What do you believe the human body and mind is capable of?

[runic zephyr]

You’ve heard about the miracles from the past, you’ve seen people breaking world records time after time, pushing the limits of what the body is capable of, you’ve seen or read stories about super heroes. There seems to be a deep and strong, will for humans to push our limits with technology but also with our bodies and minds.

I am curious to hear your stories of people who have achieved what people used to think was impossible and would also like to hear what you personally believe to be possible in terms of new discoveries with our bodies and minds.

[flint ingot]

the olympics ban performance enhancing drugs; lets see what the human body can really do

[honest spade]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman's_dilemma

In the 1970s, Gabe Mirkin reported that more than half of the top runners whom he polled, would accept the following proposal: "If I could give you a pill that would make you an Olympic champion and also kill you in a year, would you take it?". This surprising result prompted Bob Goldman to ask world-class athletes in combat and power sports a similar question: "If I had a magic drug that was so fantastic that if you took it once you would win every competition you would enter from the Olympic Decathlon to the Mr Universe, for the next five years but it had one minor drawback, it would kill you five years after you took it, would you still take the drug?" He also found that more than half said they would take it. This result was consistent in his findings over a period from 1982 to 1995.

[honest spade]

All you'll get is a bunch of dead Olympic athletes

[flint ingot]

oh dear, oh bother. That is not so great indeed

[stark iris]

I'd say thay most skills humans currently have, are actually superhuman. Travelling at the speed of sound, sending our thoughts across the world with the speed of light, discovering the fabric of the universe with hadron colliders.

Even regular people preparing foods that we physically aren't able to process without technology.

We are superhumans right now.

[sweet isle]

You can talk about superhuman things but there are also lists that point out our inability as well. From everyday life inability to super-theoretical impracticality. The true test is to overcome simple humanness which the only approach right now is transhumanism, leaning on heavily on sci-fi such as Robocop (when going down that rabbit hole). The attempt to bypass humanness is not focused on our flaws but how to get around them instead.

"Ultimately, adherents of transhumanism envisage a day when humans will free themselves of all corporeal restraints. Kurzweil and his followers believe this turning point will be reached around the year 2030, when biotechnology will enable a union between humans and genuinely intelligent computers and AI systems. The resulting human-machine mind will become free to roam a universe of its own creation, uploading itself at will on to a “suitably powerful computational substrate”. We will become gods, or more likely “star children” similar to the one at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/06/no-death-and-an-enhanced-life-is-the-future-transhuman

[flint ingot]

Currently, if your muscles could life an enormus amount of weight, your body would crumble because your body is not meant to hold that much weight

[runic zephyr]

What if it were possible to have the technology guide our bodies through transhumanism without having the technology itself replace the said functions of our bodies. Example: Instead of a chip inserted inside the brain taking control of certain functions, finding a way to connect that chip to the brain and train the brain to make the changes itself, and being able to disconnect the chip afterwards and have the biological body transform itself (sort of like when you train a community how to fish instead of exporting fish to their community making them reliable to those exports). I know very little of the technical terms and 'limitations' of the human body, but I just learned 5 minutes ago, that the cells of the human body divide and create new cells every 24 hours, replicating their DNA every time.

That is just on the scale of cells. How about on the scale of atoms and quarks? How malleable are those inside our bodies? I agree this is farfetched to say the least but, who knows?

Every new discovery starts with a vision/ idea.

[flint ingot]

This reminds me of ant man; he can shrink and that 200 something pounds are compressed into a smaller area than should be possible. Similar thing to what you are thinking about. Someone’s body would need to be a lot denser, and hence also heavier. It would burn a lot more energy and that is a problem. Altering a person’s body would have repercussions on other functions, some that would not be good for the person. The person being the same size as a normal person, and twice as heavy, just would not be the same.

[runic zephyr]

You don't even need to go there with Antman; What about your emotions? You know you are capable of mastering your emotions from time to time, don't you? Or at least have some kind of control over them, or at least be able to ride them gracefully from time to time? What if you could learn to master them almost 100% of the time? It should be feasible, right? Imagine what effect you could have if you were to master that?

[flint ingot]

No. Emotions aren’t part of what a human being can physically do.

Do not take that statement the wrong way, becoming powerful, becoming strong, that requires willpower. Staying in shape. Exercising. But with science, if we could chance a person fundamentally at the dna level, the way you suggested I may add, emotionally someone could be any way and it would not affect what they physically can do.

Emotion is important for the motivation to do things. The non physical version of what you are talking about.

[runic zephyr]

Mind/body, physical/non physical… choose to believe what you will, but to me the lines aren’t black and white as such. It’s much more connected. You hear the word connected all the time when talking about reality and spirituality, but maybe that’s because it’s apparent everywhere. Emotions aren’t part of what a human being can physically do? I will agree to disagree on that.

[half drift]

I mean, everything is physocal, but thats hard for people to grasp since we humans like putting things in boxes