Please omit snark and name-calling from your comments to HN. Your comment would be fine without the swipe at the end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well I can't edit it to remove it.

I initially thought GP was being overly hyperbolic, but after watching the video I can't say I fully disagree. It's not so much the animal studies aspect, but rather the fact that they used bluetooth via a mobile phone to connect to the monkey.

That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey. This framing somewhat gives the impression that this living being has been reduced to the status of a replaceable commodity, a mere peripheral that one might connect to via bluetooth.

I agree that given how much modern society relies on animal testing that it's not really a rational response - maybe this reaction could have been mitigated somewhat if they had connected to the monkey via a computer or more involved process rather than simply just the conventional bluetooth pairing flow on a phone.

> That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey.

I understand that, but I think to some degree, you're letting somewhat unrelated things influence your opinion of this.

You know what else it interacted with and controlled wirelessly? Pacemakers. Nobody thinks of those people are replaceable commodities.

Also, what about those that don't live a life of luxury and have access to lots of commoditized devices that wirelessly pair through a cellphone? People in less affluent countries might be less jaded about controlling something wirelessly and still view that as an amazing new technology associated with things they can rarely afford.

So, to what degree are those associations useful and accurate, and to what degree are they you bringing unrelated prior biases to bear?

I‘m working for a company which makes apps connecting to insulin pens and pumps via Bluetooth. Once you get into the mindset of connecting medical devices to your phone, this feeling of cheap commodity entirely disappears. Bluetooth and phones can be awesome tools, and if implemented with enough verification and validation, are sufficiently safe.

I think you articulated it well. It trivializes life. Countless animals die horrifically for science, but much of it is ultimately in the pursuit of valuing human life. This is something different. This animal has been reduced to a device accessory.

After watching macro trends in U.S. politics and tech for a while, I've held (but not articulated much) a sense that power is shifting from federal government to private interests. Previously that would have meant corporate boards, but I think increasingly it's a small number of individuals (due to realpolitik).

The good thing about messy, human models of transactions and interaction is that it can take a long time and many different voices can be heard, allowing disuptes to occur and be resolved.

Many of these successful tech corporates work to eliminate the human discussion element, and replace it with digitized (and frequently proprietary, or at least gatekept) rules.

I think I've dealt with a few difficult dominant personality types in the past, and it would not surprise me at all to see them consider humans-as-pets as a desirable future. Match that with digitized 'asset ownership' and other non-repudiable mechanisms and there could be a very dystopian and authoritarian future in the mind of some of these people.

Now I'll make sure to sound like a complete nutter (as if I hadn't already) and mention that some of these individuals and companies are now so essential to the U.S., both domestically and internationally, that they are becoming untouchable.

Meanwhile our own tech industry is busy debating and trying to determine what the future of libre software will look like. It's a pivotal moment and I'm optimistic we'll figure it out to everyone's benefit, but there is a lot at stake.

Bluetooth is just a short-range wireless technology. People use bluetooth to control their pacemakers, is there an issue with that too?

For me, I find it unsettling because it's a reminder of how ultimately we're all just compositions of atoms with electric signals in our body. While I find this immensely exciting, it unnervingly reminds me of my mortality. It's akin to what I imagine Neo would've felt when he learnt about the Matrix. I'd like to think I'd have without a doubt taken the red pill too (like I want this kind of research to be more successful) but anything that makes the Matrix more real is unsettling.

I'm not buying the idea that the animals somehow benefit from this. I'm not necessarily against animal testing either. But it's one thing to test on animals to develop lifesaving cures and another thing entirely sure to experiment with brain implants with the potential to take away a living creature's free will. Or the ability to intrude on thought. The whole thing is pretty gross.

It's great that this tech could help paralyzed people and amputees, but is it worth the cost?

To the paralyzed and the amputees, absolutely. The faster the advancement happens, the sooner animals models can be deprecated. Nobody wants to use animal models, they are a necessary evil.

Edit: This is a moot point if it turns out we can repair the damage from paralysis and amputation using bioengineering.

Absolutely worth it. It's not ideal, but how else could we advance such technology that could help the paralyzed?

Nothing says feel'n good and free will like banana smoothies and forced brain implants.

> As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will.

Why don't they do it on humans then?

It's legally prohibited until a certain amount of animal testing has been performed. They're aiming to do the first human implants within a year.

2030 is going to be a dystopia

> It's legally prohibited until a certain amount of animal testing has been performed.

Link?

You have to conduct testing to show that the device is safe and effective before you can begin marketing it.

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-approval-pma/p...

If you've never gone through the process of bringing a medical device to market, well, I'm not sure there's an easy FAQ that will answer your scepticism. But the basic idea is that you have to do a bunch of testing in the lab, then probably a bunch in animals, then finally a bunch in human clinical trials, then you can actually market the device to the public.

Neuralink is in the 'animal testing' phase, and it sounds like they're likely to start human testing soon.

Note that once they've gotten a device approved for humans, that doesn't mean they will stop testing on animals. There will likely be improvements to the device, new protocols, etc. that will necessitate continued testing as new features are brought to market.

Nice link, thanks.

Relevant section:

> Among the types of evidence that may be required, when appropriate, to determine that there is reasonable assurance that a device is safe are investigations using laboratory animals, investigations involving human subjects, and nonclinical investigations including in vitro studies.