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Category: sex – Page 31

Though Cheok acknowledges that sex robots could fulfill sexist male sexual fantasies, he believes robot-human marriages will have an overwhelmingly positive effect on society. “People assume that everyone can get married, have sex, fall in love. But actually many don’t,” he says. And even those who do might be in search of a different option. “A lot of human marriages are very unhappy,” Cheok says. “Compared to a bad marriage, a robot will be better than a human.”

Though various sex robots are on the market, there are none that come close to resembling a human sexual partner—and there’s certainly nothing like the type of humanoid robot capable of replicating a loving relationship. However, Cheok believes the greatest technological difficulty in creating love robots is not a mechanical challenge, but a matter of developing the software necessary to build a robot that understands human conversation skillfully enough for the job.

Once that problem has been addressed, Cheok sees no problem with romances between man and machine. “If a robot looks like it loves you, and you feel it loves you, then you’re essentially going to feel like it’s almost human love,” he says. Cheok points out that in Japan and South Korea, there are already cases of humans falling in love with computer characters. Cheok also compares robot love to human emotions for other species, such as pet cats. “We already have very high empathy for non-human creatures. That’s why I think once we have robots that act human, act emotional, or look human, it’s going to be a small jump for us to feel empathy towards robots,” he says.

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“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.” — Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Artificial intelligence has fascinated mankind for more than half a century, with the first public mention of computer intelligence recorded during a London lecture by Alan Turing in 1947. More recently, the public has been exposed to headlines that have increasingly contained references to the growing power of AI, whether that’s been AlphaGo’s defeat of legendary Go player Lee Se-dol, Microsoft’s racist AI bot named Tay or any other number of new developments in the machine learning field. Once a plot device for science-fiction tales, AI is becoming real — and human beings are going to have to define their relationship with it sooner rather than later.

Peter Diamandis, co-founder and vice-chairman at Human Longevity, Inc., touches on that relationship in a post he authored on LinkedIn, titled “The next sexual revolution will be digitized.” Diamandis points to recent reports showing that the Japanese are increasingly abandoning sex and relationships, while a growing subset of men report that they prefer to have virtual girlfriends over real ones.

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Elon Musk doesn’t want to simply send humans to Mars. The SpaceX CEO has bigger ambitions. He wants us to be an “interplanetary species,” which means creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars, which means living and dying on Mars — which at some point might mean sex and pregnancy on Mars.

So how would that work?

Given that Musk hasn’t figured out how to keep people alive on the trip to the Red Planet, it’s unlikely he has details on how people will make more people once they’re there. We don’t have any data on how human bodies will work on Mars specifically, but we have enough information to know that sex in space could be a real hassle.

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Something like this…How can we extend sex appeal?

Gyms and beauty salons are in charge of this question now. There is some success, but it’s mostly superficial. Plastic surgery only masks, but doesn’t delay the processes of aging.

Expanding sex appeal is a complex task. Its aspects include both beauty and the activity of the brain. To be sexually attractive we have to be smart and fun. One cannot solve the problem of dementia with makeup.

We have to be in an excellent physical shape to be sexually attractive, but also things should be running smoothly with our hormonal regulation.

The task of extending the period of sex appeal is extremely science-intensive. It is not only the Viagra, but a complex impact on the whole organism. It is obvious that molecular biology is responsible for sex in the modern world.

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There is a stark contrast between the cover stories in current issue of Boys’ Life –vs- Girls’ Life. [see it here]. The Boys cover effectively urges males to learn, build, think and question assumptions. But, the Girls cover wonders “Oh My! What will you do with your hair and nails today!”

Although I am a feminist—and readily jarred by the juxtaposition of contrary messages—I am giving editors at Girls’ Life a ‘get out of jail’ pass this time. It may not be the sexism that it seems.

[Originally published at AWildDuck under my pen name, “Ellery”]

Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) kicked up a firestorm last week, when she tweeted a photo of two side-by-side magazines on a newsstand. The contrast between cover features of Boy’s Life –vs- Girl’s Life is startling. With characteristic sarcastic wit, she tweeted:

“Why are you feminists always complaining?
We treat boys and girls exactly the same.”

For those who are reading without the above image, the current issue of these magazines calls out to readers like this:

  • Boys: Would you like to build and fly the next generation of jet fighters?
  • Girls: What on Earth can you do with your hair and nails this weekend?

Boy'sLife-vs-Girl'sLife

The difference between these covers suggests that the respective magazine editors are pushing 19th century aspirations onto the next generation of 21st century women. It’s a reminder of lingering differences in the way we perceive the sexes. But does this contrast present a fair and balanced comparison?

Certainly, there is work to do—but, the stark difference between these magazine covers may not point to a societal ill in the way that seems to jump off the screen.

  1. Despite similar titles, these magazines have very different audiences and goals. I doubt that Girls’ Life is aimed at the broader demographics of Boys’ Life. The subscriber base evolved to target the girls of Toddlers and Tiaras. I am exaggerating by pointing to a narrow demographic, of course! but it sells to girls who already aspire to be future homemakers, or who simply have the fashion obsession that is still the hallmark of many preteen girls.
  2. Unlike boys, girls really do have more options for viewing their future and their careers. Feminism and technological/political empowerment is not yet universal or even universally embraced. Some families, particularly among the south, among religious conservatives, and among hard-hat towns dependent upon muscles and mining, still promote the notion of TFRs onto the next generation (traditionally female roles). Right or wrong, it brings us to point #3…
  3. It’s clear that there is a stark difference between covers: “How can I build a jet fighter?” –vs- “What will I do with my hair tonight?” But, it is all too easy to assume that we understand cause-and-effect. That is, the difference is likely to be a reaction to market forces, rather than the publisher’s attempt to shape desires. One cannot find fault with delivering content based on consumer demand.

If you tell me that there are plenty of girls that hope to build or fly a jet fighter, I will nod in violent agreement. But if you tell me that there is an equal fraction of boys who obsess over their nails, hair and the color of a blouse, I will wonder if we live on the same planet.

My teenage daughter is clearly in the former group: She imagines, asks tough questions, builds, tears down, and then builds a better gizmo from scratch. She codes Android apps and creates massive murals for the local shopping mall. But, some girls care about classic ‘girly’ things, at least during their early years. And here’s a surprise…

Many of these gilrly girls exhibit just as much technical proficiency and self-confidence as their empowered peers. They are assertive, independent, financially savvy, and aware of their equal political and career footings. Helen-Gurley-Brown-vintageYet, many of us feminists bristle at the thought of a female child who obsesses about their hair and nails (at least to the point of subscribing to a magazine in that venue). In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive.

So, can I still call myself a feminist in the mold of Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem? Perhaps not. I am more likely to identify with a less militant Helen Gurley Brown. She was all about empowerment and sexual equality. Yet, somehow, she avoided pushing the sexes to be completely indistinguishable and androgynous.

Do you disagree? Do you think that I exhibit a Luddite attitude that is at the core of a chauvinistic society? Don’t just let it grate on you—Be a Wild Duck! Leave a comment here, next to the original article.

Philip Raymond
Boston MA

As the biotech revolution accelerates globally, the US could be getting left behind on key technological advances: namely, human genetic modification.

A Congressional ban on human germline modification has “drawn new lines in the sand” on gene editing legislation, argues a paper published today in Science by Harvard law and bioethics professor I. Glenn Cohen and leading biologist Eli Adashi of Brown University. They say that without a course correction, “the United States is ceding its leadership in this arena to other nations.”

Germline gene modification is the act of making heritable changes to early stage human embryos or sex cells that can be passed down to the next generation, and it will be banned in the US. This is different from somatic gene editing, which is editing cells of humans that have already been born.

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If you’ve seen the dystopian nightmare fuel that is BBC’s Black Mirror, you might be getting the “No no nos” about Sony’s latest patent application — ‘smart’ contact lenses with a built-in camera that can record, play, and even store videos right before your eyes.

With Google and Samsung having already filed patents for contact lenses with tiny, built-in cameras, these things seem inevitable, and they have the potential to change everything about the way we interact with each other… for better or worse.

So yep, that means in the future we could all be playing back recordings of old conversations to our friends and family to win an argument, or, you know, watching a ‘greatest hits’ compilation while having sex with our significant other. But we have more faith in the good of mankind than that, right?

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Interesting article on toddler memories. I was actually speaking with my mother on Sat. and shared with her 3 distinct memories that I had before age 3. One in the crib seeing my grandmother, second was my first rocking horse, and 3rd was 2 pet birds.

She (my mom) thought that I would have remember building a step staircase out of my grandmother’s drawers of her 6ft chest, and climbed up to sit on top of the chest so that I could throw down my grandmother’s powder on the floor. They saw a cloud of smoke from the powder coming out of the room; and found me.

Just sharing because I am always amazed at how brain sensory and memories work.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t remember anything from your life before the age of three. This phenomenon, first dubbed by Sigmund Freud as “infantile amnesia,” occurs in many different species, yet why it happens remains a mystery.

Freud (being Freud) pinned the culprit on sex: those early memories are actively repressed because of their highly charged psychosexual context. This idea is now “actively repressed” by modern scientists, who instead point to quirks in the developing brain as the root of toddler forgetfulness. Some believe that the young brain has not yet mastered the ability to store memories. Others think the rapid reorganization of the developing brain quickly overwrites what’s already been written.

baby-memories-brain-learning-3

These modern theories rely on the same assumption: that our baby memories are erased. But what if Freud was right about the mechanism (if not the reason)—and these memories are simply repressed, waiting for the right cue to become active again? Can the things you don’t remember as a child shape the person you become as an adult?

Continue reading “How Forgotten Baby Memories Rewire Learning in the Brain” | >