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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

Be careful what you wish for. Not all memories are good. Some are best left forgotten.

The irony is we keep failing to remember to consider unintended consequences.

Even if we consider them, what do you suggest? Stop all the research?

I would definitely suggest not using epilepsy patients as lab rats. First off, the article says "Machine learning is inherently notoriously inscrutable" which is extremely wrong and ignorant. Then they proceed to demonstrate how they essentially failed to force people to memorize useless words on a screen, by zapping their brains while not really know what they're doing or how anything works. This is NOT my idea of ethical, late-stage pre-market human research. This is something to do on rats, not people. This is the same as shock therapy of rebellious women in the 60's. It's horrible, has irreversible side effects and you need to stop doing it. These are people, not toys for PhDs.

I think you can chill out a little. These are volunteers and this is speculative research. And these people are already wired and receiving gross electric shocks to different nerve clusters in their brain to regulate epilepsy, so I doubt that more nuanced stimulation like this, is much worse, and may lead to new breakthroughs, and may turn what is a handicap, into a special abilility for these people. They are pioneers.

Ok. So when do we stop chilling out?

The fact remains: not all memories are desirable.

Research with caution. (Guidelines/laws maybe?)

You never know how the product of research is going to be used. How do you imagine laws trying to solve that?

Laws? We don't need laws. We need researchers (and their underwriters) with ethics, foresigh, and a sense of responsibility and morals.

The standard cop out "Oh. I'm / we're responsible for how X is used" is irresponsible. History shows us that.

We don't need laws. We simply need accountablity. It's not rocket science ;)

Maybe we did know but were made to forget.

Did I say that?

What I suggest is we stop ignoring the fact that there are (almost) always unintended consequences.

Why do we keep pretending we are smarter than we really are?

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