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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."
I don't think mechanical love will hurt human marriage. In fact, mechanical love has been making human marriages work better since at least the 1880's and possibly as early as 1653. And just a point in fact, the early ancestors of loving robots have been more common than toasters since 1917.
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
"Each of these sons then go on to be a leader of one of the 12 tribes of Israel." The two sons, Moab and Ammon, went on to become the biblical ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites. They were loosely related to the Israelites, but were not part of the 12 tribes of Israel. I'm not a biblical scholar, but I believe there was a fair amount of tension between these groups and the Israelites, and that this particular story of the origins of the Moabites and the Ammonites was meant as an insult.
Actually my first thought was Yuria 100 Shiki
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We need an English DVD release of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea!