To be fair, it's easy for us to sit here and dismiss research into brain implants while we have full use of our bodies and are fit and healthy. On the other hand, people who have suffered horrific injuries likely feel quite differently about the research. While what's allegedly happening to the animals is horrible, let's just be clear that "self gain goal disguised as scientific research" is a highly subject take. No progress happens without research and I dare to say, many of us take medicines that we wouldn't have without animal trials. Are we not guilty then too?
Out of genuine curiosity, without wishing to seem challenging, and appreciating that engaging in lengthy conversation online might be difficult for you... I wonder if other technologies might come to market quicker.
Frankly, I wonder if neuralink will come to market at all, and how affordable and accessible it will be. I can't imagine someone without the use of their limbs in a developing nation benefiting from neuralink ever, for example.
oh, I definitely have no loyalty to Neuralink. I'd particularly like it if something like Open Water, a non-invasive IR refraction imager, would succeed. Implants sound dangerous, difficult to maintain and intractable to upgrade.
And accessibility tech tends to be crappy and massively overpriced unless it's marketed to able-bodied users as well. My eye tracker was $200, because it's for "gamers", while the eye trackers for disability cost >$10K despite having the same hardware. Neuralink is never going to be affordable.
I probably overstated my impairments a bit. I can type and walk for short periods, just not sustainably. Basically my joints dislocate constantly and my nerves are unreliable. I'm at the level where e.g. something like a powered exoskeleton would be extremely useful, but not bad off enough for insurance to cover it if it costs $200K (since I can get around the house most of the time as long as it's short, and wheelchairs are cheaper.) So even in developed countries cost is an issue.
My response to this is a few days late. I thought to check my replies after reading the recent lack of notifications thread. And I had a thought. As you say, implants sound dangerous and hard to maintain but also, intractable. I wonder if a solution may be to have a client/server approach.
When I've used arduinos in the past (and it has been some years since I've had the time to tinker with them), I remember writing some software to act as a client on the arduino, that would receive commands and pass back telemetry to a raspberry pi. I wonder if the same style implant could work. Something to handle IO but which relied on an external, upgradable unit for processing?
Just a random thought. Hope that your journey to handsfree programming goes as well as it can.
legs are messed up too. I use voice and eye tracking with talon and cursorless and a tree-sitter extension I wrote that enables different command grammars based on where the cursor is, and syncs the vocab list with the symbols in scope.
I'm not sure. if I need it to survive? yeah, probably. I'm vegetarian but I'd kill animals if the alternative were starving. all the meds I take were tested on animals, some of them probably primates.
if there's an alternative that's a bit crappier but pretty usable? then I'd choose that.
if the alternative only lets me eke out a meager existence, dependent on help and unable to work? I'd probably still go with what works, even if it means animals were harmed. I dunno if that makes me a crappy person, but it's hard feeling this helpless.
It's not the personal gain. The results of the experiment can be used not only for humans but for animals as well.
Refrasing your comment, are you comfortable torturing many humans and animals (alive and not yet born) in order to save several tens of monkeys?
They wouldn't be used for animals because there is no return of investment on that.
Ethics don't by nature stop suffering of the many. What they do is protect the few from being defined as arbitrarily less valuable than the many and thus being exploited. I think there are plenty of history lessons around that one which are worth reflecting on.
Edit: to be clear, both our perspectives are valid. But one does not allow arbitrary escalation of harm to others.
