this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Memes

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 69 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I once had a chemistry professor who used to work as a senior drug researcher at a major pharmaceutical company. He often joked about how the company treated the monkeys used for testing far better than the PhDs. If a monkey suffered a negative reaction there was a major investigation. I'm incredibly surprised Musk can be killing monkeys left and right and hasn't been thrown in jail.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago

Here is a cnn article about it.

Elon wasn’t really involved with it. A university was.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/02/17/business/elon-musk-neuralink-animal-cruelty-intl-scli/index.html

[–] tootbrute@lemmy.ca 43 points 1 year ago

I still think we should try it on musk himself. Those monkeys just didnt have moxie

[–] DrVortex@lemmy.one 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are confusing taking a class with actually having ethics. No amount of attending a lecture about ethics will convince you if you do not, as a basic premise agree with the ethical principle that loss of life is a bad thing. And to be very clear, ethical principles are subjective. There is no objectively right or wrong thing as far nature is concerned.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Classes don't solve the problem entirely, but they're a start and without them in this case a company so large and powerful that it has a space program and foreign policy planks is being guided by nothing but the intuition of someone who grew up spending money earned by child slaves and who thinks that scuttling an army's mission in-progress is pacifism

[–] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 26 points 1 year ago

Funny story, the only ethics required in my engineering degree was a 2-day unit on our professional code of ethics. We had a 20-question true/false homework on it, and the thing about a professional code of ethics is it's not super intuitive. Most of the class thought they could gut feel their way through it, but you actually had to read the code because the wording was very specific sometimes. When it turned out that everyone failed the homework, the professor let us try again.

Ethics!

[–] torpak@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 1 year ago

No amount of ethics teaching will change the behaviour of a narcisistic psychopath like musk.

[–] aeternum@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

RIP to the monkeys. They deserved better.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At least you get to take an ethics class. Mine was just about patents and Therac-25

[–] Dhs92@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, we really don't want a repeat of the Therac-25

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Still can't believe it happened the first time.

"Oh let's just reuse the code and forget the hardware breakers on the machine it'll be fine."

Like I have no ethics training but they even had a (human operated) control rod in the first chicago pile who trusts a radiation gun to a SOFTWARE toggle?

[–] qfe0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

It wasn't collectively known that software was hard to do right at that time. If it always performed as intended it would have made for a less expensive and perfectly safe machine. It's the textbook case in doing software wrong because there wasn't one that happened before it.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I only learned about it from the "Well There's Your Problem" podcast. Can't believe my school never talked about it. We did hear all about Challenger though as well as a few other disasters where the lesson was "If you cut corners, or take chances, people can DIE"

[–] Floey@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

I personally enjoy ethics as a subject, but has it been shown that studying ethics in uni actually leads to people behaving more ethically? I agree that ethics should be applied to science, but science should also be applied to ethics to determine the effective approach.

[–] iByteABit@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

We don't in my country, and I'm 100% sure people would complain if there was one. Even if they attended it, it would go completely over their heads probably.

A shitty capitalist society with deeply rooted individualism can't be treated unless it's done from the root of the problem.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please explain how this is a meme.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well hating Elon has become all you need.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not...really. I mean, I hate Elon too but that doesn't make it a meme by itself. It's how it is presented, and this ain't it, friend.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh.

I apologize. I didn't realize.

[–] Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Down vote and move on. That's how this works.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well my instance doesn't allow downvotes, so... shrug

[–] spiderjuzce@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 year ago

I used to think like that but looking back those classes were pretty fun

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And there are actual real life goobers dying to get one themselves.

[–] Lt_Cdr_Data@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I absolutely would. I'd not line up to be among the first, but controlling devices via a brain interface is an inevitable step of technological evolution.

It will provide such an immense performance boost, that many professions may become unattainable without having one. Possibly within our lifetime.

[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Enjoy the unskippable ads in your dreams.

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dreams? What about when it locks up and plays a virtual 200db 5khz tone for the rest of your life?

[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago

No, that's a feature. To make it stop you need to pay a subscription.

[–] Lt_Cdr_Data@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

You clearly have no idea what a brain interface is.

[–] ComradeR@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Is about to kiss the love of their lives "And now, I wanna show our newest sponsor! Hello Fresh have the best options so you can make your own dinner and blah blah blah..."

[–] Droechai@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

If it can reroute my neurons to lessen my ADHD and autism traits I would gladly pay with 3/4 of waking hours filled by ads. At least that would give me 1/4 more working brain than I currently have

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I really want a neural pointing device, but not by this dork.

[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

Yea stopping animal testing sounds great, but animal testing is the backbone of drug and medical breakthroughs. So at least for now that's not possible

[–] Noxar@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Would you like them to test on you instead?

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Siv@lemmy.praxis.red 5 points 1 year ago

Recognition that animal testing is actually pretty fucked up would be a good start toward funding research into alternatives, such as biological computer simulations.

We can simulate complex/chaotic systems, like weather, in nearly real-time, so biosim research is mainly a funding and staffing problem at this point.

Probably we'll still need animal testing for the final phase before human trials, but we can at least reduce the need for it to bare minimums.

[–] eltimablo@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Cool, where should we test all the pet food and medical treatments for animals then?

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Philosophy should be taught from very early. The hability to think, argue, relate to others and understand others while being capable of express your ideas is extremely important.

[–] aracebo@unilem.org 7 points 1 year ago

My law/ethics prof was a big old NIMBY. Apparently, utilitarianism is when "neighbor allows cell tower in his yard and it block my view"

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

And he wanted to put those in humans?!?

Correction.. still does

[–] TheFerrango@lemmy.basedcount.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because then you’ll be able to dismiss the ethics while being aware of the implications of your research.

Disregarding the ethics while not knowing them grants you no extra points, whilst deliberately ignoring the ethical ramifications but understanding them gets you all the points

[–] MartinXYZ@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Oh, I thought it was a meme similar to the old "Bush or chimp"-days, back when dubya was president, and was thinking: "surely they could have found a monkey that looked more like Elmo" but that's not the point of these pictures, it seems 😕