This particular issue always reminds me of the the definition of humanity, or rather, the effor to define what makes us human. If we could see, in IR, UV, Xray, etc. would we be more or less human? How would you describe such a scene with those eyes to a person without such visual abilities? Say one person has enhanced vision, enhanced audition, strength, cognitive abilities... would this person even be able to relate to the unenhanced human? Could this person even be called human? At what point does self-engineering so remove us from where we started that we become an entirely new life-form (think Vinge's Singularity posit with a twist.)
And how does one define "vision loss"? Vision less than the norm? Does a 75 year old man with 20/100 vision have vision loss, even if he is within one standard deviation of the mean for people his age? How about the person with 20/20 as compared to the person with 20/10? I see that you are a vision scientist, but for those not familiar with visual acuity testing: 20/20 is only an AVERAGE. It is not as many people will say: "perfect vision." It is not uncommon for people to have better than 20/20. Which begs the question are these folk then judged to have "vision loss" as compared to there eagle eyed bretheren?
As a person in the medical field I too am interested in technology that enhances a person's quality life and more importantly may reduce suffering. But while it may be easy to define medical need by looking at a child whom has a degenerative eye disease causing blindness, the questions becomes more difficult to answer when drawn to an extreme.
Decrease in fitness is relative to the enviroment. An organism that my be fit in one niche may be completely unsuited to survive in another. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution; they are simply well suited to living in temperate climates on a planet with Earthlike qualities. Would humans survive "as is" on Mars? No. Humans for example do not have protective fur to walk with aplomb unassisted in arctic enviroments nor large lung capacities and high oxygen carrying capacities to plumb the depths of the ocean. I like to think of enhancements as adjuncts or logical extensions of adaptive responses. Enhancements would provide humans with the ability to explore heretofore difficult or unreachable places.
And what is so ridiculous about artificial muscles? Human muscle has a finite upper bound with regards to strength vs. mass ratio. Certainly not the strongest nor most efficient stuff around. Could we not replace human muscle with a more efficient compound? (Some of my research deals with exactly this issue.) Stronger muscles do not necessarily imply greater energy intake: that can be achieved by increasing efficency, of which the human muscle is not a perfect example (think exothermia).
And to state that our bodies already operate at their optimum, again there is the caveat that optimum is dependent on the environment and the task at hand. Enhancement in regards to recall/attention ability for example, is not only possible, but present (methylphenidate for example has been shown to increase cognitive function for "normal" people). Certainly there is room for "improvement." And there is also the issue of helping those that are diseased or disabled with respect to the norm. In this case can one not redefine enhancement as "repair?"
As an aside, where is the differentiation between "nanobots" and "molecular biology." Targeted molecules, receptor specific proteins, cell mediated hormones..."nanobots!" they are simply points on a continuum.
Slashdot Mirror
This particular issue always reminds me of the the definition of humanity, or rather, the effor to define what makes us human. If we could see, in IR, UV, Xray, etc. would we be more or less human? How would you describe such a scene with those eyes to a person without such visual abilities? Say one person has enhanced vision, enhanced audition, strength, cognitive abilities... would this person even be able to relate to the unenhanced human? Could this person even be called human? At what point does self-engineering so remove us from where we started that we become an entirely new life-form (think Vinge's Singularity posit with a twist.) And how does one define "vision loss"? Vision less than the norm? Does a 75 year old man with 20/100 vision have vision loss, even if he is within one standard deviation of the mean for people his age? How about the person with 20/20 as compared to the person with 20/10? I see that you are a vision scientist, but for those not familiar with visual acuity testing: 20/20 is only an AVERAGE. It is not as many people will say: "perfect vision." It is not uncommon for people to have better than 20/20. Which begs the question are these folk then judged to have "vision loss" as compared to there eagle eyed bretheren? As a person in the medical field I too am interested in technology that enhances a person's quality life and more importantly may reduce suffering. But while it may be easy to define medical need by looking at a child whom has a degenerative eye disease causing blindness, the questions becomes more difficult to answer when drawn to an extreme.
Decrease in fitness is relative to the enviroment. An organism that my be fit in one niche may be completely unsuited to survive in another. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution; they are simply well suited to living in temperate climates on a planet with Earthlike qualities. Would humans survive "as is" on Mars? No. Humans for example do not have protective fur to walk with aplomb unassisted in arctic enviroments nor large lung capacities and high oxygen carrying capacities to plumb the depths of the ocean. I like to think of enhancements as adjuncts or logical extensions of adaptive responses. Enhancements would provide humans with the ability to explore heretofore difficult or unreachable places. And what is so ridiculous about artificial muscles? Human muscle has a finite upper bound with regards to strength vs. mass ratio. Certainly not the strongest nor most efficient stuff around. Could we not replace human muscle with a more efficient compound? (Some of my research deals with exactly this issue.) Stronger muscles do not necessarily imply greater energy intake: that can be achieved by increasing efficency, of which the human muscle is not a perfect example (think exothermia). And to state that our bodies already operate at their optimum, again there is the caveat that optimum is dependent on the environment and the task at hand. Enhancement in regards to recall/attention ability for example, is not only possible, but present (methylphenidate for example has been shown to increase cognitive function for "normal" people). Certainly there is room for "improvement." And there is also the issue of helping those that are diseased or disabled with respect to the norm. In this case can one not redefine enhancement as "repair?" As an aside, where is the differentiation between "nanobots" and "molecular biology." Targeted molecules, receptor specific proteins, cell mediated hormones..."nanobots!" they are simply points on a continuum.