The justification will be a consequentialist argument, we sacrificed/tortured animals and in exchange we gave this to humanity; the overall calculus is a net positive.
This post shows the very worst of the equation, and they will bring up the best, maybe some people that couldn't walk that now can, or some psychological disease for which this contributed to the cure.
They will probably bring up numbers like, this damaged hundreds, but will benefit hundreds of thousands.
This is not the first time society accepts such a compromise. There are innocent people in jail serving life sentences, because every criteria will have false positives. We can undo this wrong right now, we just have to let everyone out of prison.
Personally I don't thinks these questions have good answers and thus I think we (as society) should adopt a values first mode while critically reflecting about where our values will lead us. I understand the consequentialist appeal but it's deeply flawed as expectations are made up and it's just too easy to justify anything.
What worries me about Neuralink is that I don't think the experiments are motivated by base research or will benefit humankind or any kind besides Musk and his partners. It's a private company based on hype. Best case scenario it's just propaganda.
I agree with you these arguments can be used to justify atrocities. Actually they can be used to justify atrocities arbitrarily large as long as you find enough people that you think are being benefitted.
However I don't think they should be entirely dismissed. Specially if at some point the weight on each side of the balance differs by enough orders of magnitude.
This post shows the very worst of the equation, and they will bring up the best, maybe some people that couldn't walk that now can, or some psychological disease for which this contributed to the cure.
They will probably bring up numbers like, this damaged hundreds, but will benefit hundreds of thousands.
This is not the first time society accepts such a compromise. There are innocent people in jail serving life sentences, because every criteria will have false positives. We can undo this wrong right now, we just have to let everyone out of prison.