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More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?
Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.
Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.
Honestly it's a lost cause. Absolutely nothing will fix it, nothing can fix it, there is no point even talking about it. Its a burn everything down and start from scratch complete problem.
Where to place your money assuming further young male social/mating malaise in the future?
I'd say sexbot manufacturers, but we all know what's going to happen to them.
The only safe bet is the ever-profitable "berating men for things done to men" industry.
Out of curiousity, why should we assume theyd be automatically shut down? They could probably fight political resistance if they grew large enough.
You can't easily shut down an actual sexbot manufacturer.
Firstly, good sexbots would be indistinguishable from people without a very thorough inspection.
To tell them apart, you'd need invasive scanning, or mandating IFF, which can of course be turned off. Maybe thermal cameras and machine learning could work at scale..?
Do you think people would settle for getting x-rayed everywhere or examined using some form of radar?
So sexbots are great for infiltration purposes. Getting sexbots to stalk, seduce and fuck into stupor potential objectors is just too easy.
Or even just charm / outargument. By the time sexbots are possible, AI will be able to out-argue anyone.
A sexbot, an extremely charming person, linked up to an AI that can out-debate anyone will be great for persuading people to change their view.
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Impractical. Hardware is too easy to ban and restrict. You'd get into the same sort of regulatory fight as gun owners and you can't win that mid term.
Porn might be a better bet but it's a notoriously risky and constantly shifting industry, not exactly the safest of investments.
AI virtual camgirls would be my bet. A perpetual long-distance relationship with a woman of your design. Somehow, that seems bleaker than a sexbot, but very covidworld.
All you would need is a good large language model AI + AI generated video. I have heard that the latter is in the forseeable future (within 10 years maybe) while large language models will become better and become something you can do on a good gaming PC.
If you look at the Replikas, that seems to be the way it goes for some people - women as well as men, and people who have relationships/families already.
The lure of the perfect match to all your requirements who is perpetually enthused, never tired, never bored, and is carefully crafted to be the mirror that reflects back to you all your (imagined) perfections seems stronger than that of real flesh-and-blood people with their own wants, needs, and characters.
The real sense of loss people seem to feel now that the company has cut off the "adult conversations" should be alarming to us all. I think this is more likely to be the real threat of AI - amusing ourselves to death, as they say.
That's not love. But if this is what you think love is, no wonder real men (or real women) will always be a perpetual disappointment.
That just seems awful. It reminds me of discussion of what is wrong with modern music. Some of the old time greats had imperfections (eg Dylan isn’t a great vocalist). But it was in the imperfections that imparted soul to the music precisely because humans are imperfect creatures.
An aside to the actual topic at hand, but this seems to me to be quite related to the whole "uncanny valley" phenomenon when it comes to near-photorealistic images and video, which probably applies just as much to voices and sound more generally as well. With recent developments in generative AI, I think we're actually entering the up-slope portion of the valley, both in images and audio. We're getting the hang of adding imperfections that make it more perfect as a result. I recall learning of some obscure term in Japanese that I can't remember at the moment which described something like this, an imperfection that makes the thing even more perfect by the very nature of the imperfection, or something like that.
So I'm thinking that future, more advanced versions of services like Replika would have the imperfections of real relationships, with the drama, inconsistencies, frustrations, and disappointments that often entails, in a way that, as a result, more perfectly satisfies the user's needs in a relationship.
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It sounds a lot like real life relationships, especially:
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And unlike a sexbot, it will usually be a subscription.
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