Comment by johnea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnea | Hacker News Reader

The article, and the comments here, ignore the worst problem of "AI girlfriends": the fact that someone could think of images, audio, and text, only seen on a computer screen, as one's "girlfriend".

The willingness to live in make believe, and the willingness to treat that make believe as if it were reality.

This disconnect from physical reality, and the substitution of a fantasy world for reality, is at the root of the overwhelming majority of millennial mental health issues... Video game, phone, and internet brain damage...

To the extent that generated images replace human porn, I don't see that as an issue. Perhaps it's even a positive in removing some potential exploitation of porn actors. But I don't think most people think of porn as their "girlfriend".

In the same sense I don't think many women think of a dildo as their "boyfriend".

But in both cases there are some people who think of interactive generated images and audio as a relationship partner. These are the cases that are based on a disconnect from reality, and lead to (or are a symptom of) further mental health issues...

Historically, it's been the case that a relatively small percentage of men have monopolized the available women of their time. Perhaps the most famous example of this was Genghis Khan, to whom something like 1 in 12 men in Asia and 1 in 200 men globally carry Y chromosomes linked to him.

It is only somewhat recently that many first-world societies moved towards more egalitarian, monogamous marriages.

However, dating apps are a big step back towards the original state of human relationships: a small cohort of men gaining the attention of the vast majority of women. The remaining men have few, if any, options, much like it was in the distant past.

Marriage law hasn't yet changed to catch up, but marriage rates are also decreasing.

Can you really blame someone destined to be permanently single for indulging in a fantasy relationship? Is it really much different than someone playing video games where they get to be the hero in a virtual world?

I think I'd prefer single men indulge in fantasy relationships than the time-honored alternative of radicalization and violence, at least.

> Is it really much different than someone playing video games where they get to be the hero in a virtual world?

No, it's not different at all, and that's exactly why I call it a mental illness.

You don't need to be a hero, and you don't need to find a girlfriend in someone who swept right. Go outside! Talk to some woman walking her frikin' dog. Even if she's not single, I bet she knows someone who is.

The human species propagated itself in this way for 10s of thousands of years. You don't need a dating app, you need to get up from the frikin' computer and face the real world.

In human tradition, men have chosen women for their looks, and women have chosen men for their ability to raise their social status. Sad but true, and brutally self serving in a world that has been brutal overall.

If you don't find yourself in possession of the looks, wealth, or social status that cause women to flock to you, try this: look for a woman that expresses interest in you, instead of a woman that somehow meets your ideals of the perfect girlfriend.

I can only say this as a person who spent decades pursuing women based on my ideals, and in the meantime allowed numerous opportunities to escape with women who would have been life long relationship partners.

To paraphrase: If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with...

> look for a woman that expresses interest in you

My goodness, what an idea! Why didn’t I think of that?

> Historically, it's been the case that a relatively small percentage of men have monopolized the available women of their time. Perhaps the most famous example of this was Genghis Khan, to whom something like 1 in 12 men in Asia and 1 in 200 men globally carry Y chromosomes linked to him.

Bible (2000 years old) is heavily pushing monogamistic relationship from a simple practical reason - horny man is angry man, angry man is aggressive man and a group of aggressive men can completely destroy whole society. Polygamist societies are rare and unstable. If over supply of men is not used for military expansion, then they will collapse society from inside.

Seriously, who could think it’s a good idea to setup society so that access to sex is reserved for whichever small group of men can violently triumph over the rest?

I'd say at least some of these are people who take their cues from watching nature and see it work somewhat similarly for "revered" animals (eg: lions, bears, bulls, rams, etc).

This is in no way an endorsement of that kind of thinking (or even saying that these folks are even right about what happens in nature).

That’s why the stories of genghis khan seem like bullshit to me.

> The willingness to live in make believe, and the willingness to treat that make believe as if it were reality.

Everyone acts on fictions every day, some are just socially acceptable. Like, do you think countries and currency really exist, or are they really just collective fictions we find useful?

You make a very good example of exactly what I'm talking about.

Countries are indeed fictional, and the misplaced belief that they are in some way a natural reality is a significant part of what leads people to start talking about killing each other in the name of their country.

Fictional entities aren't just ubiquitous, they're essential to civilization. Even laws against murder are fictional entities, but I don't think any reasonable person would argue for their elimination on that basis.

The point isn't whether fictional entities exist or not, or that they're all inherently bad or not, it's on maintaining an understanding of what's fictional and what's reality.

Thinking a fictional character on your computer screen is a life relationship partner is a slip away from reality that is surely a mental illness.

> Countries are indeed fictional, and the misplaced belief that they are in some way a natural reality is a significant part of what leads people to start talking about killing each other in the name of their country.

No, people kill each other because others have things they want, countries are just a means of organizing such endeavours, but let's not go on that tangent.

The point of accepting that we all depend on fictions shows that real vs. fictional is not a meaningful measure of healthy vs. unhealthy, and the latter is what we should actually care about, not the former.

> Thinking a fictional character on your computer screen is a life relationship partner is a slip away from reality that is surely a mental illness.

You're just arguing for fictions that are the status quo as if they're "healthy" without having to do the hard work of proving they're actually healthy, or the new "virtual" thing is actually harmful.

The distinction of real vs. fiction is simply not relevant, what's healthy or unhealthy is what's relevant, but you don't get to call it unhealthy without empirical evidence to support such an assertion which is why you're trying to fall back on calling it "not real", and leaving "not real implies unhealthy" implicit. Except "not real implies unhealthy" is false.

Religions. Corporations. Legal authority.

All exist only because we believe in them.

You could go to the extreme and say that every relationship exists in two copies. One in the mind of the first member and the other in the mind of the second.

Ai relationships are different because they don’t exist in the mind of the ai. There’s no mind there’s an architecture that does not even attempt to simulate a mind.

> Ai relationships are different because they don’t exist in the mind of the ai. There’s no mind there’s an architecture that does not even attempt to simulate a mind.

Even setting aside the question of AI minds, I fully accept that an AI relationship is different. How does it then obviously follow that this is bad or unhealthy for the human though? This part just doesn't follow from anything stated thus far.

The other fictions that we've normalized can be both bad and good, depending on the circumstances.

This use of the term "fiction" is mostly popularized by Yuval Noah Harari, and while correct in some sense, I find it tends to favor its meanings of falseness and unreality. Another more widely used term is "social constructs", which seems preferable, at least to me, because it's emphasizes that we are building something together, which has real and practice impacts on people's lives, often through explicit legal agreements, rules, and norms.

I do think the more common usage of the term "fiction" fits these AI uses much better, that is, literature involving imaginary things. It can still evoke real feelings and nudge you towards certain behaviors, but importantly, if you decide to ignore the chatbot, there's no risk of imprisonment by some 3rd party (like if you ignore the social constructs of taxes or national borders).

Perhaps one way to differentiate these is that "singular fictions" impose no obligations to 3rd parties, while "collective fictions" / "social constructs" do?

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