Neuralink and the Crippled Man
example · technology speculation ·
retold in 4 talks
Žižek critiques Neuralink's humanitarian example of a crippled man moving a chair with his mind, arguing that if the machine can read your mind, it controls you, destroying the gap between thought and reality that constitutes freedom.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“What goes out goes in. This means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then?”
“Just think as a dirty old man... we look at each other, we read each other's minds, immediately we see yes, yes, okay let's go to bed”
“There is no flirting. We look at each other and get the signal I would like to do I don’t it’s the end of sexuality as we know it.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Giolitti1Kazuo Ishiguro1Johann Sebastian Bach1Henri Rousseau1Harrison Ford1Milan Kundera1Jordan Bardella1Nick Bostrom1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Žižek critiques Neuralink's humanitarian example of a crippled man moving a chair with his mind, arguing that if the machine can read your mind, it controls you, destroying the gap between thought and reality that constitutes freedom., illustrating Neuralink,subjectivity is always negative
Žižek imagines a future with Neuralink where digital machines read thoughts directly, ending the mystery and play of flirting, which he sees as the end of humanity as we know it., illustrating technology-ai-cyberspace,consciousness-mind
5:29 Slavoj Žižek: ‘Trump is an obscenity, Elon Musk lives like a communist’ | Prospect Podcast2025-04-17 · 33:57
Žižek argues that direct brain-to-brain communication via Neuralink eliminates the 'gap' or uncertainty required for flirting, thereby ending sexuality., illustrating technology-ai-cyberspace,sexuality-gender
Žižek discloses he received personal invitations from Elon Musk's Neuralink group and from Peter Thiel (whom he dubs 'the robot father of Vance') after his book on Hegel and the digital world, both of which he declined, to frame his critique of brain-computer interfaces., illustrating Neuralink,AI as threat to subjective interiority