6 ms·

Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

40 points by zeristor 7y ago

zeristor 7y ago
“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” O Canada I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular logic.
- Haga 7y ago
  They made excellent spies though.
- smcl 7y ago
  I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    In the 1960's "I don't want gay men to work here" was acceptable and would not have been seen as unpalatable. Same sex sexual activity was made legal in Canada in 1969.
  - gtsteve 7y ago
    There's blackmail, but also it was the zeitgeist at the time that homosexuals were in some way morally compromised in the same way that drug users are seen as immoral (personally I don't feel that drug users are immoral but I feel I'm in the minority). I sometimes come into contact with more old-fashioned industries where I hear similarly old-fashioned ideas from time to time. The idea is dying but not dead yet unfortunately.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
varjag 7y ago
Was this PKD's inspiration for Voight-Kampff machine?
- Theizestooke 7y ago
  Funny I thought of Clockwork Orange because of the dentist chair.
prvc 7y ago
Article contains some a priori speculative criticism of the test. I wonder if its empirical efficacy has been assessed in the current epoch, and how that would compare to using AI to assess facial features towards the same end. Peculiar that the designers tried to measure interest rather than arousal (which can be done somewhat reliably by taking readings from the genital area).
fbn79 7y ago
Inspiration for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-Kampff_machine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-Kampff_m...
zeristor 7y ago
Compare this to the US Navy trying to root out the subversive cell of 'The Friends of Dorothy' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstan... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c !! Facepalm concussion warning !! If only they could get to this Dorothy then they could maybe get her to give up a list of all the gay seamen, simples.
FatDrunknStupid 7y ago
I'd like to ask the LGBTTQQIAAP (googled that) community - would this actually help if it's use was reversed? Instead of pupil tracking etc. if you swipe left or right on a bunch of images then indicate your own view of your sexuality, it could be correlated against the responses of others. This might help alleviate the 'confusion' phase and perhaps could offer advice. Tell me if I'm being daft?
finnthehuman 7y ago
2019: But this time when we use half-cooked classification to identify undesirables and treat them badly it'll be different. We'll only target people that are OK to shit on by contemporary social norms.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Also "Fruit machine" is a British term, referring to a slot machine.
- taneq 7y ago
  If you get three fruits in a row you win a prize! The prize is an orgy. >.>
- borumpilot 7y ago
  The same in Dutch.
diggan 7y ago
“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More information on the subject here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militarie... Seems we're constantly in a pendulum in terms of sexuality, what's ok or not.
- salutonmundo 7y ago
  This was also practiced (somewhat pederastically) in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Military_same-sex_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Militar...
- taneq 7y ago
  > Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. Which is interesting because one of the most coherent arguments against women fighting on the front lines is that if they got injured or captured, the male soldiers in their unit would get themselves killed trying to rescue them.
- 7952 7y ago
  I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.
  - thrwayxyz 7y ago
    Unlikely. When people talk about homosexuality being acceptable in ancient societies they leave out the fact that it was acceptable for barely pubescent boys to be the receiving partner for adults. So are we going to head down that route in another decade or two when we become even less authoritarian?
mavihs 7y ago
On the subject of pupil dilation, in the book Thinking fast and slow, Daniel kahneman explains that for any mentally taxing task pupils dilate in proportion to the difficult of the task. If the task is too difficult, they don't dilate at all.
- diggan 7y ago
  That's interesting. I could imagine a video game to employ this somehow, as basically the difficulty in designing video games is trying to make the game not too hard or too easy, so the player gets a challenge but doesn't experience it to be too hard. Bit intrusive to get the pupil dilation currently, but maybe with future VR gear we can get better information and adjust video game difficulty depending on how the player is experiencing the game at the moment.
  - ordu 7y ago
    There is a theoretical risk of player mind spotting the causal link and abusing it. I cannot say definitely is it possible or not, but if pupils dilated not only due to complexity of the task but for other reasons too, then it would seem completely plausible for me.
clarkey252 7y ago
IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember if one spawned the other.
- diggan 7y ago
  The concept of having a machine that can measure X attribute from humans have probably been a thing for long before both of those. Probably the earliest example of that (I can remember from the top of my head) is finding out if someone is a witch by throwing them into water with a stone attached to them. It's just with more technology, the "tests" become more advanced/elaborate.
  - pferde 7y ago
    Indeed. See also: phrenology
zeristor 7y ago
Why has this article been flagged? I take it this flag is down to users flagging it as an issue. But isn't that exactly the point the article was raising?

40 points by zeristor 7y ago

“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” O Canada I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular logic.

Haga 7y ago
They made excellent spies though.
smcl 7y ago
I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.
- DanBC 7y ago
  In the 1960's "I don't want gay men to work here" was acceptable and would not have been seen as unpalatable. Same sex sexual activity was made legal in Canada in 1969.
- gtsteve 7y ago
  There's blackmail, but also it was the zeitgeist at the time that homosexuals were in some way morally compromised in the same way that drug users are seen as immoral (personally I don't feel that drug users are immoral but I feel I'm in the minority). I sometimes come into contact with more old-fashioned industries where I hear similarly old-fashioned ideas from time to time. The idea is dying but not dead yet unfortunately.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

varjag 7y ago

Was this PKD's inspiration for Voight-Kampff machine?

Theizestooke 7y ago
Funny I thought of Clockwork Orange because of the dentist chair.

prvc 7y ago

Article contains some a priori speculative criticism of the test. I wonder if its empirical efficacy has been assessed in the current epoch, and how that would compare to using AI to assess facial features towards the same end. Peculiar that the designers tried to measure interest rather than arousal (which can be done somewhat reliably by taking readings from the genital area).

fbn79 7y ago

Inspiration for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-Kampff_machine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-Kampff_m...

zeristor 7y ago

Compare this to the US Navy trying to root out the subversive cell of 'The Friends of Dorothy' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstan... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c !! Facepalm concussion warning !! If only they could get to this Dorothy then they could maybe get her to give up a list of all the gay seamen, simples.

FatDrunknStupid 7y ago

I'd like to ask the LGBTTQQIAAP (googled that) community - would this actually help if it's use was reversed? Instead of pupil tracking etc. if you swipe left or right on a bunch of images then indicate your own view of your sexuality, it could be correlated against the responses of others. This might help alleviate the 'confusion' phase and perhaps could offer advice. Tell me if I'm being daft?

finnthehuman 7y ago

2019: But this time when we use half-cooked classification to identify undesirables and treat them badly it'll be different. We'll only target people that are OK to shit on by contemporary social norms.

quickthrower2 7y ago

Also "Fruit machine" is a British term, referring to a slot machine.

taneq 7y ago
If you get three fruits in a row you win a prize! The prize is an orgy. >.>
borumpilot 7y ago
The same in Dutch.

diggan 7y ago

“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More information on the subject here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militarie... Seems we're constantly in a pendulum in terms of sexuality, what's ok or not.

salutonmundo 7y ago
This was also practiced (somewhat pederastically) in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Military_same-sex_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Militar...
taneq 7y ago
> Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. Which is interesting because one of the most coherent arguments against women fighting on the front lines is that if they got injured or captured, the male soldiers in their unit would get themselves killed trying to rescue them.
7952 7y ago
I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.
- thrwayxyz 7y ago
  Unlikely. When people talk about homosexuality being acceptable in ancient societies they leave out the fact that it was acceptable for barely pubescent boys to be the receiving partner for adults. So are we going to head down that route in another decade or two when we become even less authoritarian?

mavihs 7y ago

On the subject of pupil dilation, in the book Thinking fast and slow, Daniel kahneman explains that for any mentally taxing task pupils dilate in proportion to the difficult of the task. If the task is too difficult, they don't dilate at all.

diggan 7y ago
That's interesting. I could imagine a video game to employ this somehow, as basically the difficulty in designing video games is trying to make the game not too hard or too easy, so the player gets a challenge but doesn't experience it to be too hard. Bit intrusive to get the pupil dilation currently, but maybe with future VR gear we can get better information and adjust video game difficulty depending on how the player is experiencing the game at the moment.
- ordu 7y ago
  There is a theoretical risk of player mind spotting the causal link and abusing it. I cannot say definitely is it possible or not, but if pupils dilated not only due to complexity of the task but for other reasons too, then it would seem completely plausible for me.

clarkey252 7y ago

IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember if one spawned the other.

diggan 7y ago
The concept of having a machine that can measure X attribute from humans have probably been a thing for long before both of those. Probably the earliest example of that (I can remember from the top of my head) is finding out if someone is a witch by throwing them into water with a stone attached to them. It's just with more technology, the "tests" become more advanced/elaborate.
- pferde 7y ago
  Indeed. See also: phrenology

zeristor 7y ago

Why has this article been flagged? I take it this flag is down to users flagging it as an issue. But isn't that exactly the point the article was raising?