Comment by niemandhier

I am very aware how optogenetics works, I wasted some part of my live getting channelrhodopsins into cells to trigger neurons.

Yes you are right one would probably use transient gene therapy tho make a modification like that, but transcranial methods are afaik for human adults less suitable since the structures lying above the stuff you usually want to stimulate are simply too thick, so a hypothetical sleep replacement machine would probably need to be an implant. That is unless you can use self-refocusing lasers or holograms for stimulation, but I do not see how one would do this unless you replace most of the skull with glass.

The point with Musk was a joke more or less.

Though it’s true that he is probably the only person both morally ambiguous enough to even try to build a dystopian sleep replacement machine and capable of getting funding for it.

Maybe a Reddit account is a good idea.