DARPA successful in assisting Sarif industries developing artificial limbs
269 replies, posted
[QUOTE=PredGD;41603367]you can lose a limb if it gets infected and dies or if someone chops it off
if a wire or two breaks in a mechanical arm you'll most likely have to pay your ass off to repair it again[/QUOTE]
Probably not dude, this whole argument assumes that they'll be cheap enough to be common place which means they won't be anywhere near as expensive as some folk are assuming they will be, on top of that with better manufacturing techniques it would be probably be easier to just replace the component or the whole arm and recycle the old one.
The main reason that I don't believe "Deus Ex" is the natural progression for human evolution is because it relies on the assumption that a huge number of people would be willing to butcher themselves for an upgrade. I'm not at all opposed to augmentation technology. In fact, I think it's a pretty cool concept. But I do not believe it is reasonable to think that a large enough number of people would be willing to permanently remove fully functioning limbs and organs in order to replace them with consumer goods. The sample size here is pretty biased, being that we're all essentially a bunch of nerds who grew up watching scifi and playing video games. If you were to go out on the street and begin polling people to see who would be willing to unnecessarily remove their arms in lieu of artificial arms, I'd wager we'd see some very different results.
And it's not a matter of being afraid of technology, it's a matter of it not being worth it. Who would want to remove their own arm in favor of an arm with a drill in it when they could just pick up a drill? It's a pointless trade, unless its out of medical necessity. There are no marked advantages for every day life to robotic prosthetics that couldn't be easily managed by something that [I]doesn't[/I] require self-amputation, and what advantages that do exist are extremely niche.
Infinitely more likely than this "Dues Ex" future of willing amputations is the emergence of additions or wetware. In order for it to succeed in the consumer market, it can't force the consumers to make major sacrifices or undergo lengthy or dangerous medical procedures. We'll see the emergence of things like chips to regulate body functions, augmented reality devices or implants, internal computers to allow us to "telepathically" communicate with the world around us, neural internet that will allow instantaneous access to information, translation software to bridge language barriers, and business like that.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;41603403]Now who is strawmanning?[/QUOTE]
Everyone everywhere in this argument, I'm afraid. :v:
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603384]Probably not dude, this whole argument assumes that they'll be cheap enough to be common place which means they won't be anywhere near as expensive as some folk are assuming they will be, on top of that with better manufacturing techniques it would be probably be easier to just replace the component or the whole arm and recycle the old one.[/QUOTE]
that's true. right now i'm basing it off phones, a thing everyone has and switch out every now and then. if a phone breaks, you'll most likely have to pay nearly as much or even more than a brand new phone costs.
this entire thing is incredibly hard to discuss
no one knows what kind of technology we have when the bionic arms are as we all describe them.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603371]This is a better way to refute rather than just call me a luddite.
It's not so much that the human arm is better but it's more that you're [i]willing[/i] to cut your functioning arms and legs off to replace it, like a computer part someone said. If you don't want your body parts, then why are you even born human? You're a living tool - a robot - and you'll be used like one until you're deactivated without any resistance.[/QUOTE]
Again you're riding on massive assumptions, why would someone with a robotic limb or two suddenly become an unthinking machine?
There is no such thing as a soul, if the brain and nervous system remain intact then that person will remain intact.
By the way, just to clear this up, personally if someone offered me some beastly robot arm I probably wouldn't take it unless I needed it, folk getting augmentations that's cool and stuff but I'd rather stay meaty unless I had a major health issue.
And don;t do the whole "then why are you born human thing," you're born human because there is no other way to be born, the metaphysical and philosophical arguments are cool and stuff but they don't hold up.
i like to think that we've come farther than "evolution" and "survival of the fittest". we're pretty much as perfect as we can be on earth and we're the species who shape the future now. nature have lost a lot of control to us.
The main reason why I would not go for it is, well, because I always think of things in the context of "what if the rug was suddenly pulled from under me, the rug being our developed civilization and society?"
What if? What if you find yourself strapped for cash and on the streets? What if a huge disaster happens and you are stranded with civilization nowhere near to be found? What if some goofy apocalypse happens and/or our society collapses? If you have a swanky robot arm that needs maintenance and probably to be charged, unless it can run off the body itself somehow, you'll eventually find yourself a cripple with a now useless lump of high-tech thingamabobs strapped to a limb, as opposed to just being a boring good ol' human with boring good ol' human issues.
correct me if i'm wrong, but there are prosthetics which runs on glucose from your own body. having an external power source would be the least preferable in most cases, so i wouldn't be surprised if they will try to find a way to use the resources which were supposed to go to the old arm for the new bionic arm
[QUOTE=PredGD;41603446]i like to think that we've come farther than "evolution" and "survival of the fittest". we're pretty much as perfect as we can be on earth and we're the species who shape the future now. nature have lost a lot of control to us.[/QUOTE]
We're not even close to perfect, we have an appendix which serves little to no use in our bodies except to swell up and burst sometimes, our appetite and body haven't yet caught up with modern eating habits and we still suffer from our bodies famine and plenty modes.
Like all animals we've evolved to excel at our speciality, ours is being really smart, at everything else we're pretty average with some exceptions.
Also, nature could quite happily bitch slap us back to the stone age any day of the week.
[QUOTE=Mr. Scorpio;41587143]Because metal is stronger than flesh.[/QUOTE]
To fail is to be flesh, only metal endures.
To think that mankind has conquered nature is hubris of the worst sort. A single, cosmically tiny speck of dust or an exploding star could just wipe us out along with life on Earth in its entirety.
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603269]Why is a human arm innately better than a robotic one? Assuming both the arm are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would the human arm be superior simply through the fact that it is human?[/QUOTE]
the only real argument for this is the fact that if you hurt your human arm, it can be repaired with fairly minimal effort and knowledge on your side (keep it clean, put a splint on it, etc; your body takes care of the rest),
in contrast a robotic limb requires the a team of engineers to build in the first place, requires access to someone with knowledge of its design to be repaired, and the repairs would need specialised manufacturing processes and materials and such if any parts need to be replaced; as a result, you are now open to be controlled and manipulated by someone who has the power to stop you from gaining access to all this
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603491]Most arms and shit would operate the exact same way your current limbs work, from glucose in the blood. No need to reinvent the wheel.[/QUOTE]
people might work out how to use the body as a power source, but the limbs themselves are still mechanical and would need occasional maintenance by someone who knows a lot about them, unless somebody managed to engineer something that could repair itself using the resources that the human body can provide
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
(real arms do that)
[QUOTE=Uber|nooB;41603507]the only real argument for this is the fact that if you hurt your human arm, it can be repaired with fairly minimal effort and knowledge on your side (keep it clean, put a splint on it, etc; your body takes care of the rest),
in contrast a robotic limb requires the a team of engineers to build in the first place, requires access to someone with knowledge of its design to be repaired, and the repairs would need specialised manufacturing processes and materials and such if any parts need to be replaced; as a result, you are now open to be controlled and manipulated by someone who has the power to stop you from gaining access to all this[/QUOTE]
Again people are assuming that at this point prosthetics are still going to be clunky metal heaps of gears and motors.
If at some point in the future these prosthetics are as common as people are suggesting the sure as shit will have some ability to repair themselves on the fly, most likely through self repairing materials.
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19781862[/url]
You could quite easily just have a self repairing plastic use compounds extracted from the blood supply, id you're already powering it with glucose from blood then you might as well strip out some proteins and have feedstocks to repair minor damage.
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603427]Again you're riding on massive assumptions, why would someone with a robotic limb or two suddenly become an unthinking machine?
There is no such thing as a soul, if the brain and nervous system remain intact then that person will remain intact.
By the way, just to clear this up, personally if someone offered me some beastly robot arm I probably wouldn't take it unless I needed it, folk getting augmentations that's cool and stuff but I'd rather stay meaty unless I had a major health issue.
And don;t do the whole "then why are you born human thing," you're born human because there is no other way to be born, the metaphysical and philosophical arguments are cool and stuff but they don't hold up.[/QUOTE]
Each augment steals a bit of their humanity away.
And there is such a thing as a soul. It's what tells us what is right and what is wrong. It's what prevents people from conducting unethical experiments or research.
The metaphysical and philosophical arguments are important since they remind us of our morality and humanity. Without either of those two, we wouldn't be who we are.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603577]Each augment steals a bit of their humanity away.
And there is such a thing as a soul. It's what tells us what is right and what is wrong. It's what prevents people from conducting unethical experiments or research.
The metaphysical and philosophical arguments are important since they remind us of our morality and humanity. Without either of those two, we wouldn't be who we are.[/QUOTE]
This is less an argument about augmentations and more about how you percieve humanity, if you believe in a soul that's all gravy, but I don't recall any great philosopher or great book or anything suggesting that the limbs are the seat of the human soul.
Seriously what the fuck man? You're actually suggesting, right now, that veterans of wars who may have lost their legs to IEDs or anyone who's lost a limb due to a car crash is now, somehow, in your eyes less human.
How does the loss of the limb effect the human moral compass (which is 100% subjective and relative the individual) in a direct way through the loss of the limb, and not through the psychological trauma of losing a limb?
We learn what is right and wrong through society, family and our peers, it's why in some places of the world infidelity gets you stoned and why in other parts of the world it nets you a divorce.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603577]Each augment steals a bit of their humanity away.[/QUOTE]No it doesn't.
[QUOTE]And there is such a thing as a soul. It's what tells us what is right and what is wrong. It's what prevents people from conducting unethical experiments or research. [/QUOTE]No there isn't and no it isn't.
There is no reservoir of humanity that starts leaking out with each augment you get. There is no soul. None whatsoever. We just have a central nervous system.
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603618]We learn what is right and wrong through society, family and our peers, it's why in some places of the world infidelity gets you stoned and why in other parts of the world it nets you a divorce.[/QUOTE]In some places the concept doesn't even exists and instead they are polygamist societies.
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603269]Why is a human arm innately better than a robotic one? Assuming both the arm are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would the human arm be superior simply through the fact that it is human?[/QUOTE]
Why is a robotic arm innately better than a human one? Assuming both arms are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would anybody go willingly amputate their perfectly fine human arm?
That's the biggest flaw with mechanical augmentation theory. You could make the arm stronger or faster or self-repairing, or include swiss army tools or whatever, but at the end of the day it wouldn't have any bigger of an impact on your everyday life than your normal ole' human arm would. So what's the point of it, unless your human arm has stopped working?
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603572]Again people are assuming that at this point prosthetics are still going to be clunky metal heaps of gears and motors.
If at some point in the future these prosthetics are as common as people are suggesting the sure as shit will have some ability to repair themselves on the fly, most likely through self repairing materials.
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19781862[/url]
You could quite easily just have a self repairing plastic use compounds extracted from the blood supply, id you're already powering it with glucose from blood then you might as well strip out some proteins and have feedstocks to repair minor damage.[/QUOTE]
self-repairing materials are not all that great at the moment, since their ability to repair themselves is limited
but yes, the dependence on large amounts of knowledge and access to technology for maintenance is hopefully a solvable engineering problem
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;41603658]Why is a robotic arm innately better than a human one? Assuming both arms are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would anybody go willingly amputate their perfectly fine human arm?
That's the biggest flaw with mechanical augmentation theory. You could make the arm stronger or faster or self-repairing, or include swiss army tools or whatever, but at the end of the day it wouldn't have any bigger of an impact on your everyday life than your normal ole' human arm would. So what's the point of it, unless your human arm has stopped working?[/QUOTE]
Oh absolutely, but my point is that they're one and the same effectively and that it comes down to personal choice. Like I said earlier I'm more inclined to keep my meat suit and all it's parts in full working order but some of the people in this thread are fanatical and that goes for both sides.
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Uber|nooB;41603661]self-repairing materials are not all that great at the moment, since their ability to repair themselves is limited
but yes, the dependence on large amounts of knowledge and access to technology for maintenance is hopefully a solvable engineering problem[/QUOTE]
Honestly, with current technology there are work arounds, the only problem is the cost and as time goes on the costs will drop.
It'll easily be 50 years at least before we see a sizeable amount of people with elected augmentations, and between then and now I'm sure we can come up with a few materials to fit the bill.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;41603658]Why is a robotic arm innately better than a human one? Assuming both arms are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would anybody go willingly amputate their perfectly fine human arm?
That's the biggest flaw with mechanical augmentation theory. You could make the arm stronger or faster or self-repairing, or include swiss army tools or whatever, but at the end of the day it wouldn't have any bigger of an impact on your everyday life than your normal ole' human arm would. So what's the point of it, unless your human arm has stopped working?[/QUOTE]
This is the thing I'm wondering about. Would the advantages of replacing my arm be big enough to warrant spending what I can only imagine are tens of thousands of dollars?
[QUOTE=Antdawg;41587126]I sometimes can't tell if some Facepunchers are being serious or not when they read things like this and want to have parts of their body replaced with artificial parts.
I assume those that say this have perfectly functioning limbs and no physical disabilities. So I ask, why?[/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De2SuYAjrdY[/media]
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;41603658]Why is a robotic arm innately better than a human one? Assuming both arms are equally viable for day to day use with absolutely no functional differences, why would anybody go willingly amputate their perfectly fine human arm?
That's the biggest flaw with mechanical augmentation theory. You could make the arm stronger or faster or self-repairing, or include swiss army tools or whatever, but at the end of the day it wouldn't have any bigger of an impact on your everyday life than your normal ole' human arm would. So what's the point of it, unless your human arm has stopped working?[/QUOTE]
I'm gonna be honest, there's people who will go in for the cosmetics.
I think of it like a tattoo. It's a wholly cosmetic thing which will become less and less tasteful over time. It's also permanent and can never be removed unless you undergo a very expensive treatment.
Going by your model of a "perfect" augment, it'd be exactly the same thing for people who want to look like they're half cyborg. Then once the technology rolled around again, you'd be able to re-grow a human arm through a very expensive treatment (though that might take a few extra decades).
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603577]Each augment steals a bit of their humanity away.
And there is such a thing as a soul. It's what tells us what is right and what is wrong. It's what prevents people from conducting unethical experiments or research.
The metaphysical and philosophical arguments are important since they remind us of our morality and humanity. Without either of those two, we wouldn't be who we are.[/QUOTE]
It's actually scary how people who really believe this exist
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603618]This is less an argument about augmentations and more about how you percieve humanity, if you believe in a soul that's all gravy, but I don't recall any great philosopher or great book or anything suggesting that the limbs are the seat of the human soul.[/QUOTE]
That is the core of the ethical implications of human augmentations. It's never been about the augments themselves, but more what they do to you.
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603618]Seriously what the fuck man? You're actually suggesting, right now, that veterans of wars who may have lost their legs to IEDs or anyone who's lost a limb due to a car crash is now, somehow, in your eyes less human.
How does the loss of the limb effect the human moral compass (which is 100% subjective and relative the individual) in a direct way through the loss of the limb, and not through the psychological trauma of losing a limb?[/QUOTE]
I should have clarified that each augment that people [i]willingly[/i] trade their functioning limbs for, steal a bit of their humanity. People who legitimately lost limbs and have augments allows them to reintegrate with society.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;41603628]No it doesn't.
No there isn't and no it isn't.
There is no reservoir of humanity that starts leaking out with each augment you get. There is no soul. None whatsoever. We just have a central nervous system.
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
In some places the concept doesn't even exists and instead they are polygamist societies.[/QUOTE]
You've already made it perfectly clear to me that you have no soul and therefore have no problems with replacing your self.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603763]That is the core of the ethical implications of human augmentations. It's never been about the augments themselves, but more what they do to you.
I should have clarified that each augment that people [I]willingly[/I] trade their functioning limbs for, steal a bit of their humanity. People who legitimately lost limbs and have augments allows them to reintegrate with society.
You've already made it perfectly clear to me that you have no soul and therefore have no problems with replacing your self.[/QUOTE]
You genuinely have to be trolling right now, there is absolutely no way anyone could be this dumb by accident.
So who or what collects the humanity? If the humanity is stolen surely there must be a thief?
[QUOTE=bravehat;41603769]You genuinely have to be trolling right now, there is absolutely no way anyone could be this dumb by accident.
So who or what collects the humanity? If the humanity is stolen surely there must be a thief?[/QUOTE]
"He has a different opinion. He must be trolling."
You're selling your self to machines.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;41603780]"He has a different opinion. He must be trolling."[/QUOTE]
No man, it's because you're actually retarded. How would having a metal arm by choice mean that you are actively trying to become less human or that you are somehow attempting to subvert humanity?
[QUOTE=Pilotguy97;41603758]I'm gonna be honest, there's people who will go in for the cosmetics.
I think of it like a tattoo. It's a wholly cosmetic thing which will become less and less tasteful over time. It's also permanent and can never be removed unless you undergo a very expensive treatment.
Going by your model of a "perfect" augment, it'd be exactly the same thing for people who want to look like they're half cyborg. Then once the technology rolled around again, you'd be able to re-grow a human arm through a very expensive treatment (though that might take a few extra decades).[/QUOTE]
Yeah, obviously if the technology is there, there will be people who go in for unnecessary mechanical augmentation. Zedacon here is proving that well enough. Likewise, there will be people wholeheartedly opposed to it. But for the average Jane or Joe, with no strong moral reservations one way or another? It's a novelty, not a necessity, and it's one that requires self mutilation to qualify for. It's a pretty hard sell.
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