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Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

Noted and begs the question of why "human augmentation" tends to popularly mean "partial replacement." (I'll assume because artificial limbs read better in visual media)

In reality, there are plenty of opportunities for true augmentation. F.ex. a friend was discussing the pacemaker his mother recently had implanted after an episode of tachycardia. Fairly small, continuously monitors vitals & syncs to communicate with base station (which can contact physician if needed), internal battery. And works in conjunction with the existing biological heart!

Why not focus on actually augmenting our already-amazing bodies?

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Anyone remember the "6 Million Dollar Man"? Steve Austin had an arm and both legs replaced with bionic ones with super powers. He'd do thinks like break handcuffs by spreading his arms.

But only one of his arms was bionic. It would have just ripped the other hand off. Similarly, his running at superspeed would have just shattered his spine.

I.e. you can't increase the power of the engine without increasing the strength of the drive train.

  >> would have just ripped the other hand off.

I was amused that he could hit a tennis ball through the tennis net, rather than having the strings on his tennis racket shatter.

Yeah, with most technologies all the most useful applications are, well, more boring by the time you get them than what people imagine beforehand.

I imagine some of the best augmentation tech is going to be about diagnostic data and about coaxing/training our bodies away from maladaptive states. Consider already-existing stuff like insulin pumps or anti-seizure implants. Extend that to dealing with obesity, panic attacks, allergies...

Absolutely agreed. What's the effectiveness difference between doing something your body already does well... better? Vs doing something biology is terrible at... well?

It's engineering. Get the low hanging fruit first.

The wide separation between whats done and whats talked about makes the topic interesting. The technology isn't here yet and may never arrive, most of it's thinly veiled magickal fanfic. So they play with magnets instead.

In the example of the pacemaker, it would be like techies 50 years ago talking about how cool a computer controlled pacemaker would be, while they implant a 12AT7 dual triode vacuum tube in their belly doing roughly nothing.

True, but I think it's also somewhat disheartening (tone in article) to compare the present to only the "sci-fi exemplars" of the tech.

Yes, it's depressing we don't have artificial limbs that are superior to biological ones.

But, it's amazing and inspiration that we do have micro pacemakers and blood monitors and portable defibrillators today!

IOW, don't blind oneself to the future forest because the actual trees aren't the species you were expecting.

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