3 replies to this topic

[manofsan]

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.newscient...p?id=ns99994930

This technique is being used to treat Alzheimer's Disease, but it could conceivably be used to enhance ordinary people.

Imagine not only designer bodies, but designer brains as well.

But if that were to happen, there might be a dangerous tendency of resorting to gene therapy techniques to solve every kind of psychological problem. Sort of like how Prozac is heavily over-prescribed today.

But the idea of technologically enhancing our minds is very intriguing. I'd think that most of us would prefer to have a sound mind over a sound body, if we had to choose between the two. And a strong mind can accomplish a lot more than a strong body can. This type of technology could become a productivity-multiplier for the economy.

If you take care of the strategic weak points -- brain, joints, teeth, bowels -- you could probably keep people very active in the work force uptil very high age.

Comments?

[Mind]

More and more techniques for modifying ourselves arrive everyday. It is interesting how technologies used for treating defects/disease are looked at as good, but when used to improve oneself, they usually get a bad connotation. Many people are wedded to the idea that natural is good and that improving the human body or brain is bad. I know what that feeling is. Anthropocentric ideas die hard.

[lightowl]

It is funny how using drugs to temporarily or long-term degrade ones mental capabilities is globally accepted, but the opposite if frowned upon. But slowly food supplements are beginning to gain acceptance to. I think it is only a matter of time before stronger and longer lasting methods will begin to enter the general public market. Of course this all depends on politics and how much influence anti development activists get.

Edited by lightowl, 28 April 2004 - 11:33 PM.

[manofsan]

I was reading this:

http://story.news.ya..._neanderthal_dc

Neanderthals apparently had bigger brains that Cro-Magnon man. What if they had survived to evolve further, just as Cro-Magnon did, or perhaps instead of Cro-Magnon? Would humankind be in a more advanced state today?

Did they have bigger brains than modern homo-sapiens?

Perhaps hybridizing their genes with modern humans would produce a smarter human being.