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TastyLaksa t1_jaozjjn wrote

Reply to comment by DangerousAd1731 in FDA reportedly denied Neuralink's request to begin human trials of its brain implant | The agency cited 'dozens' of safety issues that must be resolved before moving forward. by chrisdh79

What WOULD you want in your head that’s not already there and wasn’t essential

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ACCount82 t1_jaqz6jy wrote

Lots of things. Human brain is painfully limited and borderline inadequate for the requirements the modern world puts on it.

Of course, the current state of the art is nowhere near being able to improve on that. But that's now. BCI tech is really promising still - too many human limitations lie in the brain, and we can't do anything about them without cracking the skull open.

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ACCount82 t1_jasobh1 wrote

/u/SidewaysFancyPrance: still have your comment cached, so here's a reply

This kind of feedback loop has been going for a while now. Humans shaping their environment, and adapting to the environment they themselves shaped. It's a process so old it pops up in the fossil record. It's just stuck on a bottleneck now. Humans got too good at shaping their environment, and evolution no longer cuts it when it comes to shaping humans to match it in turn.

Which means: it's time to take over that part of the process too.

>If we feel like we have to install hardware in our brains to survive, we've failed as a species.

Or: that humans have truly succeeded as a species.

Humans have a history of breaking natural limits. Humankind used to be foragers - until humans got very sick of their food supply being at a whim of their environment and invented agriculture, enabling them to specialize and accomplish more. Humans used to rely on spoken word to teach and spread knowledge - until they invented writing, allowing human knowledge to endure, to resist corruption, to be stored, transferred and replicated much more effectively. Humans used to get culled by horrendous pandemics - until they got tired of dying pointless deaths and started figuring out things like germs, vaccines and disease prevention. Humans used to struggle to understand their world, inventing things like superstitions in a desperate attempt to explain what they could not understand - until they invented scientific method, allowing their imperfect minds to be used to discern the truths of the world.

The thing is, it's not about survival. Humans haven't been a threatened species since the last Ice Age. It's about how humans want to live.

Imagine having intuitive understanding of personal finances. Or an ability to remember and recall strong enough that "where I left that thing?" or "did I forget to turn something off?" never happens in your life anymore. Or just being flat out smarter - better at remembering, understanding, recalling, making the right connections and applying knowledge. Imagine being able to get by on a single hour of sleep a day - and feeling more rested than you do after a full night of sleep now. Imagine being able to pry a drug addiction straight out of your mind just by wanting to do so.

Those things are impossible now. They don't have to remain that way.

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