[perardi]

I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out.

It’s called “skepticism”. You read enough history, you realize the charlatans greatly outnumber the geniuses, and you do your due-diligence before you invest, or form some weird cult.

[tokipin]

Some skeptics remain skeptics up until the point that they've been proven blatantly and obviously wrong and people stop accepting their arguments, so for some "skeptics" at least it's more of a stubborn mindset backed by confirmation bias or other issues disconnected from the actual subject matter, rather than sound reasoning.

[qayxc]

In this case, however, scepticism is more than warranted.

Just comparing the mission statement of NeuraLink (from their homepage) with the wild claims of their most prominent founder (Musk) should make you stop and think for a second.

The actual goals are quite humble and achievable in the near term. What Musk says on Joe Rogen's podcasts and other public forums, however, is more fiction than science.

Unfortunately most publications focus on the latter and ignore the former and way too many people fall for this and seriously believe that highly invasive and risky brain surgery will become routine in just a couple of years.

We're talking about the same guy who said there could be "1 million full self-driving robo taxis on the road by 2020" during the April 2019 Tesla investor day [0]. The same guy, mind you, who's company two years later, in 2021 told regulatory bodies that their technology is only SAE level-2... [1]

The technical press back then was very sceptical about the claim as well (and it turns out they were right to do so). Autonomous cars are on a whole different level than BCI, though, and there's no breakthrough science required to achieve autonomous cars.

So in light of this I feel that scepticism has its place w.r.t. BCI and outrageous claims (e.g. streaming music directly into the brain or curing neurological diseases) about the near-term abilities and development stage of the technology.

[0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/290029-tesla-well-have-f...

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful...

[dadrock]

Meanwhile this monkey is playing Pong with his brain: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374749/elon-musk-neurali...

[qayxc]

Funny you mention that. First of all, that's nothing new - years ago a simple external EEG was enough for users to move a mouse. Now available as off-the-shelf hardware and with OSS projects to boot [1]

Secondly, nothing that was shown (apart from being far from new, exciting or ground-breaking in any way) was independently verified so we just have to take their word for it...

I am not impressed at all.

[1] https://github.com/monkalynn813/Mindwave_controlling_cursor

[bpodgursky]

If you read enough history, you realize that people who fail are forgotten, but the people who mock the people who end up succeeding are remembered and humiliated forever.

[dadrock]

Meanwhile this monkey is playing Pong with his bran: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374749/elon-musk-neurali...

[cblconfederate]

She's not a skeptic on the value of the technology however , in fact she dismisses any ethical issues it poses. She 's skeptical of the timeline, which is more of a business statement.