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Comment by michaelsshaw | Hacker News Reader

>or contact lenses projecting onto your retina, or some kind of neural connection,

I don't know why anyone would voluntarily receive medical devices and procedures for the sake of having cool tech, particularly brain surgery. In a time where a lot of people are reducing their online footprint, you'd have to be crazy to think that anyone would risk their lives to "sign-in" to a kind of social network that you can't ever leave.

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>In a time where a lot of people are reducing their online footprint

No they aren't. The average person is increasing it. Social media platforms are bigger than ever before. I 100% expect that if they released a brain chip that gave you instant access to GPT-10 making you smarter than everyone else, people would buy it. You'd be unhirable if you didn't because everyone else has instant access to all human knowledge.

>No they aren't.

They are. Not necessarily en-masse, but 10 years ago the terms "digital footprint" and "third-party cookies" were not commonly known terms. They are now.

Eh I give credit for the cookie thing entirely to GDPR, and I question the general usability of “digital footprint”. So I think you’re extending your personal experiences a bit far. That said, just looking at Europe to avoid “new internet user” bias from poorer nations, this random website says that a few (facebook, Instagram, and Twitter notably) shrunk a little last year, so hey, maybe I’m the out of touch one

https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1334334/social-media-user...

do you have an actual source? these are just terms for a trend that very few people are actually following. total time spent on digital devices and social media is only going up.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045353/mobile-device-da...

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-much-time-does-the-ave...

This is a false dichotomy; both things can be true at the same time. Just because some groups increase their time massively on media, particularly children, doesn't mean that the privacy movement is not growing. Take into account the addiction factor, people doing things they know are bad for them because the _need_ that dopamine hit.

Just take a look at the iPhone advertising slogan: "Privacy. That's iPhone" It's not, but people like to pretend to actually care about data collection, and that's why they use it in their promos.

Other than that, laws are currently being passed in several states[0] that are attempting to limit this extreme data collection. These laws are limited compared to their European counterparts and are obviously not enough, but clearly people do care.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/us-data-privacy-...

It’s really not that crazy. People are already putting RFID chips in their skin. If it were safe and effective, there are people would jump at that chance. And once it gets early adopters, normalization starts occurring, until eventually at some point, maybe after anyone alive now is already dead, it’s more abnormal not to have that connection, and they’re putting it in infants to “hide” the memory of the pain like a circumcision.

>to “hide” the memory of the pain like a circumcision.

That's a pretty positive spin you put on lobotomizing a person, and stripping them of their human experience. What you're describing genuinely sounds exactly like what is in "Brave New World." If you give people the option of forgetting everything bad whenever they feel like it, like dosing soma, they will literally constantly be doing that, and there's no way that could be a good thing.

I understand the want to eliminate mental illnesses like PTSD and others, but for me personally, this is way overboard.

As for the RFID thing, you're comparing apples to open-brain surgery. A sub-dermal implant, or even more critical devices like pacemakers, are leagues away from a computer in your actual brain.

I think you’re misinterpreting a poorly worded comment - I meant people would rationalize performing whatever surgery to add the neural interface in infancy by assuming that the child would want it in adulthood, and doing it before memories start being fully formed reduces the trauma impact of a major surgery. Nowhere did I suggest neural interfaces would be used to “eliminate mental illnesses” or that it would be anything akin to a lobotomy.

Regarding Brave New World and dosing soma to forget your troubles… are we not there already? There’s a little dopamine machine in your pocket. If you’re tired of being poor or starving or mentally ill, just pop open TikTok and start consuming.

I see what you're saying now. Forget the first part of what I said

>Regarding Brave New World and dosing soma to forget your troubles… are we not there already? There’s a little dopamine machine in your pocket. If you’re tired of being poor or starving or mentally ill, just pop open TikTok and start consuming.

Not really. The entire point in the book was not that it was escapism, but that their entire society was built around nobody ever experiencing pain, or really any emotion at all, not just procrastinating and ignoring any and all issues permanently. To quote the RWC: "Christianity without tears, that's what soma is." It's uncanny to think about that because it is so dehumanizing

RFID in your skin is a world away from brain interfacing hardware.

That's like equating a contact lens with a fully bionic eye.

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