Subjectivity is at the point where no one is home. That's what's authentic in someone. It can't be any positive substance, because exactly in that case it could then be changed or manipulated by choice. There is an authentic core to a person but its not a positive, it's an absence of anything positive. Nothing is at home. Maybe that's why I don't see the fear in this idea of manipulation.
Love, an authentic connection with another person, is outside of my whims, i'm not able to freely control it. That's why no one else is able to control it either, it's universal.
Now, it is possible to use my love for someone against me to profit or whatever. But that happens now. Workers get their passports taken away and are threatened with never seeing their family again if they cause trouble for the bosses.
Isaiah White
You are ignoring the material conditions, China cannot reach the imperialist stage of capitalism, because it lacks the domestic resources reserves for that.
The Chinese military runs off surplus generated by Chinese workers, key resources and fuel for weapons are imported, this means no belligerent foreign policy, this means no imperial super-profits for the Chinese bourgeoisie, so no means for bribing the military.
It's boxed in.
John Gray
not really
Justin Taylor
Alternative energy forms and materials breakthroughs will change that
Jaxon Bennett
What does that even mean? There is no "best" way to respond to a person. Any attempt at building such a thing would be an obviously shallow and garbage imitation. It would fall into the uncanny valley the same way '00s CGI does. Real people don't respond to your emotional needs in a "way that best suit[s]" them. Real people are flawed and come into conflict over their emotional needs. This kind of robot is closer to an ideal therapist rather than a romantic partner.
Furthermore, what builds any kind of personal bond (whether romantic or not) is the way that people work through those conflicts to find a resolution that works for both of them as individuals and a unit. That includes fights but it also includes simple things like dividing the responsibilities. A robot that does whatever you need paradoxically doesn't fulfill the actual need here, which is to be in a relationship with a peer.
It's like Hegel said. Your sense of identity is possible only through seeing a peer and understanding them as an equal. (Somebody remember the term for this? I forget.) Giving people robot gfs is only going to drive people deeper into depression and alienation, and because they think it's the thing they need, they will have an extremely difficult time understanding why they're still unhappy.
You could theoretically program a robot to come up with problems and then work through them in the way calculated to best sate our need to work through problems and come to an agreeable solution. You just have to take a broader, less instinctively obvious definition of emotional needs - the first generation may make uncanny valley mistakes, but you can always fix that in the second, or an OTA update that breaks half of them.
I say that not to imply that robots are going to be good, but to emphasise that the problems run deeper and are more disconcerting than a simple technical implementation problem. You can always move on and try to solve technical problems, if the problem is a philosophical or social one that's much harder.
