I think a bit of skepticism is warranted here. Patient number 1 isn't some random guy getting the procedure and recounting it's benefits. But someone self-selected and willing from day 1, massively engaged with the company, likely paid or compensated, getting a lot of promotion, visibility and attention, etc.
It's possible a lot of the QOL improvements are from the circumstances of getting all that attention, or the hype circle they themselves found themselves in.
I also think people need to be open minded to the possibility Neuralink does offer promising benefits.
I'm just seeing a lot of people strongly for or against, and really I think the reasonable stance here is to remain optimistically pessimistic until further evidence.
Let's be clear about what is a good subject for review and what is not. One person's opinion about how they feel is not. It can be a good subject for further inquiry, though: learn more about their experiences and consider critically whether those experiences generalize to others.
No placebo can let him "do things like play Mario Kart, control his television, and turn his Dyson air purifier on and off without physically moving his fingers or any other part of his body."
Given that there are objective changes, it is not unreasonable to believe his claim that he is satisfied or has benefitted from them.
if it is truly "objective" then his subjective experience is irrelevant, so your logic makes no sense. it is not necessarily incorrect to investigate or be skeptical about another's self reported "subjective" claims (never mind their "objective" ones), for the reasons the comment you were dismissive of mentioned. plus given the nature of the company one would hardly be surprised if certain facts are cherry-picked over others. if it's truly as cut and dry as you believe, then surely any independent expert will soon end up empty handed. being dismissive of such an endeavor before it has even begun feels like kool-aid sippin...
The objective and subjective observations are about different but related things.
The objective measurements are about his enhanced abilities. He can do things he couldn't before.
But, the GP comment referred to "quality of life" which is innately difficult to measure objectively. It's possible that he was able to do those things but it caused him enough irritation to do them that he avoided using it (like CPAP often is for example), or that the things it enabled him to do weren't sufficient to warrant feeling improved. My father has limited mobility, but no interest in playing mario kart or adjusting an air filter, and there's very little in his home that he has or would want to be automated. Anything that could be my mom or another family member usually takes care of anyway, even if it's still something he could do himself as he's rather tech illiterate.
So, in this scenario, given my father's age, the risks involved in such a major surgery for his age, and his personal inclinations, the very same additional capabilities likely wouldn't be worthwhile in his opinion. Hence, the subjective experience of the objective changes are how you measure quality of life for this kind of operation.
yes, quality of life is a very difficult thing to measure objectively, because of the subjective component, as you state. are you under the impression the "reviews by independent experts" mentioned in the comment above the one you cited would only be meaningful if the person narrating their subjective experience was found to be outright lying? you are clearly familiar with some of the nuances, thus i'm not sure why you would not also be interested in independent reviews of the subject. his personal story is worth a lot, but it's not everything. i would think the more people reviewing it seriously, the more benefit to people like your father (and countless others)
If you don't trust the subject, he would most likely decline to participate in an independent review entirely.
In any case, just like the stock market, the fact he responded well does not guarantee someone else will.
What we need is more data, not a higher degree of confidence in this one point. An independent review would be nice to satisfy our curiosity, but it wouldn't add much to our understanding anyway.
You are right when it comes to qualia, but wholly incorrect in this case. There are measurable metrics in his life (ie independent use of computers, social engagements etc.)
It's not like he's having to rate his level of happiness here, these are physical benefits
Who is measuring the physical benefits? because based on this article it's no one... so again, we're taking one person's word for it... and it's very likely this person is contractually obligated to not disparage the company
we don't have enough information to say that either, wouldn't be unusual to get free medical treatment in exchange for good press... and even without an explicit incentive there's a lot of implicit bias to not speak ill of someone that has hardware in your brain
this is why it's worthless without a third party review of conditions
if that's the case why do you care to read about his subjective experience, at all? isn't that the point of the comment inquiring about an independent review?
Because the subjective experience is the thing we actually care about.
Same reason you ask the users of any product for feedback. Sure, you can objectively see that they were able to click the register button, still doesn’t guarantee they came out of that experience wanting to use the product.
are you under the impression that the sole focus of an independent review as described in the root comment would be to investigate the personal veracity of "Participant 1"'s narration? do you alter course in your product because of single, particular user anecdote? i'm not sure what you think you are arguing against here...
That's not categorically true. Although a placebo inherently relies on a patient's subjective understanding of receiving a treatment, that understanding can change any number of very objective outcomes. That's why so many studies that measure objective metrics use placebos to begin with.
a good point, and one that highlights the fact that people are unironically relying on "objective"/"subjective" distinctions in this thread - when this division is not necessarily a straightforward one in neurology or philosophy/language. putting a neurological implant in someone's brain doesn't strike me as an act that immediately clarifies this issue, to put it mildly. but this technology is still in its infancy. thus, the more people to "review" it, the better... doesn't mean the benefits they are giving people or the work has to stop... it just doesn't mean some skepticism isn't warranted either...
I can't tell if you're trying to be clever, sarcastic, or are failing at both so I'll answer earnestly: reviews by independent experts of the claims of Neurolink the company and of the methods used to achieve those claimed results.
See: Yeonmi Park and the absurdity of her stories that are essentially a product of South Korea's day-time TV.
(North Korean refugees typically can't get work permits, some of the little work available is telling people how bad NK is. It is illegal to say anything good about NK in SK)
That's not a philosophical argument at odds with our current understanding of copyright law. That's exactly what this judge found copyright law currently is and it's quoted in the article being discussed.
Thanks for pointing that out. Obviously I hadn't read the whole article. That is an interesting determination the judge made:
> Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use, a legal doctrine that allows certain uses of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission.
There are still questions: is an AI a 'user' in the copyright sense?
Or even, is an individual operating within the law as fair use, the same as a voracious all-consuming AI training bot consuming everything the same in spirit?
Consider a single person in a National Park, allowed to pick and eat berries, compared to bringing a combine harvester to take it all.
They never claimed to be the party of personal freedom. There's a libertarian contingent within the GOP that wishes they could persuade people to go that direction, but unsuccessfully for decades.
They have claimed to be the party of small government. And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in. It doesn't necessarily (or in practice ever) mean less spending.
> And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in.
Sure, maybe if they were ever ideologically consistent. Yet somehow “government should not be involved in healthcare” also means “government can dictate your healthcare decisions” vis a vis gender affirming care and abortions. Or how “government should not be involved in wealth redistribution” means “let’s grow the national debt to give billionaires more tax breaks and subsidies”.
This is totally setting aside the fact that small government has always carried the connotation of fiscal conservatism.
I feel like American democrats are leaving Christian votes on the table. Here is a party programme of center left evangelical party from Europe [1]. For example, I find it brilliant that they rebranded the environment to the Creation.
I was confused when I moved out to Phoenix especially because the logos are pretty similar. Turns out Fry's electronics was started by the sons of the founder of Fry's food.
There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.
The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.
It’s also worth nothing that the TSMC plant is basically as far north as it’s possible to be while still counting as part of the (huge) Phoenix metro area. The vast majority of the 5 million residents of that metro area are nowhere near the plant and very unlikely to be affected by it in any way.
At least the fabs can recycle the majority of their water. Unlike farms which use more than is needed and are likely producing animal feed for international animals.
I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?
> I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?
That, I agree. I noticed a sibling comment also mentioned that. If the farms in question are of that kind, it is reasonable. I'd just like to object to the creation of a general sense of sacrificing farms for fabs.
really stretching the definition of recycle there. Material staying within a closed loop is kind of a requirement for something to be recycled. The farms don't do anything to keep the water available and have to extract more water from other sources
Water loss from evaporation and transpiration are inevitable, and run off is a large chunk of it. Nearly half of the water used in farming is lost, and some of that becomes run off that pollutes the environment and whatever bodies of water it reaches.
Yes, but... The way the law works is that the farms own that water. The state would likely have to use eminent domain and pay fair market value if they want to take it away. I have no idea what that would cost.
I think the reasoning here is to have the fabrication being done away from areas where a natural disaster might cause an issue. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no heavy winter storms with a ton of snow, etc. If you locate it on an elevated area with good drainage there won't be any problems with desert storms/flooding either.
Drying in the southwest is more likely than in the northwest, probably. The specifics are all over. But the bigger distinctions tend to be north versus south.
This is an extremely over-simplified take. It depends on entirely on what the farms are producing, their water efficiency, etc. Nobody would seriously suggest that people go hungry so that we can have more chips, so responding as if that's the actual suggestion is unwarranted.
The place is a desert. Growing crops in a desert takes a lot of water, as you might imagine. A smarter thing to do is to not try to grow crops in a desert where it needs so much irrigation. The US has plenty of non-desert land for growing essential crops.
desert weather is consistent(ly warm sunny). Irrigation being the missing factor means that you can have a nice long growing season, undisrupted by bad weather, or storms or any other number of unpredictable factors.
Lots of the farms exist to provide year around salad. What is more important, year around salad or computer chips? Economically, for Arizona, the answer is pretty clear.
This is also why I laugh when people in wet areas talk crap about my state's water problem. My state's problem is your problem too buddy.
