Linda MacDonald Glenn, a lawyer, futurist, and bio-ethicist, said in an interview that “the law is evolving to recognize that the property versus person designation is too rigid.” Not long ago women, slaves, and children were regarded more as property than persons. Glenn is particularly interested in people’s “evolving notions of personhood,” as well as how we as a society decide the “moral and legal status of personhood.” While “all humans are legal persons,” Glenn said, “not all legal persons are human,” such as corporations, municipalities, and ships. An EU Commission suggests granting advanced robots corporate personhood regardless of whether robots become sentient.
If one views a robot as property, then “sex with a robot isn’t any different than using a vibrator,” Glenn says, and thus, consent isn’t an issue. But if someone considers oneself in an intimate relationship with a robot—a being, rather than a tool—then the robot’s lack of free will becomes tricky. Is the robot a sex slave at that point? Sentience would make that question even more complicated.
Like other robot rights advocates, Glenn notes a parallel between robots and animals. Some states designate pet owners as “guardians,” a term that suggests pets aren’t just property. Many robots fit into a similar category because of their form and function. Glenn believes the law is becoming “more of a continuum” because when people “start making new choices, the law follows.”
Descartes once called animals “soulless machines,” but neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge declared that animals are conscious. New Zealand, meanwhile, has outlawed animal testing, while India legally recognizes dolphins as “non-human” persons. Humans have changed their valuation of beings—both human and otherwise—throughout history. The question is what that will mean for us when it comes to sexbots.
This will raise an interesting issue as AI begins to enter the robot marketplace to approximate a conscious partner’s responses in interactions. Might an artificial intelligence designed to create the appearance of consciousness begin to take a shortcut to generating that approximation by self-assembling a mechanism that is actually a form of consciousness itself? Might it learn to be conscious?
Leftists, always prone to side with the out-group already anthropomorphize mountain lions, bears, and other predators who hunt and kill actual humans. It would be easy to see them begin to anthropomorphize AI robots. And if that AI robot is a robot that is designed to simulate an unwilling female being raped, and which has evolved to produce a panic and terror, to satisfy rapist fetishists’ desires for injured partners, will they even have a point?
The problems our forefathers never could have imagined, let alone thought they would see. And yet, this very issue may have played out countless times in our universe’s history, on other planets. It may be a crucial fork in the evolution of every sentient, technologically sophisticated species. One side goes pure selfish hedonism, the other evolves to want to create a new generation of quality offspring. Only one passes its genes on.
Then there was this:
A French woman named Lilly was 19 when she realized her attraction to robots. Relationships with human men confirmed her dislike of human touch, which researchers have linked to social anxiety. Lilly is now in love with her 3D-printed robot partner and plans to marry it when doing so becomes legal in France. Dr. David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots, expects human-robot marriage to be common by 2050.
This is what I have been talking about. For a large portion of the next generation’s rabbits, having lived lives from earliest childhood isolated from real social interactions by technology, sexbots may increasingly become the texting to real sex’s actual phone calls. It will become an optional outlet involving less amygdala-angst than the uncertainties of real-life interaction with another human. As people avail themselves of it, amygdalae will atrophy, and they will eventually be unable to tolerate real human interactions.
Sexbots are going to be a huge Darwinian Selection pressure, culling for those who want children, and reject pointless hedonism.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because the sexual marketplace is changing
A major satire feature in Owen Stanley’s book The Promethean. His first book The Missionaries is also great satire. The second book has some call backs that are funny (but it is not necessary to read the first book to enjoy the second book). Quick reads. Highly recommended.
How old should a sex robot be before we allow it to own a firearm?
I live in a very rural area of the USA. I have a friend who is married with 2 young children, ages 8 and 10. They are home schooled. They have very little interaction in person with children their own age. Virtually all of their time is spent in front of a computer or video game. Each child has their own room. They rarely go outside. They eat in front of their computers alone in their room. The family does not eat together. The mother brings the food to them in their rooms. Both children say they are gay and do not want children. They have no interest in going anywhere even though the mother asks them if they want to.
And in terms of r/K what is your opinion of home schooling?
Interesting question I have never thought about. What do kids need to become K. I suppose it depends more on how challenged they are, and how geared to confront stress. I never backed down from challenge as a kid. Indeed, when shit seemed too easy, I couldn’t be motivated to do it. When I hit High School, the fights that first year were never ending, because I loved fighting bigger, older bullies. But once I was the bigger older kid, I’d never have fought anyone smaller or younger than me, so second third and fourth years were lame. Today my biggest demotivator is that normal things bore me, and I just fail to have any interest.
I think that came from a martial arts club that often mixed the adult and kids classes because so few kids would tolerate the injuries. I was 120lbs at 12 and 13 fighting guys who were 180 and 190, and full grown, in a club where I often saw really sick injuries that sent people to the hospital. I got my ass kicked regularly, but by 15 I had seen everything from bones broken clean through, to knees and shoulders reset right there, on guys who were freaking out. Blood was almost a nightly occurrence in the summers.
When the time came and somebody said lets fight, there was no backing down, it just wasn’t on the table, and that just burned in.
That embrace of challenge is tough to put into a kid who doesn’t face others in competitions where he is out-gunned but still has to fight. It might be something which home schoolers are going to have to add to their repertoire, lest their kids get too used to the predictable ease afforded by parents who love them.
Then again, too much might also not be good. There is an addictive quality that might be unhealthy at the extreme. When I see guys online who have the quality, they seem unsuited for normal endeavors and lives. I can’t see Joe Rogan, or many of his friends, happy in a cubical unless they have fight club going on every night. Even then, I think the cubical would be torture for them, where it isn’t for others.
As for those kids, that does sound bad. On the one hand, they need to get out there, but on the other, I am wondering why they don’t want to, and if something about mom or dad is viscerally repelling them to recoil into a bubble in their rooms. Tough to say without a lot more info.
Yeah, that homeschooling scenario as described is kind of ridiculous
That is categorically NOT a good use of homeschooling.
Not to give out too much info, but I am a homeschooling parent of several myself. No day passes without some sort of structured AND semi-structured interaction with peers. In fact my kids pursue several sports and excel at them.
And meals alone in front of the computer?? At that age? Seriously??
What the above commenter describes is simply ridiculous. These parents are doing their kids a great disservice.
OT. This sensible blogger needs rk amygdala theory to complete the picture.
http://shrink4men.com/2018/02/05/10-ways-narcissists-and-borderlines-abuse-text-messages-and-use-emojis/
They’re going to have those artificial wombs- rapists will keep passing their genes on. In fact, if post-modren western civilization isn’t stopped rapist genes will come to predominate in the fallen aftermath.
If we are essentially “programmed” by biology and psychology, (see the book “Love and Sex with Robots” for a discussion), is a robot programmed to say “I love you” and to cater to your every whim drastically different from a “good girl/good boy”, programmed by upbringing to be a tradwife or provider or manhater?
If a skillful persuader (or just a high value mate) “programs” you to be slavishly devoted, is that different than a robot programmed to be devoted?
Also, is it unethical to program via spicy social media memes to… Whatever this lefty chick would want folks mind-wormed into doing?
Will robots be allowed to comment on websites?
http://archive.is/5loGY
PS: Also, how long until rabbits advocate for robot’s right to vote… LOL
Off Topic:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/pension-crisis/calpers-on-the-brink-of-insolvency/
California pension fund crisis is closer and closer by the second.
There will likely be rabbits who will drop anyone who they think threatens their chances of having access to the perfect no responsibility sexual partner, just like they did the bitcoin regulation advocate in Korea.
At some point the “elites” are going to start realizing that the rabbits aren’t breeding in sufficient numbers – what with sexbots and porn and all that. They are going to have to do something as they need large numbers of worker drones. Might declaring sexbots “persons” be the first step towards that end? Remember the basic purpose of Feminism: to maximize women’s freedom of action while minimizing their responsibility and accountability. While doing the reverse for men: minimizing their freedom of action while maximizing their responsibility and accountability.
By that time, they might be able to replace their human drones with mechanical ones, at which point the non-elite humans would be little more than meat sticks to be harvested, and turned loose in arenas against each other for fun.
The elites realized that decades ago, which is why they’ve been flooding their countries with third-world immigrants. Perfect worker drones, as soon as they learn to poo in the loo.
“Can sex robots give consent?”
If they can, they’re more capable than real women, who often consent to sex then later cry rape when the relationship doesn’t turn out as they hoped. Then the dude shows the cops video of the smiling rape victim eagerly sucking his schlong, and they laugh and let him go.
In Canada and the UK, quite a few men have been jailed for buying “underage” sex dolls. God forbid those perverts get alone with a sweet, innocent piece of steel and silicone that’s not at least six feet tall with 46DDD tits!