[ExI] Kelly's future

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki
<rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> charges or report the event. This whole thread is getting very
>> strange... sigh. The corners of human sexuality are just strange.
>
> ### Indeed. Regarding sexbots and satisfaction of the mythical
> "emotional" needs of humans:

Why, pray tell, are "emotional" needs mythical? In some sense, they
seem to be the only needs that are real... ;-)

> I came to believe that the primary emotional need that is satisfied by
> a companion is actually status affiliation. Men seek physically
> attractive women that can be shown to other males as a status symbol.

This is perhaps one characteristic among many others. For example, it
would not do to have an attractive mate who was mean to your
offspring, and raised little monsters. Nor would it be considered a
very good deal to get a mate who despite her culinary deficiencies,
insisted on cooking dinner every night. The number of ways a mate can
be deficient and meet the above superficial need is staggering.

Choosing an acceptable mate is an optimization function with many
levers. Each chooser of a mate has different weights assigned to the
importance of each of these levers. Initially, I cringed at this
statement, and then upon further reflection, I realized it was true of
me, although at a very low weight compared to other things I care
about.

The key issue for me is that the optimization function for a mate
(while having most of the same levers) vs a dedicated sexbot is
weighted entirely differently. A good mate would not necessarily be a
good sexbot, nor vice versa.

> In addition, intelligence and an agreeable, conscientious character
> are desired for their practical usefulness (living with a smart and
> nice woman is just easier and more productive than living with a inept
> harridan).

Clearly this is the case. :-)

> Another premise that needs to be articulated is that women have an
> agenda that is not compatible with what men want. Due to the
> vicissitudes of evolution, women are obsessed with status of their
> partners (and thus likely to be at least partially dissatisfied with
> the majority of available partners, since the majority of men is by
> definition low status), deceptive, and faithless.

While I can agree that the optimization function for any given woman
is going to be different than any given man, and that you might find
weights generally cluster differently for women than men, this
oversimplification is not something I can agree with.

> I have few doubts that building agreeable, conscientious, and smart
> sexbots is in principle possible, perhaps even including a built-in
> artificial womb for full functionality. If the device is very
> expensive and thus the possession of only the select few, it might be
> a status symbol and thus a full substitute for a woman. But once the
> price comes down, this aspect of its usefulness might be affected,
> just as an overproduction of Porsches would undercut brand value.

I see the function of a sexbot as more likely to be private or
semi-private. More like the concubine of Old Testament times. There is
the public wife, the private concubine... Also, does the genetic
material carried in the womb of the sexbot come from the wife or some
other source? A surrogate womb is another function that I view as
being almost entirely separate from that of a sexbot.

> In the unlikely event that flesh men continue to exist after the
> singularity and can own AI devices,

Up to here, I can agree. There is a small window where this might
occur... remembering that even after you can create god-like
intelligence, you might choose not to. Just as we have supercomputers
today, and microwave oven controllers. :-)

> I would expect that the artificial
> woman would displace the vast majority of flesh women and severely
> reduce their appeal, since most women are nothing to boast about.

And yet, there seems to be a man that is nothing to boast about for
most of them... :-)

> Given the low quality of most women as companions (due to personality
> problems and having the above-mentioned agenda) most men would
> probably be fully satisfied with the robots, especially once the
> stigma wears off, and would even continue to procreate. There would be
> some men who would seek women as a status symbol, although I would
> expect that most of their real emotional needs would be still catered
> for be devices actually *designed* to be nice to men.

This is not the future I have in mind. I can't agree with "most men"
in the above in any case. Even supposing that what you say is
practically correct, it might change the behavior of women. We could
end up with a huge divide between women and men, or a situation where
sex mattered very little. It's hard to predict.

> Since I am not a woman, I find it doubly difficult to analyze the
> manbot question. Women are more status-obsessed in relationships than
> men, and the manbot might of less use to them than fembots are to men,
> unless manbots could radiate status. I expect there would be many
> women whose sexual needs would be fully satisfied by manbots but still
> unhappily pining for real men needed to make them feel truly wanted.

Again, this seems overly simplified.

-Kelly