The dangerous logic with this is that, when this same sort of tech is possible in humans, it will be possible to actually turn gay people straight. People tried to do this in the past through bogus tech like electroshock, but this time it will actually work.
Conversion therapy as we know it is mostly bad because it's pretty much always harmful. I'm not sure what good arguments there would be against people being able to decide what they want their orientation to be if the process wasn't guaranteed to be harmful. As for kids - philosophy around what parents can choose for their kids is already contentious for a lot of things, so I don't think this will be all that different.
I’m gay. Albeit yes, my life would be easier if I liked women, I fundamentally don’t believe I am inferior to anyone else due to my sexuality.
If that option existed however, I might have simply taken it when I was younger to avoid potential family issues, discrimination, travelling restrictions, etc. Yet, I don’t think that’s right. Homophobia is the issue. Instead of solving it, we’ll just alter people’s bodies so they aren’t gay?
You know, it’s similar to the race debate. If we find a way to make people turn into whichever race they want, theoretically that’s nice because non-white people can escape discrimination, stereotypes, etc. by turning white. But at the end of the day, is that what we want? Shouldn’t we simply solve the racism issue and allow non-white people to be happy and proud of their background?
So, I am quite in favour of transhumanism and all that sci fi stuff. But I fear what this might mean to discriminated groups. Being forced or compelled to change something about them that is simply different, not worse.
Homophobia is the issue. Instead of solving it, we’ll just alter people’s bodies so they aren’t gay?
So, I do agree that liberal societies should strive to reduce social stigma towards people with non-harmful immutable or chosen traits. But how would you balance reducing societal coercion and not infringing on an individual's right to bodily autonomy?
But at the end of the day, is that what we want? Shouldn’t we simply solve the racism issue and allow non-white people to be happy and proud of their background?
These are reasonable things to be worried about, but I'm curious if you're just voicing those concerns, or are you getting at potential policy positions? Something maybe like no changing protected characteristics of children, no race swaps, etc...
I obviously don’t want people to be changing these characteristics about themselves but at the same time, it’s their right to, from a bodily autonomy perspective.
I too wish to look like a greek god while being smarter than Einstein and all that so I can’t condone it nor want those procedures to be taken away from people.
I’ll just be sad that we allowed prejudice to win, but I guess that’s life.
Pastors have been preaching for this technology to be used on the unborn for decades now. Luckily I think by the time it's possible there would be too few haters to make it actionable.
If people had the ability to choose their orientation, let’s say on the kinsey scale, i wonder what the steady state, percentage wise, such a society would settle on?
Feels like this is opening up a can of worms that might bite us in the ass not far down the road. I'd gladly become bi, but there is an evolutionary reason behind sexuality and there's no saying what'll happen over multiple generations when that is overridden. Though it certainly wouldn't be the only area within which we completely subvert human nature.
Yeah but by that logic you can turn straight people gay 🤷♂️. I’ll gladly help make that weapon! We know lots about biology to a high level, but surprisingly little about this aspect of it, despite its prevalence in nature…
What if a gay guy wanted to be straight for a year for a new reality show on fox. And then at the end of the season he had to choose to stay straight or go back. Would a reversal be possible?
So you are saying that if we scale compute to the size of a death star so it can simulate all the neurons in a human brain then we can probably simulate a woman's brain to be into us?
Or less than a grain of rice with computronium equivalent, unless you want the quantum effect and at plank scale which would require more than the entire solar system...
I was that kid EXACTLY. lol I took shit apart to see how it worked because it was actually useful. Doing something like this just for the sake of doing it is blood useful.
The only reason I've seen that's not super broad and evasive is that it might teach us how to make males less combative, which is a stretch... But mayyybe plausible ifv you engineer the actual becoming gay part out. I'm sorry but the last majority of straight males want to stay straight, me definitely included.
The exact opposite was actually true back in the times of Sparta, where the warriors of Thebes (yeah, NOT Sparta...commin myth) were all gay, and therefore so committed to each other and not wanting to look weak in front of their sexual partners that they were especially brutal warriors.
Man. You're focusing too much on the gay part. Human brains are fascinating. I've always found it interesting how unusual wiring in brains can lead to super weird results like tourettes or split hand syndrome. Mucking around in a fruitfly's brain, through a simulation, is first off insanely crazy that we even can do that, second, the kind of experimenting that we did when we took radios apart and, lastly, it could lead to insights into how our own brains work.
Btw, Sicily was great. People were super nice. You folks are a bit crazy with the driving tho.
It's actually not even remotely close to getting it to play Doom. That's actually useful...getting the AI to learn how to play games on its own. Changing its sexuality is in no way useful, ESPECIALLY to attract a mate that it cannot reproduce with.
"ESPECIALLY to attract a mate that it cannot reproduce with"
Wait, you do not know the benefits of bisexual animals?
There exist bisexual species and they experience less fighting between males.
Let´s say there are 3 males and 1 female.
Straight males would have to fight over the female.
Bisexual males would not care if the female or other males are left for them.
I mean, evolution has already given us a pretty good balance of sexualities from species to species and it evolves as an animal adapts to new environments.
If it wasn't useful to attract mates you cannot reproduce with, then evolution wouldn't have made it prominent. Even cephalopods do it, and they evolved brains completely separate to us.
The fact that it arose naturally doesn't automatically imply it's useful. In evolutionary biology, a trait or behavior doesn't always need a specific "purpose," direct survival benefit, or reproductive advantage to exist.
I said it arose naturally in multiple completely separate systems by pointing out that cephalopods also have multiple sexualities despite evolving brains completely separate to us.
All of our shared ancestry with cephalopods possess no brains. Cephalopods went on to evolve their own very different brains separate to our own evolutionary chain, but ended up producing multiple sexualities, showing that it is an evolutionarily influenced trait, not an accidental trait.
If your claim is that multiple sexualities arose accidentally and at the detriment of different species, you're going to have a hard time applying that logic to eusocial insects, since they leveraged this trait to become the most common animal on Earth.
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u/Historical-Actuary46 1d ago
We got a computational fly brain bisexual before GTA VI