Joy. We’ve just reinvented adolescence. No thanks.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not a scientist, I’m just a dude on the internet who reads science articles. I’d also like to apologize in advance for not providing citations (for some unknown reason, my browser won’t let me highlight text). If you are skeptical of what I’m saying feel free to look it up.
My understanding is that human beings (indeed, all mammals) emotional lives are governed by a part of the brain called the Limbic System. This is a more evolutionarily primative system than our Frontal Cortex. The limbic system evolved prior to the emergence of language. When a mother bonds with her infant, or human lovers gaze deeply into each other’s eyes, there is a chemical called Oxytocin that gets released that makes that bond feel satisfying…
It’s my belief that we can “fool” the limbic system into believing that the robot you are caressing and holding eye contact with is “real” even if you don’t believe it from an intellectual standpoint. That is what I mean when I say it could trigger an emotional response.
I think you missed the part where I said you could play on “easy” mode if you don’t want to play a guessing game. Or perhaps you would be in the market for a totally submissive bot that doesn’t even try to be realistic.
But I don’t think most people would enjoy that kind of a toy. I actually think if sex robots became a common thing, the totally submissive ones would be the anti-status symbol…the kind of thing that a typical person would be embarrassed about owning.
But wooing someone else requires that you play a game. That’s why dating is called “the game”! It is more subtle than the game you’d play with a dumb sex bot, but it really isn’t that much different. You might really delight in making steak and lobster for your date. But that doesn’t mean your date isn’t interpreting that play as “Hmm, this guy really wants to jump my bones! I hope he likes my sexy panties.” If instead you brought her take-out from McDonalds, she might think that move deserves only a peck on the cheek. Cue the little “womp womp” sound. Game over.
When a guy compliments me on my physical appearance and I suspect he’s a heterosexual looking for a mate, I don’t usually assume he’s just complimenting me because he likes complimenting people in general. I assume he wants to woo me and he is looking for me to return the favor by either complimenting him back or me being receptive to other advances, so the two of us can get to the next level of having a sexual relationship. I don’t think my assumption is always correct. But most of the times, it probably is. What do you think?
I think humans really dig knowing that they have earned something…that it wasn’t just given to them without any resistance. The hard work is what makes it fun and something to talk about.
When I think about all the people in my life that I’ve been close to, this entire idea makes me want to vomit.
No, I do not want to believe that I had an intimate interaction with someone because I “earned” it or “won” it. That’s an absolutely revolting concept to me.
When I started this thread, I didn’t have in mind whether robots would a companion for everybody. What I had in mind was the people on the left hand side of the bell curve for attractiveness. I don’t subscribe to the bleak 80/20 theory, but I think that amongst any population, there’s going to be the bottom 5% of people in attractiveness who are effectively doomed when it comes to romance.
For those people, a robot companion may not be a perfect substitute for a human, but it’s better than nothing.
For my part, I’ve basically been on “hard mode” for the past 17 years. Trying, and trying, and trying to cultivate a romantic relationship. Finding female friends and repeatedly getting some variation of the speech “you’re a nice guy, but I just don’t feel that way about you. But you’re going to make some woman very happy someday… just not me.” So yeah, I do want “easy mode.” I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.
Good for you, bro!
But personally, I like knowing that my friends like me not merely because I exist, but because I actually do things that make me likable and worthwhile in their eyes. I don’t see their friendship as a “win”, but I do feel proud that I have earned their acceptance and respect. I think it would creep me out if people befriended me just because they think I need a friend, not because I actually do stuff for them that they enjoy.
If getting someone else’s love was just as easy as showing up, then I don’t think most of us would value it that much. But YMMV.
I don’t think it makes you a bad person. I’m not in the position to judge anyone’s sexual desires and coping mechanisms.
I only threw out the idea of a “hard mode” sex robots to push back against the idea that sex robots have to be one kind of way. Personally for me, I don’t want a sex robot. But I would probably buy a companion bot that intersperses witty commentary and magic tricks between cooking and running the vacuum. I don’t think this would mark me as a bad person, but I probably wouldn’t be announcing from the roof tops that my best friend is a robot. It would be something I would keep on the down-low because I know it would likely carry a stigma.
:dubious:
This is a false dichotomy. I want relationships with people who share things with me—viewpoints, likes and dislikes, etc—things that come naturally to both parties, not because one of them “tried” to please the other.
This entire sentence is utterly unrecognizable to me as an interpretation of what I said.
To me, the value in a relationship arises from compatibility. The idea of “earning” or “winning” a relationship strikes me as transactional—the relationship happened not because of the natural manifestation of existing traits and qualities but instead through a calculated exchange of value.
No, I don’t want to think that X relationship happened because I successfully maneuvered it by executing exchanges of value A, B, and C. Even if A, B, and C are merely clever conversational ploys. That’s creepily calculating.
There’s a woman I’ve been friends with since college. She got married a few years after school, but it didn’t last long. We were friends and we talked about all kinds of things, so what I describe here took place over multiple conversations, probably over a couple years.
She said that she wished her husband was more ambitious and dynamic. I can’t recall if those are the words she used; he was just a go-with-the-flow type, and she would have liked him to be more assertive in certain ways. At some point, she was telling me about the circumstances of her divorce and she told me that she had asked him for it, and he didn’t want the divorce but went along. Remembering what she’d said about him, I asked if she would have wanted him to be more assertive in disagreeing about the divorce and trying to stay together. My friend admitted that she would.
The thing is, she wasn’t necessarily wrong. Part of a relationship is the reassurance of knowing someone cares for you. It may be that her way of receiving that reassurance is in the effort a man puts in to being with her. If that’s the relationship model she learned growing up, and what she needs from a partner, then that’s just the way she is. But it’s also the kind of thing that would drive me nuts. Even with two people who are trying their hardest to be open and honest, there’s no guarantee they can make it work. Add in those secret goals and hidden rules and it seems impossible. And, I suppose, in this one case I know of, it was.
Games have winners and losers, and rule-makers, and goals, and an end. Seems to me that the goal of a relationship shouldn’t be to win, but to make it last and have as much fun as you can along the way. And if it’s a game, which one of us is playing; why am I jumping through her hoops, why isn’t she trying to jump through mine?
I can’t think of a better way to explain it than to say that I’m looking for someone who’s trying to be found.
But, what do I know?
There are plenty of people in the world who share my viewpoints, likes, and dislikes. But if they don’t show that they care about me and I can’t be arsed to show I care about them, then we aren’t going to be friends. Hell yes, I want someone to try to please me! Why would it be a bad thing for someone to bring me, say, a box of chocolates and flowers to make me happy? I’m not a chocolate-and-flowers kind of gal, but such a gift would please me. It would make me feel appreciated and admired and LOVED. Only a cold-hearted cynic would try to paint this as “calculating and manipulative” rather than a simple act of kindness.
Same here, bud. All I said is people enjoy feeling that they’ve earned the rewards they get from other people, and your response to that is to talk about puking. I can only hope you misread what I said; otherwise you need get your gastrointestinal issues checked out by a professional.
But relationships usually wind up being transactional. People may initially dig each other due to their compatibility, but they only stay together when they fulfill each others needs and wants. That is to say, when their transactions are balanced. And there is nothing untoward about this. Historically, transactional relationships have been the norm since it is easier to get along with the one you’re with as long as they’re holding up their end of the bargain. Viewpoints, likes, and dislikes…those things can change.
Only a robot would even have such a mindset. Nothing I posted should give you the impression that this is why I meant by “Humans really dig knowing that they earned something.” Come on now.
But, that is a ripe recipe for becoming one in the right situation.
Now, while I have managed to avoid going down the road to your definition, I do have a fair amount of resonance with the frustrations that lead one down that road. I have a strong feeling of “there but for the grace of god go I.”
And it’s not really the grace of god, it was actually drugs.
There is more to being an incel than just not getting laid, though that is what many of them think is the solution, and so it appears superficially that getting incels laid would solve the problem, but the problem is a lack of social interactions and acceptance.
Thinking that they need to get laid is putting the cart before the horse here, as the reason that they can’t get laid is that they don’t have the social connections to meet women that would have any similar interests, and they don’t have the social skills to “woo” any women that they do encounter in other environments.
They get called assholes, because, even though they may have every intention of participating in an equitable exchange of social camaraderie, they aren’t very good at it, and so are shunned, not just from “access to women”, but access to any sort of positive social reinforcement whatsoever. Then they get worse at social interactions, and they deserve it, for being an asshole. One poster very early on in this thread suggested that they just up and kill themselves, and he’s not alone, that’s a fairly common sentiment. When the message that you receive from social communities are that if you can’t fit in, you should either suffer in silence or end your life, you tend to become a bit resentful towards those social communities in general.
I can certainly see how, if things had been a bit different, I could have gone down that path, but as I said, my solution was drugs. And it wasn’t just the drugs, though I will admit that getting high did mitigate the feelings of despair and hopelessness to a decent extent. It was the social activity of the drug scene. For years, the only people who would regularly return my phone calls were my drug dealers, and the only people that I really socialized with were them and their other customers, as we had at least one thing in common. I eventually met friends of friends, and moved into social circles that did not involve drugs (though some did involve D&D, which some may not say is that much better), and eventually found myself accepted and well liked by many, but I don’t really see how I could have made those friends without that step.
I don’t know that I would recommend that step to other social failures like myself, but I don’t know that I can think of a different path that would have led to where I am now. Most other paths would involve taking pool’s advice, or at the least, considering pool’s advice on a daily basis. Another path is to find other social rejects like myself, and to talk about the things that we have in common with them, as talking about such subjects in any other settings just encourages people to encourage you to commit suicide. The obvious problem with that is that then, you have an “incel” community, that reinforces the problematic social behaviors, and encourages externalizing the blame. The community is much like a cult, encouraging in-group thinking, and discouraging continued interactions with external influences. This leads to greater ostracization from mainstream thought and community, and can cause radicalization.
I’ve met some very ugly people who were centers of their social circles, and some highly attractive people who were barely accepted, but the trend is very much the other way. People do judge you before they ever speak to you, and they do so based on appearance, it is definitely an advantage.
Back to the actual subject of the thread, I do think that being able to relieve sexual frustration, whether through robotic aid, or paid companionship, would help to mitigate and prevent some socially awkward people from going down the road towards inceldom, but would do little for one who has fully accepted the incel “creed”, and would not be an adequate substitute for everyone. It would, IMHO, take a bite out of the problem, but certainly would be no silver bullet.
All things being equal, I am of the opinion that becoming a drug user is more likely to lead to social acceptance and happiness than getting it on with a lifeless piece of metal and plastic, but I only have my own experiences to draw upon.
I don’t know why you’re assuming your friend kept her wants and desires secret from his ex-husband. I mean, do you know that she was keeping “hidden secrets” and having “secret goals”? Or had she repeatedly told her ex husband, in both subtle and explicit ways, what she needed from him and he was unable or unwilling to give to her?
I understand why that would be a frustrating thing to watch from the outside. I have a sister (not you with the face) who is stuck in a failed marriage because she has expectations that her husband is unable or unwilling to meet. And like lots of married women, she feels like she does so much of the emotional labor in the relationship while her husband just sits there passively, taking it all for granted. I feel frustrated when I listen to her complain because while I agree that he’s an idiot, I think she is an idiot for putting herself in that situation and not extracting herself from it. But I also understand why she is upset. She doesn’t want her husband to just love her. Any ole automaton can say “I love you.” She wants her husband to show that he loves her. She wants someone who works just as hard as she does to keep the emotional fire going. I don’t see that as her playing a “game” on him. That’s her having human needs that are going unfulfilled.
I don’t care who you meet, that person is likely looking for someone who can fill some deep-seated need. And if you’re not at least willing to try to cater to those needs when they are expressed, you really can’t say you care about that person. I think the problem comes when people don’t communicate what they need and then blindside the other person with accusations of neglect. That is so wrong. But I don’t think there are a lot of people out there who don’t expect you to jump through any mysterious hoops. Very few people have enough time and energy to list out everything they want and need. It is not unreasonable to expect someone to figure some stuff out on their own by putting in some effort and learning through trial and error.
It seems like you’re characterizing the oftentimes complex components of compatibility as being “secret goals and rules”. Do you think your friend never at any point told her ex how his passivity made her feel? Let’s suppose she had. There wouldn’t be any secrets between them, but it’s still likely they would remain incompatible. It sucks but this is life.
I don’t know what any of this has to do with programming a robot so that it’s more than just a predictably obedient automaton with big boobs. It just seems logical that if these bots are to help single men cope with being alone, there would be the option for them to be interactive and dynamic, similar to how real people are.
Relationships require give and take; this is one thing most Incels don’t seem to get. If you desire a relationship but you are offended or frightened at the idea that your actions could unknowingly repel your partner—or, alternatively, your actions could make your partner more affectionate towards you—then you might want to reconsider if relationships are what you really want.
I’ve read testimonials from RealDoll owners who seem genuinely happy with their purchase, and who basically treat their dolls like their girlfriend. They say it was the best decision they ever made. The general sense I get from that crowd is that they regard their doll as an object of affection, and not merely a sex object. It may seem weird to have an inanimate object as a “girlfriend”, but it’s better than a heroin habit, IMHO. 
Here’s a very informative VICE article, The Surprisingly Sensitive World of Men who Own Sex Dolls
In my 2, maybe 3 (depends on how you count), actual relationships, the thing that I found most exciting was when they did something that I didn’t expect (well that was postivie, anyway). That’s where I don’t know how well dolls would work, that they have no agency or initiative of their own, but instead, just do what you make them do. Some, OTOH, may prefer that.
I can kind of get the idea of having one as a sleeping partner, but to be honest, I’ve never liked sleeping in the same bed as anyone, no matter how intimate we are in other aspects.
IMHO, other than the sexual use of the robot, a pet would be better in pretty much every way. I do have to say that the unconditional love that my dog gives me every single time I come in the door does quite a bit to lift my emotional spirits.
So, completely off the wall idea, probably a bad one, but I just thought of it. Combine the sex robot and the sex worker industry. You buy a robot, but then you pay a sex worker hourly to control it. I dunno, may make it a more interactive and interesting experience, and the sex worker no longer actually needs to allow other the use of their body.
That’s intriguing. I don’t suppose that would count as prostitution under the law, either, so it should be perfectly legal.
There’s a huge difference in my view between being someone who meets another person’s needs and characterizing it as something that is “won” or “earned.” That frames it in terms of competition. And if I find out that my friend or other intimate thinks of me in terms of “you won the competition against the other people because you succeeded in achieving certain goals,” then I’m going to be completely creeped out.
Because to me that’s absolutely not true. I absolutely don’t want to be given the idea that I earned the care, interest, love, loyalty, etc., that I got from someone. Because that implies that I was playing a game or competing with someone. And that implies that the care, interest, love, loyalty, etc., is explicitly conditional and is constantly on the edge of being withdrawn. That idea is absolutely revolting to me. That’s a condition I expect from an employer, not from a personal relationship.
This isn’t a joking matter to me.
I absolutely do not “dig knowing” that my friendships and other relationships were “earned.” No way. Does that make me non-human?
Since I didn’t say that humans only dig those rewards they feel they have earned, I don’t understand why you’re taking what I said so personally or literally. My statement does not imply that anyone is a “non-human”. You are letting your jerking knee get in the way of reading comprehension.
You’re making a broad claim about human nature. If I apply that claim to my personal life, I find the results to be extremely repulsive. That’s not “taking it personally.” I’m not accusing you of harming me; I’m offering my opinion about your assertion.
It is one possible implication of what you said. I asked you a specific question to elicit elaboration. Your assertion is in very broad terms. I think it’s worth digging down, particularly since the broad claim you make about human nature would represent an anathema to me in my own personal life.
Now this is actually a personal attack. I haven’t used disparaging language about you. I would appreciate your not insinuating faults in my character, intelligence, or reasoning process.