Comment Re:Is this different from sport? (Score 2, Insightful) 487
Many of us spend our livelihoods trying to enhance human knowledge and experience and abilities through improved software. Hell, half of us would sign up today for an internet implant chip. What's wrong with improving the wetware directly?
The rules are different, but the problems are the same as in sports with steroids. They start to arise when us others, who for various reasons don't want sign up for "improving the wetware directly", don't have any possibility of leaving normal lives anymore. You want super-powers. That's fine. But first move our society away from competitive living to just living. Take away the "winner takes it all" mentality, so you can have your drugs while I won't have mine.
Why? Because "winning" defined as who's better at "enhance human knowledge and expirience and abilities", "being smarter", "be productive", recognize a novel cure for disease" is just as random as "being a better entertainer at sports" -- life, as we live it, is still a game with a relatively level playing field imposed by society. The ruleset may be a lot more complex than sports, but still it has it's own rules and enforcements. Otherwise, in the absence of rules and enforcement, what would stop me from killing your drug-pumped, better-graded child, in order for my clean, very smart, but slightly less-performant kid to have a chance for University later on, too?
Now, we can argue whether society is such a good concept to have or not, but this is a different debate. At any rate, as long as we have one, we need to make sure that every member of society has a decent chance, not only those who would readily put their long-term health at risk for being more productive. (How much "productive" do you actually need, really, that cannot be archived otherwise? And for what, exactly?)