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DeVliegendeHollander comments on When does technological enhancement feel natural and acceptable? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Have you ever wondered why, in an age of cell phones and hand grenades, telepaths and fireball throwing wizards in fantasy books sounds cool? Somehow it seems like we like to do things with our mind or body only, not relying on tools.
That is how primitive cyberpunk novels fail. I am pretty sure I don't want to replace my eyeballs with mechanical eyes. However I am thinking if LASIK surgery could be good. So the idea is not so much so to implant machines in our body or to use them externally, but to use technology to make our own bodies become high quality and powerful. I like this idea.
People shooting other people with blaster rifles and flying spaceships sounds cool too.
I'm not sure what your point is?
Not even if you could adjust them to become telescopes or microscopes if need be? If you could switch to seeing in infrared or ultraviolet? Add amplification to clearly see on moonless nights with nothing but starlight?
If this can be done inside the eyes, it can be done outside the eyes, as a removable eyeglasses like thing.
This is why cyberpunk never really made sense to me. Why remove the choice of putting something on or off? Okay there is an advantage of never forgetting it at home, still. Gibson's razor blades implanted under the fingernails sound cool until you realize you just gave up the option of ever being allowed on an airplane for example.
Oh, and sometimes I hear horror stories that when people wear diamond rings for decades and it becomes unremovable from their fingers, and some criminal mugs them, they just cut of the finger. Extrapolate from here...
You might not, that doesn't mean that nobody does. I think I have meet 3 people face to face with implants to be able to perceive magnetic fields.
Need not be implants. The NorthPaw http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/ or the feelspace belt http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/ are cool despite being devices - precisely because they quickly fade into the subconscious.
Yes, there are non-implant solution but that doesn't change the fact that there are people willing to use implants.
If you have vision problems, as I do, those "mechanical eyes" sound interesting.
Fantasy appeals strongly to the adolescent mind because our bodies at that age start to change and develop new powers, so to speak - just not necessarily the kinds of powers we might want; or else our new powers still don't meet the needs of our new desires. Notice especially how fantasy appeals strongly to the sorts of boys who get pushed aside from access to girls until their 20's, or even indefinitely in more cases than we would care to admit.
But that is self-hating escapism mostly.