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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting how quickly people resort to a "the ends justify the means" attitude about this stuff when, as pointed out in the article, there are others in the same space doing the same thing who HAVE managed to perform the due diligence required to get the proper approval. Is the assumption their efforts won't lead to anything because they've managed not to screw up the implant sizes or glue?

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I think the argument is that they're taking too long. Actual humans continue to suffer with problems that could be addressed by this technology while some people are "hand-wringing" about animal life in a society that raises and kills animals inhumanely because they're tasty.

We can only assume that this is taking too long if we assume that Neuralink is somehow able to skip the fundamentals and be successful. As I pointed out above Synchron is further ahead, they are making more progress because they were able to meet the required standard, and I think we can all agree standards are important for human trials (or is a few extra human deaths ok if it gets to market sooner?), so I'd suggest it's Neuralink's own fault they can't meet the advancement criteria and not just concerns about animal welfare that are getting in the way.

Synchron was also started 4 years earlier, so it's not necessarily because they are doing a better job. Neuralink is playing catch up in a sense.

> Neuralink is playing catch up in a sense.

Yes, in areas like testing discipline. I don't accept the argument that you can skip past the fundamentals and it'll all just work out because you may be able to help some people quicker. That's everyone's goal in that space - to get implants onto the market as fast as possible.

I know you don't find it plausible, just saying that that doesn't necessarily mean it's incorrect.

It is wholly incorrect that you can perform sloppy experiments that lead to excess costs of your research and expect this to be at all respectable or acceptable among your peers just because your research is particularly exciting or potentially useful.

If anything, being sloppy is a point against you when you’re working in particularly impactful stuff, because it shows your skills as a scientist aren’t up to the standards of the field you’re researching.

Aren't Synchron doing a much easier task?

I'd have more sympathy for this argument if Neuralink was genuinely the fastest or more efficient way to solve these problems, but it's a far shot attempting to build a technology that is wildly ambitious where there's no guarantee that it will provide the revolution people claim (or that it will even be commercially and economically available at all to the vast majority of people who need it).

It's not just that the research could be done with less suffering/death, it's also that this is also not really the highest-priority research if we want to improve the lives of differently-abled and disabled people. But we're being asked to excuse bad research practices that result in unnecessary death because somehow Neuralink specifically is an emergency that needs to have market domination as soon as possible to save lives.

I have no objection to Neuralink responsibly conducting research in this direction, but it's far from the most effective or optimistic way that we could be spending that time and money, so I don't see why they specifically should get a pass to violate research ethics. They're already devoting resources in a way that is sub-optimal if you just want to improve the lives of disabled people as quickly as possible. And that's fine, but at least they can devote those resources responsibly without causing additional suffering.

Synchron is not nearly in the "same space". Comparing their active stents to Neuralink's implants is like comparing a current Timex G-Shock to the new Apple dive watch. (Which is to say both are cool, but one requires evolutionary tech progress and the other requires significant R&D.)

Does it matter that Apple's watch is going to eventually be better if only the Timex is able to keep time right now?

Are you claiming that the ends can never justify the means? If not, then I don't see how their arguments would be inherently devoid of merit.

You have to weigh the ends against the means. "Repeating the experiments because of sloppiness" is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ends, in my opinion.

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