Bryan Johnson invests $100M in Kernel to unlock the power of the human brain

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-human-bra...

...illustrates the problem well. Here's a nice quote:

"Although researchers worldwide were publishing tens of thousands of neuroscience studies every year, neither our understanding of basic brain functions nor our ability to treat brain disorders seemed to be progressing much. "

It's mostly been a failure. The successes have been very, very limited from what I've read. I'm a non-expert that follows generalist scientific publications that report on breakthroughs and interesting products. So, maybe I've missed all the amazing things neuroscience is doing for people's health outside actual surgeries. I just figure spectacular results coming from all the grants and private investment would've made it into things I read. Rarely anything does past "Hmm. That study had some interesting results that might go somewhere some time with a lot more work." Followed by others that seem to contradict it or at least make me wonder.

I remember recently there was an article showing renewed interests in glial cells since they might be more critical to brain function than previously thought. Imagine that. All this research and money thrown at it since the beginning of the field operated on the assumption that they weren't significant. There were others I saw about neural communication in previous years that overturned prior beliefs. One can wonder what new fundamentals we'll learn in this next decade that will challenge our prior beliefs.

Introducing technology that improves how something functions usually needs accurate knowledge about how that something fundamentally works. Investments like Johnson's bet that results will be achieved without that knowledge or even with incorrect knowledge. Kind of like old gold rushes where people bet there'd be gold all over the place in certain areas without even prospecting them first. That's the feeling I get looking at neural ventures.

Note: We had them in the past, too. Implants to control or expand the mind, cause hallucinations, effortlessly give you lucid dreams, and so on. Enough interesting stuff happened that some tactical accomplishments might come from just throwing money at random stuff. Yet, all the interesting stuff of past and present still hasn't given a non-drug guarantee on things as basic as insomnia, depression, or ADD. All failure so far in big picture.

Here's someone who's investing his own hard-earned money into a "device aimed at reducing cognitive deficiencies for sufferers of conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia." And all anyone can do is complain that it's infeasible or that he's unqualified. I don't know about you, but I want more people working on these problems, not less.

Seems very reminiscent of when Musk was starting SpaceX and everyone assumed he didn't know anything about the domain and would automatically fail.

Oh no. That's one possible inspiration. Another would be Braintree IPOing or continuing as a company providing an alternative to Paypal's BS I constantly read about while guy continues to make tons of money or get rich. Then he invests in hard problems we're likely to solve where we have the necessary foundation to begin to achieve the stated goals.

Instead, he got rich selling off his good company and now has money to blow on stuff like this. Good for him. Still inspirational with Braintree's early work still something I'm going to cite. Just still worth critiquing for where it went or is going wrong so next bootstrapper considers better alternatives.

Also, realize the irony that you don't like us criticizing what he did with Braintree or where the money is going while Braintree itself owed its success to correct criticism of how successful payment companies were doing things & where their investments were going. He pointed out the problems, showed a better way via his offering, and now we're talking about him instead of them. ;)