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From the Washington Post piece:
But the study doesn’t go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump.
- It doesn’t examine other social media, like the much-larger Facebook.
- Nor does it address Russian hack-and-leak operations. Another major study in 2018 by University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggested those probably played a significant role in the 2016 race’s outcome.
- Lastly, it doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all.
And
“Despite these consistent findings, it would be a mistake to conclude that simply because the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter was not meaningfully related to individual-level attitudes that other aspects of the campaign did not have any impact on the election, or on faith in American electoral integrity,” the report states.
Irreparable brain damage is something the Federation remains uncomfortable trying to “fix” with advanced tech well into the TNG era, as shown by Bareil’s situation in DS9 Life Support.
Knowing nothing of brain science, I’d extend your theory to posit that Pike also lacks the brain function to do any fine motor controls of his body: he can conceptualize simple things like “go to a place,” but cannot handle anything more precise. As such, the chair and beeper allows him essentially the same freedom of movement and expression that his damaged brain could have got out of a more “conventional” set of cybernetic replacements.
Pikes chair still sticks out as a classic example of old Star Trek having moments of not-so-prescience, but viewing it as a solution to a damaged brain more than a damaged body definitely helps make it less absurd.