#2167 - Noland Arbaugh
2024-06-20 01:36:06
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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What? What's up, Nolan?
Nothing much, can you guys hear me through this? Yeah. Is this too far away?
No, it's perfect, it's perfect. Yeah, cool man. It's a pleasure to meet you, man.
Hey, you too, thanks for having me.
I have a feeling, if there's a movie that they do in the future, of how the world changed in 2024, you're going to be in that movie.
Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool. I wonder if they'd get to play me.
They probably don't need people by then. They'd probably just do movies with AI, and probably really quickly. You could probably take a really great novel like The Great Gatsby, run it through an AI video creator, and it would just make you the most amazing version of The Great Gatsby.
Yeah, that's true. Probably. Yeah, that'd be sick.
But, if we're talking about historical moments in human beings, and in technology, the implementation of Neuralink on the first human patient, that's you.
Yeah, yeah, I guess so.
No, definitely. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I keep thinking about it. like, you know, BCI have been around for a while.
What is BCI?
Brain Computer Interface, so just implants that they've done in people, different ways that they've found.
They've given people the ability to, like, control electronic devices. They've been able to control computers and stuff. There are a couple things out there. The Utah Array, Synchron, came out with something where basically they go through the artery in the neck, and they kind of thread something up into the brain. It expands in a vein up there, in an artery up there, and then they can, like, control the brain through that.
So BCI has been around for a while, a few decades at least, I think, since, like, the 90s. So I always say that we're standing on the shoulders of giants sort of thing, but I know Neuralink just has a league of its own, and I know that, you know, with Elon's name attached to it, it's going to blow up way more. But I think this is the beginning. I think everyone else that, you know, comes after this, basically, is going to be pulled up by the progress Neuralink's making, and the fact that they are trying to, like, open source, basically all of it. I think the whole field is just going to grow exponentially at this point.
Well, we can only hope so, and that really is fascinating. And it really is fascinating how many different ways and strategies they've employed to try to connect computers to human beings and brains. So do you know what year, the first one was that they did this?
Uh, 98?
. Oh, wow. Yeah, I think so. I think that was the Utah Array. And that just was, it looks like a chip with, like, more fixed, like, threads on it.
They were, I think, a lot smaller, and it just sat on the brain. So obviously another open brain surgery, and they put it in there, and then it would read a section of the brain, motor cortex, I think, as well.
Have you seen some of the stuff now where they're using some kind of scanning imagery where they can actually see thoughts?
No, I haven't.
Yeah, they're doing where they think they're going to be able to record dreams eventually, and what they're able to do now is get, like, an approximation of what someone is seeing and thinking.
Whoa.
Can you find that, Jimmy, so we can figure out exactly what they did? Yeah. Here it is. Scientists read dreams using brain scans. This is an older one.
This is an older one? This is not the newer one. Okay.
That's crazy. I mean, I've always heard that scientists really don't know how, like, what dreams are and, like, what is going on or why we do it. I've heard plenty of people say, like, yeah, we still don't know why you even need to sleep, or, like, what's going on in your dream. I don't know if that's changed recently, but, like, I don't know. Dreams are an interesting thing.
The whole sleep thing is interesting. Yeah. MRI scans reveal what we see in dreams. Japanese researchers unveiled dreams' visuals with 60% accuracy using innovative MRI scans at pivotal Kyoto studies, showcasing a breakthrough in sleep science. Whoa.
Wow. Wild stuff.
That picture just looked AI. Are we dreaming in AI now?
I think we're close. Yeah. I think, if the simulation is real, it seems ridiculous now, less so than it seemed five years ago, but I think five years from now it'll seem likely. I think it's all interconnected in some very bizarre way. I think we're slowly building toward that connection with all of this technology and all of these new innovations and all of a greater understanding of quantum physics and space and all these different...
Yeah. As they build on all this stuff, I think it's going to become more and more likely that this whole thing is somehow another real, but not real at the same time.
Yeah.
Neither a simulation nor actual reality, like a hybrid of these things.
Oh, yeah. That'd be crazy. One of the things I'm really excited about with Neuralink is how much we're going to learn just about the brain from this, like the amount of data that they're collecting. I mean, little things, like the fact that all this stuff with the thread pullout going on with my brain, one of the reasons that they think it happened is because... Well, I don't know.
Have you heard about the thread pullout and stuff?
Can you explain it to me?
Yeah, yeah. Basically, there are 64 threads implanted in my brain with 16 electrodes on them each, and over the course of a month, we saw a lot of the threads start retracting from my brain. So the threads that the robot implanted were retracted, and so we were getting less signals from a lot of them, and they can't see that on brain scans or anything. So the threads are so small, not even the size of a human hair, that in order to get a scan of them, you'd have to use such a big machine that it would probably just fry my brain. So they can't just go in and look at them.
So a lot of the data that we have that shows that they were moving or coming out of the brain was literally just whether or not the electrodes on the threads were sending signals anymore if they were picking up neuron spikes. So a lot of the threads were getting pulled out, and that led to some declined performance. For a while, they kind of fixed that in a way. But some of the reason that that happened, at least we think, is because the brain moves more than they thought it would, which is something that was so bizarre to me when I first heard that. I was like, you guys don't know how much the brain moves?
This feels like that should have been something that was solved ages ago.
I never even thought it moved.
Yeah, so it pulses with your heart. So as your heart pulses and stuff, your brain pulses as well. Because, you know, there's blood running through it and everything, so it's just pulsing. And they thought that it moved, like pulses, at about a one millimeter rate. So that's how much it'll pulse, like.
move, is one millimeter. And they found in my brain that it was moving three millimeters, pulsing. So that's on a scale of 3x times what they had made the whole Neuralink and the threads and everything for to be able to withstand. So they think that that might have had something to do with it as well.
So is that a normal thing? Does the brain have a range?
Yeah, I don't know. I think that's gonna... we'll know more.
Stiffness pulsation of the human brain detected by non-invasive time. The human brain pulses every time the heart beats. Scientists have used the tiny jiggle to reveal new insights about our neurons. Neuroscientist... try that name.
Yuli Rutishauer. Rutishauer. Yuli Rutishauer. PhD. Thought he'd uncovered a strange new phenomenon about the human brain.
So it pulses every heartbeat. So if your heart's beating fast, if you're jacked up, does your brain pulse fast too?
Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I get like... What happens with me is if my heart rate's higher, I'll get like headaches and stuff. So I have a lot of weird things with my body, with being a quadriplegic, where I can tell... If I have really high blood pressure, my head just gets really, really...
I get really bad headaches and stuff. But yeah, so... Brain moves more than we thought it did, which blew my mind. Once we get more people in the study, then we'll really know if, for some reason, my brain just moves a lot more than it should. I imagine that we'll see something around the same.
And then we will be able to determine a range, like you're talking about. If it's a range of one millimeter, to, say, five millimeters. Or if it's pretty consistent around three millimeters. I'm not sure.
So what this implant allows you to do is you can interface with a computer. And you can use keyboard. You can type in URLs. You can play video games. Yeah.
How does it work?
Yeah, so basically.
. Excuse me. My implant has a Bluetooth connection to the computer. And then, through that, Neuralink has created an app that they have uploaded to the computer. And through that app, I can interface with the computer.
What it does is all of the electrodes on the threads are sending neuron spikes, neuron signals.
And through my.
. So it's all implanted in my motor cortex. Through my intentions, so say, if I want to try to move my hand left, right, up, down, I can't really move it. I have a little bit of movement in my hand, but I can't really move it. But the neurons are still firing.
That intention is still there. So those signals are being sent. There's just a cutoff in my spinal cord. So obviously it's not getting down. But it's still going on in my brain.
And those electrodes are picking up those signals. And there's an algorithm, like machine learning going on in the background, that is taking those intentions. And over time, it is learning what I'm trying to do. And that translates to cursor control. Holy shit.
Yeah, so if I want to try to move the cursor to the left, I move my hand to the left. But that's not necessarily what I would need to do. If I wanted to move the cursor to the left, I could kick my foot. Or I could do any sort of motor action to train it to learn. that's what I want it to do, to go left.
So there will be a visual on the screen that says, move your hand to the left. And then they will train that left movement to left on the cursor control. But that visual could be anything. It could be, like, do a little jig, and that will move it to the left. Like anything that it can do, anything you can do, I mean, it can learn.
And you can map that to anything.
So does this include facial movements? Yeah. So you could, like, move it with your nose.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like, we haven't tried anything like that. We haven't tried, you know, a lot of stuff. This is very, very, like it's still very new. So there are things that, you know, we're working on what works well at this point.
So, like, a lot of it is, like, my right-hand stuff. We have mapped a lot of things to, like, individual fingers, hand movements in general. But we've done, like, left-hand stuff. We've done, like, foot kick stuff. And it doesn't look like the signals are as good.
But that also might be just due to the fact that some of the threads are pulled out. So when they fix that issue with the next people, then those things would be much, much better. And if that's the case, then you could theoretically do multiple things at once. It's not just, you know, you map, say, my right hand to the cursor control. Then you map my fingers and my other hand and my toes to, like, key control.
So I could be moving the cursor and typing at the same time with my toes or something. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to explore with this.
That's so interesting that it's tied to your mind telling different parts of your body to move. I'm obviously very ignorant to this stuff. I thought, like, you were just using your mind and telling the cursor to go around.
Yeah, so it's something that is true. So it's something that we differentiate. There are what are called attempted movements and imagined movements. So at the very beginning, I did a lot of attempted movement. Attempted movement is just what it sounds like.
I attempt to move my hand in a certain direction. I attempt to move my fingers, like lift your finger up, down, left, right. I attempt to do something. And then the algorithm will take that and translate it to cursor control. But what I realized, maybe a few weeks in, was that I could just think cursor, go here, and it would move.
That, it blew my mind when that happened for the first time. Like I said, with everything going on in my brain, all of it still works. All the signals are still there. Like, I think, something to try to move, and the signal gets sent. So when I'm attempting to move my hand and the cursor is moving, and it's moving basically where I want it to, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
It didn't really shock me that it worked. I assumed that it would work because all the signals are still working. It's just my spinal cord that's jacked up. But when I moved it for the first time with my mind, without attempting to move at all, like I was giddy the entire day. I could not believe what had just happened.
And I think we're going to find that with a lot of things. Right now we are doing like, I'm trying to map, like sign language, like the sign language alphabet, in order to text, like write words and stuff. And it's pretty promising. It worked. I'm sure there's a video out there of me somewhere that Neuralink has of me spelling a couple words with sign language.
Wow. So you're thinking in your mind, or you're trying to get your hands to make the signs of sign language. And then the computer interprets that as the language and types it out.
Yep. And I think the same thing is going to happen where I went from attempting to move my hand to imagining just moving the cursor. I think it's going to be the same way with the texting. I haven't had this confirmed yet, but I don't see why not. I think at some point the computer is going to learn, like me trying to do certain letters, like attempting it.
At some point I'm just going to think that letter instead of actually trying to move, and it'll type it.
Wow.
Yeah, because I think it's both like me learning what the computer is trying to do, the algorithm, and the algorithm learning what I'm trying to do. And so over time it's just going to be completely thought-based. I don't see why it wouldn't get there. From what I've seen just with the cursor control, it makes sense that, as I'm attempting, it's learning. And then, instead of even needing to attempt, it'll just understand what I want to do, and it'll do it.
So you were saying that you were one of the first people to do this, and there's going to be more people in the trial, and that maybe they'll learn the things that are going wrong with yours. Can they do yours again? Can they redo it?
Yeah, they could. It was something that when the thread retraction had happened, I was obviously pretty broken up about it. I thought that... So when they told me, I didn't have very good control of the cursor anymore. It was really hard for me to get the cursor to go where I wanted it to go.
I thought my time in the trial was coming to an end. And that's something hard to come to terms with, because they had just shown me this whole new world.
All these new capabilities that I had. And they had introduced so many things. Before that point, I had played video games for 10 hours without needing any sort of help. And it was hard to internalize that. it could all be coming to an end.
I know that it will at some point, because I'll be out of the study and I won't be able to use it anymore. So my first thought was, can you guys go in and fix it? Like, go in, take it out, put in a new one.
And they basically said, we're not at that point yet. We're going to see if we can fix it. We're going to see if we can do things on the software side to fix it, which they ended up doing. It works better than it did before now, even with fewer threads.
So I'm glad we didn't, because they learned a lot. If we would have just gone in and taken it out and put in a new one, they wouldn't have learned the last – like anything that they had learned over the last three months. They could go in and do it. They're not going to. I don't think that they need to.
But at some point, I know that the whole point of Neuralink is to be upgradable. So at some point, they're going to go in, hopefully, and take it out and give me a better one. Wow.
Now, what is the extent of your injury?
Sorry? Of course. I dislocated my C4C5 in a – people keep calling it a diving accident. It wasn't really a diving accident. It was just sort of like a freak accident while I was swimming in the lake.
So I dislocated my C4C5, which they told me was good, because I didn't sever my spinal cord. It was just kind of like my spinal cord, like, bounced out of place, for, you know, a split second and hopped right back where it was supposed to be. And so I cannot move anything. I have no control or sensation below my shoulders. I got a little bit back.
Like, I can move my hand a little bit, but not enough to do anything. Like, I couldn't control a joystick or anything. So, yeah, no movement or sensation below my shoulders.
Is there anything that – have you looked into what they do with stem cells?
Yeah. Yeah, I'm – so I applied for studies before Neuralink, and I never got asked to be in any of them. I never even heard back from anyone, which is kind of what I assumed would happen with Neuralink, honestly. But I had applied for things because I obviously don't want to be paralyzed anymore. I don't want to be a quadriplegic.
So it would be great if I could get into something and have them fix as much of me as possible. I mean, even if I had more control over my hands, the amount of things that I could do would, like, skyrocket, like an order of magnitude better. And my life would be better. My independence would be better, everything.
Yeah, don't – I mean, I don't think it would hurt to try. And are you familiar with a lot of these clinics, like the Cellular Performance Institute in Mexico?
No.
They do. a lot of UFC fighters. They do –, like, you, can do things in other countries that you're not allowed to do in America because of regulations. But what they're able to do down there is they're going right into discs, and they're alleviating people's disc problems, where they're actually making the discs grow larger and heal people with back injuries. And I know I've read things about spinal cord injuries and improvements, but I would love to connect you with them.
And they're the experts on this. They'd be able to tell you, like, what the state of the art in terms of, like, what the research shows that stem cells can and can't do. I don't think it would hurt. I mean, it's just a healing thing, right? If you're getting some sensation, a little bit better movement, maybe they could accelerate that.
Yeah, that would be great.
I'll connect you with them. Cool.
I don't know if I'm allowed to at this point. Oh, really? Because I'm in the knurling study. I'm not sure that...
Maybe you should lie.
Yeah.
I mean, it would be great.
You should lie, but that would suck to get out of the study, too. Both things would suck.
Yeah, yeah. I mean...
Maybe they would allow it.
Yeah, I mean, we'll see.
We'll see. I mean, it's only something that would help you heal.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I just know that, like, in a lot of studies, something like that, they might not want to take on, like, the added risk.
Understandably. Also, it would kind of mess up their control. Like, what happens? You juice somebody up with stem cells, and does the brain pulsate more? Does the fibers come out more?
Yeah.
How does it interplay with any sort of device that someone has implanted?
Right. Yeah, I get it. I get it.
Is there a hope in the future of utilizing this technology to help people regain movement?
Yeah, yeah. That's one of the plans. I don't know if you've seen anything on it. Basically, they do something similar to what the stem cell, a lot of the stem cell research is. A lot of the stem cell stuff is, you know, implant stem cells above and below the level of injury, and those stem cells will migrate, basically, and create a bridge.
Some of them have even talked about injecting right into the level of injury. So, with the Neuralink, the plan is to implant one in the brain, and then implant one below the level of injury, and then the Neuralinks will just talk right to each other. All the brain signals that it's picking up in the brain, wherever, you know, it's implanted, motor cortex, in this point, in this scenario, would go straight to the other one, and it would send it right through your body like it should.
And are they – do they have a plan on when to try this?
They're already trying it in animals. They have one in a pig. You can watch the video of it, where, basically, they have an implant in the pig's brain and an implant in the pig's spinal cord, I think in the thoracic section of the spinal cord. And they have been moving the pig's, like, legs on its own. The pig's not paralyzed or anything, but, basically, they, like, tell the pig, come to this section of – you know, they, like, grid off the floor, and they put food in a section of the grid, and they're like, if you're okay with us testing on you, pig, come over here, basically.
And the pig will go in there, and then they will take control of the pig's leg, and they will, like, start playing around with it, like, making the pig – yeah, so this right here. So, all those movements right there, the pig's leg, are them. They're doing it. So, and this is just the beginning, obviously.
So, this is flexor movement, it's saying, and the pig is lifting its leg up unconsciously. It's not doing it on its own.
Nope, they're doing it all.
Dude, how long before they can hijack people? How long before the CIA can hack into you?
Yeah, I know, right?
That's like – I mean, that is the ultimate fear of human beings becoming cyborgs, is that we're going to be subject to all the problems that our computers and our phones have with malware and spyware and hacking.
Yeah, I mean, people ask me all the time if this thing can be hacked, and short answer is yes. But at this point, at least, hacking this wouldn't really do much. You might be able to see, like, some of the brain signals. You might be able to see some of the data that Neuralink's collecting, and then you might be able to control my cursor on my screen and make me look at weird stuff, but that's about it. I guess you could go in and, like, look through my, like, messages, emails, something like that.
But I'd also have to be, like, connected already, so if I'm not connected to my computer or anything, you can't get in there on your own. So it would have to be a time when I am on it and you are able to hack it.
You're giving it basically a guidebook on how to ruin your life.
I know.
It's going to crank up the volume and put gay porn on full blast.
Meatspin.
com.
Yeah, I mean, it is what it is.
It is what it is.
Yeah, I think if it happens, it happens. It's something that they had to tell me about before I got into the study. This is possible, but I'm not worried about it.
What kind of a piece of shit would they be to hack your brain? Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, I know, right? There's plenty of bankers out there stealing money. Go concentrate on them.
You know, along that line, it's something I've thought a lot about with, like, doing interviews and stuff, is, like, some of the people that I've done interviews with, I'm like, are they going to try to attack me, to get to, like, Elon Musk or something? Are they going to say things about me or, like, you know, try to do, like, a getcha on me, gotcha sort of thing? Yeah. And everyone that I've talked to about that, they were just like, they would have to be the scum of the earth to try to do that to you. But we'll see.
It hasn't happened yet. Maybe someone will.
Oh, there's some scummy people out there. They'll give it a go.
Yeah.
Especially if they think it can go viral.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's become in fashion to criticize Elon Musk.
Yeah. I've already had some people who, just, the way that they're interviewing me, it's just so, I don't know, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like, I can tell. they're trying to get me to say things. I'm just like, no.
So what do you think they're trying to do? Are they just trying to attack? Well, see, here's the thing about interviewing. that's kind of, that a lot of people don't know. When you're used to talking to people, like I talk to a lot of people, I'm used to talking to people if I just meet them.
This is me if I was at a store buying food. This is me everywhere. I can be me. But it's because I'm used to it. But a lot of people, when they sit down, they know they're going to be on camera.
They've never been on camera before, and they get very nervous. And that's why I like to talk to people before the show, just kind of, hang out a little, get you chilled out. I'm just a person. You're just a person. We're going to just talk.
It's going to be easy, man. I'm your friend. We're going to have a good time. Some people don't want to do that. They want to do the opposite.
So they want to sit there with a clipboard, and they want to look at you in a condescending way. And it's like a little bit of a power move. And what they're trying to do is make salacious content. That's all they're trying to do. That's their job.
Their job is different than a person who just wants to have a conversation and ask questions, which is my job. Their job is to make something dramatic happen. that's going to be shared on TikTok.
They're barely in the news business anymore. What they're kind of in is the clip business, viral clip business. They're farming viral clips. So if they can say something ridiculous, and maybe you'll say something back, and that'll become the gotcha. Oh, he claps back.
Yeah. It's something like. I'm not nervous talking to people. I never have been. I've never had stage fright.
I think people are people. I think I'm pretty good with people. I am not weird about interacting with others. I think it's because of my mom. My mom's like the friendliest person in the world.
So I grew up just being able to walk up to someone on the street and start a conversation if I wanted to.
And so then I can obviously tell things when people are interviewing me, like what they're trying to get from me. Like just the way that they ask questions, the tone of their voice. Like, hey, I'm your friend. Like, open up to me.
It's so sincere.
I know. I know. It's just not great.
Well, that's the business they're in. If you work for a tire store, you're trying to sell tires. That's their business. You need new tires. Do I really?
Their business is talking shit and making things.
It's a bad format. Most of those media interviews are bad formats because it's a very limited amount of time. And you have to have a clip that fits in between commercials. And also, they're not free. They have executives.
There's too many people that get in there. The person talking to you should just be talking to you. And they should have an understanding of what you do and how it happened and what this is all about. What this means for future people. It shouldn't be like going after Elon Musk.
Everyone's so goddamn political right now. It's so weird. They're even making apolitical people political. So to connect you to that, it's just so stupid. What you are is, like.
I said, I think, if there's a movie about the future. One of the very first people that has used this kind of technology. And we're learning that these people are getting better at it. And now with the use of AI.
I mean, who knows what's going to be possible with you just in a few years. It's very exciting.
It is very exciting. I know a lot of people are really nervous about it. And understandably so.
I'm one of them. I'm nervous.
I've heard a little bit of what you've said about it. And I don't have good arguments against it. I can come on here and be like, Joe, don't worry, man. I'm here to help. Don't worry about it.
I would say that's the computer in your brain talking to you, man.
Let me into your computer, your phone. I'll show you. There's no big deal. I'm your friend, Joe. No, but I get it.
At the same time, the way I look at it is how much it's going to be able to help people. How much it's going to be able to help people like me. at the beginning at least. I know a lot of this is down the road stuff. What it's going to do to normal people who get this.
They're going to be able to be hacked or controlled or something. But for me, I think about it like how many people who are paralyzed don't have to be paralyzed anymore. How many people with disabilities, ALS or Alzheimer's, or any of these who are blind. How many people are going to be able to live their lives again? And that's my goal at the beginning.
I know that I feel like people are going to look at me and say like I really need to be more concerned about a lot of the things coming down the road. And it's something that I'm trying to think more about, because at some point people are going to ask and I don't have good answers for it. Because all I'm thinking about is I want to help people and I feel like this is going to help people. And that's what I'm focused on.
Well, I think your perspective is probably the right one, because no one knows what's coming. No one. And you can be freaked out about it like I am. I'm sometimes freaked out about it, but other times I'm just sort of resigned to the fact that this is just the existence that we find ourselves in. This is our timeline.
We live in a very strange timeline. And it's happening at a very, very, very rapid rate. And no one has a map of the future. It's not possible. It's just all.
guess. It's completely, it is like an ant trying to figure out how to operate an iPhone. It's not, we don't have it. Whatever it is, whatever it's going to be, it's going to be, and you're not going to stop it now. We are a runaway train.
Let's just hope we're going to a cool spot.
I mean, you look at 100 years ago, there's no way they could have imagined what our world would be like now. No.
And I have a feeling the next 5 to 10 years is going to be a lot bigger than that.
Yeah, I mean, exponential growth. Yeah.
Well, it's just once this stuff goes live, it's going to be really weird. It's going to be really weird. But along the way, we're going to solve a lot of the problems.
Look, I've had three knee surgeries, two ACL reconstructions. If I lived 100 years ago, I'd be a cripple. Just how it is. My knees would be destroyed. I wouldn't be able to walk good.
And now I can do anything. That's just medical technology and understanding of the human body. Implementation of this kind of device that can allow you to move your body and can, as you were saying earlier, you can bring back eyesight to some people. This is something that they really are hopeful for. Have they done any of that on animals yet?
I'm not sure. I know that what the plan is, like. they did a talk about it a while ago on a show and tell. They basically show how the Neuralink works in my brain would be very, very similar. You would just take, you would activate certain parts of the brain or behind the eye.
The part of the brain, the part of the eye that dictate sight and stuff. You would activate certain things in order to display what's going on around the world to someone. The back of someone's eye, to their retina, whatever it is. I don't know much about it. But they have done it.
Oh, they did it with monkeys. actually, yeah. There's a video of them lighting up parts of a screen. They have basically an eye tracker in the monkey. The monkey will look to different parts of the screen and wherever they've lit up on the brain, basically.
Whatever implant they have in the brain, they'll light up somewhere on the brain. Then they'll light it up on the screen and the monkey will look there. Then at some point they stop lighting it up on the screen and they're just lighting it up in the monkey's brain. The monkey still looks there. So they know that they can do these sorts of things.
It's amazing. I know that there are other companies that have done something similar to this too. Like giving people, like helping people with their eyesight. I know one of them went under, which was just a wild story. Basically about a company who had implanted things in people and the company went under.
Then the people in the study were like, well, what do we do now? They didn't know if they were just going to continue. That's one of the things about Neuralink.
Yeah. I should mention that the blindsight implant is already working in monkeys. The resolution will be low at first, like early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision. Holy shit. Also, no monkey has died or been seriously injured by a Neuralink device.
March 21st.
By a Neuralink device. Right. But they did have to kill the monkeys that they originally did studies on, right?
Yeah. Do you know much about studying with animals and stuff like that? Yeah.
You have to kill them to find out what damage you've done to them.
Yeah. Exactly. Basically all animals that are in studies at some point get, I think they have a really terrible term for it. I think they call it sacrifice. Whoa.
Sacrifice.
That's satanic. Yeah. It's crazy. Come up with a new word, guys. I know, right?
Right? I know, right?
In this day and age, there's a lot of fucking fear of Satan.
It's not a great term for their cause.
We could have worked on that one.
Yeah, I know, right? Put a little bit more thought into it. So yeah, they do that. They have to, like you said, learn something from the monkeys, from the animals that they're testing on. So some of them, they will let live longer.
Some of them, they'll implant something in and then sacrifice almost immediately to see, because they have to know what it's doing short-term, medium-term, long-term.
So basically, all animals in all animal testing get sacrificed at some point. I don't know how true that is, because obviously a lot of them, once they're done with the study that they're in, they let go live. if it wasn't too invasive. If they don't need to study any part of them, that would need to be killed for.
But if you're going to study the brain.
If you're going to study the brain, then there's really no other way.
You've got to get ahead of them.
And then there was the whole report that came out about all the terrible things that Neuralink was doing to monkeys. I've talked to the people. I got to meet them, the people who were working directly with the monkeys. Those monkeys have the best animal facility in the world. Someone came in and built it.
Basically, they're going around. now, that person is going around and changing how other labs treat their monkeys for the better. So they're revolutionizing the world of animal testing, basically. So Neuralink treats their animals better than anywhere else. And then the report that came out and said all these terrible things are happening with animals.
It's skewed. Because all the things that they brought up were just, it was all of the bad. Basically, anything bad that happens to the monkey has to be, or any of the animals, has to be reported. And it gets reported in this XYZ format of, this is what's going on with the monkey. This is what happens, what we think happened.
We had to kill the monkey, yes or no. But none of the other things get reported at all. None of the time between, like, if it's five years that the monkey is alive and one bad thing happens, then there's a report about that one bad thing happening to the monkey. And you compile all of that and you're like, look at all of these terrible things that are going on with the monkeys. But it's just not really true.
Interesting. Yeah. Well, it's a tough one, because some people don't think any studies should go on with animals at all. Yeah. And so for them, everything that happens to an animal in captivity for scientific purposes is evil.
You know, I get it. I get it from their perspective.
Yeah, I get it.
You know, they call us speciesists because we're willing to do things to monkeys that we, you know. Aren't there? like a lot of evil people in the world, we could practice on? You know?
I mean, I don't want to give anyone any ideas.
Right. That's a terrible thing to say. Shouldn't do that. But an innocent monkey, it's fine.
Very weird. I mean, monkeys do terrible things to us too.
They do provoke, you know, or if they live in urban neighborhoods where they rely on tourists and they steal their phones for food and attack people. Yeah, they're fuckers. They can be fuckers.
I saw a story of a monkey who basically tore some kid's face off. I think he was like outside of the village or in his village. And the whole story was about how they were doing reconstructive surgery on the kid and like making him look a bit more normal again. But that's terrifying.
Monkeys are unbelievably strong. There's a video of a guy sitting on the ground cross-legged and a monkey hops on his shoulder. And then the guy's like thinking it's cute and smiley. And then the monkey just decides to take a massive chunk of his scalp off. Just bites down on his head and just takes like a football-sized chunk of scalp off this dude's head.
It's horrible. Just decided for no reason, unprovoked.
Wow.
You know, monkey lives in a rough neighborhood.
He had a hard life.
He's not out there, just, you know, picking fruit. This is it. So? this dude is just sitting here with his monkey, is like sitting on his lap and he's like talking to the monkey. He's saying something to him.
He's like, hello, Mr. Monkey.
Saying something bad about his monkey.
Look, he doesn't seem like he's bummed out about the monkey. Now watch what the monkey does.
Oh, jeez.
Ouchy wawa. Is that his skull?
Yeah.
I thought that was his brain. No, not that. I mean, that would have to be a chunk of skull, right? But it was the skin. I mean, that's gone.
That's gone forever. Yikes.
No, thanks. Ouch.
Yeah. Gross. But, you know, that monkey, again, probably had a hard life.
Yeah.
We need his monkey life reform.
Yeah, I know, right?
I think when we're looking at these kind of scientific experiments on animals, a lot of people are going to have a problem with. But I wonder, through with new technology, if that's even going to be necessary anymore. In the future, particularly with the leaps that are going to be made with AI, I wonder if they're going to be able to just be able to map out a study. You know, like understand the interactions between human beings and these devices and be able to map out the possibilities and probabilities without having to do that.
Yeah, you would think so.
But who knows?
Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. I feel like at the beginning they would probably need to do like that, along with a study on a human. So they might run, say, simulations a million times on what, you know, an AI simulation on what, how this would interact with a human. But then they would have to go in and do it to see how true the like simulations are.
And then, depending on how accurate they are, then maybe they could just go fully to that. But if it ends up being different, then.
Yeah, I have a feeling they're going to be able to replace parts with artificial parts too. Like the eyeball itself. I was just thinking about that the other day. Like how complex. Like, look, how small these little cameras are on phones.
Little tiny ass cameras. But one of these can do 100x zoom. Yeah. You know, and one of these is 200 megapixels. This little tiny, thin thing.
Like what's to say that they wouldn't be able to come up with something that works way better than the human eye? Where you could zoom in.
Yeah.
Just like a phone. Just like zoom into something. But have like a real optical zoom. Yeah.
I just hope they don't give them red retinas. Yeah. That's just.
That would be creepy.
Yeah, I know. Terminator style. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It just seems like they could do better.
Yeah, it would be very weird talking to someone with two fake eyes.
It'd be weird if you couldn't even tell.
You probably wouldn't trust them anymore, right? Because you kind of like look into someone's eyes and then you find out if they're cool. Yeah, right. Like you'd be just looking into these lenses. Are you even in there anymore?
Yeah.
I'm just trusting that you're still there. It's like talking to someone with sunglasses on forever. You know?
What's going on there, man? Yeah. What are you looking at?
That is a weird thing that we look through the eye. You know, it's the old expression, the windows to the soul. Yeah.
I mean, you can tell, right? Yeah. Sometimes, looking at people, you look in their eyes, you're like.
Yeah, you're a little angry, dude. Like you got crazy eyes. A little sketchy. Yeah.
Something like that. Yeah. Like, I'm saying, maybe at some point you wouldn't even be able to tell. Which is also something to think about. Who?
Like, if you wouldn't be able to tell someone had robot eyes. Like just looked like a normal person. Right.
But that's a real part of how we interact with each other. It's like facial expressions. Like figuring each other out just by like how your eyes are looking at me.
Oh, man. Well, it's not like you distrust someone because they have like a glass eye or something.
No, not a glass eye. Yeah.
Yeah.
If they got like. Little red lights moving around inside their head. Maybe that's the only way it works. It has to make a little noise. Especially when you're alone with them.
Oh, man. All through the night.
Little movements.
Rapid eye movement. Yeah. Just like.
While you're sleeping. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure they've worked. Wasn't there some sort of a study where they were trying to develop an artificial eye? I got a.
Whether or not this is. I'm trying to find out how real it is. I got one guy who has a 3D printed eye.
3D printed eye.
He's got a camera in it or something. I'm trying to find it. Oh, doesn't it hook up to his tooth? There's two things I'm seeing here. They figured out a way to allow people to see things through their teeth.
Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't get it.
I'm not going to get that one.
Yeah.
There's not enough time in the world for me to figure that out. Thank God for smart people. I know, right? I mean. How are they getting it through the tooth?
I don't know. I'm trying to. Both of them have a 3D printed eye. Here's the one guy. First guy.
He's a director. Shot himself in the eye and ax. Oh, yo. I guess he's got a camera. in there, it says.
And he sees through the camera? That, I was trying to get to. Yeah, it's got a transmitter. I don't know if it's going through his brain, but he can see it on a camera. Oh, so he can see it on a phone.
Yeah. Well, that's kind of weird. Maybe that's the first step. Then they need to. That guy would make the weirdest POV porn.
Is this made in, like, the 90s?
It's not new. Yes, 12 years ago. Uh-huh.
It looks like he's playing that on a Game Boy. Yeah.
It's not a Game Boy, but it's some sort of a proprietary little electronic video player.
Hmm.
Yep.
Amazing times.
Yeah.
So, what is next in terms of, like, how long does this study that you're on? A blind woman sees with tooth? in eye surgery. Doctors in Florida restore a woman's sight by implanting a tooth in her eye. That's different.
No, but I think that's how they do it. Okay. That is the thing. I was saying, like, through your teeth, but, I mean, that is how they do it. A team of specialists at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine announced Wednesday that they're the first surgeons in the United States to restore a person's sight by using a tooth.
The procedure is formally called modified osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis. Sharon K. Thornton, 60,, went blind nine years ago from a rare disorder called Stephen Johnson Syndrome. The disorder left the surface of her eye so severely scarred. she was legally blind, but doctors determined that the inside of her eyes were still functional enough that she might one day see with the help of this thing.
This is a patient where the surface of the eye was totally damaged, no wetness, no tears. Dr. Victor L. Perez, the ophthalmologist at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami, who operated on Thornton. So we kind of recreate the environment of the mouth in the eye.
What?
I don't get that.
Three-phase operation started with the University of Miami dentist, Dr. Yo Sawatari,
who removed the tooth from Thornton's mouth and prepared an implant of her own dental tissue for her most severely damaged eye. The tissue would be used to make a new cornea to replace the damaged one. The doctors then removed a section of Thornton's cheek that would become the soft mucus tissue around her pupil. Whoa! Finally, Perez and his team implanted the modified tooth, which had a hole drilled through the center to support a prosthetic lens.
We used that tooth as a platform to put the optical cylinder into the eye, explained Perez. Perez said doctors often use less risky and less invasive techniques to replace corneas, but the damage from Thornton's Stevens-Johnson syndrome ruled those out. Whoa! Using a tooth might sound strange, but it also offers an advantage. because doctors used Thornton's own cheek and tooth tissue.
She faces less risk that her immune system will attack the tooth and reject the transplant. Patients getting a cornea transplant from a deceased donor, on the other hand, face chances that their immune system will reject the new tissue. Wow.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. For some reason, I thought they were using that tooth to, like, I don't know, use it as a replacement for, like, her vision in some way, but it's literally just a placeholder for, like, you know, different things, like the tissue and different places to, like. I said, hold that lens and stuff.
That makes more sense.
Yeah, I thought it was that, too. I thought they were seeing through the teeth. Yeah, yeah.
I was like, that doesn't, I don't get that.
No, that makes more sense.
Like, why can't we see through our teeth all the time? Be looking at what's going on in my mouth.
Right. Yeah. All this stuff is, it's just mind-blowing to imagine where this is going to be in 100 years.
Yeah.
And with you, do you have, like, if they start doing the range of motion studies or the, being able to recreate motion or restore motion, are you going to be available for those studies? Can you do that, too, or are you only, like, locked into this one study?
Yeah, I don't know. I imagine I'm locked into this, for now, at least. But at the same time, I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. You would have to do it with someone who already has the implant in their brain.
So I don't know if it will be a separate Neuralink that they would need, like a different one, specifically for, like, the two implants interacting together. I don't see why that would be the case. Just like the same thing with people who, they're going to have to test to see if the surgery to replace a Neuralink is safe at some point. They're going to have to go through a whole thing. So they're going to have to do it on people who already have it in.
So I imagine, like, that sort of study might be something I would be involved in. if they're planning on implanting one in someone's spinal cord and then seeing how they interact and seeing if it works. I don't see why I couldn't be in that. But we'll see. It's kind of a long way off, I think.
How big is the Neuralink implant?
It's about the size of a quarter.
It's thicker than a quarter. I don't know, maybe half an inch, like that thick.
And does it, it's on the surface?
Yeah, it's implanted on my skull. So they cut out a chunk of my skull. I think it's called a craniectomy. And then they left that chunk out and just replaced it with the Neuralink.
Do they take that chunk and, like, put it in the freezer so they can put it back in you someday?
Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't think so. Oh, talking about it, yeah, talking about it afterwards.
That's it? Yep. Yo, that's in your head.
I was talking about it with my buddy afterwards, and I was like, I should have asked them for my chunk of skull. That would have been sweet.
I don't think they're allowed to give that to people. I think that's, like, bio-waste or something like that. It's bio-waste. I know. It definitely should be.
They give people their testicles back.
Right, but it has to be in, like, formaldehyde or something.
Okay.
So take your skull and put it into formaldehyde.
Yeah, that's fine with me, as long as I can have it.
How many versions did they go through before they got to the one where they were willing to do it on people?
A lot. I saw, like, from their very first idea of Neuralink, through this one. I don't know. I don't know exactly how many there were. I would say at least one or two dozen different, like, iterations.
Yeah, and then, like, the version I have is, like, thousands in, like, the thousand or two thousand iteration of this one. So, like, they're constantly changing stuff. So, like, even the next person that gets it, they've probably made, I don't know, a thousand more modifications to it, little things. Wow. So, like, if they've seen certain things in my implant they can improve on, obviously they're going to change how the threads work.
They're going to add more electrodes. They're going to maybe update the battery. They might update a lot of things. They're looking at updating what signal it uses instead of Bluetooth. They're looking at different things like that.
So the next one that comes in is probably going to be much different, maybe the same design. Maybe they found a better design. I don't know.
Wow. And I know in the future they've talked about putting this into people that don't have any issues medically. What are they planning on doing? Like, how are they planning on that? Do you know?
What do you mean how?
Like, in terms of, like, is that going to just be offered for, like, what are the long-term goals? Is it to get the internet on that? Is it so that people communicate telepathically? Is it going to be, like, a slow build-up to the idea that everyone is going to want to get one of these things?
I think, once it's proved, so, like, this study, is to prove whether or not it's safe and if it works, basically. I think once that's proven, then they're going to get into a lot more of what it's actually capable of. And then, once it's released to the public, I think people are going to rush to get it, honestly. At least a group of people who have been following it, at the very least, because once we know that it's safe, then that's one of the big things that people are going to, like, once that's lifted, once you're like, okay, it's safe, now we can go through and start talking about being able to communicate with people and being able to, you know, possibly download information or have it be available to you using AI and stuff like that. I'm not sure if that's going to happen.
I don't see why it's not possible, at the very least. And then they, I know Neuralink's talking about opening up a clinic in Austin, basically, where you would go in and get a surgery and, like, walk out. So it's not like, like, my surgery was, I don't want to say not invasive, because obviously they did brain surgery, but they were expecting it to be something like three to six hours, and my surgery took under two hours. It went super, super fast. There were no complications at all.
It was not, like, obviously invasive in the brain, but there was no damage done, really. So, and this was the very first time. So once they get this even better, even more tuned in, then I imagine people will go into this clinic and go in and come out in a few hours with Neuralink, and then they can chat with all their friends online or something else. It'd be pretty cool. It'd be pretty cool.
Again, I'm not, I'm not here to talk about, like, the ethical ramifications of that, or, like, how it's fun to think about, like, the things that might go wrong or could go wrong, and it's probably something that people much smarter than me should think about, whether or not it should be done, but I think there are so many things that you could do with it.
I think it's going to be done no matter what, and if it's not done by Neuralink, it's going to be done by someone in another country. It's going to be done. Technology always moves forward. It never stops over concerns of what could possibly go wrong, hence the nuclear bomb. Yeah.
It's not going to stop.
Yeah.
It's just not what we do. We always try to come up with greater things, and if someone does figure out a way to connect human beings to some form of wireless Internet or wireless data or some completely new thing, instead of thinking as the Internet as we know it, being these devices that go to websites, it might be a completely different invention that uses a completely different type of technology to sync all the information and all the minds in the world together. It might not be as dopey as going to a website. Going to a website is probably an archaic way to do it.
Yeah. It'll be like the cloud or the metaverse, or something. You can just hop in, and everyone will be there. You can go chat with whoever you want around the world.
And they can just upgrade your operating system and make you woke.
Yeah. Exactly, right?
You sign up for the wrong one, and the next thing, you know, you get some way crazy ideas.
Yeah. Propaganda will take new leaps and bounds.
Right, but then who's running it? Is it one person and everybody else is a robot? That doesn't make any sense.
I'm sure that's what they'll try. I'm sure someone's going to want to run it all.
Someone is going to want to run it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's going to need to be…. Hopefully, by that point, they will regulate it, but as we've seen with things like AI art, even, they're trying to catch up with that. It's like, oh, should we have thought about this before all this was released? No, government will figure it out. Yeah, good luck with that.
Right. Yeah. Well, they're able to scour the internet for every artist's work, and then sort of take pieces of that and create art. And these artists are like, hey, that took me fucking forever to paint that. Yeah.
And you just stole it and did a version of it in 13 seconds.
Yeah.
Weird.
Yeah.
And that's just one problem. Another problem is deep fakes and songs. Yeah. They made a Drake song that became a hit, and Drake had nothing to do with it. Yeah.
It's not that far away from it, being out of the barn, where you're not going to be able to ever stop.
You're going to be able to do whatever you want in terms of creating videos, audios, and it'll look indistinguishable from a real video, real audio. Yeah. They're already going to take this podcast and translate it into different languages without me being able to speak them just through AI.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they did the same thing with the deep fake, like you were just saying. I think they did something with Trump recently, where it was like a deep fake of Trump, and after a while he had to be like, hey, guys, that wasn't me.
Wasn't there a football player that was saying some wild shit that turned out to be fake, or a basketball player?
Oh, yeah, that too.
Did you hear about this, Jamie? It depends on exactly what you're talking about, but there's a bunch of fake press conferences that go viral. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's like a thing someone's doing.
Yeah, but apparently it was just barely wacky enough for people to go, that looks fake. You have to be very sophisticated. If you saw this, I mean, we're getting used to looking for things being fake, whereas 20 years ago you would say that's real. Yeah. I see it.
It's a video. It's real.
It's something that I was actually just talking with my buddy about the other day. I think it's going to be something similar to how we get e-mails from Nigerian princes, and we're like, yeah, grandma, don't open that. Don't send them money. It's not real. I think it's going to be something that people are able to do, like the next generations, where they look at something online and they're like, oh, yeah, that's AI.
Oh, yeah, that's fake.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Yeah, they're going to grow up with it, so they're going to be able to figure out. But maybe not. This stuff looks so real that I don't know. But maybe they're going to have to be required to do, like, watermarks or something on it every time.
I don't think they're going to be able to stop it. I think we're just going to get into a real weird, blurry place. I think the one thing that might help,
and this sounds crazy, but I think ultimately what technology does is it makes things more accessible. It gets you more information. It connects people more. With translation, it's connecting people from different cultures and different countries more. I think ultimately, what it's going to do is it's going to be some sort of a mind interface.
I don't think it's going to be as simple as language. I think it's going to be a next-level mind interface. If it's something, through a technology akin to Neuralink or maybe future versions of Neuralink, I think we're going to be able to know what someone's actually thinking. I think you're not going to be able to lie anymore is what I'm saying. I don't think lying is going to be possible 100 years from now, which would be a really good thing.
If you're a person right now that lives your life without lying, you know this. This is way better. As a person who used to lie and doesn't lie ever now, I'll tell you right now, it's great. I love it. It's a good thing to not lie.
If you live your life in this manner, where there cannot be deception, how much more would we get done? How much more would we understand each other in relationships? If you're bullshitting, you'll understand that you're bullshitting. by the way, another person sees your thoughts. Then you'll be forced to handle those and go, you know what?
I'm trying to put this off on other people, and it's really me.
I'm the problem.
You'll be able to see it. Everyone will see reality instead of these sort of manufactured narratives that people have with this very selective view of memory and their thoughts of the past. My boss did me wrong. No, you were a fuck-up. You showed up late every day.
They fucking hated me. No, you were super insecure and real shitty around people.
We'll be able to solve a lot of our social issues that seem insurmountable because of poor communication, poor understanding, and a lack of honesty, a lack of real, honest conversations instead of just people trying to win arguments.
Yeah, that would be great. until people realize that maybe you don't need to lie exactly. Maybe you can find ways to work around having to lie with this thing. If you can't lie anymore, if you're not allowed to, people find ways to kind of sort of lie all the time. Also, if you can hack it and then you're able to lie and no one else is, then that becomes kind of an issue too.
If in some way you are able to jailbreak your neural links so you can't lie anymore, and then you're the only one lying, everyone's going to believe you. They think that you can't lie, and then that brings up a whole new world of problems.
In my eyes, you're seeing right into the thoughts. Oh, I see. I don't think you have a chance to lie. I don't think there's any – that doesn't exist anymore. I think it goes away.
And hence, leaders go away. That's going to be a real problem. We're going to have to have actual understanding of all the different processes that are in play, whether it's environment or resources or inter-country conflicts, whatever the fuck is going on. We're going to have – we're going to have to have a real understanding of it, without politicians bullshitting us as to why we're going to do something. That won't exist anymore.
That would be wild. They would be the ones that would resist it the most. They're like, we have this dangerous mind-reading technology. It's like fucking Nancy Pelosi would have a press conference.
I mean, I just think, if something like that ever came about, they would never let it happen.
I don't think they have a choice. Because China will do it. Russia will do it. Everyone will do it. Someone's going to do it.
All these eggheads out there that are willing to push that, but they're not going to listen to the government. Shut the fuck up. The government is just a bunch of people. The super nerds out there are the ones who are really in charge of this stuff. Because even – we're seeing this with technology and some of these hearings on AI.
The people that are asking the questions don't know what the fuck is going on. And I'm sure you saw that with some of the Facebook hearings and some of the other hearings. The people that are actually asking about the technology, how much time do you have to get into the understanding of this? How much time between worrying about water rights in your district and this and all these other problems that you have as a politician? How much time are you actually spending trying to figure out how social media works?
Probably none. They just have aides that are giving them all this stuff.
That's why they have pieces of paper and they're looking down with their reading glasses. Now, Mr. Zuckerberg, my phone doesn't go to Google, right. Why is that?
He's like grandpas who argue on Facebook. They're not going to be the people that control AI and they're not going to be the people that are going to be able to figure out how to stop mind-reading technology. I think when mind-reading technology comes, it's going to come so fast that it's going to be just like all these other things, like the internet. It came so fast they couldn't control it. Because if you looked at the internet, if you looked at what the internet has done for a distrust in mainstream media, distrust in politicians, exposing corruption, all the different things that we know about now that are a fact that just 20 years ago you would have thought been crazy conspiracy talk.
If they knew that that was going to happen and make life so much more difficult for them, they would have regulated the internet from the jump. They would have stopped, stepped in, took over like China did, took over like North Korea did, and you would get their version of the internet forever, and that's it, and there's no growth, and they'll silence dissidents. And that's how they would have done it if they had ever known that it was going to be what it is now. I think that's exactly what's going to happen with mind-reading software and mind-reading technology. I think it's going to happen.
They're going to be like, oh, Jesus Christ. And also, look, they're just human beings too. They're going to want that. If they find out there's a technology that allows you to communicate with people in a completely new way, and it's much more fulfilling, and we understand each other much better, and we really do realize that we are all one, imagine we can communicate with this technology and it ends war overnight. It makes war literally impossible.
You realize that these people that you're about to bomb are you and that we're all the same thing. We're all one consciousness, experiencing itself through different bodies and different lives and different experiences and different genes and different parts of the world, but we're all genuinely the same thing.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It brings up a lot of questions, like where we would go from there, though, like how it's going to change.
That's when the aliens land. Yeah. The aliens land, we figure it out. Oh, finally.
Oh, man. Yeah. We were waiting. If that's what it takes to bring aliens down, then I'm all for it. If that's what it takes to really get us to be face to face, the only thing I keep telling my buddy is like I am all down for the whole.
like aliens come in, us interacting with them and everything, as long as they're not the mantids. If they're the mantis people, I don't want anything to do with them. I think that, you know, I just don't want it.
I'm with you, bro. Yeah. Fuck the mantis people. Can you imagine if mantises were like the size of a dog? We'd be so fucked.
Yeah. We'd be so fucked. Yeah. One of the most gangster videos I've ever seen online is like a gecko, and the gecko's trying to eat the mantis, and the gecko walks up to the mantis and tries to get it, and the mantis is like, not today, bitch. I'm going to eat you.
Oh, my gosh. And the gecko's like, what is happening? Look at its face. It's like so confused, and it's got its claws, these fucking, these giant things wrapped around it, controlling it. It just starts eating its face.
Yeah. Mantises are like insects themselves. Like, you, really get up close to an insect. You're like, that thing is ugly. I do not like it one bit.
Now, imagine that. And the things I've heard about the mantids is they're not the size of a dog. They're like the size of like multiple people. and no thanks. Absolutely not.
The mantis aliens I'm not too familiar with. I've seen a couple things online. How many people have seen the mantis aliens?
Yeah, I know of one story where there was a hunter just walking around, and it got like dark over him or something, and he looked up, and there was just like a ship over him, and he looked through his scope, and he looked right into some like mantis people. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah, and I'm not okay with that. Like, that's the one alien story I think I'll stay far away from and hope it's something else.
Well, you got to think that insects have some kind of bizarre intelligence. Because if you've ever seen leaf cutter ant colonies, when they pour the cement in them, and you realize like how sophisticated they are, like, how do you guys do this? Like, how do you figure this out? There's like, they have channels where the air can pass through so they can ferment leaves. So they have like a fermentation factory inside their ant colony.
And the colony is huge. It's so big, and you're like, you little tiny fuckers built a city underground right here. There's got to be some sort of intelligence. Now, if ants evolved to the point where they developed that kind of intelligence, who's to say that in a different environment, where ants have more access to food, more access to resources, and more competition, that they don't evolve to the point where that intelligence, it keeps getting scaled up, and they get to, like a human. Human level, intelligence from an insect.
Or beyond. Why not?
Yeah, they just need some psychedelics or something to really get that brain to grow.
Or a neural link. Yeah, right. That's what I have a feeling. I have a feeling that in the future, everyone's going to be some sort of a cyborg. And everyone else is going to be artificial.
That there'll be complete life forms that were developed just with computers.
Computers, technology, whatever form of chips, and they'll put together things that are more intelligent than us, can communicate with us, can work with us. But that's going to be one of those things. It's not going to be one of us. And that'll be a different life form that exists alongside with us. But I don't think there'll be very many people like me.
No chip. No, nothing. Just a person. Like, what is that moron doing? You're running around with no chip?
You know, I think in the future, it's going to be everyone's going to have something that enhances them. We already do with our phones, you know? It's going to be something beyond that, where it's going to be so compelling that everyone's going to want to do it.
So you're not going to get it if it comes out?
I'm not saying I'm not going to get it. I might get it.
I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be the only person who can't read minds. I probably wouldn't want to be the first adopter, you know? I want to wait a little bit.
That was an argument that I had. with doing this was, do I really want to be the first? I mean, who knows what kind of problems there's going to be.
But for a guy like you, I would say, like, they're pretty sure it works. And they were right. And how cool was it the first day to be able to play video games?
Yeah, it was awesome.
Where did you play?
Civilization VI. I don't know. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's a massive game. It's something I've been wanting to play for a long time.
I was able to kind of sort of play it with some different assistive technology over the last few years, but not really. And I played it, like, all night. I didn't sleep. It was freaking awesome. Man, I just love.
I mean, I grew up being a gamer. I grew up in kind of this age. So the last eight years, I've watched all of my friends play games that I've wanted to play. And the fact that I might be able to play some of them, like, some of them, are still too far out of reach for the Neuralink at this point. But not for much longer.
In the next few years, I think I'll be able to play anything anyone else plays. I love Halo. I'm a big Halo fan.
Are you going to be able to play that?
Yeah, I hope so.
Wow.
I really hope so. Yeah, that would be sick.
So you'll be able to play shooters like Call of Duty.
Yeah, yeah. That brings up another thing. Like, I basically have an aimbot in my head.
Oh, that's crazy.
They'll probably have, like, different leagues for people like me, because it's just not fair.
Wow. Is it that accurate?
It's that accurate. Wow. And it's faster. One thing that I found with the Neuralink is something that kind of blew my mind too. Is that when I'm attempting to do stuff sometimes, or I'm thinking it to, like, move in a certain place, sometimes it's so good that it's moving before I even, like, think it to move.
It's almost like, if you think about moving your hand, the signal is basically already being sent before you move your hand. Like, your mind is saying, okay, he's about to move his hand, basically. So the signal needs to be sent all the way down and back up in order for you to move your hand. So the speed that all that happens, and it's almost a little preemptive, I saw that with the Neuralink, where it was moving the cursor before I was actually moving my hand. Wow.
So with video games, stuff like that, you just need to think for it to move somewhere, and it is that accurate, and it's quicker than you can even think. So there's no way it's going to, like, no one else is going to be able to keep up with it.
That's going to be wild for something like Quake. Like a fast first-person shooter, you're running down hallways, and you're just catching people and shooting them instantaneously.
Elon Musk will have a field day. Wasn't he, like, one of the best Quake players in the world?
Was he? Yeah. I didn't know that.
Yeah, I think he was, like, one of the top Quake players in North America at one point.
I wouldn't doubt that. I know he's a gamer. I know he gets addicted to games, especially something that's that exciting. That's going to be so dope for you, man. You'll be fucking people up.
Yeah, it'll be cool. I'll just enter tournaments, and I won't tell them. I have the Neuralink. I don't know how I would do it, I guess.
Yeah, but.
If I'm doing it all online, like, they might not be able to see me.
It would be kind of cool for you to play them in a tournament, like a one-on-one tournament.
And fuck up, like, the best players in the world. Wouldn't that be insane? Yeah. I bet they would play you.
Just to see. For sure. For sure.
Yeah, because, like, there's tactics and strategies. Especially if you're, like, doing a one-on-one deathmatch. Where you have to know, like, when the health is spawning and when the weapons are spawning. How to control a map. So they'll have, like, a little bit of an advantage in that.
But if you just can't miss.
I'm pretty good at video games. I'm pretty good. He's getting cocky. I like it.
Yeah. I like it. Now, what about VR? Has there been any sort of interface that allows you to use, like, Meta's, VR or Oculus?
No, not yet. I don't think... So, like, a lot of what we've done, is just the computer at this point. Like, they're planning on doing it into phones. I did connect to a Nintendo Switch.
at one point. I was playing Mario Kart. And that's something that isn't, like, too far off as well for me to just be able to do that on my own. But that's going to be every console. I don't see why VR would be any different.
I think at some point in the study they're going to do it just to see if it works. I don't see why it wouldn't at all.
The only thing that I would say is that VR actually requires physical movement. Like, there's a couple games that we have...
Yeah, but if the brain is already interpreting your, like, motor cortex. The movement of your motor cortex. Then you can just think, move this, and it'll move it in VR as well. I think it'll work.
Right, but you're actually moving these handles in VR.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah, I see what you mean.
You know, you have the handles in your.
Well, just get an Optimus robot. And then have him hold the VR handles, and then you can control that.
And he's connected to you.
Yeah. Whoa. It would be the same.
Bro. You're going to be inside that thing walking around. Yeah.
I'll just.
I'm Iron Man type dude.
Yeah, I've always thought, if.
. You know, you just give me an Optimus robot. I'll have it, get one of those, like, baby chest carriers or something. And it can just carry me around like that.
And it'll be great. You imagine walking down the street with that. That's... You'd actually step on people.
Did you ever watch Dave Chappelle's old, like, show that he did? There was a... Chappelle's show, you mean?
Yeah, I was on it a couple times. Oh, I didn't.
Sorry, I didn't know.
No worries.
There was one about the home stenographers. And it's basically, like, a little person that they carry around on one of those carriers on, like, their back. And it's just like a stenographer. He's typing down everything you say. And I just want something like that.
Like a little Optimus robot carrying me around on its back.
Like a kangaroo pouch.
Yeah, something like that.
Put it right in the front, so you'd just be sitting there. That's what you want. You want, like, your head on the chest.
And it's just.
Yeah. Yeah.
It'd be sick.
What's this guy doing? Oh, there it is.
And he just reads back things.
Oh, what you said.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I do remember that bit. Yeah. Yeah, that would... Like, I think the future is going to be very interesting.
And I think there's going to be a lot of really wild discoveries that build upon other wild discoveries and stuff like Neuralink. I'm sure there's competing companies that are doing something similar, right?
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think that, like, I'm pretty sure, some of the people who have left Neuralink have gone and either started their own little companies or have gone to other companies that are doing something similar. I think Neuralink's advancements now are going to pull everyone else up. I think Neuralink will be at the lead for quite a while, but I don't see why companies that haven't been able to achieve what Neuralink is achieving now won't be able to do it in a year or two's time. Like, especially, like I said, because Neuralink is making everything so open source, and there's people like me out there who are just talking about it, like, willy-nilly, that I don't see why other companies won't, you know, find some way to catch up over time.
No, for sure. I think, with them leading the way and the fact that it's been implemented and it's been successful, and the fact that they're already improving upon the software and being able to correct issues with it. What is their timeline, like, in terms of next being able to use something that allows people to move, that couldn't move, restore site? Do they have, like, a timeline where they think, well—?
Yeah, I don't know. I keep saying that it's all going to happen in my lifetime for sure. I keep saying that it's going to happen in the next 10 years, 20 years, where quadriplegics like me, paralyzed people, won't have to be paralyzed anymore. I have this vision of someone being paralyzed, going into the hospital, getting the Neuralink, and walking out, like, a day or two later, which I think is totally possible. I think it's going to happen a lot sooner than later, especially how fast all this is moving and the fact that this is, like, successful now.
I don't know that it would help me, per se, even though I said it's in my lifetime. Part about being paralyzed and quadriplegic is, my body is just deteriorated so much that even if they did give me something to, like, make me able to move again, my body's just so jacked up at this point that I'm not sure it would really help that much. I could probably build it back up to a certain point, but even people who have recovered or have been part of studies where they get some movement back, their bodies just don't work the same.
Because of atrophy?
Because of atrophy. Like, one of my, you know, ankles is completely jacked up. It's, like, twisted the wrong way. I have to wear this hand brace because, if I don't, my fingers are all just, like, curled up, basically. And so, like, correcting some of that would take probably some extensive surgery.
One of my buddies is, like, one of the top ortho surgeons in the United States, so maybe I could just get him to go in and fix it all. But it would be a lot, and I'm not sure it would help, and muscle atrophy, so I don't know. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that people won't have to be paralyzed in the future. Like, that's more, like, that's worth more than anything.
Well, that's also one of the legitimate uses for steroids. One of the legitimate uses for steroids is for people with, like, muscle-wasting disease. Oh, really? Yeah, people who have, like, severely atrophied, and that it allows them to build up tissue better.
Oh, yeah. Maybe that would help.
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