The FSD Paradox: Why We Resist the Future We Actually Want

The rental car key felt foreign in my hand. After years of Tesla’s Full Self Driving, sliding into the driver’s seat of a conventional car felt like stepping backward in time. Not nostalgically backward, painfully backward.

I actually had to turn a key. No push-button start, no seamless awakening of the vehicle, just the mechanical grinding of metal on metal to coax an engine to life. The sound felt primitive.

It was dark, raining, and I was navigating an unfamiliar city. Within minutes, I found myself desperately longing for FSD to take over. And that’s when I understood something uncomfortable about human nature: we’re not resisting the technology, we’re resisting the admission that we were wrong.

The Motorsports Paradox

I need to establish my credentials here because what I’m about to say will sound like heresy to anyone who knows me. I’m a motorsports enthusiast. I love off-road racing, I own a race truck that I drive to desert trails on weekends. I still own a manual Mazda Miata that I take to the track, a car I bought specifically because of its designer’s philosophy of Jinba Ittai, the unity of horse and rider.

I’ve spent weekends at racetracks, owned manual transmission cars by choice, and genuinely believed that driving was one of life’s great pleasures. The connection between human and machine, the skill required to heel-toe downshift, the satisfaction of a perfectly executed corner, this wasn’t just transportation, it was craft.

But here’s the thing about craft: it has context.

After about ten minutes of “driving” that rental car through dark, rain-slicked streets in an unfamiliar city, managing lane changes, monitoring speed limits, trying to read street signs while avoiding pedestrians, the fun wore off completely. I found myself longing for the Tesla to take over, to handle the mundane task of getting from point A to point B while I focused on something more valuable than maintaining following distance.

The realization hit me like a cold slap: I actually hate most driving.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves

“So many people resist and say they WANT to drive and they love driving,” I found myself thinking, “but they are lying.”

Not intentionally lying, that would be easier to address. They’re lying the way we all lie when we confuse identity with preference, when we defend positions that made sense in a different context but no longer serve us.

The truth is more nuanced than “I love driving” or “I hate driving.” The truth is that spirited driving and utilitarian driving are completely different activities that happen to use the same equipment. Conflating them is like saying you love cooking because you enjoy fine dining, then defending your preference for making breakfast every morning at 6 AM when you’re running late for work.

I love driving my race truck through desert trails. I love the precision required for heel-toe downshifting in my Miata on track days. I love the feedback from a well-tuned suspension system when I’m pushing the limits of adhesion. But I absolutely hate the cognitive overhead of managing traffic patterns, monitoring for pedestrians, calculating merge gaps, and navigating unfamiliar cities in the dark and rain, all the mundane driving that isn’t about the joy of the machine or the challenge of the course.

The rental car experience forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: I had been defending a position based on outdated information.

The Philosophy of Changing Minds

The Greeks had a word for this kind of transformation: metanoia (μετάνοια), literally “changing one’s mind” or “repentance,” but deeper than simple opinion revision. Metanoia represents a fundamental shift in understanding that changes how you see everything that follows.

But metanoia is difficult because it requires something most of us resist: admitting that our previous position was based on incomplete information.

This isn’t about being wrong in the sense of making a factual error. It’s about recognizing that the context has changed, that new information has emerged, or that direct experience has revealed gaps in our theoretical understanding. The difficulty isn’t intellectual, it’s emotional and social.

When I defended manual transmissions and “real driving,” I wasn’t just expressing a preference. I was signaling identity, demonstrating expertise, and positioning myself within a community of people who valued automotive skill. Changing my mind about FSD wasn’t just updating a preference, it was potentially abandoning a piece of who I thought I was.

Arete (ἀρετή), the Greek concept of excellence, demands something more courageous: the willingness to pursue what actually serves human flourishing rather than what serves our self-concept.

The Broader Pattern

This pattern extends far beyond automotive preferences. We see it everywhere in technology adoption, organizational change, and personal growth. People resist innovations not because the innovations are inferior, but because accepting them requires acknowledging that their current approach might not be optimal.

Consider the broader AI adoption resistance we’re seeing across industries. How much of it is genuine concern about capability or safety, and how much is identity protection? How many people are defending “human creativity” or “authentic craftsmanship” not because they’ve carefully evaluated the alternatives, but because accepting AI assistance would require admitting that some of their current work could be done more efficiently?

The pattern is always the same:

Identity Formation: We develop preferences and positions that become part of our self-concept
Context Change: New technologies or information emerge that challenge those positions
Resistance Phase: We defend our positions using rational-sounding arguments that are actually identity protection
Experience Gap: We avoid direct experience that might challenge our theoretical positions
Metanoia Moment: Direct experience forces us to confront the gap between what we claim to want and what we actually prefer

The Framework for Honest Evaluation

Phronesis (φρόνησις), practical wisdom, offers us a way forward. Instead of defending positions based on identity, we can develop the skill of distinguishing between genuine preference and nostalgic attachment.

Here’s the framework I’ve started using:

Separate Recreational from Utilitarian: What do I enjoy doing for its own sake versus what do I need to accomplish efficiently? These might use the same tools but serve completely different purposes.

Seek Direct Experience: Theory and identity-based reasoning are poor substitutes for actual experience. If I’m going to have an opinion about something, I need to actually try it.

Question the Source of Resistance: When I find myself resisting something, I ask: Am I resisting because it’s genuinely inferior, or because accepting it would require changing my mind about something I’ve previously defended?

Embrace the Compound Advantage: Being willing to update preferences based on new information creates a compound advantage over time. Early adopters don’t just get access to better tools, they get the meta-skill of adaptation itself.

The Call to Excellence

The rental car experience taught me that excellence requires intellectual honesty, even when that honesty is uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

The question isn’t whether Full Self Driving is perfect, it isn’t. The question is whether I’m willing to honestly evaluate what serves my actual goals rather than what serves my self-concept.

This applies to far more than driving preferences. What other technologies, processes, or approaches are we resisting not because they’re inferior, but because accepting them would require admitting we were wrong about what we actually want?

The path of arete demands that we have the courage to update our preferences when experience reveals better alternatives. It demands that we distinguish between the things we enjoy for their own sake and the things we simply need to accomplish efficiently.

Most importantly, it demands that we build cultures, in our organizations, our communities, and our own minds, that reward changing our minds when the evidence supports it.

The future we actually want might be different from the future we think we’re supposed to want. The courage to embrace that difference is what separates those who thrive from those who merely survive the changes ahead.

What technology are you resisting that you might actually prefer? Sometimes the courage to change our minds is the path to what we actually want.

Final Thought

This week, identify one technology, process, or approach you’ve been dismissing or avoiding, not because you’ve tried it and found it lacking, but because accepting it would challenge something you’ve previously defended.

Give it direct experience. Not theoretical evaluation, not secondhand opinions, but actual hands-on trial.

Then ask yourself the hard question: Am I resisting this because it’s genuinely inferior, or because accepting it would require admitting I was wrong about what I actually want?

The rental car key taught me that intellectual honesty isn’t just about being right, it’s about being willing to discover you were wrong. And sometimes, being wrong about what you thought you wanted is the first step toward getting what you actually need.