Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a game theory perspective it's very rare for it to make sense to be the first to try new medical interventions.
Mate thats not game theory its common sense.
1 + 1 = 2 is common sense, but it’s also math.
Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
351–360 of 481 posts
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's unfortunate - in principle, return on investment today can achieve greater humanitarian impact tomorrow vs humanitarian impact today. Of course, this creates a perverse situation where choosing humanitarian impact today over investment is always irrational, but this is the fundamental tension in charity vs investment, and aside from relying on governments and guilt, I'm not sure we have discovered…
Problem is, when people start to analyse things like this, even apart from falling into utilitarian traps, they don’t apply regular business reasoning. There’s a bunch of effects to consider 1) improving lives right now may well improve subsequent generations lives directly 2) your future project may have a higher failure rate than your current one 3) the problems you are trying to solve may no longer be relevant in…
It's the people thinking about the bottom line who will push for the gradual enshittification of the product until it's beaming ads into people's brain, preventing them from saying anything bad about elon, forcing them to sing his praises against their will, or charging them a monthly fee for "continued autonomous breathing as a service".
Taking a good thing and fucking people over with it in every way possible is "regular business reasoning"
At a certain point it's smart to say "We have the technology to do something good, let's be extremely cautious about concerns over what's profitable and focus on doing what's right with it"
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money. Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
It does kinda feel like there's an accidental attempt to LARP the plot of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (if you squint hard enough) - richest man in the world, brain control, Mars colony, attempted coup on Earth... all the plot points are there!
Once Elon gets a robotic arm, steel teeth and prosthetic eyes that's when we know we're in real trouble.
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've read, if you are blind from birth, but visual signals were suddenly restored, your brain wouldn't know how to process them. Blind from birth = blind forever. I'm not certain though.
"Blind" has way more of a wide definition than we usually appreciate. I volunteer at a food pantry. There is one old lady who is sometimes rude in the line, shoving through saying "move it, I'm blind!!" She sometimes informs me that produce I hand her has black spots and she doesn't want it. I believe she may actually be legally blind.
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Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#355I 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…
The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money. Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
> how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up
It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neuralink maybe. Do you remember how much attention he got for his stupid submarine during the Thai cave rescue?
I have lots of ideas. Some are great, some are ordinary, and some turn out to be embarrassingly stupid. So does everyone else who tries to create new things. Edison had dumb ideas, too, like his mining ideas. The Wrights also had dumb ideas like their persistence with wing warping, and the canard stabilizer. The sub thing didn't hurt anyone, it was an emergency so he didn't have much time to think about it, so really…
I mean it hurt the guy who disagreed with it a lot, since Elon decided that because of that he was a pedophile and proclaimed that publicly
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#357so this is like MCP but for neurons? can they wire up the neurons that control ear twitch muscles to something useful e.g. "Open terminal" shortcut?
With the ear twitch muscles, it would probably be easier to use muscle sensors, which are a lot cheaper and easier to use (stick them on the skin), instead of delving inside someone's brain
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have lots of ideas. Some are great, some are ordinary, and some turn out to be embarrassingly stupid. So does everyone else who tries to create new things. Edison had dumb ideas, too, like his mining ideas. The Wrights also had dumb ideas like their persistence with wing warping, and the canard stabilizer. The sub thing didn't hurt anyone, it was an emergency so he didn't have much time to think about it, so really…
I mean it hurt the guy who disagreed with it a lot, since Elon decided that because of that he was a pedophile and proclaimed that publicly
"the guy" initiated the exchange by calling Musk names on TV. Musk did not initiate it.
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money. Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
> how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
It's not that difficult, really.
"By using this implant I agree to the collection and sharing of analysis data with Neuralink and its trusted third parties".
[ ] Agree
[ ] Ask me later
Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
#360I'll let other blind people go first, but I'm definitely some one that would love, love, love to be able to see. Driving, knowing body language, playing any and every video game out there, shoot yeah!
From what I've read, if you are blind from birth, but visual signals were suddenly restored, your brain wouldn't know how to process them. Blind from birth = blind forever. I'm not certain though.
Some part of this is true, but it’s complicated.
I lack stereoscopic vision, due to eye surgery in infancy & wildly different focal lengths in each eye (one is very nearsighted, the other farsighted).
I can still see in 3D because my brain uses tricks like relative object size, shadows, and sometimes I move my head laterally so my farsighted eye gets different angles on an object (“faking” stereoscopic vision with one eye).
Nonetheless, catching a ball thrown straight at me is very difficult— I have to judge the size at which the circle is getting larger, and know the actual size of the ball. It often hits me in the hand and I try to grab it before it bounces away.
And I can never see those stereogram images where it looks like static unless you focus both eyes at some distance. I never see the world with both eyes simultaneously.
I once got glasses that corrected my vision “perfectly” but got major headaches and couldn’t wear them. Objects were in focus in both eyes, but were wildly different sizes!
I went to an ophthalmologist who basically told me they can correct my lenses but in my brain “the wiring is shot”.
I mostly work in front of a computer screen. I now use reading glasses so that when my nearsighted eye gets tired, I can put them on and continue working with my farsighted eye. These glasses have only a minor correction on the nearsighted eye so they don’t give me headaches.