[ExI] "Olympics on steroids" takes a high-tech, F1-style angle on athletics

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, 7 February, 2024 3:25 AM
To: Extropy Chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
Subject: [ExI] "Olympics on steroids" takes a high-tech, F1-style angle on athletics

"Olympics on steroids" takes a high-tech, F1-style angle on athletics
By Loz Blain   February 07, 2024

<https://newatlas.com/sports/enhanced-games-olympics-steroids/>
Quotes:
>...It seems the Enhanced Games are on like Donkey Kong, with multi-million dollar investments from Peter Thiel and other high-profile VCs. Performance-enhancing drugs are welcome – indeed, this could become an early preview of a transhuman Olympics.

>...You could argue the Tour de France beat them to it – or indeed the regular Olympics themselves; of the top six fastest men ever to run the 100-meter sprint, only Usain Bolt has never tested positive for banned substances.

>...And maybe we're being too precious about the sanctity of the human body, in an age where bionics, brain chips, AI, gene editing and all manner of transhumanist technologies are coming within reach. If this stuff can make us better, maybe we should let it, and maybe the Enhanced Games are a symbolic step in that direction.
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BillK

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BillK, I have been anticipating something like this for a long time.  I am surprised it has taken this long to happen, but not surprised Peter Thiel is the one who is getting it done.  He is a very special guy: smart as a whip, loooooves competition, any competitive skill-based game, hell he's worse than I am, sheesh.  The evolutionary psychology is strong in this one.

I aw a foot race where one of the competitors, Oscar Pistorius, was an amputee and had steel springs below the knee.  It occurred to me we might be able to rig something like that for people who have actual feet: some kind of springy something, where we could have a new class of competition: use any mechanical enhancement which does not involve wheels.  The hoop-spring leg adapters would be a great example.

The mechanical enhancements could (maybe) have electric power, or make that a separate category, powered and non-powered.  We have already explored deeply the race competitions which allow wheels.  Now I want to see wheeled robot races and non-wheeled enhanced human racing.

Oh mercy is this a great time to be living or what?

spike