Everything Is A Construct — Not
I’m fairly strong on the Nature side myself. At least 80%, and I rather suspect that even for the undeniable parts of Nurture, such as prior environment and influence, a case can be made that these too are determined by the nature of those who created the environment, no matter how unwilled that creation.
Roissy asks:
Which got me thinking. Is unmanliness a harbinger of the fall of great powers ?
To which the answer is — Spengler yawns —
Yes.
***
Earlier, he has an interesting piece on our robotic future as regards artificial sex.
Much has been written about the sexbot phenomenon, with the skeptics focusing on the technical limitations (men make this argument) and the insistence that sexbots would not satisfy male sexual desire like real women would (women make this argument). It’s possible the technical hurdles to creating a sexually pleasing mechanical woman that could compete with real women might be too high, but assuming those hurdles are jumped, I offer the following future scenario.
etc.
Although at least this might lead to less inane chatter from those advocates who make a wishful distinction betwixt ’sex’ and ‘gender’, that might be balanced by an increase in geek chatter about hardware and programming.
Personally, although obviously much stronger on the realist wing than the romantic, I can’t think of anything more dire. Life without passion is tawdry and arid foolishness. No doubt the geeks would insist on the validity of the personality of each machine — where man’s anthromorphological urgings, strong enough in normal life, meet with the insistent deconstructualisation of actual personhood and what it means to be human promulgated by atheist philosophers looking for excuses to be what they would want to be, but lack the courage to implement — yet no matter how realistic these things could be, they would still be slaves and slaves aren’t companions. Which exemplifies that if one creates a perfect world of artifice to merely surround oneself with heaven, one remains a slave oneself.
Authenticity is not just the finest achievement, it is the only prerequisite for a valid life. Which is not to say that it is necessarily nice or good, but that like oxygen to carbon-based beings, it is necessary. Personally I’ll stick with girls.
