Skepticism, Technology, and Collective Opinion

You can't stop the future with your mere opinion!

Elon Musk and his Neuralink have recently flamed up an animated debate in the researcher community. What Elon believes about the ‘Brain to computer’ interface, is nothing but a scam to many of us. People who are the extreme devotee of the human brain’s enormous capability and believe that silicon chips have nothing comparable with the intricacy of the human neurons; are complaining about Musk’s vague vision towards the bionic brain.

Future humans may hold a peaceful coexistence with robots

Understandably, Elon Musk and his team have not demonstrated anything trustworthy so far. I, myself, have been skeptical towards such unorthodox projects, since to me (and practically to most of us) visible progress matters the most.

However, I would like to challenge my tenet today.

For the people of the 21st century, specifically, those who are around 30 years old or more, we belong to a generation that was born before 1990 (or about a year/ two later). We are the people who link the era of individualistic methodological science to the recent days of collective scientific development.

We scarcely have the foresight to predict accurately

We still believe that scientific development is an epoch-making event or a drastic success story of a scientist.

More precisely, we think any revolutionary scientific development will come all on a sudden and within a full-fledged package. We will get to know the result instantly (as soon as the researcher reveals her success).

Now let’s counter-attack our age-old presumption.

It took 10 years for Einstein to develop the theory of relativity. In 1905, Albert Einstein first got a grasp of relative reality. He thought, our perception towards reality might be different for the relative difference of space, time, and mass. He had just a vague concept back then, and no scientific research or evidence supported his claim.

Imagine Einstein had a Facebook Account, where he regularly uploaded the updates on relativity 

It was completely a new framework for the physics world, which literally made no sense.

And right after 10 years, in 1915, Albert Einstein published his paper on the ‘Theory of Relativity.’

Now let’s conduct a thought experiment on Einstein. Suppose he was born in an era of social media, where every scientist had posted their ongoing research on Facebook! Alert Einstein had a Facebook and Twitter account and regularly updated his scientific thoughts to other netizens.

Don’t believe every individual opinion you come across on social media! Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

In April 1905, Einstein put his first Facebook status on the theory of relativity, ‘I think the world we are living is relative in perspective. If I can move faster than you guys, I will be much younger than my friends!’

His comment section would look like this:

·        Seriously dude?

·        Smoking weed, huh?

·        I think this guy needs some treatment, be empathetic towards him XD XD

And on and on.

In March 1914, Einstein might have posted some of his complex calculations on relativity, which would have further been taunted for being meaningless.

Thank goodness 18^th and 19^th-century scientists didn’t have Facebook accounts!

The modern-day scientific revolution has become more collective than age-old individualistic approaches, Photo by Chokniti Khongchum on Pexels.com

You know what, our opinion on something doesn’t matter at all. 

To be specific, no individual opinion matters. What matters is collective opinion.

And surprisingly, collective opinion can’t be perceived beforehand.

I have seen numerous cases where people had scolded a new technology but gradually adopted it when it was deemed necessary. In my country, when mobile financial services first came back in late 2010, no one seemed willing to open a mobile bank account.

Even some rebellious skeptics argued to boycott MFS out of sheer exuberance. They explained, MFS lacks security and will stop within a year or two, since ‘Banking can’t be done with a mobile phone.’

And as you can guess, today almost every family in Bangladesh has an MFS account! Including the people who had reproached MFS for being unsecured!

Scientists are finding way-outs to replace fossil fuels, Photo by Mike on Pexels.com

This is how the technology works. These days, you get to know a premature technology before it becomes fully operational by the grace of ubiquitous social media. Something under process doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a failure in the future. You, I, nobody knows what holds in the future!

If Elon Musk was born in the era of Einstein, perhaps he would have revealed the success story of Neuralink after 10 or 20 years of research.

We’d be awed knowing our brain can now be recharged with emotions!

So, the next time when Elon Musk claims that people in the future would plugin their brains before they go to sleep to power up their implants, I think we should be watchful rather than ridicule him.

You can debate, you can turn your back, but you can’t ignore it! Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

Because the collective opinion is what matters eventually!

Disclaimer: I had a mindful conversation with my friend Asif Iqbal about the concept of collective opinion and the introduction of new technology. I came to know about Elon Musk’s Neuralink from him. We think, Bangladeshi peoples’ views towards electric vehicles somewhat replicate the same skepticism that people held about MFS a decade ago. In the end, all the debates and opinions which are flaring up on the internet will not really matter. People will adopt the best, and collective opinion will decide which product will rule the market.

Our future generation will be much smarter, hopefully! Photo by Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels.com