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>Who’d even want a device like this put inside their brain by a company responsible for botched surgeries and unnecessarily killing living sentient beings Goin

by treis 4y ago

>Who’d even want a device like this put inside their brain by a company responsible for botched surgeries and unnecessarily killing living sentient beings Going to guess the people that would be able to walk again

Loughla 4y ago
I'm not sure that's the great argument you think it is. Doesn't it seem a bit coercive if the people who want/need this are so desperate for it that they literally cannot care about the ethics of the company behind the product?
- noptd 4y ago
  I guess it depends on how important you hold the lives of lab mice considering they make up the vast majority of the 1500 number cited.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    I have no idea how that matters to the argument I made. I'm very confused by your statement in the context of what I said.
    - fastball 4y ago
      The key distinction here is that "unnecessary" isn't really an objective measure. You are taking that for granted, while the person replying to you was not.
      - Loughla 4y ago
        Ah. That makes sense. Thank you.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      I assume you also never kill mosquitos, flies, or any other kind of pests, or take antibiotics and vaccines?
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand science and are maybe presuming that it’s okay to be sloppy because it will eventually result in a cure, and the only people who are disagreeing with you are animal rights activists. What people are actually criticizing is that this technology is built on shaky science with sloppy experiments casting doubt on any claimed medical breakthroughs. We cannot just presume that because the possible quality of life increase is massive that we should stop caring about ensuring a quality of life increase. It’s entirely possible (and has happened historically) where someone over promises a massive quality of life increase and it thereby ends up shortening peoples lives and causes more suffering precisely because whistleblowers at animal trials were ignored.
recrof 4y ago
for what price? how many animals are worth one walking human?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- treis 4y ago
  Given the choice I'd kill literally every monkey and pig on the planet if it meant we had the technology to cure paralysis. I honestly can't comprehend the alternative. You'd walk up to some poor sap paralyzed from the neck down and say "Gee I'd really love for you to walk again but I'm a little bit more concerned about the pigs and monkeys?".
  - CaptainNegative 4y ago
    I think what you're failing to comprehend is that some people have a trait called empathy which prevents them from genociding the better part of a billion individuals for the sake of a few being able to stretch their legs.
    - treis 4y ago
      The juxtaposition of an accusation of missing empathy with describing curing paralysis as "being able to stretch their legs" is striking.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  A lot - we eat thousands of animals over our lives.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  We kill 80 billion animals for food every year. Pretty sure 1500 to advance science is nothing in comparison. And I wish we had a better way, but we just don't yet. Bioinformatics is working on creating virtual bodies, but we're not there yet, it's decades away.
rideontime 4y ago
Torturing 1500 creatures to death just so someone can walk again?
- treis 4y ago
  It's not one person. It's low hundreds of thousands to millions, depending how we count, against 1500 animal tortures. Seems like an easy choice to me.
  - danShumway 4y ago
    It's a very selective choice. Neuralink won't be giving this product away. The company is not sacrificing these animals to better mankind, it's sacrificing them to make a profit, and our hope is that in making a profit they will accidentally make a lot of peoples' lives better. However, we have regulations and restrictions around that process because when that company makes decisions about what it is and isn't willing to sacrifice, those decisions are not going to be made based on the number of people they help, they'll be made based on profit maximization. We can do (and should do) better work than this to improve lives for disabled and differently-abled people in ways that won't require this sheer level of suffering and that won't gate those peoples' quality of life behind expensive devices controlled by a single company, headed by a man who is historically against right-to-repair movements, against consumer privacy, and against consumer rights. There are the cliche opportunities to help (which is not to say that they're not important) like improving building and process accessibility, improving disabled rights. But there's also pure research opportunities like making the devices that already exist cheaper and more easily available. Neuralink isn't going to be cheaper than the existing hardware we have today to help disabled people, and if that hardware is out of reach of many disabled people, than Neuralink is also going to be out of reach for them. Heck, we can also do (and should do) this exact same research outside of a startup culture with less animal suffering involved, and the outcomes will very likely be better. ---- > It's low hundreds of thousands to millions, depending how we count, against 1500 animal tortures This also isn't the choice being offered. Neuralink isn't ready for human testing, and we have no guarantee that the company is going to succeed or that they'll end up being competitive in the market. People are treating this as if you just press a button and grant people the ability to walk at the cost of 1,500 animals, but Neuralink has a lot more testing to do, and we have no guarantee that those animals aren't going to eventually turn out to have been killed for no reason at all. This is also why we have regulations around this; because every single company believes that they are working on something so important that it justifies this level of sacrifice, and every company believes that if they were allowed to make those sacrifices that they would be certain to succeed and their products wouldn't have any serious tradeoffs or problems. Even makeup companies believe that they are working on something important enough that it justifies this level of sacrifice. So we have rules about research that apply to everyone, even (especially) people sticking computers in our brains.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by treis 4y ago

Loughla 4y ago

I'm not sure that's the great argument you think it is. Doesn't it seem a bit coercive if the people who want/need this are so desperate for it that they literally cannot care about the ethics of the company behind the product?

noptd 4y ago
I guess it depends on how important you hold the lives of lab mice considering they make up the vast majority of the 1500 number cited.
- Loughla 4y ago
  I have no idea how that matters to the argument I made. I'm very confused by your statement in the context of what I said.
  - fastball 4y ago
    The key distinction here is that "unnecessary" isn't really an objective measure. You are taking that for granted, while the person replying to you was not.
    - Loughla 4y ago
      Ah. That makes sense. Thank you.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    I assume you also never kill mosquitos, flies, or any other kind of pests, or take antibiotics and vaccines?
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  I think you misunderstand science and are maybe presuming that it’s okay to be sloppy because it will eventually result in a cure, and the only people who are disagreeing with you are animal rights activists. What people are actually criticizing is that this technology is built on shaky science with sloppy experiments casting doubt on any claimed medical breakthroughs. We cannot just presume that because the possible quality of life increase is massive that we should stop caring about ensuring a quality of life increase. It’s entirely possible (and has happened historically) where someone over promises a massive quality of life increase and it thereby ends up shortening peoples lives and causes more suffering precisely because whistleblowers at animal trials were ignored.

recrof 4y ago

for what price? how many animals are worth one walking human?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
treis 4y ago
Given the choice I'd kill literally every monkey and pig on the planet if it meant we had the technology to cure paralysis. I honestly can't comprehend the alternative. You'd walk up to some poor sap paralyzed from the neck down and say "Gee I'd really love for you to walk again but I'm a little bit more concerned about the pigs and monkeys?".
- CaptainNegative 4y ago
  I think what you're failing to comprehend is that some people have a trait called empathy which prevents them from genociding the better part of a billion individuals for the sake of a few being able to stretch their legs.
  - treis 4y ago
    The juxtaposition of an accusation of missing empathy with describing curing paralysis as "being able to stretch their legs" is striking.
happyopossum 4y ago
A lot - we eat thousands of animals over our lives.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
We kill 80 billion animals for food every year. Pretty sure 1500 to advance science is nothing in comparison. And I wish we had a better way, but we just don't yet. Bioinformatics is working on creating virtual bodies, but we're not there yet, it's decades away.

rideontime 4y ago

Torturing 1500 creatures to death just so someone can walk again?

treis 4y ago
It's not one person. It's low hundreds of thousands to millions, depending how we count, against 1500 animal tortures. Seems like an easy choice to me.
- danShumway 4y ago
  It's a very selective choice. Neuralink won't be giving this product away. The company is not sacrificing these animals to better mankind, it's sacrificing them to make a profit, and our hope is that in making a profit they will accidentally make a lot of peoples' lives better. However, we have regulations and restrictions around that process because when that company makes decisions about what it is and isn't willing to sacrifice, those decisions are not going to be made based on the number of people they help, they'll be made based on profit maximization. We can do (and should do) better work than this to improve lives for disabled and differently-abled people in ways that won't require this sheer level of suffering and that won't gate those peoples' quality of life behind expensive devices controlled by a single company, headed by a man who is historically against right-to-repair movements, against consumer privacy, and against consumer rights. There are the cliche opportunities to help (which is not to say that they're not important) like improving building and process accessibility, improving disabled rights. But there's also pure research opportunities like making the devices that already exist cheaper and more easily available. Neuralink isn't going to be cheaper than the existing hardware we have today to help disabled people, and if that hardware is out of reach of many disabled people, than Neuralink is also going to be out of reach for them. Heck, we can also do (and should do) this exact same research outside of a startup culture with less animal suffering involved, and the outcomes will very likely be better. ---- > It's low hundreds of thousands to millions, depending how we count, against 1500 animal tortures This also isn't the choice being offered. Neuralink isn't ready for human testing, and we have no guarantee that the company is going to succeed or that they'll end up being competitive in the market. People are treating this as if you just press a button and grant people the ability to walk at the cost of 1,500 animals, but Neuralink has a lot more testing to do, and we have no guarantee that those animals aren't going to eventually turn out to have been killed for no reason at all. This is also why we have regulations around this; because every single company believes that they are working on something so important that it justifies this level of sacrifice, and every company believes that if they were allowed to make those sacrifices that they would be certain to succeed and their products wouldn't have any serious tradeoffs or problems. Even makeup companies believe that they are working on something important enough that it justifies this level of sacrifice. So we have rules about research that apply to everyone, even (especially) people sticking computers in our brains.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]