Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

I think you're overestimating the importance of sex in human relationships. I'm willing to bet that someone with no sexual history can do a good enough job of raising a baby and a child, especially if they were well nurtured themselves. I'm concerned about how they'd do with an adolescent who's interested in sex.

More generally, I believe that people who have a hard time getting started on sexual/romantic relationships have parents who didn't have a good relationship.

As for social change, I don't think forbidding IVF for virgins isn't going to solve anything. I think we have sufficient evidence that external control doesn't have good tools for getting people to have children or form families.

I believe we're looking at a bottleneck where only people who really want children are having children, and I don't know what the outcome will be.

If the human race went entirely non-sexual but still wanted children at a reasonable rate, I don't think it would be a disaster. I also don't think this is likely.

I find it plausible that at least some of the people who don't want sex have had a traumatic sexual history. I really can't say that the world is a worse place because such people don't have to have sex to have children.

The big advantage I can see for sex robots is that if they can compete successfully with low-end prostitutes, women and girls will be much less likely to be forced into prostitution.

I'm willing to bet that someone with no sexual history can do a good enough job of raising a baby and a child

Indeed, in the past this was the norm in many societies. Most women's very first sexual experience was with their husband and they often became pregnant after very little sexual activity. Aside from the comment made by that anonymous psychologist, I am not aware of anyone saying that women require sexual experience to raise children. The two concepts seem entirely unrelated.

Experience with other children (children of other people in the family, o... (read more)

6skeptical_lurker11y

Interesting. What evidence do you have for this? [...] Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don't have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes. [...] It depends on how it affects them. If they are a complete nervous wreck because of the trauma, maybe it is best they don't have children? But that is a worst-case scenario.