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It's not about compassion and companionship in a broader sense of society. It's about romantic partnership. And the harsh reality is that some people will be al

by zwaps 6y ago

It's not about compassion and companionship in a broader sense of society. It's about romantic partnership. And the harsh reality is that some people will be alone. Especially in China, I think it is really fair to say that for economic and demographic reasons, many men will not find love or even companionship in their lifetime - no matter how society changes. I actually believe this is true in many places. And is it really a failing of society? Or is it a liberation of a previously suppressed part of society: women, who are now more free to choose their partner? I think one can not judge the preferences of potential partners on moral grounds by looking at history. Both women and men have every right to search for economically and socially compatible companions, or any other metric of preference. And if that means that finding a mate becomes more difficult, we have to deal with that. All this hateful and bitter crap spewed by certain male-only online communities is based on the underlying assumption that everyone deserved to find the ideal partner, when it is obviously not so. But then, we ALSO can not and should not judge or impede anyone in finding happiness and even love in other ways. AI's, robots, online personas... all these things are just as valid as the skewed preference for high quality men.

saagarjha 6y ago
> Or is it a liberation of a previously suppressed part of society: women, who are now more free to choose their partner? The situation of having a gender imbalance with fundamentally untenable in the long term. For now it does allow women, who have in the past had issues in choosing their partner, more freedom in their selection, but this has historically been a societal and not a demographic thing. As we move towards gender social equality this will stop becoming a “liberation” and turn into a curse for the bottom n% of men. The ratio is what it is right now, but we shouldn’t doom men to an unbalanced field in real life.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  Is there a solution that's not either robots or forcing(or economically "encouraging") women to date undateable men?
  - absolutelyrad 6y ago
    Aborting male kids born to ugly parents would be an interesting idea. Women are guaranteed to reproduce, men are not. If you are going to have a son, and you know he's not going to be the most handsome guy, don't have a son. Otherwise you're a trash human being pushing a lifetime of suffering on another human due to no fault of his own. Just your selfish pleasure causing pain to another human. Either be ultra wealthy or be a handsom man with a pretty woman if you want a son who wont be disadvantaged in the modern world.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      Theres plenty of ugly dudes with good relationships. If you can somehow find people who are both ugly and will develop a terrible personality, maybe. I'm not convinced mass aborting people for being unlikable is more moral then letting them grow up alone though
      - Vrondi 6y ago
        Yeah, this false belief that some insist on clinging to, that only rich or gorgeously handsome men get a woman is so tiring. The world is filled with average or really not-good-looking guys with great girlfriends and wives. However, these are guys with kindness, talents, and other personality traits that they've learned to use wisely and guys who have learned that some great women don't always look like models. Humanity needs all of these traits, not only handsome faces.
      - guskel 6y ago
        In a world of billions of people, you'll find plenty of everything. The question is how much more difficult it is for those who are don't physically measure up. If some men are winning the lions share, then necessarily some others will have to do without.
    - airstrike 6y ago
      "Aborting male kids born to ugly parents would be an interesting idea." In other words, eugenics except you're only selecting for beauty?
- zwaps 6y ago
  But what is the solution? I deeply reject the incel rhethoric (not by you but generally) that society must somehow nudge or influence the choices of women such that unattractive men also can find partnership, a demand that is most often presented on the backdrop of a dystopian image of violent hordes of disenfranchised men. In other words, a thinly veiled threat. It is then often the same people who reject the notion that societal norms have influence over nature. Well then, the only choice would be to exert force on one sex or the other. Indeed it would be the traditional values that were a societal correction to the state of nature, where Pareto‘s law holds even for partnership and some men simply remain unsuccessful. The conclusion should thus be that traditional societies that incels endorse have in fact cheated women out of their natural rights to be with attractive men. The paradoxical demand to go back to a traditional society is, if one accepts nature ruling over society and current revealed preferences of women as they are, nothing short of the admission that women and their wishes are somehow supposed to be worth less. Otherwise, given these assumptions, one should all but support the development of AI and sex robots for men who are, by nature, not cut out as attractive partners. But of course I agree that social norms do actually matter a lot, and the paradoxical opinion above is simply misguided. I am less confident that societal values of attractiveness will actually change quickly enough before we see much more human suffering and this suffering will be understood as evidence for the misguided theory above... So long story short, I personally support the development of companion AIs, intimacy robots and holodecks.
  - totony 6y ago
    >I deeply reject the incel rhethoric (not by you but generally) that society must somehow nudge or influence the choices of women such that unattractive men also can find partnership, a demand that is most often presented on the backdrop of a dystopian image of violent hordes of disenfranchised men. In other words, a thinly veiled threat. I'm not too familiar with this, but aren't we doing this for women already? (All women are beautiful, plus-sized models, etc.) Why would that be wrong to do for men?
    - selestify 6y ago
      > All women are beautiful, plus-sized models, etc. You can say that all you want (and personally I do think everyone deserves to have good self-esteem no matter their body shape), but at the end of the day some people are objectively going to have orders of magnitudes more suitors attracted to them than others are. This is not a value judgment, just an observation. You can (and I do support) say the same thing for men as well, but that’s not fundamentally going to change anything about the dating market.
belorn 6y ago
It is going to be a difficult problem to address social gender equality, and a much harder problem than solving economical gender equality, but if history is anything to go by we will see improvement. Accepting inequality as a matter of harsh reality is just status quo. I strongly believe that all people deserve well being in aspects of economical, social and personal health. The strongest tool to achieve that is through culture. In the past people thought that the only method to address economical inequality was to redistribute wealth forcefully. We should not assume that the only method to address social inequality is also by force.
- selestify 6y ago
  > In the past people thought that the only method to address economical inequality was to redistribute wealth forcefully. I still don’t see a peaceful alternative. The wealth gap is growing inexorably year after year, decade after decade, and the richest of the rich certainly aren’t voluntarily tripping over themselves to redistribute the gains.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"we ALSO can not and should not judge or impede anyone in finding happiness and even love in other ways. AI's, robots, online personas." The problem with that is that the people who fall in love with AIs, robots, and online personas will be subject to manipulation and control by the makers of these things.
- ausbah 6y ago
  tech making it easier to manipulate people isn't anything new
  - selestify 6y ago
    But the degree to which this is possible is new. Manual human surveillance certainly existed before CCTV, but automated surveillance at scale brings new implications that didn’t exist before.
- zwaps 6y ago
  I concede that this is a problem, but one that is not limited to companionship AIs and one that, if it is to be solved, will have to be solved in a larger setting that includes the other areas where it is pertinent

by zwaps 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

> Or is it a liberation of a previously suppressed part of society: women, who are now more free to choose their partner? The situation of having a gender imbalance with fundamentally untenable in the long term. For now it does allow women, who have in the past had issues in choosing their partner, more freedom in their selection, but this has historically been a societal and not a demographic thing. As we move towards gender social equality this will stop becoming a “liberation” and turn into a curse for the bottom n% of men. The ratio is what it is right now, but we shouldn’t doom men to an unbalanced field in real life.

thatguy0900 6y ago
Is there a solution that's not either robots or forcing(or economically "encouraging") women to date undateable men?
- absolutelyrad 6y ago
  Aborting male kids born to ugly parents would be an interesting idea. Women are guaranteed to reproduce, men are not. If you are going to have a son, and you know he's not going to be the most handsome guy, don't have a son. Otherwise you're a trash human being pushing a lifetime of suffering on another human due to no fault of his own. Just your selfish pleasure causing pain to another human. Either be ultra wealthy or be a handsom man with a pretty woman if you want a son who wont be disadvantaged in the modern world.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    Theres plenty of ugly dudes with good relationships. If you can somehow find people who are both ugly and will develop a terrible personality, maybe. I'm not convinced mass aborting people for being unlikable is more moral then letting them grow up alone though
    - Vrondi 6y ago
      Yeah, this false belief that some insist on clinging to, that only rich or gorgeously handsome men get a woman is so tiring. The world is filled with average or really not-good-looking guys with great girlfriends and wives. However, these are guys with kindness, talents, and other personality traits that they've learned to use wisely and guys who have learned that some great women don't always look like models. Humanity needs all of these traits, not only handsome faces.
    - guskel 6y ago
      In a world of billions of people, you'll find plenty of everything. The question is how much more difficult it is for those who are don't physically measure up. If some men are winning the lions share, then necessarily some others will have to do without.
  - airstrike 6y ago
    "Aborting male kids born to ugly parents would be an interesting idea." In other words, eugenics except you're only selecting for beauty?
zwaps 6y ago
But what is the solution? I deeply reject the incel rhethoric (not by you but generally) that society must somehow nudge or influence the choices of women such that unattractive men also can find partnership, a demand that is most often presented on the backdrop of a dystopian image of violent hordes of disenfranchised men. In other words, a thinly veiled threat. It is then often the same people who reject the notion that societal norms have influence over nature. Well then, the only choice would be to exert force on one sex or the other. Indeed it would be the traditional values that were a societal correction to the state of nature, where Pareto‘s law holds even for partnership and some men simply remain unsuccessful. The conclusion should thus be that traditional societies that incels endorse have in fact cheated women out of their natural rights to be with attractive men. The paradoxical demand to go back to a traditional society is, if one accepts nature ruling over society and current revealed preferences of women as they are, nothing short of the admission that women and their wishes are somehow supposed to be worth less. Otherwise, given these assumptions, one should all but support the development of AI and sex robots for men who are, by nature, not cut out as attractive partners. But of course I agree that social norms do actually matter a lot, and the paradoxical opinion above is simply misguided. I am less confident that societal values of attractiveness will actually change quickly enough before we see much more human suffering and this suffering will be understood as evidence for the misguided theory above... So long story short, I personally support the development of companion AIs, intimacy robots and holodecks.
- totony 6y ago
  >I deeply reject the incel rhethoric (not by you but generally) that society must somehow nudge or influence the choices of women such that unattractive men also can find partnership, a demand that is most often presented on the backdrop of a dystopian image of violent hordes of disenfranchised men. In other words, a thinly veiled threat. I'm not too familiar with this, but aren't we doing this for women already? (All women are beautiful, plus-sized models, etc.) Why would that be wrong to do for men?
  - selestify 6y ago
    > All women are beautiful, plus-sized models, etc. You can say that all you want (and personally I do think everyone deserves to have good self-esteem no matter their body shape), but at the end of the day some people are objectively going to have orders of magnitudes more suitors attracted to them than others are. This is not a value judgment, just an observation. You can (and I do support) say the same thing for men as well, but that’s not fundamentally going to change anything about the dating market.

belorn 6y ago

It is going to be a difficult problem to address social gender equality, and a much harder problem than solving economical gender equality, but if history is anything to go by we will see improvement. Accepting inequality as a matter of harsh reality is just status quo. I strongly believe that all people deserve well being in aspects of economical, social and personal health. The strongest tool to achieve that is through culture. In the past people thought that the only method to address economical inequality was to redistribute wealth forcefully. We should not assume that the only method to address social inequality is also by force.

selestify 6y ago
> In the past people thought that the only method to address economical inequality was to redistribute wealth forcefully. I still don’t see a peaceful alternative. The wealth gap is growing inexorably year after year, decade after decade, and the richest of the rich certainly aren’t voluntarily tripping over themselves to redistribute the gains.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"we ALSO can not and should not judge or impede anyone in finding happiness and even love in other ways. AI's, robots, online personas." The problem with that is that the people who fall in love with AIs, robots, and online personas will be subject to manipulation and control by the makers of these things.

ausbah 6y ago
tech making it easier to manipulate people isn't anything new
- selestify 6y ago
  But the degree to which this is possible is new. Manual human surveillance certainly existed before CCTV, but automated surveillance at scale brings new implications that didn’t exist before.
zwaps 6y ago
I concede that this is a problem, but one that is not limited to companionship AIs and one that, if it is to be solved, will have to be solved in a larger setting that includes the other areas where it is pertinent