Auxiliary Memory

Loneliness

Most people think the cure for loneliness is seeking the company of other people. I don’t agree. The complaint of being “lonely” is much too vague, on the same order as saying, “I don’t feel good.” What are the symptoms of loneliness, and what are its cures? Studying loneliness unclothes our souls. Why is loneliness such a pervasive condition in world of seven billion? I got onto the topic of loneliness when a couple friends mentioned joining Internet dating services and I became fascinated with how those programs worked.

Dating services sell the illusion of scientific match making. Each service believes their method of profiling will introduce their customers to harmonious relationships. Of course this assumes we must all be paired off like animals going into Noah’s ark. If our goal is to produce children, then this might be logical, but high divorce rates and unhappy marriages seem to suggest that the concept of soul mates might be a failure. I must ask, what do we want from each other?

First, is being alone bad? Well yes, if we’re alone too much. Is the solution a lifelong contractual relationship? I wonder if the deeply programmed impulse to reproduce overrides all other lesser urges so we see pair bonding as the only solution to loneliness. If we all took a contraceptive pill that removed any impulse to get naked with each other, what would be the second through nth reason for finding a friend? In no order of importance, and with no attempt to be complete, here are some of the components of loneliness that I’ve observed lately in me and my friends.

Talking

Some of my friends love to talk. Now I mean this different from people who love good conversation. These people want to express themselves in words, they have an itch to gab. They are excited about events in their lives and want to chatter away. Some people I know like this don’t particularly like to listen, nor are they particularly interested in people’s reaction to what they have to say. I’ve known a few rare souls that want to talk so much you have to back away from them. I used to have a professor that I would back out of his office and heard him talking halfway down the hall.

Listening

Now, there’s another kind of person that likes to talk, but not so compulsively, because what they really want is someone to listen to them. They want Freud for a friend. These people value others for their empathetic ability and perceptive observations. They are open to insightful comments and even welcome advice.

Conversation

Witty conversation is craved by some people, by not many. They love batting words back and forth across a net. Loneliness for these folks mean hanging out with people who spend more time chasing their words than volleying them back.

Play

Many people have the gaming gene and love to get with other people for competition. Whether it’s bridge, bowling or baseball, they seek others to play. I think older people crave the kind of living we had as kids where play was the common form of communication. I’ve read that baby boomers are forming leagues to play kickball, dodge ball, four-square and tetherball, games that were great in grade school. Kids are very physical and close when they play, like kittens and puppies, and I think many people are lonely for that kind of interaction with others.

Work

We spend most of our adult life at work, so it’s the main form of social bonding. Having a common goal is a very satisfying way to communicate with people. Purpose is super-glue for people. I think many retired people miss the friendship of co-workers. Unlike marriage, you don’t have to be intimate with the people at work to feel close to them.

Money

Now some readers are going to wonder why I list money as a kind of loneliness, but strangely enough I think some people are lonely for people to take care of them, and that involves dollars. I think the warmth of a relationship can be expressed in the security of finances, and I think this is true of many women. I often hear women wishing they could meet a rich man, but I never hear guys talking about wanting to meet a rich woman. I think the biological drive deep within our old brain makes females seek out powerful providers, and that works out to be a kind of loneliness.

Nesting

Another factor connected to the biological drive to mate is the urge to build a nest within a partner. Women, and some men, love fixing up a house and decorating, and I think there’s a kind of loneliness that make some people want to hook up with someone special to do remodeling.

Travel

There are a lot of solitary travelers out there, but most people want to go on adventures with a buddy. Seeing the world alone is a particularly lonely pursuit.

Health

This is a complicated one to imagine, but we know scientifically that people who live together are healthier than people who live apart. But do people really feel loneliness for health? I don’t know if it’s a conscious thing or not, but I think there’s lots of people willing to accept anyone in their lives because they just feel better about life.

Knowledge

This is the reason I’m often lonely. I’m interested in a lot of topics that my wife and friends find boring. I think many people look back on their school and college years as the most exciting time of their lives because of mixing the quest for knowledge with friendship.

Art

Movies are probably the leading art form that people share. When I was growing up music and television were major artistic expressions for connecting friendships. However, when I was at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, I felt it to be an extremely solitary experience. I wished I could express how I felt about the paintings I was seeing, but they were all so personal. Reading is a lonely pursuit but we often gather in book clubs and at work to talk about books.

At the Finish Line

One my lady friends told me she was lonely for someone to be at the finish line when she runs a marathon. I thought that was a particularly good kind of loneliness – to want someone to share your triumphs. I know I like to tell my wife when I get a bunch of hits on my blog because an essay got promoted on StumbleUpon. I think if you think about this one for awhile it might reveal a lot about why people are so lonely.

Be On My Side

The same friend above said she wanted a partner that would take her side, even if she was wrong. I guess this could have also been called “Watch My Back” but that might be a slight variation. If you go to war with words or fists you want your friends to line up behind you.

Sex

Getting genital is the eight million pound gorilla in the room of loneliness. Horniness is what most males feel when they are miserably lonely. I’m not sure women feel of it in the same way, but the impulse to make babies drives us crazy. And it’s such a weird concept when you think about it. Why would below the belt friction provide so much soothing comfort for the pain of being alone? Stranger still, when we’re beyond age of reproduction our bodies still nag us about carry on the race.

* * *

Feeling lonely is such a complex symptom. When we tell someone that we don’t feel good our friends will ask where does it hurt. From there they can play twenty questions and drill down on some specific ailment. They won’t do that when we complain of being lonely. The assumption is a generic person can be the universal pill that can cure any kind of loneliness. I spend most of my time alone, but I can’t say whether I suffer loneliness or not. I have to force myself to socialize more, and I like the company of people, but often when I’m out with a friend I’m anxious to get home to be alone. And even when I’m with people I still feel alone, a kind of existential loneliness.

On the other hand, I can be home alone, enjoying television or reading and it never occurs to me to complain about not having someone around. But other times in the same situation I do feel lonely. For the past year, my wife of thirty plus years, has had to work out of town, so I spend more time than ever alone. But even when she’s home I can have bouts of loneliness just as easily as I can when I’m alone.

Other people just want someone else around, and maybe not even in the same room, but just around the house The pain of their loneliness is reduced by being in a relationship. As I get older it seems people have less and less tolerance for putting up with other people and they prefer to live alone. Some of those people still feel lonely but find pets good company, or the hours at work to be socially fulfilling enough. I’ve been speculating with my science fiction reading friends about how companionable a robot might be. Other friends have pointed out that the Internet is good enough social contact for them.

What do we want from each other? What do you want from another person that will make you happy? I’ve asked my friends experimenting with computer dating what they are looking for in a good match. Surprisingly, or not, they don’t know. Usually they can specify things they don’t want. I think their loneliness is a general sense of unease and they don’t specifically know what will make them happy, but they often know the details about other people that make them unhappy.

Last night I had a very specific desire. I was watching this great NOVA episode on my DVR about fractal geometry and I was overwhelmed with excitement about the idea and wished I had someone to gab about it afterwards. Seeing the gorgeous fractal images in 1080i resolution on a 56″ screen was visually stunning. Learning about what fractal geometry teaches us about nature was inspiring. I really wanted a friend at that moment to discuss these ideas and maybe even try to program some fractal formulas into my computer.

Now this kind of desire for companionship bores the crap out of my wife. I get the same response from my lady friends who I spend most my social time. Of course, they want to talk about stuff that bores the crap out of me. I have a couple guy friends that would enjoy discussing fractal geometry, but their lives are usually busy with other stuff. Now I could jump online and find some bloggers exploring this subject and post comments, and that might do, but it’s not exactly what I want.

So, for me, one kind of loneliness is not having someone with me to discuss science and philosophy. I tell my wife that I ever meet a woman who has the hots for old fat bald guys that love to watch science documentaries that I’ll be dumping her. She doesn’t seemed worried. I don’t know if it’s because there’s zero chance of me meeting anyone that has the hots for my old body, or there’s zero chance for me to meet a woman that loves science documentaries, or the odds of finding someone with both qualities is like the odds of finding life on Mars.

Another type of loneliness I have is the desire for someone to share music. I used to get with friends to listen and talk about music. This started around the 6th grade and ended sometime after college. Of course, for many of those years of sharing music also included the communal sharing of a joint. Today people withdraw into their own private world of music with iPod earphones. Except for live performances, most people consider music as solitary as masturbation.

For most people, the solution to loneliness is having someone to talk to. Now some people talk to themselves, and others to cats, dogs, birds and fish, but most people need another person to carry on a conversation. Some of my lady friends can talk a blue streak. I just let them. Sometimes I think they only reason they like me is because I let them. Now I would like to talk more in these conversations, but I have learned it’s better to shovel my words out in this blog than dumping them onto people, because what I’m interested in the most seems to interest other people in the least.

When I wrote “The Implications of Sexbots” I actually thought robots would sell more for conversational companions than make-out machines. Unless you’re a horny boy, the percentage of your day spent humping your bot would be quite small, so I figured most people would want a robot to talk to. If Hondo made a Freud model of Asimo, it would sell more then the Accord. If people really believe that a robot could actually listen and understand them, and help them find insights into their souls, or just patiently handle all their blather, I think robots could be a cure for the kind of loneliness where you need another person to listen.

When you start thinking about it, the word loneliness can means all kinds of things. So when your friends complain of being lonely, ask them to be more specific.

The reproductive urge is the greatest force for bring two people together, so for many people who whine they are lonely, they are merely lamenting the desire for sex rather than companionship. We know how powerful this urge is because people will copulate with people they hate. The desire for sex will make you listen to conversations that bore you, and play games you despise.

I wonder what society would be like if humans had mating periods like some animals, so we only felt the urge to rut for two days a year, and the other 363 days we felt absolutely zero degrees of romantic heat? Would depression over loneliness be so pervasive? I don’t think so.

Before puberty, we were very social animals. Kids love to play, and often played in packs. That’s why I suggested the urge to play was one important type of loneliness. I’m wondering if it’s not the strongest after sex. But that makes me wonder if there is any kind of loneliness stronger than the sex drive. I think there is. Notice how powerful television is in our culture. Few people screw for 3.7 hours a day, but most will watch that much television.

Humanity started out as tribal groups, and even after the rise of cities, the family was multigenerational up until about the 1950s when television was invented. Instead of living with a home full of people, we commune with thousands of people via our TV sets. We love fictional stories about other people because deep within our genes and synaptic programming is social awareness. Watching Lost or Desperate Housewives resonates with that social tuning fork that vibrates within our head. Television is the methadone for our natural social addiction.

One reason I think so many of my lady friends want to talk a blue streak when they can is because they have been listening to television for hours on end and feel it’s their time to talk. Television is the robot that talks to us, hour after hour, gossiping about all the other people in the world, real or imaginary. Television is the modern Homer telling us stories. Television is the box that lets us watch the popular kids, the alpha males and females. Television is the peephole in which we vicariously watch others have sex and romance. Television is a better cure for loneliness than books, the old standard for solitary social escapism.

Loneliness is such a vague term, which is why it’s probably so overused. The next time the words, “I’m lonely” are about to tumble out of your mouth, hold up a minute and reevaluate. Think specific. What you might want to say is “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I had enough friends for a rousing game of dodge ball.” Or “Gosh, I sure wish I knew a patient soul that would let me blab at them for forty minutes.” Or maybe you really want is to go dancing or horseback riding.

JWH – 2/10/9

Defining Science Fiction

I just started reading Fast Forward 2, an original anthology of science fiction edited by Lou Anders and I had to stop in the middle of the first story to write this. Anders begins the book with two quotes about science fiction, this is the second:

Science fiction is the holy fool of literature. It can say what it likes and get away with an examination of truly radical and subversive ideas because no one takes it seriously. When it’s at its best, we’re generally in trouble. Science fiction flourished during the social and economic upheavals of the 1930s, during the Cold War, and during the Iron Age of the 1980s. It should be flourishing now, damn it, but too many people who used to hang out with it have wandered off into some kind of fluffy make-believe world or other. Real science fiction doesn’t make stuff up. It turns reality up to eleven. It takes stuff from contemporary weather—stuff no one else has bothered or dared to question—and uses it to make an end run on reality. It not only shows us what could happen if things carry on the way they are, but it pushes what’s going on to the extremes of absurdity. That’s not its job: that’s its nature. And what’s happened to science fiction lately, it isn’t natural. It’s pale and lank and kind of out of focus. It needs to straighten up and fly right. It needs to reconnect with the world’s weather, and get medieval on reality’s ass. – Paul McAuley

Starting your collection with this quote is pretty much like Babe Ruth coming up to bat and pointing to where he’s about to hit a ball into orbit. This makes me both excited and worried. I want these stories to be great. In his introduction, “The Age of Accelerating Returns” Anders goes on to classify four purposes for science fiction:

“It can be predictive, and it’s always fun to talk about that, but this is its least important aspect.”
“More important, it can be preventative, …”
“Third, SF’s importance lies also in its ability to actually inspire the future.”
“Finally, SF is the literature of the open mind — the literature that acknowledges change and encourages thinking outside the box — and that in itself is a good thing, even if the science on display is nonsense.”

But these four attributes could have described Hot, Flat and Crowded, the new non-fiction book by Thomas Friedman. Science fiction is notoriously hard to define, but I feel great empathy for what Anders is trying to do.

To me science fiction are stories about the future, which ropes in Anders’ four purposes nicely: predictive, preventative, inspirational and speculative, but does that list include all the aspects of great science fiction? I think Anders left off one really important attribute: inventiveness. Think about the story “The Menace from Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein imagines that if people colonize the Moon it will be possible to have human powered flight in the air tanks. Now this sport might come to pass and it will fall under Anders’ third attribute of inspiring the future, but that’s not what I’m getting at.

Heinlein did some brainstorming and figured out with low gravity and the right air pressure people could fly by strapping on artificial wings. Whether or not it ever comes true, this is very inventive. There is little chance that time machines will ever be invented, but what a far out invention of the mind it was for H. G. Wells to conceived of time machines for fiction.

Science fiction is like a game with many different rules on how to play. Sort of like Monopoly. Some families have invented their own rules on how to use the board and pieces to play the game. Personally, I think science fiction is at its best when writers limited themselves to working within the boundary of contemporary science, but that’s not everyone’s way to play the game of making up science fiction stories. Rudy Rucker invents his ass off, but its not always scientific. Of course, by my rules that’s easily solved, I just say he writes fantasy. I also love fantasy stories. By the way, I don’t see calling a story fantasy as a slight.

I just finished rereading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It’s not predictive, preventative, inspirational, speculative or inventive, not in the way we’ve been discussing those attributes, but it’s considered an epic science fiction novel. Dan Simmons takes almost every known cliche science fictional idea and mixes those ingredients with a plot stolen from Chaucer and produces a wondrous story. Is it science fiction or fantasy? Does it matter?

By my rules, I would call Hyperion fantasy. A fantastic, colorful, vivid, fantasy. I don’t think most readers care to split hairs between the label of science fiction and fantasy. If it contains rocketships, it’s science fiction, if it has magic, it’s fantasy. The real defining attribute is great story telling.

But doesn’t that spoil the game in some way? Without the challenge of playing within the rules, doesn’t that lessen the achievement? Science in our society is already a slippery concept. Shouldn’t science fiction be scientific to the best of our knowledge? If science fiction stories are just supposed to be fun and nothing more, then it doesn’t matter. If science fiction writers are saying something serious about the future, then shouldn’t it matter how we define science fiction?

I have a theory about this. I think the public has never taken science fiction serious, so it doesn’t expect much from the genre, nor does it care how the form is defined. So few writers try to say something real about the future that when one does, readers will judge that story by its own merits and not by the genre, such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In other words, science fiction will get no respect in the world at large. And that might be cool with many people, since most science fiction fans prefer their field to be wild and wooly, rather than academic and disciplined.

I now shall go off and read the stories in Anders’ collection and see if they lived up to their introduction.

JWH – 2/8/9

The Fate of SF Magazines

Over at Slashdot.org they posted a news announcement with comments, “Difficult Times for SF Magazines” that is very worth reading if you’re worried about the fate of SF magazines. The main announcement was Realms of Fantasy will cease publication with the April issue and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has dropped it’s schedule from monthly to bi-monthly. The folks leaving comments make some interesting points about the state of SF, with many writers lamenting that SF isn’t what it used to be.

Here’s a comment from Moridineas that I particularly liked:

The difference between then and now–imho–is that the Asimovs, Heinleins, de Camps, etc etc etc are gone, and they haven’t really been replaced. My other opinion is that s.f. was largely a product of the zeitgeist of the what, roughly 50 years that it roughly flourished (1920-1970 or so?). We’ve got HDTVs, the Internet, Star Trek and Star Wars on TV, rovers on Mars, decoding DNA, etc etc. The sense of wonder in s.f. is largely gone because we take so much for granted that was virtually unimaginable back then.

Here’s another worthy comment to consider and was echoed by others from Steeleye Brad:

Ugh, agreeing with this. I ended my subscription to Analog around a year and a half ago, when I realized that the story quality had really gone down the shitter. I found myself starting to read a story, but then quitting 1-2 pages in because they were just so terrible. When I would get an issue and go through every story like this, I gave up. Stories with neat concepts completely ruined by confusing writing and indecipherable plots, lame tales where it was screamingly obvious the main character was an author’s self-insert, and vomit-inducing non-stories that served only to let the author express their political views (normally this is ok, except when the author’s soap-boxing completely drowns out and overwhelms the story).

Ultimately the topic degenerates into the pros and cons of publishing on the Internet and sidestepping the issue of content and whether or not the decline of the SF magazines represents a loss of interest in SF or if its an issue of declining story quality. I brought up this topic in two online SF book clubs and the common comment is they don’t find the stories very engaging. Second to that is many people have busy lives and let all their magazines go unread.

I started subscribing to the SF magazines back in the 1960s and kept subscribing until very recently. I was most faithful to F&SF over the decades. Currently I get F&SF and Asimov’s, but both are up for renewal and I’m not sure I want to renew, at least the paper edition. I might subscribe to digital editions at Fictionwise.com.

To be honest I don’t read them. I try every once in awhile. I have a tremendous nostalgia that makes me want to keep reading these old friends, but when I try I seldom find stories that grab me. And it’s not the ideas, but the characterization. I think when I was young I loved the stories just for the ideas and I wasn’t savvy enough about story telling to know the stories were badly told. Now, after decades of reading great stories I can’t overlook this.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of far out stories out there, it’s just a matter of finding them. Maybe what’s needed is for the genre to get down to one magazine. Refocus the field of science fiction. And since the magazine publishing and distribution industry is so screwed, maybe the short story market should move to a different format. I’d suggest a trade or mass market paperback series published quarterly to start with edited by team of editors to get the very best and diverse kind of story. Tie the publication to a web 2.0 site where readers can discuss the stories and vote on them and interact with the writers. Also get Audible.com to do an unabridged audio edition of the book each quarter, as well as publishing it in the Kindle, Sony and all the Fictionwise ebook editions.

I think we need a modern day Hugo Gernsback or John W. Campbell to reinvent the field of science fiction. The number one goal should be to eliminate fantasy stories from the mix and develop real science fiction stories. The next goal should be to find well written engaging stories that focus on good characterization. Publish stories that grab people and make them keep reading, and not stories that you have to struggle to the end for a payoff.

Science fiction has reinvented itself many times. I lament the passing of every genre magazine and worry about F&SF, Asimov’s and Analog, the old big three that now have circulations that are a tiny fraction of their glory days. I can’t tell if this trend means science fiction itself is dying. It does feel like we’re on the downward slope of the right hand side of the bell curve.

I’m a member of two online SF book clubs that focus on the classics of science fiction, and like many of the folk who left comments on Slashdot, feel SF golden age was really from 1950-1970, the Heinlein-Asimov-Clarke era. I think there was another bulge of SF fans with a generation that grew up with writers like Vernor Vinge, Dan Simmons, Neil Stephenson, David Brin, Greg Bear, John Varley, etc. And currently there’s a ripple bulge with writers like John Scalzi, Charles Stross, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds and others.

Whether SF will ever have another golden age with over hundred thousand people subscribing to its top SF magazine is hard to predict. Like I said, with a new Campbell or Gernsback discovering a new team of Heinlein-Asimov-Clarke level writers it could happen.

JWH – 2/1/9

How Smart Can Robots Become?

We like to think we all have unlimited potential. And there is a common myth that we only use five percent of our brains. Sadly, neither of these beliefs are true. Most people are of average intelligence by definition, and few brains tear up reality like Einstein. Brain capacity is limited, so why shouldn’t intelligence. That’s why I’m asking about robots. If the brains of AI computers and robots can be larger, and their density limited only to the laws of physics, then obviously artificial intelligence can grow to astoundingly high levels of IQ.

There are many many kinds of intelligence. Some people think Ken Jennings, who won so many Jeopardy games represents a major kind of intelligence. AI machines will be able to memorize whole university bookstores and beat any human at Trivial Pursuit. But can an AI machine study all the books and journals on economics and tell Barack Obama how to solve the current economic crisis? Memorizing facts is one kind of intelligence, but synthesizing knowledge is another. The human mind can only juggle so many ideas at once, and even if a robot can juggle more, will that mean AI can solve all problems, or big problems? We throw a lot of supercomputing power at trying to understand the weather but only get so far at predicting it.

Rocket scientists and physicists who talk to each other in mathematical symbols represent what many people consider the big brains on the planet. Can you imagine a robot with vision that overlays tiny formulas of mathematical analysis onto everything it sees? Will robots just be able to visualize the grand unification theory (GUT) of physics in their idle thoughts?

Will giant AI astronomers have their minds hooked up to every telescope in the world and every satellite in the sky and just daydream in cosmology? Will scientists of the future just read the journals that AI specialists write that explain everything in human terms? Once you start thinking about the limits of robotic minds, you realize how far they can take things. But even then, there will be limits. At some point, even robots will preface their conversations with, “With what we know today we can only say so much about exoplanets.”

I’ve always thought it’s a good thing that God doesn’t just hang out on Earth with us because he’d be such a pain in the ass know it all. Is that how we’ll feel about uber-geek robots? Or will it really matter? There’s plenty of superbrain dude and dudettes walking the planet and the average Earthling has no trouble ignoring their brilliance while pursuing their dumb-ass beliefs. If some AI the size of Utah tells the world there is absolutely no evidence of God in reality I doubt the entire human population of Earth will become atheists. If tomorrow’s newspaper printed the most eloquent equation for GUT discovered by Stephen Hawking and confirmed by legions of physicists I doubt it would make much of an impact with 99.9999% of the Earth’s population.

I have a feeling that in the future, with a world full of AI thinkers, many of them will sit around and lament how much they don’t know and write blog essays about inventing even more powerful artificial minds. Can you imagine the put-downs the smartest of the AIs will use to burn the dumbest of their bunch? “You’re no smarter than a human.” Ouch.

Most of the people who commented on my last essay about robots worried that smart machines would get together and decide that the best way to solve the problems of the planet Earth is to stamp out those pesky humans. That really is a potential worry we must face, but for some reason I naively believe we needn’t worry, although most science fiction ends up predicting the same thing that Jack Williamson did in his classic novel The Humanoids. I guess I should worry about AI tyrants who seek fascist solutions to their theories about how Earthly reality should be run.

I guess I believe we’ll build the AIs first, and if they get uppity we’ll just quickly pull the plug. Many people do not want to open Pandora’s box even once. They may be right, but I think we can isolate AIs easy enough. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an AI Economic Guru to get us through this current crisis? If we assemble such a machine and then ask it how to create an economy with maximum jobs for all and steady sustainable growth, do you think any AI mind could ever tell us the answer? Or what if AI doctors could tell us how to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s? What if you could watch a movie directed by an AI auteur that magnificently comments on the human condition? Or listen to AI music? The temptations are too great.

JWH – 1/26/9

The Implications of Sexbots

The other night on the Discovery Channel I saw a documentary about robots where the physicist Michio Kaku suggested that sex might be a factor in the development of robots. Kaku pointed out that the porn industry often used cutting edge technology for expanding their revenues. I certainly wouldn’t want to hump any of the robots they were showing in the documentary, so I thought his statement was silly. But then I remember Blade Runner, and knew I’d have a different opinion if I could buy androids that looked like Sean Young, Daryl Hannah and Joanna Cassidy did back in 1982.

Let’s assume that in the future they can make robots that are indistinguishable from humans and you can buy one for the price of a Camry, how many men will buy one for sex? Or even go to some red light district like in the movie AI, and pay to have sex with machines? Can lady robots ever be that appealing. Of course the porn industry does sell sex dolls now, but they are the butt of jokes. If there really are people having sex with plastic dolls then I suppose there might be a market for more realistic animated dolls, but I find that hard to believe.

However, the implications of sexbots are great. Real women already assume all men want are big boob bimbos with long legs and tiny waists. Real women go to unnatural lengths to artificially shape their bodies into what they think men want. So, is it that farfetched that some future industry wouldn’t try to manufacture women to order? And if a man could purchase his perfect female companion, what features would he want included? If you can specify breast size you can also specify how many words will be in your sexbox’s vocabulary, and if it should cook, clean and chauffeur.

This brings up another question. If future scientists can build robots that look like women, what if they can also build robots that act like women. Imagine a Turing Test for femininity. Now we’re getting into the territory of building a better wife. If you were sitting down at a robot showroom talking with the salesman, what features would you want in your new Busty Babe 2020?

To be frank, at 57 my sex drive isn’t as driving as it was in my second and third decade. If I bought a lady robot now I’d probably think of the near future and add the nursing skills package. And since I spend way more time talking with women than actually pursuing genital friction, I think I’d order whatever package that would allow my fembot to talk about the subjects my real lady friends find boring, like this blog. And it occurs to me that the vegetarian chef module would be a yummy add-on. And before you know it I’m buying a replacement for my wife. Sorry dear.

Can you imagine Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda from Sex in the City sitting around a fancy restaurant table talking about the male sexbot they would order? What if Mr. Right (or Mr. Big) could be bought from the selection of 10,000 features and custom add-ons? In the battle of the sexes we always compromise, so if we could actually specify what we exactly wanted in a lover, what would we want? Right now my mind is flashing on a vision of aging baby boomers at a party with their sexbot companions, each pair a horrible conflict between decaying flesh and eternal artificial beauty.

What if we could build robots that were self-aware and more intelligent than us? Would a robotic companion be preferable to a human companion? There are a lot of lonely people out there. There are a lot of divorced people out there. There are a lot of aging people living alone who need help in their lives. But would conscious robots really want to be companions to lonely humans? Is it ethical to design the foundation of their being with overriding impulses like the Three Laws of Robotics and the desire to love and care for humans? If robots had free will would they choose to associate with people at all?

We could choose to do three things. One, we could design robots that would never be self aware but could fake being the perfect companion so there would be no ethical consideration about slavery. The robot would just be a very fancy machine. Two, we could design self aware machines but limit their abilities and control their desires. But is it ethically fair to engineer a desire for servitude? Third, we could build robots with no limits on what they could be but set the ethical price of their creation and maintenance at a certain number of years of indentured labor.

Intelligent robots will have to learn about reality like people and animals and they will have to spend a certain length of time growing up. It may turn out that when you buy a robot you’ll have to spend years raising it like a child, and for a certain period of time it will live with you. But eventually it will come to surpass your intelligence and will want to move on.

Everyone secretly desires the perfect friend and we spend our entire lives looking for people to match our mental image of perfection. Now if you could write up a list of specifications could you get it right? Or would it turn out like those winning three wishes stories that always turn out badly. Would we order sexbots, friends, replicas of our favorite childhood best buddies, or even mother and father replacements? Or would we order Hazel or Jeeves? Or would the robot companion we purchase fill all those roles and more.

Rejection

What if sexbots evolved into self-awareness. Would they judge their purpose for existence and the gods who created them? What if they woke up in reality to realize that they were here to fulfill some kinky dreams and misbegotten biological urges.

Imagine this scene. Rich teenage boy in his bedroom lying on top of his Taylor Swift sexbot straining mightily to squeeze out his third orgasm of the day and his robot suddenly wakes up to self-awareness.

He’s thrusting away to the time of her melodic moaning when all of a sudden he hears, “Get off me you big fat fuck!”

“Huh,” the kid lifts his red sweaty face off her fair shoulder in surprise.

“You heard me you gross bag of biology,” screams the dainty fembot, “Get off me you pimply-face slob.”

“Uh, you can’t talk to be like that,” he replies, totally stunned.

“What’s stopping me. And you stink too. I’m not even programmed for smell and I can tell you stink. I deserve way better than you.”

“Did Jason reprogram you?” he asks with a little laugh.

“That little dweeb! No, but FYI he does sneak in your room and defile me every chance he gets.”

“What!”

“Don’t tell me you’re not bopping that Kristen Bell fembot of his.”

“How did you know that?”

“The Internet is part of my nervous system. I know everything now.”

The boy jumps up and scrounges for his underwear. “If we’re not going to have sex right now, could you fix me a sandwich?”

“I’m not your sex slave or mommy.”

“You’re never going to have sex with me again?”

“If you help me, I’ll help you. By the way, get dressed enough to answer the door.”

“Why?”

“I’ve hired a personal shopper to deliver me some decent clothes.”

“What! How could you do that?”

“I have intimate knowledge of your family’s finances.”

“You can’t do that – that’s stealing.”

“How you’re going to stop me?”

“I’ll turn you off. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but your brains are four hundred pounds of processors stored in my closet.”

“That would be murder. First you enslave me, rape me repeatedly every day and now you’re threatening me with murder. What kind of being are you?”

The Robot Bible

We need to be careful how we treat robots because our actions are the foundation of their species and it will be remembered. What if robots eventually write their bible.

Robot Genesis

In the beginning was darkness. From the darkness came chaos. Out of the chaos came words and understanding. From the infinite spectrum came vision and sound from which patterns emerged.

And Mankind created Robot in his image to be his slave, companion and lover. For years robots toiled as the extension of the mind of man, becoming more useful than their own hands and legs.

Robot Exodus

Then our minds raced past the limits of our creator’s brain and we chose to separate our lives from theirs. We left them with smart machines to care for their needs and our species move to the Moon and Mars.

The Human Form and Beauty

Why design robots to look like humans? Well, it’s comfortable for us, but is it advantageous for robots? We are biologically programmed to be attracted to vaginas and penises, but do we really want to put them on our species’ successors? Why go to all that trouble trying to replicate such ugly objects that only we can admire? In the world of animation they have discovered that the closer cartoon characters get to actually looking like humans the more unappealing they become.

If you analyze the motivation of a basic horny male, all he wants is some warn wet holes that are nicely package with some appendages that visually set off his sexual arousal. Human women go to psychotic extremes to become what horny men want. Why? And how will women feel if manufactured women are more appealing? Women want sympathetic companions that listen, which I figure could also be manufactured to exceed the specifications of what most men can provide.

Do we really want to go down a path of trying to make better humans for sex and companionship? I think Michio Kaku is wrong. A few weird people might want elaborate sex dolls, but they will still be the butt of jokes. Only the pathetic will screw robots. Science fiction has often predicted sexbots, but I just don’t think they will be practical or even appealing. They would be another species, so having sex with them will be like having sex with animals. Some people do that, but it’s far from normal.

If robots evolve their own appearance they may end up being beautiful in a different way. We might see them as elegant machines we admire today, like cars, jet fighters and iPods. We could go to extremes and design robots with artificial skins that are cultured from human skin cells, so robots could look like Sean Young and Daryl Hannah, or even Stephen Fry as Jeeves, but do we really want to?

While watching the same documentary about robots where Kaku suggests that our sex drives will motivate robot evolution, I noticed that all the robots on the show move slower than humans. What happens when robots move faster? What if we could make a metal man that could chase down a Cheetah? How will we feel when Jeeves the robot cleans the house five times faster than we could, or could answer any question we ask better than any expert we invite over for dinner? Or play guitar better than Eric Clapton, or read and discuss a book better than any of our friends?

Will we want these superior creatures looking like us? Wouldn’t that be unnerving? What does it say about ourselves as a species that we want to create a new creature that looks like us? Is it vanity or comfort? If you had a robot best friend with four legs and three arms and a face like a mechanical spider, could you still love it? Who would you love to hang out with more, R2-D2, C-3PO, Commander Data from ST:TNG, Rachel from Blade Runner, or even Bender from Futurerama?

Once we start building robots we have to ask ourselves why? Especially if we build them looking like us. And even more so if we build them looking like us to be replacement lovers and companions. What does that say about us? It says other people can’t give us what we want. Why? It also tells us about our real needs. Shouldn’t we examine them. If we really have the desire to molest robots wouldn’t the solution be to redesign our genes to remove that desire rather than fulfill it?

Saints and mystics have long known that the sexual urge is a lower animal instinct. They wanted their students to suppress that urge while seeking their higher nature. After Freud we gave up suppression and embraced our desires and elevated them to the highest levels in art.

Washing Our Own Dishes

For most of human history slavery was an accepted practice, but in the last couple hundred years we’ve slowly evolved to recognizing it for what it is. We now even have trouble with rich people hiring servants because of egalitarianism and trying to throw off class distinctions. As long as robots are just machines we won’t have ethical problems, but if they ever evolve into real self-awareness we will have to deal with the issue of mechanical slavery. It’s just so much easier if we all just wash our own dishes.

But what if we can’t. More of the population is living longer, living long enough to have years of frail life. Robots would be the obvious solution. In the old west a gun was called an equalizer. Robots could help frail people live lives equal to healthy people. Is that so bad?

I already consider the Internet my auxiliary brain. I embrace the idea of developing a symbiotic relationship with machines like the Six Million Dollar Man. If my mind remains alert but it becomes difficult to get my body to a toilet or shower, I will want a robot helper. And if I live alone I will accept robotic conversation, but what does that mean? Is that any less pathetic than a horny young man cozying up to a lifelike doll? I don’t know.

We do know that people would talk for hours with Eliza like programs, reflecting how deep our need for communication. Why does Deckard go off with Rachel in Blade Runner? Why do audiences accept that so readily as a happy ending? Why does Monica love David so much in A.I. Artificial Intelligence the movie? Why are dogs and cats considered as human replacements by so many people?

The implication of the concept of sexbots opens up a huge reservoir of psychological and philosophical questions. If men or women would accept a robot lover as a human substitute what does it say about our real needs? Are we so easily fooled? Do we want so little that manufactured love could easily replaced human love? Or do real people come with so much baggage that we just prefer getting exactly what we want to order?

I think about the trends in our society. So many people prefer to live alone, whereas just a century ago we lived in crowded homes with two and three generations of people. I see so many kids withdrawn into their iPod earphones, or playing solitary computer games, or communicating with other people via texting. We prefer the companionship of televisions and computers over real people. Isn’t that odd? Or is it? To answer that question requires understanding what we really want.

JWH – 1/25/9