Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the some-topics-are-just-too-weird-for-words dept.

The folks over at CNBC have dug up some experts to explore the question should you have sex with robots:

Should we be having sex with robots?

It's a question that has sparked fierce debate among moralists and the robotics industry. And it turns out, they're all split on what role machines should play in future relationships.

During a discussion at the Web Summit technology conference in Dublin on Wednesday, experts warned about the dangers of getting intimate with robots.

"It's something we should be very concerned about...because if people feel they can have an intimate relationship with a machine, that is saying something serious about how we're experiencing empathy with each other," Kathleen Richardson, senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at the U.K.'s De Montfort University, said during the panel.

The academic, who launched the "campaign against sex robots" earlier this year, added that "we are losing our sense of humanity."

How, exactly, do you get to be an expert on banging robots? Just saying...


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday November 07 2015, @02:31PM

    by Francis (5544) on Saturday November 07 2015, @02:31PM (#259962)

    Haven't heard of masturbation? It's a lot cheaper than paying for a date or going to a bar and trying to get laid.

    People can masturbate and they still get married. Until robots can provide proper companionship and children, I don't think there's any reasonable worry about this being a big problem. There's more than enough people collectively having children to assure that the species doesn't go extinct. We could easily afford to have the population decrease to 2bn or less, provided it didn't happen all at once.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 07 2015, @07:37PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday November 07 2015, @07:37PM (#260073) Journal

    Right. And you can go outside and pick a stick up from the ground and play war pretending that it is rifle and yelling "da-da-da-da-da-da-da" at your friend and hoping he falls down. Why would first-person-shooter video games ever make nickel when everyone has access to sticks for free and most people can say "bang"? Apply those conclusions to masturbation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:18PM (#260090)

      Because the real world is ugly and boring, which is the same reason that I simply masturbate. Just as I am not sexually attracted to garbage cans, I am not sexually attracted to real people.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:12AM (#260237)

        My feeling is that I am asking a lot from a woman to have sex with her. So much so that women expect payment for it, just as I expect payment for doing something I do not like to do.

        If I can offload that duty onto a machine, then as far as I am concerned it relieves the woman of having to do this for a man just as a washing machine frees her from the tedium of washing clothes.

        What it means is that the time I can spend with a woman would then be quality time, not time spent satiating my glands at her expense.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:20PM (#260091)

      Wha??

      Off on a tangent we go!!!

  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:23AM

    by Geotti (1146) on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:23AM (#260300) Journal

    Autoerotic acts are a bit different than tantric ecstasy. If these bots could provide that...

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:04PM

      by Francis (5544) on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:04PM (#260375)

      Which they can't because you can't do tantra without a ton of work. A robot isn't likely to ever be able to do something like that. Most people will never be able to do that because of the years or work it takes before that point.

      • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:43PM

        by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:43PM (#261911) Journal

        they can't because you can't do tantra without a ton of work

        I can pop some acid and when happening in the right conditions, all of the work happens by itself (with the necessary effort) and the experience is divine.

        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:33PM

          by Francis (5544) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:33PM (#261950)

          No, you can't. Drugs are bad 'mkay.

          I get freaking tired of people saying bullshit like that. That the drugs are helping them to be creative or that they're a substitute for legitimate spiritual development. Yes, some cultures used things like peyote at times for ceremonial purposes, but it was never a replacement for spiritual growth or work. It was a tool used within a framework.

          • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday November 13 2015, @12:10AM

            by Geotti (1146) on Friday November 13 2015, @12:10AM (#262422) Journal

            And I get tired of people insisting that you have to rape your mental capacities by "training hard for a lifetime" or submit to some dubious guru or whatnot to achieve epiphany instead of finding your own way.

            it was never a replacement for spiritual growth or work.

            We definitely agree on this point. And I didn't say acid's not a tool for spiritual development, just like a hammer is for getting a nail in the wall.
            Yes, years of meditative training is a tool too, and the experience might be more sustainable if you so desire, but it's also possible to sustain the experience using other tools. (Unfortunately, you usually end up being called a schizophrenic in western cultures. ;) )

            Quite a lot of cultures use entheogens as a tool, including in Tantra:

            A number of techniques (sadhana) are used as aids for meditation and achieving spiritual power:[...]

            Use of taboo substances such as alcohol, cannabis, meat and other entheogens.[...]

            (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra#Sadhanas)

            Mh'key? good.

             

            some cultures used things like peyote at times for ceremonial purposes

            (You expose your origin with this statement.) All over the world people (i.e. priests, shamans, etc.) used whatever was available to them. In Latin America san pedro and peyote was used (amongst others) but there's also agaric -to come back to the Indian area-, which was possibly the soma [wikipedia.org] of the Rig Veda, but definitely used ritualistically northwards towards Siberia.

             

            No, you can't.

            How the fuck do you know? I know what I've experienced, friend. :)