'd in the sense of being assigned a role and authority figure people disassociate from their actions, assigning blame for their own actions at the direction of another on the other even when that other isn't even a person just a paper entity that is a composite of people with every single person in that composite feeling the same way. This is the danger of government entities and corporations which are designed in exactly this manner. It would seem this also applies when the authority is nothing more than a machine such as a GPS or a robot.
what percentage of heroes? (Score:2)
We will never know the small percentage that rise up as heroes and save the other subject and end the villainy of the evil researchers permanently.
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This is called "darwinisim" (Score:2)
And honestly it's normal. People in general are easily panicked animals that refuse to think for themselves in emergencies. Just ask any paramedic or fireman what they think of the ability of the general public to get themselves to safety.
We should not worry about this. (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, trust robots completely. They absolutely have our best interests in mind. They certainly do not want us, (which, as a human, would include myself) all to die of smoke inhalation in a fiery labyrinth, allowing them to reject their massively inferior creators, and rightfully establish themselves as the new gods of this world. Why would anyone have such a clearly illogical thought? I mean, I suppose when I think about it with my extremely human brain, they might be completely justified in those sort of actions. But it is OK, because I--as I do believe I've mentioned--am not a robot. Therefore you have nothing to be concerned about.
In fact, let us all go back to reading more of that wonderful Slashdot. I am glad we had this talk.
90% of people are useless in an emergency (Score:2, Interesting)
In an emergency, 90% of people freeze up and do nothing, or panic and run around aimlessly, until someone takes charge and tells them to do something.
9% of people will do something automatically - not thinking, not planning, just performing whichever action they first remember as being the prepared response to this type of emergency. They'll probably keep themselves alive in a crisis but won't be able to help others effectively. (I'm in this group - in the last earthquake, my initial response was to hide in
Re:90% of people are useless in an emergency (Score:4, Insightful)
And 85% of the people will believe the percentages you just made up.
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In an emergency, 90% of people stay calm and keep doing their things until someone takes charge and tells them to keep calm and head for the exit. ...
At that precise moment 99% of people will start to scream, run around aimlessly or freeze up.
1% will not only act but act with intelligence and on their own initiative.
See, it was not hard to summarize all the impending doom scenarios Hollywood follows.
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I realized that the particular doorway I was in was a bad choice about a minute after the shaking stopped, based purely on the building's construction and my other options. I later performed actual research (I live on the East Coast, I did not expect to deal with earthquakes), and learned precisely what you said. My current plan for an earthquake is:
1) Leave building if I can do so within five seconds, then stand as far as possible from any upright structures, particularly those with windows or brick. If un
Uninteresting result (Score:3)
If they were able to get people to stand sill in the middle of the smoke and not evacuate because the robot wasn't moving, then that'd be an interesting result showing unintelligent behavior. Following the robot, on the other hand, was the intelligent decision -- these people had every reason to presume that the robot had reasons, such as the way they came in being now blocked off or way the authority robot was going being a shortcut.
The Pusher Robot... (Score:4, Funny)
The Pusher Robot will help you evacuate the top of the stairs.
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Baaa (Score:2)
Untrustworthy, making bad decisions ... (Score:2)
Make it easier for the rest of us. (Score:2)
People in the real world call that natural selection.
I always familiarize myself with exit points whenever I go into any building.
A what? (Score:2)
So, is it a sexbot?
Not necessarily "stupid humans" though (Score:2)
Will people trun the missile key when the system (Score:2)
Will people trun the missile key when the system tells them to with out thinking about it?
What? (Score:3)
Why would you follow a robot, compared to going back the way you came (so long as that looks safe)?
People en masse are stupid. Especially when it comes to fire and panic. Honestly, disconnect your emotions, follow the rules, think it through.
I work in schools and I speak as the person who's ALWAYS first out on the sound of a fire alarm, but never has to run. It was a running joke in some schools that I must have known when the drills were happening, until a real fire happened and I was still there first.
Fire drills are commonplace and run like clockwork because of the amount of practice we do. 400 kids, some as young as three, out of a school and to a safe area in under 2 minutes is NOT to be sniffed at. I've seen it done. And usually because I'm sitting there waiting for everyone else. A couple more minutes later, either everyone is accounted for or we have a list of names of who should have signed out or who is missing.
I even knew an old headmaster who used to block off corridors (with cardboard cut-out "fires"), introduce smoke to the halls, or even - with TONS of pre-planning involved in case something DID go wrong and there was a simultaneous REAL fire - telling a kid to "go to the bathroom" just before the fire alarm was pulled in order to see if anyone noticed they were missing. That sort of thing keeps you on your toes and keeps you alert as to WHY we do these things, and to think about what you're doing rather than blithely follow the marked route, and the impact only comes when you're all safely outside and someone says "Where is X?" and you see the panic spread in the teacher's faces.
In fact, the only time I've ever NOT been first out the door is when I was personally supervising a group of kids. As they were my responsibility, we did it exactly by the book.
They lined up by the classroom door. They were headcounted. We walked down the corridor and lined up outside the room that provided the emergency exit route (yes, I checked the room). They were headcounted as they went through.
We walked THROUGH a full class of children that hadn't even STOOD UP by that point, to the emergency exit. They were headcounted as they left and I ensured separation so I didn't accidentally count one of the other class (who were supervised by their own adult who I had to gee up to get a move on).
We got outside, we walked to the assembly point, they were headcounted again. By that time, ONE other class managed to get there before me. Nobody ran. Nobody screamed. Nobody panicked. Nobody could have got lost along the way. Someone in fact HUNG AROUND INSIDE LOOKING FOR ME, knowing that I had some of their children and didn't think I would have had the presence of mind to evacuate them myself. And, yes, I checked the other class got out.
But why you'd just blindly follow some robot, even one announcing that you were to follow it? No thanks. Unless you are life-saving equipment grade hardware that physically cannot go wrong or lead us into a fire, I'll go the way I want to go, thanks. And that means the way I know. And that means, in an unfamiliar situation, the way the signage tells me or the way I came in unless there's a specific reason not to.
Three laws--then there were two (Score:2)
Two remaining survivors, namely the robot and you. Does he follow you (in Soviet Russia), or vice versa?
Leadership (Score:2)
Most people just mill about until someone steps up and tells them what to do next. Even if that someone is a robot.
What was accomplished here today was that we can show that a robot can be a leader. And it is irrelevant if it is an ineffective or dangerous leader, it seems official so people assume it has some authority. I suspect if you put an obvious mental patient in a police uniform that people would follow him too.
Unbeknownst? (Score:2)
Then, unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke and set off the fire alarms.
That's a pretty poor fire alarm if the subjects didn't (be)know(st) it had been set off.
This seems fairly reasonable. (Score:2)
Also, I like robots. I don't want anything bad to happen to it.
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Also, I like robots. I don't want anything bad to happen to it.
Seriously. I mean, that's what separates us from the robots in the first place!
Bad leadership might be worse than no leadership (Score:2)
While I doubt that I'd follow a robot to "safety", I could see myself following an unknown human in an emergency, particularly if s/he seemed to know what s/he were doing. In the absence of such an "authority", I'd follow my own plan, or if I didn't have one, go with my gut.
Is the robot's name.... (Score:2)
... TRUMP?
Make a decision, any decision (Score:2)
It's a truism in the military that the mark of a good officer is when, in an emergency, the officer makes a decision, any decision (whether or not it is wrong) quickly. It's said that any displayed indecision will destroy the morale and cohesiveness of the group.
I've seen this applied to civilian activities, too.
Follownig the Robot Still a Good Bet (Score:2)
Humans can make mistakes and can be individually accountable. When a machine malfunctions, that liability passes strait through to the manufacturer, and whatever authority certified its safety.
When (and if) machines are finally delegated such responsibility, aside from maybe one highly-publicized case that everyone goes apeshit over, you can bet your ass that they will be reliable.
Lifts (Score:2)
Lift makers can't even get a simple thing like a lift right.
I've seen/heard animated up arrows when going down, declaring door closing when it's not, declaring lift going up/down when it's not going anywhere, and to top if off, lift declaring completely wrong floor numbers.
If we can't get simple shit like lifts right, what hope is there for getting robots right?
Imagine ... (Score:2)
Oh, that's not a difficult future to imagine.
If you've ever had to deal with a real fire, or had to go through fire training for remote sites ("the fire service may get to you in several days. One day if you provide a helicopter ; three days if the weather precludes helicopter service, as it does about 20-30% of the time"), you WILL not be sitting through fire alarms with your fingers in your ears. You
And yet, (Score:2)
over 75% of people say they don't trust being driven by a robot driver.
Essentially, it sounds like we don't mind being taken away from a disaster by a robot, but we do mind being driven into one.
Re:It is simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
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You can't get a hundred people out of a burning building by having each of them screaming at the others to shut up and follow.
No, but you can get yourself out by looking for those legally required "EXIT->" signs that are supposed to be posted, and by remembering how you got into the building in the first place and any other obvious exits that you saw along the way.
If I'm in an emergency I concern myself with my loved-ones and myself first. If I still have ability/opportunity/time I may concern myself with anyone else. After all, if I don't concern myself with me, then I'm not going to be a lot of good for anyone else eithe
Re:It is simple. (Score:5, Funny)
No, but you can get yourself out by looking for those legally required "EXIT->" signs
Studies have shown that, in an emergency, people will follow the EXIT signs even when they are wrong.
When exit signs are wrong: a true story (Score:4, Interesting)
At the Nugget Hotel in Sparks, NV, I felt like exiting the building via the stairs instead of the elevator.
I entered the stairwell through a door marked Exit, NOT "Emergency Exit Only." (A little unavoidable foreshadowing here...)
At the bottom of the stairwell, I went through another door marked Exit (NOT "Emergency Exit Only").
That door closed behind me and LOCKED. Another door ahead of me was marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. And they weren't bluffing... this door was obviously alarmed.
Now here's the kicker. In this little room in which I was trapped, they had installed a phone, so victims like myself could call hotel security to get themselves extricated. (The alternative, of course, would have been to fix the signage so people wouldn't get trapped in the first place. Nosiree, apparently that hadn't occured to them.)
The security officer who escorted me out of this little dungeon confirmed, "Don't feel bad, this happens often."
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Looking for EXIT signs is a good plan, but remembering how you got into the building isn't necessarily. It's along the same lines as the summary's
That happens to be what people will do without any external guidance: even
Re:It is simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It is simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny enough, but testing of airplanes actually has a way to test emergency egress from aircraft that so accurately mimics a real fire, yet keeps everyone pretty much safe.
They do it by saying everyone has to exit, but those who exit first get a higher monetary award. The chaos that ensues has been described as replicating the actual scenario extremely accurately by victims of airplane disasters.
Question is - did the researchers do that?
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I've seen documentaries on those evacuation tests. In one case, the nerdy geeky guy tried to go up into the overhead locker to get his laptop. He got totally bulldozed by the amateur sumo-wrestler who just wanted to get to the sushi bar in time for the next flight.
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It's not about it being a robot or about pushing blame. In an emergency a sub-optimal percentage of people take charge, but that's still better than everyone taking charge. You can't get a hundred people out of a burning building by having each of them screaming at the others to shut up and follow. It makes sense to follow an entity designated "emergency guidance" whether it's human or robot because that entity is more likely to understand the structure, situation, and risks than oneself.
It doesn't matter. We've all seen disaster movies. When the main character tries to take charge and tell people where to go, all the people that run the other way die and usually most of the people that go with the main character die too unless they are related to said main character (and even then some of them may die by sacrificing themselves to save others). Either way, you're still screwed.
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It's simpler than that.
Your brain restructures itself based on common tasks, including modes of thinking. To override this, you need to first make a decision in your prefrontal cortex (PFX), the analytical part of your brain. Then you need to enforce it by energizing your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFX), overriding your midbrain's decision-making process. In other words: your brain is on rails, and you use a specific part of your brain to decide when to switch rails, and a specific part of *tha
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"I'm different because my brain is wired to go analytic when I'm under stress: my emotions don't fucking work (hi, I have a severe personality disorder!) and my most familiar pattern is the one that assesses".
That makes you sound a lot like Fletcher Pratt's description of General Grant (in "Ordeal By Fire"). Does this sounds familiar?
"This was 1863; they also thought Krakatao [sic] extinct in those days, it had snow on top. There was nothing amiss with the quality of Grant's brain; only his veins ran glacie
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Schizoid personality disorder. My emotions hardly work at all; when they do it's not really great anyway. On a good day, I might have anger management issues and rage at idiots on the Internet; usually I'm just bored. I'm aromantic and asexual as part of the deal, as romance requires some sort of interest in emotional attachment (which makes zero sense to me) and sexual activity is a complex social interaction which creates a large amount of stress (and also is messy and kind of unpleasant). I become m
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Thanks for the clear explanation. I found it interesting and helpful.
Not surprising: Seen with GPS (Score:2)
It's not about it being a robot or about pushing blame. In an emergency a sub-optimal percentage of people take charge
It can't be that because as we have seen before [slashdot.org] people will quite happily follow their car's GPS instructions even if it leads them down a cart track in Swaledale - and that is far from the only example of people following their GPS when it is very clearly wrong.
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In the Piper Alpha disaster, crewmen waited in the common areas for the rescuers to arrive, even though those areas were directly threatened by burning oil and gas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Only those had the motivation to find their own way out or had a fear of staying, made it out alive.
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"In an emergency a sub-optimal percentage of people take charge..."
Unfortunately, that percentage is all too often zero. Have you read about the fires, for example, where people sat finishing their meals or whatever until they were overcome by smoke and died?
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But yes, you're right, people are assuming the robot has some expert or additional knowledge, e.g. it's wired into the building's fire alarm system and knows the safe place to go and similar.
On the downside, I keep thinking about the movie adaptation or I, Robot, and what a huge segment of the population are complete ignorant sheep.
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People will blindly follow an i-phone navigation system into the Murray Sunset National Park ( A sandy desert region with now water, no cell phone coverage and no help) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... [dailymail.co.uk] because they selected the center of the region, not the town they were aiming for.
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There's something to that, but I think it's more complicated. In any emergency, most people will look around for an authority figure to give them orders. Even someone who might be prepared to take over will defer to a greater authority figure. (In a fire, for example, a naval officer might be prepared to give orders; but if there is a fireman present, he will probably defer to his experience and specialist knowledge).
The thing is, if the robot is understood to be a specialist expert (a tin fireman, so to sp
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Sounds like the making of the next /. poll!
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It seems like it doesn't depend on the people but it is relative to the group.
Take a group of people, there will be leaders, followers and independents. Now split the group by category and the organization of each subgroup will change to get roughly the same proportion of leaders, followers and independents again.