chapotraphouse

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.

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.