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<p>Thanks for having this conversation in front of us, I'm pretty
invested in these kinds of issues and they are rarely discussed
openly IMO.<br>
</p>
<p>Perhaps you can unpack for me a little (or say it another way so
I can gain my own parallax):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>In our capitalist society, is it reasonable for Neuralink to
be less susceptible to the flattening you describe by
aggregating (not summing over) all subjects' projections from
a high-dimensional construct? <br>
</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p><i><br>
</i></p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/15/22 12:56 PM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:40d253e6-0bdd-f557-b9f6-66004160e461@gmail.com">Excellent!
Thanks. However, it's also important to note that the lawsuit is
against UC Davis, not Neuralink. So, to whatever extent that
Neuralink funding, mixed with tax payer funding, drives university
research (and possibly other things like overhead or paying a
percentage of salary for some with teaching loads, etc.), those
backseating costs can deeply impact whatever it is we call a
research university.
<br>
<br>
I'm about halfway into my "evaluation" of
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://consilienceproject.org/">https://consilienceproject.org/</a>. What I've seen so far has a
healthy plating (I was going to say veneer, but that's too thin)
of pretty words. But those pretty words sound a tiny bit like
Neuralink's corporatized strawman/response to these accusations. I
bring up Consilience because it's placed in between a for-profit
company and a research university. On Consilience's About page,
you see 2 ethical commitments:
<br>
<br>
• collective attribution of authorship, and
<br>
• transparency in methodology
<br>
<br>
These may seem a bit contradictory to some observers. My guess is
that, given some time and effort (maybe even semi-automated NLP
computation), I could ferret out who wrote which featured article.
What I'd like to be transparent is who contributes what to each
article. (This is a professional task I have to some extent with
my clients ... so it's not mere hobby.)
<br>
<br>
Going back to the lawsuit against UC Davis and the 3 example
spectrum (and perhaps even the political tangent SteveS raised),
where does Neuralink end and UC Davis begin? In our capitalist
society, is it reasonable for Neuralink to be less susceptible to
the flattening you describe by aggregating (not summing over) all
subjects' projections from a high-dimensional construct?
<br>
<br>
We see a similar thread in the "academic free speech" rhetoric the
alt-right is pushing these days (though there are lefty
exceptions) ... aka when is an academic not talking as an
academic? And in the Barret and Gorsuch exhortations that they're
not partisan hacks ... even when talking at a partisan event.
<br>
<br>
[sigh] I know these fluffy issues aren't interesting to most
people. It's way easier to shut up and calculate. But not only are
they interesting to me, I think they're necessary, then, now, and
later.
<br>
<br>
On 2/15/22 11:30, Marcus Daniels wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">For some activity there will be a mesh of
consequences, that perhaps with enough transparency, debate, and
observation the facts of the matter could be quantified as a
large graph. Across this graph, one could apply a subject's
function of the utility of each one of those consequences. If
some of the consequences are both illegal and observable and a
node represented a risk to the subject doing the assessment of
the graph, then that node would probably result in a negative
utility for most subjects and perhaps it will overwhelm other
positive evaluations across other nodes. One could perform the
same procedure across all possible subjects. The sum would be
a social evaluation of the mesh of consequences. I think it
would not be very useful, and not even address externalized
costs. Throughout this procedure the subjects' utility
functions would all be subject to advertising, propaganda,
religion, blood sugar and hormones. Measure twice you could
get different answer.
<br>
<br>
If there are externalized costs that need to be recognized for
the survival of humans, then humans will have to create laws
with large risks for those that don't comply with them.
(Case-by-case harassment, vigilantism, or terrorism wouldn't
scale as well.) My guess in this Neuralink case, is that if
there were any deviations from best practices, they will be
aware of this risk in the future. In the cynical view of it
being propaganda, well, yes, they'll be motivated to make the
best kind they can and to set things up to compartmentalize the
most sensitive or emotionally charged information.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
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