the fucking trials out of australia where they successfully gave people back like their sight or hearing or whatever it was, and then the trials ended and they had to have the implants removed or disabled so the company didn’t have to keep supporting them was the most heartbreaking thing I had read that month.

edit: I’m wrong it was stopping her debilitating seizures https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073634/brain-implant-removed-against-her-will/

If this is what they do now to the test subjects imagine how much worse and more insidious it can get as the tech matures

Your augs will play ads at random times unless you buy the premium upgrade. And they will play ads in your dreams

I mean, that does seem to be the best course of action. It’s not hurting him to still be in there, but it could easily hurt him to remove it.

I’m glad they don’t want to touch what they fucked up, but I think this is a case of referring him to actual neurosurgeons to help him mitigate any potential damage at their own expense. They won’t because that’s admitting fault for litigation purposes, but Jesus that’s bad.

You go into a coma for opening your mouth while your brain firmware is updating

Is there any way to perfect the tech that ISNT something out of a dystopian scifi?

Nope. The entirety of academic science is predicated on the dystopian scifi of modernity. E.g. the species of mouse that has been selectively bred to remain genetically identical (so it can be used as a scientific unit for experimentation) for more than a century, has been copyrighted, and is used in basically all testing. It’s been squished, starved (lab animals are generally kept in a state of hunger to make them more easily controlled), diseased, burnt, drowned, cut open (while alive), shocked, etcetc. Similar treatment of many other animals (and humans in the global south, and people of colour and disabled people and women etcetc in the global north).

Our (Capitalist-European) ways of knowing are based on this brute force torture-science where we tear stuff apart to find out “what it is” (and more importantly, can it be made profitable or is it useless?) as soon as possible, and then we declare the results of this torture-science universally applicable, e.g. we declared animals stupid because we ran tests on animals we’ve captured, starved to ensure food motivation and locked up in cages for ease of access and tested on things humans find relevant (e.g. testing facial recognition on apes using human faces instead of ape faces; shockingly gorillas are better at telling gorillas apart than telling humans apart).

Like, it rly has to be remembered the basis of Academic European Science is rich fucks doing experiments for fun, using “raw materials” (living or otherwise) available to them as a result of their immense privilege. As their wealth was already based on e.g. literal chattel slavery they had no qualms doing literal torture on subhumans for fun and “progress”, no qualms tearing up ecosystems to “study plants and animals” (bc of this, Academic science is still basically baffled by a lotta how plants and animals actually work in nature). They therefore had less than no qualms doing any of this to “improve the human condition (i.e. to make more shit for companies to sell)”.

Capital was willing to work 2 year olds to death in lace mills for pretty dresses; it has less than no qualms about torturing apes or mice to death to ensure quality hair products or slightly longer human lifespans (for the rich, in the global north). Socialism (as it exists after imperialism dies, not as it exists while competing with imperialism) will likely have to (be forced to by the poorest) reconsider a lotta the stuff we in the imperial core take as necessities of life.

There isn’t a capability to model a complete living brain in silico, so not really at this time.

I would say that if people were set for life in a more humane, egalitarian society, one can choose to opt into experiments without there being financial incentives to ruin informed consent.

Volunteering in this society with how they treat test subjects (a term that’s already loaded as fuck) is letting an unchecked researcher and/or corporation to fuck you up and deny responsibility while waiting you out in court.

It’s exactly what I expected to happen, but being right isn’t always much consolation.

Season 2 plz

So why the fuck did they go ahead with it before addressing the known problems???

Marketing.

The capacity you describe is already available in hobbyist grade products. Not consumer grade yet, but you can see youtubers playing with kits to do all that in their gamer chair with no surgery.

this is such a fucked up take holy shit. this is a guy whose life has been completely destroyed by an accident when he was young trying to regain some of his previous abilities and we’re implying he should die because Elon Musk is involved?

He was just some disabled dude who wanted to play chess though

hey, that’s a lot more sympathy than quadriplegics usually get, so thanks?

I get it, but being disabled to that extent makes you reliant on other people to access resources and information to help you make informed decisions.

The accident happened while he was a teenager and I can’t imagine it’s easy to do independent research or evade pressure from peers when you can’t just disengage from a Tesla bro who wants to use your condition for clout.

I hope he figures out and denounces the whole thing, but at this point sunk cost sets in.

A lot of disabled people are seen as fundamentally inhuman when all they’re missing is a hand, or foot, or just can’t sit on their legs for more than a couple hours, so imagine how it must feel to live your life in a little motorised chair that you control with your tongue because it would be either an untenable strain on your hands or simply, you no longer have the motor control to do so. Once you become quadriplegic, most people’s good will and compassion run out very quickly and your life becomes limited to a very small amount of friends and family you become completely dependent on for most everything.

With the exception of chancers and hucksters, who, as above, see you as fundamentally inhuman so they will have no qualms about using you as mince meat for whatever scam product they have lined up. However, that’s a lot more attention than everyone else gives you, and, at a point, you might have given up on life so completely that knowing full well the offer is a scam, you’re hanging on the hope it somehow backfires and actually works. And if it doesn’t, and it kills you? You might be past the point of caring when you accept it.

This isn’t a used jetsky salesman that got the bazinga chip so he could crunch spreadsheets while banging hookers. It’s someone who wants some really basic human decency back and sadly fell into the hands of the most divorced man on earth and his scam chip company. This whole reply isn’t to chide you, it’s just trying to offer context on how the more desperate you are, the more likely you are to fall for stupid scams. And that makes you the victim.

After all, desperate people fall on the hands of predatory lenders and horrible working conditions, and our immediate reply isn’t to tell them “what are you, stupid, what did you expect?”