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• What is beauty, and what it is that defines perfection in a robotic woman?
• If the perfect robotic woman can do housework, converse with and satisfy her partner sexually, then what is the basis, in the minds of the creators, as to why this is better than a real woman?
• As women, are we looking to be replaced, and if so why?
And beyond the issues surrounding the creation of a “perfect” robotic woman (or man), other developments could significantly alter the current state of gender relations. For example, advances in genetic engineering and biotechnology conceivably could allow individuals to switch genders back and forth fairly easily and inexpensively, to be intersexed, or even to become genderless.
So, we’d like to know what you think. How much are things going to change between the sexes over the next four decades?
That’s the question we’ve posed in our current IEET reader poll:
Looking forward to the middle of the century, around 2050, will relations between women and men be much different than they are now?
We look forward to hearing your responses!
Mike Treder is the Managing Director of the IEET, and former Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
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For example, advances in genetic engineering and biotechnology conceivably could allow individuals to switch genders back and forth fairly easily and inexpensively, to be intersexed, or even to become genderless.
I think this will happen eventually, but not by 2050, so I have chosen another more conservative option.
I think the only morally viable option is to work towards a post-gender duality reality in which any sentient being can fully decide their location on the masculinity-femininity spectrum at any given time, solely limited by physical constraints. Most of us have no idea how positive this would be for our experience of reality. Furthermore, we need to pursue morphological freedom, eventually in its full form, as long as it doesn't minimize other people's utility.
Morphological and mindstate freedom, if taken over a certain threshold, starts becoming increasingly less compatible with our current perspective of personal identity. In my view, we are all just self-aware patterns of the same reality interacting with each other. There is nothing physical that separates us from each other. If we developed a full morphological and mindstate freedom and started exchanging and copying physical shapes and subjective states (which are ultimately fully correlated) then I don't see how this wouldn't drastically alter our concepts of who we are and what separates us. Mere speculation about these issues has huge impacts on how we percieve ourselves and reality, as Buddhism is a prime example of. Implementing such ideas 'in the physical world' would logically have even bigger impacts.
On the other hand, there is a need for an intelligent hive mind/collective consciousness to arise from the communication and interaction of the matter on this planet if we are to minimize current and future existential risks. Conflict is essentially disharmony. It's not only that choices bring about effects, effects require the specific choices that bring them about. Which effects do we truly want to experience?
We are free to think of ourselves as hive minds already if we choose to since that is what we actually are, each of us made up of trillions of cells that keep exchanging their energy with what we consider the separate environment. The concept of an AI is ultimately meaningless since computational substrate is irrelevant. Down at the quantum scale there is only one substrate.
Something that Kurzweil et. al. seem to be ignoring or perhaps hushing down is that if we turned ourselves into conscious digital computation patterns, all operating on the same cloud computing system, the barriers between us would become completely optional and determined by ourselves and our influences on each other. At least some of us would inevitably start merging together. I know of many individuals who already long for merging or evolving into their own conceptions of an AI. Personal identity is ultimately an issue of perspective and identification.
I have only read the first few chapters of his Singularity is Near so I don't know how open he is about this. He might be very open and clear and it might be the majority of his audience that doesn't seem to understand the true implications of his message, which is quite unfortunate since the accelerating process is presently arising from our unconscious actions. As a civilization, we have yet to start seeing the big picture.
What might be positive about the 2012 memeplex is that it might help precipitate an increased global understanding of what is really going on. I find it scary to think about how such a globally disruptive process would feel from an emotional perspective. I am not arguing that we need an instantaneous 'global awakening' but it seems obvious that increasingly many people do, like for example Kurzweil with his books and upcoming movies and Ken Wilber and co. with their Integral Institute. http://www.integralinstitute.org/
Each and every one of us needs to honestly start facing and evaluating his/her own present goals, desires and needs from the perspective of what is actually possible, whether this applies to longevity, morphological or mindstate freedom, the minimization of existential or personal risks or merging or separation of personal identity. It should be clear by now that the possibilities are truly limitless, our current and past existence is the proof of that. The question isn't whether but when, how and in what order.
If you are opposed to any pursuit of morphological freedom then just consider the alternative, which is to maintain an indefinite status quo in these issues and what that would actually entail. Among other things, it would mean that we should retain our current shapes and limitations until the point at which we get hit by a meteor or the sun becomes a red giant and engulfs us. Of course, we could try to stay as we are and move outside of this solar system like in Battlestar Galactica but in that case I'd much rather become something like a Cylon (though a peaceful, tolerant, loving and forgiving one).
I think it is quite clear by now that we should try to move past the gender and current human aesthetics barrier. Even the religious extremists would agree if they were able to consider for just one second that their metaphysical views on the concept of an 'after-life' might be erroneous. All of us desire heaven, we just need to finally figure out that the only way to get to it is by building it 'here'.
I am personally not necessarily against initial restrictions and legislations that limit and slow down this development. Such things are after all nothing but our attempts to guide the unstoppable process of change. However, a much higher level of morphological freedom and a full freedom to move along the gender continuum is essential to the fulfillment of our utopian dreams. This goes hand in hand with our ability to (re)generate our bodies by consciously maintaining and improving upon their life-sustaining systems to the extent necessary for achieving indefinite lifespans.
Furthermore, I am not advocating that we should try to abandon and fully transcend the human experience. Personally, I love the human dream and wish to stay in it for as long as I wish to. All I'm saying is that we should allow ourselves to make it more enjoyable, especially since change seems to be occuring despite of our subjective feeling of choosing it.
Because of my conviction about this I have decided to make the development of morphological freedom, the transgression of gender duality and the abolition of limited lifespans my primary objectives in life until these goals are achieved. I would welcome any feedback to my views and advice on how to proceed at a personal level in the pursuit of these goals.
Regarding Morphological and mindstate freedom in its full form
I envisage this as primarily the ideal of a collective consciousness as one entity, or perhaps even an artificial persistence or longevity realised as a machine consciousness. Here singular conscious minds may persist as individuals and merge experiences, thoughts and ideas as one. And the most ideal circumstance would permit the individual identity to leave the collective consciousness and then later return with renewed experiences to share with the collective?
I am guessing this is the form of ideal most readily embraced for this hypothesis, and supports the notion that individual identities persist. However, the next step from here is further evolution of this collective consciousness into a purely singular consciousness/mind/entity where identity is finally overcome altogether? These are the ideas and understandings already supported by Buddhism and Advaita, with the realisation that either only mind or pure consciousness really exists, (is real).
Are folks willing to give up themselves, their "selfs", and their identities into the absorption of pure oneness? I think not, and this notion may be abhorrent to most folks? And yet furthermore how could you possibly prevent this entity from evolving into this pure collective state, there may ultimately be no final choices whatsoever?
I personally have no problems with this, my identity, my "self" is merely a creation and means nothing whatsoever, and it will expire at death. Yet this does not mean that I would not wish to experience a true connectedness as a human mind, (in the form of a post-human entity), or even in a spiritual bodily understanding of connectedness as promoted by Buddhism and Advaita.
In any case you are correct, these ideas must first begin with the exploration of the boundaries of gender and identity, and bodily forms, and with the courage to realise that your identity may be at risk : of evolution.
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