[ben_w]

I disagree.

I see the promise, but I've got too many real life examples of security issues to draw on to trust it would even keep working very long — let alone working appropriately and under my control — to allow one to control my body, which an implant would necessarily need to do.

And that's even with 100% of the biological compatibility issues being solved (I'm told those take several years to show up in all the other research examples from everyone else) and assuming that there was no trust deficit with Musk's companies selling products on the promise of what they aspire to do "this year" and don't/them having misleading demos — this is a fundamental issue of digital security being hard.

If an accident like Christopher Reeve's were to happen, I'd wait for something that repaired or regenerated tissue over a chip.

[tmnvdb]

You seem awfully sure about what you would do but you again do not seem to have considered about what it is like to be fully paralyzed. Let me be clear, I understand the risks of these devices. But my impression is that you're having trouble emphathizing with people with such medical conditions and you're not really considering how it feels to live like that. In fact, you again spend your whole message talking about abstract considerations, but you do not talk about the experience of being unable to do almost anything - how that shapes a persons willingness to take risks and weigh them differently. That is my point about trade-offs, consider the personal and emotional as well as the technical.

[ben_w]

> In fact, you again spend your whole message talking about abstract considerations

No.

Not abstractions.

I have experience of software, I know how bad the entire industry is.

https://xkcd.com/2030/ applies to everything.

Even without malice, my degree used as case studies the failures of the Therac-25 and the digitalisation of the 1992 failure of the London Ambulance Service computerised dispatch system.

Hospitals and devices do get attacked. Bitcoin ransomware does affect hospitals. These are not abstractions, they are things that actually happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_device_hijack

I wasn't being "abstract" when I said the frequency with which attacks are attempted can be measured in Herz, that's an actual anecdote from someone I knew a decade ago.

[tmnvdb]

Software safety is an abstract concept. You have experience with specific instances of problems that fall under the abstract concept of software security. This is not to say it is not important.

Not being able to move your hands is not an abstract concept. It can be directly experienced.

[ben_w]

"A specific disability" is as little of an abstraction as "this specific software vulnerability".

"Disability in general" exactly as much an abstraction as "software safety in general".