The recent propaganda about the wonders of sex robots has gotten me worked up because I consider the sex robot a horrible idea, and it leads me to worry about just how disordered the relationship between the sexes can possibly get. Young men need experience with sexual relationships starting at an appropriate age so that they can develop the skills they need for dealing with women successfully in adult life in general. Sufficiently advanced sex robots (“advanced” in a technological sense, because I consider the technology socially damaging) could sabotage this process and result in turning a whole generation of adolescent boys into emotionally and socially impaired adult male virgins who don’t know how to relate to real, biological women. Something like this trend has already advanced far in Japan, even without sex robots: Reportedly a quarter of unmarried Japanese men in their 30’s have had no sexual experience, despite Japan’s normal male to female sex ratio, the culture’s sexual liberalism and Japan’s proximity to other Asian countries which have sex tourism industries. Japan has a funny way of living “20 minutes into the future,” so we shouldn’t shrug this off this phenomenon as a peculiarity of Japanese culture and not expect it to show up elsewhere.
For some reason I find little reception to my concerns about this. I would even argue that male sexual backwardness should become a focus of professional development in business, to show the importance of addressing it as a wider problem. Promising male business leaders who lack sexual experience need help in acquiring it as part of their training so that they can earn the respect of women in the work place. (What, you don’t think that women can pick up on the difference between the experienced, confident man versus the inexperienced man who feels uncomfortable around young women, ceteris paribus?)
But as I said, I don’t know of anyone else who shares my point of view, and especially not professional sexologists. The sex scientists in the West, at least, seem to have the agenda of promoting feminism and normalizing deviancy. They don’t care about the experiences and problems of adult male virgins and incels with normal desires, so guess who gets thrown to the wolves?
Apparently some fertility clinics in the UK will help virgin women bypass sexual experience on the way to motherhood, even ones who might never have had a boyfriend or gone on a date.
Hmm. Okay. What could possibly go wrong with this, apart from the usual hazards of single motherhood?
Well, the Daily Mail article says the following:
Child psychotherapist Dilys Daws said the fact that virgin women were resorting to IVF ‘suggests someone who is not emotionally mature enough to be close to someone else – and that matters when it comes to bringing up a child. It implies the woman has a fear of having a close physical relationship with someone else, in which case the baby will not be brought up with that love.’
Uh, you know, this resembles my concerns about the developmental deficiencies of adult male virgins. Perhaps I sound like a crank for insisting that young men need experience with sexual relationships to develop into thriving adult men; but then this psychotherapist says that young women need the emotional growth that comes from experience with sexual relationships, and they preferably need to become pregnant in these relationships, so that they can become good mothers.
And now the UK has inadvertently started a social experiment where female virgins can forego this stage of life experience and skill development because they want to make babies right away without having any sexual involvement with men. The women who give birth this way will probably have problems forming relationships with men afterwards, and not just because of men’s natural aversion to cuckoldry – why should these men invest their resources into rearing other men’s children? – but also because these women could project something “off” about them that reduces the perception of their reproductive fitness. Making babies as virgins minus sexual intercourse has to muck up women’s hormonal cycles involved with courtship, pair bonding, mating, conception, pregnancy and childbirth – natural and sexual selection shaped women’s bodies and minds to do it this way over hundreds of thousands of years—and the subtle but detectable damage will probably manifest itself in their bodies and in their behavior around men.
However I doubt if the medical community will heed the warnings of mental health professionals like Dilys Daws. In the modern political regime, women can get pretty much whatever they want, even female virgins who want to become mothers without having to submit to the indignity of coupling with the bodies of icky boys. Meanwhile, some transhumanists who should know better think that sexually backwards men will find meaningful “relationships” with sex robots. The two trends complement each other, in a sick and twisted way; and I just don’t see how they can turn out well, especially if the one about virgin motherhood goes viral.
I don’t know of anyone else who shares my point of view, and especially not professional sexologists.
You may need to update your beliefs based on that evidence. Admittedly, your personal history has a strong effect on your recommendations for society, but (and I’m sorry that there’s no delicate way to say this) your case is not the average.
sexual relationships starting at an appropriate age
You keep using that term, like it’s analogous to the essential time window in childhood for language acquisition, but adults are much more flexible.
male business leaders who lack sexual experience need help in acquiring it as part of their training so that they can earn the respect of women in the work place
One anecdote is not evidence, but I’m the least sexually experienced and the most professionally respected person at my office. Even outside of my own team, our commercial department is full of women and all of them defer to my opinion on expected timeframes and quality checks. And I achieve all that while being on principle opposed to the idea that women naturally look up to men for guidance.
this psychotherapist says that young women need the emotional growth that comes from experience with sexual relationships
I think it’s time for each individual to decide what they need instead of imposing a homogeneous standard on everyone.
I think you’re overestimating the importance of sex in human relationships. I’m willing to bet that someone with no sexual history can do a good enough job of raising a baby and a child, especially if they were well nurtured themselves. I’m concerned about how they’d do with an adolescent who’s interested in sex.
More generally, I believe that people who have a hard time getting started on sexual/romantic relationships have parents who didn’t have a good relationship.
As for social change, I don’t think forbidding IVF for virgins isn’t going to solve anything. I think we have sufficient evidence that external control doesn’t have good tools for getting people to have children or form families.
I believe we’re looking at a bottleneck where only people who really want children are having children, and I don’t know what the outcome will be.
If the human race went entirely non-sexual but still wanted children at a reasonable rate, I don’t think it would be a disaster. I also don’t think this is likely.
I find it plausible that at least some of the people who don’t want sex have had a traumatic sexual history. I really can’t say that the world is a worse place because such people don’t have to have sex to have children.
The big advantage I can see for sex robots is that if they can compete successfully with low-end prostitutes, women and girls will be much less likely to be forced into prostitution.
I’m willing to bet that someone with no sexual history can do a good enough job of raising a baby and a child
Indeed, in the past this was the norm in many societies. Most women’s very first sexual experience was with their husband and they often became pregnant after very little sexual activity. Aside from the comment made by that anonymous psychologist, I am not aware of anyone saying that women require sexual experience to raise children. The two concepts seem entirely unrelated.
Experience with other children (children of other people in the family, or even stranger’s children) seems to be a far more relevant area of experience and, if anything, this is the area in which many women today lag behind their predecessors.
Indeed, in the past this was the norm in many societies. Most women’s very first sexual experience was with their husband and they often became pregnant after very little sexual activity.
Not to mention—my impression is that upper-class families would often hire nannies and governesses to do much of their child-rearing, and that these were considered respectable positions for unmarried women.
I think the idea is that having had long-term relationships (which leads to sex in almost all cases) is an important developmental step in which you learn a lot of important interpersonal skills. I think that’s true, and I think it’s unwise to let people skip this developmental step and create a child to fill the resulting void of loneliness.
More generally, I believe that people who have a hard time getting started on sexual/romantic relationships have parents who didn’t have a good relationship.
Interesting. What evidence do you have for this?
I believe we’re looking at a bottleneck where only people who really want children are having children, and I don’t know what the outcome will be.
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
I find it plausible that at least some of the people who don’t want sex have had a traumatic sexual history. I really can’t say that the world is a worse place because such people don’t have to have sex to have children.
It depends on how it affects them. If they are a complete nervous wreck because of the trauma, maybe it is best they don’t have children? But that is a worst-case scenario.
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
As an anecdotal example, I am the child of very religious parents and I have zero belief in religion, and I have always had zero belief in it ever since I remember.
People always make the implicit assumption that children are going to be identical to their parents. In practice, culture, environment, and other factors play a huge role. The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
This is a tangent, but I just caught myself thinking, ‘If my religious parents had a less amorphous image of religion—although maybe in their heads it really is so—a more structured way of how the world should be, instead of is, I would find religion more to my liking. After all, they taught me to doubt, they taught me to tolerate incompatible beliefs when they don’t likely lead to what I consider ‘bad outcomes’, they taught me to be curious about the world, so they have to have these values themselves! But no, it was as if they just thought religion is something you pick up with age… Maybe religious and unreligious people are more concerned about their own generation, and the respective vocal minorities who ‘go after the children’ are regarded as truce-breakers?
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
Also, homosexuality is 35-40% hereditary. There have been twin studies done. This is plausible, if for instance its caused by recessive genes which confer a homozygote fitness boost.
The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed
Intelligence isn’t orthogonal to religiosity, and I didn’t propose any sort of eugenics.
and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you; I know that homosexuality is somewhat influenced by genetics. Which is why I said it has a strong developmental component. It is not 100% genetic, like eye color or skin color.
All of this said, twin studies are highly unreliable and I don’t recommend them as hard and fast evidence.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
I’m not talking in terms of raw intelligence potential per se. I’m talking about how that intelligence is used. I’m sure that “medieval theocracies” had plenty of smart people, in fact they were almost definitely just as smart, in raw intelligence terms, as people are today. This is why I’m saying the key to a successful society lies in providing a good cultural environment for children to grow up in.
The Amish are actually a good example, they live quite differently today than they used to in the past and they’re starting to embrace non-indigenous technology; some examples include more use of things like cellphones and motorcycles. If given 100 years, would the Amish still live as they do today? It’s very likely in my opinion that they won’t. There have been many ultra-conservative religious movements in the world that persisted for centuries and then died out in a single generation due to changing factors in the external world.
OK, I’ll be clearer: the Amish are a closed subculture within the U.S. Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living. Outside of the Amish little world, but still within the U.S., you find the tremendously complicated, varied, and unpredictable chaos that is normal society, where you can see both the borders of other closed subcultures (e.g. underground crime syndicates, elite social clubs, or Druze) and the cross-pollination between relatively more open subcultures (e.g. hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other) which together constitute the “normal.”
Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living.
This is not true. Amish do not live in gated communities. They are in daily contact with normal (albeit rural) American life.
hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other
That’s not true either. They don’t.
In any case, your claim was “More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people”. There are a lot more Amish and Amish are definitely “conservative people”. Why are there more Amish?
I googled it again, (I really need to start organising bookmarks more) and the first two sources I found both said religiosity/spirituality is 40-50% genetic.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the actual ideas are genetic, but unless children are separated from parents at birth they will pass on memes too. Its also possible that in a secular environment, people with a genetic tendency towards religion will adopt a quasi-religious attitude towards philosophies or politics.
It is also possible that in some places, current world religions loose out memetically before the religious genes take over, and the future theocracy could be some kinda new-age religion. I’m not saying its likely, but I am pointing out that I’m not arguing that specific ideas are genetic, only that traits such as religiosity are.
I should have been clearer—I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships, but that’s what I find plausible, not what I have evidence for.
I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships
I don’t know. I find it very plausible that children of bad marriages would have trouble creating and maintaining a stable and happy relationship, but I’m not sure about just starting a relationship.
Part of the situation is that people are under less pressure to start relationships (less likely to deal with parents who are demanding grandchildren), and that they’re in a social environment where it’s easier to turn people down. Even a slight flinch reaction at the idea of starting a relationship is going to raise the threshold effort.
I’ll track down the link if it’s wanted, but there was a piece by a woman from the UK who decided to accept every date that was offered to her. It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
I don’t think offering a woman the choice of what the date is about indicates lack of enthusiasm of going to a date with the woman.
The thing is “signal” is at least a two place verb—it probably needs more places because there are a large number of people involved.
I may have just acquired signal as a word to be sensitive to—signals have to be interpreted, so just saying something is being signaled leaves out altogether too much variation in many cases.
Behavioral genetics has only found weak effects from parenting (shared environment). While the nature of the research only allows for detecting large effects, and I doubt your specific argument has been studied, I generally assume such selection effects are weak unless there is evidence to indicate otherwise.
Edit: Unless you’re arguing that if someone’s parents are naturally bad at relationships, they too will be bad at relationships, but since whether a marriage is good or bad is generally more complex than that I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing.
As a woman, I do find men who think that upon encountering one, they should ‘deal with her’ (not even sexually) rather creepy… Perhaps you could imagine this totally counterfactual world where you simply have no obligation to ‘deal’ with anyone based on a binary characteristic?
As to virgin motherhood, strictly speaking only mating is ‘missing’, the rest is right there (since the blind god of evolution has prepared females to give healthy offspring if raped, pair-bonding and courtship cannot be necessary). Dunno how much emotional maturity one picks up during mating, but I would not expect it to be a lot. As to hormones, it is in principle not impossible, just a very complex issue.
I found (usual disclaimers apply) that maturity comes rather after giving birth. When you slink into bed and try to immediately fall asleep, in case the kid decides to wake up at 3 am; or if you desperately want sex, you do it silently and briefly, in case that deadline moves ever closer—than yeah, you can claim some personal growth, because you are putting other’s interests before your own.
Do you think it is better for a human being not to leave descendants if the being is absolutely unable or unwilling to have sex? If virgin motherhood actually outcompetes the
traditional way of reproduction, it means it has some advantage, and the question becomes—what is the acceptable trade-off for this advantage. I would like to see some in-depth discussion of this, but I am afraid I can not quite treat the idea [of a “parthenogenesis-based” society] seriously.
BTW, do you think notable clergy 1) never included ‘thriving adult men’, or 2) were secretly all debauched anyway?
Let’s say a long-term couple wants to have a child, but some birth defect or sexual dysfunction prevents them from having sex. Should they be prevented from having a kid? The sex aspect doesn’t seem to matter in itself. What would be concerning would be if people who fear intimacy or lack interpersonal skills are able to just skip straight to having babies out of loneliness, without ever having to get past their developmental blocks.
I don’t doubt adult virgins have missed out on important developmental experiences, but it’s odd that you focus on sex itself as being this big developmental step rather than, e.g. a committed long-term relationship. I think that’s the important part.
I disagree (but upvoted—social evolution is a worthy topic).
I’m a pretty big fan of freeing our (and specifically my) cognition from the evolutionary pressures which created it (and me). Removing the pressure of sex from almost all male/female interactions seems like a worthwhile thing to explore.
I share your basic conservatism in that it’s a pretty scary change. I just see the good in it as well as the risks.
How is a sexbot different from a sexdoll or a fleshlight and pornography?
I don’t think it would create any problems in a mentally healthy individual, though it might exacerbate those suffering from pre-existing issues surrounding sex.
Create a sex robot that behaves like a human female. Problem solved.
In all seriousness though, it seems like by the time sex robots that look and act sufficiently human arrive on the scene, we’ll already necessarily be well within the time frame of emergence of strong artificial intelligence and most of your points would become moot. It seems to me that there’s only a short window of time between “sex robots that some men, but not most, would find appealing” and “the (sex?) robots have taken over.”
I’ve heard some people worry that even sufficiently good vibrators and fleshlights will reduce the amount of actual sex people have. Making a robot that a normal person can fall in love with might be AGI-complete (although some people do get attached to robot pets or form imaginary relationships with anime characters or ‘waifu’) but even a robot which isn’t as good as a human still decreases the need for human company.
Also, is the creation of sex robots a matter of AI, or of creating realistic synthetic skin? If its the latter, and AGI turns out to be really hard, then sex robots could easly come a long time before the singularity.
Sexbots are more of a joker, some sort of wild card in the gender dynamics debate. I think there’s something that I’m not sure if it’s being avoided or if it’s simply elusive enough to not be mentioned, and I have no idea what that is. It seems like they’re making men and women like cooperating enemies.
On topic, sexbots would be harder to implement for women considering they’re more attracted to behavior rather than looks.. although if you can make a convincing sexbot for a man I’m sure that canonically we’re not too many steps away from making one for a woman.
Something like this trend has already advanced far in Japan,
Next stop: Japan. Now I’ll just need to figure out if their supposed dislike for non-natives is real or not.
By the way advancedatheist, you give me a troll-esque vibe but admittingly you post some good content from time to time. High five.
The recent propaganda about the wonders of sex robots has gotten me worked up because I consider the sex robot a horrible idea, and it leads me to worry about just how disordered the relationship between the sexes can possibly get. Young men need experience with sexual relationships starting at an appropriate age so that they can develop the skills they need for dealing with women successfully in adult life in general. Sufficiently advanced sex robots (“advanced” in a technological sense, because I consider the technology socially damaging) could sabotage this process and result in turning a whole generation of adolescent boys into emotionally and socially impaired adult male virgins who don’t know how to relate to real, biological women. Something like this trend has already advanced far in Japan, even without sex robots: Reportedly a quarter of unmarried Japanese men in their 30’s have had no sexual experience, despite Japan’s normal male to female sex ratio, the culture’s sexual liberalism and Japan’s proximity to other Asian countries which have sex tourism industries. Japan has a funny way of living “20 minutes into the future,” so we shouldn’t shrug this off this phenomenon as a peculiarity of Japanese culture and not expect it to show up elsewhere.
For some reason I find little reception to my concerns about this. I would even argue that male sexual backwardness should become a focus of professional development in business, to show the importance of addressing it as a wider problem. Promising male business leaders who lack sexual experience need help in acquiring it as part of their training so that they can earn the respect of women in the work place. (What, you don’t think that women can pick up on the difference between the experienced, confident man versus the inexperienced man who feels uncomfortable around young women, ceteris paribus?)
But as I said, I don’t know of anyone else who shares my point of view, and especially not professional sexologists. The sex scientists in the West, at least, seem to have the agenda of promoting feminism and normalizing deviancy. They don’t care about the experiences and problems of adult male virgins and incels with normal desires, so guess who gets thrown to the wolves?
Then I just read the following story:
Advent of the virgin births: Women who have never been in a relationship paying £5,000 to get pregnant http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3250413/Advent-virgin-births-Women-never-relationship-paying-5-000-pregnant.html
Apparently some fertility clinics in the UK will help virgin women bypass sexual experience on the way to motherhood, even ones who might never have had a boyfriend or gone on a date.
Hmm. Okay. What could possibly go wrong with this, apart from the usual hazards of single motherhood?
Well, the Daily Mail article says the following:
Uh, you know, this resembles my concerns about the developmental deficiencies of adult male virgins. Perhaps I sound like a crank for insisting that young men need experience with sexual relationships to develop into thriving adult men; but then this psychotherapist says that young women need the emotional growth that comes from experience with sexual relationships, and they preferably need to become pregnant in these relationships, so that they can become good mothers.
And now the UK has inadvertently started a social experiment where female virgins can forego this stage of life experience and skill development because they want to make babies right away without having any sexual involvement with men. The women who give birth this way will probably have problems forming relationships with men afterwards, and not just because of men’s natural aversion to cuckoldry – why should these men invest their resources into rearing other men’s children? – but also because these women could project something “off” about them that reduces the perception of their reproductive fitness. Making babies as virgins minus sexual intercourse has to muck up women’s hormonal cycles involved with courtship, pair bonding, mating, conception, pregnancy and childbirth – natural and sexual selection shaped women’s bodies and minds to do it this way over hundreds of thousands of years—and the subtle but detectable damage will probably manifest itself in their bodies and in their behavior around men.
However I doubt if the medical community will heed the warnings of mental health professionals like Dilys Daws. In the modern political regime, women can get pretty much whatever they want, even female virgins who want to become mothers without having to submit to the indignity of coupling with the bodies of icky boys. Meanwhile, some transhumanists who should know better think that sexually backwards men will find meaningful “relationships” with sex robots. The two trends complement each other, in a sick and twisted way; and I just don’t see how they can turn out well, especially if the one about virgin motherhood goes viral.
You may need to update your beliefs based on that evidence. Admittedly, your personal history has a strong effect on your recommendations for society, but (and I’m sorry that there’s no delicate way to say this) your case is not the average.
You keep using that term, like it’s analogous to the essential time window in childhood for language acquisition, but adults are much more flexible.
One anecdote is not evidence, but I’m the least sexually experienced and the most professionally respected person at my office. Even outside of my own team, our commercial department is full of women and all of them defer to my opinion on expected timeframes and quality checks. And I achieve all that while being on principle opposed to the idea that women naturally look up to men for guidance.
I think it’s time for each individual to decide what they need instead of imposing a homogeneous standard on everyone.
I think you’re overestimating the importance of sex in human relationships. I’m willing to bet that someone with no sexual history can do a good enough job of raising a baby and a child, especially if they were well nurtured themselves. I’m concerned about how they’d do with an adolescent who’s interested in sex.
More generally, I believe that people who have a hard time getting started on sexual/romantic relationships have parents who didn’t have a good relationship.
As for social change, I don’t think forbidding IVF for virgins isn’t going to solve anything. I think we have sufficient evidence that external control doesn’t have good tools for getting people to have children or form families.
I believe we’re looking at a bottleneck where only people who really want children are having children, and I don’t know what the outcome will be.
If the human race went entirely non-sexual but still wanted children at a reasonable rate, I don’t think it would be a disaster. I also don’t think this is likely.
I find it plausible that at least some of the people who don’t want sex have had a traumatic sexual history. I really can’t say that the world is a worse place because such people don’t have to have sex to have children.
The big advantage I can see for sex robots is that if they can compete successfully with low-end prostitutes, women and girls will be much less likely to be forced into prostitution.
Indeed, in the past this was the norm in many societies. Most women’s very first sexual experience was with their husband and they often became pregnant after very little sexual activity. Aside from the comment made by that anonymous psychologist, I am not aware of anyone saying that women require sexual experience to raise children. The two concepts seem entirely unrelated.
Experience with other children (children of other people in the family, or even stranger’s children) seems to be a far more relevant area of experience and, if anything, this is the area in which many women today lag behind their predecessors.
Not to mention—my impression is that upper-class families would often hire nannies and governesses to do much of their child-rearing, and that these were considered respectable positions for unmarried women.
I think the idea is that having had long-term relationships (which leads to sex in almost all cases) is an important developmental step in which you learn a lot of important interpersonal skills. I think that’s true, and I think it’s unwise to let people skip this developmental step and create a child to fill the resulting void of loneliness.
Interesting. What evidence do you have for this?
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
It depends on how it affects them. If they are a complete nervous wreck because of the trauma, maybe it is best they don’t have children? But that is a worst-case scenario.
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
As an anecdotal example, I am the child of very religious parents and I have zero belief in religion, and I have always had zero belief in it ever since I remember.
People always make the implicit assumption that children are going to be identical to their parents. In practice, culture, environment, and other factors play a huge role. The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
This is a tangent, but I just caught myself thinking, ‘If my religious parents had a less amorphous image of religion—although maybe in their heads it really is so—a more structured way of how the world should be, instead of is, I would find religion more to my liking. After all, they taught me to doubt, they taught me to tolerate incompatible beliefs when they don’t likely lead to what I consider ‘bad outcomes’, they taught me to be curious about the world, so they have to have these values themselves! But no, it was as if they just thought religion is something you pick up with age… Maybe religious and unreligious people are more concerned about their own generation, and the respective vocal minorities who ‘go after the children’ are regarded as truce-breakers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#Genes_and_environment
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene
Also, homosexuality is 35-40% hereditary. There have been twin studies done. This is plausible, if for instance its caused by recessive genes which confer a homozygote fitness boost.
Intelligence isn’t orthogonal to religiosity, and I didn’t propose any sort of eugenics.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/intelligence-and-iq-scores-children-are-not-influenced-parenting-style-good-or-bad-313588
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you; I know that homosexuality is somewhat influenced by genetics. Which is why I said it has a strong developmental component. It is not 100% genetic, like eye color or skin color.
All of this said, twin studies are highly unreliable and I don’t recommend them as hard and fast evidence.
I’m not talking in terms of raw intelligence potential per se. I’m talking about how that intelligence is used. I’m sure that “medieval theocracies” had plenty of smart people, in fact they were almost definitely just as smart, in raw intelligence terms, as people are today. This is why I’m saying the key to a successful society lies in providing a good cultural environment for children to grow up in.
More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people. For the godzillionth time: transmission of ideas is not genetic.
Amish population grew by about 120% between 1992 and 2013. Do you think their ideas are that attractive..?
The Amish are actually a good example, they live quite differently today than they used to in the past and they’re starting to embrace non-indigenous technology; some examples include more use of things like cellphones and motorcycles. If given 100 years, would the Amish still live as they do today? It’s very likely in my opinion that they won’t. There have been many ultra-conservative religious movements in the world that persisted for centuries and then died out in a single generation due to changing factors in the external world.
The Amish intentionally restrict their children’s exposure to foreign ideas. That’s less achievable in normal society.
Define “normal”. US looks pretty normal to me :-/
OK, I’ll be clearer: the Amish are a closed subculture within the U.S. Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living. Outside of the Amish little world, but still within the U.S., you find the tremendously complicated, varied, and unpredictable chaos that is normal society, where you can see both the borders of other closed subcultures (e.g. underground crime syndicates, elite social clubs, or Druze) and the cross-pollination between relatively more open subcultures (e.g. hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other) which together constitute the “normal.”
This is not true. Amish do not live in gated communities. They are in daily contact with normal (albeit rural) American life.
That’s not true either. They don’t.
In any case, your claim was “More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people”. There are a lot more Amish and Amish are definitely “conservative people”. Why are there more Amish?
From Wikipedia:
Rumspringa notwithstanding, the Amish way of life has several built-in features that repel modern influences without needing physical fences to do so.
Well, of course. That’s how a culture survives without being melted down in a pot. In a certain sense, that’s what makes it “conservative”.
I googled it again, (I really need to start organising bookmarks more) and the first two sources I found both said religiosity/spirituality is 40-50% genetic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#Genes_and_environment http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene
Now, this doesn’t mean that the actual ideas are genetic, but unless children are separated from parents at birth they will pass on memes too. Its also possible that in a secular environment, people with a genetic tendency towards religion will adopt a quasi-religious attitude towards philosophies or politics.
It is also possible that in some places, current world religions loose out memetically before the religious genes take over, and the future theocracy could be some kinda new-age religion. I’m not saying its likely, but I am pointing out that I’m not arguing that specific ideas are genetic, only that traits such as religiosity are.
I should have been clearer—I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships, but that’s what I find plausible, not what I have evidence for.
I don’t know. I find it very plausible that children of bad marriages would have trouble creating and maintaining a stable and happy relationship, but I’m not sure about just starting a relationship.
Part of the situation is that people are under less pressure to start relationships (less likely to deal with parents who are demanding grandchildren), and that they’re in a social environment where it’s easier to turn people down. Even a slight flinch reaction at the idea of starting a relationship is going to raise the threshold effort.
I’ll track down the link if it’s wanted, but there was a piece by a woman from the UK who decided to accept every date that was offered to her. It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
I don’t think offering a woman the choice of what the date is about indicates lack of enthusiasm of going to a date with the woman.
It might be a matter of tone, but I’d rather hear at least an offer of a plan with room for other suggestions rather than no plan.
There are two different issues:
1) What does the woman prefer.
2) What does this behavior signal about the guy.
The thing is “signal” is at least a two place verb—it probably needs more places because there are a large number of people involved.
I may have just acquired signal as a word to be sensitive to—signals have to be interpreted, so just saying something is being signaled leaves out altogether too much variation in many cases.
Behavioral genetics has only found weak effects from parenting (shared environment). While the nature of the research only allows for detecting large effects, and I doubt your specific argument has been studied, I generally assume such selection effects are weak unless there is evidence to indicate otherwise.
Edit: Unless you’re arguing that if someone’s parents are naturally bad at relationships, they too will be bad at relationships, but since whether a marriage is good or bad is generally more complex than that I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing.
I agree, that does sound plausible, both genetically and psychologically.
Edit: wording.
As a woman, I do find men who think that upon encountering one, they should ‘deal with her’ (not even sexually) rather creepy… Perhaps you could imagine this totally counterfactual world where you simply have no obligation to ‘deal’ with anyone based on a binary characteristic?
As to virgin motherhood, strictly speaking only mating is ‘missing’, the rest is right there (since the blind god of evolution has prepared females to give healthy offspring if raped, pair-bonding and courtship cannot be necessary). Dunno how much emotional maturity one picks up during mating, but I would not expect it to be a lot. As to hormones, it is in principle not impossible, just a very complex issue.
I found (usual disclaimers apply) that maturity comes rather after giving birth. When you slink into bed and try to immediately fall asleep, in case the kid decides to wake up at 3 am; or if you desperately want sex, you do it silently and briefly, in case that deadline moves ever closer—than yeah, you can claim some personal growth, because you are putting other’s interests before your own.
Do you think it is better for a human being not to leave descendants if the being is absolutely unable or unwilling to have sex? If virgin motherhood actually outcompetes the traditional way of reproduction, it means it has some advantage, and the question becomes—what is the acceptable trade-off for this advantage. I would like to see some in-depth discussion of this, but I am afraid I can not quite treat the idea [of a “parthenogenesis-based” society] seriously.
BTW, do you think notable clergy 1) never included ‘thriving adult men’, or 2) were secretly all debauched anyway?
Let’s say a long-term couple wants to have a child, but some birth defect or sexual dysfunction prevents them from having sex. Should they be prevented from having a kid? The sex aspect doesn’t seem to matter in itself. What would be concerning would be if people who fear intimacy or lack interpersonal skills are able to just skip straight to having babies out of loneliness, without ever having to get past their developmental blocks.
I don’t doubt adult virgins have missed out on important developmental experiences, but it’s odd that you focus on sex itself as being this big developmental step rather than, e.g. a committed long-term relationship. I think that’s the important part.
I disagree (but upvoted—social evolution is a worthy topic).
I’m a pretty big fan of freeing our (and specifically my) cognition from the evolutionary pressures which created it (and me). Removing the pressure of sex from almost all male/female interactions seems like a worthwhile thing to explore.
I share your basic conservatism in that it’s a pretty scary change. I just see the good in it as well as the risks.
Why are you worried about preserving skills that would largely become irrelevant?
How is a sexbot different from a sexdoll or a fleshlight and pornography?
I don’t think it would create any problems in a mentally healthy individual, though it might exacerbate those suffering from pre-existing issues surrounding sex.
Create a sex robot that behaves like a human female. Problem solved.
In all seriousness though, it seems like by the time sex robots that look and act sufficiently human arrive on the scene, we’ll already necessarily be well within the time frame of emergence of strong artificial intelligence and most of your points would become moot. It seems to me that there’s only a short window of time between “sex robots that some men, but not most, would find appealing” and “the (sex?) robots have taken over.”
I’ve heard some people worry that even sufficiently good vibrators and fleshlights will reduce the amount of actual sex people have. Making a robot that a normal person can fall in love with might be AGI-complete (although some people do get attached to robot pets or form imaginary relationships with anime characters or ‘waifu’) but even a robot which isn’t as good as a human still decreases the need for human company.
Also, is the creation of sex robots a matter of AI, or of creating realistic synthetic skin? If its the latter, and AGI turns out to be really hard, then sex robots could easly come a long time before the singularity.
I believe the accepted plural of “waifu” is “waifus”.
That depends on whether you interpret “sex robot” as a companion or as a fucktoy.
Indeed, and this is one of the times when we need to define exactly what we are talking about.
Sexbots are more of a joker, some sort of wild card in the gender dynamics debate. I think there’s something that I’m not sure if it’s being avoided or if it’s simply elusive enough to not be mentioned, and I have no idea what that is. It seems like they’re making men and women like cooperating enemies.
On topic, sexbots would be harder to implement for women considering they’re more attracted to behavior rather than looks.. although if you can make a convincing sexbot for a man I’m sure that canonically we’re not too many steps away from making one for a woman.
Next stop: Japan. Now I’ll just need to figure out if their supposed dislike for non-natives is real or not.
By the way advancedatheist, you give me a troll-esque vibe but admittingly you post some good content from time to time. High five.