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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

An animal lab is by definition grim. I've also been in many, including the very UC Davis lab where these neuralink studies were done, many times.

What you reference is clearly a PR campaign from Neuralink in response to:

"In a lengthy complaint filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) said the research caused “extreme suffering” in its test subjects, who “had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die”..."PCRM obtained hundreds of pages of health records, necropsy reports and other documents related to the $1.4m partnership through California’s open records laws. It said the documents reveal the monkeys suffered “extreme psychological distress” from the “crude surgeries”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/...

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Let's be intellectually honest here. Do you have any substantiated sources? Those are claims. I can make a false claim that you did the same.

Also, Ashley Vance does not work for Neuralink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashlee_Vance

Sounds good:

"More than 600 pages of records previously released by UC Davis showed monkeys suffering from chronic infections, seizures, paralysis, and painful side effects following experiments by Neuralink. In two separate incidents, experimenters used an unapproved adhesive called BioGlue to fill holes in the animals’ skulls, which seeped through to the monkeys’ brains. In one monkey, the use of BioGlue caused bleeding in her brain, and she vomited so much from the resulting side effects that she developed open sores in her esophagus."

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220926005606/en/Phy...

There are many ways for a company to compensate people, other than hiring them as an employee (consulting fees, board seat, stock, etc.) I sincerely doubt Ms. Vance is doing this for free.

I cannot reply to the below reply to this post from Mr. Vance, so I've edited my comment here to conceded the point I made in my last paragraph. It seems that Ms. Vance is not being compensated by Neuralink for these statements. Why anyone would give their precious time away to a billionaire is beyond me, but to each their own I guess.

I'm not sure you understand what "substantiated" means.

> There are many ways for a company to compensate people, other than hiring them as an employee (consulting fees, board seat, stock, etc.)

Again, that's a claim. The burden of proof is on you. Do you have any?

> I sincerely doubt Ms. Vance is doing this for free.

It's Mr. Vance.

Your initial (implicit) claim was that Ashlee Vance is an unbiased observer, which has yet to be substantiated.

How can we know that Vance is self-censoring? We can't. I'm sure they believe everything they're saying, but if they believed something different they would not be touring the Neuralink labs.

You might want to read the thread again. I believe the word you’re looking for is “bias”. Even if we take Vance out of the picture. My point on the claims being unsubstantiated (so far) still stand.

Can you find any source that a governing body has fined Neuralink for factually being complicit based on the claims?

>even if we take Vance out of the picture

Pump the brakes. With Vance out of the picture your initial comment is a link to someone's LinkedIn profile. Do you want answers to these questions or are you throwing up flak?

Perhaps you should quickly search "Autumn Sorrells" to see her experience/credentials. Not sure what you're even getting at here.

Why would I need to search for her credentials when you gave me a url to her LinkedIn profile?

Are you familiar with the complaint lodged against Neuralink by PCRM? Did you read the Guardian and Business Wire articles that iancmceachern posted? Do you consider the Guardian and Business Wire to be reputable news organizations, and their reporting on the issue and the statements released by PCRM a form of substantiation? Is a link to Autumn Sorrells LinkedIn, a link to Ashlee Vance's wikipedia page, and a couple of tweets by the same intended as a response to any of the above?

> Do you consider the Guardian and Business Wire to be reputable news organizations

No not really. Also, there are no “forms of substantiation”or “grey areas”. Either the allegations will be confirmed true (substantiated) or not (un substantiated) after the adjudication process…

So the logical thing to do is wait and see for any ruling to come out. I despise hopping on any speculative bandwagon.

I thought we were assuming everything was on the level on the basis of Autumn Sorrells' credentials?

Hey Mr. Vance, it looks like many folks disagree with you and your wife's stance on Neuralink, including some of their own employees. See this article and associated comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33872950#33874405

And here is more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878219

It appears that they have killed 1500 animals so far, that is a staggering number. For context most of the projects I've worked on use a total of a dozen or so animals over the course of the entire program, and those devices are on the market.

My question for you is, has any of it been “substantiated”?

Because so far I haven’t seen any ruling, fine, or confirmation from any governing body.

> Why anyone would give their precious time away to a billionaire is beyond me, but to each their own I guess.

Have we as a society really devolved into a "Billionaire Bad" way of thinking? Sweeping generalizations are for the most part myopic and tend to ignore the overall picture.

Where is the nuance, good faith and thoughtful discussions?

All billionaires aren't bad, excellent point. Those that have signed the giving pledge come to mind.

Musk isn't in that boat, where is his good faith? Where is his room for nuanced discussions? The way he treats his employees is bad, flat out.

> Those that have signed the giving pledge come to mind.

That’s your only criteria? SBF (FTX) fits that description. Yet he misappropriated retail customer and investor funds. Being myopic leads to gullibility.

FYI: https://fortune.com/2022/06/01/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankma...

Maybe you need to take a step back and try to steel-man narratives you don’t agree with. Before prematurely coming to conclusions.

> Where is his room for nuanced discussions?

What do you even mean by this? I meant discussions here in HN. Do you have anecdotal experience on meetings with Musk that made you come to that conclusion? If so, please share do share.

Most, if not all of your talking points have been news headlines. Which make me think you really haven’t thought deeply about them.

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