Triangular theory of love

General chat about fembots, technosexual culture or any other ASFR related topics that do not fit into the other categories below.
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What kind of love would you have for a fembot?

Liking/friendship
11
13%
Infatuated love
14
16%
Empty love
6
7%
Romantic love
19
22%
Companionate love
18
21%
Fatuous love
4
5%
Consummate love
13
15%
 
Total votes: 85

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Spaz » Sat Jan 31, 2015 11:39 am

I picked companionate love because, while it may or may not be possible to truly fall in love with a robot, I would want a bit more out of it than just sex. If it did have a reasonably sophisticated intelligence, I would prefer to use it as a sounding board for my thoughts, my ideas, and my feelings.
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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Sat Jan 31, 2015 8:03 pm

I would say, a mix of infatuated love, non-love, and a kind of inverse of the romantic love category (completely knowing that she is a lie, but enjoying her - as well as being able to shut her off or customize her). A parody of romance.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Mirage » Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:33 pm

I think it's obvious for myself, romantic all the way.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by australopith » Mon Feb 09, 2015 6:10 am

If my fembot were as humanlike as the characters I write about/imagine, I'd definitely default to treating her as a human; and shoot for romantic love–which might develop, in time, into consummate love.
It ideally wouldn't be too different from a human relationship; except that if the fembot were built for me, I might get the opportunity to create the person I think I'd like most–a none-too-original idea, I'm sure, but still a fascinating one.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by daphne » Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:17 am

My assumption is that love with a fembot is fatuous love. You have commitment, essentially, by design, since as property she can never leave. You also have passion in the form of sexual attraction and activity. What you do not and cannot have is intimacy or friendship, which requires another entity with agency, which the fembot is not.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by daphne » Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:20 am

It's interesting to me, however, that so many people desire "love" out of the machine which is incapable of such. By its nature the fembot can never truly love, even if it has emotions; love is given, not taken, and by design it has no choice in the matter.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Wed Feb 11, 2015 10:59 am

They would seem to be satisfied with the idea of imaginary love, and call it real. Can they not imagine asking for this love from a person? Why not have a wife and a toy/pet?

I know my appetite for fembots comes from my lustful, reptilian brain stem. I am not looking for an echo of myself, but rather a thing from which I may take everything while harming no one.

I believe this imaginary love positions the human and the fembot equidistant from the point dividing humanity from non-humanity. The Fembot would be a reflection in an empathic mirror. Is the human seeking validation of his emotional palette? A narcissistic solution to a question of self-doubt? To show himself that the dimensions and depth of the intensity of his emotions work in a relationship? Unless he is Moe Szyslak or violent/negative, such a robot would teach a man to become capable and prove to himself that a human relationship would also work.

I wish those seeking this kind of love could have the opportunity to imagine out their entire ideal scenarios, and see how this scenario changes as they are changed by their experience with a fembot. Call it a Day of Reckonin'.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by australopith » Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:47 am

daphne wrote:As property she can never leave. [...] What you do not and cannot have is intimacy or friendship, which requires another entity with agency, which the fembot is not.
Who says she's not? :)
My favorite types of robot stories (both fem- and otherwise) involve robots acquiring some level of their own agency–from R.U.R. to our own Propman's Boom-Boom. It's much more interesting if the fembot has the power to leave or otherwise outdo her human creator or owner.
Then, if it's a love/sex story, the creator is challenged to win the approval of a personality he has designed himself. In a few cases, he is sexually turned on by her disapproval–but can't push it too far, or he'll face actual rejection.
Alternately, if it's just an adventure story, the creator is caught in a war of wills and philosophy; just as interesting, if not as arousing.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by darkbutflashy » Wed Feb 11, 2015 4:02 pm

daphne wrote:It's interesting to me, however, that so many people desire "love" out of the machine which is incapable of such. By its nature the fembot can never truly love, even if it has emotions; love is given, not taken, and by design it has no choice in the matter.
I beg to differ. A child "loves" its mother, and this is hard-wired into us, we have no choice either. It's interesting how people confuse this "caring love" with a sexual relationship. No, it's not interesting either, people don't care about the difference all day.

And then there are the ones who are in just for the kink, like me. I'll take whatever I find. Haven't taken the poll because of that.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by daphne » Thu Feb 12, 2015 7:36 pm

darkbutflashy wrote:No, it's not interesting either, people don't care about the difference all day.
I'll thank you not to decide for me what I do or don't find interesting.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by darkbutflashy » Fri Feb 13, 2015 6:20 am

I think it's more than clear that I'm expressing my personal views with my postings only. How should I accomplish anything else? And why? If I'd just write the same as someone else, that would be ... uninteresting. :?

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Grendizer » Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:27 pm

I picked romantic love, because it is quite likely that any sufficiently advanced fembot would be indistinguishable from a real woman (to paraphrase Mr. Clarke), with the added crack of being so deeply customizeable that it will almost certainly represent the "key" that fits your lock with absolute perfection. Humans already "fall in love" with their cars and their pets. It's a real love, even if reciprocation can never be proven. You have no reliable way of knowing whether your dog loves you int same way humans love dogs. Even human love would be a cipher without the third-party assurance of a common genetic code -- and even that presents its mysteries, as the "dress that broke the Internet" proved recently. You can never capture the qualia of love beyond your own internal experience, therefore love for a fembot isn't any more a lie than love for a human or a pet. Whether the fembot is having a subjective experience of the world at all will be a matter of faith, and faith is the one thing love will always require.

On the flipside, I'm not sure why you'd ever "commit" to an android, even one you love, except for the implications inherent in love itself. You'll want to protect it from violation or irreversible harm, theft, etc., just as you would with a car, but it would be foolish and actually meaningless to sacrifice for it, except for your own aggrandizement, because the negative consequences of not sacrificing would be a matter of your own intent to enable those consequences, making the risk, and therefore the commitment, zero.
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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:05 am

Grendizer wrote:...it is quite likely that any sufficiently advanced fembot would be indistinguishable from a real woman (to paraphrase Mr. Clarke),
I always like to take the opportunity to point out that the degree of advancement sufficient to make a fembot's programming indistinguishable from a real woman is not nearly as advanced as science fiction likes to portray. We nearly have the capacity now to model all the potential consequences to a fembot's seduction decisions, like a chess computer considers all the possible plays, and all the subsequent choices that could follow. Advance Siri-style natural language interfaces a few generations, and we'll be there.
Even human love would be a cipher without the third-party assurance of a common genetic code
Errors/variations may arise from genetic or epigenetic causes. The spelling of genes vary, and also the degree of optimal transcription. Our brains, the consequence of the transcription of our genes, expresses too much variation for what you say to be true. There is no universal third-party assurance, no legend by which to translate any person's love into any other person's language.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by smalk » Tue Mar 17, 2015 6:59 am

dale coba wrote: I always like to take the opportunity to point out that the degree of advancement sufficient to make a fembot's programming indistinguishable from a real woman is not nearly as advanced as science fiction likes to portray. We nearly have the capacity now to model all the potential consequences to a fembot's seduction decisions, like a chess computer considers all the possible plays, and all the subsequent choices that could follow. Advance Siri-style natural language interfaces a few generations, and we'll be there.
A chess computer *does not* consider all the possible plays, as it would take enormous computational time. It can, indeed, visit many outcomes for the current situation, but in the end its proficiency comes mostly from its ability to understand the strategic gain of the intermediate stages of play. Since it is anyway possible to model every intermediate state (it's a finite game, in a relatively small domain, with a relatively small number of rules), some algorithms can be tuned to evaluate accurately a state of the match.

Do you want to program a fembot's seduction decision in this way? No problem, just model me the complete and exhaustive set of all possible intermediate state, with every possible client in every possible context.

Humans and AI reason in very different way. The difficulty for an average AI to even move a pen on a table is equiparable to the difficulty for an average human to solve a multiple integral without any calculator.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Tue Mar 17, 2015 7:40 am

Moore's Law means I'm not worried about the processing power required. We'll be lucky if Q-bits don't come along soon, and Skynet us all right up the arse. A.I. of whatever stripe is not interesting to me, insofar as it helps her balance or perceive objects more clearly. Those aren't examples of a personality making decisions.

I am thinking not about the complexity of the machine required to run the program, but the simplicity of the algorithm of possible actions. She has all the contextual clues of the scene, all the memory of her owner's past responses, the common database on-line of responses by other owners with similar tastes, and she is weighing out how he will react if she does this, then this, etc. She doesn't have to predict, she is enabling the possibility of her owner's pleasure, and any pleasure that results will do just fine. She doesn't have to be a psychic, but a skilled improvisation partner.

It's not even as hard as winning at chess. He wants to have fun, and she will quickly change her approach when she sees a better way to please him. That's more like the challenge to "win" by having fun playing at bridge, partners making bids, anticipating, and setting up opportunities. Wikipedia says computers today can play bridge as well as the champions - and I'm talking about a typical Owner (not one trying like a chess champ to out-think his fembot's advances).

Yes, the machine must be extremely sophisticated to perform its bodily and perceptual tasks. Beyond the low-level and mid-level calculations, regarding seduction strategies, she doesn't have to be remotely as smart.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by smalk » Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:57 am

As my point was not taken,
dale coba wrote:We nearly have the capacity now to model all the potential consequences to a fembot's seduction decisions
I take that you like to think that your idea is very easy to implement, when there is enough available computational power. The reality is slightly different, though.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Tue Mar 17, 2015 4:05 pm

I have tried to explain the realm in which I am interested.

Does the fembot need to have a sophisticated "mind" behind her personality, if she is to anticipate her owner's responses many moves farther than any human woman could?

The answer is no. Her personality doesn't have to be any "smarter" than the most sophisticated chat-bot to date.

I think you truly are underestimating the pace of future technological change, treating problems which have resisted solutions for decades as if they always will. Also, I am not worried about how many years it will take before the fembot unit is functional, and can host the personality with effective, but unsophisticated seduction algorithms.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Grendizer » Tue Mar 17, 2015 4:52 pm

dale coba wrote:
Grendizer wrote: Even human love would be a cipher without the third-party assurance of a common genetic code
Errors/variations may arise from genetic or epigenetic causes. The spelling of genes vary, and also the degree of optimal transcription. Our brains, the consequence of the transcription of our genes, expresses too much variation for what you say to be true. There is no universal third-party assurance, no legend by which to translate any person's love into any other person's language.
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Incorrect, in that I immediately related an example of how such an assurance could be placed into doubt, but it doesn't invalidate the notion that because our blueprints are the same that our qualia are likely to be at least broadly similar, if only for selection reasons. Given that we are social animals, our experiences are likely to be similar for most of us. It is unlikely that vast variations in the experience of our social apparatus would allow us to survive.

Also, I'd like to see evidence that epigenetic variation leads to significant genomic variation. This seems unlikely to me, since it would make a hash of being able to say that we only have a small percentage of variation from monkeys, for instance. You'd have to further establish that these variations actually express themselves in ways that could lead to significant modification of brain structure, since that is where our experience emerges from. I don't' know that that has been established.
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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by dale coba » Wed Mar 18, 2015 12:53 am

Grendizer wrote:
dale coba wrote:
Grendizer wrote: Even human love would be a cipher without the third-party assurance of a common genetic code
Errors/variations may arise from genetic or epigenetic causes. The spelling of genes vary, and also the degree of optimal transcription. Our brains, the consequence of the transcription of our genes, expresses too much variation for what you say to be true. There is no universal third-party assurance, no legend by which to translate any person's love into any other person's language.
- Dale Coba
Grendizer wrote:... because our blueprints are the same that our qualia are likely to be at least broadly similar, if only for selection reasons. Given that we are social animals,
Especially in this group, with our self-reported rates across the Aspergers spectrum, not everyone is an equally, similarly social animal.
our experiences are likely to be similar for most of us. It is unlikely that vast variations in the experience of our social apparatus would allow us to survive.
That is a species imperative. The species doesn't care about whether or not individuals are created who are not fit enough to reproduce, so long as they are a small fraction.
Also, I'd like to see evidence that epigenetic variation leads to significant genomic variation.
I think with respect to the qualia of individuals, we are looking at phenotypic variation, which is the combined product of genetic variation and transcriptional fidelity.

There is a direct way that certain wrong epigenetic markings lead to actual changes in genetic sequence, but that is not what I am talking about. The brain, our qualia-experiencing organ, is the product of many genes - each of which is a potential candidate for transcriptional complications.

There is a protein in the male fetus which amplifies the testosterone, ensuring that whatever genetic variances there may be in the several testosterone genes that contribute, it will get AMPLIFIED and pushed to the definitively male, reproductive heterosexual ideal-as-the-species-sees-ideal. Without the amplifier, there are many more variants in testosterone levels, leading to less masculinization, which will express at low-frequency population rates.

Canalization means, there are only so many possible outcomes. These locations are epigentically sensitive, complex junctions of traffic lights and street signs laid on top of the DNA road, markers left differently depending on whether the gene came from the father or the mother. Without canalization, variation appears - especially unfit variation which it has been important to suppress, for reproduction or simply for the survival of the individual.

When I deny the existence of a universal I am specifically including the qualia of all individuals not ideally fit for reproduction.
This seems unlikely to me, since it would make a hash of being able to say that we only have a small percentage of variation from monkeys, for instance. You'd have to further establish that these variations actually express themselves in ways that could lead to significant modification of brain structure, since that is where our experience emerges from. I don't' know that that has been established.
Those percentage calculations of DNA variation always strike me as pointless; and they have been wrong, if only in that our epigenetic inheritance complicates our DNA, and the monkeys' epigenetic markers are not at all likely to have been conserved over the time since the species split.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by xodar » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:23 am

daphne wrote:It's interesting to me, however, that so many people desire "love" out of the machine which is incapable of such. By its nature the fembot can never truly love, even if it has emotions; love is given, not taken, and by design it has no choice in the matter.

You are quite right.. A machine simply isn't a living, rational and emotional being. It's a deliberate illusion created to make up for the difficulties current society as well as various persons' hangups impose on relationships, essentially to isolate the sexual function and make it possible at comparatively low cost.
Real animals such as dogs can participate in emotional and genuinely affectionate relationships with humans, and it's a human responsibility to return the feelings and take care of the animal.
But a machine is material on which one projects their concept of desirable personhood just as are fictional people and celebrities.
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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by ministrations » Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:01 pm

I've been meaning to respond to this for a while, but I knew I'd need like an hour to put my thoughts down. Sorry to come late to the party.

I think (with respect to anyone who may have said this earlier) that the question is more evolutionary than a fixed matter of philosophical debate. We're talking about technology here, after all. (Also bell curves -- there will always be people who want to marry their pillow or their mailbox, and while I may not see it I believe their feelings are real and should be respected.)

The very first fembots, up to about the hubot stage, will only be outlets for passion and/or intimacy -- probably not at the same time, and intimacy may be limited to "warm body comfort" levels of psychological soothing. Bell curves, again, but this is a one-dimensional stage.

The next stage is the one that most people on FC seem to want to explore, which is romantic or companionate. Even a first stage fembot would likely be capable at some point of fairly complicated anticipation and conversation, but this stage is a "real simulation" of emotional connectivity -- the ability to recognize a human's often complex mix of simultaneous feelings and respond accordingly, if not in kind. A Stepford Wife, or to use an example somewhat less charged with sexism, Cameron or the robots from Virus Alert or Soccer Mom Unit. Two dimensions.

This is the stage that gets the most support on here, and it's the one that the media tries to replicate most often too, albeit often failing spectactularly. I also think it's going to be by far the shortest stage if it even happens. Why? Once you have a robot capable of simulating "real" intimacy and "real" passion, you're really less than one standard deviation away from the group that would commit to their robot partners. That's why I think movies and TV fail so often, because the producers have to put such a large artificiality or control or sexist disclaimer on a robot character to keep it in this second stage that they either knock the robot back to Stage 1; fail and the robot stays too advanced; or create an inconsistency or continuity flaw that makes the character implausible.

Still, let's move onto the third stage, which is proper emotional reciprocation. This does not require personhood, sentience, free will or even a particularly realistic experience of emotion on the robot's own terms; all it really requires is the ability to comprehend, adapt and project a wide enough range of emotions complemented to its human partner (however idealized) to satisfy the human's ego and sense of self-worth while being conscious enough to avoid boring or deeply depressing him. It's what Maslow would call "esteem."

If you're saying "there isn't a lot of difference between Stage 2 and Stage 3," there isn't. Examples. Mike, Tammy and Anya in Robotman's epic. He feels genuine emotional connection to them, to the point of risking his death for them multiple times and appropriating Tammy's fears (for instance) as his own. That sounds like commitment to me, however nontraditional. I could go on, but the vast majority of fembots in our library are really Stage 3. When you have someone who can be realistically intimate and passionate, and isn't going anywhere, you're already 99% of the way to commitment.

Then toward the end of Stage 3 the triangle theory begins to break down IMO. For fembots, there's really a Stage 4, which covers persons (Cylons, V.I.C.I., etc.)...and there's a Stage 3.5, "actual love" or "vulnerable love," where the human and robot partner are indispensable to each other and the human sees part of the meaning of her life in the experience of her robot partner (addressing actualization on the Maslow scale).

This is important because these two stages are implied to be included in human consummate love, but are not part of the three main stages of fembot-human relationship because of the artifice of control. Stage 2 (romantic/companionate) can suspend this artifice temporarily for the benefit of simulation; At Stage 3 ("consummate"), the artifice begins to break down and control is more implied than presented; and at Stage 3.5 the artifice dissolves in all but the most extreme, nominal ways, at least from the point of view of the human. At Stage 4 you're basically dealing with another species that (probably) happens to look human; you're really on The Lost Levels at that point. The triangular theory may or may not apply.

I hope no one thinks I am trying to belittle their sexual fantasies. I am not. I have no idea what I would do in real life; none of us do, because none of us have the frame of reference. But I voted for consummate love, because I think the prerequisites for most human beings to have that with a robot will exist long before truly reciprocal relationships do, and will probably exist not long after a robot can pass the Turing Test in person.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Esleeper » Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:15 pm

I picked consummate as well. I get that a lot of people would see a fembot as little more than a means to an end- a simple way to have a partner that could never reject you and can be made into whatever you want her to be, but I think that's missing the potential of what it means to have a relationship with a non-human entity, even if it's a wholly sexual one. I for one find the "mental" aspect of equal importance- the idea that this being who is almost but not quite human is still willing to accept me not merely in spite of the massive difference between my mind and hers, but because of those differences.

That being said, this is in part because I simply cannot see myself being attracted to a fembot that does not possess sentience- in my eyes, that would make her little more than an elaborate sex toy.

Xodar mentioned that a machine can only create the deliberate illusion of being a living, rational, and emotional being, and I can only reply thus:

If this illusion is so advanced and complex as to make it impossible to tell it apart from what we call the "real" thing, is the distinction between the "reality" and the "illusion" even relevant? I say the answer is a resounding "NO".
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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Murotsu » Mon Apr 25, 2016 6:26 pm

Without the initial sharing and friendship portion of a relationship with someone you really don't have anything. Sex alone, even the most passionate, heated, and incredible sex will eventually grow old. Besides, what do you and your partner do outside of sex if you have little or nothing in common? So, for the person that has odd, disparate, or unique interests it becomes difficult or even impossible to find friends, let alone intimate partners.

Then there is the person like Lucy on The Big Bang Theory. I'll use an example from a current show as you may be more familiar with it. She was an extreme introvert. How does a person like that get close to anyone?

So, enter the fembot / robot. A partner manufactured to be a mirror of you in a sense. A partner that understands and is not just willing but wants to do the things you like. Or, the partner that is as close or aloof as you feel is necessary. The better the artificial partner, the fembot, can become your best friend and your confidant the stronger your relationship grows. All you have to do is get past the knowledge she isn't an organic, flesh and blood, entity.

The animes Chobits and Time of Eve explored these concepts to some extent. Tonari no Robot, a manga does as well. This is because the Japanese version of robots works where these concepts can be explored unlike the "Hollywood" version. That is a topic for separate discussion sometime, however.

In the end, if a close human analog fembot were created, she would need to be your friend and companion first, and from that intimacy would grow. If she were designed such that she grew to share your own interests, ideas, and were a stimulating person to talk to, you'd find everything else flowed from that. So, if you were into sports she knows all about the game and watches them with you giving good commentary. Into art, science, nature, whatever...? She's there beside you sharing your love of those things.

A simple sex robot is an almost meaningless gesture. It's nothing but a vessel. The movie Cherry 2000 explored that in a mediocre way to a very limited degree. The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee did it to some degree from the female perspective.
Having the option of getting a companion that is tailor made to find you fascinating and is in turn equally fascinating to you beats the hell out of a mindless "perfect lay" that never says "no" any day of the week.

That to me is the allure of this genera. The girl (or guy) that's always your friend. That likes the things you like. That isn't too intrusive but is never forgetful, and will be there.

Well, that's my take on this.

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Re: Triangular theory of love

Post by Mixgull » Thu Sep 15, 2016 5:30 pm

I always felt that a robot whit no love programming will be very a very cute relationship

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