Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed • Hacker News Board

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#271

Post by maxlin » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

picafrost wrote: post #46

I think anyone who chooses to undergo the first few trials of a new operation like this, and is informed about the risks, is very brave. I do not know much of anything about medical science, but my impression is that we are still very, very far from having a deep grasp of how both the brain and the immune system work. Ultimately, to the body an implant is simply a foreign object. Many tech professionals work on proje…

The kind of amount of regulation around this makes me think they are not in that big of a danger, especially as previous devices in this class are way more invasive than Neuralink. I remember that even in their earliest own presentations the width of the "wires" is fraction to previous solutions

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#272

Post by bandrami » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #118

picafrost wrote: post #46

I think anyone who chooses to undergo the first few trials of a new operation like this, and is informed about the risks, is very brave. I do not know much of anything about medical science, but my impression is that we are still very, very far from having a deep grasp of how both the brain and the immune system work. Ultimately, to the body an implant is simply a foreign object. Many tech professionals work on proje…

> Ultimately, to the body an implant is simply a foreign object. I get your point but, there's a lot of foreign objects going in by the way of various pores and openings. Biological beings are surprisingly resilient & fragile at the same time.

Those openings lead to spaces that are not "inside" the body, though. For deuterostomes like humans, the digestive tract is still "outside" in a lot of important ways.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#273

Post by maxlin » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:11 AM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #2

There is a great podcast with the entire team + Noland on yt. It is ~ 8h long, but IMO it's worth the time. You get to hear things from the perspective of the chief brain surgeon, hardware team, software team, and of course Noland himself. I really recommend it, to get a better understanding of what's possible, what they had to do to get there, and how impactful this kind of research is for people with terrible condi…

I love and hate this type of Lex Friedman interviews. Several factors give out when there's a podcast that is posted uncut with a 8 hour length that I'd like to listen to. Wish he cut them!

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#274

Post by goosejuice » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

unaindz wrote: post #230

goosejuice wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've heard this time and time again. It has nothing to do with the point I'm making. This is just stoking the flamewar. If you want to compare Waymo and Tesla FSD from a technology standpoint and claim superiority of one over the other you can't use simple values like interventions per mile. It says very little. The solutions were designed for different purposes under different constraints. That's what engineers…

By definition if you aim to get autonomous that means you aim for zero or at least a very low intervention per mile. Tesla boast about that but doesn't provide.

The context clearly matters.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#275

Post by positron26 » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

ckemere wrote: post #227

I think that the negativity here is unfortunate. The reality is that it’s very hard to see a normal VC level return on the $100M+ Elon and friends have invested here. And don’t let anyone fool you - this is the fundamental reason the BCI field has moved slowly. If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a h…

Probably a decent reason that all such augmentations need to be built on open technologies. If no provider can guarantee future support, only open strategies are even viable for users.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#276

Post by alanbernstein » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

maxlin wrote: post #273

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #2

There is a great podcast with the entire team + Noland on yt. It is ~ 8h long, but IMO it's worth the time. You get to hear things from the perspective of the chief brain surgeon, hardware team, software team, and of course Noland himself. I really recommend it, to get a better understanding of what's possible, what they had to do to get there, and how impactful this kind of research is for people with terrible condi…

I love and hate this type of Lex Friedman interviews. Several factors give out when there's a podcast that is posted uncut with a 8 hour length that I'd like to listen to. Wish he cut them!

I completely relate - but I listened to this one, alone, in full. Technology has produced many things you might call a miracle, but this one stands out.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#277

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

jakeydus wrote: post #203

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue a lot of Musk haters are not getting a representative sample of his behavior, but rather only the most outrageous things he says and does, which tend to be the things that penetrate their bubble.

I don’t hate him. I think he’s a sad, small man who makes himself feel big by being a bully and faking technical experience and knowledge. I think his fans confuse being in the right place at the right time in possession significant capital as genius. I think he is an incredibly toxic public figure. I think farming outrage and feeding trolls is bad for everyone. I think Nazi salutes are bad. I think that lying is bad…

> in the right place at the right time in possession significant capital as genius

1. he created the capital he had

2. he is not the only person with capital

3. the opportunities he saw, no one else did

When someone wins the lottery 3 times in a row, it is no longer credible to call it "luck". He's simply a genius.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#278

Post by tomalbrc » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

orbital-decay wrote: post #269

bluefirebrand wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things have costs so we should be ok with a society where the wealthy exploit poor and desperate people?

The supposedly cynical comment above talks about giving quadriplegic people a reliable way to control computers for <$100k, something that was science fiction before. Is this what you call exploitation of the poor and desperate by the wealthy? You have to finance things somehow, or they won't be done at all.

[flagged]

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#279

Post by goosejuice » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:28 AM UTC

Veserv wrote: post #226

goosejuice wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well your father can't buy a Waymo. Even if he could it wouldn't go very far, wouldn't work everywhere and would cost at least 2x a model 3 or Y. So there are at least several leads Tesla has. It's a horrible comparison. Why do people keep making it? This isn't Lyft vs Uber. A better comparison to Tesla FSD would be blue cruise, super cruise, drive pilot, god's eye, and every other consumer level 2 ADAS.

Well because Elon Musk keeps making it. In January 2023, on the official Tesla earnings call, he said that FSD was currently overwhelmingly superior at autonomous driving than everything else in existence: "So who do we think is close to Tesla with -- a general solution for self-driving? And we still don't even know really who would even be a distant second. So yes, it really seems like we're -- I mean, right now, I…

So a person who most of us strongly despise makes you throw out all rational thought and make false equivalence arguments about these autonomous systems?

Everything doesn't have to be about Elon. Imagine you replaced him in 2015, but still approached autonomy through mass market level 2. How would you compare them? I think you might add just a few caveats about the constraints and environments they operate in.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#280

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

jakeydus wrote: post #72

fourseventy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone with a supreme lack of judgement he sure does own a lot of billion dollar companies. I strive to have the same lack of judgement that he has.

I hope not, I'd rather have fewer narcissistic sociopaths in the world. He only cares about himself and what people think of him. Nothing he does is to benefit other people. He's not Iron Man, he's Lex Luthor. I guess people have always idolized the creeps of the world, though.

> Nothing he does is to benefit other people

The only way Elon makes money is through people voluntarily giving it to him in exchange for what he creates.