I wonder how hard it would be for an LLM interpreting the neural signals to perform a convincing simulation of speaking for the paralyzed person while doing things they don't actually want, or after they've suffered a loss of mental function that leaves them not really wanting anything. Like the autism scandals surrounding Facilitated Communication. Not that I think that's what is going on currently.
It would be great if instead of "a clinical trial to demonstrate that the Link is safe and useful" we could have a clinical trial to determine whether or not it is.
> My parents were machines. My parents were gods. It was nothing special. I hated them.
and how the story mixes adolescence and feeling special with philosophical ramifications (hinting that focusing on the philosophical ramifications is just an adolescent attempt at feeling special?)
The narrator falls into the same trap at the end, assuming that he is the 1-in-a-million exception. He doesn't realize that everyone has the same experience, they just process it in a healthier way. AI Catcher in the Rye.
I really enjoyed that read. Is it hinted that everyone has the experience though?
There's a week where the jewel and the brain are still paired, but the jewel is in control. The hospitals monitor that the two are similar to within tolerance, but somehow this jewel slips through the net. What makes you think there's more to it than the 'one in a million' explanation?
He sets up a conspiracy theory, where the system knows he's the only one out of sync and forces him through anyway.
If you are reasonable instead of rational, the slippage that occurs within that week is fine. It's expected, as he notes, because the jewel doesn't replicate neurons constantly dying, so it can't be a "perfect" copy.
Adolescence is typified by feeling like everything is happening to "me", for the first time ever. It fits the theme to have him solipsistically dramatize a normal experience. You can see this in the last line, where he wonders if the person him ever felt as "real" as he does.
Thank you for sharing this short story. I read it with my coffee and really enjoyed it, turns out existential dread goes well with the first hit of caffeine of the day. You made my morning :)
> Noland suffered a spinal cord injury in a swimming accident and became paralyzed below his shoulders. Noland spent most of his days in bed. His primary digital device was a tablet which he controlled using a mouth-held stylus (mouth stick). The mouth stick not only caused discomfort and fatigue after prolonged use, but it also had to be put in place by a caregiver
> He is now able to control a cursor with his thoughts to browse the internet, play games, and continue his educational journey with greater independence.
Once reliable and cheap, the tangible difference this tech is going to make to people's lives is pretty wild.
We can still see the motion is forced, the cursor takes non-direct paths, actively doges away from targets, requiring active steering to stay put long enough to press them. While there are few misclicks, it feels like a product of active effort more than the inherent accuracy.
This is 85% of the threads in the device failed, yet it was allegedly mitigated after a software update, and usage of Neurolink continued to climb for the patient, suggesting the device is still functional
Being concerned about animal testing seems pretty silly coming from people who likely eat pigs, sheep and other intelligent animals every day, who likely lived in just as bad conditions if not worse their whole lives leading up to them becoming food.
I also eat meat, it just seems a bit ironic to me.
You are ignoring the benefit side of a benefit-harm morality analysis.
Eating an animal at least ostensibly has positive value for the people doing so. However, there are plenty of forms of "animal testing" that confer zero positive value. For instance, testing the wrong compound or inserting the wrong implant confers zero benefit. Having improper controls, "testing" nonsensical theories, repeating stale results poorly, inadequate data collection, etc. are just a few ways a test procedure can be totally useless or even actively harmful.
This also ignores one of the other aspects of animal testing which is as a dry run or rehearsal for actual application. You do it right in animals so you are practiced at doing it right for when you need to do it right in humans. "Oh yeah, we royally screwed up in every rehearsal, but we will nail it in production." is not an acceptable approach. You look at the care taken during their practiced procedures on less critical subjects to determine if their practiced procedure is adequate for more critical subjects. A process that kills far more test subjects than others or achieves middling results relative to resource expenditure or that treats subjects as disposable for "advancing science" is not a process fit for human subjects. Assuming ingrained cultural process deficiencies will magically disappear when using changing subjects is foolish.
These are just some of the reasons why people eating a ridiculous number of animals does not and should not waive our invalidate concerns about animal testing procedure.
> Eating an animal at least ostensibly has positive value for the people doing so
It is what comes before the eating that we should think about. We are breeding conscious beings (cattle, pigs, chickens) in harrowing conditions, with second order effects on the environment and plant and animal diversity (by clearing space for feed).
Should we stop eating animals? I don't know.
Should we stop testing on animals? If it meant that we cannot develop certain classes of therapies, then probably not.
Should we level up our compassion and care for animals and the environment even if it means humans have less luxury as long as it doesn't hold back increased life and health span? Probably.
That is almost entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
I was responding to the argument being made that any animal testing process on a small number of animals is fine since much larger numbers of animals are raised to be eaten. That is emphatically not true for multiple reasons of which I highlighted two distinct, practical reasons why careful animal testing is not merely ethical, but can and does increase the rate of the scientific development of safe procedures fit for usage on humans. Demanding good animal testing process is important even if people still raise and eat animals; it is not trumped either ethically or practically.
> However, there are plenty of forms of "animal testing" that confer zero positive value.
I find it difficult to believe that companies do expensive surgery on expensive animals for no reason (other than sadism?). These companies think this testing does in fact have value (and if we don't trust companies to make that determination we probably should restrict animal testing to governments).
But regardless, there's no real way to justify eating meat (given the marginal benefit of taste over vegan food) other than saying the lives and suffering of animals is essentially worthless. There isn't a threshhold you can put which will allow eating but prevent animal testing.
You wanted to test implant A, but you unintentionally used implant B in half of your experiments is not "learning". Unless you needed to learn Surgery 101 like maintaining and going through checklists, but then you are grossly ill-equipped to be doing neurosurgery.
There is a plethora of animal testing-free bathroom products.
As for medicines, I’m not sure what to do about that. Where I draw the line in veganism is essentially where I’d die if I don’t eat the animal. If there’s a necessity, I think it makes some sense. Some medicines are a necessity for people. Yet I don’t like the idea of supporting companies which would likely be testing non-essential medicines on animals as well.
Right, but neither irony nor hypocrisy means that it's wrong. Murder is wrong and if a murderer on death row says that murder is wrong they are still correct.
> Being concerned about animal testing seems pretty silly coming from people who likely eat pigs
This is reductive and lacking any form of nuance. If I eat chicken, should I automatically be okay with heavily industrialized chicken farms, or even setting chickens alight for entertainment? Just because one evolved to be an omnivore doesn't mean one is okay with all forms of killing animals.
I'm not going to be harangued for being an omnivore who's against factory-farmed chickens. You can lump me with the rest of the meat-eaters if it makes your feel better, but I'll have you know I don't purchase or use their services from those I find objectionable. I make no apologies for having a different moral scale, or liking chicken as a protein source.
Considering you have options, one could argue that you must be okay with them, otherwise you could just choose to not support them. I personally believe there's more nuance than that, but Ive heard that line of argument before.
You should perhaps consider that most people would rather die than be tortured to death and perhaps we feel the same way about animals even if we eat meat - especially primates.
Taken seriously, this is a fallacy and a way of thinking that easily halts progress in making the world a better place. You can always use whataboutism to argue against any improvement on grounds that a consistent ethic would require you to improve several other things at once. Being this kind of silly on the way is fine.
(Also of course a lot of the critics don't eat meat, and it's also true that the rest of us should stop, starting from factory farmed meat)
Not the OP, but your question got me thinking. I think ends frequently justify means, though I’m guessing that the real question in that adage should be “does the end justify any means?”
Our entire decision system relies on endings justifying meanings. I want a steady job that pays well, so I concede to going to a 4-year institution and paying a decent amount in order for that end to be so. The end justifies the sacrifice in time and finances, so the decision is justified in my mind. If the end were that I had only obtained unemployable skills or knowledge, then that particular end would not have justified the means for me.
So I suppose that when people say the ends don’t justify the means, they’re not really saying it categorically—just that the particular ends being argued don’t justify the particular means.
With the case of animal testing to improve human quality of life, it’s hard to say. Dogs were routinely experimented on and killed to first link diabetes to the pancreas, and later to discover insulin was a substance that could be transferred to preserve life. These medical results have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the past hundred years. Whether the neuralink experimentation is justified in its potential for quality-of-life improvements in paralysis victims years into the future really depends on where you weigh animal well-being and life in relation to future improvements to human life, as well as whether you believe their experiments are too gratuitous and could be carried out more safely/ effectively on fewer animals.
Sorry, I can't answer that as a yes/no since there is a whole package of connotation with such statement that I don't necessarily agree with in either case.
I thought my argument was clear, but I can try to make it more clear:
- I eat pork. Unfortunately because of people like me there are many many suffering pigs.
- I believe that it is more justified to make a pig suffer for neuroscience research than to be made into a McRoyal. (Let's assume that the suffering is comparable. Please also assume that the suffering is necessary for the particular research and that research has actual potential for useful applications. If there is evidence of unnecessary abuse then I'm not defending such abuse.)
- Therefore it seems silly to me to attack neuroscience researchers instead of me, an omnivore who could be vegetarian/vegan.
I understand that one can argue for both positions at the same time -- argue against research on animals and argue against eating meat. But I think the latter one is much more important than the former. And yet you probably wouldn't attack me for my meat-eating habit. (Maybe because doing so would be impolite.)
Do you believe that killing a pig for bad or sloppy neuroscience research that provides no useful data is worth it?
To use an extreme example, say I have a theory that the brain is an unnecessary organ. Can I go around removing pig brains in the name of “neuroscience research” and get a free pass?
Okay, now suppose I want to test if my new brain implant that I intend to attach with known acutely neurotoxic binding agent is safe for long term use. I then observe that the acutely neurotoxic binding agent causes acute brain damage like it said it would and thus my implant is unsafe for long term use. Do I get a free pass for that even though I killed an animal to learn something the manual already told me?
Okay, now suppose I want to test if implant A is safe for long term use. But when I go to do the surgery I insert implant B because I took the wrong implants out of the storehouse because I did not follow standard practice and go through my checklist as any competent doctor should. I then repeat this say 24 more times before realizing that I have inserted the wrong implants into around half of the test subjects. I then kill the animals when I realize my mistake because no useful data can be drawn due to my mistake. Do I get a free pass for “experiments” that even I acknowledge are worthless because I made a mistake because I ignored standard practice that has practices explicitly designed to cheaply and easily avoid the class of mistake I made?
Killing a pig for high-quality neuroscience research can be worth more than eating it. However, there are plenty of forms of “neuroscience research” that are objectively useless that confer less benefit than eating it or are even actively harmful and thus confer only harm. These forms of “neuroscience research” can still be unethical even if we, as a society, continue to eat meat.
> Say I have a theory that the brain is an unnecessary organ. Can I go around removing pig brains in the name of “neuroscience research” and get a free pass?
Of course there are proposal review processes for research involving animals, that considers the potential benefits versus the harm done.
> However, there are plenty of forms of “neuroscience research” [involving animals] that are objectively useless
Says who?
You may disagree with the standards and decisions of review processes, but they are ubiquitous today.
> Do you believe that killing a pig for bad or sloppy neuroscience research that provides no useful data is worth it?
No, but Neuralink has proven results and proven useful applications. If you believe that they should publish more data or that there has been a specific misconduct then that is a different argument.
I'm sorry but if you make me choose between 1,500 animals or improving the life of one single paralyzed human being, I am choosing the human every single time.
Why would you cease developing BCIs? It’s not ethical to force another sentient being into biological R&D on their own body. OTOH there’s no problem to enroll someone to a dangerous mission if they’re truly voluntary and get a benefit from it.
Give it time. Under President Musk it'll only be a matter of time until they invent a drug like the one used by Dr Cortazar's group in The Vital Abyss, eschewing ethics for scientific progression. I wouldn't be surprised if half the scientists under Musk's companies jump at the chance to use it, considering they still work for him while he dismantles American democracy (so their ethics are already questionable).
Between 2018 and 2022 I've probably consumed 1500 animals worth of products, and didn't hand 3 paralyzed people their autonomy back as a result, so I'd say Neuralink are doing just fine.
Glad to see neuralink didn’t give up on their sensationalism.
“telepathy” gtfo, they’re trying to give their brainchips marketing hype synonyms like how Altman calls ChatGPT AI when really, it’s not artificial intelligence, it’s just ML. But ML sounds a whole lot less exciting in the marketing pitch.
Lex Fridman's interview with Noland and the doctors is a marathon 8.5 hours, but I highly recommend it for a deep dive into the process and results.[1]
Isn't the main showstopper issue to solve for brain implants is scarring response or something similar? That is when body responds to the implant and surrounds electrodes with some sort of tissue reducing its effectiveness. Has Neuralink made any advancements in that area?
They can remap the electrodes to find ones that work. Also the thing seems relatively easy to replace and brain implants go. It's a bit early to say how much use they'll get.
Yes, they cloned some minions to downvote biologic reality.. Posted the same questions. Got nil response. If they had a break through, you could see it at the patent search.
So - what about implant scar tissue? How do they avoid it? How do they reintegrate connections if the implant has to move on? I dont want sob-stories, i want links to patents about avoiding inflamation.
The videos are remarkable. He moves like a person on a touchpad, rather than a quadriplegic. Incredible technology. The joy it is going to bring to so many is going to be wonderful to see.
Am I the only one a bit disturbed by this whole communication ?
I mean, we all know helping disabled is not the end-game objective of neuralink. And right now, from a very cynical point of view, disabled people constitute a large reservoir of cobayes and free marketing for Neuralink
I don’t know how much has been invested in R&D on Neuralink, but I doubt we have ever invested that much money in any other technology to provide autonomy to the disabled.
And it is not perfectly clear to me that, for the sole prospect of helping paralysed people, Neuralink is the best way to go. It sure is the one that looks the coolest, but it’s going to be very expensive, hard to fix when something goes wrong, and it is also hard to trust. Those issues do not seem to be avoidable
Don’t get me wrong, I admire the huge QoL gain for the three patients. As individuals, they sure benefited from this. Idk if the same is true of the disabled as a social group
> Can you tell us more what you surmise we all think is the end-game objective?
Musk's original stated end-game objective is to give humans a chance against ASI by removing the biggest impediment that humans have to communicate digitally, the keyboard.
This is hard to believe as the truth, as it is extremely short-sighted. If ASI can think 1000x faster than a human brain, and with much more intelligence, then what does giving humans even a 100x improvement in I/O achieve? Also, if ASI is achieved, then it will continue to self-improve. The meat brain is stuck at our current speed.
Please see my HN profile for a privacy rant about the downsides, which only assumes a read capability. Once a write capability is introduced, I mean you gotta be kidding me. Who should you trust with that power? The answer is no one.
Jensen Huang becoming a sandworm from Dune, only he keeps shitting out mountains of NVIDIA cards instead of spice. Elon Musk and the rest of the technorati using neuralink to upload themselves into said mountain of GPUs to become immortal.
Someone who has genuine concern for helping people doesn't cut medical programs in fly-by-night operations to leave people with medical devices in their body and whatnot. Empathy and caring about suffering can be ruled out.
Generally speaking, the demo is always about finding the green ball on top of a red cube, or the person who went missing in a land slide, but what sells it is detecting and aiming at the dissident hiding under a truck.
And isn't it weird how "think of the children" is always ridiculed but "think of the paralyzed etc." is just fine? I've seen it countless times in the last decades. Just recently when I said on here I want "AI" art to be marked as "AI" made and someone claimed I don't care about the people who have Parkinson's and can't hold a brush, but wouldn't answer why we can't mark it anyway. It's not the people with Parkinson's that want to pass of their creations as hand-made. They're just getting used.
Sure, paralyzed people would love to be able to control a cursor with their mind etc., but even more than that they don't want cuts to social programs, that enable them a dignified life beyond "making them as functional as a healthy person", to allow tax cuts for the super rich. They want friends to have time for them instead of working 3 jobs, that sort of stuff. But Musk and his spiritual brethren are gleefully moving in the opposite direction, as fast and ruthlessly as they can.
So I say this particular doctor is three butchers in a trench coat. I can't prove it, because I can't read minds, but nobody else can either, and this is the "bet" I'm going with. Vulnerable and sick people can only have things that would a.) help super rich people with the same conditions and b.) enable more persecution and exploitation, and an easier discard of undesirable, unproductive or rebellious members of society.
Well, even to genuinely protect children it often means removing things from impacting them. You don't give a newborn honey; we don't invent some kind of pill that allows us to give them honey on day 1, they can't deal with honey, it's fine, just keep it away from them. Then the older they get, the more it's about giving them the tools to make their own decisions -- but children can't consent, so yes, you have to ban adults from doing some things. You can't usually just "enable" something else so they don't harm children. Children grow on their own, provided they get what they need and some stimulus, but also crucially safe space to grow in, from which to extend their feelers so to speak. That must be carved out negatively. And frankly, society totally threw them under the bus even when it was just TV and ads, with phones it's so much worse. But that's a total tangent and besides the point.
"think of the children" can and is also be used as a fig leaf, to just ban things or get control, but that fact in turn is then used as a fig leaf for dismissing any concern for children. While "think of the disabled people whose welfare the broligarchy wants to see cut" somehow is just taken without second thought.
> Vulnerable and sick people can only have things that would a.) help super rich people with the same conditions
I have occasionally wondered if, in some kind of time-travel scenario, I could convince the local royalty that subsidizing healthcare for the masses would ultimately benefit them years down they line when they need an experienced doctor who knows how to do some kind of surgery.
> Someone who has genuine concern for helping people doesn't cut medical programs in fly-by-night operations to leave people with medical devices in their body and whatnot.
> I have occasionally wondered if, in some kind of time-travel scenario, I could convince the local royalty that subsidizing healthcare for the masses would ultimately benefit them years down they line when they need an experienced doctor who knows how to do some kind of surgery.
Your intuition that subsidies can increase outcomes for even the super wealthy is correct, but it should be noted that this already happens today.
Subsidies for healthcare, including for highly specialized and technical procedures that are expensive, yield:
- Increased Access to Cutting-Edge Treatments
- More Skilled & Experienced Surgeons
- Lower Costs Through Economies of Scale
- Encouragement of Medical Research & Innovation
For instance, for heart surgery in particular, in the US, there is Government Subsidies and Assistance (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA, and ACA) as well as Private and Non-Profit Aid (HealthWell and PAN Foundation, American Heart Association & Mended Hearts, Hospital Financial Assistance).
Then there are major healthcare foundations funded by billionaires, focusing on medical research, global health, and disease prevention. Some of the more notable and impactful ones are:
As much as I like regaining autonomy, we should hold back those tears until a patient's implant outlasts a product cycle. I can't find the article to link to, but there's an ongoing issue with tech companies producing assistive devices or prosthetics and obsoleting them when the company pivots, gets bought or goes under.
Corporate cyborg parts are an already-predicted nightmare, already taking place, unfolding in slow motion, and soon it will breach the sanctity of human thought.
The simple solution is that all such devices must be submitted to a central government database and all blue prints, source code etc. will be released into the public domain is the company no longer supports the device or closes down.
This is indeed the solution for every industry. The main issue is that really often companies get bought with assets by another company that just let them rot. So you would need a provision that in case of non maintenance it should be released. But then they would fight you in court because they use specific code or design in a newer device and that would release it to the public... So while it would be the perfect solution for the patients I doubt our society is really organized to represent their rights and needs (and we see that with insurance as well)
I'm pretty confident that anything involving a central government database won't really fly under the current political climate. Definitely not in the US, but many other countries are bowing to US pressure to limit regulation.
The same disabled people whose hard earned rights are on the chopping block right now in the name of anti wokeness? I’ll say, taking away their ability to participate in society first, then selling it back to the richest of them is an ingenious business approach.
> These tools need to be paid for. By people whose welfare is currently being taken away by the same man who owns NeuraLink.
I'm struggling to understand your point. You seem to be saying that Musk is trying sell a product to people but at the same time taking away their ability to pay for it. Logically, that means nobody would be buying the product, which leads me to conclude the thinking you express above is flawed.
For one, they enable, yes. So there's a market to create here.
But. It also doesn't take a lot of imagination to see what other beneficial uses they promise to bear, as a general device. Imagine having a computer plugged-in permanently in your brain. Both in reading (and reacting by providing a stimulus, whatever it is, however you may do so directly or indirectly), and perhaps even, some day, in writing.
When you see what you can achieve with an individual, customised touch-screen computer in the pocket, something that didn't even exist a quarter of a century ago. The potential. The horizon. How would you not invest in that vision if you had the money for it?
What a striking coincidence that the man behind this project has now access to the resources of a huge country, which administration happens to deport "illegal" immigrants here and there, without due judiciary process (that is, publicly documented), in territories outside of judiciary overview (like Guantanamo).
The same guy who felt brazen enough to make twice a nazi salute in front of televisions.
Far fetched scenario? Yes, obviously. Improbable? Also yes. Impossible? No.
> But it won’t help get them a job because DEI is bad.
That's an uncharitable take that focuses on the wrong issue, in my opinion.
Noland's life was pretty dire: "Since dislocating his C4-5 vertebrae in a 2016 swimming accident, Arbaugh had dropped out of Texas A&M and returned to live with his family in Yuma, Arizona. Due to the combination of Yuma’s scorching heat — from May to September the average high temperature is 99 degrees or more — and the intense spasms he experienced when sitting in his power chair, Arbaugh spent most of his time in bed, watching TV. With no sensation or function below his shoulders and having limited caregiving hours provided by the state, he relied heavily on his parents and brother and often felt like a burden." [1]
After Neuralink, the abilities that Noland gained is best represented by his own words: “Before, I would wake up and just [watch] my TV,” he says. “Now, I wake up and [work] on my computer. It’s very similar, but at the same time, my daily routine has changed from just watching stuff to being more active and interactive with the world.”
So yes. Throwing out the vulnerable onto the streets, to promise a future where those who can afford it can be made to function as good as healthy people, to earn their human rights and dignity with cold hard cash, like everyone else. The rest, who cares... they don't have a voice even while they live, so nobody will ask about them when they no longer do.
In both cases it looks more like a usage spike in the third month and then back to a pattern of roughly linear growth. Not sure if those spikes were related to updates to the neuralink itself or they just got really into a game/project/etc
* 15ish+% think that embedding stuff in your brain from any company is a bad idea(TM)
* 5-ish% think this is not worth working on at all, or not worth the animal / human research costs
* In the know folks point out that tech like this has been around for roughly 10 years, but research hasn’t progressed past the point where brain injury isn’t a major risk -> this is too early
I don’t read anything here about human autonomy; each of the guys written about have my utmost respect for not just committing suicide — they must be incredibly tough, persistent and positive humans, full stop. The idea that they can’t or shouldn’t be able to weigh the risks and benefits of tech like this feels infantilizing, in the worst way - infantilizing from people who have full mobility.
At any rate, I applaud a company trying to help people like this, EVEN IF their long term goal is an ad-supported BCI (although TBH Elon’s always had significantly better revenue ideas than ads), and I applaud the first few folks willing to risk their health to get access to a better life, and help people down the line from them.
UFO abductees report telepathy regularly, as the default mode. UFO witnesses often report they "feel" something odd, that the UFO somehow "sees" them. And pretty much every story is both the same and extremely odd. There have been claims by those in the field implicating an "over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen".
Here's a post about an amazing piece of technology that is being created for helping people in dire conditions and the only thing being discussed in here is how much of a bad person is the owner of the company researching said technology.
Now, I'm not a US citizen so I have way less stakes in that kind of discussion but I have to say, I find it disgusting how one of my favorite online forum have become a den for political activists.
It's hard to separate politics from topics like these, as the current politics have very far reaching impact on almost aspects of life.
For example, this article discusses medical implants. Safety of those is very important. When the owner of the company is actively dismantling oversight that ensures safety, this directly impacts whether we can trust this product.
I agree that HN should be mostly politically neutral, and for the most part it is. For topics involving Musk, however, one simply cannot ignore their problematic attitude towards anything that might inconvenience them.
I'm not seeing discussion on how much of a bad person that guy is but in how he's demonstrated recklessness and a disrespect for oversight, which are alarming when discussing medical devices - especially such as this specific one.
This is a piece of marketing from a private company. It is a good thing that people raise criticism missing from it.
Yeah, reddit is heavily leaking in this thread. The Internet as a whole has become slowly more political over the past decade, and that's to be expected. But this last cycle has been utterly unbearable for non americans. The identity politics and the obsession of every person having to be either a super-hero or a villain is tiring. Why can't people just discuss the tech?
Honestly? Same. Musk is systematically dismantling essentially every regulatory and enforcement agency that could possibly hold him accountable if these things go sideways, accidentally or otherwise.
until we have a solution to the problem that is Elon Musk, and potential future Elon Musks, this type of technology can only be a net negative to society.
Henry Ford was a Nazi. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post and drove it into the ground.
I think basically any of the leaders who brought us the technology we are using today are cults of personality like this, we just forget about the ones that aren't contemporary. I have yet to see us grow without them.
If Henry Ford didn't exist, do you think no one would have tried mass manufacturing? If Jeff Bezos didn't exist, do you think no one would have scaled up an online store? These techno business overlord types occasionally nudge our timeline ahead by a few months, and are rewarded handsomely for it, but they've never produced some fundamental new insight or technology that leaps us forward in ways we wouldn't otherwise achieve.
I very violently recoil from any of Musk's ventures these days.
Im sure there are some very smart and talented people working at Neuralink.
They should go work for someone else as their boss has shown himself to be a revolting person and the kind of leader who seeks to actively harm people who inconvenience him.
This kind of behavior is not befitting of a company that will need to cultivate an incredible amount of trust from customers before they buy into the idea of a brain implant.
Considering that Musk is purging government agencies and employees that investigated/are investigating Neuralink, it would be smart to stay far away from it.
Elon is so effective as a leader he seems to break people’s brains. No other person could have started this company and had even half this success. There’s a reason all the most talented flock to his companies, despite “conventional wisdom” saying they shouldn’t. It takes a lot of self deception to ignore the reality that he obviously must be doing something right.
I also think the way DOGE has gone about their business is the only way that'd work in a systemically corrupt environment. If you give these institutions ample warning they'll bury or destroy any and all evidence, because that's how it's been done for decades. That doesn't work.
Ample warning of what? Evidence of what? If the goal is to, say, shut down USAID, to do so legally you just need to get Congress to pass a law shutting down USAID. No "evidence" is required, and warning is irrelevant. What is a shut down agency going to do with "warning" that it has been shut down?
Both views can exist at the same time. Many effective leaders are terrible human beings. It's up to everyone to choose their own, ethics and empathy is high on my list of things I care about in a new job but it may be different for others.
I think it comes down to his personal conduct. Specifically, just as I said, I think he actively tries to harm people who might inconvenience him or cause him damage to his public image.
In short, I see him as a bully.
One of the great examples of this is the infamous "Pedo guy" incident in which he showed himself as very unempathetic and petty the moment people dismissed him as he attempted to hastily insert himself into a tragic moment.
He's also regularly sued people exercising their free speech to comment on or criticise his financial interests, knowingly attempting to drown influential people he doesnt like in legal fees and frivolous lawsuits.
In the past he has participated in doxing governmental employees who might cause him financial damages, often encouraging his followers to harass beuraucrats and lawyers who are just doing their legal jobs.
There are plenty of examples of Elon regularly engaging in bullying of others who may not have access to the resources he does, its not just limited to these few examples.
In my eyes, any measure of success or wealth will never excuse how a person conducts themselves in public. And I think Elon no longer thinks that the rules apply to him as so many are willing to overlook his behavior due to worshiping his money and influence.
Elon's nazi salute is the perfect example of this.
So my original statement still holds.
Neuralink has a very large mountain to climb when it comes to consumer trust. Products in the Healthcare industry can massively impact people's lives, especially when they dont work as intended.
Any company that participates in this space is morally and ethically required to be empathetic to the lives that they impact.
And this level of empathy is not something that I see coming from the man behind neuralink which I think should disqualify it as a company with the potential to impact a lot of people.
> In the past he has participated in doxing governmental employees who might cause him financial damages, often encouraging his followers to harass beuraucrats and lawyers who are just doing their legal jobs.
In general, yes. With narrow exceptions, employment as a public servant is a matter of public record and subject to public comment. Such comments are not only protected by US constitional law but in many cases are statutorily required to be taken into account by regulatory proceedings.
This makes it rather galling that Elmu is seeking to shield DOGE employees from such accountability, but understandable when people on Reddit are openly advocating their assassination.
>understandable when people on Reddit are openly advocating their assassination.
Is this standard of shielding government employees from accountability applicable only to DOGE employees, or could we also have applied it to the many employees receiving death threats from Elon's fan base? Consistency on this would be welcome.
> There are plenty of examples of Elon regularly engaging in bullying of others who may not have access to the resources he does, its not just limited to these few examples.
There’s no “probably” about it. There are hundreds of thousands of doses of tuberculosis treatments that aren’t being delivered and will expire. Every untreated case of TB will lead to some other number of infections and increases the odds of more drug resistant strains popping up. It will take a long time to undo the damage of killing those programs alone.
Even if you subscribe to the notion that US government should not be paying for this, you can phase it out with enough notice for others to step in and take over the funding. The flippant, "tech disruptor" method of abruptly ending an organization that has for decades been funding critical public health initiatives in countries where they would otherwise not happen... That is the truly infuriating part.
In the grander scheme of things, the US voters do indeed have the right to vote for not providing foreign aid. Which is sad of course, but is a valid political position.
Kind of like the chip from Lumen on Severance. I don't understand why anyone would want a chip placed in their brain, unless it's to help overcome a disability.
Overt nazi salutes is one, but another is the intentional tinkering-with and partial dismantling of the US Government's system to dispense appropriated funds, and act that is blatantly illegal.
There also doesn’t seem to be any corroborating data to suggest he’s a nazi. I’m all for calling a spade a spade if he is, but it seems that people are working backwards from the “I hate Musk” position rather than forwards from the facts.
"Sorry officer, I did not flip you off twice, that were both just very awkward gestures"
There is tons of data on how Musk became a far right supporter and sympathizer, like his support of UK racists and the German far right.
You seem to still use X, you could just scroll through his posts there and try to not ignore the evidence you see with your own eyes
Have you considered that perhaps the increasing levels of vitriol and outright hatred directed at him by the left might have had something to do with his rightward trend? They seem pretty correlated.
I struggle to see how doubling down on the hatred is going to convince anyone other than _already hateful_ people of the righteousness of your cause?
The ADL's current leadership appears to be ideologically aligned with Elon Musk for reasons unclear. Here's an article with other Jewish voices, including the former director of the ADL, emphatically stating that it was a Nazi salute: https://forward.com/fast-forward/690745/adl-elon-musk-sieg-h...
> Musk later denied being antisemitic and described himself as a "pro-Semite".
So which is it? It seems wildly inconsistent to me to intentionally make a nazi salute but verbally deny being antisemitic. I don’t think someone like him would need to rely at all on plausible deniability, given that everyone already seems to hate him and he’s been granted immense power without having been elected to any position.
Forigner here, one who's family has been shaped on both sides by the nazis and lived through either bombing, or were active members of the resistance in occupied europe.
That was a Hitlergruß, no ifs no buts. More over it wasn't just the once.
Does it make him a nazi? no.
But one has to question why the fuck he thought it was a good idea.
He's terminally online, he knows exactly what it is. He's seen the same memes as us, and knows exactly what that gesture means. So why do it?
That is the far more concerning question.
But thats irrelevant as he appears to be gaining absolute control over the executive.
As far as I understand, most of the leaders of the historical NSDAP (the Nazi party) / the Nazi regime were not Nazis themselves, insofar as they did not believe in whatever was written in Mein Kampf. Nazism was just a mean to grab and hold power. The true believers were basically victims of a con.
So... I don't care whether Elon Musk is actually a Nazi. I do believe that he is willing to use Nazism as a lever, which makes him much more dangerous.
Likely trolling and pushing boundaries to see what he can get away with. Similar to Trump. They're grifters and like being the center of attention. I don't think they have real ideologies. Whatever works for them. Well, maybe Musk buys into techno feudalism.
>But one has to question why the fuck he thought it was a good idea.
Probably not a good idea publicly. I'd say he slipped if he did do it. I do find NS to be very funny because it annoys/offend some people, most comedians similarly will find it funny.
I don't think there's any real question as to what he's doing there.
The ADL these days mainly exist to shout "antisemite" at anyone criticising Israel. Their giving him a pass was sickening, and undoubtedly related to Republican support of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Other Jewish organisations have called it as the world has seen it. One organisation does not speak for a very diverse people.
> On November 15, a Zionist account posted a tweet attacking Nazis for being “cowards” and posting ‘Hitler was right.’” In response, a fascist account replied that “Jewish communities have been pushing... dialectical hatred against whites” through “hordes of minorities... flooding their country.”
> Musk responded to the latter post with the statement, “You have said the actual truth.”
Those, and so much more, are the facts. You cherry-pick the ADL, say "there doesn't seem to be anything else", and conclude everyone, including Auschwitz survivors who seriously have better things to do, just "hate Musk".
Musk just recently had to go tour Nazi death camps to do a PR tour after promoting Nazy theories on Twitter. The people on the tour with him said touring the camps had zero emotional impact on the guy.
> it was genuinely a white nationalism thing or if he was just being an edgelord.
Can we admit to ourselves that most edgelords are actually people infatuated with exact same movements and value systems? Literally all edgelords get angry and strongly dislike anyone left leaning. For example, you do not see them harassing right wing, but you do see them harassing perceived sjws.
Somehow, there is no such thing as left wing edge lord. And that is because when left wing people act badly, they are blamed as bad left wing people. Edgelord is just a way to not blame right wing people and attributing them benefit of the doubt never given to the center or to the left.
Sadly it seems that the most visionary and successful CEO's tend to be a*holes to the people around them. Steve Jobs with his 'reality distortion field' comes to mind as well.
And to have enough candidates for that, he's doing his best to make life on Earth as bad as possible for as many people as possible as fast as possible?
Now he looks like a cross between film and book versions of Hugo Drax, or like Joiler Veppers from Surface Detail.
But — despite all the things that should've (but didn't) set alarm bells ringing in my head at the time — until just after he bought Twitter and immediately starting making harmful decisions with its new rules, the output of his companies looked kinda like it was helping improve the world.
With SpaceX, humanity was finally unlocking that cheap spaceflight the Space Shuttle promised but didn't deliver ever since Rockwell started building the Enterprise-née-Constitution in 1974, which is one of the few areas where their work is still going great.
(Buuuut even then, for Mars missions to be viable they must have a working Sabatier plant that fits in the payload bay and can produce 330 tons of methane every 2 years from a Martian atmosphere and irradiance level, and I've not seen any sign of this actually getting worked on by any Musk-group company; such machines would be really useful for Earth's environment, and it's a requirement for his Mars plans as otherwise the Starship vehicles can't return to Earth).
With Hyperloop we were finally getting high speed transit to compete with polluting flights, but TBC has completely failed to do anything noteworthy, not even when it is news-worthy.
With Tesla, we were finally getting non-polluting cars, when the competition was hydrogen vapourware, milk-floats, an excuse for ongoing corn subsidies, and the occasional slow news day when some back-yard inventor made a car that was propelled by springs and/or hamsters.
I don't like Musk's recent actions or the awful political ideas he's been pushing either, but it's remarkable that people can't see why he's admired by so many people.
This sort of blindness is a major reason liberals can't properly respond to the rise of MAGA or Trumpism. They refuse to understand it. Understanding something doesn't mean you agree. You can't properly criticize something you don't understand, nor can you provide an alternative that answers it.
Go back in time to the 1990s and 2000s.
The shuttle program was winding down. The only way to get humans into space currently on the market was the Russian Soyuz program, which is ancient Soviet technology. The only human habitation in space was the ISS, which everyone knows is a good engineering experimental platform but otherwise a dead end. The DC-X (first vertical landing rocket) was cancelled. The Venturestar was cancelled, and it may not have been a good design anyway for several reasons.
A lot of people are writing about this as the end of the space age, that the whole thing wasn't a good idea to begin with and there is no future there.
Then along comes SpaceX and within a few years they go from small orbital rocket to functional first stages that land themselves and now they almost have a fully reusable super-heavy capable of refueling in orbit.
Now look at cars. Common wisdom in the 1990s and 2000s is that affordable long-range cars are impossible without fossil fuels. There's a popular site called The Oil Drum that pushes the narrative that all motorized transport will end if fossil fuels are depleted. There are hybrids, but they still run on gas, and nothing much has happened to ICE technology since fuel injection in the early 1980s.
There are some EV efforts but they're early and half-assed.
Then along comes Tesla with the roadster and shows that EVs can be not just viable but cool and actually faster with better torque and acceleration than conventional cars. Since then many other car companies have caught up, but I still believe the whole industry would not have moved without Tesla kicking them in the arse.
If you really hate Musk, the question you should be asking is: why does the human race seem to need people like this to advance?
We had the technology to build the Falcon 9 and Starship in the 1990s, maybe even the 1980s. The problem wasn't money. The total cost of Falcon 9 development was comparable to two space shuttle launches.
The situation wasn't as absurd with EVs, but we definitely could have built a commuter EV at least a decade before we did. Look into the GM EV1 from the 1990s, which pre-dated the Nissan LEAF -- the first mass market EV, which did beat Tesla on that front -- and it had similar range and performance. The EV1 was killed in spite of demand becuase the conventional auto industry hated EVs. Some still do, like Toyota.
It really does seem like nothing big happens in human history without some manic unhinged asshole pushing it. We have everything -- ability, intelligence, technology, money -- but we don't do it without one of these people. Why?
Maybe we'd need "visionary" CEOs less if we had an over the counter amphetamine-like drug but with less addictiveness or other side effects.
I agree about everything else, but I'm not sure about this:
> The situation wasn't as absurd with EVs, but we definitely could have built a commuter EV at least a decade before we did. Look into the GM EV1 from the 1990s, which pre-dated the Nissan LEAF -- the first mass market EV, which did beat Tesla on that front -- and it had similar range and performance. The EV1 was killed in spite of demand becuase the conventional auto industry hated EVs. Some still do, like Toyota.
Could we have actually built an affordable commuter EV a decade earlier?
OTOH, perhaps the extra demand would just have made prices fall sooner, given the other graph in the link shows the relationship between market size and price, rather than year of price…
Conversely, it's remarkable to me that people still admire Elon Musk. It's perfectly acceptable to acknowledge his past accomplishment while accepting now that he appears to be suffering from drug abuse related and mental health issues.
In my view, Elon's spent most of his good will reputation capital. Of course, we still do have the super-fans who are willing to look past his petulant behavior and give him a pass for his bone-head business moves.
The other take is that he's a genius and a hostile takeover of Twitter was just a checkpoint on the way to making US government his puppet state. Congress is twiddling their thumbs while Musk is apparently preparing to siphon off taxpayer dollars into Space X, Tesla or other ventures.
Either way, it's bad. I loathe the man and fear what could happen.
My feeling on Musk is kinda like... there's this rock star I liked and damn the man could play, but then he ended a concert by stumbling onto stage covered in vomit, misses half his shows now with a syringe hanging out of his arm, and got arrested for domestic violence against his wife.
It's sad, but damn the man could play... once... I guess I can listen to the old albums.
It's like that.
Unfortunately rock stars on the spiral don't generally destroy democracy.
I don't dispute Musk's success as a manager - the problem is that, to achieve his vision, he turned each of his companies into dictatorships. That's fine (at least in the US), because you can choose not to work for him. But I don't think it's fine to run the entire US like Musk's (and Trump's) companies are run. As they say, Hitler contributed a lot to technical progress, built great Autobahns, and his scientists later assisted both the US and the USSR in the space race and in other fields - does that mean it's good Hitler was in charge of Germany? I don't think so..
Well I personally don't think he is trying to better the world for the sake of being some amazing person giving back to humanity, I do think he really wants to succeed being the first trilionaire. And even if he is not doing this for compassion of those who have lost so much, I do think he wants nothing more then this to be successful so he can sell it to those who need it. Even if his motivation is fully monetary, I don't think anyone with complete loss of mobility ultimately cares what it costs to get some freedom back even if it comes from the a person some see as evil.
He has access to a lot of money so maybe these people working on it should continue to work for him. Maybe he wants to charge an outrageous fee for it but ultimately at some point down the road if he can do it others will to and it will be common place for those who need it and probably common place for those who don't need it but want it.
> And even if he is not doing this for compassion of those who have lost so much, I do think he wants nothing more then this to be successful so he can sell it to those who need it.
I'm sure he wants to sell it to those who need it, but I don't think that this means he cares that much whether it's successful as a medical device. He generally cares whether some device appears to work well enough that he can sell it, especially to investors, and far less about whether it actually solves a problem/doesn't introduce worse problems.
Tesla FSD is the best example of something he's been selling for at least 7 years now without it actually working as advertised. Cybertruck was sold long before it came out, and now they're producing only a trickle. Roadster has been sold by the tens of thousands and it's not even in a design phase yet. Solar Roofs was presented to investors as a working product when it was a plastic mockup. There are probably others.
lol I never said I think this means he cares. He cares only as far as being able to sell it. So ultimately he wants it to work and work well but if it works just good enough that those who are desperate for some fraction of improvement are will be willing to pay whatever he will be happy.
Arguably he has found a quicker way to become a trillionaire, based on a government willing to fund his trip. And even now he's pushing to expand this base internationally. Do you think investing in research is still worth of his attention? It might be too soon to notice, but I somehow think not, and the "normal" projects and companies be they cars or links will start to wither...
I am extremely unlikely to ever allow anything even vaguely related to Elon Musk to implant something in my brain, or even to wear as completely noninvasive "through the skin" helmet or headband-like sensing device. Nevermind something with him as a founder.
The article shows a video of Noland, paralyzed from the shoulders down, playing Polytopia. It's great to be fully able-bodied and mock Elon Musk, but for someone to go from using a mouth stylus to playing Polytopia via telepathy is very cool and should be celebrated.
Sure, but have any made as much progress as Neuralink? Not a rhetorical, genuinely asking as someone who doesn't know much about this field. Though, even if others have, isn't this kind of technological achievement something to be lauded regardless of who owns the company that did it?
The technology to do these sorts of things as proof-of-concepts is fairly old. You do not see widespread deployment because brain surgery betas are not a very good idea. There is insufficient evidence the technology is mature or safe enough to support full-scale deployment. A common class of problem being brain scarring on the invasive insertions that reduce efficacy of the implant requiring further damaging brain surgery to remove the implant in a few years.
When you have insufficiently mature technology for deployment you optimize for research. For that, you only need enough to saturate your researchers with data and well-designed tests which is usually achieved with only a small number of units. This is similar to the reason why you only need a few prototype cars even when you are going to make millions of them. If you are not deploying, then you do not need a lot to saturate your design/development process and making a bunch of each half-baked version prior to the final release candidate is a waste of time.
When the technology is minimally adequate, then you scale up. In contrast, deploying middling quantities of proof-of-concept versions as if that "tests" anything is a recipe for a slow-burning disaster. Nobody else is "trying to compete" on who can deploy more because competing on who can deploy more half-baked brain implants would be unethical.
very interesting links, thanks! I was not aware that the technology had progressed that rapidly (outside of Neuralink, which captures a lot of the attention)
I'm reminded of The Diamond Age novel, where a character hears about someone who had an implant which was hacked. If I recall correctly, the hack caused the implant to display an advertisement in a different language at the edge of their vision.
That seems pretty benign compared to what a neural implant could be made to do to someone.
In Iain M Banks' Culture novels there's a ship (the General Systems Vehicle "Grey Area", but most often called "Meatfucker" by other ships) which has converted its interior into a museum of torture devices. Lots of stuff we'd recognise, but one we wouldn't - a Neural Lace. Almost all Culture citizens have one, it's typically implanted in early adulthood and grows next to your brain. A Culture Citizen touring the museum is confused, why does the Grey Area have a Neural Lace ?
Well of course the device doesn't have to be programmed to be controlled by the host, does it ? Torture entirely by manipulating the compute substrate your mind runs on would be effective† and yet very easy to do... so this is in fact just another torture device.
† Effective in the sense that it would inflict needless misery on people, that's what torture is actually for, it's not an effective interrogation strategy and never has been.
Given the security track record of software in general, not even specifically those of Musk's companies but more broadly zero-days in all the major platforms, I would worry about a scenario half way between the plot of the film Upgrade and the long-standing trope of using hypnosis to turn someone into an unwitting assassin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_(film)
It seems easy to worry about somewhat far-fetched scenarios like this when one is not paralyzed and thus not making a trade-off between risks and a fully paralyzed life.
I know people this paralyzed. The concerns they have are usually more "How will I pay rent next month" and "how do I not get such bad bed sores"
How much do you think Neuralink is going to cost? How will people who can't get around on their own pay that? How are people who can't work going to pay that?
I don't know why supporters of all these things are so unable to view the whole situation. Musk doesn't want to pay taxes to a government that will support these disabled people. Musk doesn't want to support these disabled people. They are literally pawns for PR to him.
Musk doesn't want to advance the HUMAN RACE. Musk wants to advance CERTAIN PEOPLE.
> Musk doesn't want to advance the HUMAN RACE. Musk wants to advance CERTAIN PEOPLE.
I think he can't tell the difference between those certain people and the human race as a whole. Trans people in particular would be the obvious example of his failure here — ironically, given how much inspiration he's taken from a fictional universe where people can change physical gender by thinking about it a bit and waiting a few months.
It's… not intended as a compliment when I say he "seems sincere" about wanting to advance the human race when it comes with this caveat. Quite the opposite.
Likewise given what else he's "seemed sincere" about in the past and hasn't manifested.
Why should we believe that he is not just straight up a lying or hiding some kind of fatal flaw? He is intentionally and systematically dismantling any regulatory or enforcement bodies that would hold him accountable or investigate his claims
If the whole slave simulation with humanoid robots does not work for Elon Musk and his peers, maybe we will see W40K-like servitors, where they take the people the billionaire class deems subhuman and convert them into human drones.
I'm thinking in 50 years humans will be so much less capable than bots, that using a human as a servant or a soldier or what have you instead of using a bot would be laughable. Some of us look at AI, and Neuralink, and robot tech and see a point in time and conclude they won't get any better. That's not how any of this has ever worked. They will all get better.
The future of non-elites is unknown. But hopefully either the elites will be magnanimous, or non-elites will create new occupations that will at once, be able to create wealth, and not be able to be performed by bots. Not sure what those new occupations will be? But human ingenuity is an incredible thing, especially if the system remains market capitalism based. Because that will mean your rent and food will depend on you coming up with something to do. I think people will think of something.
If not? Well, let's just say the future might not hold societies as pleasant for non-elites as the societies of today.
Musk is a great example of how to ruin ones legacy. At this point, no matter what he does, how his companies perform, or even if this implant gives people back control of their bodies. Nothing will rid his work of the taint.
It's tragic in a way. If he stuck to same playbook as practiced by many other early tech billionaires, spending his life on investing, philanthropy, himself and family, the world would probably not have things like common reusable rockets, widespread EV adoption or massive satellite constellations.
His willingness to pour money, and ability get others to pour their money, into various extremely risky ventures, is what made all of that possible. Eventually it would happen anyway, but probably much later.
But I suspect, that very same personality traits that enabled him to do this, are responsible for his current state. Over the years he has lost his self control, to the point that he looks almost childish. Handful of years ago, he opposed people he now works with.
He's now undermining his own companies, with his actions. Even people like Murdoch or Thiel look better in comparison. Not because of what they do, but because they are less visible.
Everything he has ever done, will now be viewed in much worse light. His reputation, sabotaged by the only person who could accomplish that feat. Himself.
This Greg Egan short story is a useful intuition pump about the possibilities. Not recommended for children. Or before trying to sleep. https://philosophy.williams.edu/files/Egan-Learning-to-Be-Me...
It would be great if instead of "a clinical trial to demonstrate that the Link is safe and useful" we could have a clinical trial to determine whether or not it is.