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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34985 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Disagree. Satisfying social needs with AI is like satisfying sex needs with an inflatable sex doll, and both will stay incredibly low-status. Especially in the scenario of dramatic automation: if you have the time, you really run out of excuses to just sit in your room and chat with computers.

Yes, but low status opt-outs can have impacts on everyone else. For example, I think that online porn, incel culture, waifu games, and the like have kept many men out of the dating pool, and increased the bargaining power of so-called HVMs (and even just guys who keep trying to win the dating game rather than quit it) to women.

both will stay incredibly low-status.

The thing is, there's a whole framework in place now for fighting this. Being gay used to be incredibly low-status. Being trans used to be incredibly low-status. Poly, kink, asexuality, etc. The dominant elite culture now says you're required to regard these as neutral at worst, and ideally as brave examples of self-actualization.

The robosexuals are absolutely going to try to claim a place within this framework and demand that people respect their preferences. Elite sexual morality has, at least formally, jettisoned every precept except consent, and there's not much of an argument against this on that basis.

The problem is, the implicit goal of all of those examples was to increase the status of all of those groups relative to the dominant status group, cis straight white men. Dominant groups basically don't get to make these claims, and it's viewed as extremely dangerous when they try.

Instead, I think there's going to be a nasty knife fight for victimhood status between groups with existing claims to dis-privileged status that want access to sexbots (severely deformed and/or disabled people probably having the strongest claim) and advocates for the sexual rights of the AIs themselves. If the former wins out then it will be hard to justify gatekeeping the technology; the latter, motivated by a combination of self-interest in preserving female SMV and 'yuck' factor in seeing something female-shaped being sexually exploited (even and especially when the object claims to like it) will be much more likely to torpedo the entire concept by having it morally and legally equated with rape.

The robosexuals are absolutely going to try to claim a place within this framework and demand that people respect their preferences.

I feel like robosexuals would run into the same issues that incels and men's rights activists before them had. Whatever framework raised the status of other low status groups before them just won't apply to low status men.

depends on when convincing synths appear vs widespread automation. given the rate Boston Dynamics' tech has improved i put the first reasonably passing synth at 2030 and fully passing by 2040. if automation arrives at the same time, and the total economic shift doesn't snap society in half, it's certainly possible a lot of people will pursue leisure-but-self-improvement type activities and find relationships through general extroversion. it's a nice thought, i don't expect it to happen. automation will probably need to be phased in over a multigenerational timeframe, where the future kids, grandkids, or even great-grandkids of current elementary school kids are the first generation raised specifically against the expectation of finding paid labor as adults.

there's no question people will form fulfilling relationships with synths, the question is how many. of the two largest demographics, the high use of synths by one demo will see the less-using demo experience progressive degradation of social power. if enough use/refrain-from, the refrain-from group will experience social power collapse. they'll hate the using demo, but what they can they threaten? what can they offer? how do they compete? nothing, nothing, they don't.

Does it matter? Isn't a big part of the reason men care about status is that it's a pathway to many abilities some may find unnatural getting laid? "You can have a convincing waifu that loves you unconditionally, but some people will think you're even more of a loser than they do now" doesn't seem that horrible.

If sex was the endgoal then visiting a prostitute would suffice. If a convincing emotional experience is the endgoal then I think there are apps out there now where an actual human will pretend to be your loving bf/gf. Neither option on their own seems like they can replace a real relationship. Imo, the issue is people on some level understand that it's just not "real", and that makes it both pathetic (in the eyes of society) but also unsatisfying (on a personal level) for most people.

Yep - there's a reason the "us against the world" meme is unkillable. If Clyde's got Bonnie, he can go without status if need be.

Not to mention the growing contingent of men with neither relationships or status...

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