It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn’t going well?
This story is circulating all the media outlets and feels more like PR than a legit example of how this procedure is actually going to work for most people.
It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn’t going well?
Given how eager people are to pounce on negative news about anything Elon Musk-related, I expect we would be hearing way, way more about this if it wasn’t going well. “Elon Musk’s Neuralink Damages a Man’s Brain!” and “Elon Musk’s Neuralink Fails!” Headlines and such from every rooftop.
Can’t we just fling him into the sun and let someone else take over these companies?
That takes an immense amount of fuel. We orbit the sun at 30 km/s, of which you have to cancel about 24 km/s to actually hit it. This is after escaping Earth’s atmosphere (another 11 km/s of delta V) and effective sphere of influence which takes even more fuel. We could use some gravity assists off the moon and inner planets to get there, but even then it’s not really economical. Our best bet would be to send him out super far using ~9 km/s of dV, and then use a very small amount to cancel out any remaining angular momentum and let him slowly fall into the sun. Unfortunately, as with all efficient space maneuvers, you pay for them in time, and this maneuver would take you 3 years. We’d have to somehow support the little bastard all that time but it might just be doable.
We could just set him up for a one-way orbital rendezvous with his car and be done with it…
Can you imagine if he got there and realized he left his keys at home?
If we get him outside of the atmosphere and throw him in the direction if the sun, he won’t eventually get caught in it’s gravitational pull?
You can get caught in the sun’s pull by just leaving Earth’s sphere of influence, but remember that all of the planets are already caught in the sun’s pull and have remained distinctly outside of the actual sun for essentially forever
That’s why I suggested shooting him directly towards it, wouldn’t he just keep going unless he somehow manages to hit something on the way there? Surely he’d end up hitting the sun?
He’d still have the 30 km per second (67,000 mph) of sideways velocity that Earth has when it’s orbiting the sun, and that speed is enough to prevent Earth from ever hitting the sun.
Orbits aren’t very intuitive; if you want something you launch from Earth to fall straight into the sun, you actually need to fire it directly opposite to the direction that Earth orbits in. So if you imagine Earth orbiting clockwise, you want to shoot the thing counterclockwise. If you do that at the right speed, you counteract all the orbital speed and the thing just falls into the sun.
If you can speed something up a completely unlimited amount then sure you could aim straight at the sun and just fire it so fast that it hits the sun anyway. It’ll be off-centre a bit but the sun is pretty big. Consider how much of the sky isn’t sun though. If the sun is directly overhead and you shoot straight at the sun, the thing you fired is already going 30 km/s sideways before you even started. We could do the trig to figure out how fast you need to shoot it to still hit the sun anyway but I think the more important part here is getting a feel for the motion involved.
You mean like these articles doing the rounds a while back? https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/
Yeah, exactly. People love to amplify any negatives they can find about Musk, it plays to the rage mobs and that translates into clicks and endorphins.
It kinda seems like you’re saying it’s a bad thing to report on things he does that are bad simply because there’s an audience that’s interested. But, that’d be kind of a weird take
I’m saying that reporting disproportionately negative news about someone is not going to lead to a realistic view of the world.
For example, consider Fox News pouncing on every possible headline that could paint Joe Biden in a bad light because Fox viewers already hate Biden and such reports draw engagement as a result. Nor a good thing if your goal is a realistic view of the world, right? Same idea here.
…do you think that fucked up things like that shouldn’t be reported on?
Sure, they should be reported on. The problem is in the focus and bias present in the reporting overall. If all you ever report on are the bad things that could conceivably be linked to a particular person who is popular to hate, the overall result can be an unrealistic portrayal of the world even if each individual story and each individual fact within them is true. History is rife with distortions like that.
considering that we’re not out of the realm of complications… it’s too soon to know if it’s going well or not.
there’s a reason most CBI researchers are keeping things as not-implants.
lol seriously. dude is acting like people cover up bad news about musk. I hate the fucker but if he rolled his eyes at a waitress it would be front page news.
Breaking News! Sources in Lemmy said Elon Musk of Tesla rolled his eyes at waitress at an undisclosed restaurant!
Patient 2: “unresponsive”
Two years later
Patient 27: “unresponsive”
Patient 28: “Guys! We’ve got a live one here!”
“Patient 28, you are now Patient 1.”
It let him control a mouse with his brain, which is actually great since he’s a quadriplegic. Getting it if you aren’t fully paralyzed would be stupid.
Doctor organizations did bash the news release for being PR. Especially when there’s desperate people who are watching this tech and all they got was a tweet saying “installed it, lmao”.
My only concern is that people are going to think that he only stayed playing civ all night because it’s exciting to do something. But that’s not the case.
Innocent people are going to try this game and keep saying “one more turn”.
loool, we need to team up with schools and warn the kids of the danger that civ poses to their health and their future
Just one more turn AAAANNND it’s dawn!
I would be a lot more impressed if the brain implant had given him the willpower to walk away and go to bed
Yeah he should have played a good game
Because this patient playing Civ 6 is the modern version of Joshua playing games on WOPR.
Lets hope the patient is not named Mohandas.
I think it’s an amazing advancement and that’s awesome for a quadriplegic person to interact with the world.
The part that I haven’t heard anyone mention is what is the life cycle of these chips. Computers and cell phones all become outdated so quickly. Are recipients guaranteed upgraded chips as they become available?
I was reading an article recently about people who have had implants in their eyes that help them to see become obsolete. One because the company stopped supporting the specific version that was in the patient. The other because the company had gone out of business.
Even if the chip never went obsolete, the scar tissue build up around implanted brain devices interferes with signal over time and they need to be replaced.
Also, each installation/replacement has a few percentage point chance of leading to a life threatening infection.
Unless both those issues are solved, irrespective of obsolescence this is only the sort of thing that makes sense for patients who feel that their life is effectively over without it and have low risk thresholds for treatment options.
Ever seen Johnny Mnemonic? He had a whole 80gb storage in his brain and upgraded it to 160gb. Future proof. He’d almost be able to install a modern AAA title!
deleted by creator
This tech is extremely experimental and nowhere near ready to market as a consumer device that a regular person can purchase, so a lot of those questions don’t really have answers.
The story of “Second Sight” and the folks that depended on them is pretty sad. I hope there’s some kind of backup plan in case the company goes under, gets acquired, or decides to abandon existing technology. Like placing the key tech in a trust of sorts.
Part of the study is to see how long it lasts. It’s replaceable in theory but there’s things like are there complications with redoing it (e.g scar tissue) to be explored.
As a human trial, he may never get an upgrade, and it might fail in a few months unexpectedly.
It’s part of the risk of being in a trial vs waiting until it’s a finished product.
“Sorry, your brain is out of warranty.”
Many have mentioned that so you didn’t look very far then. It’s like the first thing people wonder. They have no answer of course, this is research and not a product
I suppose the counter argument is people don’t ask that kind of question when they get a pacemaker. At some point you have to get an implant if you need an implant you can’t go oh well our weight six months because then version 2.0 is out
One… More… Turn…
I have played one game of Civ in my life. After spending the better part of a weekend with it, I realized the “one more turn” thing was too addictive for me and decided it was best if I never play the game again.
I hurt my finger from clicking so much once night and haven’t been willing to go back. It was a bit too addictive, but ngl, playing it with just my brain sounds interesting. I’m just left thinking, what’s the catch? What “ergo” issues might come up from using this thing for hours to do something repetitive? None? Big, if true
Three was an interview/presentation at neuralink where people asked him some questions.
Someone asked him what it felt like to use it, and he tried to explain, but it came down to it was too complicated to fully explain it.
Asking him if it caused any sort of fatigue would have been a amazing question.
And then the realization hits that you’re at turn 200 and it takes like half an hour
To do the turn or to process the turn when you submit? Lol
I’m very happy for this guy. Fuck musk.
The start of the article is confusing. Given what it tells us that the patient has been doing, it sounds like the chip only acts as a receptor of the brain’s outputs, this is, the chip should act on the brain as little as possible. However,
The billionaire also hinted at the time that the implant was functioning well and had detected a “promising neuron spike”.
Which makes it sound like the very opposite. Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if Elon had no goddamn idea about what the implant does yet rushed to comment on it anyway.
Or, he’s just a liar.
He uses those words as buzzwords, having no real clue about the correct terms are.
But obviously looks like they do aim to “interface”, not just interpret, eeg already can do that from outside the brain
I would never have assumed he had a clue what was happening in the first place. What role, apart from money, does the Boer even play in this thing?
‘Spike’ probably is refering to a shape on a graph and not any physical harpoon like component.
for me it just sounds like the chip is receiving signals from neurons and the “spike” is basically a signal.
short: the chips works well in receiving signals and you can control the mouse by that. so nothing sending hut just receiving and getting a clear signal.
I don’t know why, I have zero reason to even think this. Maybe it’s my growing distaste for Musk and his bullshit. But something about this whole thing has my “press X to doubt” meter going off the charts.
If I’m wrong. Great. But something in my gut tells me that you don’t just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel’s worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects.
Again, this is all allegedly. I have no proof or evidence either way. It’s just my own gut. So don’t sue me, Elon.
We’ve been able to do this for years. The difficult part has been making it cheap, reliable and non-invasive. Electrodes in the brain degrade neural tissue and… There’s good reason this isn’t done on the regular.
You’re right to be sceptical, considering Musk’s other company - Tesla - faked self-driving footage on his direction. The videos were just straight up edited to generate hype while in reality the product was still failing during internal testing.
Why? Because time and time again it has been shown that Musk’s big bold ideas are shaky prototypes based on lies that just blagged it long enough for him to find someone who could kind of make something work. It’s a complete coin toss as to whether it actually works out or not, but it will be despite Musk not because of him.
you don’t just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel’s worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects
What this article doesn’t tell you is that before neuralink, this patient absolutely hated turn-based strategy games. But now the only thing they can do is play Civ 6. Day or night, doesn’t matter, Civ 6 is the only thing in their brain. Just one more turn. Just one… more… turn…
I was expecting the source to be The Onion
Good game choice.
Could you imagine if he used his new powers to be toxic in League of Legends instead?
This is your scheduled reminder that Musk’s companies have a history of faking test footage and results on his direction.
I have 200 hours in Civ 6, and have yet to win a game on anything except points. The latter eras are such a slog.
You almost need to pick your victory condition at the start and focus everything on that, and what you can’t focus on that win condition you focus on denying the win for someone else, whoever happens to be winning by that point. Generally the same will be over before you get to the modern era.
Religion and war are the sloggiest.
Culture victory is almost impossible without mods. Even if you get past how cryptic it is, other civs basically have free reign to stall you if they focus at all on culture.
Funny thing is though, I got a culture victory as Gilgamesh… because I nuked Greece. I was going for war victory so it was really funny to launch a nuke at the greek capital then suddenly jump to the culture victory cutscene.
I want Doom running on a Neuralink outputting the game directly in your eyes
The year is 2028, and thousands of neckbeards, volunteers of Musk’s implant program, run screaming through the streets, blasting people with shotguns and cutting them down with chainsaws. The DOOM Zombie Crisis has begun.
Woah, they ported doom to reality. Sweet!
And then they get run over because traffic is no game.
I take it you have never played Frogger?
We’ll then put all the fuckcars people in prison. If they’d had their way, we’d all be dead.
Their next product is to give vision to blind people and they claim its working in monkeys now to some extent with graphics to start off low like a NES game.
So that might not be too far off.
Just need to write a driver that interfaces to the Neuralink visualization API.
I’m pretty sure this could be done non-invasively like 5 years ago if not 10
You can literally go on youtube right now and watch people play racing games and other things with those brainwave readers or whatever they are called.
I mean, the guys quadraplegic. They have this computer controller you can control with your mouth, but I’m sure just thinking about moving thr mouse and the mouse moves is far easier.
People staying up all night playing Civ?
Lol, take the upvote go back to playing civ
I can play Civ with my fingers right now, no brain-implant required.Wild, I know.Edit: Ignore me, I’m talking out of my ass.
Uhh, you know that the guy in the article is quadriplegic, right? He literally can’t use his fingers.
I was talking out of my ass, ignore me.
A very useful skill for a quadriplegic.
Frees up the tounge for mouse control.
Removed by mod
Tongue controllers have existed for a very long time.
And doesn’t require drilling into your skull to install.
If you watch the interview, he says he can’t do that for extended time because he can’t sit in the chair for that long without getting sore spots, and he has body spasms which put him out of place which would require someone else to put him back into a playable spot.
He can do this with neuralink in his bed, despite the spasms that change his position.
Edit: that one might be different though, the tongue one he has is part of his chair
deleted by creator
Fuck Elon, but that’s awesome for this guy.
Imagine letting Elon Musk drill a hole in your head just so you can make the mouse move with your mind
He’s a quadriplegic. It’s not like it was done because he was a Musk fanboy.
On one hand, I get it, on the other, I’d trust just about any other tech company above anything Musk does
Which other tech companies are doing this?
BlackRock, for one, which shouldn’t make you feel any better.
You can do this non-invasively though. Like, nothing I’ve heard about this so far justifies cracking someone’s skull open for it. I mean, someone came up with a way of controlling their avatar’s ears in VRChat using a Muse2 headset. While that’s not quite on the same level as being able to control a mouse pointer, I’ve seen articles on more advanced non-invasive BCIs being used to interface with PCs or even controlling robotic arms.
Edit: if this was giving him some kind of feedback, like making him feel things in response to on-screen information, I’d feel differently. However, as of right now, this seems like an overly invasive procedure for something that can be done without an implant.
Noland set the BCI point and click world record in the first 7 hours of using it. They’re clearly doing something right.
Alright, that’s kinda cool.
You got a source for that? I couldn’t find it on Google.
There’s a clip of it happening in the Neuralink All Hands video he posted.
Thank you. I found it just after I made that comment.
The fidelity of information we can get outside of the brain is much less than the fidelity of what we can get inside the brain.
Neuralink has 1024 electrodes (and I’ve heard them talk about 4k if memory serves in the future)
They’re going to be able to do much more than point and click in the future, but as mentioned below they also broke the point and click record in the first 7 hours using it.
You gotta start somewhere though and point and click is a good space to start and can be meaningful.
With 2 or more implants one in the motor cortex and one connected below the break in his spine, he might even be able to walk one day. But you don’t start with that. You build up to it.
Also being the first human patient in a trial may delay his personal ability to enter a future trial like a walking one with the same patient. So he’s taking on various future risks to his future potential lifestyle being the first human trial.
More likely he’s both a quadriplegic and a Musk fan.
Imagine being a quadriplegic and having someone invent a method by which you can better interact with the outside world again, but refusing it because “Twitter man bad!”
You realize Elon Musk doesn’t actually do the surgery himself, right?
Imagine being a quadriplegic and having someone invent a method by which you can better interact with the outside world again, but refusing it because “Twitter man bad!”
I would have a different opinion if it had been Civ5.
I quit playing after Civ IV, there’s just nothing better than Leonard Nimoy’s voice narrating it.
Heh. Yeah, the older they get the more I actually enjoy them. In fact, I actually picked up Unciv, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/unciv-is-a-free-open-source-take-on-civilization-5-thats-coming-to-steam, since its FOSS and I can play it for hours on flights.
Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121611292
I’ve never played Civ 4, but even though I keep the voice volume nearly inaudible, I still always play with this mod.
Boo! Civ 6 is better. 4 was pinnacle, but I got tired of it after 1000 years.
Check out my reply to PugJesus. The gist of it is that, so far, I haven’t heard about neuralink doing anything that a non-invasive BCI can’t do. I’d feel differently if the implant was giving him feedback on the things he was doing, but right now it seems like an overly complicated and invasive way of doing something that can already be accomplished without surgery.
The goal of Neuralink is to accomplish far more than what non-invasive BCI can, but you can’t leap straight to a finished product on your very first test. That’s part of what testing means, it’s research.
I have a number of concerns about Neuralink specifically. Mainly:
-
The scientists I’ve seen saying stuff like, “I work in a lab with Nematoads (flatworms), and if we had casualty rates like they’ve had with monkeys, we’d have our license revoked and a full investigation of the lab.”
-
What’s the long-term look like for these? How often will they need to be replaced? What’s the End of Service going to look like? Will they be like that recent issue with those bionic eyes that the company just stopped supporting and the patients who had them implanted had no other choice but to go back under and get them surgically removed because they were going to just stop working.
The idea of the tech is great, but I don’t trust a for-profit company to care about the people that it’s going into, and a company under Musk especially. Look at all the issues with Teslas that make it seem like there’s no regulatory oversight on those cars. From that billionaire woman who just drowned because the glass Tesla uses is shatterproof when submerged and the doors are electronic (so don’t work without power - like when the car touches water) and the only way to manually open them is to disassemble the door panel and pull an unmarked wire, to how they have the highest accident rates of any car brand. And supposedly, their newer models (since 2021 or so) don’t even have a manual shifter. The car guesses whether you want the car in drive or reverse, and if it guesses wrong, you have to change it in the touchscreen menu.
Musk’s name being attached is reason enough to worry simply because of how often it seems that safety regulations just seem to disappear when he’s involved.
Everything you mentioned about the Tesla vehicle issues is largely inaccurate. It’s not your fault, because there’s been a ton of sensationalized stories and misinformation thrown out there about them. Full disclaimer: I do own a 2020 Tesla Model 3 and love it. It’s not a perfect vehicle by any means, but it’s a whole lot of car for what I paid, and it’s required almost no maintenance or attention from me over the past 4yrs beyond rotating and changing tires. I don’t like Elon Musk and think he’s a giant tool/lunatic in so many ways, but Tesla makes pretty damn solid cars despite him. I wish they’d get rid of him, though I bet he has a controlling/majority share unfortunately. I bought my Tesla before he became a huge raging asshole on public platforms, and that definitely contributes to hesitation at buying another in the future (though that’s several years out anyway).
- The emergency door release in the front doors on a Tesla is a simple latch mechanism easily accessible right underneath the digital button door handle. It’s actually so easy to access that it’s extremely common for people new to the vehicles to pull that manual release instead of using the button to open the door. This is true for all Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and newer Model X and Model S vehicles. On older Model S and X vehicles that have the pull handles, the manual release is the same as the digital release. It’s only the rear passenger doors that have more obscure manual releases, presumably so children can’t bypass the child lock easily. That process varies by model, but none of them require any door panel disassembly. You can see most of the methods in this video. It’d be nice if this process were more standardized across models, though, and it could be made more clear for any passengers not familiar with the car they’re in for sure.
- The glass isn’t anything different from what every other auto manufacturer is using on vehicles. Glass used in car doors is tempered and will completely shatter into thousands of tiny, mostly harmless pieces upon precise impact on a point, but will resist shattering from blunt hits. More “luxury” vehicles use laminated glass on the doors that does not immediately fully shatter even from precise pointed hits, but once a small shatter has been created, the glass can then be pushed out/in relatively easily. See the link above again, as they also go over this.
- All of the newer models do still have a manual shifter, but it’s definitely not traditional (none of their shifters have been fully traditional in the first place, though). They’re now all P/N/D/R buttons, either up near the rear view mirror or down on the center console. The preferred method of shifting on these newer models, however, is using the touch screen - but it’s probably not how you’re thinking. The side of the touch screen closest to the driver has a dedicated area when pressing the brake pedal while in park and always active when driving that you just swipe up or down on to switch between drive and reverse manually. I’ve never experienced this personally, as my Model 3 is an older one with a steering wheel stalk to shift. Owners of these do generally say they very quickly get used to it, the gesture rapidly becoming natural to them. I can definitely understand hesitation about it though, which is why there are still the physical controls in addition to this. The predictive shifting is a setting that can be disabled, and any user input always takes priority even when it is enabled. I’ve heard it also works rather well from other owners, but again, I have no personal experience.
- In terms of general overall safety, Tesla’s vehicles have consistently been scored as some of the safest vehicles to drive in the world by the NHTSA and other safety organizations. See their latest NHTSA-rated model for an example. You are more likely to survive a collision and other incidents (and more likely to remain unharmed) in any of the Teslas than most other vehicles on the road. They’ve been highly rated for pedestrian safety as well. (Note: dunno where the Cybertruck sits in all this, as it’s brand new and is an entirely different class of vehicle from their previous, being a full-size pickup truck. I don’t think they’ve been fully rated by any organization yet.) Tesla actually publishes their incident rates quarterly, and they can be seen here.
-
You realize this tech has existed for like a decade, right?
Shit, I remember research from 20 years ago.
So why is Neuralink a thing, then?
If that’s what it takes to get the tech into the heads of people who need it, yay marketing.
Because a quadriplegic can play a pc civilization video game on it. I don’t even like Elon Musk anymore but this is badazz.
Imagine being able to control something and staying up so excited as a quadriplegic person and then passing out and still dreaming about the game.
But yes,let’s be hesitant no? I assume they are following the regulations and what not
Imagine spending your time, money, and resource on fancy thought chips instead of actually working to cure the disease bcz you think a brain chip is worth more money.
…working on the “thought chips” are working on a cure. Or a workaround for the handicap, at least.
Would you accuse the guy who invented the wheelchair of wasting their time on a fancy mobile lay-z-boy instead of “working on a cure”?
No, I just know how people like Elon Musk think. He thought this was a better investment than research to cure this. I mean, if you haven’t figured it out yet, which it seems like you haven’t, they are using this guy as a PR stunt for the product.
There was no intention or aim of improving the life of quadriplegic people with this.
It’s purely a means to an end for Elon Musk. And quiet frankly, people should be scared shitless of having these things inside their head.
But, it’s a feel good story, so people don’t see the wider implications of the device.
What are your opinions on cochlear implants?
Irrelevant, cochlear implants don’t require them to crack open your skull in a major surgery that can kill you.
So you would be fine with them “spending the money on developing fancy thought chips instead of a cure” if the implant had similar complications/survivability rates as cochlear implants?
And cochlear surgery, while quite safe, isn’t exactly the most minor surgery. They’re going pretty deep into your head to put that stimulator gizmo on your auditory nerve behind your inner ear.
No, this technology is bad news. Have billionaires and governments ever shown themselves to behave ethically and in the best interest of anybody but themselves ever?
This is basically the internet of things, except inside your head. The security implications alone should be enough to not want this.
But, that’s my bad, it’s on me for thinking people are on average smart enough to see a problem before it becomes one. It’s been too long since the pandemic, I’m starting to forget how stupid the population actually is.
Look man, you seem to be buying into the boogy-man of people just getting these implanted on a whim. That’s not the use case, and probably won’t be in the next 50-100yrs.
This is a technology specifically for people with hugely debilitating conditions. People who can’t move or talk, and have to communicate with eye movements.
You can talk all you want about how dangerous this technology is, and you’re right. It potentially could be. You know what else that’s true for? Pacemakers. Pacemakers are hugely invasive to put in, and have proven vulnerable to Bluetooth attacks over and over and over again. It’s trivially easy to hack someones pacemaker and potentially kill them. It’s an IoT device implant through and through. And you know what no one is advocating against having? Pacemakers. Because without them people would just die instead.
This is the same thing. Are there dangers? Absolutely. You know who doesn’t care? The person who literally takes 20min to type out “Hello” on an eye tracker keyboard. This tech is game changing for them. It gives them the ability to interact with the world far beyond any other measure we have today. And I don’t think it takes much empathy to realize that maybe that makes it worth investing in.
Let’s separate the asshole from the accomplishments please, I don’t think we should deny people potentially life changing technology because it’s associated with some rich dickhead.
The company and its accomplishments are pretty sketchy though
Their accomplishment seems pretty good in this case.
It was an incredibly reckless process of development that involved abusing monkeys and skirting regulations
I see this repeated, but no sources provided.
I can google it for you if you’d like…
https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musks-neuralink-may-have-illegally-transported-pathogens-animal-advocates-2023-02-09/ (or https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/9/23593011/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-implant-transportation-department-investigation-contaminated)
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/neuralink-musk-fda/
Did any of those go anywhere? People love just throwing shit and seeing what sticks. Nothing I’ve seen have shown any actual evidence, nor these investigations leading to anything…
But sure perpetuate misinformation, you do you mate.
I hate Elon Musk, but come on, man. Use a bit of that critical thinking I am sure you have in the back of your brain.
