Who knows if it will work, but trying in itself is valuable. Steve Jobs took took stuff that other people had done and put them together in a new way that changed everything.
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Trying what, though? What exactly is he trying? When he has to give specifics itās clear that he has absolutely no idea what heās doing. He can say anything he wants, but HOW does he propose to ārestore full body functionalityā for spinal cord injury patients with a BRAIN implant? That is literally impossible. That is one of 2 first applications they are focusing on and there is no actual plan for how to accomplish the impossible.
Now, if they want to do spinal cord implants, cool. Maybe they will (once again) only manage to somewhat improve the tech that other researchers have already gotten to work. Thereās some really cool stuff in spinal cord injury research but it all involves some components below the injury site.
Steve Jobs was working entirely with computers. Thatās engineering. Biology is ridiculously complexāespecially the brain. Once you get into that stuff it gets way more complicated.
The smart thing to do is to listen to what actual neuroscientists say about Neuralink. They are solidly underwhelmed, and are annoyed by Muskās bluster. Iām just trying to inject a little realism into the fanstastical claims, but people can certainly believe whatever they want!
If the end goal is to make advances, there are a lot of researchers and companies doing really cool stuff and I am excited to see where the field goes. I just donāt think Neuralink will be making the big advances. 
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Let me fix that for you: Most people donāt care.
(Twitter daily users in the US are a small fragment of 350 million.)
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Thatās Elon-time. (could be Martian "monthsā).
āIt wonāt workā¦ā Perhaps not, any credibly-documented research moves the ball forward for academic neuroscientists. And itās his money.
fwiw: I used to say the same thing (āit wonāt workā) to Bill Gates Foundation folks when they were spending (I actually used the term āwastingā) millions trying to re-think high school, but there were few naysayers bcos, well, it was Bill Gatesā¦
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Thatās true, but as an academic neuroscientist, itās frustrating to see so many resources and so much attention paid to the Neuralink work. There are other people out there doing way cooler stuff with way less money and struggling mightily to fund their work.
I wish that both basic science (what I mostly do) and applied science (i.e. engineering and medicine, what I do less of) was better funded.
I wonāt complain much about my personal situation because I have been really lucky with the funding of my own research. But itās not about me. I am not jealous of Neuralink and I would never want to work there. There are just so many other SOLID lines of research that would produce immediate improvement of peopleās lives were they to receive more resources. Thatās not what Neuralink is doing. I think for all the $$ thatās being poured into it, the return on investment will be embarrassingly small (i.e. some nice improvements to the tech). But hey, itās not my money, so he can spend it however he wants. Good luck with the FDA clearance, LOL.
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Now Iām interested to see if Elon actually builds a smart phone. He has the money and the guts to pull it off and take relevant market share. Heck, he doesnāt have to pay advertising costs either. He OWNS Twitter. Iām thinking itāll have the Tesla name. It could be āBoring,ā but that just doesnāt sound right.
My wish as well.
Re: achieving what others failed to do. We would have cured cancer by now if the human body was a bunch of circuits operated by ones and zeroes. It is not.
/ We all know how well Silicone Valley quest for diagnosing diseases from a drop of capillary blood worked outā¦ and that is just āsimpleā diagnostics.
I get it that Muskās persona annoys many. Thatās fine. If the existing establishment feels thereās nothing there thatās ok too. His dime his direction.
Anyone who has āway cool stuffā should be able to find money to back it. Although, it might be harder now due to our economic predicament. Do you have to market your idea to the right people? Yes. Might they choose not to fund your idea? Absolutely. But if you have an idea way cooler than NuraLink, and can paint a picture of what success looks like. You should be able to get backing. Now, would you still have greater than a 96% chance of failure? Yeppers.
Silicon Valley is famous for funding way-cool stuff. Some of which is way-cool and achievable, much of which is way cool and impossible, and a small fraction that is actually fraud.
Iām not sure thatās exactly true. Yes, VC funds exist to fund cool projects, but not every cool project gets funding. Basically the projects that get funding are the ones marketed to the right people in the right wayā¦ that isnāt the same thing as the best projects get funded.
Basically investors are looking for projects that will give them a good return on their investment in the timeframe that they are looking forā¦ they donāt always pick the right ones, some great ideas languish due to not having a good business plan, and so on.
A lot of cool stuff gets funded through VC, but itās not a perfect vehicle. Same goes for publicly funded research. Criteria is different (ie ROI is not necessarily the leading factor), but it also still requires a review panel to determine what gets money and what doesnāt.
And well marketed ideas do suck up a disproportionate share of available funding. Hype helps.
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Agree. But, If Iām sitting on a way-cool idea, Iām not sitting on my thumbs waiting for money to come to me from some grant (although Iād try that too). Iād put on my marketing pants and sell the value.
Sitting on a way-cool idea and complaining that other not-so-cool ideas are getting all the money and all attention sounds a little petty.
I didnāt get the sense that @ColdWombat was sitting on a cool idea (or knew people who were), but rather that money is going disproportionately to gimmicky ideas. I have no way of assessing if that is true or not, but in other areas, I have observed that marketing and networking sometimes outweighs solid engineering or future value.
I tend to believe that money has a sort of gravitational weight, and does not flow freely to the best ideas, but rather aggregates, at least in the near term (less than 20 years). Long term (30 plus years) it tends to get unstuckā¦ but a lot of good stuff gets overlooked.
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Perhaps a value judgement because I donāt know how you can prove that good stuff is getting overlooked.
Any researcher, or person with a cool-idea, should make it their goal to get their idea āseenā. Then, money may flow based on value. āThey just donāt see the valueā may be a problem with the investors (find new ones) or with the idea (may just not bankable). Any idea that is way-cool but not fund-able is, IMO, strictly academic. So, grants are the only avenue. Unless, you have a spare billion $$ around, then you can fund anthing. Hmmm, who might have that??? 
[quote=āRivet2000, post:1096, topic:3608467, full:trueā]
Perhaps a value judgement because I donāt know how you can prove that good stuff is getting overlooked.[/quote]
This is definitely true. But we can look historically and see that this is the case - take Tesla for example. Lots of great ideas that have proven out over time, but he was bad at marketing and finding investors (and investors were bad at finding him).
I would qualify that to say money flows based on perceived return on investment.
Also, not every āgoodā idea has a high ROI. I think we tend to conflate āmaking moneyā with being good.
Right, which I think goes back to the original complaint. If the goal is to advance human knowledge, VC money is not going to go there. Itās too abstract without a predictable ROI.
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This reflects a lack of understanding of how basic science works. Ask any working scientist and they will tell you that tons of good stuff gets overlooked. Ask any scientist who sits on federal grant review panels and they will tell you that there is money to fund only a small fraction of the worthy proposals that they receive.
No I donāt have some amazing idea that I feel a burning need to get funded. Thatās not really how basic scientists work. Getting VC funding for our work just sounds exhausting and impossible on top of the existing workload. We tend to seek out money from government and foundation grants, which do a reasonable (but imperfect) job of prioritizing funding. Iām funded adequately through those sources.
The basic science to market pipeline is a long and involved process for biomedical research. Most basic researchers do not deal with the final portions of it. Itās just not our area of expertise. I know diddly squat about business and I loathe business. I would be terrible and miserable at trying to āput on my marketing pantsā to āsell the valueā. Playing the grant game is painful enough as it is.
I have a friend who has done fantastic work as a faculty member at U Chicago. He wasnāt having much success getting his work funded, nor was he getting much support from U Chicago. He left for a biotech company. Itās U Chicagoās loss and itās what he had to do to keep doing his research. He is single so he was able to uproot his life to make the move to a different super expensive city. His work coincidentally has a lot in common with Neuralink type stuff. Heās amazing and I wonāt be surprised if he develops something really neat and useful. It would have been a huge shame if he left research altogether. Which is what many people do when they canāt get their work funded.
Most researchers are not going to go the route of VC funding. They are utterly uninterested in playing the VC game. Some good scientists are able to make the transition. But many of the researchers who would seek VC investment tend to overhype their work and, surprise, surprise, are not infrequently exposed as liars sometime later. Biomedical research is a loooong slog and we are NOT business people nor should we have to be. We already have to wear so many hats that itās dizzying.
Yes, the hyped stuff gets the money, and itās sometimes total crap: Theranos, Cassava Sciences. Iām not mad about it, nor do I want that money for myself. Iām doing fine. I just wish that actually good research got a more proportional share of the money and attention. In many scientific fields, the hypemasters dominate, to the detriment of overall advancement. Donāt blame the messenger, though.
Yes, the rich people get to fully develop their ideas. Guess what, elitism is alive and well even in scientific research. And āstrictly academicā research is what has given society much of what we enjoy as benefits of our modern lifestyle. If you donāt invest in basic science, very little of the foundational work ever gets done. The foundational work (NOT sexy, NOT attractive to VCs, NOT obviously useful) is what is necessary for the ultimate development of the internet and HIV drugs and cancer treatments and, and, andā¦
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Not a mod, but I think this is getting a bit far away from the thread topic.
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I will happily bow out! 
Itās mostly not his money either. Why are we hearing about Neuralink now, when thereās nothing new to report? Because Musk wants to distract from other stories that are going to be published that are more directly damaging to his interests. And wants to remain the center of attention in the press and on Twitter. Just like the invented fight with Apple earlier in the week. And the forthcoming reveal of a semi truck thatās years late and still isnāt ready to be built in volume.
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Iāve been on Twitter for a few years and have had both my accounts now suspended for no good reason since Musk took over. I mostly like/retweet, rarely reply to anyone except on occasion. I didnāt use profanity, no hate speech, sure I was snarky sometimes but nothing as over the top as the people Musk is letting back on to Twitter. I wanted to stay on and see what happens, but I had already noticed a significant decrease in the quality of tweets showing up in my timeline so I wonāt be going back. Not that I had much of an opinion on Musk before, but I am disgusted by him now.
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