That makes sense. Without my glasses, I can’t focus on an object 8 inches away from me. But not because it’s too close. It’s too damn far away. If I can be so nearslghted that 8 inches is too far away, someone could be so farsighted that 20 feet is too close to focus on. And there might not be any distance at all that can be seen in focus without eyeglasses, I get that too. Now that my eyeballs are old folks’ eyeballs and I need bifocals because the lenses can’t reshape the way they used to, my useful focal distance has shrunk to a narrow little 3 inch zone with everything else either “too close” or “too far away”.
To be clearer - I was not wondering about bringing the eye to 20/15, I was wondering about something like 20/5 or 20/1, superhero level vision.
It seems like many Dopers are suggesting that there is a trade-off between being far-sighted like that and losing your near vision. That seems to make sense intuitively, but I couldn’t find anything that verifies that is an actual limiting factor when it comes to surgery. Is that the case? “Well we could give you 20/1 corrective surgery, but then you’d only ever be able to read the want ads from across the room…” Maybe there is some physical limit on the human lens to flex and focus?
SamuelA seemed to have the closest to what I was looking for - that there are too many inherent flaws in the human eye which collectively can’t be corrected to that level.
Just to be clear, my vision with my glasses on is better than 20/20 for distance and is also good close up (for now, as I age my near vision is gradually deteriorating). There does not need to be a compromise between better than normal near and far vision.
And my second proposal was sort of tongue in cheek, but it’s true. If you really wanted to have reliable superhuman vision, the way would be a display that is very high resolution, mounted in a device that blocks all external light. Then computer algorithms would filter and sharpen and monitor what you are looking at to produce an enhanced image.
Of course, that’s if the tech worked perfectly. In reality your vision would probably be crammed full of distracting popups and notifications and people would routinely get hit by a bus while distracted. And battery life would be an ever present issue.
But it could be technically far superior, providing enhanced zoom, infrared and night vision and radar and pulling data from machine learning systems and the internet. Far better than anything your regular eyes will ever be able to do.