Aquinas vs. Musk
The limits of transhumanist fantasies
Elon Musk is in the news again, this time for talking about how he wants to put microchips in our brains.
In early December, Musk suggested that Neuralink’s implantable chip might be ready for human trials in as little as six months. (He co-founded the company in 2016.) Musk boasted that the chip could one day allow users to control their smartphones with their thoughts, even “better than someone who has working hands.”
That’s fairly tame stuff for Musk.
Musk has previously waxed eloquent about “downloading” our consciousness into a computer or even a new body, so that we can “live forever.” One of the many transhumanist fantasies he has entertained over the years is that we will one day be able to use brain implants to store memories. “We can save and replay memories,” he said at another Neuralink event in 2020. “The future is going to be weird.”
As someone who has spent the past six years studying memory, count me unimpressed. There's nothing particularly “weird” about being able to “save and replay” memories. Humans have been doing this since, well, forever, using the single most sophisticated “wetware” neural network in the universe: the human brain.
It smells mark of the beast.