Darwin, Evolutionary Biology, & Race

Darwin’s ideas about race have (or had) also been twisted or willfully misinterpreted (or only partially quoted) by the Eugenics movement, which ultimately helped informed not only Hitler’s policy of the ‘pure Aryan Race’ and the resultant atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the U.S.’s policy on care and treatment of the mentally ill before and during that period.

Each side of the question of race find what each feels supports their cause in the writings of Darwin. Some paint him as racist, while others say he was not. It is important to note that the human ‘race’ is never mentioned in the ‘On the Origin of Species’ (that would come later in his ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’) and the language that Darwin often used to discuss race when he did discuss it, was couched in the lingo and beliefs of his time. However, a full study of his work does not seem to support either racism or eugenics, but, rather, the opposite.

Eugenics, a ‘fake science’ for controlling and ‘improving’ the human species through means of targeted selection (as opposed to ‘natural’), was intended to enhance desirable human qualities (based on racist ideas and views) by weeding out undesirable qualities and people from the gene pool. This policy led to the attempted extermination of an entire people in Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, and, in the U.S. the institutionalizing and sterilization of other types of undesirables, most notably the mentally ill and physically ‘unbeautiful’ or those perceived as grotesque.

Though the beliefs and practices of racism and eugenics would seem to overlap, each was so virulent and widespread in the U.S. that they hardly ever seemed to have influenced each other to any significant degree. Racism was mostly about discrimination, based in part on ideas of racial superiority/inferiority, while eugenics focused almost exclusively on the disabled (mentally and physically) of ALL races.

The Eugenics Movement that would have such a profound and regretful influence on Hitler’s ideas of a ‘Master Race’ (and the policies that followed) actually had its origins in two unlikely sources: the ideas of Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin and a noted scientist in his own right, and widespread practice and funding in the United States. Both white AND black intellectuals supported it at the time, each feeling that its own group was the genetically superior one. Funding came from some of the largest and most well known sources at the time, including the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, among others.

What Darwin actually thought and said about the differences in various human ‘races’ can best be summed up in this excerpt from Wikipedia:

“Introducing chapter seven, ("On the Races of Man"), Darwin wrote, "It is not my intention here to describe the several so-called races of men; but to inquire what is the value of the differences between them under a classificatory point of view, and how they have originated."^[15] In answering the question of whether the races should rank as varieties of the same species or count as different species, Darwin discussed arguments, which could support the idea that human races were distinct species.^[16][17] This included the geographical distribution of mammal groups which was correlated with the distribution of human races,^[18] and the finding of Henry Denny that different species of lice affected different races differently.^[19] Darwin then presented the stronger evidence that human races are all the same species, noting that when races mixed together, they intercrossed beyond the "usual test of specific distinctness"^[20] and that characteristics identifying races were highly variable.^[21] He put great weight on the point that races graduate into each other, writing "But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed",^[22] and concluded that the stronger evidence was that they were not different species.^[23]”

To get a clear view of Darwin’s beliefs call for a complete and (completely unbiased) reading of both his seminal works, ‘On the Origin of the Species’, and ‘The Descent of Man’.

'Dear John': Letters of Revelation

Two schools of thought exist concerning the Bible’s origins:

1.       It is the actual word of God,

issued directly from a Divine source.

2.       It is not.

If one wanted to ride the fence on the subject (and not offend either side), one could say that the source material was passed ‘from above’, and then adapted, translated, and annotated by the willing recipients of the _______church (fill in yours).

For this short piece, however, we will say that the current version of the western Bible (King James being the most well known translation) is the direct descendant of several early councils of the Roman Catholic Church, which decided the final, definitive form Christian biblical canon would take. The Old Testament’s sources were a direct import of the Hebrew Torah, the Five Books of Moses. (The Torah is also referred to by its Greek name, the Pentateuch, which translates into ‘five books’. These books are part of a larger collection of Hebrew canonical text called the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. Many of them were sources for the Old Testament.).

Being of an older tradition, and more ancient, Hebrew sources (the previously mentioned Tanakh), with a different persona of God, or ‘Jehovah’, (called the ‘War God’  by some, or the ‘Lord of Hosts’), the Old Testament depicts a wrathful God presiding over dire times; all fire, dreadful storms, and ‘laying waste’, war and conquering, rape, abduction, duplicity, revenge, and sacrifice. Some of that goes on in the New Testament as well, before and after Jesus, but the overarching message of that later testament is mostly held to be one of peace, at least peace from ‘above’, in the form of Jesus, called the ‘Prince of Peace’, (Isaiah 9:6, Old Testament.). In the New Testament, God, through Jesus, becomes a more loving and benevolent (and forgiving) deity.

(Actor Cliff Curtis as Jesus from the movie 'Risen', 2016)

The New Testament’s councils, many and meticulously contested, were hashed out over several hundred years. The first seven, as listed by Wikipedia, are:

The First Council of Nicaea in 325

The First Council of Constantinople in 381

TheCouncil of Ephesus in 431

The Council of Chalcedon in 451

The Second Council of Constantinople in 553

The Third Council of Constantinople from 680–681

The Second Council of Nicaea in 787

These ecumenical councils were to begin the centuries-long process of deciding, in the broadest and most detailed scope, the manner and way the Church would embrace and spread its influence in the world. (The word ‘catholic’, from the Greek, means ‘all-encompassing, embracing, including a wide variety, inclusive: all terms also meant to define to the Church.) However, that ‘all-inclusiveness’ did not include every book that could have gone into the Bible; several source materials were left out, all for reasons political to the Church itself, and the consolidation of its power. (The process has been long; the total number of such councils is twenty-one, spread over a period of roughly seventeen centuries.)

(Note: This short, informal essay is by no means exhaustive or authoritative, rather it is a reflection on, and a simplification of the origins and versions of the Bible, excluding mentions of the versions (and books) of the other offshoots of Catholic Christianity, such as Protestantism, for the sake of brevity.)

(A Parchment from the Dead Sea Scrolls)

These ‘lost books’ of the Bible are referred to by two names, each which gives a brief clue to their original mode of having been written: The Pseudepigraphs or Pseudepigrapha, (‘false writings’) and the Apocrypha, or ‘secret, non-canonical’ writings.

The Pseudepigraphs are what their name implies, works by what were then modern, mostly anonymous writers, but falsely ascribed to earlier (mostly Jewish or Hebrew) patriarchs of the Bible, or ‘written in the style of’ those historic figures. Apocrypha are similarly described, being of ‘unsure or unknown origin’. The two terms (Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha) are sometimes used interchangeably. Each refers to texts of questionable origin.)

(The Nag Hammadi Parchment Books)

The Apocrypha were books that were included in the Latin Vulgate Bible (and Septuagint), and could have gone into the Catholic Bible as well, but were, for various reasons, left out or rejected by those early Councils. Because these collections of writings were, for all intents, considered somewhat more legitimate than the Pseudepigraphs, they are sometimes included in various versions and copies of the Bible even today, under the separate heading of Apocrypha, usually at the back of the book. Why they were left out say much about the times in which they were written, and the thought processes of the Councils that rejected them, or at least, decided not to use them when compiling the Book. The exclusion also says much about the offshoots of Christianity that would not accept them, as well.

Many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha come to us by way of the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered by shepherds in Qumran hidden in a cave, right after the end of WWII in 1946 or 1947. That other collection of ancient texts, the Nag Hammadi, is a collection of Gnostic writings by another ancient and mysterious sect of the same name. Some of the Apocrypha have been attributed to this collection as well. (The Nag Hammadi documents were found a year earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.)

The best analogy with today’s literature would be to compare these types of ‘unofficial’ narratives of biblical stories (no matter what their source) to a form of what is now called ‘fan fiction’: stories based on established literary or film sources but written by people other than the original creators. In their texts are stories about Jesus as a back-sassing, murderous adolescent, Jesus in a gay encounter with Lazarus, and also with John the Apostle, and in The Secret Gospel of Mark, a ‘flying wizard battle’ (between Peter and Simon Magus), an infant Noah, inhumanly perfect in birth, shining like an angel and talking, straight out of the womb, and Daniel defeating a dragon.

With so many tales that involve controversial subject matter and the supernatural, its easy to see what the church fathers found it prudent to just leave most of it out. After all, why would anybody come to church for spiritual guidance when they could just 'whip up' some Christian magic, and perform miracles and healing (and absolution) themselves?

So, given the subject matter, and the literary approach, it seems that a text such as The Book of Revelation could also have come from one of these largely forgotten, ignored, suspect, and decidedly sensationalistic sources, yet it still somehow made it into the Bible anyway. It is as if the Councils, tired after 1700 years of debating, decided to throw caution, decorum, and any lingering doubts of losing control over the earthly salvation of its followers to the wind, and ‘rubber-stamped’ The Book of Revelation without editing, censuring, or reading it.

Of course, that was far from the case. Revelation was perhaps the most rigorously debated book to be considered for inclusion into the Bible. It was, at various times, almost universally accepted, and (universally) denounced (and accepted again) before finally settling into its final home at the end of the Book.

This final chapter is odd, for several reasons. It is a series of epistles (letters) written by a one ‘John of Patmos’, to the Seven Churches of Asia, (‘satellite’ worship centers and their Christian populaces, which had gradually spread out from Rome). Scholars were, at one time, were not definitely sure who he was supposed to be, a conflict that was eventually resolved and is no longer a concern. (Patmos is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea, which during biblical times, was used as a penal colony and point of exile, mostly for bothersome upstarts from various Christian sects, of which there were many.).

His book is full divinely inspired visions, of dire prophecies and grim warnings, with their central theme being the so-called End Times, Judgment Day, and the millennial return of Christ. With nightmarish imagery second only to that found in Dante’s Inferno in Classic literature, Revelation may well be the most brutally descriptive of all the books of either testament. However, what was the true meaning of these passages, and how did they make it into such an auspicious place in the Bible (as the end chapter) when other, relatively tamer books, (and perhaps less controversial), by comparison, did not?

Who Was the Author of the Book of Revelation?

(John, the youngest apostle)

During biblical times, ‘John’ was a rather common name. The author of the book was, at one time or another, suspected of being any one of them; John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, John of Patmos, and even, John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (Gospel of John). Eventually, all those candidates turned out to be the same person, the Apostle John, once the youngest of Jesus' disciples, and brother of James Zebedee. This realization was the resolution of the first mystery of the Book of Revelation: the identity of its author. (The question of authorship is no longer considered to be in doubt as it has been in the past, at least not by the majority.)

If John of Patmos was the same ‘John’ as John the Apostle, then that would have made him the youngest of the original twelve apostles, and conceivably able to have survived (into old age) to become John of Patmos. Considering the fact that he’d already been ‘martyred’ by being boiled alive in oil before being banished to Patmos, that survival was not without its challenges. (He somehow emerged from the ordeal completely unharmed, causing an entire Coliseum of spectators to spontaneously convert to Christianity en masse.) John the Apostle then became John of Patmos, and eventually got himself banished to that island for being a trouble-making rabble-rouser of one of the new, troublesome sects that all went under the general heading of ‘Christianity’.

 The most recent research verifies that the ‘Patmos’ John, who is also John the Apostle, is the one generally accepted as the author now.

(John of Patmos)

What, exactly, is the Book of Revelation?

The Book of Revelation takes the form of letters, or ‘epistles’, addressed to the 'Seven Churches of Asia’, and contains some of the most fantastic and allegorical imagery to be found in the Bible. These images come to him in the form of prophetic visions, mostly about the ‘End of Days’, Judgment Day, apocalyptic battles, and the Second Coming of Christ.

(The Seven Churches of Asia Minor, while they initially spread during end of the first century A. D., eventually flourished during the rise of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Some time after Christ’s crucifixion, Christianity, at first a minor Jewish cult, spread into Asia Minor from Rome proper, right after it had split itself into two distinct entities known as the Eastern and Western Empires. The division into two halves of the once mighty Roman Empire occurred around the year 284 AD.  under the Emperor Diocletian. That means that John of Patmos would have written his seven letters to each of them during the very earliest years of their histories, between 70 A. D. and 96 A.D.)

Post-biblical writers and researchers all have various opinions on what the allegories mean, ranging from actual future visions of end times, to allegorical representations of political upheavals (and wrong-doings) in the Church at the time John set his (supposed) visions down with quill and scroll. (John of Patmos would have lived around the time of the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus Flavius Caesar Domitianus, (Domitian)at the end of that particular millennium.) It was most likely that emperor that had him banished to Patmos.

Whatever the passages mean, allude to, or predict, they sound more like the apocrypha and pseudepigrahpa that had been purposely left out of the Bible by the various Councils. So how did the last, defining chapter of the Book of books come to be composed of such fantastic material?

To answer that question, it is important to remember that the word ‘Revelation’ itself comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, which means ‘revelation’. So, there is at least one chapter, the final one, which is part of the apocryphal tradition, but one that still made it into the final cut of the Bible. Moreover, it does not hurt that one of the original Apostles of Jesus was supposed to have written it. As such, the Book of Revelation came with sterling credentials, after years of scholarly debate and research had verified its author to be John, the ‘last’ apostle of Jesus.

When and Why Was the Book of Revelation Added to the Bible?

('The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' by Albrecht Dürer, 1498)

Like many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, The Book of Revelation, (also known as ‘The Book of the Apocalypse’) was not always roundly accepted by all factions of the still ‘factious’ early Catholic/Christian Church. Although it is true that its first reception had been a remarkably good one (as far as potential new candidates for addition to canon go), it later hit a bumpy road, as many doubted its authorship, and its message of a millennial reign of Christ, among other things. (This aspect of Christ’s return, as presented in The Book of Revelation, is considered by some to be a militant, or 'zealot’ form of millennialism, which many early theologians and Church Fathers rejected.) This doubt would eventually spread throughout the various factions of the religion, with many either accepting it or rejecting it along similar lines.

Some churches still rejected Revelation, again, for many of the same reasons it was rejected in the past: Lingering doubts about authorship, the fantastic and bizarre storytelling style (again, much too much like the other rejected texts of the Bible). It was also rejected because of the fact that other less well-accepted factions of the church accepted its prophetic visions, which had too often been called into question by other, majority member-churches of early (Eastern) Christianity. (Also, the very idea of a ‘militant’ Christ, at the head of an avenging army did not sit to well with them either.)

Leading thinkers of the church from Dionysius to Martin Luther and John Calvin (1509-1564) did not have a high opinion of The Book of Revelation. The same doubts about Revelation’s value and meaning still exist, yet it was added to the books of the Bible as it is known today at the Synod (or ‘council) of 397 (during the Third Council of Carthage), by its alternative name, ‘The Book of the Apocalypse of John’.

In addition, to further the confusion, there were other ‘books of Revelation’, most notably, the Apocalypse of Peter, found in the Nag Hammadi Library. Like John’s Revelation, the Apocalypse of Peter had its supporters and detractors, and spent time in and out of the favor of various churches and theologians, before finally receding into the relative obscurity of the other Apocrypha texts.

Yet the question remains: why was such an admittedly contested and ‘odd’ book of John’s Revelation eventually added to the Bible, when so many others like it, the so-called ‘lost and forgotten books’ had been rejected?

The reason is simple: The author of the book, elderly, hoary old John of Patmos, had once been the youngest of Jesus’ disciples, known as John the Apostle. Now elderly but still ‘graced’, the last living follower of Christ, having survived being boiled alive in oil and banished to the island of Patmos by the Emperor Domitian, had received dire, ecstatic visions from a divine source, apparently from Christ himself.

(John the Evangelist)

As a direct link to Jesus, the old sage was well positioned to bring the world a final, apocalyptic message as if it were couched in Christ’s own words, and from his own lips, about his final return. For many of the Church’s early fathers, theologians, and patriarchs, that proof of authorship (eventually) gave The Book of Revelation an unassailable pedigree. (And, unlike so many other rejected texts of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, which often offered supernatural ways to 'work around' the authority of the Church, Revelation seemed to offer only the church as a final salvation against eternal damnation and the fires of hell.)

The firmly established fact of author's identity had been more than enough to have ‘The Book of the Apocalypse of John’ accepted as the final chapter of the New Testament, written by the last living disciple of Christ and from Christ's own words, by he who had in turn been called 'John the Apostle', 'John, whom Jesus loved', 'John, the Evangelist', and finally, John of Patmos.

Further Reading: 4 Big Myths of the Book of Revelation

The Gentleperson's Unofficial Guide to the Laws, Rules, & Dicta of Science

Science and other ‘egghead’ fields are full of laws, by-laws, rules, dictates, dicta, and endless lists of witty observations. Some are quite serious, some, not so much. Some are as ancient as the Greeks are, while others are as new as ‘because I just wrote them a few months ago’ (‘The Three Laws of Humanity’).

There are dozens of such laws, ranging from universally known, to those unknown outside their particular field of practice.  Here is an ‘almost comprehensive list’ of such dictates provided for your elucidation, education, and Enlightenment. 

Occam’s Razor 

(a.k.a. ‘The Law of Parsimony', or 'The Law of Economy’)

Hanlon’s Razor

Isaac Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword

Murphy’s Law

Yhprum’s Law

Finagle’s Law 

(a.k.a. 'Melody's Law' or 'Finagle's Corollary to Murphy's Law')

Sod’s Law

Sally’s Law

Natural Law Theory

Positive Law Theory

Hickam’s Dictum

Ockham’s Broom

The Rule of Falsifiability

The Rule of Replicability

The Fallacy of Correlation and Causation

The Rule of Thumb

Fermi’s Paradox

Isaac Newton’s Three Laws of Physics 

(a.k.a. 'The Laws of Motion')

The Three Laws of Biology

The Three Laws of Robotics

The Three Laws of Humanity 

(a.k.a. ‘Shameless Plug’ on author's part!)

More rules than you can shake a slide rule at here:

List of Scientific Laws Named After People

Failsafe & Fail Secure: Update for Improved System for Self-Driving or Autonomous Cars

Auto-pilot and autonomous (self-driving) vehicles are poised to become the defacto technology of the next decade, but not before working through some considerable technological challenges which, if unaddressed, could eventually delay or derail the entire venture.

As of this writing, these vehicles, in their current version and state of development and premature deployment, constitute a serious threat to life and property, merely because the state of the technology has not yet warranted or earned status required to operate in live traffic, thereby causing them to be both deadly and dangerous.

Before any more tragic accidents occur, the vehicles must be pulled from the live traffic and entered into a long stage of beta development on closed roads and training facilities, with specially trained human drivers as Instructors or coaches. These human mentors, teamed with the most sophisticated A.I. technology, will together rewrite the code that powers the decision-making capabilities that power these autonomous systems.  Further, the cars should not be returned to the road until all the current bugs have been expunged from their systems, making them safe to operate around human drivers and pedestrians.

Until this is accomplished, a self-driving car is nothing more than a novelty, and nothing less than a lethal weapon.

Final Caveat: Until they are perfectly safe, self-driving, autonomous, or auto-piloted vehicles should sport warning lights (similar to police or taxicab lights) and issue steady, periodic warning sounds alerting all pedestrians that such vehicles are under autonomous control, and potentially dangerous.

Accidents Involving Self-Driving Vehicles

Incident: Vehicle plowed into a concrete highway lane divider, and then burst into flames.

Maker/Operator: Tesla

Failure/Cause: Vision failure with some stationary objects, also objects with color that blends into background

Fatalities/Casualties: One, driver Wei Huang

Link: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-self-driving-crash-california/

Incident: Autopilot slammed into stopped fire truck

Maker/Operator: Tesla

Failure/Cause: System cannot detect non-moving objects while autonomous vehicle is traveling more than 50 mph/80 kph and the vehicle ahead moves aside, to be replaced by a non-moving vehicle in the front position. (Such systems as autopilots are designed to ignore static, non-moving objects.)

Fatalities/Casualties: None

Link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/tesla-model-s-crashes-into-fire-truck-in-utah-at-60-mph/

Incident: Self-driving vehicle kills pedestrian

Maker/Operator: Uber

Failure/Cause: Software bug, pedestrian was detected by sensors, software ‘decided’ to ignore her, determining her to be a ‘false positive’.

Fatalities/Casualties: One, a pedestrian was struck as she crossed the street in front of the vehicle, which did not slow upon approaching her.

Link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/report-software-bug-led-to-death-in-ubers-self-driving-crash/

Incident: Self-driving car aborts a lane change suddenly, knocks over motorcyclist moving into previously vacated spot.

Maker/Operator: GM (General Motors)

Failure/Cause: Autopilot ‘misjudged’ when it was safe to switch lanes.

Fatalities/Casualties: One, motorcyclist knocked from his bike by car abruptly switching back to previously vacated lane.

Link: http://abc7news.com/technology/motorist-sues-gm-over-self-driving-car-crash-in-san-francisco/2991916/

Note: In the case involving the fatality in Arizona, where the car ran into the pedestrian without slowing (regarding her as a ‘false positive’ to be ignored) “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that the system was operating as intended, wasn’t defective, and that Tesla didn’t need to recall any cars.” Although it is true that the vehicle’s systems operated as intended, it still killed a woman, and, so is still in error, and should have been removed from the road, including all models with the same driving systems.

1.    Self-driving cars are potentially deadly weapons and should be treated like as such.

2.    Default to Halt: During the beta stages of development (which should be on the number of years not months or weeks) certain safety protocols should be in place which immediately halt the vehicle (as soon as it is safely possible to do so) until it has been determined (by a human driver or coach) that it is safe to proceed.

3.    Human Instructors, specially licensed and trained human drivers need to be present in the vehicle throughout the beta stage to make decisions, keep notes, and pass this information on to the programmers and hardware developers for continuous and safe evolution and development of the car’s navigation systems.

4.    Specialized training: Instructors should also receive regular training along with the vehicles, all with an eye toward improving the car’s autonomous driving ability by uploading or ‘imprinting’ the decision-making skills of the coach into the car’s A.I. systems, and having those systems analyze the driving practices of all coaches and instructors to look for aggregate, repeatable practices to emulate.

5.    Extended Beta Stage: While in the beta stage of development, autonomous vehicles should be designed and built with systems that prohibit the car from starting, moving, or even turning on unless there is a coach in the passenger seat, logged in to the car’s navigation system, with his/her own steering and controlling system.

6.    Driving and Training Range: Self-driving cars should also be routinely subjected to a driving range especially designed for them, to shake out unforeseen bugs in the system without endangering human lives or property. This debugging stage should not come at the cost of any more human lives.

7.    License Revoked: With pedestrian safety in mind, all autonomous vehicles now on the road should be suspended from driving in ‘live traffic’ until the end of the beta period.

8.    Failsafe & Secure: The proposed systems, as previously defined in the initial document, Improved System for Self-Driving or Autonomous Cars, have several layers of built-in redundancy. At least three (or more) of these different subsystems (out of the dozen or so) must agree on a course of action before the car proceeds. If these criteria are not met, then the vehicle should stop, instead of plowing ahead. The traffic situation, which causes the vehicle to halt, should be fully detailed by the car’s own systems, and by the on-board, human coach. This information should in turn be added to a comprehensive database, which will become part of the ‘experience’ set of all autonomous vehicles. As such, such a database should be monitored and updated regularly. Eventually, the A.I. learning systems will parse the data submitted by all drivers and vehicles, using that data to ultimately learn repeatable, ‘best driving practices’, which can in turn be passed on to the vehicles’ programming.

9.    Mimic Human Behavior: In time, autonomous cars can become better drivers than their human counterparts, but until that time, those vehicles can still ‘learn’ from human drivers, even the worst of them. Human drivers, on encountering something ‘unknown’ in the road, will come to a sudden stop, if only to preserve their own lives and property. Autonomous or robotic vehicles should mimic this behavior, especially since human lives, property, and expensive prototype systems (the car itself) may be endangered or compromised.

10.  Self-Diagnostics: On startup (with coach present), the car should run through a series of self-diagnostics for all its navigation and communication systems. If any of these systems fails, and second diagnostic should be attempted before the car reverts itself to non-autonomous mode, secures it doors and windows, and, if it can, call in its status to the nearest Control Center. During this time, only a Coach or a systems developer should be able to unlock the vehicle and drive it manually, otherwise, it should be towed to the nearest certified service facility for a full systems analysis.

11.  The Obstacle Driving Course Police and other armed safety and security officers often have to train on a specially designed course called ‘Shoot Don’t Shoot’ where they are presented with several ‘targets’ which they must decide, at a moment’s notice, whether to shoot or not shoot. Such a course, modified to present various traffic situations, needs to be developed for the A.I. systems, which control autonomous vehicles. This exercise would allow the software and hardware developers (and the A.I. itself) to gain useful practice and insight into which conditions on the ‘real road’ require the vehicle to stop, or not without endangering human lives. When there is even the slightest doubt, the vehicle should be trained or programmed to stop.

12.  Hardware Sensors are the car’s eyes and ears, and, as such, must be near flawless. Because no hardware systems are (flawless), redundancy has been prescribed for these systems, as described in the parent document (Improved System for Self-Driving or Autonomous Cars). These vehicles should not be working as human drivers do, peering ahead into darkness (or foul weather) then reacting too slowly, too late, or worse, not at all, when something unexpected appears or occurs on the road ahead of them. The purpose of having self-driving or autonomous vehicles is to actually improve on human drivers, not emulate their bad habits. If this is not the case, then why have them? These vehicles should have and area-awareness far superior to that of humans beings. They should also react faster, and have access to a constant data stream of road and weather conditions, which would preclude them from ever being ‘surprised’. For this to be possible, they must have superior detection systems with multi-layered redundancy, and a ‘voting system’, where a significant majority of its systems decides. Any less, and the vehicle stops; it does not ‘plow ahead’; a human driver would not, unless he or she was somehow incapacitated.

13.  Digital Rear View Mirrors should be able to capture and store video to the diagnostic system or ‘black box’, and also to aid the car or its owner/Instructor in operating the vehicle should the need arise.

14.  Laser -enhanced Headlights can be used to measure the distance between one vehicle and another, and as an additional way to detect other obstacles in the road, such as human beings or animals - another layer of redundancy in the protection of human life and property. (The rear taillights can also have this feature.)

15.  Proximity Awareness is something that every car on the road should have, whether it is a self-driving vehicle, or not. (Older cars can be retrofitted with a cellular-based device.) Autonomous cars should always know where other vehicles are in relation to their own current position, given the variables of speed, distance, and predetermined AOC (‘area of concern’). This information, along with an awareness of construction, roadblocks, bottlenecks, and weather conditions, will determine how fast the car travels, and how closely to other cars immediately around it.

16.  A governing body should be assigned by each municipality (state, city, county, or country). This body will determine how long vehicles stay in the beta stage of development, when Instructors and owners (and their vehicles) must retrain and re-certify, and when cars must be pulled off the road for maintenance and checkups. Divisions of this governing body would also exercise authority over other types of autonomous devices, such as drones and aircraft. (See below.)

17.  A designated and certified owner/operator should be in the vehicles at all times during the beta stage, and should have the ability to either stop the vehicle, or seize control of it whenever necessary. Interface with the car can include voice, control panel, smartphone, and, of course, the traditional steering/stopping mechanisms.

18.  Remote Retrieval and Operation will allow an unattended or disabled vehicle to be remotely operated and driven (by PC) into a service and diagnostic facility, preferably (at first) by a human operator.

19.  A.I. Systems and Diagnostics are essential to safely operating autonomous or robotic vehicles. The current state and development of A.I. technology is quickly becoming a mystery, even to its developers. This state of affairs must end. If these vehicles are to be re-released safely to the road, then every decision made by the A.I. system controlling the car must be understood if it is to be successfully debugged. If a vehicle, or class of vehicles continually makes the same poor decisions on the road (or, preferably, on the driving and training range) then the reason(s) it makes these mistakes must be discovered, and more importantly, understood. That means knowing what the A.I. is ‘thinking and doing’ all the time. To assist in this, a series of self-diagnostic routines must be built into the software. These routines should show variable value dumps and changes, routine and modular calls, test states, multiple options considered (and why they were chosen or discarded), and status of the vehicle when (fatal or flawed) decisions were made. In essence, the A.I. needs its own ‘black box’ built-in, in conjunction with its programming and decision-making routines, and the processor(s) for that code. There should also be several levels of diagnostics (similar to the Star Trek: Next Generation series.)

20.  System Health will be constantly monitored by sensors built into the vehicle, which will report the status of the cars major systems (propulsion, brakes, combustion, electronics, environmental, steering, etc.) to the owner upon starting the car. This information will be gathered during the diagnostic phase, and relayed to the owner visually (onscreen), and by email, if the owner desires. It can also be immediately uploaded to the nearest Control Center or service technician upon request of the owner. (This, for instance, would be requested if the car were performing oddly or erratically.)

21.  Wireless or Remote Recharging should be the goal of all vehicles, especially autonomous ones. Such vehicles should be able to recharge (or refuel) remotely, either wirelessly (while still in motion), at a charging stations (as some vehicles are doing as of this writing), and by remotely dispatched flying drones capable of charging several vehicles.

22.  Emergency Navigation: All autonomous vehicles should be constantly aware of and able to find at a moment’s notice all emergency service locations, such as hospitals, fueling (or gas) stations, police stations, and, of course, home.

23.  Status Monitoring is a feature of the B.E.A.C.O.N. (see original document) software running on the smartphone or iPhone. Once removed from its Command Cradle, the handheld device should constantly monitor the status and location of the vehicle at all times, like an intelligent LoJack system, alerting the owner if the car is tampered with, vandalized, moved, or even ticketed and towed. A police or municipality officer ticketing or causing such a vehicle to be towed would relay this information to his or her precinct, which, in turn, would report pertinent info to the nearest Control Center, which will then relay the info wirelessly to the owner.

24.  Glass Break Technology should be developed (and deployed in a fashion similar to airbags) in the event that a vehicle is suddenly submerged with passengers trapped inside. The mechanism should be either manually triggered, or automatically, if the system senses water has filled the passenger space. Most importantly, it should be configured and designed in such a way that the shattering glass does not pose an additional threat to passengers in the vehicle.

25.  Fire Control and Suppression: Each vehicle should have its own dual part fire suppression system: one for the passenger compartment (safe to breathe for short periods) and one for non-passenger areas of the car, such as under the hood, in the trunk, and inside the car’s inner workings.

26.  Authentication Stream and Authentication Fingerprint is a steady flow of authentication data, approximately hundreds or even thousands of times per second, which will help protect the vehicle from unauthorized remote control, access, seizure, theft, or driving. This stream can be of the highest possible encryption (or some new type, yet to be developed), and include blockchain technology. Any significant breach or break in the flow or rhythm of the stream may indicate that the vehicle’s online security has been compromised. The authentication fingerprint will be different for each vehicle, based on the maker of the car, information about the owner, the current trip, the pre-established rhythm of the data flow, with its own unique pauses and stops, and the home Control Center alpha-number, several dozen digits and letters long. (Each vehicle will have access to all Control Centers, but call only one ‘home’ at a time. Home Control Centers can be reassigned, but only by the governing authority, or by petition to the Authority by the owner.)

27.  Co-Pilot: With the dozens of sophisticated systems onboard, the driver/owner, if he or she so desired, could monitor the steady flow of information via an onscreen output called the system co-pilot, which would intercept and manage this data to make it more accessible for human occupants of the vehicle. It could be configured to share only that information that would prove to be most vital to the human driver, while withholding the more mundane (or complex) information unless it is preconfigured to do otherwise. (The decision and the configuration settings will be at the discretion of the driver.)