[throwaway60701]

Why is eating steak a sufficient reason but developing such life-changing technology is not?

We already know that BCIs work and bring enormous benefits to people with epilepsy, ADHD, etc. There's no question about that. The only problem is, and that's what Neuralink aims to solve, that it's a very invasive procedure, so it's not being done often. But we know it works.

[klodolph]

Eating a steak is not a good reason to cause unnecessary suffering. I don’t know what kind of argument you were hoping to make, but comparing one cruel thing with another is not insightful or useful. Industrial livestock production is inhumane and this is unnecessary; it can be fixed but there is not enough political will.

[throwaway60701]

So you're expecting them not to do anything whatsoever with animals, because you define anything done with them as cruelty? I disagree completely. Of course there shouldn't be any unnecessary suffering and definitely zero cruelty, but animal testing - as well as animal eating - is fine with me and many more people.

It can be "fixed" but almost nobody wants that "fix". Politicians are here to enact the will of the people. That's democracy. I don't think it's nice to talk about your differing political opinions as a "fix". This is not something that's broken, we want it this way - we wouldn't have spend so much time making regulations about it if we didn't.

If you find developing technologies that could fix epilepsy and ADHD (and potentially many more neurological issues) as well as help locked-in people communicate as unnecessary, I really don't know what to tell you...

[klodolph]

> So you're expecting them not to do anything whatsoever with animals, because you define anything done with them as cruelty?

No, it sounds like you completely misunderstand my position. I guess I haven’t explained my position very well, because that’s completely incorrect. (I’m honestly a bit baffled by this.)

When I say “unnecessary suffering” I am not talking in some kind of mathematical sense of necessity, but I’m using the term colloquially, as it works in ordinary conversation. It means something like this—the suffering could be avoided without undue burden.

> This is not something that's broken, we want it this way - we wouldn't have spend so much time making regulations about it if we didn't.

I’m not sure I understand the logic for why you say we want it this way—politicians are here to enact the will of the people is a nice theoretical foundation for understanding the political process, but the actual behavior of representative democracies diverges from the will of the people, and it’s also not a moralistic argument—part of the reason that we have a constitutional government in the US is exactly because we recognize that we shouldn’t do whatever the people will.

The idea that I’m not supposed to “fix” the will of the people is kind of absurd anyway—all I’m doing is making moral arguments about what should be done, and the “will of the people” itself is an end product of people making arguments about what should or should not be done.

> If you find developing technologies that could fix epilepsy and ADHD (and potentially many more neurological issues) as well as help locked-in people communicate as unnecessary, I really don't know what to tell you...

You seem to be arguing that the behavior of Neuralink is necessary to achieve its goals, but the testimony I’ve heard seems to contradict this—the experiments are being done hastily, which results in bad data, unnecessary suffering, and then you have to redo the experiments.

There’s a simple formula you can use to get people to do immoral unethical things, if you desire. Create pressure to get results, then create an organizational structure that shields people from seeing the consequences. This is how we have industrial farms the way we do, this is how clothing companies based in the US end up using child labor overseas, and this is how Neuralink appears to be working.

When a clothing company gets caught using child labor overseas, you find some contractor to blame. You terminate the contract and hire another contractor to manage the manufacturing for you. This creates the façade of moral behavior on the part of individuals, while preserving the economic and organizational systems which encouraged immoral behavior in the first place. Neuralink isn’t out there with the goal of causing suffering just like clothing companies aren’t—and the best way I know to counteract it is with regulations.