So the Boobz are getting worked up – again – over some imaginary “proposed legislation” to ban sexbots. Vox Day, one of the esteemed elder statesmen of the right-wing of the manosphere, has resurrected an urban legend that first fooled his comrades about two years ago, reposting a “statement” of mysterious Canadian origin explaining that
provisions have been proposed for the new Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act, the first draft of which is currently being finalized.The provisions are specifically meant to target the concerns that were expressed at the roundtable that sexbots will negatively impact the pursuit for gender equality and may unduly emphasize the objectification of women as sexual objects.The suggested provisions fall into the larger framework of regulating the emerging service robot industry that will be governed by the Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act and under the direction of the Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence, to be established in Ontario and other Canadian provinces and territories at the end of next year.
The main provision of this dastardly Femi-Canadian proposed legislation?
The use of sexbots in the privacy of one’s home is prohibited, unless otherwise permitted by the Ministry of Robots and Artificial intelligence or a relevant regulating agency as per the criteria outlined in the Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act.
You may wonder: Why didn’t I read anything in the papers about this Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act? Why haven’t I heard about this Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence?
Well, you guessed it. Because neither of them exist. I looked into this two years ago when the story first, er, broke in the manosphere. There’s no vast feminist conspiracy to deny Canadian men (or, for that matter, women) their still-imaginary sexbots. The “statement” was evidently written as part of a law school class project on law and robotics taught by Prof. Ian Kerr at the University of Ottawa Law School.
If you Google “Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act” or “Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence” you will find that literally the only people talking about this issue are MRAs and PUAs and conspiracy theorists. And some of the more gullible 4channers, though a few of them quickly figured out that the whole thing was fake. (As did the Real Doll enthusiasts.)
Vox Day, who has yet to come to this realization, draws some dire conclusions from this thing that isn’t real, declaring that the
This Canadian attempt to preemptively ban sexbots is an overt confession by feminists of both sexes concerning their belief that women have nothing significant to offer men but sexual services. Moreover, it is proof that their “pursuit for gender equality” is directly and fundamentally opposed to the most basic human freedom. …
One would think that even those only superficially acquainted with human history would realize that attempts to put the technological genie back in the bottle almost always fail, as do attempts to prevent men and women from pursuing pleasure in ways deemed illicit. But then, a near-complete ignorance of human history is required to either be a feminist or possess a genuine belief in the rainbow-tailed unicorn of equality.
Well, not so much. Though Vox proves yet again that there are few people on planet earth as gullible as the manosphere’s pompous philosophers.
NOTE: Vox isn’t the only manospherian up in arms about the evil imaginary sexbot ban; more on this tomorrow.
@leftwingfox
My feeling is that there are already critters who we could potentially communicate with – they’re called whales, and dolphins. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to do it.
And no, when that happens I don’t think it will lead to us treating them any better than we do now. It’s not like our track record as a species is all that great even when it comes to people who we can communicate with very easily.
Tiny quick thing: “nonexistant” should be “nonexistent.” [I have OCD.]
@CassandraSays: Agreed completely. Also possibly bonobos, chimps, gorillas and parrots.
Also, ravens and crows.
Definitely gorillas, because of Koko. I think people actively resist knowing that we’re not the only sentient beings around because if we acknowledged it then we might have to think about the implications of how we treat those other fully sentient beings.
(And shut down Sea World, like right now, please.)
@Argenti Aertheri: “nerdypants1 — you new around this parts?”
No, not really, but I haven’t been around for a while (life got busy). Thanks for the tea 🙂
@Yoyo: A fundamentalist Christian who wants to be a PUA? That’s a bit contradictory, but it does kind of explain the misogyny.
I get really pissy about this. There was an article about the orca that killed his trainer at Sea World and the author talked about how when he was first captured the rest of his pod followed the truck carrying him all the way up the West Coast, and I kept thinking, dude, be honest – the word you know you should be using but don’t have the guts to isn’t “pod”, it’s “family”.
Katz: Awesome. Loved the WWJD shorts. Third panel down made me lol (“it’s like you’re not even listening!”)
” MRAs and PUAs and conspiracy theorists
Literally all the same thing.”
Chemtrails, HAARP and fluoride are all misandry too?? That explains a lot… *Scratches her Morgellons*
Katz: Oh the Kinkade. How did I miss that. Brilliant.
@leftwingfox
Sorry if I screwed up the blockquotes. I’m not entirely sure how to do them. I just wanted to say…they DID do a Star Trek TNG episode on that. Some guy wanted to dismantle Data to study him and build more, but he didn’t want to. Then they said he was a machine and therefore Starfleet property, and Picard had to prove that Data was sentient. Picard totally won. (Of course. He’s Picard)
When it comes to machines… Turing thought we’d have human-level artificial intelligence in a few decades or so. We still don’t. We’re still not even NEAR creating something that can pass the Turing test. It just turned out to be WAAAAAAY more difficult than anyone thought. Maybe it’s even impossible, for some reason.
But I’m hardly an expert on these matters, and maybe someday we’ll really do it.
Anyway, when it comes to how to define a person… In philosophical discussions, you never put in “must be of the species homo sapiens” at the end of a definition, since that would be completely random. But if we move outside the philosophy seminar and into the real world… As Cassandra says, look at our track record. I think it would be a terribly long and hard fight for “robot rights” and them being recognised as real persons, it’s not something that would happen automatically just because it was no longer rationally justified to regard them merely as dead objects and nothing more.
@Cassandra:
I’m not fond of using the word “sentient” to mean something like “can think rationally” or “being aware of oneself as a person”. I prefer “sentient=experience stuff” or something along these lines. I think one should use “rational” or “self-aware” if that’s what one’s after, rather than the ambiguous “sentient”. (just my two cents)
And as every animal rights philosopher ever has pointed out, it’s not like we consider human beings to be up for grabs to do whatever we want with them if they lack rational thinking, but when it comes to other species we suddenly think lack of rational thinking justifies killing them for luxury items or using them in other ways. And yeah, some have tried to justify this by arguments that always sound pretty ad hoc, like “well, non-rational people don’t really have moral rights, but there are all these pragmatic reasons for giving them legal rights nonetheless that don’t apply to other species” or “non-rational people have rights in virtue of us having a special relationship with them that we don’t have with other species” or something like that.
All this is also something people in general “resist thinking about”.
Fixed “nonexistent.” I was trying to remember which way it was spelled and I should have just looked it up.
I use sentient to mean self-aware. There’s definitely the idea of a certain minimal level of intelligence in there too, but to me it implies intelligent + experiences emotions + self-aware + an awareness of others as beings who also have thoughts, feelings, etc.
…Except that I just realized that by that definition hardcore misogynist aren’t always sentient, because many of them fail the last test.
Btw, that’s one thing that bugged me about TNG. I’m always a fan of these maladjusted Trek characters that can’t get a grip on human interaction, and overall I really liked Data. Yet it was so annoying the way they insisted that he lacked emotions, when it was obvious that he did have an emotional life (although probably a less vivid one than the humans).
Data came across as repressed rather than emotionless. Android or just English?
I think it is a valid concern among contemporary heterosexual human males is that even if modern science could somehow create authentically sentient yet customizably programmable fembots to fill the traditional wifely roles of homemaker and helpmeet that by and large the “post-modern” heterosexual and bisexual human females simply refuse to do anymore, the Western feminazis will just try to turn them against us en masse for the sheer lulz of it by indoctrinating them into becoming (straight) man-haters too. I mean, look how they’re not content to turn their own homelands into a mess all in the name of “Women’s Liberation”, they’re still going abroad and attempting to disrupt the status quo between the genders in the world by raising shitstorms in every country they can reach on the planet. Exporting their war of the sexes overseas, as it were. No wonder why the Muslims view the War on Terror as a Clash of Civilizations. Western Cultural Neo-Imperialism in the 21st Century A.D. courtesy of NOW.
Damn. Abnoy has found out about the feminazi/lesbian plans to indoctrinate all women at home and abroad, and export our war of the sexes overseas. MUSLIMS.
Sounds like we’re at the core of basement-dweller’s complaints – never mind the sexbot fantasies, his mum’s told him he has to do his own laundry and cooking now he’s a big boy.
Abnoy:
“the Western feminazis will just try to turn [the sexbots] against us en masse for the sheer lulz of it by indoctrinating them into becoming (straight) man-haters too”
Oh, dude! Brilliant idea! I’m going to hack into one of these and make her quote passages from The Dialectic of Sex just before he cums.
him: oh, oh, oh, …
robot: oh, oh, oh… [tinny voice] If women are differentiated only by superficial physical attributes, men appear more individual and irreplaceable than they really are…
him: oh, oh- … wtf?
MRAs’ obsession with sexbots is the most delightfully hilarious thing in the world.
tinny voice: “he will go to his grave feeling cheated, never realizing that there isn’t much difference between one woman and the other, that it is the lo-oving that creates the difference”
I’m going to make this guy have an existential crisis with his pants down.
@ Katz – that is awesome! The Confederate flag and the angel figurine (Precious Moments?) really set the scene. Is the building in the picture meant to be anything in particular?
Things that appear to have never occurred to ABNOY — women in various assorted countries can think/say similar/identical things for similar/identical reasons and *gasp* it not be some global conspiracy.
Things that ABNOY probably obsesses over — men in various countries forming similar/identical thoughts because it’s the truth!
The double standard, it burns.
Love how he keeps noting that he means humans, as if there was another option here. Aliens? Sapient sexbots? Turing test failing bots? Annoying little mosquitos?