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Comment on Neuralink's first in-human brain implant has experienced a problem, company says

retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Not totally surprising, I feel bad for the person who was in a desperate enough situation to become a con man narcissist’s guinea pig.

It looks like we’re learning the lesson we already learned back when Bill Gates tried to mess around with the education system and faceplanted; just because billionaires made a bunch of money selling a fancy toaster they invented or whatever, doesn’t make them experts on anything else.

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protist@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The Gates Foundation has been working in education for over two decades, and still is

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- retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  And has produced mostly expensive failures which they simply abandoned.
  
  This is because Bill Gates is just a guy who helped cobble together a computer in his garage with his dad’s money, he doesn’t know jack about education and has repeatedly ignored the advice of experts because it wasn’t what he wanted to try.
  
  We place too much virtue on wealth in this country, just because someone has accumulated a lot of wealth doesn’t mean they should be allowed to tinker with our society and try out ideas they had in a dream or w/e.
  
  Instead they should just pay their taxes.
  
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  - maynarkh@feddit.nl ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    who helped cobble together a computer in his garage with his dad’s money
    
    And the sold it with his mom’s connections.
    
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  - protist@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    To be fair, that article’s only about one of their education initiatives, and they’ve had many
    
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    retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They mention two, but it’s enough to make the point. There’s no justification for Gates to be at the helm, if he wants to help he can donate money to the groups and institutions that actually know what they’re doing or, as I said, just pay his taxes.
    
    There’s no reason for him to be meddling, his ignorance is actually making the money less effective.
    
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antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No use of your body is a pretty desperate situation. Before the procedure he had to yell for his parents that he wanted to use the computer, they’d come sit him upright and put a joystick in his mouth, leaving him unable to speak. And he was often very uncomfortable in that position, so he couldn’t do it long. Now, he can use the computer fully laying down, without anyone’s help. The next logical step would be to have some robotic helper arms.

Anyway he can’t shoot himself. He can’t hold a gun or anything else. There’s little reason for this to be about Musk at all other than money. This is the culmination of decades of research from many medical professionals. It’s about a lot more than one person.

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- retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s 100% about Musk, yes, given his pursuit of tech even if it comes at a human cost. It’s a pattern of his specific companies.
  
  What this situation demonstrates is that Musk is pushing the tech ahead before it’s ready and that the person recieving the implant is simply lucky that that negligence and haste hasn’t left them with brain damage or worse.
  
  No one is saying medical devices shouldn’t be developed to help people, I’m saying Musks tech-cult attitude of “move fast and break stuff” should not apply when human lives and well being are involved.
  
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  - antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nobody is making you get a brain chip. Noland did the research, talked about it with his family, and wanted to proceed in spite of the fully disclosed risks. Bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right - if you want to do something or have something done to your body it’s not the governments place to stop you. Safeguards are necessary, and they do exist. You don’t need laws to make sure everybody has the same risk tolerance as you. I can’t fully imagine what it would be like to have no use of my body and no hope of recovery. But I wouldn’t want people like you or me who aren’t in my shoes deciding what I can and can’t do. Honestly if he wanted to have a lethal injection, I believe he should be allowed to make that decision, but he can’t. I’m happy he was able to make some kind of decision, and regain some autonomy, if only temporarily, and not just be a vegetable head in a bed for the rest of his life.
    
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    retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Again, the person’s desperation is a key here, this technology is targeted at people who are potentially willing to try anything even if it comes with risk.
    
    That isn’t the same sort of consent I have as someone who isn’t paralyzed and just think it’d be cool to control my garage door with my brain or something. I’m not under the same pressure.
    
    If I mix a bunch of laundry chemicals and bill it as a miracle cure for cancer, and then target vulnerable people willing to try anything because they are stage 4, that doesn’t excuse me of my reckless disregard for safety or to use those people as experiments.
    
    Musk’s company wants to get this tech into human beings as quickly as possible even if it’s underdeveloped and potentially unsafe because Musk’s priority is not really about helping people.
    
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  - Aux@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We have billions of spare humans on this planet, no need to worry much.
    
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    retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My concern is not the extinction of the human race, sociopath.
    
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- Beetlejuice001@lemmy.wtf ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Elon should buy an exo skeleton as a way to show his appreciation For the paraplegic man’s sacrifice to science
  
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- Fades@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  It’s about a lot more than one person.
  
  yes, but Musk is pushing this way too fast way too early. That was clear even before the disgusting fiasco with the monkey test subjects. Musk is ultimately with majority blame here because he is the one pushing it just like he did cyber truck, full self driving, etc. except this time literal life and death is at play more directly than the risk of one of his cars self-driving over a child.
  
  This? wired.com/…/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-death…
  
  yeah, that is about one person making this happen.
  
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  - antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My takeaway from that article is mostly that primate research is a big emotional topic for some people, and maybe tech writers shouldn’t write about medical research. Do you think it would be so interesting if it was done on mice? The primate research center in Davis has been there since 1962, and it’s always been controversial. Do you think they’ve just been twiddling their thumbs for 55 years waiting for Neuralink to come along? No, that shit is routine for them. They keep doing it because primate research is still an important step before human trials.
    
    There is no need to ethically green light a medical procedure that is voluntary, of sound mind, and of one’s own will. It’s not your body. It’s not your life. People implant beads and magnets into their bodies and tattoo their faces. People hang themselves from meat hooks for fun. People get circumcised, and pierced. It’s all none of your business.
    
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Hominine@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well, I’ve got good news, you can do both at the same time with the patented cyber-bullet! When it implants, it implants 100 percent of the time.

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lanolinoil@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m excited to get more cyborg parts especially after laser ablating my eyeballs

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- ashok36@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The older I get, the more becoming a robot tiger seems like as good a retirement plan as I’m gonna get.
  
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  - Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As a robot tiger, your ability to maul rednecks and hillbillies with narcissism that try to contain you would be considerably greater than your current form.
    
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Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I dont feel bad for him. At all.

Literally everything he has experienced so far has been incredibly positive.

We can all call out elon for the shitbag he is, but until this guy who volunteered for this mad science experiment starts singing a different tune, im celebrating the hope for the future that might happen in our lifetimes.

I just buried my grandmother after living with her as one of 2 people to care for her as we sat front row to her descent into madness and insanity of alzheimers and dementia.

If this tech can be used to fight that monster its worth the risk as it stands at this moment. And i am aware this is some tenuous extreme “success” at the moment im not kidding or deluding myself, but after finding that most of the research on alzehiemers from the last many decades is now known to be junk science based on false claims and they pretty much have to start most of it all over again, this is hopeful.

Helping those who have been handed the worst lot in life gain access to some parts of the human experience they are denied is almost enough to make this bearded white middleaged cia male cry tears of joy for the first time in a long bloody time

Dont change your opinion of Elon because of this. Compartmentalize it and focus on the good. And fucking demand that Anthony Arbaugh and everyone else that is ever involved in trials is NEVER abandoned. Neuralink needs to be made responsible for maintaining the health of the patient and covering any and all costs to maintain this project for them even post bankruptcy. Complete care and support for the risk they are taking(even if its only anthony atm)

Ill shut up now but Ill leave you with this quote

I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.

Anthony Arbaugh

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