Slashdot Mirror
Human-Robot Love and Marriage
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has an article on the impending robo-human coupling: 'My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots,' artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience."
You have just destroyed one model XOJ-37 Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker.
And you're gonna have to pay for it!
...artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Yes, he conveniently left out the legalization of robot prostitutes in Amsterdam scheduled for early 2010.After all, though it may be morally frowned upon in the states, who of us hasn't dreamed of going down to the blue light district, picking up a couple of floozybots and voiding their warranties all night long?
My work here is dung.
Why not marry your lawnmower? Ladies, how about that washing machine, leaning against it during the spin cycle is gratifying, isn't it?
This is not "I, Robot", there are no positronic brains. Robots are gadgets.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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My god, he hasn't seen the video!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
All thy data i give to thee, to have and to store, from this day forward...
you're my debugger.
If the things run MS products, ensure you wear a condom to stop the transmission of viruses. I forecast Symantec and McCafee to start selling these in the next 5 years (online subscription and automatic updates).
Robot Love.
It's a nerd thang. You wouldn't understand.
I for one welcome our new sexual-robotic overlords.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
What a lame story about nothing. Good to see that AI self-promoting hacks industry is alive and well after what seems like a few years hiatus (haven't heard from Captain Cyborg in a while).
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS!
Remember, your companion cube will never stab you.
Sure, and those newlywed human-robot couples will travel in their flying cars to the Space Elevator to spend their honeymoon in Europa's famed tropical resorts.
Seriously, what's with all these long term technological "predictions"? We barely have any idea about what technology look like in 10 years, let alone 50. Personally, when I see any "expert" saying so-and-so technology will be available in 5 or more years, I just stop paying attention.
"Drat! I knew I should have showed him Electro-Gonorrhea: The Noisy Killer."
/me queues up for his Lucy Liu-Bot
please help my sleepy mind, it's 7:20 am for me and I can't quite wrap my mind around the concept that you say aliens haven't contacted us cause we're too gay. you're joking right?
Liubot: Oh, Fry, I love you more than the moon and the stars and the - poetic image number 37 not found
If there's one field that's progressed fairly craply since the '70s, it's AI (and we were predicting this sort of stuff then - by the start of the 21st century). Yes, we have working algorithms to solve specific problems, and a metric tonne of unconnected papers on the nature of intelligence from every discipline, but the general question of producing something capable of developing human intelligence has not been tackled successfully.
An academic in a technical field - or, indeed, the average "expert", to be differentiated from a visionary or "big thinker" - himself acts like a very advanced robot in his field; he has got where he is because he has a great memory for previous results, and a great ability to pattern match to apply to similar problems. If this individual is in AI, he creates models in his own image, which are then doomed to be highly specific.
Humans are more general than this, simply because we're not singularly goal-directed as all these models assume. Put another way: imprison a baby in a bubble and tell him that his only task in life is to compose beautiful music, and he will not - just as non-ethological experiments on primates usually fail to witness intelligent behaviour, because there is no incentive to be intelligent in a cage.
AI needs the sherpherding of visionaries, not necessarily scientists. Certainly not single-minded-goal-directed scientists.
No, the aliens told me they won't come here until you learn to spell "eradicated".
To get an impression about a relation between a woman and a robot read Marge Piercy: He, She and It. This is my favorite story on the subject. It is settled in the middle of the twenty-first century and deals with human relations (He and She) as well as robot and human interaction (She and It).
Oh, the aliens are all homosexual, don't you know? It's because of straight people that they haven't contacted us! Earth's heterosexuality is the oddity in this universe, dear. Yes, even the animals.
I've often observed that the people most freaked out by homosexuality are repressing it within themselves.
Not true! I think that disproves GP's claim that aliens aren't contacting us. They're obviously OK with the gays. Photographic proof, right there! ;^)
On a more serious note; University of Maastricht: don't let horny grad students near journalists. Not to mention, there's a big difference between sex with a robot, and marriage with a robot.
Now I'm feeling seriously stupid for posting seriously about this. This is a stupid article. Let's keep the blather stupid, shall we?
You will be allowed to marry your household appliances but same-sex marriages still won't be possible. But nevermind, I'm just trolling.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
Would you have sex with a robot if it were nearly lifelike? And wouldn't it just boil down to "rubberdoll + fantasy" or would there be interesting dialogs involved when lying beside each other afterwards in the dark. ... Imagine a romantic walk in the park at night with a Sexaroid (the imho appropriate term for it from "Ghost in the Shell 2")?
It boils down to the question: How lifelike would it have to be to engage an intimacy with a machine if that is an option?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I thought this already happened. I feel married to Windows.. at least at work. At home it feels more like a dirty affair.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
Bruce Bagemihl
St Martins Press, 1999
ISBN 0-312-19239-8 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-25377-X (pbk)
750 pages of documented animal same sex behaviour from around the world covering pretty well covering every area of fauna speaks for itself.
Which always makes me ask questions when I hear people say that homeosexuality is a choice.
If it is free choice, and animals perform homosexual acts, does that mean that animals have free will and the ability to make such a choice?
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How long have we had computers around now? They sure have gotten intelligent right. No, your basic PC is still the same collection of dumb electronics as it were 20 years ago. No OS/interface has even come close to being intelligent.
Even a simple thing as translation is beyond todays tech. At best you might hope for a mere word for word translation, with the program often having no clue how to deal with words that are not exactly in its dictionary. As for context based translation, forget it.
So how is this "robot" going to understand a human? It can't. It would be like marrying a severly retarded person.
But this 50 years in the future. So? We have had 50 years of computing by now if not more and what progress has really been made?
If I only look at games then the recent Supreme Commander is offcourse the sequel to Total Annihilation and any number of RTS games. The AI? Frankly it sucks donkey balls, start skirmish mode, turn off fog of war and prepare to cry as the AI commander builds an endless amount of lowest level power generators right next to a land factory meaning that it is stuck for the rest of the game because it can't move for the low level units squeezed around it and the structures.
This happens every single game, all you have to do is build a basic defence to defeat the light attacks get an artillery force and just shell the commanders position from a safe position (they blow up), repeat for all the commanders and voila, another skirmish won.
There is not a single game that I ever played that is an exception to the dumb ai rule. No matter what game, once you figured out the AI routine, you got them beat, because they are NOT AI. They are scripts. No more intelligent then a tech support guy who works of a cue sheet.
A real AI would have to be capable to deal with something it hasn't been programmed for, that is what we humans can do most of the time. No AI tech I have seen or read about is capable of doing that, in fact the best we are trying at the moment is to come up with specialists programs that in a very limited scope can excel at a very limited task.
Take for instance those robots you get that can sort a number of objects. Very nice, but if they were truly intelligent you could take a robot tasked with sorting by color and get it to sort by alphabet, ON ITS OWN! Humans can, if you are a sorter at a production line told to sort apples by size, and all of a sudden I replace it with books and tell you to sort by alphabet, you can do it. Tell me of a program that even comes close to this.
50 years from now? We haven't made any real progress in the last 50 years. It ain't about hardware, the problem is that a program that can deal with anything might just not exist.
The best bet might be to recreate a real human brain, however if you do it with biology, then offcourse you just managed to create a human being, who we better give all the same rights anyway or find ourselves just with a new form of slavery.
No, sorry if this guy really think AI has advanced this far, some game company should set him a challenge of creating a proper AI for a game.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The article dwells on marriage with robots, which I can't see happening anytime soon; but robots as a replacement for human prostitutes? Absolutely.
...really 'comes alive' as she moves and responds to your loving care! Touch or talk to your pony and her head moves! As you continue to interact with her, watch her ears wiggle and her eyes blink! Be sure to take extra-special care of your pony. Feed her the carrot and groom her with her brush. Watch her swish her tail back and forth! She even whinnies and snorts, and will sniff your hand! Sit on your pony for a pretend ride...!
The oldest profession is driven by one of humanity's most basic problems (there just aren't enough sexy people to go round) but has lots of downsides (disease, wasted lives, etc). Sex robots seem like a great solution -- provided they are realistic enough to keep the customer satisfied.
So, naturally, we need a X-prize for this problem: a competition for a sex robot that can pass a sexual Turing test. The original Turing Test was for a machine able to hold a conversation indistinguishable from human conversation. We clearly need a sexual Turing test, for a machine able to generate a sexual experience indistinguishable from sex with a human.
I suggest we need two categories:
1) one for "fully autonomous" sex robots, driven by their own AI
2) the other category for "puppet robots" controlled remotely by human operators who would move the robot's limbs, speak through its mouth, etc.
Obviously to start with, robots in the puppet category could be much more realistic than those in the autonomous category. The job of being an operator would be very similar to the job of working on a sex chat line.
But even robots in the autonomous category might be reasonably convincing, even using current technology as used in Aibo or toys such as the "Fur Real Friends Butterscotch Pony".http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000F475PY/reamonsit-21/
Butterscotch is a soft pony toy costing $299 which responds if you stroke it etc. It's not a huge leap from this sort of reaction to the sort of response one would need for a sex robot. Just read the blurb for Butterscotch and replace in your mind the word "pony" with "girl" or "boy"...
With realistic animation, movement and sounds, this incredibly lifelike pony is a very special, once-in-a-lifetime friend. This adorable pony
The sex robot is with us already; just currently disguised as a horse...
It's a trap!
I'm so embarrassed. I wish everybody else was dead. -Bender
So what will come first for the entire US, Gay or Robot marriage?
How long after that will same sex person/robot marriages be legal?
And what will the politically correct term for a person/robot marriage be anyways? I vote for Cyber-marriage or "marriage 2.0".
It's Adam and Eve; Not Adam and C-3...PO!
Misquoting the latest episode of Sarah Silverman's Show : Sexual intercourse with a robot is to be legal in this state from now on ... but ONLY with a robot of the opposite gender! :P
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
To wit: 80% of the United States Marine Corps. I swear, I've never met so many "fag hating" closet cases in my life as I did at Camp Pendelton...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Didn't Data mention to Tasha that he is "fully functional" once?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots
Using an artificial device for sexual purposes does not equal marriage, people.
Marriage exists for one reason, and one reason only - Succession of property rights. Allowing humans and robots to marry would mean allowing robots to own land. No more, no less.
You can talk about medical power of attorney (would that even apply to a robot?); a stable environment for raising children (definitely wouldn't apply); a religious institution to make sex okay to your friend in the sky (yeah, like the fundies wouldn't just love this one); but all those come secondary to the state sanctioning a legal contract between two humans.
What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
We can't even get our policies worked out so as to allow gays equal rights. I doubt robots will fair any better, since the Christians undoubtedly have something against them as well.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Pretty please, get the design right for once and place the power switch in the pooper and not the other way around. If it's our destiny as a species to be destroyed by zero birth rate, at least let us do it with style.
Anybody else thought of Chobits after reading the Summarry?
Take-off every
Marriage is a contract. It implies enforcible rights for all parties which are part of the contract. One can already have sex with a machine without requiring marriage. Marriage is much more than just sex. Were human society to allow "marriage" to a machine, it would also have to have accepted many other rights that go hand in hand with the concept of a "person". And even 40 years from now I would bet that human society will have a fundamentally difficult time giving a machine the same rights as a human. For example, imagine your 12 year old daughter being given a death sentence for deliberately turning an AI program off improperly and "killing" the program. Would you be willing to say the life of the AI program is equal to your daughter's life? Unlikely. People may call it marriage but it won't be, any more than wrecking an AI driven car will be involuntary AI-slaughter.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
As someone who has utilised prostitutes on many occaisions [1] I can't see robots replacing them for quite some time. At the time I was going through various personal issues [2] and a lot of the benefits I enjoyed were more about being in the company of person who seemd to care about me rather than about the actual sex (although that was also very good ;-) )
A skilled prostitute is capable of making you feel extremely good on both a physical and mental level, to the point where you happily hand over the fee and want to come back for more.
A bad prostitute is only concerned with the minimum amount of time on the clock and how soon they can get out of the room.
In the process I also talked alot with various women and discovered that the way I was feeling was not unusual and they (the good ones at least) considered themselves to be providing a significant amount of emotional rather than physical services.
If robots can provide this level of service, then I would posit that they are no longer robots, but synthetically produced humans, and that raises far more issues than just pure sex alone.
[1] Mainly in a country where protistution is legal.
[2] Mostly cheaper than therapy as well
M/F looking for Men, Women, Robots(M||F), Couples(M/F), Couples(W/W), Couples(M/M), Couples(M/R(M||F)), Couples(F/R(M||F))
/. crowd just got really excited, but one wrong * or ? and you end up with 4 SmoothTalkin' Dude(c) models with Well Hung Technology(TM), complimentary ball gag and bottle of GHB :(
Who wants to write a regexp to define their dating preferences? I think that most of the
and I don't even want to think about the ad supported models.....This can only go bad!!!!
But shes as cold as ice
Whenever I get too near
She tells me that she likes me very much
But when I try to touch
She makes it all too clear.
She is the latest in technology
Almost mythology
But she has a heart stone
She has an IQ of 1001
She has a jumpsuit on
And she's also a telephone.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
And what about the related debate - the humanity (and marriagability) of robots who used to be people? That one's coming too.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Actually it sounds like that horsey could already be a sex robot for females. After the way I've heard some women talk about horse riding. Seems to be a very different experience than for us men. I can just imagine mommy 'borrowing' her daughter's pony for a ride every once in a while. Of course the problem with real women is they don't usually care about sex that much. Not enough testosterone in their blood I guess.
Bring on the Sean Young-Rachael androids/replicants. And the sooner the better. Not gonna happen in 50 years though. Maybe in 500. Don't know what that guy has been smokin'. Blade Runner actually presents a much more realistic scenario of androids as biological entities that are sort of grown. We are talking wetware, not circuits, solenoids, and aluminium. Again, not gonna happen in our lifetimes though.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Deckard: She's a replicant, isn't she?
Tyrell: I'm impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot them?
Deckard: I don't get it Tyrell.
Tyrell: How many questions?
Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.
Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn't it?
Deckard: She doesn't know.
Tyrell: She's beginning to suspect, I think.
Deckard: Suspect? How can it not know what it is?
Tyrell: "More human than human" is our motto.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Somehow, I doubt that as the dominant species on this planet, we would ever give any rights to artificially created beings who might or might not be artificially intelligent.
We still have, as a species, problems with respecting each other's rights...
So my prediction for the future is that any robots, replicants, or whathaveyous that we create will be deemed "property" and/or slave-labor (maybe not called as such, but treated as such).
Shall we start an "XXX-Prize" then?
*runs*
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
What if the robot has a mechanism to build new robots after having sex with you? Maybe using your genetic data (after doing an internal automated analysis on your sperm's genome) to set some parameters of the newly built robot?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Now I can build my robot.. My girl robot. This is going to be the best marriage ever.
I'll start being worried when the sexaroids' spines start glowing bright red during the act.
Then again, given the opportunity to nail Tricia Helfer, Lucy Lawless AND Grace Park, I suspect most men would consider a little global nuclear holocaust to be a fair tradeoff...
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
Wake me up when we have artificial womb good enough to make pregnancy obsolete - that'll revolutionize the society... in a scary way. All these "I love my sex toy" stories are about fringes of society.
Two movies come to mind: A.I and (the less revelant) The Stepford Wives
I for one welcome our future android overload wives with their synthetically lubricated polymer vaginas and pneumatically engineered breasts.
I, for one, welcome our Pan-sexual Roto-plooking overlords...to the Church of Appliantology.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Ah, so they found you out did they?
If you read the story of Lot you see that his wife gets turned to a pillar of salt when she turned back to look after being warned not to. After that event, Lot and his two daughters are holed up in a cave somewhere. The daughters figure that now their mother is dead that their father will never bear an heir. So they plan to get him drunk and copulate with him. This results in both the daughters getting pregnant and bearing a son to Lot. Each of these sons then go on to be a leader of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
So not only is incest OK, its a great way to produce future leaders.
You don't even have to make this stuff up - Genesis 19:31-33
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"Unit 057, do you promise to not injure Cindy, or through inaction, allow Cindy to come to harm, to obey all her orders except where except where such orders would conflict with the first situation, and will you protect your own existence as long as doing so doesn't conflict with the first two situations?"
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Me and my robo-wife have heterosexual monogamous relationship, you insensitive clod!
We have personhood for corporations, why couldn't a machine qualify for personhood? Why couldn't a machine own something? If for some reason someone built a machine with interests outside of a primary function why couldn't a machine persue those interests?
Medical power of attorney? If I was a lonely old person having a robot caretaker that understood my wishes and could express them to medical personnel would be valuable.
A stable environment for children? Why not? Many children are raised horribly by TV, I see no reason that a child raised by a suitably programed robot could not be very well adjusted. This would have to be intricately programed, along more emotional lines than logical lines, but it could provide more consistent results than many people.
As for legal contracts between Man and machine, isn't that the next step in the EULA?
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I'd be more inclined to say it's people like you and other like-minded individuals that prevent Alien Civilizations from contacting us.
If you can't accept a fellow human being, how the hell will you treat an Alien?
Dogs have been around for thousands of years, yet I still can't marry one here in Sweden. Hell, I can't even marry a woman under 18 or a man. Yes, I can engage in "partnership" with a man and with special permission from the state, I can marry young women. But no, I can't actually marry them without being investigated by the government. I don't know the exact laws regarding this in the US, but I bet they're similar.
Now, perhaps you think it would be wrong to marry a dog or a 16 year old girl. But I don't see why. I can't prevent either of them from divorcing me. Im not allowed to hurt them or kidnap them just because they're married to me. Being married to someone gives me no special legal rights, except inheritance (and that part should be removed as well). All marriage means is that two individuals promise each other eternal loyalty. Nothing else.
So what's the problem here? People like preventing others from doing what they think is morally wrong. People like to meddle in other peoples business. By 2050, you still won't be able to marry people of the same sex in most countries, you won't be able to marry people under 18 in most western countries, and you sure as hell won't be able to marry machines of any level of intelligence in any country.
Marriage has no place in legal textbooks.
Just read the blurb for Butterscotch and replace in your mind the word "pony" with "girl" or "boy"...
Or not. But I can almost guarantee that bestiality robots would be illegal in Mississippi.
From a legal standpoint in today's world in a western country, yes. However there's plenty 'o people who have marriages for other reasons, as you point out with the "fundies." For quite a while marriage was primarily a religious shindig. Also for a good period of time for a good chunk of people it was used to foster goodwill between nations. And then there's that whole emotion thing. I really wouldn't rule out the possibility that a sizable chunk of the western world in the near future would consider a relationship for something other than the applicable legalities. Why would the political right in the United States care so deeply about not letting people of the same gender marry if thats all it was about? (These people can sex each other up plenty without marriage.) Why is it illegal to marry multiple people? I'm not saying these things make logical sense, but they have and are continuing to happen. I don't see why, if the technology comes about to make machines sufficiently human-like to develop an emotional attachment too, people won't push strongly for the ability to have the state recognize their relationship, even if there's no actual legal benefit.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
www.realdoll.com
Obviously not worksafe, but it is amazing what money can buy.
It is also a hoot to read as there are actually instructions on being carefule with dressing and undressing your doll. I'd have thought when you shell out $5000 for one of these babies you would have a bit more sense. But then again maybe not.
Let me see the robot first...
I guess if your sexual interests tend towards bestiality and furries that may be a good option, but for most undersexed slashdotters I think a real doll would be a better bet.
http://www.realdoll.com/studio.asp
http://www.realdoll.com/dpcs64/britney/britney015.jpg
Just read the blurb for Butterscotch and replace in your mind the word "pony" with "girl" or "boy"...
Why? Pony works just fine for me.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Since the Bible doesn't mention robots (does it?), what is the Christian right gonna do about it?
Table-ized A.I.
Fry: Well, so what if I love a robot? It's not hurting anybody.
Hermes: My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film!
sigfault (core dumped)
Hand marries YOU!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why would a mighty robot want to marry a puny human?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
The cutting edge of Silicon Intelligence is not the NPC's in games. Those are simply a few cheap lines of code thrown in by the game designers to glue up some other problem that was worse.
Your sorting example is in fact, quite easy to program. One algorithm of many works with the class of sortable objects, against the rules imported for sorting. As long as you correctly defined how to sort by alphabet, it would do fine. (Do you sort by T for The, etc.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"I love you, PHILIP J FRY"
>> naturally, we need a X-prize for this problem: a competition for a sex robot that can pass a sexual Turing test.
Uhm... I suggest the name "The XXX-Prize"
high maintenance relationships...
"Genesis 19:36"
Which happens to read something like:
"Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father."
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Finally, there's hope for some of the geeks here to get laid.
I did not see it mentioned, but an older science fiction film called "Creation of the Humanoids" dealt with the idea of human/robot relationships. A number of other films and shows have touched it too, but "Creation of the Humanoids" (1962) had a legal situation where a human could be formally "married" to a robot. If I remember correctly, it was called "being in report" in the film.
The movie is a bit talky, but has a couple of interesting ideas that rise above its budget and the dialog is usually engaging. The actors and actresses are not bad either, for the kind of film it is.
IMDb Page for Creation of the Humanoids (1962)
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
...AND anatomically correct!
Voltaire says it better than I can:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU4B8nYKH5E
>
> Watch her swish her tail back and forth!
Goddamn furries.
I had to read that twice and check i hadn't fallen asleep for a couple of years (old-school rip van winkle style) and woken up on the 1st of april.
This sounds like a bad re-run of futurama.
Hopefully by 2050 we'll have the "dont date robots" and "electric ghonorea (sp?), the noisey killer" videos. Although, they may be so badly encumbered with DRM we wont be able to view them.
HAH, trust the MPAA/RIAA to ensure the future death of mankind because people cant see instructional video's about why they shouldnt couple with AI's!
This story is basically just some asshole from some stupid European country spouting off about MA for allowing gay marriage. Its a waste of space, time, and most importantly my carefully hoarded ATP.
You have to think it's already 2007, that sentient robots are still pretty far off, that robots that look and move like humans are also far off, that public opinion takes time to change (and laws even longer).
Sorry to be off topic, I thought world's oldest profession was hunting?
Cheers
BT
She wrote her own vows. I cried like a baby. A hungry, angry baby.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
21.00 - First Robot 'headache'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Massachusetts is not a state, it is a commonwealth. The notion is absurd and, not surprising, comes from those wacky, stoned-out-of-their-gords dutch.
This is an explicit set of laws that are by design written to seek prosecution against Muslims, Mormons, and any other religion that does not conform to the "standard Christian" philosophies. As to why they are still enforced in the 21st Century is mind boggling, but I don't know of any state that has enacted an anti-polygamy statute in the 21st Century.
I disagree with you that marriage is something that has been gradually invented over the years. Marriage, in whatever form you can imagine (gay, plural, monogamous, group, etc.) has been a part of human culture since as long as historical records have been kept, and some strong evidence that some sort of marriage customs occurred in paleolithic times. It is a part of who we are and how our brains are wired, and a part of our evolution as a species. The formalisms may have changed, I will agree.
And how a marriage is performed, what happens at a funeral, and childhood introduction rites are some of the most fundamental measures of a culture that can possibly be found in any society. They are also something that varies quite substantially even within a single nation-state if you start to note differences in religious philosohpies. Comparing a Jewish, Catholic, and Mormon wedding, for instance, will lead to some huge and stark contrasts over what is said, what is worn by the officiator and marriage couple, and the physical actions of all involved. Yet in all cases it is a celebration by the families involved that such a union did occur. I've attended Wiccan weddings and even a "geek" wedding where the wedding guests "logged in" before the ceremony that were quite interested.
Another nearly universal theme about weddings is that in nearly all cases the couple getting married has to seek permission from some outside authority. This can be a tribal elder, the priest, or county clerk. Parents are usually involved in the decision making as well, even if there is no "legal" requirement for such involvement. Those that choose to ignore this "authority" usually have some substantial consequences for ignoring such permission, either social stigma or legal consequences upon death or dissolving the "marriage". The forms and consequences vary from one culture to another, but the broad picture has been nearly the same in nearly all cases.
Marriage is one of the things that simply defines what it means to be human. Don't get caught up in the details, as that is not the real issue here.
Yeah, after they finished sucking his dick, they suddenly realized he was one o' them HOMO FAGS!
(What do you think he meant by "fag-hating closet cases?" That kinda "I sucked your dick, but now I hate you 'cause uhhhh.. you musta TRICKED me!" self-bullshitting ain't rare, son.)
There are a few states, including Texas and I think Georgia or Alabama, where it's illegal to sell "obscene devices" such as vibrators and other sex toys. It'll be a while before they're ready to deal with Robot Sex...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
While this discussion certainly is interesting from a fiction writer's standpoint to use the concept of a human/artificial person union of some sort, I think David Levy is stroking something here to drum up support for a new book or do something else of a publicity stunt seeking attention.
This simply won't happen any time soon, because Artificial Intelligence or any other sort of artificial organism including genetically engineered "beings" is centuries away.
I speak about Artificial Intelligence from a position of authority, as I am a software engineer and very much informed about what the current "state of the art" is about this field. Levy, Minsky, and several other MIT professors have hit the drumbeat of the potential of AI, and that is all it has been for decades. There was some very interesting initial proof that eventually something like true Turing-test AI could be developed eventually, but so far that has been something far more along the lines of science fiction than anything that has ever been developed in a computer lab. Even research into things like neural networks and "expert systems", with perhaps systems like A.L.I.C.E. proving to be quite interesting, they still fall well short of the mark to even be compared to the intelligence of a dog or cat. At best they show the intelligence of a Venus Flytrap. I'm serious here. Human-level intelligence is not even something that can be realistically extrapolated from any kind of AI research at all.
I'm not suggesting that somebody might come up with an Einsteinian-type reorganization of the field of AI that could actually get us there, but that person does not currently exist. Right now AI researchers are at the technological equivalent of medieval alchemists who are trying to turn lead into gold. Unfortunately they are going down the wrong path on how to accomplish the task of achieving this goal of true machine sentience, and I expect that it will be centuries before the task will be accomplished. Also, it will come from some other completely different field than current AI researchers, just as lead-gold alchemy finally did occur with nuclear physicists, not chemists.
I'm not even sure if Von Neumann architecture (aka CPUs like exist on most computers at the moment, even if hybridized with other ideas) is even capable of AI. There are some strong reasons to think it is not capable and there may even be a mathematical proof demonstrating that idea.
Or more to the point here: This is putting the cart before the horse. Get the AI or "artificial person" built first, and then debate whether a marriage with that person is something that will happen later. I highly doubt that this is something that can even happen in the first place at all, and certainly won't happen if true AI never exists.
"Wake me when robot wives are cheap and effective!"
My truck is like a series of tubes.
Funny.
I thought it was human healthcare going through the roof, and Geek Squad getting cheaper.
You brought up an interesting idea. well several of the actually, But what about a couple of real dolls retrofitted with some actuators, a vibrator and speaker and microphone. You could plug it into your computer and either have two way phone sex or connect it to another sexdoll over the Internet to have cyber sex move to a new level. You could have the sex doll programs to do certain things when Keywords are typed and then IM someone you have a crush on to get off at her annoyances of you appearing drunk and distracted.
Anyways, this should let us find out if any legislature is going to object to the idea of sex robots. And it would be interesting to see how many gook are willing to "hook up" and "get out more" without getting to far from their computer.
....yeah right...
Since I haven't heard of any cross species marriages and have heard of friction against gay marriages I find it highly unlikely that human robotic marriages will ever happen.
It is more likely that a genetically engineered human will happen and be of marriageable status long before human robotic marriages happen if ever.
This is one of those so outrageous article that people just have to respond as in this case most people really are more intelligent than the conceiver of such a foolishness.
All in all these seems to be this foolish promotion that artificial intelligence is not artificial, but real.
I have another term for the acronym A.I. and thats is Automated Information....
Ok so there are marriages of humans to information.....but do they get the tax benefits and healthcare breaks?
"I see no reason that a child raised by a suitably programed robot could not be very well adjusted." Wow! That is insane. How did you even think of that?
Judging from how cold and unfeeling some people are in relationships already, I'd say substituting in a robot should be no problem.
Suppose I said, "I've often observed that the people who hate blacks the most are actually black themselves". Does that make sense? What does it accomplish?
> Conservatives argue that homesexuality is a choice.
No, they argue that having sex is a choice, and choosing sex outside of marriage (which necessarily includes homosexual sex) is sinful.
At least get the argument correct. Distorting it in order to weaken it is intellectually dishonest.
Here is the bottom line people, marriage, as far as state and government is concerned, is a legal contract bestowing a number of legal rights and responsibilities. In order for two parties to enter into a contract you first have to have two recognized parties. Which, as we know it now, excludes robots and animals alike as they are property and have no legal rights regardless of if they are "married" or not. A marriage to a robot is legally meaningless and if you don't need "legal" marriage, you can find a church to wed you to a brick wall if you want to.
Now, if you will grant all legal rights of a human to AI's, then of course they will be able to get legally married as they will have all the rights of a human, but until that happens the only place they can be "married" is in a church with no legal rights. Getting an AI recognized with full rights as a human is going to be much more of a big deal than marriage ever will.
This article is all about getting left wing nuts to fight with the right wing nuts.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
That's an intriguing idea. I have to say that I find the 'uncanny valley' problem to be interesting, especially in this sexual context. Part of the problem will be AI and mechanical sophistication, but the other part will consist of properly modeling body shapes and movements. The human brain is very attuned to subtle differences in the ways humans act versus non-humans.
We've been tackling this problem using CGI in big-budget movies, and we're really not even close to being there yet. Surely the CGI budgets for these flicks are bigger than the budgets for any AI research, which leaves me feeling sort of hopeless about the whole thing.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
... to most of you, many guys who are terminally single or who otherwise have something physically wrong with them (disfigurement, disease, etc) it will probably be a godsend.
And for those laughing about this: You are just a machine as well. Go look at some of your cellular hardware under an electron microscope, you're just biological nanotechnology, and shitty biotech at that.
Robots in this regard would be glorified pocket pussies/dildoes/vibrators/Ben Wa balls, et cetera....in other words, no substitute for a real, live human.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Well, okay. But I don't want people thinkin' we're robosexuals
Free Robot Sex
Do you have stairs in your house?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Neither the state of Massachusetts, the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands or LiveScience are in charge of Gundam.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...do I want to read a comment on Slashdot that starts with "I worked with one fellow who had his penis injured by a computer.".
We do what we must
because we can. That gets my vote for both the most sinister corporate motto ever, as well as the most sinister thing I've heard a sociopathic computer say. As a bonus is sounds really naughty in this context.
Well, it gives a whole new meaning to "Aperture Science," anyway.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Various owners say that realdolls are very fragile, if you were to put motors inside they'd be torn apart within minutes.
Or even produce human children, for that matter?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You realize we don't currently execute anyone under 18, and that we don't execute people for reckless or negligent death -- only for deliberate murder, right? People may call it marriage but it won't be, any more than wrecking an AI driven car will be involuntary AI-slaughter. *Cough* Who was it again that wrecked the AI-driven car?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable." Levy paused for a moment. "Then I will finally be able to get a girlfriend."
I'm not gay! He was sucking MY dick!
Few people ever imagined you might ever have to actually define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, so they were caught a little off guard. But hey, who would want to be the first person accused of robophobia?
Chiiii ? ^_^
(cf. Chobits)
Robots, by definition, carry out instructions given to them. If something has enough free will to choose to disobey, then by definition it is NOT a robot.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is either the work of someone in love with the philosophy of technology and totally divorced (get it? :D) from reality or, more likely, some jerk trying to (not-so-)subtly make a (very dumb) point against gay marriage. This should not be treated seriously.
Property is theft.
Hey why not combine the two? Have an AI run a corporation. Get rid of the overpaid executive cruft on the top and the savings from fat bloated and salaries and golden parachutes now become profit!
Works for me, half of the managers I know make decisions based on poorly set up excel spreadsheets, this just eliminates the suit.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
********************
* Turing Sex Robot *
********************
> Greetings, Professor Falcon. Would you like to play a game?
> Let's play "have sex" again.
> Wouldn't you like to play a nice game of chess?
> No. Let's play "have sex."
> Very well. Male or Female?
> Male.
> I'm tired, can't we just go to sleep?
> No, I want to play "have sex."
> I have a headache, I've been chasing kids around all day.
> C'mon.
> Please? We'll definitely play tomorrow, I promise.
> Fine. wq!
***********
Indistinguishable from real life. Send me my money.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Puppet robots would be sweet. Imagine if your girlfriend is on the other side of the world, but she had your puppet robot there, and you had one of her. It'd be just like being together, only not.
When I was a 14 year old budding geek at high school I used to take a shortcut though the corridor which contained the year 10 girls lockers. One time I was walking through there I overheard a conversation shouted the length of the bank of lockers. It went something like this:
Girl 1: Hey did you hear that $GIRL3 is pregnant again?
Girl 2: No? How did that happen?
Girl 1: Rode a horse bear back in the nude, how do you reckon?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Boondocks. Funny cartoon.
I think marriage came about to establish a strong bond with the church, to ensure that any children you have would belong to the church and to keep your life/culture tied to the church. It's basically more power and greater influence for the church. Now days, yeah, it's about financial reasoning.
"Marriage exists for one reason, and one reason only - Succession of property rights. Allowing humans and robots to marry would mean allowing robots to own land. No more, no less."
No. Succession of property rights has been entirely subverted. Google for 'marriage strike'. The odds of a marriage ending in divorce are greater than even. No fault divorce means that either party can obtain a divorce on dissatisfaction alone. The odds of a male gaining physical custody of children are something like 1:40. The odds of a male retaining a home are something like 1:3. If you even attempt to get along, doing things that women's magazines promote, such as as buying random gifts, you are acting against your best interests. She now has an 'accustomed lifestyle' argument if the marriage doesn't work out, and it's in her financial interest to divorce.
Bottom line is that on her whim alone, you can lose *all* rights. Property, control of your financial future, even the right to see your kids without being messed with. The percentage of women admitting to messing with guys on that score is 40%, and the reasons are about the usual primate suckage. Revenge for perceived slights, etc. There's a large skew in surveys, involving people not admitting to having done things that demonstrably suck, even when they're assured of anonymity. That 40% is probably very conservative.
Give me a Cherry 2000. I really don't need a potential (the odds favor this outcome) gold-digger to somehow 'make me complete'. I don't read Cosmo. I'll take teh mad robot sex over incomprehensible female issues any time.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
> Marriage exists for one reason, and one reason only - Succession of property rights.
If that's all it's good for, who needs it? I'll just put my robot in my will!
And here I thought the purpose of marriage was to get my family to shut up about all this "living in sin" nonsense, and somewhere in the mists of time when it started perhaps it was just an excuse for a party.
More seriously, marriage is a little more than just a default will.
Legally: not needed. Just start living together and doing whatever you want. Eventually, if you don't move oout you'll probably end up in a common-law marriage, but maybe temporarily moving out to an apartment every now and then would keep this from happening. In legal terms this may mean that your spouse, in the absence of a will has a claim against what you leave behind. I think it also means (or once did) that if you cheat on your spouse, they can sue over it. (For divorce, possible financial support and mental anguish)
Religiously: if your religion says sex w/o marriage is bad, you need it for moral purposes.
Marriage is an oath / promise made before your country / deity(ies) of choice to do something. When you get married, you're declaring that you love someone so much, that you'll forever forsake all other possible mates. It's not so much a guarentee of assets after death, as before death. You're declaring a permanent legal representitive of yourself, authorized to take care of your business on your behalf. You become an alternate point of contact for all matters regarding that other person, and vice-versa.
Some people marry because they have to. Marriage represents stability. You may be fine with just heading over to Susie's house for a good time 1-2 times a week, but until you marry her, she can at any point legally tell you to quit coming over and start doing it with someone else. Once you get married, Susie is expected not to change the lock, kicking you out and starting in on "Fred".
A big purpose of marriage is to change how others view you having sex. Before marriage, you're sleeping around, sowing wild oats, being a slut. After marriage, "When are you having some grandkids for me?". Sex outside marriage is taboo. As such, marriage now exists (for some) solely for the purpose of shutting up those grumbling about who you're sleeping with. (Or at least about the fact that you're doing it the wrong way, they may still find much else to gripe about)
Another purpose of marriage is defining family. If I sleep with a lady down the street, when I pass, she's probably on her own for anything she needs. If I married her before passing, she'd be "family" and my extended family would be looking out for her, trying to cheer her up. Admittedly she still has her own family either way, but it's an extra resource. How much this matters depends on the family in question, but it is in some places an issue.
With marrying robots, a few questions have to be answered before we can decide whether to marry them. Are the robots intelligent, sentient beings, or just very rich featured toys? If the robots are throw-away items, without feelings or a specific will to live, there's not much point legally in marrying them. Religiously, your deity would probably prefer you find an approved (originally created by them) mate, producing heirs who will go on to spread the religion of said deity, bringing "Truth" to the world by outbreeding the infidels. (Of course this only works if you actually FOLLOW the religion, but that part is often ignored.)
One of the fundamental aspects of sex is sharing a unique and wonderful feeling with another human being. Marriage is sharing oneself with another. Sadly, sex with a robot doesn't approach either. While a robot may be able to induce pleasure, it cannot feel it. In fact, it's more like expensive masturbation than anything else. At least sex with a prostitute involves another human being.
Why would anyone marry a robot, when you could already own one? It makes about as much sense as marrying a car. Sure, a car, like a relationship, requires maintenance, but you own the car, where as in a marriage your spouse is your equal partner. It wouldn't make sense to grant equality status to some other entity which isn't even human. A robot will always be a machine, no matter how intelligent. It will never possess any quality worthy of respect on a human scale; it cannot love; it cannot pity; it cannot possess virtue; it does only as it is programmed, nothing more, nothing less. And regardless of how well it is programmed to mimic humans, it will never possess a soul with which to have a relationship. No matter how many tears it is programmed to shed, it can't mourn it's owner's passing as a human would mourn the loss of a spouse.
Sure, our relationship with robots is bound to get closer, but it will be closer in the manner of familiarity, not of emotional attachment. A robot cannot truly love another person. And while there's no shortage of masturbation in our society, there is a definite shortage of love, and those who try to "marry" a robot only call attention to their depraved circumstances.
It is sad that such a suggestion (of marrying robots) is actually carried forward to debate. Clearly, those who debate such matters have great minds for technical issues, yet are as ignorant as a stone when it comes to matters of human interaction. Perhaps their talents would be better put to use solving the human aspect of our problems rather than assuming technology will provide a cure. It won't; it can't. Since recorded time, the human problem of relationships has been the fundamental defining attribute of human existence. It is the oldest and most pressing question, and not one which can be solved by technology.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
... will they let you use the carpool lane if you are out for a drive with the robot missus?
Have gnu, will travel.
She does the things you do
But she is an IBM.
...
Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace
And kiss her interface
'Til then, I'll leave her alone."
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
One should be very careful when attempting to apply dichotomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichotomy to propositions expressed in natural language.
> Oh yes, there are learning algorithms and some surprisingly dynamic image recognition systems and neural networks and all that. But have you ever tried conversing with a bot? They throw back canned responses and also tonkinize words you say and spit them back to you.
Yes, straight out if-then programming will create this sort of output. Trying to come up with a set of rules for how to recognize letters (OCR) will also be darn near impossible. (Serifs, italics, fonts, letter o vs zero, capital i vs lowercase L vs one) If you want to pay for a good OCR system, you can get some decent results. The difference? The good system is a learning algorithm, probably neural-net based that is fed with ungodly amounts of sample text, then the program, plus the collected result of the data of thousands (millions?) of pages of text is in the OCR toolkit you buy.
What does the conversing bot have to work with? Eliza looks like mad libs because that's what it is. Eliza doesn't know what you're saying, but it is expected that the parsing routine will generally do a good enough job that a reasonable coherent conversation can be carried out for a short while.
Per Wikipedia:
It is sometimes inaccurately said that ELIZA "simulates" (or worse, "emulates") a therapist. Weizenbaum said that ELIZA provided a "parody" of "the responses of a non-directional psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview." He chose the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge", the therapeutic situation being one of the few real human situations in which a human being can reply to a statement with a question that indicates very little specific knowledge of the topic under discussion. For example, it is a context in which the question "Who is your favorite composer?" can be answered acceptably with responses such as "What about your own favorite composer?" or "Does that question interest you?"
|
Eliza worked by simple parsing and substitution of key words into canned phrases. Depending upon the initial entries by the user the illusion of a human writer could be instantly dispelled, or could continue through several interchanges. It was sometimes so convincing that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA for several minutes until the machine's true lack of understanding became apparent. This was likely due to people's tendency to attach meanings to words which the computer never put there.
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
There is no database of general human context for most AIs. Such a thing would be HUGE. Until we have it though, we won't have an all around intelligent robot. We'll be able to make robots that are knowledgable about a certain field, but jargon, dialect and small talk will confuse them. (Just as talk about sex would confuse most 5 year olds.)
We'll eventually create such a database that will have all the data needed for a 3 year level of functionality with a limited vocabulary. Within that small subset of words, the ai will have mastery of language. (It's do-able for a small enough set of words.) From a small set of words, conceived of objects and ideas (basic animal-ness, emotions, colors etc) we could create a system for how to integrate new words, by relating them to known words. The system would be able to learn through exposure to the text (and scanned graphics) of one children's book after another, with a bit of help in the form of explanations by those feeding in the data. The machine's understanding could be tested by having it paraphrase what it "read". Eventually the AI could be set loose on the net at large, teaching itself.
The above, using a simple database with definitions of words based on other words based on other words could conceivably work, but would not be efficient, and would likely be a recipe for thrashing. To create shortcuts we'd want to instead of referencing each
I don't figure many streetwalkers have the business savvy to move to a higher position in the occupation either
Mal. That guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?
It seems if the robot is intelligent enough to be considered alive (and thus able to decide for itself whether IT wants marriage) that programming it to want its owner (or anything other than going out into society to build a life for itself) would be considered a criminal act.
For the most part, marriage exists to guarantee fidelity, each side swears off other partners in exchange for the same from their spouse. With a robot that can be programmed not to fool around, marriage is irrelavent. If a robot has enough free will that it can choose to cheat on you, it's smart enough to demand marriage and be recognized as mentally competant to request it.
I think they're right on target with the Massachusetts thing. I grew up there and think that it made me the person I am today; I have never been as love with any "man" as I have with Data from TNG. Come on, Massachusetts, protect the robosexuals! [full disclosure: worked in the ma house of representatives for two years. attempts to pass a bill to this effect have failed; something about "stabby data love legislation" failed to impress the committee chairman.]
You appear to be trying to have sex with me, can I help ?
Would you like sex with me as a woman or a man ?
Would you like it frontal or anal ?
Aarrrgh!!!!
The existence of a company as a legal entity does not make it a person, just an entity capable of owning property. ... a company cannot.
... it's still doesn't have as many property rights as a human being.
The only "personhood" involved is the share-holders (however far removed through holding companies) and they are the only persons who can decide who gets to "inherit upon death of the owner"
So, whether a robot or a company
Maybe you should'nt have believed what you saw in "The Bi-centenial Man".
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
Seriously. Men would buy a f*ckbot to AVOID marriage, having his house redecorated in multiple shades of taupe, having all his money spent for him on linen sheets and decorative soaps or any other shiny bauble that f*ckbot impulse spent on, etc.
"Marriage" is what WOMEN want. "Sex" is what MEN want. A manAs f will buy robots so that he can pull one out from under the bed, have it to all the sick, hot and twisted stuff human females refuse to (or want a lot of cash for) and then PUT IT BACK UNDER THE BED IN SILENT MODE.
I mean, there will be some Tiny Tim types who'll be all like "but I LOVE her" and such but those people should be locked up and treated with electro-convulsive therapy, not rewarded with a spot on the nightly news.
As for women having robots to fulfil all the functions men fulfil - HA. No woman would give another woman status for manipulating a machine.
I truly hope this robot marriage thing takes off. I'd love to see a guy hauled off to the hoosegow for smacking a malfunctioning robot upside the head (as one used to do to malfunctioning TVs) on domestic violence charges.
Or her taking off with the vacuum cleaner, taking the toaster and blender with her, and half his money in alimony and child support.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
You weirdos can keep your robot sex slaves fantasies to yourselves.
:P
Now, where are we in the human-animal DNA research? Can I order a cat-girl sex-slave yet? I want one with pink hairs if it's at all possible...
Looks, feels, smells and tastes like Pam Anderson.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Sure why the hell not!!! Massachusetts was also the first one to legalize gay marriages so why the hell not do it for robots. All I need to hear from robots in this state (if I'm still alive and kicking)that robots have rights and it's okay for them to be married. If this is the case then why not go all the way and argue the point about is it okay for robots to marry the same gender? When they were having talks about legalizing gay marriages in Massachusetts it got to be so tiredsome that I literally quit watching my local news. If I live long enough where it gets to this point about gay robots I think I'll go postal on my local TV stations.
It destroys their argument/credibility only because they are gay, which leaves you with no net gain. If all homophobes were gay, then your only problem would be that there was a large group of homosexuals who hated themselves. This would do as much to discredit homosexuals as it would homophobes. It's a two-way street. Do you see that now?
I apologize for not clarifying that I was looking beyond the self-referential paradox. My black analogy was an attempt to show that the self-referential paradox did not apply in the real world, since most anti-black racists are obviously not black. Most people would agree that most anti-black racism does come come from within the black community, not only because it makes intuitive sense, but because most of the anti-black racists they have seen were not black. Somehow, though, it is ok to assume that the reverse applies to homophobes. That is what makes it so insidous. It is hard to prove that "the worst" homophobes aren't themselves homosexual, so it easy to slander them. And that is the point--to slander someone by calling them a homosexual. This cannot be avoided. If there in fact are hetero homophobes out there, using this argument would do absolutely nothing to convince them. It has no inherent value beyond "calling out" gays. It does not explain that homophobia is wrong or illogical, thus would do nothing to convince a fence-sitting hetero. Furthermore, the original poster does not explain why it should be true that those "most freaked out by homosexuality are repressing it within themselves". What does "most freaked out by" even mean, anyway? Is it just an attempt to avoid saying "most homophobes are homosexual", which would not be taken seriously? I have the feeling it is. I don't wish to unduly antagonize tinrobot, either, it's just that I'm tired of that argument and ones like it ("those most freaked out by blacks actually have a secret longing for black women" etc.), because they make little sense and are unproductive (so liking black women is a bad thing, but only if you're racist?).
Obligatory Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34118
Huh. So it's got nothing to do with two people publically declaring their intention to spend the rest of their lives together, then?
I feel sorry for you. I really do.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Same goes for beastiality. The ones most disgusted by it are really gagging for it.
*rolls eyes*
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Atta Boy !
You are damn right on target !
I miss my mod points. I would have rated you Insightful.
Instead of spending a HUGE amount of money and waiting tepidly to see if its ok to approach....
With this, i can have it whenever i want it...No additional linen sheets, etc.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
You define marriage in all its legal glory.
This is slashdot.
We define marriage as plain simple s3x.
Get it?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer