SEX WITH A CLONE
On the surface, cloning
seems like a really cool thing. Replace your heart, arteries,
kidneys, liver, eyes; you name it. Hypothetically, you could
be just like that energizer bunny. You could keep going and
going and going, maybe even forever. What's to stop it besides
the money to pay for it?
There is one particular aspect of
the process though, that I've been wondering about for some time
now. It has to do with cloning a complete human being, not
just the replacement parts.
And I don't mean just any human being.
I'm talking about babes, the beautiful young ladies who always seem
to be around teasing us into a coma.
What if you could clone them?
It is a venture that -I dare say - many a horny young dude has thought
about. What I'm wondering (assuming that you're married) is
whether or not having sex with a cloned babe would constitute infidelity.
I really don't think it would.
A cloned babe would not be a person.
A cloned Jessica Simpson, for example, would not have her memories
(would it?) and thus (please excuse me for using this word) her
soul. So, in a very real sense, you wouldn't actually be having
sex with Jessica Simpson, any more than you would be if you masturbated
while looking at one of her photographs or videos. Having
sex with a cloned sex toy would be the most sophisticated form of
masturbation imaginable.
And that is truly all it would be.
And incredibly expensive. Can you
even begin to imagine? But if it were possible, I'm sure that
the rich millionaires wouldn't hesitate to get themselves a copy
of whoever happened to be the latest hot model.
And the models surely wouldn't mind
because it would be yet another source of income for them.
They could sell a single hair from their head for god knows what
price.
But that would mean that they would
have to be obsessively careful about anything they touched.
They wouldn't want to leave a drop of saliva on a glass or straw
at a restaurant. They might even resort to walking around
with plastic shower caps on their heads lest a single hair should
find its way into some unscrupulous counterfeiting hands.
There would even be an interest in
cloning deceased babes, like Marilyn Monroe, possibly one of the
sexiest women to ever haunt the planet.
There is already a precedent for this
sort of thing. Have you ever seen those love dolls they're
making these days?(Check out RealDoll
to see what I'm talking about.) They cost five-thousand dollars
and more. And they're only made from synthetic materials.
Can you even begin to figure how much one would cost made from human
DNA?
I truly believe that the desire for sex is powerful enough to fuel
the effort to accomplish such cloning. Coupled with the desire
to live forever, it's difficult to imagine stopping it. It's like
prostitution. You can legislate against it till you're blue
in the face. Does that make it go away? The primal urge
to live and reproduce is much stronger than the social urge to legislate.
It's just about that simple.
Anime
Battle of the Sexes
Human Neuroses
Sexual Deviance
Sexual Equality
Sexual Variety
Prostitution
For the second time, my somewhat eccentric views have been vindicated
(see Imus Primus for the other instance).
The above essay was originally posted in January, 2007. Today,
June 15, 2008, the following was posted at Yahoo News:
In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot
by Alix Rijckaert Sun Jun 15, 1:50 AM ET
MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AFP) - Romantic human-robot relationships
are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect
them to become reality within four decades.
"I am talking about loving relationships about 40 years from
now," David Levy, author of the book "Love + sex with
robots", told AFP at an international conference held last
week at the University of Maastricht in the south-east of the country.
"... when there are robots that have also emotions, personality,
consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They
can ... say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you',
and say it as though they mean it ..."
Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five
years, predicted Levy, "a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls
on sale now".
These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter
"nice sounds" when a human caresses their "erogenous
zones".
But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with
conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.
Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and
consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.
"But for loving relationships -- that is something completely
different. In loving relationships there are many more things that
are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation.
"You want your robot to be able to talk to you about what
is interesting to you. You want a partner who has some similar interest
to you, who talks to you in a manner that pleases you, who has a
similar sense of humour to you."
The field of human-computer conversation is crucial to building
robots with whom humans could fall in love, but is lagging behind
other areas of development, said the author.
"I am sure it will (happen.) In 40 years ... perhaps sooner.
You will find robots, conversation partners, that will talk to you
and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another
human. I am sure of it."
Levy's bombshell thesis, whose publication has had a ripple-effect
way beyond the scientific community, gives rise to a number of complicated
ethical and relationship questions.
British scholar Dylan Evans pointed out the paradox inherent to
any relationship with a robot.
"What is absolutely crucial to the sentiment of love, is the
belief that the love is neither unconditional nor eternal.
"Robots cannot choose you, they cannot reject you. That could
become very boring, and one can imagine the human becoming cruel
against his defenseless partner", said Evans.
A robot could conceivably be programmed with a will of its own
and the ability to reject his human partner, he said, "but
that would be a very difficult robot to sell".
Some warn against being overhasty.
"Let us not exaggerate the possibilities!" said Dutch
researcher Vincent Wiegel of the Technological University of the
eastern town of Delft.
"Today, the artificial intelligence we are able to create
is that of a child of one year of age."
But Levy is unyielding. He is convinced it will happen, and predicts
many societal benefits.
"There are many millions of people in the world who have nobody.
They might be shy or they might have some psychological hang-ups
or psycho-sexual hang-ups, they might have personality problems,
they might be ugly ...
"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make
normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the
choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would
I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship
at all or a relationship with a robot."
They might even become human-to-human relationship savers, he predicted.
"Certainly there will be some existing human-human relationships
where one partner might say to the other partner: 'if you have sex
with a robot I'm leaving you'.
"There will be others who say: 'when you go on your business
trip please take your robot because I happen to worry about the
red light district'."
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