Imagine if you were deaf: "I've been able to get rather similar perceptions just through regular living…walking on the street and feeling a subway train below the ground. I've felt the vibration of the grinding tracks…seen sparks or electric bolts when subway cars temporarily lose power…why would I grow so tired and bored of the senses that I have, that I would want to hear?"

Asimov, back in 1939, wrote a great short story that has stuck with me ever since I read it for the first time: The Secret Sense[1]. It tells the story of Martians, who are mocked and pitied by Earthlings for their terrible sense of sight and hearing, such that they have no appreciation for our great art, our paintings, our music. I won't give away any more of the plot, suffice to say I recommend you find yourself a copy to read, and hope it brings you the wonder and reflectiveness the story brought to me when I was a boy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Sense (contains spoilers)

Well yeah, people who are deaf tend to have hearing aids (hopefully if they can afford to). Same as how people who are amputees have a prosthetic leg/arm/etc.

But I would say that serves a different scenario.

> Is the issue that people nowadays are too stubborn to ignore the senses they already have, or grow so tired and bored of them that they need to add a completely new one?

That's kind of a negative outlook on the whole thing, isn't it? I imagine people said similar things about, for example, headphones, or GPS. And while both of those things have potential downsides, people don't use them because they're too lazy to read a paper map or too selfish to want to share a music experience with friends.

I don't mean for it to come off as a negative outlook, so apologies since it apparently did.

I just don't see an embedded magnet as being the same kind of assistive device as headphones or GPS. Neither of those examples provide a new sense (which was my original comment's example of what an implanted magnet does). They don't replace senses or add completely new ones. Unless someone is capable of storing an entire region's map to memory and locating themselves within that region precisely (maybe some people can to an extent, but not entirely the same).

I feel like both of those things have very clear advantages (ie, paper maps are large and cumbersome, I can store much more data on a server, I don't want to bring a boombox on the subway).

I'm all for people doing what they want as long as it's not extremely selfish, but I cannot myself see a clear advantage to a magnet implant, other than:

A. Party tricks B. Telling people I have a magnet in my finger

I think it probably comes from a wish for ill-thought out sci-fi tropes with the less than adequate technology at hand.

I think I agree with your last sentence - the current technology is pretty crappy. But given our brains' plasticity, I don't see any reason against grafting additional senses onto ourselves, anymore than I see any particularly good reason against wearing a watch.