[HN Gopher] A Year of Telepathy
___________________________________________________________________
A Year of Telepathy
Author : julianh65
Score : 173 points
Date : 2025-02-11 22:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (neuralink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (neuralink.com)
| hexator wrote:
| Not mentioned at all is the failure rate, which back in May was
| reported by Ars to be 85% with the first patient, Noland. [1]
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/neuralink-to-
| implant...
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| This is 85% of the threads in the device failed, yet it was
| allegedly mitigated after a software update, and usage of
| Neurolink continued to climb for the patient, suggesting the
| device is still functional
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| What about the scar tissue those implants generate? How did
| they avoid that?
| kadushka wrote:
| I'm curious why for Noland and Alex the implant usage dropped in
| the fourth month?
| _--__--__ wrote:
| In both cases it looks more like a usage spike in the third
| month and then back to a pattern of roughly linear growth. Not
| sure if those spikes were related to updates to the neuralink
| itself or they just got really into a game/project/etc
| walrus01 wrote:
| I am extremely unlikely to ever allow anything even vaguely
| related to Elon Musk to implant something in my brain, or even to
| wear as completely noninvasive "through the skin" helmet or
| headband-like sensing device. Nevermind something with him as a
| founder.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| If it was that or be paralyzed for the rest of your life, would
| you at least consider it?
|
| I don't like Musk and I find Neuralink spooky in terms of their
| overall goals, but it's hard to deny how much this invention
| helps people.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given the security track record of software in general, not
| even specifically those of Musk's companies but more broadly
| zero-days in all the major platforms, I would worry about a
| scenario half way between the plot of the film _Upgrade_ and
| the long-standing trope of using hypnosis to turn someone
| into an unwitting assassin:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_(film)
| tmnvdb wrote:
| It seems easy to worry about somewhat far-fetched scenarios
| like this when one is not paralyzed and thus not making a
| trade-off between risks and a fully paralyzed life.
| ben_w wrote:
| The tech itself is far-fetched; that hackers exploit
| vulnerabilities in every system is not, rather it is so
| common you can measure attempts in Herz.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| You have again ignored the trade-off in your word-play.
| computerthings wrote:
| If it would make the greed and exploitation that form
| people like Musk go away without a trace and forever, I'd
| happily to be paralyzed for the rest of my life. Nobody
| would even have to know and thank me for it, as long as
| _I_ knew... I 'd watch humanity flourish on TV and cry
| tears of happiness. Even the best version of my best life
| is still just 1 life.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| It is very brave of you to make this totally hypothetical
| sacrifce for us - only in your mind of course.
| computerthings wrote:
| > If it was that or be paralyzed for the rest of your
| life, would you at least consider it?
|
| It's all hypothetical anyway, what's your deal? Are you
| saying the totally hypothetical life changing cure is
| something to be impressed by so much, that the real
| suffering caused by those pursuing it is to be ignored?
| Ignoring the real suffering for some hypothetical deus ex
| machina is very cowardly, and if my hypothetical
| sacrifice reminded you of that, that's fine.
|
| "If Elon Musk gave a shit about anything than profit, and
| knew his ass from his elbow, _and_ this tech was
| feasible, _and_ you were paralyzed, would you do it? "
|
| He doesn't, he doesn't, it may not be, and I'm not, so
| the question is moot. But it's very scientific to ask,
| and a great way to navigate such society impacting
| questions, thanks!
| ben_w wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| I see the promise, but I've got too many real life
| examples of security issues to draw on to trust it would
| even keep working very long -- let alone working
| appropriately and under my control -- to allow one to
| control my body, which an implant would necessarily need
| to do.
|
| And that's even with 100% of the biological compatibility
| issues being solved (I'm told those take several years to
| show up in all the other research examples from everyone
| else) and assuming that there was no trust deficit with
| Musk's companies selling products on the promise of what
| they aspire to do "this year" and don't/them having
| misleading demos -- this is a fundamental issue of
| digital security being hard.
|
| If an accident like Christopher Reeve's were to happen,
| I'd wait for something that repaired or regenerated
| tissue over a chip.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| You seem awfully sure about what you would do but you
| again do not seem to have considered about what it is
| like to be fully paralyzed. Let me be clear, I understand
| the risks of these devices. But my impression is that
| you're having trouble emphathizing with people with such
| medical conditions and you're not really considering how
| it feels to live like that. In fact, you again spend your
| whole message talking about abstract considerations, but
| you do not talk about the experience of being unable to
| do almost anything - how that shapes a persons
| willingness to take risks and weigh them differently.
| That is my point about trade-offs, consider the personal
| and emotional as well as the technical.
| ben_w wrote:
| > In fact, you again spend your whole message talking
| about abstract considerations
|
| No.
|
| Not abstractions.
|
| _I have experience of software, I know how bad the
| entire industry is_.
|
| https://xkcd.com/2030/ applies to everything.
|
| Even without malice, my degree used as case studies the
| failures of the Therac-25 and the digitalisation of the
| 1992 failure of the London Ambulance Service computerised
| dispatch system.
|
| Hospitals and devices _do_ get attacked. Bitcoin
| ransomware _does_ affect hospitals. These are not
| abstractions, they are things that actually happen:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_device_hijack
|
| I wasn't being "abstract" when I said the frequency with
| which attacks are attempted can be measured in Herz,
| that's an actual anecdote from someone I knew a decade
| ago.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| Software safety is an abstract concept. You have
| experience with specific instances of problems that fall
| under the abstract concept of software security. This is
| not to say it is not important.
|
| Not being able to move your hands is not an abstract
| concept. It can be directly experienced.
| ben_w wrote:
| "A specific disability" is as little of an abstraction as
| "this specific software vulnerability".
|
| "Disability in general" exactly as much an abstraction as
| "software safety in general".
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I know people this paralyzed. The concerns they have are
| usually more "How will I pay rent next month" and "how do
| I not get such bad bed sores"
|
| How much do you think Neuralink is going to cost? How
| will people who can't get around on their own pay that?
| How are people who can't work going to pay that?
|
| I don't know why supporters of all these things are so
| unable to view the whole situation. Musk doesn't want to
| pay taxes to a government that will support these
| disabled people. Musk doesn't want to support these
| disabled people. They are literally pawns for PR to him.
|
| Musk doesn't want to advance the HUMAN RACE. Musk wants
| to advance CERTAIN PEOPLE.
| ben_w wrote:
| To add to what you say:
|
| > Musk doesn't want to advance the HUMAN RACE. Musk wants
| to advance CERTAIN PEOPLE.
|
| I think he can't tell the difference between those
| certain people and the human race as a whole. Trans
| people in particular would be the obvious example of his
| failure here -- ironically, given how much inspiration
| he's taken from a fictional universe where people can
| change physical gender by thinking about it a bit and
| waiting a few months.
|
| It's... not intended as a compliment when I say he "seems
| sincere" about wanting to advance the human race when it
| comes with this caveat. Quite the opposite.
|
| Likewise given what else he's "seemed sincere" about in
| the past and hasn't manifested.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Why should we believe that he is not just straight up a lying
| or hiding some kind of fatal flaw? He is intentionally and
| systematically dismantling any regulatory or enforcement
| bodies that would hold him accountable or investigate his
| claims
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| The article shows a video of Noland, paralyzed from the
| shoulders down, playing Polytopia. It's great to be fully able-
| bodied and mock Elon Musk, but for someone to go from using a
| mouth stylus to playing Polytopia via telepathy is very cool
| and should be celebrated.
| walrus01 wrote:
| There is more than one organization/company in the world
| working on human-computer assistive interfaces for the
| paralyzed. For instance:
|
| https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230824/Brain-computer-
| in...
|
| https://news.brown.edu/articles/2012/05/braingate2
|
| https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.123.037719
|
| If you google "BCI brain computer interface paralyzed" you
| will find a wealth of researchers and organizations working
| on it which are _not_ Neuralink.
| aetherson wrote:
| Great. Happy to celebrate them too.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Sure, but have any made as much progress as Neuralink? Not
| a rhetorical, genuinely asking as someone who doesn't know
| much about this field. Though, even if others have, isn't
| this kind of technological achievement something to be
| lauded regardless of who owns the company that did it?
| Veserv wrote:
| Yes: https://www.youtube.com/@BCIcanDoBetter
|
| Shaking _President_ Obama 's hand with "touch feedback"
| in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itkgmMLi7l4
|
| Eating a taco in 2018:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUjfA78FuZM
|
| Robot arm in 2018:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjFr0rnbT24
|
| Playing Final Fantasy 14 with a BCI in 2019:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNHkRH0Dus
|
| Non-invasive robot arm control in 2011:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eOSlzDdOpg
|
| Non-invasive robot arm control in 2020:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDwupMbE2I
|
| Speech/voice generation in 2024:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8frSsvwPp4
|
| The technology to _do_ these sorts of things as proof-of-
| concepts is fairly old. You do not see widespread
| deployment because brain surgery betas are not a very
| good idea. There is insufficient evidence the technology
| is mature or safe enough to support full-scale
| deployment. A common class of problem being brain
| scarring on the invasive insertions that reduce efficacy
| of the implant requiring further damaging brain surgery
| to remove the implant in a few years.
|
| When you have insufficiently mature technology for
| deployment you optimize for research. For that, you only
| need enough to saturate your researchers with data and
| well-designed tests which is usually achieved with only a
| small number of units. This is similar to the reason why
| you only need a few prototype cars even when you are
| going to make millions of them. If you are not deploying,
| then you do not need a lot to saturate your
| design/development process and making a bunch of each
| half-baked version prior to the final release candidate
| is a waste of time.
|
| When the technology is minimally adequate, then you scale
| up. In contrast, deploying middling quantities of proof-
| of-concept versions as if that "tests" anything is a
| recipe for a slow-burning disaster. Nobody else is
| "trying to compete" on who can deploy more because
| competing on who can deploy more half-baked brain
| implants would be unethical.
| dpnmn wrote:
| very interesting links, thanks! I was not aware that the
| technology had progressed that rapidly (outside of
| Neuralink, which captures a lot of the attention)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| BCIs have been doing what Neuralink is showing off since
| at least the 90s. It is emphatically not a difficult
| concept to understand that you can put wires in the brain
| and someone can learn to influence signals on those
| electrodes. Hell, Deep Brain Stimulation has been an FDA
| approved use of putting electrodes in your brain since
| 1997.
|
| The hard parts of BCI are: Electrode sensing, but that's
| a much less difficult problem nowadays. Implant
| longevity, probably an unsolvable problem without massive
| advancements in understanding the body. Brain surgery,
| which will never not be a huge deal because piercing the
| barriers that protect the brain is just inherently a huge
| deal and risky to do.
|
| I'm pretty sure Neuralink is the only one mass killing
| monkeys though.
|
| Note that Elon has also helped push for the killing of US
| science funding, like funding used to further study BCIs.
| How convenient for him that all his competition is
| suddenly going to struggle.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'm reminded of _The Diamond Age_ novel, where a character
| hears about someone who had an implant which was hacked. If I
| recall correctly, the hack caused the implant to display an
| advertisement in a different language at the edge of their
| vision.
|
| That seems pretty benign compared to what a neural implant
| could be made to do to someone.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In Iain M Banks' Culture novels there's a ship (the General
| Systems Vehicle "Grey Area", but most often called
| "Meatfucker" by other ships) which has converted its interior
| into a museum of torture devices. Lots of stuff we'd
| recognise, but one we wouldn't - a Neural Lace. Almost all
| Culture citizens have one, it's typically implanted in early
| adulthood and grows next to your brain. A Culture Citizen
| touring the museum is confused, why does the Grey Area have a
| Neural Lace ?
|
| Well of course the device doesn't _have_ to be programmed to
| be controlled by the host, does it ? Torture entirely by
| manipulating the compute substrate your mind runs on would be
| effective+ and yet very easy to do... so this is in fact just
| another torture device.
|
| + Effective in the sense that it would inflict needless
| misery on people, that's what torture is actually for, it's
| not an effective interrogation strategy and never has been.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > That seems pretty benign compared to what a neural implant
| could be made to do to someone.
|
| Black Mirror: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire
|
| just as an example
| ben_w wrote:
| "Mind virus" has a whole extra dimension when IoT is hardwired
| to your brain.
| jdoe1337halo wrote:
| As much as I hate Musk, this brings a tear to my eyes seeing
| these disabled people regain autonomy and feel like a person
| again.
| rezmason wrote:
| As much as I like regaining autonomy, we should hold back those
| tears until a patient's implant outlasts a product cycle. I
| can't find the article to link to, but there's an ongoing issue
| with tech companies producing assistive devices or prosthetics
| and obsoleting them when the company pivots, gets bought or
| goes under.
|
| Corporate cyborg parts are an already-predicted nightmare,
| already taking place, unfolding in slow motion, and soon it
| will breach the sanctity of human thought.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I think that would be these eye implants[1].
|
| 1: https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
| llm_trw wrote:
| The simple solution is that all such devices must be
| submitted to a central government database and all blue
| prints, source code etc. will be released into the public
| domain is the company no longer supports the device or closes
| down.
| javcasas wrote:
| We don't want to be political here.
|
| So, what do we do first? Propose a political solution.
|
| We all know how this is going to end, there have been more
| than enough cyberpunk videogames and novels for us all to
| read.
| llm_trw wrote:
| All regulations are political. I'm not sure what you
| think the issue here is.
| kvdveer wrote:
| I'm pretty confident that anything involving a central
| government database won't really fly under the current
| political climate. Definitely not in the US, but many other
| countries are bowing to US pressure to limit regulation.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The founder of this company is actively shutting down
| government databases, not looking to add more.
|
| Edit: And definitely don't suggest adding a government SQL
| database or you will trigger him. The government doesn't
| use SQL.
| ta988 wrote:
| This is indeed the solution for every industry. The main
| issue is that really often companies get bought with assets
| by another company that just let them rot. So you would
| need a provision that in case of non maintenance it should
| be released. But then they would fight you in court because
| they use specific code or design in a newer device and that
| would release it to the public... So while it would be the
| perfect solution for the patients I doubt our society is
| really organized to represent their rights and needs (and
| we see that with insurance as well)
| some_random wrote:
| Sure but that's a much more solvable problem!
| sussmannbaka wrote:
| The same disabled people whose hard earned rights are on the
| chopping block right now in the name of anti wokeness? I'll
| say, taking away their ability to participate in society first,
| then selling it back to the richest of them is an ingenious
| business approach.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > taking away their ability to participate in society first,
| then selling it back to the richest of them is an ingenious
| business approach.
|
| That's not what is happening here. These tools (Neuralink and
| others) enable people who are disabled to participate _more_
| in society.
| croes wrote:
| But it won't help get them a job because DEI is bad.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Nobody prevents them from getting a job, as long as they
| pass the interview like everyone else.
| computerthings wrote:
| So yes. Throwing out the vulnerable onto the streets, to
| promise a future where those who can afford it can be
| made to function as good as healthy people, to earn their
| human rights and dignity with cold hard cash, like
| everyone else. The rest, who cares... they don't have a
| voice even while they live, so nobody will ask about them
| when they no longer do.
| croes wrote:
| Yeah sure, because having a disability, the wrong skin
| color or wrong gender was never the reason for not
| getting hired.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| DEI itself creates the situation where having the wrong
| gender or skin color was the reason to not get a job.
|
| You cannot fight racism/sexism with racism/sexism.
| croes wrote:
| A loss of privilege isn't racism/sexism.
|
| What would your solution be?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > But it won't help get them a job because DEI is bad.
|
| That's an uncharitable take that focuses on the wrong
| issue, in my opinion.
|
| Noland's life was pretty dire: _" Since dislocating his
| C4-5 vertebrae in a 2016 swimming accident, Arbaugh had
| dropped out of Texas A&M and returned to live with his
| family in Yuma, Arizona. Due to the combination of Yuma's
| scorching heat -- from May to September the average high
| temperature is 99 degrees or more -- and the intense
| spasms he experienced when sitting in his power chair,
| Arbaugh spent most of his time in bed, watching TV. With
| no sensation or function below his shoulders and having
| limited caregiving hours provided by the state, he relied
| heavily on his parents and brother and often felt like a
| burden."_ [1]
|
| After Neuralink, the abilities that Noland gained is best
| represented by his own words: _"Before, I would wake up
| and just [watch] my TV," he says. "Now, I wake up and
| [work] on my computer. It's very similar, but at the same
| time, my daily routine has changed from just watching
| stuff to being more active and interactive with the
| world."_
|
| [1] https://newmobility.com/noland-arbaughs-life-as-the-
| first-ne...
| computerthings wrote:
| DEI _A_ to be precise
| sussmannbaka wrote:
| Yes, this is the selling back part. The taking away is
| currently happening in the White House and at the Broccoli
| aisle.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| These tools need to be paid for. By people whose welfare is
| currently being taken away by the same man who owns
| NeuraLink.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Please. What is Musk doing to "these people"? The Musk
| invective on HN is so tiring.
| hall0ween wrote:
| I've been out of live neural recordings for about 3 years. While
| this is neat, it's my recollection that this is dated
| science...with better PR.
| murderingmurloc wrote:
| Lex Fridman's interview with Noland and the doctors is a marathon
| 8.5 hours, but I highly recommend it for a deep dive into the
| process and results.[1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Kbk9BiPhm7o?si=g-MqcUcmS9sZhVdc
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The interview with Noland at 6:48:59 was particularly
| interesting to me. Lots of details about what Neuralink is
| actually like to use in practice.
| etchalon wrote:
| I wish I could trust this.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Honestly? Same. Musk is systematically dismantling essentially
| every regulatory and enforcement agency that could possibly
| hold him accountable if these things go sideways, accidentally
| or otherwise.
| SimianSci wrote:
| Dont.
|
| until we have a solution to the problem that is Elon Musk, and
| potential future Elon Musks, this type of technology can only
| be a net negative to society.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Henry Ford was a Nazi. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post
| and drove it into the ground.
|
| I think basically any of the leaders who brought us the
| technology we are using today are cults of personality like
| this, we just forget about the ones that aren't contemporary.
| I have yet to see us grow without them.
| psb217 wrote:
| If Henry Ford didn't exist, do you think no one would have
| tried mass manufacturing? If Jeff Bezos didn't exist, do
| you think no one would have scaled up an online store?
| These techno business overlord types occasionally nudge our
| timeline ahead by a few months, and are rewarded handsomely
| for it, but they've never produced some fundamental new
| insight or technology that leaps us forward in ways we
| wouldn't otherwise achieve.
| discordance wrote:
| Between 2018 and 2022 "the company has tested on and killed at
| least 1,500 animals -- over 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys, as well
| as mice and rats." [0]
|
| 0: https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2022/12/11/23500157/neura...
| zensavona wrote:
| Being concerned about animal testing seems pretty silly coming
| from people who likely eat pigs, sheep and other intelligent
| animals every day, who likely lived in just as bad conditions
| if not worse their whole lives leading up to them becoming
| food.
|
| I also eat meat, it just seems a bit ironic to me.
| Veserv wrote:
| You are ignoring the benefit side of a benefit-harm morality
| analysis.
|
| Eating an animal at least ostensibly has positive value for
| the people doing so. However, there are plenty of forms of
| "animal testing" that confer zero positive value. For
| instance, testing the wrong compound or inserting the wrong
| implant confers zero benefit. Having improper controls,
| "testing" nonsensical theories, repeating stale results
| poorly, inadequate data collection, etc. are just a few ways
| a test procedure can be totally useless or even actively
| harmful.
|
| This also ignores one of the other aspects of animal testing
| which is as a dry run or rehearsal for actual application.
| You do it right in animals so you are practiced at doing it
| right for when you need to do it right in humans. "Oh yeah,
| we royally screwed up in every rehearsal, but we will nail it
| in production." is not an acceptable approach. You look at
| the care taken during their practiced procedures on less
| critical subjects to determine if their practiced procedure
| is adequate for more critical subjects. A process that kills
| far more test subjects than others or achieves middling
| results relative to resource expenditure or that treats
| subjects as disposable for "advancing science" is not a
| process fit for human subjects. Assuming ingrained cultural
| process deficiencies will magically disappear when using
| changing subjects is foolish.
|
| These are just some of the reasons why people eating a
| ridiculous number of animals does not and should not waive
| our invalidate concerns about animal testing procedure.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Eating an animal at least ostensibly has positive value
| for the people doing so
|
| It is what comes before the eating that we should think
| about. We are breeding conscious beings (cattle, pigs,
| chickens) in harrowing conditions, with second order
| effects on the environment and plant and animal diversity
| (by clearing space for feed).
|
| Should we stop eating animals? I don't know.
|
| Should we stop testing on animals? If it meant that we
| cannot develop certain classes of therapies, then probably
| not.
|
| Should we level up our compassion and care for animals and
| the environment even if it means humans have less luxury as
| long as it doesn't hold back increased life and health
| span? Probably.
| Veserv wrote:
| That is almost entirely irrelevant to the point I was
| making.
|
| I was responding to the argument being made that any
| animal testing process on a small number of animals is
| fine since much larger numbers of animals are raised to
| be eaten. That is emphatically not true for multiple
| reasons of which I highlighted two distinct, practical
| reasons why careful animal testing is not merely ethical,
| but can and does increase the rate of the scientific
| development of safe procedures fit for usage on humans.
| Demanding good animal testing process is important even
| if people still raise and eat animals; it is not trumped
| either ethically or practically.
| concordDance wrote:
| > However, there are plenty of forms of "animal testing"
| that confer zero positive value.
|
| I find it difficult to believe that companies do expensive
| surgery on expensive animals for no reason (other than
| sadism?). These companies think this testing does in fact
| have value (and if we don't trust companies to make that
| determination we probably should restrict animal testing to
| governments).
|
| But regardless, there's no real way to justify eating meat
| (given the marginal benefit of taste over vegan food) other
| than saying the lives and suffering of animals is
| essentially worthless. There isn't a threshhold you can put
| which will allow eating but prevent animal testing.
| hoseja wrote:
| > testing the wrong compound or inserting the wrong implant
| confers zero benefit
|
| It's called learning. That's why they are doing it in the
| first place.
| Veserv wrote:
| You wanted to test implant A, but you unintentionally
| used implant B in half of your experiments is not
| "learning". Unless you needed to learn Surgery 101 like
| maintaining and going through checklists, but then you
| are grossly ill-equipped to be doing neurosurgery.
| fulafel wrote:
| Taken seriously, this is a fallacy and a way of thinking that
| easily halts progress in making the world a better place. You
| can always use whataboutism to argue against any improvement
| on grounds that a consistent ethic would require you to
| improve several other things at once. Being this kind of
| silly on the way is fine.
|
| (Also of course a lot of the critics don't eat meat, and it's
| also true that the rest of us should stop, starting from
| factory farmed meat)
| yreg wrote:
| I believe that killing a pig for neuroscience research is
| more worth it than killing it to eat it. It also scales
| much better.
|
| (I currently eat meat.)
| diggan wrote:
| Do you sometimes feel like the end justify the means?
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| Not the OP, but your question got me thinking. I think
| ends frequently justify means, though I'm guessing that
| the real question in that adage should be "does the end
| justify _any_ means?"
|
| Our entire decision system relies on endings justifying
| meanings. I want a steady job that pays well, so I
| concede to going to a 4-year institution and paying a
| decent amount in order for that end to be so. The end
| justifies the sacrifice in time and finances, so the
| decision is justified in my mind. If the end were that I
| had only obtained unemployable skills or knowledge, then
| that particular end would not have justified the means
| for me.
|
| So I suppose that when people say the ends don't justify
| the means, they're not really saying it categorically--
| just that the particular ends being argued don't justify
| the particular means.
|
| With the case of animal testing to improve human quality
| of life, it's hard to say. Dogs were routinely
| experimented on and killed to first link diabetes to the
| pancreas, and later to discover insulin was a substance
| that could be transferred to preserve life. These medical
| results have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the
| past hundred years. Whether the neuralink experimentation
| is justified in its potential for quality-of-life
| improvements in paralysis victims years into the future
| really depends on where you weigh animal well-being and
| life in relation to future improvements to human life, as
| well as whether you believe their experiments are too
| gratuitous and could be carried out more safely/
| effectively on fewer animals.
| lanstin wrote:
| If the ends don't justify the means, what else would?
| diggan wrote:
| I guess there are three "competing" ideas:
|
| - The ends justify the means - Meaning we could justify
| torture if it prevents terrorism for example. Some people
| would consider this fine, others not.
|
| - Some moral principles or duties have intrinsic value
| independent of their outcomes - For example, telling the
| truth might be considered right not because of its
| consequences, but because honesty itself is inherently
| valuable.
|
| - Both means and ends matter - Actions are justified when
| there's moral harmony between how we act and what we
| achieve. This suggests that good ends achieved through
| ethical means have a different moral quality than the
| same ends achieved through harmful means.
|
| Probably I'd put myself in the latter camps, rather than
| the first two. But then I haven't thought about this too
| deeply myself, so happy to hear the opinions of others
| who might have thought about it more :)
| yreg wrote:
| I have just refused to answer in a different reply to
| you, but actually when you describe it like this, the
| third camp resonates with me the most. So I'm with you
| there.
|
| However, wouldn't most people say that? It is kind of a
| cop-out because it let's you decide on each moral dilemma
| in a case by case basis -> which I think is actually
| necessary since you can't say that ends justify/don't
| justify means blankly.
|
| Do you by any chance know Alex O'Connor? I listened to an
| ethics episode of his podcast and it was quite
| interesting and well-spoken in my opinion. (It is about
| veganism again, I suppose it is a useful theme for
| ethical arguments.)
|
| https://overcast.fm/+AARh0bWaidM
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOzGNFamgQ (the same
| content but video)
| yreg wrote:
| Sorry, I can't answer that as a yes/no since there is a
| whole package of connotation with such statement that I
| don't necessarily agree with in either case.
|
| I thought my argument was clear, but I can try to make it
| more clear:
|
| - I eat pork. Unfortunately because of people like me
| there are many many suffering pigs.
|
| - I believe that it is more justified to make a pig
| suffer for neuroscience research than to be made into a
| McRoyal. (Let's assume that the suffering is comparable.
| Please also assume that the suffering is necessary for
| the particular research and that research has actual
| potential for useful applications. If there is evidence
| of unnecessary abuse then I'm not defending such abuse.)
|
| - Therefore it seems silly to me to attack neuroscience
| researchers instead of me, an omnivore who could be
| vegetarian/vegan.
|
| I understand that one can argue for both positions at the
| same time -- argue against research on animals and argue
| against eating meat. But I think the latter one is much
| more important than the former. And yet you probably
| wouldn't attack me for my meat-eating habit. (Maybe
| because doing so would be impolite.)
| Veserv wrote:
| Do you believe that killing a pig for bad or sloppy
| neuroscience research that provides no useful data is
| worth it?
|
| To use an extreme example, say I have a theory that the
| brain is an unnecessary organ. Can I go around removing
| pig brains in the name of "neuroscience research" and get
| a free pass?
|
| Okay, now suppose I want to test if my new brain implant
| that I intend to attach with known acutely neurotoxic
| binding agent is safe for long term use. I then observe
| that the acutely neurotoxic binding agent causes acute
| brain damage like it said it would and thus my implant is
| unsafe for long term use. Do I get a free pass for that
| even though I killed an animal to learn something the
| manual already told me?
|
| Okay, now suppose I want to test if implant A is safe for
| long term use. But when I go to do the surgery I insert
| implant B because I took the wrong implants out of the
| storehouse because I did not follow standard practice and
| go through my checklist as any competent doctor should. I
| then repeat this say 24 more times before realizing that
| I have inserted the wrong implants into around half of
| the test subjects. I then kill the animals when I realize
| my mistake because no useful data can be drawn due to my
| mistake. Do I get a free pass for "experiments" that even
| I acknowledge are worthless because I made a mistake
| because I ignored standard practice that has practices
| explicitly designed to cheaply and easily avoid the class
| of mistake I made?
|
| Killing a pig for _high-quality_ neuroscience research
| can be worth more than eating it. However, there are
| plenty of forms of "neuroscience research" that are
| objectively useless that confer less benefit than eating
| it or are even actively harmful and thus confer _only_
| harm. These forms of "neuroscience research" can still be
| unethical even if we, as a society, continue to eat meat.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > Say I have a theory that the brain is an unnecessary
| organ. Can I go around removing pig brains in the name of
| "neuroscience research" and get a free pass?
|
| Of course there are proposal review processes for
| research involving animals, that considers the potential
| benefits versus the harm done.
|
| > However, there are plenty of forms of "neuroscience
| research" [involving animals] that are objectively
| useless
|
| Says who?
|
| You may disagree with the standards and decisions of
| review processes, but they are ubiquitous today.
| yreg wrote:
| > Do you believe that killing a pig for bad or sloppy
| neuroscience research that provides no useful data is
| worth it?
|
| No, but Neuralink has proven results and proven useful
| applications. If you believe that they should publish
| more data or that there has been a specific misconduct
| then that is a different argument.
| Veserv wrote:
| Great, so you agree that there exist classes of
| neuroscience research and experiments that are "worse"
| than eating animals, so the fact that animals are eaten
| in bulk does not give a free pass to all classes of
| "neuroscience research"?
|
| We actually need to evaluate the "neuroscience research"
| and processes to determine if it constitutes one of these
| classes?
|
| If no, please explain how my first example is clearly
| morally superior to eating an animal.
|
| If yes, then please answer the other two concrete
| hypotheticals I proposed and evaluate their practical and
| moral content.
|
| I contend that such practices would be unethical and
| practically worthless, with the benefits being either
| practically zero or actively negative from engaging in
| such research practices. So, eating an animal would be
| morally superior to such bad research practices. Such
| practices would, furthermore, be strongly dominated by
| well-known, standard practices which are more ethical,
| practically useful, and cheaper; thus harm minimization
| and utility maximization both support the use of
| standard, known practices in preference.
|
| I also contend that such deviation from standard
| practices would only be morally justified if you were
| intentionally attempting to evaluate the standard
| practices themselves, but that would require both a
| specific nuanced argument and would preclude such
| experiments from testing new innovations to avoid
| disqualifying confounding variables. As such, the
| proposed hypotheticals do not fit this criteria as they
| are attempts to "research" some other non-process factor.
| So you can only argue this point if you wish to argue
| that intentionally confounding process and research
| variables is good science.
| martinsnow wrote:
| Neuralink is being proven and it's on its way to market.
| There are so many people out there who will benefit from
| the technology.
|
| Animal testing has existed for centuries and will
| continue to do so until we can fully sinulate a human
| being.
| Philpax wrote:
| I'm pulling out my vegetarian pass to say, without hypocrisy,
| that Neuralink's animal testing record appears to be pretty
| horrific.
| misja111 wrote:
| If you're using non-vegan products such as soap, shampoo or
| certain medicines you are complicit to animal testing as
| well.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| So incredibly easy to find vegan soap and shampoo today.
| Even in discount stores, like grocery outet.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Soap is just saponified fat. Oil + lye. You can use any
| oil, and e.g. olive oil soaps are super common.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| There is a plethora of animal testing-free bathroom
| products.
|
| As for medicines, I'm not sure what to do about that.
| Where I draw the line in veganism is essentially where
| I'd die if I don't eat the animal. If there's a
| necessity, I think it makes some sense. Some medicines
| are a necessity for people. Yet I don't like the idea of
| supporting companies which would likely be testing non-
| essential medicines on animals as well.
|
| The world isn't really configured for veganism
| Philpax wrote:
| I'm not necessarily opposed to animal testing, but I am
| opposed to whatever Neuralink is doing to get that kind
| of kill count.
| Timwi wrote:
| Right, but neither irony nor hypocrisy means that it's wrong.
| Murder is wrong and if a murderer on death row says that
| murder is wrong they are still correct.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I suppose, but most people do not believe killing animals
| to benefit humans is wrong.
| foobiekr wrote:
| You should perhaps consider that most people would rather die
| than be tortured to death and perhaps we feel the same way
| about animals even if we eat meat - especially primates.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Being concerned about animal testing seems pretty silly
| coming from people who likely eat pigs
|
| This is reductive and lacking any form of nuance. If I eat
| chicken, should I automatically be okay with heavily
| industrialized chicken farms, or even setting chickens alight
| for entertainment? Just because one evolved to be an omnivore
| doesn't mean one is okay with all forms of killing animals.
| aaarrm wrote:
| Considering you have options, one could argue that you must
| be okay with them, otherwise you could just choose to not
| support them. I personally believe there's more nuance than
| that, but Ive heard that line of argument before.
| sneak wrote:
| Would you prefer they do the R&D solely on humans? Or that they
| cease developing BCIs?
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Volontary humans over constrained animals? Sure!
|
| Why would you cease developing BCIs? It's not ethical to
| force another sentient being into biological R&D on their own
| body. OTOH there's no problem to enroll someone to a
| dangerous mission if they're truly voluntary and get a
| benefit from it.
| lijok wrote:
| Between 2018 and 2022 I've probably consumed 1500 animals worth
| of products, and didn't hand 3 paralyzed people their autonomy
| back as a result, so I'd say Neuralink are doing just fine.
| agos wrote:
| you consume more than one whole animal a day? you might want
| to cut down on that
| philwelch wrote:
| I think most people could probably eat an entire rotisserie
| chicken every day.
| 00N8 wrote:
| Yes & two quail would be even easier
| fliglr wrote:
| Who cares. Do you want them to test on humans?
| ArlenBales wrote:
| Give it time. Under President Musk it'll only be a matter of
| time until they invent a drug like the one used by Dr
| Cortazar's group in The Vital Abyss, eschewing ethics for
| scientific progression. I wouldn't be surprised if half the
| scientists under Musk's companies jump at the chance to use
| it, considering they still work for him while he dismantles
| American democracy (so their ethics are already
| questionable).
| drawkward wrote:
| I hate Elon and refuse to support any of his business ventures;
| this, however, seems preferable to testing on humans.
| some_random wrote:
| I'm sorry but if you make me choose between 1,500 animals or
| improving the life of one single paralyzed human being, I am
| choosing the human every single time.
| wazdra wrote:
| Am I the only one a bit disturbed by this whole communication ?
|
| I mean, we all know helping disabled is not the end-game
| objective of neuralink. And right now, from a very cynical point
| of view, disabled people constitute a large reservoir of cobayes
| and free marketing for Neuralink
|
| I don't know how much has been invested in R&D on Neuralink, but
| I doubt we have ever invested that much money in any other
| technology to provide autonomy to the disabled.
|
| And it is not perfectly clear to me that, for the sole prospect
| of helping paralysed people, Neuralink is the best way to go. It
| sure is the one that looks the coolest, but it's going to be very
| expensive, hard to fix when something goes wrong, and it is also
| hard to trust. Those issues do not seem to be avoidable
|
| Don't get me wrong, I admire the huge QoL gain for the three
| patients. As individuals, they sure benefited from this. Idk if
| the same is true of the disabled as a social group
| andsoitis wrote:
| > we all know helping disabled is not the end-game objective of
| neuralink.
|
| Can you tell us more what you surmise we all think is the end-
| game objective?
| golol wrote:
| powerful general BCI, FDVR, cyborg intelligence and so on.
| Elon Musk clearly stated this many times.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Jensen Huang becoming a sandworm from Dune, only he keeps
| shitting out mountains of NVIDIA cards instead of spice. Elon
| Musk and the rest of the technorati using neuralink to upload
| themselves into said mountain of GPUs to become immortal.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Wait... A sandworm with a mountain of GPUs ravaging a
| country ruined by a Technorati-coup's failed dreams of
| immortality?
|
| The anime movie Vexille (2007) has you covered:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Ti8mjRXsc&t=34
|
| Technically the worms ("jags") are unintended junk rather
| than tools of apotheosis, but the overlap is striking.
| computerthings wrote:
| Someone who has genuine concern for helping people doesn't
| cut medical programs in fly-by-night operations to leave
| people with medical devices in their body and whatnot.
| Empathy and caring about suffering can be ruled out.
|
| Generally speaking, the demo is always about finding the
| green ball on top of a red cube, or the person who went
| missing in a land slide, but what sells it is detecting and
| aiming at the dissident hiding under a truck.
|
| And isn't it weird how "think of the children" is always
| ridiculed but "think of the paralyzed etc." is just fine?
| I've seen it countless times in the last decades. Just
| recently when I said on here I want "AI" art to be marked as
| "AI" made and someone claimed I don't care about the people
| who have Parkinson's and can't hold a brush, but wouldn't
| answer why we can't mark it anyway. It's not the people with
| Parkinson's that want to pass of _their_ creations as hand-
| made. They 're just getting used.
|
| Sure, paralyzed people would love to be able to control a
| cursor with their mind etc., but even more than that they
| don't want cuts to social programs, that enable them a
| dignified life beyond "making them as functional as a healthy
| person", to allow tax cuts for the super rich. They want
| friends to have time for them instead of working 3 jobs, that
| sort of stuff. But Musk and his spiritual brethren are
| gleefully moving in the opposite direction, as fast and
| ruthlessly as they can.
|
| So I say this particular doctor is three butchers in a trench
| coat. I can't prove it, because I can't read minds, but
| nobody else can either, and this is the "bet" I'm going with.
| Vulnerable and sick people can only have things that would
| a.) help super rich people with the same conditions and b.)
| enable more persecution and exploitation, and an easier
| discard of undesirable, unproductive or rebellious members of
| society.
| yreg wrote:
| > And isn't it weird how "think of the children" is always
| ridiculed but "think of the paralyzed etc." is just fine?
|
| Isn't the difference that "think of the children" is used
| to ban stuff and "think of the paralyzed" is used to enable
| stuff?
| computerthings wrote:
| Well, even to genuinely protect children it often means
| removing things from impacting them. You don't give a
| newborn honey; we don't invent some kind of pill that
| allows us to give them honey on day 1, they can't deal
| with honey, it's fine, just keep it away from them. Then
| the older they get, the more it's about giving them the
| tools to make their own decisions -- but children can't
| consent, so yes, you have to ban adults from doing some
| things. You can't usually just "enable" something else so
| they don't harm children. Children grow on their own,
| provided they get what they need and some stimulus, but
| also crucially safe space to grow in, from which to
| extend their feelers so to speak. That must be carved out
| negatively. And frankly, society totally threw them under
| the bus even when it was just TV and ads, with phones
| it's so much worse. But that's a total tangent and
| besides the point.
|
| "think of the children" can and is also be used as a fig
| leaf, to just ban things or get control, but that fact in
| turn is then used as a fig leaf for dismissing _any_
| concern for children. While "think of the disabled
| people whose welfare the broligarchy wants to see cut"
| somehow is just taken without second thought.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Vulnerable and sick people can only have things that
| would a.) help super rich people with the same conditions
|
| I have occasionally wondered if, in some kind of time-
| travel scenario, I could convince the local royalty that
| subsidizing healthcare for the masses would ultimately
| benefit them years down they line when they need an
| experienced doctor who knows how to do some kind of
| surgery.
|
| > Someone who has genuine concern for helping people
| doesn't cut medical programs in fly-by-night operations to
| leave people with medical devices in their body and
| whatnot.
|
| Some folks might miss the political reference:
| https://www.citizen.org/news/egregious-abandonment-of-
| ongoin...
|
| > but what sells it is detecting and aiming at the
| dissident hiding under a truck
|
| Mildly relevant: https://xkcd.com/2128/
| dmbche wrote:
| Isn't it to sell brain-computer connectivity to the masses?
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Can you tell us more what you surmise we all think is the
| end-game objective?
|
| Musk's original stated end-game objective is to give humans a
| chance against ASI by removing the biggest impediment that
| humans have to communicate digitally, the keyboard.
|
| This is hard to believe as the truth, as it is extremely
| short-sighted. If ASI can think 1000x faster than a human
| brain, and with much more intelligence, then what does giving
| humans even a 100x improvement in I/O achieve? Also, if ASI
| is achieved, then it will continue to self-improve. The meat
| brain is stuck at our current speed.
|
| Please see my HN profile for a privacy rant about the
| downsides, which only assumes a read capability. Once a write
| capability is introduced, I mean you gotta be kidding me. Who
| should you trust with that power? The answer is no one.
| tdeck wrote:
| Apparently "cobaye" is guinea pig in French. I learn something
| new every day :).
| Terr_ wrote:
| My first puzzled interpretation was of a "reservoir of co-
| pays", as if there was some kind of financial/insurance
| exploitation going on.
| SimianSci wrote:
| I very violently recoil from any of Musk's ventures these days.
| Im sure there are some very smart and talented people working at
| Neuralink. They should go work for someone else as their boss has
| shown himself to be a revolting person and the kind of leader who
| seeks to actively harm people who inconvenience him.
|
| This kind of behavior is not befitting of a company that will
| need to cultivate an incredible amount of trust from customers
| before they buy into the idea of a brain implant.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| What is the problem with Musk? I know his many shenanigans, but
| what about his helmanship causes you to violently recoil?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Overt nazi salutes is one, but another is the intentional
| tinkering-with and partial dismantling of the US Government's
| system to dispense appropriated funds, and act that is
| blatantly illegal.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| Edit
| SimianSci wrote:
| When people mistakenly make a gesture, they dont do it
| once more exactly the same.
|
| And when people point out that they made this gesture
| their answer is usually not to crack jokes about how they
| made a Nazi salute in response.
|
| We can maybe disagree about WHY he did it, there's room
| to discuss if it was genuinely a white nationalism thing
| or if he was just being an edgelord.
|
| But it WAS a nazi salute and denying this is
| disingenuous.
| watwut wrote:
| > it was genuinely a white nationalism thing or if he was
| just being an edgelord.
|
| Can we admit to ourselves that most edgelords are
| actually people infatuated with exact same movements and
| value systems? Literally all edgelords get angry and
| strongly dislike anyone left leaning. For example, you do
| not see them harassing right wing, but you do see them
| harassing perceived sjws.
|
| Somehow, there is no such thing as left wing edge lord.
| And that is because when left wing people act badly, they
| are blamed as bad left wing people. Edgelord is just a
| way to not blame right wing people and attributing them
| benefit of the doubt never given to the center or to the
| left.
| lewispollard wrote:
| > Somehow, there is no such thing as left wing edge lord.
|
| I mean, I'm a pretty staunch socialist/commie and there
| are plenty of hard-left edgelords out there "joking"
| about gulags and executing academics and so on.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Yeah, they exist. The big difference is that we don't
| accept their behavior, especially when in positions of
| power.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, but you call them "hard-left" and do not pretend
| they are not communists or Stalinists. Meanwhile,
| edgelord is consistently supposed to be someone did the
| nazi salute, but the gesture was supposed to be innocent
| and totally not a far right thing.
|
| You have put joking into quotes. Even in this comment,
| you are not trying to convince me that they are actually
| fine, that they are something less then Stalinists.
| toasteros wrote:
| > Somehow, there is no such thing as left wing edge lord.
|
| Your comment is absolutely correct; Musk and his ilk are
| just people who "joked around" on 4chan and essentially
| radicalised themselves doing it.
|
| HOWEVER left wing edgelords absolutely exist. Look up (at
| your peril) the phenomenon of "tankies". They're not your
| average communist, but rather apologists for Stalin's
| genocides.
|
| Maybe your comment is more about the terminology at play,
| but it's interesting to see that the left wing mirror
| image of the average 4chan poster absolutely exists.
| watwut wrote:
| > HOWEVER left wing edgelords absolutely exist. Look up
| (at your peril) the phenomenon of "tankies". They're not
| your average communist, but rather apologists for
| Stalin's genocides.
|
| But that is my point - tankie is someone who is a
| communist, hardcore pro-Stalin. There is no assumption
| that tankie is someone apolitical who is just joking
| around. There is no "he is just a tankie, doing things
| for fun, stop accusing him of being a communist".
|
| Meanwhile, edgelord is someone who is supposedly just
| joking. A fine guy who just happen to draw swastika to
| get a reaction. Someone who you should let say and do
| movement things, because "deep down they do not mean it".
|
| > there's room to discuss if it was genuinely a white
| nationalism thing or if he was just being an edgelord
|
| This is what I reacted to. You cant replace "edgelord" by
| "takie" and white nationalism by stalinism in that
| sentence. It wont work. The "there's room to discuss if
| it was genuinely a stalinist thing or if he was just
| being a tankie" does not work, because tankie is
| literally a stalinist .
|
| > Musk and his ilk are just people who "joked around" on
| 4chan and essentially radicalised themselves doing it.
|
| Or rather, the were attracted to 4chan because they had
| the same opinions and values as those people. They did
| not just joked around, it was what they believed and who
| they were. And while both center and left pretended they
| are just playing, they meant it and managed to radicalize
| other people too.
| sneak wrote:
| I have no extremely strong pro- or anti- Musk feelings, but
| the ADL (who seem to me to be the experts on antisemitism)
| say that's not what that was.
|
| https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403
|
| There also doesn't seem to be any corroborating data to
| suggest he's a nazi. I'm all for calling a spade a spade if
| he is, but it seems that people are working backwards from
| the "I hate Musk" position rather than forwards from the
| facts.
| specproc wrote:
| I don't think there's any real question as to what he's
| doing there.
|
| The ADL these days mainly exist to shout "antisemite" at
| anyone criticising Israel. Their giving him a pass was
| sickening, and undoubtedly related to Republican support
| of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
|
| Other Jewish organisations have called it as the world
| has seen it. One organisation does not speak for a very
| diverse people.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-
| musk...
| zwirbl wrote:
| The 'awkward gesture' take is a fun one.
|
| "Sorry officer, I did not flip you off twice, that were
| both just very awkward gestures"
|
| There is tons of data on how Musk became a far right
| supporter and sympathizer, like his support of UK racists
| and the German far right. You seem to still use X, you
| could just scroll through his posts there and try to not
| ignore the evidence you see with your own eyes
| Philpax wrote:
| The ADL's current leadership appears to be ideologically
| aligned with Elon Musk for reasons unclear. Here's an
| article with other Jewish voices, including the former
| director of the ADL, emphatically stating that it was a
| Nazi salute: https://forward.com/fast-forward/690745/adl-
| elon-musk-sieg-h...
|
| As for his other views, Wikipedia can speak to it better
| than I can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_M
| usk#Race_and_wh...
| sneak wrote:
| > _Musk later denied being antisemitic and described
| himself as a "pro-Semite"._
|
| So which is it? It seems wildly inconsistent to me to
| intentionally make a nazi salute but verbally deny being
| antisemitic. I don't think someone like him would need to
| rely at all on plausible deniability, given that everyone
| already seems to hate him and he's been granted immense
| power without having been elected to any position.
| lores wrote:
| It strikes me there's no particular reason a modern Nazi
| should hate Jews when there are plenty of other groups to
| be scapegoated, like immigrants or liberals. There was
| historical prejudice against Jews then, there is against
| others now. I can well see Musk loving the trappings of
| fascism, the hilarious fun of trolling as a Nazi, and
| having people pay attention to him, while not being
| directly antisemitic.
| toasteros wrote:
| You have to remember that fascism's application of
| othering is not logical, it's just a convenient method of
| gaining leverage. The Nazis targeted Jews because it was
| easy to weave a narrative about them, and because their
| population within Germany itself was so small that it was
| electorally inconsequential to victimise them. You see
| this with the Musk-Trump regime's position on trans
| people; trans people are not a threat to anyone, and are
| so few in number that you can easily weave a narrative
| about them and use it to push a more extreme agenda.
|
| You are absolutely correct that modern Nazis are not
| really bothered by the Jews, but you have to remember
| that fascists just look for easy targets to hate.
|
| Essentially, yeah, fine, he's not a card carrying member
| of the NSDAP. But he's a hateful individual pursuing a
| hateful agenda all the same, and he did the salute to
| signal to edgelords that he sees them.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Forigner here, one who's family has been shaped on both
| sides by the nazis and lived through either bombing, or
| were active members of the resistance in occupied europe.
|
| That was a Hitlergruss, no ifs no buts. More over it
| wasn't just the once.
|
| Does it make him a nazi? no.
|
| But one has to question why the fuck he thought it was a
| good idea.
|
| He's terminally online, he knows exactly what it is. He's
| seen the same memes as us, and knows exactly what that
| gesture means. So why do it?
|
| That is the far more concerning question.
|
| But thats irrelevant as he appears to be gaining absolute
| control over the executive.
| Yoric wrote:
| I think we're forgetting something.
|
| As far as I understand, most of the leaders of the
| historical NSDAP (the Nazi party) / the Nazi regime were
| not Nazis themselves, insofar as they did not believe in
| whatever was written in Mein Kampf. Nazism was just a
| mean to grab and hold power. The true believers were
| basically victims of a con.
|
| So... I don't care whether Elon Musk is actually a Nazi.
| I do believe that he is willing to use Nazism as a lever,
| which makes him much more dangerous.
| diggan wrote:
| Probably some of the Nazi leaders may have been
| opportunists to varying degrees, but to say that most of
| the leaders were not hardcore Nazis is not accurate. Out
| of the various biographies and books I've read, they're
| were all aligned about racial supremacy, antisemitism,
| and German expansionism, this is 100% crystal clear. Even
| private diaries from people like Goebbels that are now
| public, makes their commitment abundantly clear.
|
| Another example is Albert Speer (whose biography I've
| also read), where he initially was an opportunists but
| eventually became active participants in furthering the
| goals and believing the "mission" of the Nazis, even
| though initially (and afterwards) wasn't as convinced
| (edit: by his own accounts, many historians disagree with
| this today).
|
| Characterizing the leadership/inner-circle/leaders as
| merely power-seekers who didn't believe their own
| ideology minimizes their moral culpability and
| misrepresents the historical record.
| Yoric wrote:
| You may be right. I'll need to double-check.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >But one has to question why the fuck he thought it was a
| good idea.
|
| Probably not a good idea publicly. I'd say he slipped if
| he did do it. I do find NS to be very funny because it
| annoys/offend some people, most comedians similarly will
| find it funny.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > I'd say he slipped if he did do it
|
| I mean yeah, but he did it more than once, and it wasn't
| like it was an odd sort of wave, it was a full on parade
| standard Hitlergruss (thumpy on the chest hand out at the
| ascribed hitler angle). Which he then repeated to the
| audience in the front and the people behind him.
|
| Monty python use to do it all the time, as did a number
| of other comedies. but the important distinction is that
| comedians aren't in power.
|
| Musk arguably has more power than the president. So him
| thinking that it can't harm to try the old nazi salute,
| with unprecedented power isn't a healthy thing for
| democracy, regardless of who you think should be in
| power. Do you think he's going to give up that power
| willingly?
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| I have to admit, if I had all the power in the world I'd
| be openly offending various groups. Although in bad
| taste, it serves as a test to weed out petty people.
| Further I'd be offering those groups a clean exit to from
| their own 'offenseless' society.
|
| Now coming to the democracy thing - I'm not sure it's the
| best form of governance as is commonly understood, so I
| personally don't value it. I don't imply that the
| opposite of democracy is tyranny either. I suspect that
| groups exist that are outside of typical govts and
| personally I'd be a part of such group, than participate
| in a 'democracy' which caters to a relatively low IQ -
| the stuff that Monty Python highlights.
|
| I would think that EM has already reached that stage of
| no wanting the approval of those easily offended people.
| drawkward wrote:
| >I have to admit, if I had all the power in the world I'd
| be openly offending various groups. Although in bad
| taste, it serves as a test to weed out petty people.
|
| In this scenario, it is the people offended by the Nazi
| salute, and not the person doing it for outrage bait who
| are petty?
|
| Brother, I have been accused of a lack of self-awareness,
| but man this is next level! In your own scenario you have
| all the power in the world; you dont ever have to weed
| out anyone, by definition.
| goatlover wrote:
| Likely trolling and pushing boundaries to see what he can
| get away with. Similar to Trump. They're grifters and
| like being the center of attention. I don't think they
| have real ideologies. Whatever works for them. Well,
| maybe Musk buys into techno feudalism.
| computerthings wrote:
| You mean the same ADL that sees no problem in Gaza? Okay?
|
| https://www.jta.org/2025/01/21/politics/how-did-the-adl-
| conc...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controvers
| y#J...
|
| > There also doesn't seem to be any corroborating data to
| suggest he's a nazi.
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/22/ilnh-n22.html
|
| > On November 15, a Zionist account posted a tweet
| attacking Nazis for being "cowards" and posting 'Hitler
| was right.'" In response, a fascist account replied that
| "Jewish communities have been pushing... dialectical
| hatred against whites" through "hordes of minorities...
| flooding their country."
|
| > Musk responded to the latter post with the statement,
| "You have said the actual truth."
|
| Those, and so much more, are the facts. You cherry-pick
| the ADL, say "there doesn't seem to be anything else",
| and conclude everyone, including Auschwitz survivors who
| seriously have better things to do, just "hate Musk".
| drawkward wrote:
| The ADL can be wrong too. The ADL can want to avoid
| harassment from Elon's brownshirts.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Musk just recently had to go tour Nazi death camps to do a
| PR tour after promoting Nazy theories on Twitter. The
| people on the tour with him said touring the camps had zero
| emotional impact on the guy.
| amelius wrote:
| The guy is a psychopath, which is probably also why he's
| so good at doing business. He just doesn't care about
| other people's feelings.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplac
| e
|
| > Hare further claims that the prevalence of psychopaths
| is higher in the business world than in the general
| population.
| SimianSci wrote:
| I think it comes down to his personal conduct. Specifically,
| just as I said, I think he actively tries to harm people who
| might inconvenience him or cause him damage to his public
| image. In short, I see him as a bully.
|
| One of the great examples of this is the infamous "Pedo guy"
| incident in which he showed himself as very unempathetic and
| petty the moment people dismissed him as he attempted to
| hastily insert himself into a tragic moment.
|
| He's also regularly sued people exercising their free speech
| to comment on or criticise his financial interests, knowingly
| attempting to drown influential people he doesnt like in
| legal fees and frivolous lawsuits.
|
| In the past he has participated in doxing governmental
| employees who might cause him financial damages, often
| encouraging his followers to harass beuraucrats and lawyers
| who are just doing their legal jobs.
|
| There are plenty of examples of Elon regularly engaging in
| bullying of others who may not have access to the resources
| he does, its not just limited to these few examples.
|
| In my eyes, any measure of success or wealth will never
| excuse how a person conducts themselves in public. And I
| think Elon no longer thinks that the rules apply to him as so
| many are willing to overlook his behavior due to worshiping
| his money and influence. Elon's nazi salute is the perfect
| example of this.
|
| So my original statement still holds. Neuralink has a very
| large mountain to climb when it comes to consumer trust.
| Products in the Healthcare industry can massively impact
| people's lives, especially when they dont work as intended.
| Any company that participates in this space is morally and
| ethically required to be empathetic to the lives that they
| impact. And this level of empathy is not something that I see
| coming from the man behind neuralink which I think should
| disqualify it as a company with the potential to impact a lot
| of people.
| bmacho wrote:
| > In the past he has participated in doxing governmental
| employees who might cause him financial damages, often
| encouraging his followers to harass beuraucrats and lawyers
| who are just doing their legal jobs.
|
| Is this legal in the US?
| Philpax wrote:
| Legality is only relevant when enforced, and it doesn't
| look like that's going to happen any time soon.
| kragen wrote:
| In general, yes. With narrow exceptions, employment as a
| public servant is a matter of public record and subject
| to public comment. Such comments are not only protected
| by US constitional law but in many cases are statutorily
| required to be taken into account by regulatory
| proceedings.
|
| This makes it rather galling that Elmu is seeking to
| shield DOGE employees from such accountability, but
| understandable when people on Reddit are openly
| advocating their assassination.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >understandable when people on Reddit are openly
| advocating their assassination.
|
| Is this standard of shielding government employees from
| accountability applicable only to DOGE employees, or
| could we also have applied it to the many employees
| receiving death threats from Elon's fan base? Consistency
| on this would be welcome.
| kragen wrote:
| I think that in general it's going to be hard to square
| the liberal bedrock ideal of government accountability
| with networked mob violence, individual superempowerment,
| the rise of surveillance capitalism and the surveillance
| state, and autonomous swarming weaponry. When the people
| winning every armed conflict are those who can protect
| their anonymity while penetrating the anonymity of their
| opponents, republicanism itself seems like it has to be
| politically unstable, much less the consent of the
| governed.
|
| Briefly, in the firearm age, respecting the popular vote
| was a Nash equilibrium, because if you lost the vote, you
| probably wouldn't be able to field enough riflemen to win
| on the battlefield either, so your best option was to
| lick your wounds and make do under the opposition party
| until the next election. Despite the resounding defeats
| of the US by masses of riflemen in Vietnam and
| Afghanistan, and of the USSR in Afghanistan in between,
| that equilibrium seems increasingly unstable in the drone
| age. The first warning signs of this were the
| staggeringly unequal death tolls in the US's first Iraq
| invasion, reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa. Recent
| examples of this instability might include the US's
| successful initial invasion of Afghanistan, the US's
| successful eventual defeat of Daesh in western Iraq
| (despite the relative hostility of current Iraqi
| leadership to the US, which counts as a sort of defeat),
| Israel's utter dismemberment of Hizbullah, Israel
| successfully stymieing Iran's nuclear weapons program,
| and Ukraine's surprisingly successful resistance to the
| invasion by Russia's much larger army. Also Hamas doesn't
| seem to be doing very well at defending Gaza.
|
| Unfortunately the literature I could recommend to you on
| this topic has mostly been flagged as wrongthink, so I
| won't recommend that, but Slaughterbots is probably still
| safe to watch. It contains the memorable line "nuclear is
| obsolete", a riff on Putin's remarks at Valdai in Sochi
| 11 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA
|
| It's fiction, of course, but thought-provoking fiction,
| scripted by leading AI researchers to be as realistic as
| possible, and it may have more truth in it than we would
| like.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > There are plenty of examples of Elon regularly engaging
| in bullying of others who may not have access to the
| resources he does, its not just limited to these few
| examples.
|
| As written about by Sam Harris recently and discussed in
| the (now dead) thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716926
|
| Musk is a terrible person, but also a deeply dishonest and
| selfish one.
| javcasas wrote:
| Last time that people doing the nazi salute experimented with
| health, well it wasn't pretty.
| 42772827 wrote:
| It wasn't pretty, and for their crimes some of them were
| sentenced to positions as top scientists for the US
| government after the war.
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| He seems hostile to regulatory oversight which is a problem
| when he's selling a microchip you implant in your brain
| goatlover wrote:
| Kind of like the chip from Lumen on Severance. I don't
| understand why anyone would want a chip placed in their
| brain, unless it's to help overcome a disability.
| amelius wrote:
| Pulling out of USAID probably killed more helpless people
| than his companies helped enhance lives.
| naravara wrote:
| There's no "probably" about it. There are hundreds of
| thousands of doses of tuberculosis treatments that aren't
| being delivered and will expire. Every untreated case of TB
| will lead to some other number of infections and increases
| the odds of more drug resistant strains popping up. It will
| take a long time to undo the damage of killing those
| programs alone.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Even if you subscribe to the notion that US government
| should not be paying for this, you can phase it out with
| enough notice for others to step in and take over the
| funding. The flippant, "tech disruptor" method of
| abruptly ending an organization that has for decades been
| funding critical public health initiatives in countries
| where they would otherwise not happen... That is the
| truly infuriating part.
|
| In the grander scheme of things, the US voters do indeed
| have the right to vote for not providing foreign aid.
| Which is sad of course, but is a valid political
| position.
| drawkward wrote:
| Well the nazi salute for one. The attempt to gaslight earth
| about it for two.
|
| Those are just two of very many recent examples.
| 14 wrote:
| Well I personally don't think he is trying to better the world
| for the sake of being some amazing person giving back to
| humanity, I do think he really wants to succeed being the first
| trilionaire. And even if he is not doing this for compassion of
| those who have lost so much, I do think he wants nothing more
| then this to be successful so he can sell it to those who need
| it. Even if his motivation is fully monetary, I don't think
| anyone with complete loss of mobility ultimately cares what it
| costs to get some freedom back even if it comes from the a
| person some see as evil.
|
| He has access to a lot of money so maybe these people working
| on it should continue to work for him. Maybe he wants to charge
| an outrageous fee for it but ultimately at some point down the
| road if he can do it others will to and it will be common place
| for those who need it and probably common place for those who
| don't need it but want it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > And even if he is not doing this for compassion of those
| who have lost so much, I do think he wants nothing more then
| this to be successful so he can sell it to those who need it.
|
| I'm sure he wants to sell it to those who need it, but I
| don't think that this means he cares that much whether it's
| successful as a medical device. He generally cares whether
| some device _appears_ to work well enough that he can sell
| it, especially to investors, and far less about whether it
| actually solves a problem /doesn't introduce worse problems.
|
| Tesla FSD is the best example of something he's been selling
| for at least 7 years now without it actually working as
| advertised. Cybertruck was sold long before it came out, and
| now they're producing only a trickle. Roadster has been sold
| by the tens of thousands and it's not even in a design phase
| yet. Solar Roofs was presented to investors as a working
| product when it was a plastic mockup. There are probably
| others.
| 14 wrote:
| lol I never said I think this means he cares. He cares only
| as far as being able to sell it. So ultimately he wants it
| to work and work well but if it works just good enough that
| those who are desperate for some fraction of improvement
| are will be willing to pay whatever he will be happy.
| soco wrote:
| Arguably he has found a quicker way to become a trillionaire,
| based on a government willing to fund his trip. And even now
| he's pushing to expand this base internationally. Do you
| think investing in research is still worth of his attention?
| It might be too soon to notice, but I somehow think not, and
| the "normal" projects and companies be they cars or links
| will start to wither...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > Im sure there are some very smart and talented people working
| at Neuralink
|
| I'm sure there are. There may also be people with The Com
| background (https://cyberscoop.com/the-com-764-cybercrime-
| violent-crime-...) working on it too:
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...
|
| yea more known as the DOGE guy but worked at Neuralink before
| that. Imagine the potential for abuse.
| Yoric wrote:
| Sadly, this kind of brings back memories of a few regimes
| employing criminals for enforcement.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Considering that Musk is purging government agencies and
| employees that investigated/are investigating Neuralink, it
| would be smart to stay far away from it.
| misja111 wrote:
| Sadly it seems that the most visionary and successful CEO's
| tend to be a*holes to the people around them. Steve Jobs with
| his 'reality distortion field' comes to mind as well.
| andrewoneone wrote:
| What's his vision though? (This isn't me being naive - it's
| more of me asking the reader of these comments to contemplate
| this)
| afpx wrote:
| Everyone connected to spacex via brain implant with him in
| control - i.e. the borg.
|
| If the guy has demonstrated anything, it's that he wants
| total control.
| otikik wrote:
| Musk's vision is a big picture of himself.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Basically Bioshock's Rapture, but on Mars.
| rob74 wrote:
| And to have enough candidates for that, he's doing his
| best to make life on Earth as bad as possible for as many
| people as possible as fast as possible?
| ben_w wrote:
| _Now_ he looks like a cross between film and book
| versions of Hugo Drax, or like Joiler Veppers from
| _Surface Detail_.
|
| But -- despite all the things that should've (but didn't)
| set alarm bells ringing in my head at the time -- until
| just after he bought Twitter and immediately starting
| making harmful decisions with its new rules, the output
| of his companies looked kinda like it was helping
| _improve_ the world.
|
| With SpaceX, humanity was finally unlocking that cheap
| spaceflight the Space Shuttle promised but didn't deliver
| ever since Rockwell started building the Enterprise-nee-
| Constitution in 1974, which is one of the few areas where
| their work is still going great.
|
| (Buuuut even then, for Mars missions to be viable they
| _must_ have a working Sabatier plant that fits in the
| payload bay and can produce 330 tons of methane every 2
| years from a Martian atmosphere and irradiance level, and
| I 've not seen any sign of this actually getting worked
| on by any Musk-group company; such machines would be
| really useful for Earth's environment, and it's a
| requirement for his Mars plans as otherwise the Starship
| vehicles can't return to Earth).
|
| With Hyperloop we were finally getting high speed transit
| to compete with polluting flights, but TBC has completely
| failed to do anything noteworthy, not even when it is
| news-worthy.
|
| With Tesla, we were finally getting non-polluting cars,
| when the competition was hydrogen vapourware, milk-
| floats, an excuse for ongoing corn subsidies, and the
| occasional slow news day when some back-yard inventor
| made a car that was propelled by springs and/or hamsters.
| api wrote:
| I don't like Musk's recent actions or the awful political
| ideas he's been pushing either, but it's remarkable that
| people can't see why he's admired by so many people.
|
| This sort of blindness is a major reason liberals can't
| properly respond to the rise of MAGA or Trumpism. They
| refuse to understand it. Understanding something doesn't
| mean you agree. You can't properly criticize something you
| don't understand, nor can you provide an alternative that
| answers it.
|
| Go back in time to the 1990s and 2000s.
|
| The shuttle program was winding down. The only way to get
| humans into space currently on the market was the Russian
| Soyuz program, which is ancient Soviet technology. The only
| human habitation in space was the ISS, which everyone knows
| is a good engineering experimental platform but otherwise a
| dead end. The DC-X (first vertical landing rocket) was
| cancelled. The Venturestar was cancelled, and it may not
| have been a good design anyway for several reasons.
|
| A lot of people are writing about this as the end of the
| space age, that the whole thing wasn't a good idea to begin
| with and there is no future there.
|
| Then along comes SpaceX and within a few years they go from
| small orbital rocket to functional first stages that land
| themselves and now they almost have a fully reusable super-
| heavy capable of refueling in orbit.
|
| Now look at cars. Common wisdom in the 1990s and 2000s is
| that affordable long-range cars are impossible without
| fossil fuels. There's a popular site called The Oil Drum
| that pushes the narrative that all motorized transport will
| end if fossil fuels are depleted. There are hybrids, but
| they still run on gas, and nothing much has happened to ICE
| technology since fuel injection in the early 1980s.
|
| There are some EV efforts but they're early and half-assed.
|
| Then along comes Tesla with the roadster and shows that EVs
| can be not just viable but _cool_ and actually _faster with
| better torque and acceleration_ than conventional cars.
| Since then many other car companies have caught up, but I
| still believe the whole industry would not have moved
| without Tesla kicking them in the arse.
|
| If you really hate Musk, the question you should be asking
| is: why does the human race seem to need people like this
| to advance?
|
| We had the technology to build the Falcon 9 and Starship in
| the 1990s, maybe even the 1980s. The problem wasn't money.
| The total cost of Falcon 9 development was comparable to
| two space shuttle launches.
|
| The situation wasn't as absurd with EVs, but we definitely
| could have built a commuter EV at least a decade before we
| did. Look into the GM EV1 from the 1990s, which pre-dated
| the Nissan LEAF -- the first mass market EV, which did beat
| Tesla on that front -- and it had similar range and
| performance. The EV1 was _killed in spite of demand_
| becuase the conventional auto industry hated EVs. Some
| still do, like Toyota.
|
| It really does seem like nothing big happens in human
| history without some manic unhinged asshole pushing it. We
| have everything -- ability, intelligence, technology, money
| -- but we don't do it without one of _these people._ Why?
|
| Maybe we'd need "visionary" CEOs less if we had an over the
| counter amphetamine-like drug but with less addictiveness
| or other side effects.
| rob74 wrote:
| I don't dispute Musk's success as a manager - the problem
| is that, to achieve his vision, he turned each of his
| companies into dictatorships. That's fine (at least in
| the US), because you can choose not to work for him. But
| I don't think it's fine to run the entire US like Musk's
| (and Trump's) companies are run. As they say, Hitler
| contributed a lot to technical progress, built great
| Autobahns, and his scientists later assisted both the US
| and the USSR in the space race and in other fields - does
| that mean it's good Hitler was in charge of Germany? I
| don't think so..
| api wrote:
| That's what I'm getting at.
|
| Why do we need this to advance?
|
| We had everything we needed to build the Falcon 9 in
| 1985.
|
| We will keep suffering Hitlers until we can build the
| Autobahn without him.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| If we look at every other category of major innovation
| for the last century, are they all kicked off by a world-
| class narcissistic asshole?
|
| Many yes, but certainly nowhere near all. So that would
| seem to invalidate your hypothesis.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Conversely, it's remarkable to me that people still
| admire Elon Musk. It's perfectly acceptable to
| acknowledge his past accomplishment while accepting now
| that he appears to be suffering from drug abuse related
| and mental health issues.
|
| In my view, Elon's spent most of his good will reputation
| capital. Of course, we still do have the super-fans who
| are willing to look past his petulant behavior and give
| him a pass for his bone-head business moves.
|
| The other take is that he's a genius and a hostile
| takeover of Twitter was just a checkpoint on the way to
| making US government his puppet state. Congress is
| twiddling their thumbs while Musk is apparently preparing
| to siphon off taxpayer dollars into Space X, Tesla or
| other ventures.
|
| Either way, it's bad. I loathe the man and fear what
| could happen.
| api wrote:
| My feeling on Musk is kinda like... there's this rock
| star I liked and _damn_ the man could play, but then he
| ended a concert by stumbling onto stage covered in vomit,
| misses half his shows now with a syringe hanging out of
| his arm, and got arrested for domestic violence against
| his wife.
|
| It's sad, but damn the man could play... once... I guess
| I can listen to the old albums.
|
| It's like that.
|
| Unfortunately rock stars on the spiral don't generally
| destroy democracy.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But it is emphatically not like that, because Musk fans
| aren't saying he should keep doing what he's good at:
| Telling SpaceX to shoot for the moon and feeding them
| cash
|
| Musk fans keep insisting he should get more and more
| control of my life as an individual who has no interest
| in buying his products or using his businesses because
| _they aren 't good products for me_.
|
| They keep insisting that I AM WRONG for being upset about
| an outright asshole forcing himself into my life.
| ben_w wrote:
| I agree about everything else, but I'm not sure about
| this:
|
| > The situation wasn't as absurd with EVs, but we
| definitely could have built a commuter EV at least a
| decade before we did. Look into the GM EV1 from the
| 1990s, which pre-dated the Nissan LEAF -- the first mass
| market EV, which did beat Tesla on that front -- and it
| had similar range and performance. The EV1 was killed in
| spite of demand becuase the conventional auto industry
| hated EVs. Some still do, like Toyota.
|
| Could we have actually built an _affordable_ commuter EV
| a decade earlier?
|
| Eyeballing this graph, batteries were about 6x more
| expensive a decade before Tesla actually started
| delivering the Roadster:
| https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
|
| OTOH, perhaps the extra demand would just have made
| prices fall sooner, given the other graph in the link
| shows the relationship between market size and price,
| rather than year of price...
| BluSyn wrote:
| I violently recoil at comments like this.
|
| Elon is so effective as a leader he seems to break people's
| brains. No other person could have started this company and had
| even half this success. There's a reason all the most talented
| flock to his companies, despite "conventional wisdom" saying
| they shouldn't. It takes a lot of self deception to ignore the
| reality that he obviously must be doing something right.
| jlengrand wrote:
| Both views can exist at the same time. Many effective leaders
| are terrible human beings. It's up to everyone to choose
| their own, ethics and empathy is high on my list of things I
| care about in a new job but it may be different for others.
| simianparrot wrote:
| I also think the way DOGE has gone about their business is
| the only way that'd work in a systemically corrupt
| environment. If you give these institutions ample warning
| they'll bury or destroy any and all evidence, because that's
| how it's been done for decades. That doesn't work.
| goatlover wrote:
| Why should we trust DOGE to get it right? They're not
| elected, and Elon has serious conflicts of interest with
| his business ventures.
| simianparrot wrote:
| They're appointed by your president to do the job. What
| do you mean, "not elected"?
| allturtles wrote:
| Ample warning of what? Evidence of what? If the goal is to,
| say, shut down USAID, to do so legally you just need to get
| Congress to pass a law shutting down USAID. No "evidence"
| is required, and warning is irrelevant. What is a shut down
| agency going to do with "warning" that it has been shut
| down?
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >It takes a lot of self deception to ignore the reality that
| he obviously must be doing something right.
|
| Well, you have hit the nail on the head. My misanthropic view
| is that most people are a deluded lot.
| internet_points wrote:
| Imagine the fun 4chan will have when they find Musk's master keys
| and commence to 24-7 rickroll some paralyzed person.
|
| A Year of Rick Astley (hey it almost rhymes)
| floppiplopp wrote:
| If the whole slave simulation with humanoid robots does not work
| for Elon Musk and his peers, maybe we will see W40K-like
| servitors, where they take the people the billionaire class deems
| subhuman and convert them into human drones.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'm thinking in 50 years humans will be so much less capable
| than bots, that using a human as a servant or a soldier or what
| have you instead of using a bot would be laughable. Some of us
| look at AI, and Neuralink, and robot tech and see a point in
| time and conclude they won't get any better. That's not how any
| of this has ever worked. They will all get better.
|
| The future of non-elites is unknown. But hopefully either the
| elites will be magnanimous, or non-elites will create new
| occupations that will at once, be able to create wealth, and
| _not_ be able to be performed by bots. Not sure what those new
| occupations will be? But human ingenuity is an incredible
| thing, especially if the system remains market capitalism
| based. Because that will mean your rent and food will depend on
| you coming up with something to do. I think people will think
| of something.
|
| If not? Well, let's just say the future might not hold
| societies as pleasant for non-elites as the societies of today.
| nomilk wrote:
| > Noland suffered a spinal cord injury in a swimming accident and
| became paralyzed below his shoulders. Noland spent most of his
| days in bed. His primary digital device was a tablet which he
| controlled using a mouth-held stylus (mouth stick). The mouth
| stick not only caused discomfort and fatigue after prolonged use,
| but it also had to be put in place by a caregiver
|
| > He is now able to control a cursor with his thoughts to browse
| the internet, play games, and continue his educational journey
| with greater independence.
|
| Once reliable and cheap, the tangible difference this tech is
| going to make to people's lives is pretty wild.
|
| Curious to know how accurate the cursor movements and clicks are.
| For example, here he is playing polytopia:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgY70ZWCL1g
|
| In polytopia, a misclick can be about as frustrating/costly as a
| mouseslip in chess (when you move a piece to the wrong square by
| mistake).
| pona-a wrote:
| We can still see the motion is forced, the cursor takes non-
| direct paths, actively doges away from targets, requiring
| active steering to stay put long enough to press them. While
| there are few misclicks, it feels like a product of active
| effort more than the inherent accuracy.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The videos are remarkable. He moves like a person on a touchpad,
| rather than a quadriplegic. Incredible technology. The joy it is
| going to bring to so many is going to be wonderful to see.
| jonjon16 wrote:
| Here's a post about an amazing piece of technology that is being
| created for helping people in dire conditions and the only thing
| being discussed in here is how much of a bad person is the owner
| of the company researching said technology. Now, I'm not a US
| citizen so I have way less stakes in that kind of discussion but
| I have to say, I find it disgusting how one of my favorite online
| forum have become a den for political activists.
| kvdveer wrote:
| It's hard to separate politics from topics like these, as the
| current politics have very far reaching impact on almost
| aspects of life.
|
| For example, this article discusses medical implants. Safety of
| those is very important. When the owner of the company is
| actively dismantling oversight that ensures safety, this
| directly impacts whether we can trust this product.
|
| I agree that HN should be mostly politically neutral, and for
| the most part it is. For topics involving Musk, however, one
| simply cannot ignore their problematic attitude towards
| anything that might inconvenience them.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Yeah, reddit is heavily leaking in this thread. The Internet as
| a whole has become slowly more political over the past decade,
| and that's to be expected. But this last cycle has been utterly
| unbearable for non americans. The identity politics and the
| obsession of every person having to be either a super-hero or a
| villain is tiring. Why can't people just discuss the tech?
| contagiousflow wrote:
| Don't you think the business operators, along with their
| motives and influence, should be a part of the discussions on
| technology?
| dmbche wrote:
| I'm not seeing discussion on how much of a bad person that guy
| is but in how he's demonstrated recklessness and a disrespect
| for oversight, which are alarming when discussing medical
| devices - especially such as this specific one.
|
| This is a piece of marketing from a private company. It is a
| good thing that people raise criticism missing from it.
| yapyap wrote:
| Glad to see neuralink didn't give up on their sensationalism.
|
| "telepathy" gtfo, they're trying to give their brainchips
| marketing hype synonyms like how Altman calls ChatGPT AI when
| really, it's not artificial intelligence, it's just ML. But ML
| sounds a whole lot less exciting in the marketing pitch.
| nickvec wrote:
| ML is a subset of AI.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| I mean a set of if/else chains is, in the broadest sense, AI
|
| but it's not the AI that Altman is selling, ditto for ML
| Terr_ wrote:
| "But sometime next^8 year, the patients will be Fully Self
| Driving."
| betimsl wrote:
| Naming it Telepathy is plain wrong.
| jeff_vader wrote:
| Isn't the main showstopper issue to solve for brain implants is
| scarring response or something similar? That is when body
| responds to the implant and surrounds electrodes with some sort
| of tissue reducing its effectiveness. Has Neuralink made any
| advancements in that area?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Yes, they cloned some minions to downvote biologic reality..
| Posted the same questions. Got nil response. If they had a
| break through, you could see it at the patent search.
| tim333 wrote:
| They can remap the electrodes to find ones that work. Also the
| thing seems relatively easy to replace and brain implants go.
| It's a bit early to say how much use they'll get.
| kragen wrote:
| I wonder how hard it would be for an LLM interpreting the neural
| signals to perform a convincing simulation of speaking for the
| paralyzed person while doing things they don't actually want, or
| after they've suffered a loss of mental function that leaves them
| not really wanting anything. Like the autism scandals surrounding
| Facilitated Communication. Not that I think that's what is going
| on currently.
|
| This Greg Egan short story is a useful intuition pump about the
| possibilities. Not recommended for children. Or before trying to
| sleep. https://philosophy.williams.edu/files/Egan-Learning-to-Be-
| Me...
|
| It would be great if instead of "a clinical trial to _demonstrate
| that_ the Link is safe and useful " we could have a clinical
| trial to _determine whether or not_ it is.
| janetmissed wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this short story. I read it with my
| coffee and really enjoyed it, turns out existential dread goes
| well with the first hit of caffeine of the day. You made my
| morning :)
| kragen wrote:
| You're very welcome!
| sdwr wrote:
| I liked the line
|
| > My parents were machines. My parents were gods. It was
| nothing special. I hated them.
|
| and how the story mixes adolescence and feeling special with
| philosophical ramifications (hinting that focusing on the
| philosophical ramifications is just an adolescent attempt at
| feeling special?)
|
| The narrator falls into the same trap at the end, assuming that
| he is the 1-in-a-million exception. He doesn't realize that
| everyone has the same experience, they just process it in a
| healthier way. AI Catcher in the Rye.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| So - what about implant scar tissue? How do they avoid it? How do
| they reintegrate connections if the implant has to move on? I
| dont want sob-stories, i want links to patents about avoiding
| inflamation.
| clarionbell wrote:
| Musk is a great example of how to ruin ones legacy. At this
| point, no matter what he does, how his companies perform, or even
| if this implant gives people back control of their bodies.
| Nothing will rid his work of the taint.
|
| It's tragic in a way. If he stuck to same playbook as practiced
| by many other early tech billionaires, spending his life on
| investing, philanthropy, himself and family, the world would
| probably not have things like common reusable rockets, widespread
| EV adoption or massive satellite constellations.
|
| His willingness to pour money, and ability get others to pour
| their money, into various extremely risky ventures, is what made
| all of that possible. Eventually it would happen anyway, but
| probably much later.
|
| But I suspect, that very same personality traits that enabled him
| to do this, are responsible for his current state. Over the years
| he has lost his self control, to the point that he looks almost
| childish. Handful of years ago, he opposed people he now works
| with.
|
| He's now undermining his own companies, with his actions. Even
| people like Murdoch or Thiel look better in comparison. Not
| because of what they do, but because they are less visible.
|
| Everything he has ever done, will now be viewed in much worse
| light. His reputation, sabotaged by the only person who could
| accomplish that feat. Himself.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > Everything he has ever done, will now be viewed in much worse
| light.
|
| Viewed by whom? By you and a bunch of other neurotics that
| consumed too much CNN?
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Agreed. The Musk invective on HN is just wild.
| vessenes wrote:
| Quick summary of the comments:
|
| * Everyone hates Elon
|
| * For most this is enough to hate neuralink.
|
| * 15ish+% think that embedding stuff in your brain from any
| company is a bad idea(TM)
|
| * 5-ish% think this is not worth working on at all, or not worth
| the animal / human research costs
|
| * In the know folks point out that tech like this has been around
| for roughly 10 years, but research hasn't progressed past the
| point where brain injury isn't a major risk -> this is too early
|
| I don't read anything here about human autonomy; each of the guys
| written about have my utmost respect for not just committing
| suicide -- they must be incredibly tough, persistent and positive
| humans, full stop. The idea that they can't or shouldn't be able
| to weigh the risks and benefits of tech like this feels
| infantilizing, in the worst way - infantilizing from people who
| have full mobility.
|
| At any rate, I applaud a company trying to help people like this,
| EVEN IF their long term goal is an ad-supported BCI (although TBH
| Elon's always had significantly better revenue ideas than ads),
| and I applaud the first few folks willing to risk their health to
| get access to a better life, and help people down the line from
| them.
| bgnn wrote:
| Why brain implants? Did we exhaust cheaper human/machine
| interfaces, like voice control?
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