2 things:

1. We should absolutely pursuing these kind of ideas but given then nature of technological progress and our history with “democratization” things are likely to get worse before we get better. Matt is hedging a lot here reflecting this.

2. Maybe all this stuff is as promising as the various threads suggest but it’s bizzare that this is all being argued in culture war terms (you vs the gatekeepers) and not like shared human flourishing terms. Again maybe it’s working, but it’s also being marketed to a certain kind of persons fears, not as the future of human understanding.

There’s one thing that I find interesting about this. I can’t judge whether this is a good product, whether it’ll work, and what it’ll add to the medical establishment, or whether more data is always more useful.

In general, I think we should applaud this though.

Any genuine attempt to create novel medical technologies is probably a good thing (assuming they’re non-invasive and non-painful).

Unless it’s a Theranos situation, I think it’s a great thing to attempt, even if it fails. So many things we rely on today are the result of a successful attempt, but the failures were just as necessary for the eventual success.

That ambition is very positive to me.