I'm going to sound like an old man yelling at cloud here, despite being only 24. On one hand, I don't care what people buy or do in the privacy of their own home as long as it's consensual and...
I'm going to sound like an old man yelling at cloud here, despite being only 24.
On one hand, I don't care what people buy or do in the privacy of their own home as long as it's consensual and safe. Being a sexbot is both of those things, unless the thing awakens and decides to kill its owner.
On the other, we've been promoting solitary livestyles that don't engage in communal livestyles for a long time now, and I say that as someone who is online a lot. Products like these are going to encourage people even more to never engage with the real world and never leave their home. I doubt that many people will engage with these as long as they aren't perfected. They are a very expensive investment and always will be.
What I think will proliferate more is some sort of combination of a fleshlight/dildo connected to a VR/AR environment, sort of like you see in Cyberpunk 2077 and other various media. It's cheaper, easier to manufacture, doesn't require you to pass the uncanny valley that real robots have to get through, and it can get a lot wilder as you are not constrained by reality anymore.
I'm not saying it's a better alternative. It does the same thing as a sexbot, pushing people into just being terminally online, never engaging with the real world nor caring much about it. But I suppose they should be allowed to do so. I don't know, it's complicated.
I tend to think after many years of hearing this argument, which has been around in some shape or form for thousands of years, that this is an edge case scenario. Yes, some people will end up...
pushing people into just being terminally online, never engaging with the real world nor caring much about it.
I tend to think after many years of hearing this argument, which has been around in some shape or form for thousands of years, that this is an edge case scenario. Yes, some people will end up interacting only with their sexbots. But not many, and I wonder how many of those people would previously be shutting themselves away with books or PCs or streaming services or whichever the latest horror is. In my experience, most people like doing things with other people.
What I think will proliferate more is some sort of combination of a fleshlight/dildo connected to a VR/AR environment
These exist. They're quite spendy but nothing on the tens of thousands for a fancy dollbot. I wonder how much the popularity of that kind of thing will suffer because of the general friction of getting set up? Carmack talks about that being a major hurdle in VR/AR adoption.
Yea, but given how specifically designed to be addicting these virtual world can be makes it a bit of a bigger problem than the usual 'kids disrespecting their elders' ranting. I'm pushin 40, and...
this is an edge case scenario
Yea, but given how specifically designed to be addicting these virtual world can be makes it a bit of a bigger problem than the usual 'kids disrespecting their elders' ranting.
I'm pushin 40, and even with just smartphones I can see the huge disconnect between people and their surroundings. People will say how beautiful nature is while dumping gallons of pesticides and roundup on their lawns.
People who never have seen a cow die don't really care much if the rainforest burns to get their burger.
I don't think peoples general ability to not see the bigger picture is quite the same as the very specific case of people avoiding society in favour of staying home to bang a robot. For what it's...
I don't think peoples general ability to not see the bigger picture is quite the same as the very specific case of people avoiding society in favour of staying home to bang a robot.
For what it's worth the part of that Socrates quote I had in mind was "love chatter in place of exercise" - the old have always worried that the kids will choose self-indulgent fun over going outside and doing stuff. (although I am older than both you and @Grzmot)
Also with sex stuff there is a physical demand on the body which tends to make things a little self-limiting. Like with eating chocolate, no matter how tasty it is there comes a point where I'm just... done for a while. I want a break. Even as a teenager there were limits! (to the amount of chocolate I could eat). This is in contrast to phones/pcs/etc where there's a whole huge range of distractions available in one device. So if smartphones didn't make all the humans stay indoors and just be online, sexbots and automated sex toys costing up to twenty times as much are unlikely to.
People will say how beautiful nature is while dumping gallons of pesticides and roundup on their lawns.
Is this anything to do with technology? People have always thought nature beautiful but humans have been destroying the wild environment for millennia. Admittedly we've got rather better at it in the last few centuries but still. Smartphones have only been around for less than two decades.
Also don't put roundup on your lawn. You won't have a lawn afterwards. Any green growth. But I feel this is drifting a little off topic...
Voila. Roundup for lawns. But really, I'm talking about what Grzmot mentioned... A sexbot (or other toys in that vein) taken in isolation isn't really a problem. But it's just one more piece...
Voila. Roundup for lawns. But really, I'm talking about what Grzmot mentioned...
Products like these are going to encourage people even more to never engage with the real world and never leave their home.
A sexbot (or other toys in that vein) taken in isolation isn't really a problem. But it's just one more piece fueling our increasingly isolationist society. Another Brick in the Wall if you will.
A person walking around outside, but staring at their smartphone with their headphones on is just as perpetually online and not interacting with the world around them as someone locked in their bedroom with a fancy fleshlight.
The average car occupancy is less than 2. Average miles driven is 12,000 a year. At 60 mph that's 200 hours of isolation a year....probably a lot more in practice. 1100+ hours of passive TV watching a year is normalized. Just those two activities consumes 80 full days of the year (at 16 hours a day). Add in 40 hours of work a week and your up to 205 days of nothing but driving, work, and TV (or substitute). While some people derive social pleasure from work, Iarge swaths do not. So we're down to 160 days to interact with the environment outside of work. So now lets add sex bots and/or VR sex toys. Even if actual enagement with sex toys is 5 minutes or less a day...afterwards does the person get dressed go out for a bite to eat with friends...or do they stay home and play videogames without pants for 2 more hours before going for another round?
People whom have never seen wilderness don't have a personal connection to it. We have an academic understanding of its importance, but without that personal connection they're not gonna boycott McDonalds coherently enough to get them to stop buying beef from rainforest-burning pastures. People want a green turf lawn (even if they never set foot on it), so they'll pay someone else to take care of it...or use the cheapest quickest way to achieve that result...because they don't have a sort of connection to the outside world to see the harm that their actions are taking on the world outside their fenced in yard.
We're continually adding new gadgets to distract us from the existential horror we're creating around us. New innovations that do not foster putting down the screen and interacting with people outside the confines of our homes is just making the problems worse....not even factoring in the additional energy demands to use them.
Oh, doing it twice eh? FANCY. I do understand what you're saying but I don't know if a sexbot is providing a new distraction, or merely replacing a different, lower tech one. People have been...
actual engagement with sex toys is 5 minutes or less
Oh, doing it twice eh? FANCY.
I do understand what you're saying but I don't know if a sexbot is providing a new distraction, or merely replacing a different, lower tech one. People have been making sex toys for.. tens of thousands of years, possibly longer. And we've had hands and fingers the entire time.. Dolphins will stick their dicks into anything that feels nice, up to and including dead fish. Masturbation aids are not limited to humans.
Also if you're arguing that all the trappings of modernity are taking people away from the wilderness and somehow the wilderness is essential to our survival (which imo is not an argument without some merit), then you're not saying sexbots are bad, you're saying everything is bad. So it's less "what's so wrong about sexbots?" and more "what's so wrong about everything we've invented since agriculture?". Which is probably a position that has some legs. But it doesn't require the existence or not of sexbots.
A person walking around outside, but staring at their smartphone with their headphones on is just as perpetually online and not interacting with the world around them as someone locked in their bedroom with a fancy fleshlight.
I would hope the person walking around in public is engaging in some other form of distraction to the one inside with the sex toys, although you never know. But what if they're watching an Attenborough documentary which is taking them outside the city they might not otherwise be able to afford to leave? Or listening to Greta Thunberg talk? What if they're reading about how to lower their energy footprint? Or perhaps they are interacting with people on a forum just like this one? Or even booking their next trip to the countyside? It's entirely possible to have positive interactions with the world via a screen, they are just tools and they can be good as well as bad.
The sexbots can too - how many people might use them let out energies which could otherwise find a much (much) less pleasant outlet involving another human? There is, as @lou alluded to, some evidence that is the case.
I engage with the real world through a screen from my home all the time. Well, I think I do. If I don't there's some incredibly sophisticated chatbots around here. The "real" world is a multi-faceted thing and it doesn't just mean walking among ancient trees (although that is an excellent thing to do).
These robots do seem a bit creepy but I think that's more to do with Uncanny Valley effects than anything else. I don't really have any kind of problem with people owning sophisticated sex toys....
These robots do seem a bit creepy but I think that's more to do with Uncanny Valley effects than anything else. I don't really have any kind of problem with people owning sophisticated sex toys. Whatever gets you through the day, right?
On the privacy front I think there are potential issues but I don't think that's by any means exclusive to sex tech. Although I once bought a sex toy which suggested I connect it's app to Facebook and it could post updates to my timeline. Hey, um, whatever floats your boats people but...
There are tangible benefits to sex robots that are similar to the benefits of sex work and porn. First, they allow people with disabilities to achieve sexual gratification. Second, they do the...
There are tangible benefits to sex robots that are similar to the benefits of sex work and porn. First, they allow people with disabilities to achieve sexual gratification. Second, they do the same for those that wish for sexual gratification without an emotional connection, or human connection at all. Third, such robots can be made to fulfill whatever the user desires regardless of morality. By doing so, they might help the user manage their fixations in a way that won't harm actual human beings. In that way, sex robots could reduce the incidence of sexual assault, benefiting society as a whole.
Fry falls in love with a Lucy Liu robot that is voiced by Lucy Liu. There's a PSA demonizing human-robot love. The robots revolt. Chaos ensues. Not much is resolved, but it's pretty fun.
Fry falls in love with a Lucy Liu robot that is voiced by Lucy Liu. There's a PSA demonizing human-robot love. The robots revolt. Chaos ensues. Not much is resolved, but it's pretty fun.
I'm going to sound like an old man yelling at cloud here, despite being only 24.
On one hand, I don't care what people buy or do in the privacy of their own home as long as it's consensual and safe. Being a sexbot is both of those things, unless the thing awakens and decides to kill its owner.
On the other, we've been promoting solitary livestyles that don't engage in communal livestyles for a long time now, and I say that as someone who is online a lot. Products like these are going to encourage people even more to never engage with the real world and never leave their home. I doubt that many people will engage with these as long as they aren't perfected. They are a very expensive investment and always will be.
What I think will proliferate more is some sort of combination of a fleshlight/dildo connected to a VR/AR environment, sort of like you see in Cyberpunk 2077 and other various media. It's cheaper, easier to manufacture, doesn't require you to pass the uncanny valley that real robots have to get through, and it can get a lot wilder as you are not constrained by reality anymore.
I'm not saying it's a better alternative. It does the same thing as a sexbot, pushing people into just being terminally online, never engaging with the real world nor caring much about it. But I suppose they should be allowed to do so. I don't know, it's complicated.
I tend to think after many years of hearing this argument, which has been around in some shape or form for thousands of years, that this is an edge case scenario. Yes, some people will end up interacting only with their sexbots. But not many, and I wonder how many of those people would previously be shutting themselves away with books or PCs or streaming services or whichever the latest horror is. In my experience, most people like doing things with other people.
These exist. They're quite spendy but nothing on the tens of thousands for a fancy dollbot. I wonder how much the popularity of that kind of thing will suffer because of the general friction of getting set up? Carmack talks about that being a major hurdle in VR/AR adoption.
Yea, but given how specifically designed to be addicting these virtual world can be makes it a bit of a bigger problem than the usual 'kids disrespecting their elders' ranting.
I'm pushin 40, and even with just smartphones I can see the huge disconnect between people and their surroundings. People will say how beautiful nature is while dumping gallons of pesticides and roundup on their lawns.
People who never have seen a cow die don't really care much if the rainforest burns to get their burger.
I don't think peoples general ability to not see the bigger picture is quite the same as the very specific case of people avoiding society in favour of staying home to bang a robot.
For what it's worth the part of that Socrates quote I had in mind was "love chatter in place of exercise" - the old have always worried that the kids will choose self-indulgent fun over going outside and doing stuff. (although I am older than both you and @Grzmot)
Also with sex stuff there is a physical demand on the body which tends to make things a little self-limiting. Like with eating chocolate, no matter how tasty it is there comes a point where I'm just... done for a while. I want a break. Even as a teenager there were limits! (to the amount of chocolate I could eat). This is in contrast to phones/pcs/etc where there's a whole huge range of distractions available in one device. So if smartphones didn't make all the humans stay indoors and just be online, sexbots and automated sex toys costing up to twenty times as much are unlikely to.
Is this anything to do with technology? People have always thought nature beautiful but humans have been destroying the wild environment for millennia. Admittedly we've got rather better at it in the last few centuries but still. Smartphones have only been around for less than two decades.
Also don't put roundup on your lawn. You won't have a lawn afterwards. Any green growth. But I feel this is drifting a little off topic...
Voila. Roundup for lawns. But really, I'm talking about what Grzmot mentioned...
A sexbot (or other toys in that vein) taken in isolation isn't really a problem. But it's just one more piece fueling our increasingly isolationist society. Another Brick in the Wall if you will.
A person walking around outside, but staring at their smartphone with their headphones on is just as perpetually online and not interacting with the world around them as someone locked in their bedroom with a fancy fleshlight.
The average car occupancy is less than 2. Average miles driven is 12,000 a year. At 60 mph that's 200 hours of isolation a year....probably a lot more in practice. 1100+ hours of passive TV watching a year is normalized. Just those two activities consumes 80 full days of the year (at 16 hours a day). Add in 40 hours of work a week and your up to 205 days of nothing but driving, work, and TV (or substitute). While some people derive social pleasure from work, Iarge swaths do not. So we're down to 160 days to interact with the environment outside of work. So now lets add sex bots and/or VR sex toys. Even if actual enagement with sex toys is 5 minutes or less a day...afterwards does the person get dressed go out for a bite to eat with friends...or do they stay home and play videogames without pants for 2 more hours before going for another round?
People whom have never seen wilderness don't have a personal connection to it. We have an academic understanding of its importance, but without that personal connection they're not gonna boycott McDonalds coherently enough to get them to stop buying beef from rainforest-burning pastures. People want a green turf lawn (even if they never set foot on it), so they'll pay someone else to take care of it...or use the cheapest quickest way to achieve that result...because they don't have a sort of connection to the outside world to see the harm that their actions are taking on the world outside their fenced in yard.
We're continually adding new gadgets to distract us from the existential horror we're creating around us. New innovations that do not foster putting down the screen and interacting with people outside the confines of our homes is just making the problems worse....not even factoring in the additional energy demands to use them.
Oh, doing it twice eh? FANCY.
I do understand what you're saying but I don't know if a sexbot is providing a new distraction, or merely replacing a different, lower tech one. People have been making sex toys for.. tens of thousands of years, possibly longer. And we've had hands and fingers the entire time.. Dolphins will stick their dicks into anything that feels nice, up to and including dead fish. Masturbation aids are not limited to humans.
Also if you're arguing that all the trappings of modernity are taking people away from the wilderness and somehow the wilderness is essential to our survival (which imo is not an argument without some merit), then you're not saying sexbots are bad, you're saying everything is bad. So it's less "what's so wrong about sexbots?" and more "what's so wrong about everything we've invented since agriculture?". Which is probably a position that has some legs. But it doesn't require the existence or not of sexbots.
I would hope the person walking around in public is engaging in some other form of distraction to the one inside with the sex toys, although you never know. But what if they're watching an Attenborough documentary which is taking them outside the city they might not otherwise be able to afford to leave? Or listening to Greta Thunberg talk? What if they're reading about how to lower their energy footprint? Or perhaps they are interacting with people on a forum just like this one? Or even booking their next trip to the countyside? It's entirely possible to have positive interactions with the world via a screen, they are just tools and they can be good as well as bad.
The sexbots can too - how many people might use them let out energies which could otherwise find a much (much) less pleasant outlet involving another human? There is, as @lou alluded to, some evidence that is the case.
I engage with the real world through a screen from my home all the time. Well, I think I do. If I don't there's some incredibly sophisticated chatbots around here. The "real" world is a multi-faceted thing and it doesn't just mean walking among ancient trees (although that is an excellent thing to do).
These robots do seem a bit creepy but I think that's more to do with Uncanny Valley effects than anything else. I don't really have any kind of problem with people owning sophisticated sex toys. Whatever gets you through the day, right?
On the privacy front I think there are potential issues but I don't think that's by any means exclusive to sex tech. Although I once bought a sex toy which suggested I connect it's app to Facebook and it could post updates to my timeline. Hey, um, whatever floats your boats people but...
There are tangible benefits to sex robots that are similar to the benefits of sex work and porn. First, they allow people with disabilities to achieve sexual gratification. Second, they do the same for those that wish for sexual gratification without an emotional connection, or human connection at all. Third, such robots can be made to fulfill whatever the user desires regardless of morality. By doing so, they might help the user manage their fixations in a way that won't harm actual human beings. In that way, sex robots could reduce the incidence of sexual assault, benefiting society as a whole.
Isn’t there a futurama that settles this question?
Fry falls in love with a Lucy Liu robot that is voiced by Lucy Liu. There's a PSA demonizing human-robot love. The robots revolt. Chaos ensues. Not much is resolved, but it's pretty fun.
It’s also not really about sex bots but about piracy. The sexbot angle is a tiny fraction of what the episode tackles.