From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Mon May 17 1999 - 23:52:39 MDT
Chris McCarley wrote:
>
> > From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha@extropic-art.com>
> > Subject: Effects of Enhanced Senses for Designer Bodies
>
> > What types of brain enhancements might be designed to
> > deal with the
> > relaying of new information gained from enhancing the
> > senses (especially
> > smell and hearing). How will the brain's cognitive
> > capabilities sift
> > through the enhanced information and utilize expanded
> > sensorial capabilities?
>
> This is an interesting question, and I would also pose the flipside
> question: how is our intellectual and spiritual growth impacted as we
> progress to an operational mode of doing more and more filtering and less
> "immersive" processing of stimuli? I.e. will we become more efficient
> information processors at the expense of deeper meaning and understanding?
> If this is true, and we become wide but shallow, it would almost certainly
> affect our interactions.
>
> It's not that I believe these two "modes" can't exist together in an
> intelligent being. I think it would be quite effective to learn first
> principals and then subsequently be able to filter out the the vast amounts
> of redundant and useless information. Unfortunately, it is all too common
> to go for the quick fix and forego the deeper understanding.
An interesting movie regarding this I think is Gattaca. In it,
the people can choose what types of kids to have, and as per
Eliezer's ideas, you can't have it all... they pick skills for
their kids that focus on mastery of science and math and also
physical stats. The result seems to be people lacking "deepness"
--
"Knowing the path is not the same as walking the path."
-Morpheus _The Matrix_
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