4 ms·

I believe it's a moral obligation not to trade speed for efficiency when you consider the raw material(animals) are almost "free" as far as ethics are concerned

I believe it's a moral obligation not to trade speed for efficiency when you consider the raw material(animals) are almost "free" as far as ethics are concerned(i.e we kill them for the taste of their meat with almost no ethical cost). I have a different opinion on human testing of course. It's like banning SpaceX's "sloppy" development because the failure of their rockets create pollution. Polution is bad and causes death but I think we should not get religious about polution where it matters little and the potential reward is high.

danShumway 4y ago
> when you consider the raw material(animals) are almost "free" as far as ethics are concerned(i.e we kill them for the taste of their meat with almost no ethical cost) I've commented similarly elsewhere, but I really wish people would stop saying "think about the meat we eat" as an argument for more animal suffering in the world. The correct response to hypocrisy is to have consistently better morals everywhere, not to have consistently worse morals elsewhere. Of course, people can disagree whether or not killing animals unnecessarily is immoral. But if you want to take the premise that eating meat is wrong, no vegetarian/vegan is ever going to tell you that they don't want unnecessary animal testing stopped until after everyone stops eating meat. People's hypocrisy around specific moral issues should not be treated like a license to completely abandon other standards; taking that approach to morality is a recipe for rapid societal decay. > where it matters little and the potential reward is high. Again, you can disagree with capableweb's argument, but I just want to characterize correctly what the argument is -- capableweb is saying that the testing here isn't actually going to significantly increase Neuralink's odds of success or their research speed. I would add to that argument that it may in fact lower Neuralink's odds of success if it encourages sloppier research or decreases public trust in the project. I don't have a strong take on that beyond that I think their testing is symptomatic of Musk imposing deadlines and pressures that are going to be toxic to a productive research environment. I don't know that excessive animal testing is going to slow down their research, but based on what the researchers in this article have said, I am pretty certain that the reason why they're doing excessive animal testing in this case is because Musk is pushing them to do sloppy testing to meet unrealistic deadlines that will lead to sloppy results and a worse product, if they get a product out at all. Fast careless testing is sometimes slower than methodical careful testing. That's an argument that's orthogonal to the moral cost of killing animals for research purposes. If you don't think there's any moral tradeoff to killing animals at all, then the only thing that matters is how their decisions impact the end result. And seriously, I just responded on here to clarify what capableweb was talking about and that they weren't making an isolated demand for rigor. I am not interested in getting into an argument about whether all of the research standards for animal welfare should all be dropped so that Musk can theoretically maybe monopolize a market in the future that will likely be inaccessible to most disabled people at a potentially slightly faster speed.

danShumway 4y ago

> when you consider the raw material(animals) are almost "free" as far as ethics are concerned(i.e we kill them for the taste of their meat with almost no ethical cost) I've commented similarly elsewhere, but I really wish people would stop saying "think about the meat we eat" as an argument for more animal suffering in the world. The correct response to hypocrisy is to have consistently better morals everywhere, not to have consistently worse morals elsewhere. Of course, people can disagree whether or not killing animals unnecessarily is immoral. But if you want to take the premise that eating meat is wrong, no vegetarian/vegan is ever going to tell you that they don't want unnecessary animal testing stopped until after everyone stops eating meat. People's hypocrisy around specific moral issues should not be treated like a license to completely abandon other standards; taking that approach to morality is a recipe for rapid societal decay. > where it matters little and the potential reward is high. Again, you can disagree with capableweb's argument, but I just want to characterize correctly what the argument is -- capableweb is saying that the testing here isn't actually going to significantly increase Neuralink's odds of success or their research speed. I would add to that argument that it may in fact lower Neuralink's odds of success if it encourages sloppier research or decreases public trust in the project. I don't have a strong take on that beyond that I think their testing is symptomatic of Musk imposing deadlines and pressures that are going to be toxic to a productive research environment. I don't know that excessive animal testing is going to slow down their research, but based on what the researchers in this article have said, I am pretty certain that the reason why they're doing excessive animal testing in this case is because Musk is pushing them to do sloppy testing to meet unrealistic deadlines that will lead to sloppy results and a worse product, if they get a product out at all. Fast careless testing is sometimes slower than methodical careful testing. That's an argument that's orthogonal to the moral cost of killing animals for research purposes. If you don't think there's any moral tradeoff to killing animals at all, then the only thing that matters is how their decisions impact the end result. And seriously, I just responded on here to clarify what capableweb was talking about and that they weren't making an isolated demand for rigor. I am not interested in getting into an argument about whether all of the research standards for animal welfare should all be dropped so that Musk can theoretically maybe monopolize a market in the future that will likely be inaccessible to most disabled people at a potentially slightly faster speed.