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Comment by wilg | Hacker News Reader

It's worth thinking about just how much could be accomplished with a device like this even with the theoretical minimum bandwidth. Just one input and output signal, like morse code. If your brain could reliably send and receive text that way. All of a sudden your brain has a built in CLI connected to a computer and the internet. Easily calculate numbers, telepathically communicate with others worldwide, look up anything with AI, etc. That all seems highly doable. Let alone all the other applications with higher bandwidth.

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> Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!

> Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.

I would not want my brain connected to the internet. Imagine giving 4chan the power to fuck with humanities brains on a global scale.

The worst of its kind is the Tech Enthusiast Programmer. They are dangerously naive and have sufficient skill to make that danger real.

I know plenty of programmers and engineers that have their own latest homelabs with home assistant controlling everything in their house

They'll get better, eventually.

A lot of that stuff is homebrewed with open source software, at least among the programmers I know. My coworkers who are all in on the latest Nest or Alexa crap tend to be young executive/management types who are overly concerned with "lifestyle". The kind of guys who dress like they're heading to the yacht club straight after work.

Sadly this is shifting, I see many young programmers nowadays buying into smart lights, VR, AI, and the whole shebang.

There's nothing wrong with any of them, given they're walled from public access/internet safely.

Smart lights with a protocol such as zigbee are lifesaver for example. Doesn't even need internet. Also work with normal switches etc.

Also nothing wrong with VR or LLMs either lol.

> Imagine giving 4chan the power to fuck with humanities brains on a global scale.

Or even worse: Elon Musk.

I know we like Musk-bashing in leiu of sport here, but 4chan is objectively worse.

That has been possible without brain surgery for decades. This was literally a demonstration by undergrad students when I was visiting a university in 2011 or so. They used one of those "shower caps" you place on your head to sense brain waves.

This doesn’t use a “shower cap” though.

Technically it's sort of a shower cap that's embeded in the skull.

The shower cap didn’t use brain surgery though.

Might as well pack it in. The shower cap is enough!

You're missing the point entirely, it's not about whether the shower cap is or is not enough. It's about how the shower cap is far less intrusive and dangerous than brain surgery and yet nobody is wearing them. Ergo maybe the most minimally capable version of this technology isn't as revolutionary as you've described.

Your idea is that because people aren't walking around wearing these (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Lacko/publicatio...) that the concept is flawed, rather than needing to be in a different form factor?

(Ignoring that the Neuralink device has many different capabilities, including and especially being able to cause brain stimulus, which an EEG cap cannot. And that writing data into the brain is a major component of what I said.)

Which makes it worse, It's a lesser shower cap that now require surgery.

My bachelors thesis in psychology was actually an experiment using positive reinforcement to alter the brain activity as read by an electroencephalogram, also in 2011. My experimantal design was flawed and I failed to show results. But getting participants to interact with externally placed electrodes was indeed a no-brainier (pun intended) to a 23 year old Icelandic kid with minimal help.

It terrifies me that a multi-billionaire is more disillusioned about this technology, than a BS-student.

Should have pushed back harder on how this is not true. EEG caps cannot write data.

Writing data is a huge can of worms. It hits at the core of (my take on) I think therefore I am. Once it might no longer be your thoughts you are thinking.

Yeah that's why this is so interesting.

Brains are not computers, they work fundamentally differently. Our brains are have fuzzy inputs and outputs, and are probably closer to quantum computers.

You cant plug into its fabric and somehow have a sidebus that does something

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