We Will End Disability by Becoming Cyborgs (2014) | Hacker News Reader

We Will End Disability by Becoming Cyborgs (2014)

spectrum.ieee.org

28 pointsprostoalex19 comments

The wrinkle here is that not all people with disabilities agree that their conditions are actually a bad thing.

Among those who are deaf, for instance, there has been a long-standing debate over whether deafness is actually a medical problem, or just a different kind of human experience. The latter group would argue that a campaign to restore hearing to the deaf would actually be a kind of genocide -- a coordinated campaign to wipe out a distinct culture, with its own languages and traditions, just because it is physically different than the majority.

That may sound wild, but the more you think about it the more troubling questions it raises. Well-meaning people would never consciously try to shame deaf people for being deaf, for instance, but the viewpoint embedded in the idea of ending deafness is that the deaf are broken people who need to be fixed by being made more like the rest of us. Do we actually agree that deaf people are broken, incomplete? If we do, does it follow that deaf people who refuse our cure should be compelled, in some manner, to accept it? How far are we willing to go to eradicate deafness? Is "eradicating deafness" even a morally legitimate thing to aspire to?

I'm not deaf myself, so I won't pretend to have an authoritative perspective on any of these questions. I just raise them to note that the standard tech-centric view of these things (here's a problem, let's create something that solves it!) isn't the lens through which everyone sees the lives they live.

> The latter group would argue that a campaign to restore hearing to the deaf would actually be a kind of genocide.

Only if it's not optional I think, where ethics get really interesting is when deaf parents want a deaf child, that's one that still isn't settled due to cochlear implants which are already a kind of cyborg.

I'm able bodied (apart from a degenerative spinal condition) and I'd happily swap that part out if I could, wouldn't even think about it for more than 5 seconds.

What of multiply resistant strains of bacteria and the end of the antibiotics era?

Not sure in what context you are asking your question, can you elaborate?

Invasive augmentation/implantation could increase the risk of infection. I was thinking that you might want to take that into consideration.

Ah right, my spinal condition is called syringomelia, it's a cavity that forms in your spine and progressively damages the nerves, the best case is constant high level neuropathic pain for the rest of my life, the worst is it destroys the nerves and I end up in pain and crippled, mine is thoracic which means I'm a lucky one (cervical it can also destroy the nerves that control your ability to breathe, beat your heart or move your upper body).

At the moment the medication keeps me functional but if it went worst case I'd take a 50/50 chance of dying from a replacement than been in the kind of pain the people I've seen with the worst case.

Also while the medication works it makes me extremely "fuzzy" some days and has trashed my short term memory, neither of which is an enjoyable experience for someone who loves to program/play chess etc.

As an aside though, going through the experience above as well as having loved ones has given me an idea for a project that might benefit a lot of people (and earn some money which is nice), it's something that doesn't exist and it's not something I would have thought of doing if I hadn't got ill/grown up with a disabled mother.

I have low vision. This makes me different from many people as I learned to navigate the world in a different way. My mental models are different, my perception is different. I am a different human being.

I would swap my eyes for good ones in a second. Shut up and take my money!!!

Think there is a difference between defective and broken.

I under clocked a CPU for a while and that worked, but that does not mean I wanted to buy a slower CPU. I can see an adult choosing to stay deaf. But, not curing a deaf child is a far more tricky question.

As a deaf person: it is a medical problem. End of story. I need a cure. If someone doesn't want the cure, they don't have to have it.

They don't have the right to forestall research or prevent other people from getting it.

The waitlist for cochlear implant surgery is already years long, and I can't get a second one that I need because there are too many other people waiting.

But to return to the parent's implication, what if it were possible to artificially add a new sense, one that biological humans don't possess (seeing polarized light, or sensing RF, or echolocation, etc.). Would we let some people have them, or routinely give them to everyone, or ban them outright? There have been quite a few SF treatments of these themes, Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain comes to mind, or Kim Stanley Robinson Mars books (for the politics of modifications).

Like gender and many other things, there's nothing wrong with it, the problems arise when you make it compulsory.

If you are deaf and you are happy with it, or you are a woman and you love taking care of the kids and making dinner before you put on a nice dress and some make-up before your man comes home.... great! Do you.

But when you are born into that with no real way to opt out, while huge swaths of the population get to live the other way by accident of birth... That's a problem.

I think the big open question here, as with transgender children and circumcision, is who gets to decide in the case of minors?

Sort of an inversion of Harrison Bergeron, except instead of the natural superman having inert blocks of metal attached to him to bring his abilities down, everyone else will have high tech stuff attached to enhance their abilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

I love the idea of having augmentations and neural implants but the potential social ramifications, which the article gets slightly into, scare the living daylights out of me.

From the Deus Ex alternative universe, year 2022:

Antoine Thisdale, an un-augmented oil rig worker sues for the right to have both of his fully functional natural arms amputated and replaced with cybernetic arms in an effort to compete with mechanically augmented workers in his profession. The Supreme Court rules in his favor, clearing the way for elective augmentation. In response to the ruling, William Taggart creates Humanity Front, a political organization that opposes augmentation.

I agree somewhat with you, I think this could easily be a hotbed of controversy moving forward. At the same time though, maybe that era would simply be akin to the early industrial eras when workers unionized and fought for better working rights. I agree that the fallout for this type of advancement could be chaotic, but when has that stopped human progress before? Would it be better if we could avoid the whole disaster and navigate this advancement nimbly and with as little disruption as possible? Sure, but I don't see it as being very likely.

I would not worry about that specific case to hard. If you can make an arm, sure you can make an exoskeleton ?

Sure, end disability and exacerbate inequality. Additionally, I don't see us all being the same type of cyborg. If anything, becoming cyborgs we'll realize that there is more than one way to become "physically functional" and so stop labeling everyone that is not typically physically functional as disabled.

Cybernetics will just change disability insurance into hardware insurance.

How can robot augmentations cure, say, depression?

Sounds like a pretty narrow definition of "disability"

I'm guessing you didn't read the article and are just responding to the title? From the article:

"One promising experiment targets depression with deep brain stimulation (DBS), in which electrodes implanted in the brain send steady pulses of electricity to certain problematic neural areas."

and

"Neuroscientists discovered years ago that this existential dread can be treated by using electricity to alter the activity of neurons, and they are now putting that knowledge to use. DBS, one of the most exciting experimental treatments for depression, uses an implanted “brain pacemaker” that sends steady pulses of electricity to certain brain regions. It’s a technology that was pioneered to stop Parkinson’s patients’ tremors, but it’s now being explored for a dizzying array of neural and psychiatric disorders, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and PTSD."

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