How Long Until the Cyborg Olympics Are Better Than the Traditional Games?

the_newsbeagle writes: In October 2016, a stadium in Zurich will host the world's first cyborg Olympics. During this event, more officially called the Cybathlon, people with disabilities will use advanced technologies such as exoskeletons and powered prosthetic limbs to compete in the games. This article chronicles one team's training for the bicycle race, where the athletes will be people with paralyzed legs. The team is composed of the paralyzed biker who has an electrical stimulation system implanted in his body, and the engineers who built the gear that energizes his nerves and muscles.

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[Etherwalk]

The olympics are the single most boring events out there. This is just slightly more interesting.

This. Most Olympic sports don't have much strategy to them. A lot of them are in part a question of who has the best unfair evolutionary advantage (how big are your feet, Australian Swimmer), in part a question of how much money you have for your coach (hi, rich kids!), in part a question of how much your country is willing to lie (Weren't the Chinese Gymnasts too young to compete last time, or something like that?), and in part a question of how good you are at not having your drugs detected (hello, Lanc

Evolutionary Advantage

[Etherwalk]

best unfair evolutionary advantage

How is evolutionary advantage unfair?

Seriously?

It is unfair because it is an advantage that a person receives without effort, resulting in a biased starting point as compared to other competitors.

Consider whether it is fair to have a basketball team of 5'4" players play against a team of 7'4" players. Both receive the same amount of practice.

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[penguinoid]

That might be unsportsmanlike, but not unfair. If someone chose to do something they're inherently bad at they should expect to lose to someone who chose to do something they are inherently good at -- that's only fair. Pretending everyone is identical doesn't do them justice.

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[Etherwalk]

That might be unsportsmanlike, but not unfair. If someone chose to do something they're inherently bad at they should expect to lose to someone who chose to do something they are inherently good at -- that's only fair. Pretending everyone is identical doesn't do them justice.

Pretending everyone is identical is *exactly* what most sports do, because they don't adjust the rules based on the starting characteristics of a team, for example.

I'll admit that fairness is, to some degree, an arbitrary concept and it's almost infinitely debatable what it means to be "fair." I think it's unfair to put two people in a boxing ring when one of them has a significant advantage that has nothing to do with his skill and then to herald the "winner" for being "better" when he just happens to hav

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[Etherwalk]

and in part a question of how good you are at not having your drugs detected (hello, Lance Armstrong)

What Lance Armstrong did was wrong, but it had nothing to do with drugs. Please do not spread lies. Or if something else came up involving Lance Armstrong and drugs, then cite it.

It had nothing to do with drugs if you are the biggest Lance Armstrong supporter in the world, maybe. In the real world, if it quacks like a duck, it probably is one.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[AndyKron]

Don't forget rotten to the core, too

We can't put the genie back in the

[clarkn0va]

"It would seem strangely restrictive to deny the farming industry GM technology already so widespread in fields like large-scale construction, computer programming, pornography, and professional sports." [theonion.com]

Cyborg olympics?

[Chris Mattern]

BOO-YAH! [nocookie.net]

I WIN!

[s.petry]

iddqd idkfa

Let's see who knows those two magic strings...

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[Chris Mattern]

In this age of Google, you can't stump people that way any more. You forgot idclip, by the way.

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[s.petry]

idclip was not in the original game so I did not forget it. If you didn't know the strings off the top of your head there is no magic.. it's just another crappy search result.

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[i.r.id10t]

plugh

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[Behrooz Amoozad]

invulnerability and keys and weapons, idfa is for weapons only
does knowing these make me old?

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[Spy Handler]

When there's trouble you know what to do
Call Cyborg!
He can shoot a rocket through his shoe
Go call Cyborg!

Supermod

[Locke2005]

In snowmobile racing, they used to have "stock" and "supermod" classes. I've always thought the Olympics should do the same and have separate events for those people willing to undergo harmful body modifications in order to win -- no drug testing necessary!

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[mwvdlee]

And somehow the honor system will make sure the athletes in the "unenhanced" category will not use drugs?

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[turkeydance]

+1 great idea, but the super-mods will get all the $ponsor$hip$.

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[swb]

I've always thought that if they just didn't do drug testing *at all* what would happen is that athletes would take more and more aggressive substances until people started dying in competition and/or former athletes were impossibly sick.

Once it reached that point, the athletes themselves would just refuse all but the most demonstrably benign performance enhancements and we'd mostly be back to where we are now (which IMHO is take what you can get away with, and mostly this means taking stuff that is benign

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[q4Fry]

In snowmobile racing, they used to have "stock" and "supermod" classes. I've always thought the Olympics should do the same and have separate events for those people willing to undergo harmful body modifications in order to win -- no drug testing necessary!

I think that's nominally the setting of a Niven/Barnes novel called "Achilles Choice."

Just what makes you a cyborg?

[techno-vampire]

I have ocular implants and adjustable, augmented hearing. Is that enough to make me a cyborg? If not, why not, and how much more would it take?

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[Stormwatch]

He is the modren man.

Define "better"

[i.r.id10t]

All depends on how you define "better". Faster, further, higher? Soonish, if events are exact same-same. Some events like trap shooting a disability may not matter - I've seen a guy in a wheel chair keep up with the pros. Some like perhaps the high jump I'd almost expect them to do it kinda soonish - it becomes a matter of engineering. If you look at Olympic vs. Paralympic record - I picked 200m men's sprint - you can see some times that are getting *very* close to Usian Bolt's 9.30 second time from the 2008 games.

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[sunderland56]

So if I break my little toe, have a top fuel dragster surgically attached, and then win the 100m dash, is that "better"?

Faster, further, higher - all human achievement is easily surpassed by machines. Just because a human is a part of the machine doesn't mean that it should qualify for any Olympic event.

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[dpidcoe]

The locomotion should probably be provided by legs in some way to keep it at least semi-interesting. Wheelchair racing on the other hand....

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[wonkey_monkey]

Regardless, the nice thing here is that this could do for prostethics what auto racing did for regular cars.

Ugh. People are going to starting putting spoilers on their legs?

Not to be confused with an athletic competition

[kheldan]

They shouldn't call such a thing an 'olympics' of any sort, because there's no real athleticism involved; it's more like a technology demonstration, and has more in common with 'Battlebots' than it does the Olympics.

Of course that being said, the Olympics, anymore, are more about world politics than they are about athleticism anyway.

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[tlhIngan]

They shouldn't call such a thing an 'olympics' of any sort, because there's no real athleticism involved; it's more like a technology demonstration, and has more in common with 'Battlebots' than it does the Olympics.

Of course that being said, the Olympics, anymore, are more about world politics than they are about athleticism anyway.

This.

It's nice as a tech demo, but I wouldn't put much value in the results because really, it's just which country can spend the most money. And after a few times of it being b

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[afgam28]

I was under the impression that the Olympics is already a competition of which country can spend the most on training facilities for its athletes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/busine... [bbc.com]
http://www.yellowfinbi.com/YFC... [yellowfinbi.com]

Since it's always going to be about who can spend the most either way, I don't see why an engineering competition is any less interesting than an athletic competition.

Motorsports (Formula One, Le Mans) are already like this, and I find it interesting because you get to see engineers push the boundar

Re:

[decipher_saint]

Bender: Now Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern hitting machine!

Leela: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns! I mean come on! Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.

Bender: Oh and I suppose Pitch-o-Mat 5000 was just a modified howitzer.

Leela: Yep.

How Clean is Financing and Hosting?

[cleara]

Will we end up with the same issues regarding finances, hosting, and sponsorships? Will we end up with cities and states shelling out big bucks for empty promises and artists being sued for using anything closely resembling the logos in their artwork?

One question

[93 Escort Wagon]

Will the proud people of Robonia be represented? I kind of have a thing for Coilette.

I'd like to see amateur competitors instead

[k6mfw]

Amateur instead of professionals, i.e. people that are really into sport but they have a non-sport day job. However, they are so good that others are willing to pay their room and board so these competitors can spend more time training. Each country selects the best amateur competitors to represent the best of the country's common people. (if you are already a professional sports player, sorry, you already have world cup and series competitions)

Better how?

[EdwardFurlong]

Performance, popularity, etc? If it ever did become really popular I think there would just be so many rules and regulations regarding the technology you can use that it would make it all pretty boring. Keep it unregulated and I think it would be interesting.

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[EdwardFurlong]

Enter the story of the athlete cutting off their legs to compete in the now popular cyborg Olympics. Or the "jockey" that is just a brain in a jar to get the weight of the robot down. I am all for it.

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[fustakrakich]

Performance, popularity, etc?

Smog and polluted water won't be a problem.

How long?

[nospam007]

Mmmm, how about now?

That's a pretty low bar.

[Oloryn]

Given how commercialized and tied up in monopolies the traditional games are, isn't trying to be better than the tradional games setting the bar pretty low?

Battlebots

[jfdavis668]

It has already happened.

clear limits

[Khashishi]

There are (reasonably) clear expectations on what is allowable in the Olympics. No enhancements, no doping (although supplements are a bit of a grey area). There is a little bit of arbitrariness required to make clear rules. But it's nowhere as bad as in Cyborg Olympics. Where's the limit? We can't have rocket cars with a little bit of human DNA thrown in there competing in the 100m dash. How do you clearly define what a cyborg is in a way that will hold up in light of rapidly increasing technology?