81–90 of 160 posts
Except for the fact that it costs millions to create technology for our brains, it's such a big gamble. And neurotechnology failure happens in most cases since we don't have enough data to make predictable guesses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, with a brain implant, it would be possible to rate limit the “happy button” similar to time-locked IV buttons or medicine bottles.
Why?
I really like the proposal from John Scalzi's 'Lock In' series where companies that produce neural implants have to establish a trust or insurance contract with enough assets to pay for the maintenance of any implants for the lifetime of the recipients, regardless of what happens to the company. Governments could provide generous subsidies, tax breaks etc. to such funds to reduce the barrier for entry for companies.…
Yes, because that went so well in the oil/coal/agriculture/chemistry/electric vehicles industries, creating world-endangering practices and authoritarian moguls. What could go wrong when the mogul can shut down your brain.
It is funny to say the least that even here, a forum of a venture capital company, people expect "the government", the people, to give free money to companies. Has any VC ever given 1 dollar without expecting not only ROI, but ownership? Why doesn't the government own 99.99% of ExxonMobil, Nestlé, John Deere, DuPont, Tesla—they have been pumping venture capital for years, over a hundred in some cases? Right, capitalism, or with other words, socialism for the rich and powerful: all gain, no pain; privatize profits, socialize losses.
This public-private model never worked, perhaps it was never intended to. It's origin is the East India Company, founded December 31, 1600, who, for all intents and purposes, owned the world for a brief moment. Brief mostly due to lack of digitalization and communication latency (London-Bengal around 80 days). The last 400 years have been a stretch of this model, pushing again and again the location of the sweatshops: from the dimly lit, fumes-filled street in the city, to the ghetto, to overseas, as Thomas Smythe [1], governor of East India Company, originally intended. It is particularly funny we cannot even truly imagine a dystopic future where a company gets to own the world, where ownage is the same as helding hostage, for the next 10,000 years since every company is inherently suicidal, another word for something which grows every quarter: cancer.
Here is another solution: have a $1 trillion fund, gather some governments or ask nicely the Norwegian oil fund, fund the research and possible product development for the next 10 to 20 years, and have 100% of the technology be open, owned by all, with 100% of the profits going back to the governments/people. Companies Need Not Apply. You say this has never happened, it is unnatural? Sure it did, you see it right here in action, in this very language that we are using: could you imagine how it would be to have a company license the word "the", to have to pay a subscription for using certain "bundles" of words. Programmatic brain input/output is even more fundamental than language.
[1] "In 1620, Smythe was formally charged with enriching himself at the expense of the company", a true pioneer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Smythe#:~:text=In%20162....
I really like the proposal from John Scalzi's 'Lock In' series where companies that produce neural implants have to establish a trust or insurance contract with enough assets to pay for the maintenance of any implants for the lifetime of the recipients, regardless of what happens to the company. Governments could provide generous subsidies, tax breaks etc. to such funds to reduce the barrier for entry for companies.…
>> Without some solution like this, it's hard to imagine any non-essential neural implants really taking off: who would ever buy a neural lace from a startup — or even an established company like Google who might just lose interest — if there was no guarentee of patches and maintenance? Speaking as someone who lived with chronic, daily, horrific pain for years before a surgery miraculously solved most of my problems…
You could have signed up only if excessive regulatory burden wouldn't have killed or prevented the startup from existing.
I find the whole "medical startups should support their patients post bankruptcy" train of thought very disingenuous: as long as we as a society make no public concerted effort to cure these people and leave them to the mercy of the markets, then surely some relief from their problems, even if temporary, is better than none, especially if it provides valuable experience that other more successful companies can use in the future for many more patients.
In view of these future possible patients, it would be downright imoral to burden such startups, which already take enormous risks, with unreasonable costs such as ensuring their devices function into perpetuity.
Yes, they should be regulated to not make the problem worse after they inevitably fail - primum non nocere. But most of the other ideas proposed in the article have a toxic effect on the business viability of medical startups, possibly preventing them altogether.
Seems like the implants (hardware design and any software) need to be the equivalent of open source (in the GNU sense). Failing that, hardware designs, and the software - along with all necessary instructions - at least have to be put in escrow in the event that the company goes under. That would not immediately help, but at least there would be a fighting chance... As in this case to still be able to have someone fi…
I really like the proposal from John Scalzi's 'Lock In' series where companies that produce neural implants have to establish a trust or insurance contract with enough assets to pay for the maintenance of any implants for the lifetime of the recipients, regardless of what happens to the company. Governments could provide generous subsidies, tax breaks etc. to such funds to reduce the barrier for entry for companies.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opiate crisis has less to do with people’s deaths and more about their addiction. The lengths they go to score another fix—stabbing people, robbing family members, selling themselves, etc. It’s one thing to die from doing something stupid—it’s something else entirely to inflict pain and hardship on others.
> The lengths they go to score another fix—stabbing people, robbing family members, selling themselves, etc. Would they do that if the government just gave them the drug they are addicted to for free? I don’t think so. Is the real problem then the addiction, or the public policy context in which the addiction exists? Of course, I wouldn’t want to be addicted to opioids, even if the government gave them to me for free…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are arguing for cruelty with a false dilemma. The symptoms are the problem. The suffering and loss of function are the problem. Sure, total causal knowledge and a perfect treatment would be nice. But until we have that, ignoring partial solutions in the name of medical research purity would be deeply irresponsible.
Sure, total causal knowledge and a perfect treatment would be nice. We won't get it if we never bother to look for it. I'm not arguing for cruelty. These articles make the front page of HN precisely because our current approach is so broken that people find the results horrifying.
But active diagnoses, treatment attempts, and tracking of patient responsiveness, are indispensable to medical research.
And it took less than a minute to Google up an overview of recent research progress along many avenues for cluster headaches, as an example:
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2020-059577.long
I think you can stop worrying that medicine has to make dire choices between best treatment efforts today vs. finding better treatments for tomorrow.
I really like the proposal from John Scalzi's 'Lock In' series where companies that produce neural implants have to establish a trust or insurance contract with enough assets to pay for the maintenance of any implants for the lifetime of the recipients, regardless of what happens to the company. Governments could provide generous subsidies, tax breaks etc. to such funds to reduce the barrier for entry for companies.…
Of course there’d be a guarantee: 5 years of security updates for your neural implant until you need new hardware.
Golly, that almost sounds completely fucking crazy until you realize it’s already their current policy for smartphones-which arguably already serve a similar role. That’s up from thee years previously. I think it was even two at one point.
I should have been a neurosurgeon.