This mostly reminds me of SSC’s discussion of Jaynes’ theory. An age where people talk out loud to their invisible personal ba/iri/daemon/genius / angel-on-the-shoulder, and which is—in a similar manner as clothes—are in practice considered loosely a part of the person (but not strictly). Roughly everyone has them, thus the particular emotional need fulfilled by them is largely factored out of human interaction. (I believe a decade or two ago there was a tongue-in-cheek slogan to the effect of “if the government wants to protect marriages, it should hire maids/nannies”.) Social norms (social technology) adjust gracefully, just like they adjusted quickly and seamlessly to contraceptives factoring apart child-conception and sex. (Um.)
Separately: it would be an interesting experiment to get serial abuse victims to talk to chatbots at length. One of the strong versions of the unflattering theory says that they might get the chatbots to abuse them, because that’s the probable completion to their conversation patterns.
This mostly reminds me of SSC’s discussion of Jaynes’ theory. An age where people talk out loud to their invisible personal ba/iri/daemon/genius / angel-on-the-shoulder, and which is—in a similar manner as clothes—are in practice considered loosely a part of the person (but not strictly). Roughly everyone has them, thus the particular emotional need fulfilled by them is largely factored out of human interaction. (I believe a decade or two ago there was a tongue-in-cheek slogan to the effect of “if the government wants to protect marriages, it should hire maids/nannies”.) Social norms (social technology) adjust gracefully, just like they adjusted quickly and seamlessly to contraceptives factoring apart child-conception and sex. (Um.)
Separately: it would be an interesting experiment to get serial abuse victims to talk to chatbots at length. One of the strong versions of the unflattering theory says that they might get the chatbots to abuse them, because that’s the probable completion to their conversation patterns.