What happens next is that the "regular" humans have to compete with these "super-humans", for example on a job market, or in Olympics.
Examples range from agriculture to the Internet; currently, smartphones seem to be hitting this threshold, as more private and public services become designed primarily with smartphones in mind.
I found it enlightening to ponder the history of clocks. There was a time nobody needed one; it wasn't actually useful for anything[0], because nothing in agricultural societies happened fast enough to require hour or minute accuracy. Some people eventually found use for more accurate and precise time tracking, then more, then those people realized they're able to coordinate better when they have synced clocks, which made new things possible, and few centuries later, our entire civilization runs on clocks, and it's near-impossible to live without minding what time is it.
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[0] - Use in sea navigation notwithstanding.
The development of clocks is related to industrialization and opening of plants that need all the workers to be there at e.g. 8 am for the shift to start. If you have to be at the factory at 8 am you'd better know what time it is. It's not that the development of clocks has brought us factories; rather, the development of factories has brought us clocks.
FWIW, I'm not saying it's a good development. I'm torn on this. Outside of direct progress, we seem to be running in Red Queen's races quite a lot, as improvements turn into baseline.
This seems a rather dubious claim, for something invented and used for more than 3000 years (see sundials and water clocks - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock). Uses mentioned incidentally in that wikipedia article seem to include religious observances, astronomy, astrology, watches (as in “night watch”).
Also, as I understand it, the navigation use wasn’t really practical until precise clocks were developed in the 18th century.
I can't think of anything that started as something to help bring people up to a median level, to then end up bringing median people into a super-human level. Everything we've done so far have all been ultimately limited by the human body, so things that bring people up to the median level ultimately have diminishing returns such that they don't benefit median people so much.
> In 2004, 4.6% of the anti-doping samples tested were positive, and that is taking into account that there were many dopers who never tested positive.
https://lanternerouge.com/2023/03/26/how-clean-is-cycling-an...
Prosthetics may not quite be there yet, but do you seriously think they won't get there?
Military is actively investing in exoskeleton R&D. Whether it's currently accessible to the median person is sort of besides the point.
It might happen in the future, but it's worth considering that a powerful prosthetic limb or exoskeleton that is superior to the biological version in every way makes both the disabled person and the perfectly healthy person equally superhuman.
> a powerful prosthetic limb or exoskeleton that is superior to the biological version in every way makes both the disabled person and the perfectly healthy person equally superhuman.
I think I'm not following, or else failing to see the relevance to this comment. This is essentially what the GP was getting at: these advancements can/will lead to anatomically "correct" humans failing to compete.
I suppose this is just down to interpretation/point of focus.
I was focusing on the 'levels' being referenced. A 'perfect' prosthetic allows all people to be able to reach the same level, while the GP was talking about things that bring below median people to median level only, and previously median people to super-human level.
If we interpret this to refer to competition against people who aren't using any augmentation, it covers even just the act of practicing. Which in my opinion, kind of defeats their point by making it excessively broad.
Imagine that a gene modification is discovered that allows a significant breakthrough in human memory. First, people with Alzheimer would undergo that treatment, to the cheers and applauds of virtually everyone (including me and you). Then the people with a risk of Alzheimer would undergo it, then it would be cheap enough that anybody rich enough could do it. Then imagine that e.g. I undergo that treatment and am now able to memorize all of Wikipedia, GitHub, and Stack Overflow. Then imagine competing against me for a job opening. You can practice all you want but never able to reach that level, because you're limited by genes while I've got rid of that limitation.
The Google guys are extremely well-invested in the bio-tech startups, and Larry the Oracle Guy puts all his money into an "institute for prolonging of human life". No bonus points will be awarded for the correct answer to the question "whose life exactly that institute is working to prolong?"
Or do you mean more people with all their genes switched "on" so to speak?
A gene can be expressed but from what I rember from my college classes....the epigenetics can determine if the gene actually works correctly and how effective it is.
Think of it as the ability to lower the overall expression of the gene
But historically the wealthy/first adopters help fuel the continued development of said inventions, which helps drive down the price, eventually allowing the larger public to have access to it.