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Humans build friendships and relationships on shared experiences. There is an element of relationship-through-experiencing-a-thing. Whether it's going for a wal
by _carbyau_ 7mo ago
Humans build friendships and relationships on shared experiences. There is an element of relationship-through-experiencing-a-thing. Whether it's going for a walk together or the classic first date template of dinner and a movie. The shared experience is the thing.
With stories that shared experience is between author and reader. Book clubs etc will try to extend that "shared experience" but primarily it is author <-> reader relationship.
Remove that "shared feeling with the author" and what meaning does it have?
- smallnix 7mo agoYou can look at a tree and feels things by yourself. Also there's the shared readership.
- CamperBob2 7mo ago...and what meaning does it have? It means, "Wow. Cool. I'm a member of a species that taught rocks to think. Holy fuck. That's pretty insanely fucking awesome. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Fuck." That's about all it means. Nothing was removed from your life, but something optional was added.
- bluefirebrand 7mo agoI think "I'm a member of a species chasing our own extinction by worshipping an idiot machine god for the purposes of profit. That's so insanely depressing. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" It has absolutely made my life worse not better
- thin_carapace 7mo ago[flagged]
- CamperBob2 7mo agoAgreed, that will indeed be a problem. We may be building the proverbial Fermi filter.
- thin_carapace 7mo agobirth rates have already tanked everywhere that isnt religious. youd think people would move back to religion and save their culture, but the sex doll argument has already pervaded. we werent designed to have our senses constantly hyperstimulated; resultantly, people increasingly dont care about reality. only sociopaths and the well disciplined thrive in this environment, everyone else becomes lost in hyperreality. id love to send it and join the masses ... after contemplating eternal damnation, a few years of sensory pleasure just arent worth it.
- gzread 7mo agoPeople without sex dolls also have lower birthrates. It's because the time previously used for fucking and childrearing has instead been owed to our masters since before we were born.
- thin_carapace 7mo agothe sex doll thing was intended as a metaphor throughout this thread. we've been slaves for thousands of years, that bit hasnt changed. what has changed is that people nowadays no longer care about themselves because they are fried. watching life on a screen feels close enough to the real thing - why bother living at all, living is risky and can hurt you. the usual answer to that would be testosterone pushing us to do risky things, but test rates have cratered. in the absence of risk attraction, values would help, but nobody has any values, because we decided to throw religion in the bin under the expectation that values would spontaneously manifest (which they didnt, no surprise, we are literally monkeys). and after all that, yes we are being worked to the bone more than ever - at least serfs owned their land.
- CamperBob2 7mo agoMy guess is we'll end up divorcing human reproduction from human sexuality at some point anyway. I don't know if that'll be a net good thing or a net bad thing, and don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do know that regardless of any debate about the causes of low birth rates, we are no longer subject to the evolutionary pressure that, however accidentally, gave us what intelligence we have. (Many of the religions you seem to be advocating would say we never were.) Anyway, none of this is an emergency. Near-term survival is the real concern, accompanied by continued technological progress. Neo-Luddites are working up the courage to take direct action (see comments elsewhere in this thread), and they will be using tools far more effective than the shoes, angry words, and monkey wrenches their predecessors employed. Meanwhile, the most popular religion in America has convinced its followers that a nuclear war is just the ticket to bring Jesus back. I wish those words were as stupid as they sound, but we live in times that celebrate stupidity and are ruled by those who embody it. If we can get through the next 50 years without any major civilization-level setbacks, I think we'll be home free. So that needs to be the focus.
- _carbyau_ 7mo agoOk, you read one AI story and get that feeling. And yes, is it pretty cool as a concept. But after how many AI stories does that novelty wear off?