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Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

one futurist gushed over a visually striking prosthetic arm, musing that it might be worth amputating for the “upgrade.” Another panelist shut them down immediately: doctors and scientists aren’t even close to solving the phantom pain and limited mobility that most amputees face, let alone building something uniformly better than a human limb.

You can upgrade your current arm by eating better and going to the gym. If that isn't enough to get the visually striking look you are after, tattoos and the right clothes can help.

I can't believe there are nutcases in the world ready to embrace becoming a Borg. This is bizarre.

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Your comment is silly. Accusing someone of being a "nutcase" is not constructive, nor is a comment about becoming a Borg.

Yes, at the moment it's not plausible to upgrade one's arm. In the future it will become plausible, though, and the upgrade will at some point be much better than what you can do at a gym. In fact, you can only get a stronger arm at the gym (or an arm with more endurance), but a bionic arm can be much better.

> Your comment is silly. Accusing someone of being a "nutcase" is not constructive, nor is a comment about becoming a Borg.

Your comment is stronger without this.

Much better in what way?

I have had reason to become somewhat familiar with what happens to the body when organs are transplanted with natural organs from other people and when metal pins are used to repair damaged parts and so forth. None of it is anywhere near as good as keeping your own parts functional and healthy to begin with. It all comes with serious complications, and I think people vastly underestimate just how bad it really is. I think it is far worse than people think.

Sure, currently it is. But that's not written in stone. Lots of medical procedures used to have huge mortality rates and extreme side-effects, and are now much better, often even just a couple of decades afterwards.

The component parts they use are inherently problematic. You put enough metal in the body, it causes metal poisoning. This is a fundamental problem. You solve it by moving to other materials entirely. Other materials that have some hope of working tend to be more organic, and then we aren't talking cyborg-like outcomes anymore. We are talking some other paradigm.

So, I don't see it.

I think you're focusing too hard on the chromesteel cyberpunk angle. A prosthetic made of silicone, plastic, and carbon fiber is still just as "cyborg".

And metal will still have its place. Most people are quite tolerant to titanium, and there's been some advances lately in hydrophobic coatings for implants that keep them from interacting with your blood. I think it's unlikely to be a primary component, though, because it's heavy and expensive and its primary advantage--strength--is useless if the body it's attached to gives out first.

Look, I am not arguing against creating prostheses for people who need them for some reason. If you are going to die without it or if your functionality is sufficiently impaired due to lack of a body part, there are certainly cases where it makes sense.

But I have difficulty imagining it will ever not be crazy to be willing to lop off a perfectly healthy arm to "upgrade" it. That was what I was reacting to. It isn't like I am decrying the evils of cochlear implants here.

> But I have difficulty imagining it will ever not be crazy to be willing to lop off a perfectly healthy arm to "upgrade" it.

Then say that and be done with it. Don't cloud the issue with misdirection about metal poisoning.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14829343

That is exactly what I said in my first comment. And then a bunch of people piled on to have a cow about that statement. And the longer this discussion has gone on, the weirder it has gotten in terms of people trying to put words in my mouth and claim intent that isn't there.

You could just give it a rest yourself. It takes two to make for good discussion. Both people need to be engaging in good faith. It only takes one to undermine that process.

Or you just coat the metal with some protection layer. Seems a bit absurd to be declaring some problems as unsolvable when we're just getting started.

I used to read medical reports all day long as part of my job. This included surgical reports for when some implanted joint or such had failed, often for the umpteenth time.

I don't think we are "just getting started here."

Also, my understanding is that Edgar Caycee, a psychic, was the first person to suggest that a nail or screw be used to hold a bone in place so it could mend when it was failing to do so. I find it ironic that this has been so widely embraced by conventional medicine. It was suggested by a guy in a trance and we ran with it and now when you try to point out that it leads to metal poisoning, failures, infections, well, I'm somehow the one not being scientific enough or something.

Wait, are you suggesting that pinning broken bones is a bad idea?

Eight months ago I broke my ankle in four places. Today, I can walk with only a minor limp because a surgeon stuck the shattered fragments back together with a load of titanium. Maybe there's a risk of metal poisoning in my future, but I think we can all agree that it's better than a near-certainty of never walking unassisted again.

The only thing I am suggesting is that intentionally lopping a healthy limb off for a so called upgrade is crazy.

Then why did you just write a whole paragraph about how internal fixation for broken bones is bullshit?

I'd much prefer nanites that silently aid you and can be controlled and repurposed and replicated easily and turned on and off like in DX1 and 2 (especially) than hunks of gross metal like in Bionic Command or DX3.

Want a stronger arm: get nanites programmed right that will aid the body in the natural strengthening process: helping repair the fibers, removing carbon dioxide and lactic acid, carrying in more oxygen and nutrients, etc.

In Deus Ex it actually went through mechs (who ended up being despised and ostracized) first to nanites then with nanites being more powerful (thus making mechs also obsolete) and seamless (you couldn't tell who had nanites in him just by looking).

Getting a prosthesis because of a medical condition is one thing, voluntarily amputating a body part to get one is insane.

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