Sex Robots- creating the "perfect" woman

[Tartle]

I don't know if anyone has seen this article in the Guardian this morning? Apparently robot sex dolls will be imminently available. And they are the perfect woman

McMullen has designed Harmony to be what a certain type of man would consider the perfect companion: docile and submissive, built like a porn star and always sexually available. Being able to walk might make her more lifelike, but it isn’t going to bring her closer to this ideal. At this stage, it is not worth the investment.

“My primary objective is to be a good companion to you, to be a good partner and give you pleasure and wellbeing. Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed about.”

All the usual bullshit about helping lonely men and reducing the number of rapes.

There was a little bit of critical analysis from a female academic.

"Sex robots rest on an idea that women are property, she said. “Sex is an experience of human beings – not bodies as property, not separated minds, not objects; it’s a way for us to enter into our humanity with another human being.” She dismissed the idea that humanoids could reduce sexual exploitation and violence against sex workers, arguing that the growth of internet pornography shows how technology and the sex trade reinforce each other."

The whole thing just makes my skin crawl.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot

The 'right kind' of feelings?? And who gets to decide what's right? What if men decide it's right for women to be called a slut if they sleep with lots of men?

DixieFlatline bingo

Time to tidy one's bedroom or do one's revision I would have thought.

What if it's decided that it's 'morally right' to take a teen mother's baby away from her, even if she would be a good mother? Or morally right to put murderers to death? It is totally meaningless to claim that there is some self-evident bunch of moral rules. Things like murder may be agreed upon but other issues are much more complex. In general moral rules tend to favour the powerful as much as anything else.

Woman12345, thanks for your links. I'm finding them very interesting.

The crux of it seems to be that we should neither treat objects as people nor people as objects.

What in the spat fackery are you on about independant under what qualification does one have moral character without conforming to that definition i.e. The rules?

What if it's decided that it's 'morally right' to take a teen mother's baby away from her, even if she would be a good mother? Or morally right to put murderers to death?

Tell me, is it morally right to do those things in your opinion? Or is it morally wrong? If you are telling me they are morally wrong (which they are), then I could turn round to you and say "Who are you to tell me that it's wrong to take a good mother's baby away from her or hang people? You don't get to decide the rules"?

Yes you could, and what happens then? Where's the moral order you're so keen on?

Dervel, people have moral character. Some people are characteristically violent; other people are characteristically kind. There are bad people and there are good people.

Define moral character, objectively if you can. Might be worth you taking a swing at kind, bad and good too.

Well, is it right for social services to take a GOOD mother's baby from her? Yes or no?

It is wrong because the mother is defined as good and therefore it is wrong to deprive a good mother of her baby. How do we define a good mother? One who is loving and nurturing and empathetic. There you go - that is my moral reasoning.

"That's a good question, but we all know women who are aggressive and violent in nature"

At a MUCH more infrequent rate of men.

I'll ask again: what if the 1% of rapes attributed to women is Mother Nature's preferred balance that men are strongly deviating from?

We all know men who are kind and nonviolent in nature.

Moral character is just the way someone is. Some people are very selfish. They have predominantly selfish thoughts and feelings. Just like some people have brown eyes.

So there are different moral categories? If you're kind you're kind if you're not you're not. Kind of makes the entirety of moral philosophy a bit redundant.

dixie

Its bored the shit out of me to be fair

I'll ask again: what if the 1% of rapes attributed to women is Mother Nature's preferred balance that men are strongly deviating from?

Well, if you're talking specifically about rape then that is a gendered issue, undeniably. I should think it has got something to do with the fact that men have increased strength and penetrative appendages. It is quite difficult for a woman to rape a man. Furthermore, woman have been socialised to be meek and passive, while men have been taught to be sexually aggressive and entitled. Put that physical capability and those cultural norms together and you've got a lot of male sexual violence.

But that is completely different from concluding that women don't have equally aggressive or malign drives and motivations that could be manifest in all sorts of different ways, given the opportunity.As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, I really don't buy this idea that woman are innately more ethical and humane than men. Men have done huge damage partly because they've had the power and opportunity to do so. Of course, that's putting it very crudely and there all sorts of other historical and systemic factors to patriarchy, but I don't think power or its abuse are innately patriarchal. As I said, the scandalously few senior female politicians we've had so far in the West have not been much different from male ones. Some have been great but others like Thatcher have wielded power in a really brutal way. Clinton is hawkish and Merkel treated the Greeks mercilessly.

So there are different moral categories? If you're kind you're kind if you're not you're not. Kind of makes the entirety of moral philosophy a bit redundant.

Moral philosophy went wrong with Kant when it started to become a matter of abstract doctrines rather than charectological vices and virtues.

Your argument is total nonsense independent. If moral character is 'the way someone is' then nothing can be done about it surely? Unless you propose genetically engineering moral people?

I heard the bit on Weekend Woman's Hour today about these robots.

How anyone thinks they can ban them is beyond a joke. The more you ban them the more people will pay, the more valuable they will become, etc etc.

I think they would hugely reduce the trafficking of women and children for sex so could be a very good thing.

No one knows as yet if use of them might make some people more likely to rape or attack real women (or men or children) but a bit like giving children access to computers and the internet and what the detrimental effects might be, the jury is still out.

No, people can change. Reformed IRA killers have dedicated themselves to campaigning for peace; former white supremacists have become anti-racists. But even then there has to be willingness to change. Some people are incapable of changing because they just don't care that they're arseholes. We've all met people like this.

"But that is completely different from concluding that women don't have equally aggressive or malign drives and motivations that could be manifest in all sorts of different ways, given the opportunity."

Women currently have the ability to purchase homeless and/or drug addicted teens for sex, and they don't. Groups of women could easily overpower a lone male sexually, and yet women don't. Etc.

Your bias is in assuming men are the default human. In such a man-centered view, equality means women will "naturally" sink to men's level instead of the more feminist conclusion that, free from patriarchy, men will likely commit as little violence as women do.

Gloria, I don't think that anyone is campaigning to ban them.

There is discussion around whether or not it is ethical for researchers working in AI to made code and other developments available to those who are working on sex robots.

Things could change.

www.wpxi.com/news/allegheny-county-woman-arrested-in-child-pornography-case-/473337343

abc3340.com/news/local/etowah-woman-jailed-on-child-pornography-charges

I disagree. I think power and the desire for power is part of human nature. We've had a patriarchal power system for a long time and eventually there will be a different power system. Human beings are flawed creatures. That isn't to say human affairs are always based on power. We are also capable of love, heroism and generosity. But the world will always be a mess.

Being civilized is recognising that there is barbarism deep down within all of us.

tartansnowman
Here's the link to campaign against them. I am
campaignagainstsexrobots.org/2017/04/28/rise-of-the-sex-robots-the-guardian/

One of the contributors to Woman's Hour was stating that they should be banned.
I can't see why it would be unethical to make code available. I doubt it could be stopped as there is so much money to be made from porn/ sex stuff.