Comment by amarant
5 days ago
I find the take a quirk in how the state of the art assistive technology works is reason for privacy fear mongering to be tired, unimaginative, and typical of today's journalism that cares more for clicks than reporting fact.
It's a very interesting quirk of a immensely useful device for those that need it, but it's not an ethical dilemma.
I for one am sick and tired of these so-called ethicists who's only work appear to be so stir up outrage over nothing holding back medicinal progress.
Similar disingenuous articles appeared when stem-cell research was new, and still do from time to time. Saving lives and improving life for the least fortunate is not an ethical dilemma, it's an unequivocally good thing.
Quit the concern trolling nature.com, you're supposed to be better than that
>it's an unequivocally good thing.
the miracle that is humans and humanity came about through millennia of unrestrained fertility and lots of sex℠ producing many babies, most of whom didn't survive to adulthood. Insects and fish still do this on a grand scale. It's where we came from and who we are, and that's Not Bad™ and I think it's unequivocally a bad thing that we keep thinking we know better and interfering with it. we are failing miserably to propel our species forward for the future. "survival of the fittest" is a mistake, it's destruction of the no-longer-adequate that works the magic.
(pretty proud of myself for realizing after I put in the tm that I could go back and put in a service mark too)
>and I think it's unequivocally a bad thing that we keep thinking we know better and interfering with it.
I'll believe you actually hold this opinion after you die from an entirely curable decease. Until then I'll assume you actually think we do know better and that our interfering with, for example, bacterial infections, is actually a good thing.
Not to tell you what you think, but this is one of those opinions people seem to think they hold until it's phrased in a way that demonstrates the cost of the idea to them.
Just the fact that you survived long enough to type this comment into HN tells me it's highly unlikely medicine hasn't saved your life at least once already. And if it hasn't, it will.
I can count 5 times of the top of my head that I would've died if not for modern medicine (usually antibiotics, but also one life saving surgery). I would've been rendered a cripple a few times over too!
>I'll believe you actually hold this opinion after you die from an entirely curable decease.
what does that have to do with anything?
narcissism and self importance are adaptive features we use to propel our genes into the future but that doesn't mean anybody else should care or help us, they are trying to look out for their own offspring
I'm talking about public policy, not your or my personal feelings. I think public policy should focus on creating the strongest possible tribe for the future.
when I hear people here whinge on the daily about how health care should be free for everybody, I yawn. No matter what line item something is in the budget, I want to hear "what do you think we should say "no" to? We can never buy all of everything, there are always tradeoffs, and if you aren't willing to announce your tradeoffs, you aren't serious.
what feelgood items will you say no to?
oh, and your other challenge, you would have been closer to the mark if you said "fsckboy, the only way you could hold that opinion is if you have been so remarkably healthy and accident free your entire life that it doesn't even make sense to you the degree to which other people want to endlessly talk about their personal and family frailties" nobody has ever needed to save my life, and i'm old now so nobody should care. Neither one of my parents ever took a single day off of work for illness.
Trying to carry out a good thing (neural assistive technology) can open the door for the expansion of oppression (literal thought policing, in ?? years) in the same way that trying to stop a bad thing (terrorism, CSAM) can. It's not an immediate threat, it's a foot in the door.
This is quite the spicy take for something that could have far more than one purpose.
The problem with humanity is some people pick up the hammer and build a house while others will crack your head open with it and eat the pink gooey insides. The discussion of technology should be able to withstand the good and bad points of its conception.
>The discussion of technology should be able to withstand the good and bad points of its conception
True, but that's a poor excuse to make up hypothetical problems that don't even exist. Tying it into the current craze about data privacy is a bit too transparent imo.
The journalists should do better, the article makes a downright dishonest interpretation of the issue by shoehorning it into a lens of a long ongoing controversy about data privacy that is in no way applicable to the technology they're discussing.
The privacy issue is not only hypothetical, but far enough off in the future that it'd be a better fit for a sci-fi novel then nature.com reporting.
The problem is not discussing the downsides, the problem is doing it dishonestly, as the article does.