It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn’t going well?
This story is circulating all the media outlets and feels more like PR than a legit example of how this procedure is actually going to work for most people.
It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn't going well?
Given how eager people are to pounce on negative news about anything Elon Musk-related, I expect we would be hearing way, way more about this if it wasn't going well. "Elon Musk's Neuralink Damages a Man's Brain!" and "Elon Musk's Neuralink Fails!" Headlines and such from every rooftop.
That takes an immense amount of fuel. We orbit the sun at 30 km/s, of which you have to cancel about 24 km/s to actually hit it. This is after escaping Earth’s atmosphere (another 11 km/s of delta V) and effective sphere of influence which takes even more fuel. We could use some gravity assists off the moon and inner planets to get there, but even then it’s not really economical. Our best bet would be to send him out super far using ~9 km/s of dV, and then use a very small amount to cancel out any remaining angular momentum and let him slowly fall into the sun. Unfortunately, as with all efficient space maneuvers, you pay for them in time, and this maneuver would take you 3 years. We’d have to somehow support the little bastard all that time but it might just be doable.
You can get caught in the sun's pull by just leaving Earth's sphere of influence, but remember that all of the planets are already caught in the sun's pull and have remained distinctly outside of the actual sun for essentially forever
That’s why I suggested shooting him directly towards it, wouldn’t he just keep going unless he somehow manages to hit something on the way there? Surely he’d end up hitting the sun?
He'd still have the 30 km per second (67,000 mph) of sideways velocity that Earth has when it's orbiting the sun, and that speed is enough to prevent Earth from ever hitting the sun.
Orbits aren't very intuitive; if you want something you launch from Earth to fall straight into the sun, you actually need to fire it directly opposite to the direction that Earth orbits in. So if you imagine Earth orbiting clockwise, you want to shoot the thing counterclockwise. If you do that at the right speed, you counteract all the orbital speed and the thing just falls into the sun.
If you can speed something up a completely unlimited amount then sure you could aim straight at the sun and just fire it so fast that it hits the sun anyway. It'll be off-centre a bit but the sun is pretty big. Consider how much of the sky isn't sun though. If the sun is directly overhead and you shoot straight at the sun, the thing you fired is already going 30 km/s sideways before you even started. We could do the trig to figure out how fast you need to shoot it to still hit the sun anyway but I think the more important part here is getting a feel for the motion involved.
How about if you leave the earth’s atmosphere first, come to a stop, then fire him/accelerate directly at the sun? Or I guess just leave him there so he falls into it slowly? I’m not trying to be difficult or anything I’m just interested.
Depends on what you mean by the "come to a stop" bit. Stop relative to Earth? You're still going Earth speeds relative to the sun, which is what you're trying to hit. It's like throwing a ball at something while driving past it. If you mean stop relative to the sun then sure, you don't even need to shoot him towards the sun, he'll fall right in. The trouble is that stopping relative to the sun is specifically the bit that takes a lot of energy.
lol seriously. dude is acting like people cover up bad news about musk. I hate the fucker but if he rolled his eyes at a waitress it would be front page news.
Yeah, exactly. People love to amplify any negatives they can find about Musk, it plays to the rage mobs and that translates into clicks and endorphins.
Sure, they should be reported on. The problem is in the focus and bias present in the reporting overall. If all you ever report on are the bad things that could conceivably be linked to a particular person who is popular to hate, the overall result can be an unrealistic portrayal of the world even if each individual story and each individual fact within them is true. History is rife with distortions like that.
It kinda seems like you’re saying it’s a bad thing to report on things he does that are bad simply because there’s an audience that’s interested. But, that’d be kind of a weird take
I'm saying that reporting disproportionately negative news about someone is not going to lead to a realistic view of the world.
For example, consider Fox News pouncing on every possible headline that could paint Joe Biden in a bad light because Fox viewers already hate Biden and such reports draw engagement as a result. Nor a good thing if your goal is a realistic view of the world, right? Same idea here.
It let him control a mouse with his brain, which is actually great since he’s a quadriplegic. Getting it if you aren’t fully paralyzed would be stupid.
Doctor organizations did bash the news release for being PR. Especially when there’s desperate people who are watching this tech and all they got was a tweet saying “installed it, lmao”.
I don’t know why, I have zero reason to even think this. Maybe it’s my growing distaste for Musk and his bullshit. But something about this whole thing has my “press X to doubt” meter going off the charts.
If I’m wrong. Great. But something in my gut tells me that you don’t just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel’s worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects.
Again, this is all allegedly. I have no proof or evidence either way. It’s just my own gut. So don’t sue me, Elon.
We’ve been able to do this for years. The difficult part has been making it cheap, reliable and non-invasive. Electrodes in the brain degrade neural tissue and… There’s good reason this isn’t done on the regular.
You’re right to be sceptical, considering Musk’s other company - Tesla - faked self-driving footage on his direction. The videos were just straight up edited to generate hype while in reality the product was still failing during internal testing.
Why? Because time and time again it has been shown that Musk’s big bold ideas are shaky prototypes based on lies that just blagged it long enough for him to find someone who could kind of make something work. It’s a complete coin toss as to whether it actually works out or not, but it will be despite Musk not because of him.
you don’t just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel’s worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects
What this article doesn’t tell you is that before neuralink, this patient absolutely hated turn-based strategy games. But now the only thing they can do is play Civ 6. Day or night, doesn’t matter, Civ 6 is the only thing in their brain. Just one more turn. Just one… more… turn…
You almost need to pick your victory condition at the start and focus everything on that, and what you can’t focus on that win condition you focus on denying the win for someone else, whoever happens to be winning by that point. Generally the same will be over before you get to the modern era.
Culture victory is almost impossible without mods. Even if you get past how cryptic it is, other civs basically have free reign to stall you if they focus at all on culture.
Funny thing is though, I got a culture victory as Gilgamesh… because I nuked Greece. I was going for war victory so it was really funny to launch a nuke at the greek capital then suddenly jump to the culture victory cutscene.
The start of the article is confusing. Given what it tells us that the patient has been doing, it sounds like the chip only acts as a receptor of the brain’s outputs, this is, the chip should act on the brain as little as possible. However,
The billionaire also hinted at the time that the implant was functioning well and had detected a “promising neuron spike”.
Which makes it sound like the very opposite. Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if Elon had no goddamn idea about what the implant does yet rushed to comment on it anyway.
for me it just sounds like the chip is receiving signals from neurons and the “spike” is basically a signal.
short: the chips works well in receiving signals and you can control the mouse by that. so nothing sending hut just receiving and getting a clear signal.
If you watch the interview, he says he can’t do that for extended time because he can’t sit in the chair for that long without getting sore spots, and he has body spasms which put him out of place which would require someone else to put him back into a playable spot.
He can do this with neuralink in his bed, despite the spasms that change his position.
Edit: that one might be different though, the tongue one he has is part of his chair
I mean, the guys quadraplegic. They have this computer controller you can control with your mouth, but I’m sure just thinking about moving thr mouse and the mouse moves is far easier.
You can literally go on youtube right now and watch people play racing games and other things with those brainwave readers or whatever they are called.
Their next product is to give vision to blind people and they claim its working in monkeys now to some extent with graphics to start off low like a NES game.
The year is 2028, and thousands of neckbeards, volunteers of Musk’s implant program, run screaming through the streets, blasting people with shotguns and cutting them down with chainsaws. The DOOM Zombie Crisis has begun.
My only concern is that people are going to think that he only stayed playing civ all night because it’s exciting to do something. But that’s not the case.
Innocent people are going to try this game and keep saying “one more turn”.
I think it’s an amazing advancement and that’s awesome for a quadriplegic person to interact with the world.
The part that I haven’t heard anyone mention is what is the life cycle of these chips. Computers and cell phones all become outdated so quickly. Are recipients guaranteed upgraded chips as they become available?
I was reading an article recently about people who have had implants in their eyes that help them to see become obsolete. One because the company stopped supporting the specific version that was in the patient. The other because the company had gone out of business.
I suppose the counter argument is people don’t ask that kind of question when they get a pacemaker. At some point you have to get an implant if you need an implant you can’t go oh well our weight six months because then version 2.0 is out
Many have mentioned that so you didn’t look very far then. It’s like the first thing people wonder. They have no answer of course, this is research and not a product
This tech is extremely experimental and nowhere near ready to market as a consumer device that a regular person can purchase, so a lot of those questions don’t really have answers.
Ever seen Johnny Mnemonic? He had a whole 80gb storage in his brain and upgraded it to 160gb. Future proof. He’d almost be able to install a modern AAA title!
Part of the study is to see how long it lasts. It’s replaceable in theory but there’s things like are there complications with redoing it (e.g scar tissue) to be explored.
As a human trial, he may never get an upgrade, and it might fail in a few months unexpectedly.
It’s part of the risk of being in a trial vs waiting until it’s a finished product.
Even if the chip never went obsolete, the scar tissue build up around implanted brain devices interferes with signal over time and they need to be replaced.
Also, each installation/replacement has a few percentage point chance of leading to a life threatening infection.
Unless both those issues are solved, irrespective of obsolescence this is only the sort of thing that makes sense for patients who feel that their life is effectively over without it and have low risk thresholds for treatment options.
The story of “Second Sight” and the folks that depended on them is pretty sad. I hope there’s some kind of backup plan in case the company goes under, gets acquired, or decides to abandon existing technology. Like placing the key tech in a trust of sorts.
Add comment