> Is it possible to patch the biological code, or is the obsolescence inevitable?
Patching? Conservatively yes. The problem is threefold:
1. The technological advancements needed to untangle the rat’s nest of dependencies that exist in the average, idealized brain, much less those developmental dependencies in any one individual brain. We have decades - if not centuries - of work ahead of us just with genetic diseases, and those are exceedingly simple in comparison. Reworking genetic expressions in neurological development is a whole different ballgame.
2. The best foundational/genetic-rewiring option moving forward is not to backport, but to work on new versions only. However, without a strictly regulated and socialist-like system that benefits everyone equally, the risk is virtually 100% that the wealthy clients will try to leverage this into establishing speciation between the haves (fantastic cognitive abilities) and the have-nots (legacy functionality only) in order to engineer a permanent economic and social stratification. And in no part of human history has this ever been a Good Thing in any fashion whatsoever.
3. Will we still be recognizably “human” after this is done, or will our ways of thinking make us completely alien to pre-mod humanity? What will we lose with these efficiencies? What “benefits” are really downsides in disguise? Will humanity look back at these modifications with regret, especially if we haven’t ensured a series of restore points to roll back to?
> Is it possible to patch the biological code, or is the obsolescence inevitable?
Patching? Conservatively yes. The problem is threefold:
1. The technological advancements needed to untangle the rat’s nest of dependencies that exist in the average, idealized brain, much less those developmental dependencies in any one individual brain. We have decades - if not centuries - of work ahead of us just with genetic diseases, and those are exceedingly simple in comparison. Reworking genetic expressions in neurological development is a whole different ballgame.
2. The best foundational/genetic-rewiring option moving forward is not to backport, but to work on new versions only. However, without a strictly regulated and socialist-like system that benefits everyone equally, the risk is virtually 100% that the wealthy clients will try to leverage this into establishing speciation between the haves (fantastic cognitive abilities) and the have-nots (legacy functionality only) in order to engineer a permanent economic and social stratification. And in no part of human history has this ever been a Good Thing in any fashion whatsoever.
3. Will we still be recognizably “human” after this is done, or will our ways of thinking make us completely alien to pre-mod humanity? What will we lose with these efficiencies? What “benefits” are really downsides in disguise? Will humanity look back at these modifications with regret, especially if we haven’t ensured a series of restore points to roll back to?