The Fence and the Slope: Why We Keep Legislating a Line That Isn't There

There is a decent instinct behind the augmentation bills now filed from Brasília to Jakarta: the wish to protect people from a change happening faster than consent can keep pace. But the drafters keep making the same error, and it is worth naming plainly. They want a fence — a clean line with the human on one side and the enhanced on the other — and the science keeps handing them a slope. A hearing implant and a cognitive lattice differ in degree, not in kind, and no committee vote can turn a gradient into a border. This does not mean we legislate nothing. It means we legislate the right things: hiring fairness, schooling access, honest disclosure, the safety review that Somaform's line still rightly faces. Regulate the harm, not the metaphysics. We will not vote our way to a definition of "human." We can, if we are humble, vote our way to a decent way of living without one.