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lol this would be amazing news for straight women. it should be super cheap and accessible too. imagine the number of weirdos who will preliminate themselves from dating before you even know them. what a wonderful gift to the world. it's great for straight men too, if the women won't have to spelunk through so much garbage to find a normal dude.
It's subjective who's a normal dude and whether that intersects with weirdos who preliminate (interesting word) themselves from dating before you even know them.
I'm definitely in the latter group except for a few very rare events (all of which did not end very well, though for some of them others say I dodged a bullet, and for some of them I've reevaluated the events and myself think I dodged a bullet, though the person is good, but they too have problems unfixed yet which would make it a dumpster fire, and some of them ended such a nightmare that I suspect I should be glad we weren't deeper into things ... tldr I'm one of those weirdos)
But this really would be amazing news for everyone if we assume a good enough physical imitation is possible. Let them. Plastic grass, fabric flowers, rubber "stone" or "brick" walls, electric fireplaces, search engines instead of actually judging for yourself whom you'd want to ask and what you'd want to read, social media instead of a forum (the Roman one, though early 00s ones were good) or a homepage, fashion degenerating into all girls at night looking the same (outdoors), the "genial" and "non-mainstream" authors' names being known to every high schooler and all the same unlike Stanislaw Lem and Isaac Asimov and Chesterton and Simak and even Tolkien and Lewis, instead of ancap (like it or not, it's a very firm and characteristic ideology, that has influenced cyberpunk in both ways) optimism\pessimism only cryptoscams and Gab and alt-rights around, instead of new computer-powered amazing art - some plagiarism machines, instead of transhumanism - some very persuasive bots, it makes sense that at some point this should come to moving dolls instead of romantic partners, and if people don't choke on the rest in this list, they won't choke on that too.
We do have Harlowe's monkey studies that do indicate that even imitation is better than nothing.
My guess is that this plays along oxytocin receptors, which is also why things like weighted blankets do kind of work, social media does kinda work, etc. People can also take inhalable oxytocin.
There is no replacement for unconditional love (which means love that respects boundaries unconditionally as extensions of a person and their autonomy) and community though. But that doesn't mean women should endanger themselves so dangerous men who enjoy being controlling (like Musk) can have oxytocin. Because then that means women don't get unconditional love and respect for their boundaries and safety.
I am agreeable to these robots but I also have some reservations as a sex worker. First, there is a substantial male population who cannot hire sex workers because they have been blacklisted for various reasons. These men could benefit from a doll for sure. Second, similar to AI deepfake concerns - some of these men are basing dolls off real people, and some are pedophiles- what stops them from ordering a doll that looks just like the little girl next door? And what stops them from filming material harming and torturing these dolls and selling it online? Including material that could involve animals, feces, or other taboo/illegal/defamatory acts? That's likely currently legal depending on the doll's appearance (how young it appears) and local laws. Yes, it's just a doll, so that's better than the huge curremt online presence of monkey torture and real human torture. But don't you think that's also bad in some way too? On one hand, it's comparatively a good outlet. On the other hand, holy fuck
Yeah, holy fuck, the morality waters get very murky very quickly when the topic of sex robots come up especially when it concerns taboo and illegal fetishism.
Content warning: moral discussions of sex-bots for very taboo fetishes below.
I think it mostly comes down to people's personal tolerance of "ick" i.e. how much person A judges a fetish that person B has that person A is not into.
Some people are, understandably, completely turned off or even horrified at taboo kinks like age-play, roleplay-incest, CNC, scat, blood, etc.
Heck I've even seen some articles that argue that "mainstream" BDSM is the fetishization of women's suffering and therefore inherently misogynistic. But I don't think that's a common viewpoint and not one I hold either.
Personally, I don't care what sex thing people are into that doesn't involve me so long as it's not causing harm and it's between consenting adults.
So springboarding off your comment about pedophilia and beastiality, which are both illegal for extremely good reasons: would sex-dolls or sex-robots for both/either be harm-reduction or harm-enabling?
On the argument for harm reduction; it's an outlet for those fetishes that has no victim. Therefore it could prevent those who have that fetish from victimising children and animals because it's much less risky and not illegal to use a sex-doll/robot for those purposes in private solitude. And who should care what weird things people get up to in private so long as it does no harm to others.
On the argument for harm enabling; it could push illegal fetishes that are quite rightly shunned by society towards normalisation. Shame is a powerful emotional tool used in animal social groups to discourage behaviour of individuals that are harmful to the group.
In a similar way if someone says something weird in person in front of a group of people they want to be accepted in they get ridiculed, feel shame and embarrassment for saying something weird, and don't say it again in that group.
Now with social media, those people who have the same weird opinion (just to be clear everyone has at least a few weird opinions, no exceptions there) can find eachother and echo-chamber themselves, calcify their opinions into more extreme forms, and occasionally act them out in the physical world causing harm to others.
What happens when the technology of social media collides with the technology of sex bots? Like with the hypotheticals you gave of people "stealing" identities of celebrities to make their own sex bots or styling them after pictures of kids they found online.
What happens when they start sharing tips for making animal sex-bots with more realistic fur, exploring these problematic fetishes with others which normalises the behaviour in the group, until finally one of the group decides that only the "real-thing" is good enough for them now then goes out into the world and does harm?
I don't know which side I fall on. And I don't think I will ever know until I can see some conclusive evidence one way or another.
That's as far as I will entertain these kinds of discussions because my "ick" point is when these trains of thought lead to asking the same question about simulated snuff.
Because that opens a whole other horrifying can of worms of what about making bots for simulated rape, murder, and necrophilia for those with psychopathic tendancies?
And for me it boils down to is the question "do we make objects to sell and commodify humanity's capacity for evil as recreation?".
As you are a sex worker, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on the ramblings above and please correct me if I've made any assumptions or leaps in logic.
Well, on the matter of dolls looking "just like" whoever, I think that should be legal with no reservations. The point we consider those acts you've described heinous and disgusting and so on is because real people\animals suffer. The rest is simply not our business. So if there's no real suffering involved, this is not even up to discussion.
Releasing filmed material with dolls is another issue, I think this should be considered harassment, maybe even on the "rape threat" level. But again - scaled by the real rights being violated, not by what we want and don't want others to do, because that's not our business.
I'm not sure I agree about it being a good outlet, I think you are right about not being sure. That outlet logic doesn't quite work the same with every person. Again, a person on the spectrum (like me) might use that possibility to play, and for them it will really be an outlet. A usual person with weird fetishes might do that too, or want the real thing after playing with toys enough, as with gateway drugs. A psychopath will likely have no use for toys since they only want real power over living beings.
As we all see with the Web and social media, lots of genocidal rhetoric has been normalized in the last decade that wasn't before that. Don't want to mention Azeris, but 15 years ago they (in the Russian-speaking Web) wouldn't go to common places, because those places would expel savages ; now the common places are just as degenerate and hateful. I wouldn't want the same thing to happen with torture and rape fantasies.
So - I think it's a bad thing. In private they may do with dolls as they want. In public and in the Web - depending on how realistic it is.
There's also a substantial male population for whom a woman being subservient is a turnoff, though, with knowing it's a transaction being sufficient. For such people a doll could help with some purely physical stupid things, but those are the least of lonely people's problems, so not very useful.
EDIT: Oh, another person has already said all the same things.
I'm right there with you. I'm mildly on the spectrum, though functional enough that no one would assume it unless they really got to know me, and while I am capable of having a moderate amount of success in the initial stages of dating, compatibility and styles of communication always end up being the primary issue, and that's not necessarily a failing on either party. The fact remains though that there does not seem to be many people out there that I am compatible with.
I am fortunate in that I am generally very content being alone and pursuing things that are of interest to me for very long periods of time (the only thing I really noticed during Covid lock downs was that my commute to work was faster, while my much more social partner at the time suffered a lot mental health wise). Despite that I am, unfortunately, still human and desire a certain amount of intimacy and connection with another person. I'm not sure if it will ever happen, but if you have seen the new Blade Runner movie, I could absolutely see myself with a "companion" like the holographic one the main character has in his apartment.
Well, my notable spectrum-related personal trait is that I want to know the truth about things, so falling in love with pictures just won't work, I won't be able to expel from my mind the fact that it's not real in any regard.
Unless a machine conscience of human kind becomes real.
Haven't seen the new one yet.
That's completely understandable.
I'm not sure if you are speaking generally, or to what I said specifically, but it may be worth adding a little bit more context for what I said originally. It is highly unlikely I would fall in love with an AI in the scenario I described above. It would more be about scratching an itch for certain kinds of interactions that I may not otherwise be able to have. I'm not sure it's a perfect analogy, but it might be similar to the way I care about a character in a book or game, or maybe how I feel about a pet.
I think if we got to the point where an AI had human levels of general intelligence and emotion this conversation would be somewhat moot. The world would be so drastically different I don't even know what kinds of assumptions to make about it to have a productive conversion about it.