[ExI] Kelly's future

[Kelly Anderson]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Be it as it may, sex bots are going to continue being perceived as
> masturbation devices as long as they are not Turing-enabled in the
> sense of exhibiting some sort of "choice". More or less for the reason
> why corpses are usually not considered as "partners", even though they
> are doubtlessly "human".

I would not consider a corpse human in any meaningful sense... but
hey, to each his own... ;-)

> OTOH, a sex bot that had to be seduced and/or could politely decline
> your sexual proffers would frustrate the entire point of manufacturing
> sex bots, would it not?

Perhaps not Stefano. Part of the need (for at least some men) would be
to seduce their partner; to fall in love. You would not love a sexbot
out of the box. As a pure masturbatory device, it could be serviceable
at that point, but it would not serve the highest possible level of
satisfying sexual partner.

According to the realdoll documentary I saw, men have rich fantasy
lives with their dolls today, and they don't even interact! One had
set up the dolls a the table, and had "dinner" with them. Another
watched TV with his doll (this probably wasn't a lot different than
the real thing ;-)

Today, some men see seducing a real life flesh and blood woman as
being beyond their capabilities for various reasons. They may be
handicapped in some way. They may be ugly, or fat. They may be
economically disadvantaged, agoraphobic (as in Thomas in Love), or
undesirable for any number of other reasons. Most commonly though,
they are just insecure for no reality-based reason at all. Perhaps
they see women as unapproachable, or get rejected once and consider
that a general all time rejection rather than a single instance
rejection.

In any case, a sexbot that is programmed to be somewhat hard to get,
but who you know will eventually be open to your advances, is much
more approachable for the shy. Men might even build up enough
confidence in interacting with a simulated woman to later try the real
thing. The air force thinks simulators are good enough to teach people
to fly multi-million dollar airplanes, so why not?

Such robots might even be considered therapeutic to relationship
challenged men. They could keep track of areas where the man did
things that would mess up a real relationship, and these things could
be reviewed later by a therapist. It's perhaps less threatening than
going to a marriage therapist with a real woman.

-Kelly