So last night I was skimming through the official Church of Satan Info Pack, like you do, and I made an interesting discovery. Alongside such standard Satany things as, you know, eugenics, vengeance, naked-lady altars, it turns out that the official Church of Satan position on sex robots is: Yes, please!
In fact, they’re so into it that it’s point number four in their “five point plan to move society in directions that are considered to be beneficial to Satanists.”
Here’s their pitch:
Satanists advocate a new industry, the development and promotion of artificial human companions. These humanoids will be constructed to be as realistic as possible, and available to anyone who can afford one.
So poor people will have to make do with blow-up dolls, I guess.
Recognizing that the human animal often raises himself up through the denegration of another, this would provide a safe outlet for such behavior. Have the lover of your dreams, regardless of your own prowess; every man a king who can purchase his own subject; or contrarywise, buy the master you wish to serve.
That got a little bit dark, huh? Then again, this is the Church of, you know, SATAN.
Freedom of choice to satisfy your most secret desires with no-one to be bothered is now at hand. What could be better for blowing-off the tension that exists throughout our society, and promoting healthier interaction among true humans?
I can’t say I’m 100% with the Church of Satan on every issue, or even 1%, but I’m going to support them on this: Sex robots for Satanists — or anyone else who feels the need to “raise … himself up through the denegration of another.” Because it’s better to be horrible to inanimate objects than to human beings.
“David, if you’re interested, look up Zeena Schrek née Levey, Anton’s daughter.”
Wiki: “On May 23, 1967, three-year-old Zeena had the first and most highly publicized Satanic baptism in history performed by her father. The ceremony garnered world-wide publicity with a reenactment of the ceremony recorded for The Satanic Mass LP. When she was 13 years old she was pregnant and credited learning meditation for getting her through her C-section delivery.”
Oy Levey!
Zeena herself is a piece of work, she’s an open neo-Nazi. Which does not in any way cast doubt on the claims she made regarding her father, more that the apple didn’t fall that far.
@Rose
No doubt. She and her hubby (was-not sure if they’re divorced) founded “The Order of the Werewolf” (I think that’s what it was called) which was mega neo-Nazi.
…I had to think long and hard about what I’m about to say before I typed it, because holy shit this is really, really gross of you to say.
One, I don’t think it’s really scientifically accurate to say. I’ve known and known of plenty of people who had kids who didn’t “mellow out and warm up”, and my biological father was one of them. In fact, he was so fucking cold he modern-day Henry the Eighth’d my mother (Less killing, more denying of responsibilities. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he turned out to be a manospherian of some breed).
Two, some of us don’t want to have kids, myself included, and holy shit this smacks of some gross “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE BABIES?!” nudging that one aunt in particular likes to do (though I’m glad she only does it once in a great while, and I can understand why she does it. It doesn’t make it any less cringe-worthy to hear, but it does help me not get upset about it). Some of us manage to not be assholes without kids just fine, thanks.
Three, while it smacks of that, it also smacks of “Babies are what all women should want!” rhetoric as well.
Stop. Step away from the computer. Take a time out.
Exploring Satanism and the Far Right Connection:
http://www.detoxorcist.com/satanism-and-the-far-right.html
There’s one Manosphere vlogger who looks Anton-y. Forget his name but he wears black, is bald and has a goatee and smokes a cigar while giving his youtube monologues.
So, one might call her Zeena-phobe?
Sorry. I’ll see myself out.
But not before nthing everyone one noping about VooT’s comment about how Ayn Rand should have had kids to mellow her out. Doubly wrong. Having kids won’t turn a shitty person into a nice person. Ask all the millions of people who were abused and/or neglected by one or both parents. Also, it implies parents are better people than non parents and that’s some bullshit.
The problem with playing out sadism fantasies with sexbots is not related to the ethics of what might happen if they turn out to be sentient. AI is not this thing that just kind of happens to computers. People are working really hard to create AI and haven’t yet succeeded, so let’s not worry at this juncture about whether or not these sexbots will be sentient. That’s an abstract debate and an unlikely one to ever come up. If we wind up creating sentient robots, it will be on purpose and we’ll know what we’ve done.
No, the problem is squarely on what it will do to the people who engage in this behavior, and the blowback from that onto larger society.
Right now, virtually everyone knows that it is morally wrong, full stop, to sneak up on someone in the park, abduct them, rape and murder them. The majority of people wouldn’t even dream of doing something like that, because it is morally wrong, full stop. There is a minority of people who would really get a thrill out of that, actually, but because they know it is morally wrong, full stop, they are not tempted in reality to actually do it. A sliver of that group knows it is full-stop morally wrong, but they have a malfunctioning connection with morality, and that’s how we get serial killers.
Can we see where we might run into some problems if we remove the full stop from that equation? If we made it so that that sort of act is actually okay under certain circumstances? If you meet criteria a, b and c, then you’re all-clear to act out your rape/murder fantasy? I don’t think it’s difficult at all to see where that will inevitably go wrong.
Policy of Madness — I’m kinda playing Devil’s Advocate here, because I have no real stake in this argument, so please, tell me to can it if you want. But that logic doesn’t really work already — those things are wrong to do, yeah, unless it’s roleplaying. Either traditional table top style RP, or naughty role playing… the former you don’t even need consent if your character is doing it to someone else’s character.
Fuck, I’ve done some questionable stuff while roleplaying (his character cut off mine’s face, and stole her pants, I think everyone was surprised that I cared more about the pants [faces regrow, amulets in pockets do not]), and don’t carry a snake bite kit IRL, nor am I about to go eavesdropping even… stuff that is less horrible than rape and murder sure (well, except the face I guess), but since everyone involved knows it’s a game it’s fine.
So how is it that we haven’t already removed the full stop from “this is wrong”? I mean, I’m not getting involved in anyone’s rape fantasies, but we’ve kinda already got that one muddy (I’m talking consensual kink here, not “misunderstanding”)
Again, feel free to tell me to can it, that role playing session did also involve go invisible and the walk through the wall *in that order* cuz our ST could be a massively annoying pedant and I totally get that I’m pushing that line here, but with higher stakes.
The kind of roleplaying you’re talking about is nothing at all like actually committing violence on another person. I’ve RPed: online, offline, tabletop, LARP, just about every flavor you can name. Roleplaying driving a car and actually driving a car are not even remotely similar experiences. RP can accurately simulate the social aspects of interacting with other people, but the physical aspects are completely and utterly different.
Yeah, actually this kind of attitude is what ran me out of RP. A roleplaying game is like any other kind of game: it isn’t fun unless everyone is having fun. There are too many roleplayers who don’t actually get this concept, and who say “well, it’s just the way my character is” when confronted by the fact that their behavior is making the scene unfun for others. Yeah, that’s the character’s personality, but let’s think about why that character has that personality: because a player decided that this would be acceptable.
If I’m playing a roleplaying game with you? Yes, you do need my consent for your character to do something to mine. This is consent that I can withdraw at any moment by saying “fuck this shit, I’m done” and walking away from the table.
Policy of Madness — fair enough on traditional RP, the only time I really pushed the line was when our storyteller explicitly asked me to take someone (his brother) down a notch, so I guess I just fucking forget that some people use that freedom to be asswipes, where we used it more to… idk… violent pranks? Not even quite that, but close enough. It being Vampire and sex just not being a thing they do prolly helped some there. (IRL fights were more “who finished the Mt. Dew?!”, I’ve thankfully never gamed with assholes)
Still leaves sexytimes role playing though. I’m thinking it’s not that sexbots would make it “okay if…” but that it would make it easier to simply ignore the issue of consent. There’s already a great number of things you wouldn’t do to a stranger, or even a friend, without explicit permission, but in some cases are downright fun with permission.
*shrugs* I’m thinking it’s the “you need consent, full stop” not the “you don’t do this, full stop”. Though you can’t consent to murder, as that one case displayed (Germany, I think?), so that one would go back to “its legal to destroy your own property”… which is what a sexbot would be…
We may be talking past each other now, since we certainly seem to agree that where real people are involved you need consent, generally legally, but morally even for P&P type RPG, and doing the thing in question with a person or person looking thing is a different beast… I’m just not sure how it’s sexbots that cross that line and not, say, blow up dolls or real dolls. Well, you’ll pop a blow up doll if you, say, cut it, but some actual fleshy people are into such things (again, consensual kink), and a real doll wouldn’t be destroyed that way… so why treat sexbots differently?
(((If anything I’m arguing we already crossed that line with real dolls)))
TMI — if it’s coming off as “but I wanna hurt people!” it’s not, I t’s the other end, I’m not the Domly Dom type. I am the sort that has really weird boundaries that may make questionable play fine but tickling an Absolutely Not.
So yeah, I’m not arguing “but I already can with consent” but rather “I already consent, or at least may” (consent, it be conditional)
Others have mentioned it, but I want to underline the fact that “The Satanic Temple” is very very different from the Church of Satan. TST are the ones who erected the statue of Baphomet in the town (I think it was in Missouri) with the Ten Commandments monument.
They don’t just troll Christian theocrats, though. They’re politically active progressives. They’re really the opposite of the Objectivist Church of Satan.
(If you get a chance to read their activity book for kids, take a look. The artwork is meh, but it’s kinda sweet. You can download it online.)
http://thesatanictemple.com/
Yeah, that was my reaction when I read that, too. For multiple reasons.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bill-murray-sunglasses.gif
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/nvrmnd.gif
Why nazis have to ruin everything. That’s a cool club name, come on.
@Jackie:
Because they’re Nazis. It’s what they do.
@Policy of Madness,
You say “I don’t think it’s difficult at all to see where that will inevitably go wrong.” I disagree. It’s possible that things may go wrong, but I don’t think it’s at all “obvious” that it “will inevitably go wrong.”
You think that letting people do what they want with robots will lead to more humans being raped and killed. The Church of Satan guys think it will reduce that kind of violence. I don’t think there is sufficient evidence to say for sure what will happen.
I’ve heard similar arguments against video games (and rap, and DnD, and Harry Potter, and porn etc) for pretty much my whole life, and they’ve never been right. It’s possible that “this time it’s different!” but I’m always pretty skeptical about that claim. I’ve heard it a lot.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/powerrangers.gif
THAT EXPLAINS SO MANY THING OMG.
I disagree on the sex robot-videogames controversy comparison. The argument against videogames is/was that they make people violent who wouldn’t become violent otherwise. The Satanists’ argument for sex robots is that they will be an outlet for people who already have violent sexual fantasies to act them out.
I’m playing Hotline Miami, an ultrabrutal and bloody game, not because I need a safe environment to act out my violent fantasies. I don’t have any. I’m horrified by guns and wouldn’t even consider to take one into my hand, let alone use it even for self-defense. The game is, however, a great tactical experience and has a sense of flow that I like in a videogame (I would prefer if it was less violent, although the story revolves around questioning that violence – which doesn’t really work, but anyways…).
The sex robot argument, however, says it’s ok for people who have extremely violent sexual fantasies to act them out on non-conscious beings instead of dealing with their onw dangerous psychological state in therapy. I’m with PoM: removing the full stop from that moral equasion is going to lead to all kinds of problems, morally, politically and socially.
Yeah, I’m with Policy of Madness and Bernardo Soares. I think that violence against robots could lead to violence against sentient beings.
The Planned Parenthood shooting tends to confirm this. Carly Fiorina — lying liar — cites a lying video. Then some guy decides, “No more baby parts.” Some people are extremely vulnerable to societal messages, even if they are loathsome and false. In the worst case scenario, these people are willing to up the ante.
And of course, all people are vulnerable to societal messages. We’re social creatures.
Because they’re Nazis. It’s what they do.
Yeah, they totally ruined white supremacy for the rest of us!
/Sargon /Aurini
I don’t like LaVey, but I think we’re being entirely too hard on him in this case. A casual look at our world doesn’t just show that sadism is common, it shows we’re ruled by sadists. American foreign policy, and our so-called “criminal justice” system take lives as expendable, and often view inflicting great suffering as laudable — and it’s not like we’re the only ones. And obviously, the people David writes about in this blog are only less terrible than many of our leaders by virtue of having less power.
I don’t really think LaVey’s proposal would solve that problem, but I don’t think it’s a nutty idea either. The goal is to let sadists inflict their sadistic bullshit on objects that can’t feel it so that the rest of us don’t have to suffer it. He’s creepily cheery about the prospect of being “king” over things that would look like suffering people, but it’s still win-win — if it would work. Personally, I don’t think it would, but this sort of technology must have looked much bigger and more impressive to someone living in his era. The worst thing I’d say about his robot proposal (aside from the fact that he comes off hella creepy) is that he’s overestimating technology, and misunderstanding its probable effects.
AI is hard. Teleoperation less so. The first “proper” sexbots may well be remotely operated, and wouldn’t that just open up a huge can of legal worms.
Sexbots are a ways off, really good virtual reality is much closer. VR will bring up many of the same ethical questions as sexbots.
Anybody know if MRAs talk about VR at all? I’m curious but not curious enough to wade through the nonsense I’d have to find the answer.
When Sexbots do become a reality, wonder how long it’ll be before the modern version of vagina dentata emerges as an urban legend about a man getting his penis crushed by a sexbot.
The ethical issues will become a thing at basically the same time because it’s an AI issue. I’m not going to call the relative timing of immersive VR and quality sexbot chassis; I could see them happening in either order.
VR with some sort of haptic feedback doohickeys makes much more sense than sex bots. It would allow a whole lot more flexibility. One could pick the setting as well as one’s sex partner(s). I would think that VR would be feasible much sooner, too. Already, there’s a hands-free sex toy for men that can give varying stimulation to match the action in certain porn DVDs.