For your first point: the relative risk factors vary significantly with age.

For a young person deciding between LASIK and contacts the chance of a significant problem due to the surgery is actually lower than the chance of one due to contacts (accidents putting them in and taking them out, contamination causing eye damage or infection, ...) over the next few decades.

For me at 37 that balance is probably the other way (caveat: I've not researched this, I'm just assuming), and there aren't many years before I'd need some form of extra correction even if I did have LASIK now. This plus your other points are pretty much why I'm still on the fence about my own eyes despite finding glasses and contacts inconvenient in different ways at different times (and likely to stick with contacts).

When you say that the risk with LASIK is lower than for contacts for younger people, does that take into account different habits? My guess (and this is totally a guess, barely informed) would be that the statement is true for the general population, but that it is not true if you actually do everything properly and consistently.

There are a frightening number of people out there who don't wash their hands before they insert or remove their lenses, or sleep with them in, or never get new ones. I'd wager that problems are greatly concentrated among those people, and that if you actually take them out every night, wash your hands thoroughly before you manipulate them, and throw them away at the appointed date, the chances of problems go way down.

For a common example of this at work, if you look up the statistics for the effectiveness of condoms, they look like they barely work at all. Then if you look up the statistics for people who actually use them properly (which includes such subtle things as actually using one every time instead of occasionally just doing without) they get a lot better.

IIRC the study I'm quoting (from memory, I can't find a link to it right now to verify unfortunately) they were considering everybody so yes, for people doing things right all the time the risk would be lower and those not (possibly lower than the LASIK risk).

It was only looking at people using daily lenses (the variety that I use) so things might be worse for monthly or "permanent" lenses depending on what you clean them with.

Some of the risk considered was manufacturing defects and so forth, so not all the risk considered was human error on the part of the user.

I imagine controlling for human error is hard, because people will lie to you.

I also imagine that patient error is a factor in LASIK risk too, because there's post-surgery care you need to follow, and if you don't do it right you probably increase your risk.

So in both cases, you should look at the risk with an eye (heh) towards your ability to do things properly, and try to be honest with yourself about your willpower in that respect.

The autofocus lens looks really interesting. One of the things I'm worried about is what I'll have to do once I get older and my lens starts to lose flexibility. Is there any more you can share about them, like how they work or how likely it is that they'll be available as a real product in a decade or two?

Much to my chagrin, I'm not allowed to talk in detail about anything (technology or timelines). But I think it's compelling... :)

That's OK, I figured that would probably be the case. I hope you make something great!