Bring on the Motherfucking Genetic Engineering!

...yeah, I pass.

AFAIK, its one shot per eye (in the eye, unfortunately) and he didn't mention anything about it wearing off. You can hear the episode here. The discussion with the scientist starts after about the 20 minute mark or so. Its all worth listening to, however.

Oh, and Lasik was (I don't know if they still are now or not) advertising that people could have "better than normal vision" with the process.

And for the issue with Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!, let me point out that in the very near future, we're going to have implantable computers with far more processing power than even a genetically enhanced human brain. Like 10 billion times more powerful. With one of those, a toddler could mop the floor with Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! armed with little more than a dirty diaper.

WTF? The Uncle Albert "Anthrax" might have done me in. My symptoms are bleeding ears and dizziness. Is this normal?

These are the symptoms of having listened to Justin Bieber. Seek treatment and/or a Pink Floyd album immediately.

Okay, I did listen to part of it, and it does seem as if it would be a boon for the colorblind. (I know a guy who's completely red/green colorblind. He's learned to "read" shades of grey, to the point where he can watch a b&w movie and tell you what colors the actors are wearing, etc.)

But the idea that it took 20 weeks in the monkeys (would it take less or longer in humans?) and that as it exists now it's not reversible...well, if someone wants it badly enough, they should certainly be included in a clinical trial.

I'll still pass.

Well, shit, Skin's got an eye that ain't doin' nothin'. Shoot that shit right on in there.

Just give me the damn technology to take away my disability already!

I grok dkehler.

That 20 weeks might be because it took that long for the monkeys' brains that long to figure out what was going on. As they recount later on in the podcast, researchers have gone to remote tribes who didn't have a word for "blue" and shown them colored blocks which were all green save one that was blue. When asked to pick out the one that was different, the tribes people were stumped. They couldn't tell the difference.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "How the hell could they not have a word for blue? And how in the hell could they not see a difference between green and blue? The fucking sky is all around and its blue!" Its a complicated answer that they go into, but basically, in nature, very few things are blue, outside of the sky. So, its essentially invisible to them. They don't notice the color. (Blue is one of the hardest colors to make for things like paintings and dyeing cloth, BTW.)

As good an explanation as any. Hard to ask the monkeys specifically what they see. And, no, the idea that a people might not have a word for "blue" isn't all that surprising, given their environment, just as the Sami (not the Eskimos, as is commonly believed) have several hundred words for "snow."

I can already see color temperatures.

That actually brings up something else - would having all these extra receptors make one vulnerable to being flash blinded?

What if an epileptic had it done? Would it make them more susceptible to seizures?

Clearly, a lot more studying needs to be done...but it is an interesting development.

The interesting thing is that there are already people in the world who can see more colors. A percentage of women have four different variations of color cones in their eyes, versus the three that the majority of people have. If you've ever met one of these women who insists that there are massive differences between paint colors that look almost identical to you, you might both be right and you are just seeing the world through literally different eyes.

What if it made them immune to seizures, because they can see in-between strobes, thus nullifying them?

Well, that would be a good thing, then.

You'd look like a red X?

... like the computer in your parents' basement?

As a musician, I DON'T want perfect pitch. It'd be awful. Your ears would be locked in a specific tuning, while useful for well-tempered instruments like the piano or even the organ, it's next to useless in most musical settings. Relative pitch is much, much more useful, as it allows the player to know whether the ensemble as a whole is in tune to itself or not, whether or not the ensemble has drifted from the note they tuned to.

For example, if an orchestra tunes to A=440 (444 in Europe, 450 in Russia!) and then starts playing a piece that changes keys a lot, ending in a key fairly remote from A (say... Eb, a tritone away and as far from A as you can get), suddenly the orchestra's out of tune in relation to the key of A as the two keys have different harmonic series. Someone with perfect pitch would be driven up the wall.

At its most oversimplified:
Perfect pitch = digital
Relative pitch = analog

On topic: This GM sounds very intriguing. I'm sure it'll cost two arms and a leg if the FDA gives it a pass.

This distinction is historically interesting. There is no group that refers to itself as 'eskimo' (except sometimes more recently by appropriating a foreign monicker). While the origin of the word is unclear, it was mostly used either in a derogative or an ethnically ignorant vague fashion, but several decades back, the Sami were just as much an object of that use as the Inuit. That's when the 'fifty words for snow' meme started. For some reason, we stopped referring to the Sami as Eskimo altogether, whereas we somehow still think of the Inuit as 'the people we incorrectly call eskimo'. So then we take an old observation that very likely used to refer to [*eskimo]/Sami, test it with [*eskimo]/Inuit, and declare it false; then turn to the [*eskimo]/Sami, and are surprised that it's actually true for a different group!

(Whether it *is* true for the Sami is a bit of a difficult linguistic question, but at least it is easier to see what people mean for the Sami language.)

Someone at DARPA has already fapped a couple of dozen times over this.

"Better than normal" is usually around 20/15 vision, which some people have naturally, like my brother and mom (and here I am nearsighted and astigmatism in my right eye. Thanks, Dad. ).

I'm one of those, or I should say I was , 20/10 in one eye, 20/30 in the other. Because of this, I have spent the majority of my life with one eye closed, especially when reading.

Don't believe I've ever seen it explained so clearly.

All right, then, I'll settle for the ability to read music (something I'm told is located in the same region of the brain as math and language skills, and which apparently was omitted from the garamet1950 model ).

Because I do see what you mean or, at least, the closest I can come to a comparator would be the fact that I can't read a line of text without the typos jumping out at me (except my own - everyone apparently has a blind spot for their own typos). Very helpful in my line of work but, especially these days when the print media can't be bothered proofing their stuff, takes a lot of the fun out of everything from the latest novel to the daily newsfeed.

Heh. Decent writers are able to edit their own pieces to a degree. Something's always going to be missed in the initial passes (like I'll find some dumb, glaring typo in a piece I wrote a while back I wouldn't have beforehand -- because I took the time to read it aloud later on).

What's annoying is when I'm writing in French, and I know something doesn't look right but I can't put my finger on it. This is because I haven't made it a habit of practicing my French and its conjugations. Sad, really

As for music, it takes quite a bit of training and practice to acquire relative pitch, to learn what the different pitch ranges sound like in relation to each other. It's not impossible to learn music, especially as it's in the same part of the brain as language and math, but it takes a lot of time, dedication and practice to acquire any decent fluency. For example, I wouldn't rate my sight singing (or playing!) ability as too terribly great on an individual basis (it's fine in ensembles); while I could sight sing a Mozart or Beethoven with ease (or even Bach), I attribute that to familiarity with their styles. Throw in a clarinet solo by a composer I'm less familiar with... I'll struggle. With voice, it's even harder for me, especially when the vocal line isn't doubled by an accompanying instrument.

Once I learn it, however, I can get complacent and fail to practice, so those technical passages can be problematic (only a minor reason why I prefer to play alto or contra clarinet ).

Can you actually get lenses to correct something that minor?

As for me:

R: 20/20 for distance; 20/100 for reading, correctible to 20/20
L: 20/325, nominally correctible to 20/20, plus astigmatism, and requiring a prism to balance the sight-level with the right

That's why I wouldn't want to tinker with what is already a challenging situation.

More interesting information - thank you! It's probably one of those things like the white man claiming to "discover" things like the Americas.

AFAIK, every indigenous tribe of "Indians" has a name for itself that translates as "human beings," to distinguish themselves, one supposes, from "that tribe on the other side of the mountains with their filthy habits..."

That's pretty much true of all societies. They describe themselves as "people" while calling those guys over there "barbarians" or similar.

Just ask Ramen. They already have penile enhancement!*

And no, I don't know through personal experience.

In other eyeball related news.