Sexuality In A Post-Human Society

MVBMVB
edited March 2016 in Everything else
What is the future of sexuality in a post-human society? 

Does gender have a future in a genetically enhanced or technologically augmented future? Or can we look forward to a future of gender fluid sexual hedonism? 

Comments

  • Gender has already started to be undermined by the internet. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/teens-these-days-are-queer-af-new-study-says

    I expect that we'll see more and more of it as time goes on. I would also note that we've already got a ton of technological enhancement of sex, from vibrators to online pron. I'd expect those have had a pretty big impact already.
  • I dont think so. Man is merging with machine - specifically machines that create better iterations of themselves using new levels of intelligence. So logically I think its safe to think we might be going in the self reproductive direction.
  • I feel like we should have more talks like this. Expand our horizons a little. This is something we would talk about on the fractal future forum so its cool to discuss it here.
  • I think it's inevitable that our evolution will impact of sexual identities. 



  • If I had to guess, my projection for the future of humanity is this:

    We'll finish disconnecting sex from reproduction, and (hopefully) get our society to a place where participation in both, either, or neither is voluntary. One of these is likely far harder than the other.

    Since sex won't be about becoming responsible for another human for years on end, it will continue to be something that people do because it's fun, and as a way of signifying emotional connection.

    Identity is like genre, mortally wounded but not aware that it's dying. Genre, for those under 20, was a way of identifying which music people you didn't know thought should be marketed together, so that that media containing that music could be put in the same general area of music stores, back when those existed. Since music is now searchable streams of content, the use of genres to denote similarity is falling apart, and you get people making up genres for fun, like seapunk, vaporwave, witch house, etc.

    Transplant that to identity, and you get self-organizing hives of weirdness like tumblr, myspace back when it was a thing, "weird twitter", biohack.me, etc., where people find people who are actually similar to them in some way (transhumanist, otherkin, ace, whatever portmanteu is trending at the moment), rather than being similar in the ways people who are not-them decided they should be marketed to each other (white/black, m/f, etc.).

    I think in the limit, there will be some people who will end up like Tesla, in terms of their interaction with others: they will interact with others only when they "need" too (he was more of a pigeon person than a people person), but unlike Tesla, they won't need to. Everyone will be the ruler of the sovereign state of themselves, a unique entity with no relation to others. Some people may chose not to do that, I suppose, but I'm not seeing a really compelling argument against it in the presence of truly perfected technology, but at this point we're talking more about physical gods than anything we'd regard as technically human. Of course they would have left "identity" behind.
  • MVBMVB
    edited March 2016
    That's really interesting @ringdown
  • My two cents involves the fact that it's becoming more and more likely that we'll end up with both male and female sex robots (of which the female sex bot is already being protested against by a certain group I won't mention to contain butthurt), however it's something that's coming whether people like it or not.

    Then there's individuals who are interested in integrating not only technology into the body, but also biological material into technology to have the high potential for self replicating technology.

    A sex robot could potentially have real living tissue and via the use of grown organs and the like, be able to also reproduce with humans.  So there's a possibility the artificial womb and real wombs in artificial beings can both be used for reproduction or just use the sex robot for solely sex.

    Think of it like this. You're gay or straight, whatever, and you want a partner that's capable sexually.  Great, we have that modern day. With advancements in AI, it'll grow so that you can have a partner that's intellectually stimulating with a personality and intelligence that matches your comfort level in a partner.

    Human and Synthetic relationships are something I foresee in the near future, not the distant. And artificial wombs are already in testing phases with animal embryos. The sex robots also exist already, but with rudimentary AI.

    I for one look forward to sexually gratifying my robot overlords.
  • A sex bot isn't a partner in sex though, it's a sex toy. And that's fine for what it is, but glorified masturbation is still masturbation. 

    "I for one look forward to sexually gratifying my robot overlords."

    That's not going to happen. At best your robot overlords will sexual gratify you while pretending to be sexually gratified. I'm extremely skeptical about strong AI and even more skeptical of the idea that AI can have physical sexual desires. Even assuming strong AI has actual consciousness the chance of it having anything approaching human sexuality is basically nil.

    In regards to uncoupling sex from procreation, they've recently been able to create sperm from stem cells, meaning that we can no create a baby from two females, and since they can create eggs from sperm, or stem cells, we can also create a baby from two men, although I believe that could lead to genetic problems if not carefully monitored. 
  • Honestly I'm thinking if biology and technology can be integrated together, not just grinders but also introducing living tissue into technology, it's possible for a machine to experience sexual gratification in theory at least.  For example if your robotic partner has a circuit board and all (however it's actually done and used) and the integration of grown sexual organs, maybe it could experience it.  I wouldn't know.

    This is technology that I don't see maturing for a very long time.  Granted though, a sex robot in today's age is basically glorified masturbation which would be very little different aside from price when compared to a fleshlight and watching a video of a porn star moaning for you on your phone.

    These are all things that are coming, to the degree of realism, functionality, etc is what's really in question.
  • Well think of this...
    Are you half human or half robot?
    I'm gonna let that sink in for a sec.
  • I'm human and will likely be human for a very long time, at least until death unless something comes along that extends our life expectancy to greater lengths allowing us to live long enough to see the day this kind of stuff might come around.  As our current life expectancy goes, I don't see myself ever seeing the day something like what I describe becoming a reality.  Born too early.
  • Organisms be default replicated via asexual reproduction. Eukaryote organisms adopted sex to get the advantages of DNA repair, novel genotypes, and increased resistance to parasites.

    I don't think a multicellular organism reproducing asexually would last too many generations.
  • "I don't think a multicellular organism reproducing asexually would last too many generations. "

    I think ferns would disagree with you there as many of them reproduce asexually and they've been around for a few hundred million years. If you mean more complex multicellular organisms like humans I would agree, although robots, or whatever we want to call a hybrid of organic and inorganic technology, would be much different than any existing organism. So different that sexual reproduction would be quite unlikely.

    If we get to the point where manufactured being become nearly as much organic material as inorganic then I think they've stopped being robots and become something else. Androids, cyborgs, or something, but not just a robot. I was assuming we were talking about robots run by a computer of some sort.

    And if we get to the point where we have these robotish beings that can experience sexual pleasure and are intelligence I think that we won't have sex bots because they will have rights. Anything that can consent to sex should have the right to consent to sex or say no. I'm sure some will be kept as slaves, but mostly that role would be filled by non-conscious robots.
  • Granted there's also benefits to an artificial womb.  As mentioned earlier we can make eggs and sperm from stem cells and sperm, and there's likely plenty people who want to raise children that just can't, regardless if the person or couple are LGBT, TFL'er or MGTOW/WGTOW or just a couple that's just sterile, the doors open up wide.  That one is likely to come soonish I would think.

    Regarding sex bots, there's glorified fleshlights, sure, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with a robot I can have sex with if it's a learning machine, I've seen the Twitter experiment by Microsoft, that thing mastered shitposting in a day and it wasn't afraid to use it.

    I think by the time we end up with sentient synthetic beings with organic material within them, I'd classify them as a someone rather than a something.  The difference I think would be the origin.  Basically "Were you born or were you made?" And yes, that would require consent for any sexual activity.
Sign In or Register to comment.