Posts Tagged ‘Technological Determinism’

Legalized Prostitution: Sex Robots Lead the Way

January 1, 2019

Legalized Prostitution: Sex Robots Lead the Way.

Prostitution is illegal in every state in America, except Nevada. You might find it interesting to review the state and federal laws against Prostitution. Please see below.

https://prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000119

You should know that prostitution, like gambling, pornography and recreational drugs were outlawed for good reasons. They were once called “vices” because they ruin families, businesses and individual’s lives. Separately each of these legalized activities is a great cost to society that should supersede hedonistic quests for more personal pleasures. Taken together, I judge that their synergistic costs to America are, or soon will be, disastrous.

On a strongly related matter: “technological determinism” is a term used by those who wish to illustrate how advancing technology shapes the perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors of populations within civilizations. When perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors change they can spread through populations via well-known biopsychosocial scientific laws and principles.  I call these laws and principles the mechanisms of change. I call the changes they cause within populations, behavioral contagion. The effects of behavioral contagion can be good or bad for populations, cultures, and societies.

Technological determinism is only one important source of the many summating and multiplicative changes in societies that, when viewed at-large, are identified as cultural evolution. Behavioral contagion is an important component of many chains of causes (war, depletion of resources, disease, natural disasters, religion changes, technological developments, politics and more) that drive good and bad cultural evolutions. Therefore, behavioral contagion can also be an important force in the rise and decline of civilizations. Changing and even clashing subcultures can easily be observed in societies.

Unfortunate, the workings of the biopsychosocial mechanisms that drive behavioral contagion for better and for worse, are not easily observed. In fact, from what I can tell almost everyone is oblivious to them. Even most scientists that I know do not think much about their involvement in sociocultural evolution and the survival value of  societies

The video below is a perfect example, among countless others, of technological innovations that can catalyze destructive forms of behavioral contagion in America.

The following  video is only soft-pornography But, I warn you that your own imagination will rapidly convert it to XXX rated hardcore-pornography. If you are offended by this video, and your own naturally occurring imagination, I will invite you to “grow-up” and face reality. You will have to politically defend against this reality, or you and your loved ones will be hurt to varying degrees by it.

Psychology is very much at play in this robotic example of technological determinism, its resulting behavioral contagion, and also resulting cultural evolutions will likely produce . I will explain in brief.

All animals are generally influenced by the same Psychological laws and principles. One of these principles is the Law of Effect. This law states that behaviors that produces rewards for individuals will normally cause them to repeat the same behaviors more often in the future. These behavior patterns, with repeated rewarding consequences, can become deeply ingrained within the in individuals and greatly increase in future frequency. Such high rates of behaviors have, in lay language, been called “psychological addictions”. When the rewards are actually biologically addicting, both psychological and physiological addictions present concurrent problems to individuals, families, businesses, etc., and entire societies. The psychologist B. F. Skinner researched and promulgated these laws and principles he called Operant Conditioning and Learning.

Basic Laws of Association increase the likelihood that stimuli, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors that occur together with individuals will be psychologically linked together and will be more likely to occur together more often in the future. If the stimuli are closely associated with pleasure, individuals will be more likely to be motivated to work to produce them more often in the future. Conversely, the stimuli, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions are closely associated with pain or discomfort will be more likely to be escaped and avoided. Ivan Pavlov’s discovery of Classical (Respondent) Conditioning helped psychologist to understand how, for better or worse, new learned (conditioned) emotions and reflexes can be learned in humans and other animals. 

The Principle of Least Effort often leads to people and other animals seeking the least effortful ways to obtain their rewards and the least effortful ways to escape or avoid pain and discomfort. The implications for sex with robots as opposed to all that one must do to find and retain sexual partners should be clear. The more realistic the sexual robots become the more powerful their attractiveness is likely to become.

It is critically to note that behavioral scientists have demonstrated that humans and other animals are generally highly motivated get their rewards more immediately, more frequently and in larger magnitudes.  

Albert Bandura, conducted important research into the psychological field of Social Learning Theory. There are a great many social influences upon perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors the individuals within societies. These influences include all of the previous laws and principles, and more. These influences are spread through language, written words, popular media, and the imitation of other’s behaviors that are perceived in some fashion. All of this presents another level of complexity of influences upon individual’s perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors.  The principles of social learning theory present countless other avenues of behavioral contagion with good or bad effects upon individuals, cultures and societies.

All of this, and much more, is part of human and animal nature.

Historically, in Western Civilization Judeo/Christian religion’s stimuli, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behaviors and sacred values have militated against bad behavioral contagion. Also, Western Civilization’s, more’s, folkways and governmental laws; largely based upon these religious values, punished the spread of bad behaviors within the populations. All of this and the population’s own social controls (encouragement, praise, material rewards; or, criticism, social censure, rejection and physical punishment) also militated against bad behavioral contagion and strengthened good behavioral contagion. 

Finally, it is now increasingly clear that genetics is a very important factor in the inheritance of tendencies towards a host of diseases, both physical and psychological; as well as a number of personality features that often produce maladaptive behaviors in individuals. 

All of this provides fodder for the behavioral contagion of bad or good outcomes for individuals, culture and society. 

Perhaps you are beginning to understand that psychology is one of our most important sciences and technologies for future human social and political survival. 

Finally, please note that all levels of America’s governments have been suppressing the power of Judeo/Christian influences. Also, our corrupt governments  have been legalizing the behaviors that were formerly labeled as sinful and illegal. Governments are doing this in order to augment their tragically depleted revenues. Governmental revenues horrifically depleted by unprincipled spending designed to secure a dependent electorate dedicated to furthering politician’s personal wealth and political power. 

Sex robots are perfect technological symbols of secular post-modern nations now in steep decline.

Will America be one of these?

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.

Health Services Provider in Psychology

Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Indiana University South Bend

 

For more “Big Picture” thinking, I invite you to study two of my professional publications below. There I detail a few (just a few) of the determinants of human behavior, cultural evolution and potentially the rise and decline of civilizations.

Also, you undoubtedly note that I have not specified what is good or bad behavior, or good and bad behavioral contagion. I invite you to think about your own value judgments about these matters. However, I ask that you put these judgments within the context of the biopsychosocial laws and principles discussed in this blog. If you wish to know my own thoughts on this difficult matter, you will find them in my publications below.  

http://uncommonculture.org/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/328

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zKtoOt2Vvb8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA45&dq=behavioral+contagion+of+gambling+v.t.+mawhinney&ots=F8rOYqs1Or&sig=e07hs19rcrN6pIPXg1QEw4D8KsQ#v=onepage&q=behavioral%20contagion%20of%20gambling%20v.t.%20mawhinney&f=false

 

 

Guns, Faith and Culture

February 25, 2018

Guns, Faith and Culture.

It should come as no surprise that traditional morality has declined to pitifully low levels in America. By this, I mean the traditional moral and ethical codes of conduct that are based upon the Judeo/Christian faiths and their derivations.

I have documented the decline of traditional American culture and social conduct in here my blogs since 2009, now approaching 1700 publications. I did the same as a university professor, when I changed my area of research to these matters in the 1980’s. 

There are many corrective laws and encouragements that can be promulgated by our various levels of government. Also, there are those of us who are dedicated to showcasing America’s cultural and social decline. We hope to embolden everyone to fight the forces of our undoing in all available peaceful ways. 

Yet, I struggle with one great fear. This fear is that, no matter what a secular government and an increasingly secular culture and society may do to reverse its own steady decline…nothing will work. 

My grave concern is that nothing will work because there is no compelling reason to forsake the immediate pleasures that a population’s increasingly self-centered (“selfish”) behavior most quickly and most reliably secures.

Without God, and his sacred rules of conduct, there is no compelling reason to abandon our own selfish pleasures in order to only have a chance at securing the long-term benefits to ourselves and perhaps for society at large. What is it that will motivate us all to forestall or give-up immediate rewards in order to benefit others who will succeed us in the distant future?

As a doctoral student, I was trained that there is no such thing as human nature. I now know this is false.

Humans prone to pursue their own short-term rewards. They prefer that these rewards come faster not slower and larger not smaller. They also prefer that they come on a thicker schedule of occurrence,  that they come with greater convenience and less pain.

Humans also love to control the odds that their rewards will become bigger and faster, etc., and that means that they will strive to control their physical, social, political and geopolitical environs. Humans are prone to use their powers to reward, hurt or kill others to achieve these ends.

Unless there is some powerful counter-controlling force, they will use whatever methods most immediately provide these things that  human animals tend naturally covet.

Within any society, it takes a mighty powerful generally accepted  belief system to motivate its inhabitants to conduct themselves accordingly and to acculturate their children to do likewise.

Historically, mighty powerful belief systems have come in the form of a society’s chosen God, who must be obeyed in order that individuals and their society can gain favor and avoid a myriad of  terrifying cataclysmic events.

Often this Godly influence has been augmented by political leaders, kings, or dictators who use their God’s rules to control their population through the threat of slavery, banishment, imprisonment or execution. Many kings and dictators have even commandeered the status of a God in order further enhance their mighty powerful control of their subject’s beliefs and behavior patterns.

Since the Founding of America, a particularly pro-social and peaceful God has shaped the development of the United States. The attendant belief system is composed of Judeo/Christian precepts and rules for personal conduct defined good and evil behaviors for the worshiping majority of Americans.

Secular forces and political leftists  have relentlessly attacked this undeniable truth and have increasingly lied and propagandized to impose their own religion upon America. This failed religion is secular humanism and its “god” is humanity itself.

Though it has lost much of its power, the Judeo/Christian God-Based belief system has been so interwoven into the fabric of American culture, that it was also woven into the fabric of its Constitutionally based Representative Republic Government.

This assertion is incontrovertible. I hope you will read one, or both of the following two books to understand the undeniable true font of America’s Greatness.

1. Rediscovering God in America, by Newt Gingrich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rediscovering_God_in_America

2. One Nation Under God, by  David Gibbs with Jerry Newcombe

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/350512.One_Nation_Under_God

America’s Founding religious beliefs guaranteed HUGE fairly immediate and also deferred spiritual CONSEQUENCES for engaging in good or evil (bad) behaviors during one’s lifetime. Believers were promised the love and favor of God during their life-times. Also, huge delayed consequences were promised, heaven if one will believe and follow the Ten Commandments; hell if one did not. A strong belief in the personal and social advantages of God exerts, both then and now, strong peaceful and pro-social influences over human behavior.

Even if a strong belief in God begins to fade for the reasons stated above, the behavior patterns learned under this Godly belief system can persist for a time with some strength. 

But for the generations that follow, without the sustaining religious belief system that sustains good behaviors and reduces bad population acts…the rate of selfish, short-sighted, hedonistic and corrupt behavior will increase with each successive generation.

This, I believe, is what we are witnessing in America and all around the developing world. The common denominator of these trends appears to be the growth of science-based beliefs and technologies that bolster human’s confidence in the their own ability to increasingly control their environments and other important events in their daily lives.

The majority of us appear to love science-based modern technologies and the amazing advantages and conveniences that we enjoy.

Sadly, these technological “gifts”  appear to be powerfully undermining the moral/ethical behavior of America.

The the thing I fear the most is that it is the proliferation of science-based technologies that have led to the growth of secular humanism and socialism leading to destructive forms of narcissism for leaders and extreme dependency and helplessness for followers. All of this correlating with increasing sociopathic/antisocial behavior for all.

I suspect that this self-destructive cycle has, along with other killing influences,  spelled the downfall of developing societies (a relative concept), for all time. 

All living things are born, they live for a while, and then they die. So it also has been with cultures. 

In the past I have fantasized that cultures, particularly America, can teach themselves how to live with increasing health for longer and longer intervals of time.

Now, and I hope I am wrong, my happy fantasy seems to be logically flawed. If it is ever to occur, even temporarily, it may take another of our great national tragedies to bring America again to its vital roots…roots that can only be found on our knees in prayer. 

I endorse the importance of the following article and hope you will give it your close attention.

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA18B48&f=WU18B16

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 2/25/18

“Sex Slaves” for Sale!

February 10, 2018

“Sex Slaves” for Sale!

Well, well, well. Look what we have here.

Sexual Robots, under the complete control of their owner! They are never not-in-the-mood, they never “have a head-ache” and they are never too tired to “make love”. They never say NO to what used to be called deviant sexual behavior.

You could be a pot-bellied, stinky, unattractive really old man and your “Playboy Poster dream-girl” will always be horny for you. She will never complain when your sexual performance is not what it once was, even if it ever was! 

Given all of this slave-like sexual servitude (without pay!), I think I will take the parenthesizes off the words sex slaves.

You should note that inventors are also developing male sex slaves. As you know liberals claim to hate sexism (overwhelming evidence to the contrary).

There can be no doubt that science and technology have a stunningly powerful effect upon cultural evolution.

With the development of the computer, cell phones and various other internet-connected devises, many of our youth, and older people too, have increasingly retreated from reality into cyberspace and its amazing fantasy world. This trend has been developing for around five or six generations.

As a practicing psychologist, for about 40 years, I have increasingly seen shy and introverted young people and adults withdrawing from social contact into the world of cyberspace. Of course, in my practice, I see a skewed sample of people, not a random sample of the general population.

However, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that there is an  association between individual’s increased use of social media and their social isolation. As yet, the causes of this correlation are not known and it will take research to more powerfully assert such attributions.

The following is but one study among many others. However, non-scientific anecdotal evidence is available for all to see.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/06/518362255/feeling-lonely-too-much-time-on-social-media-may-be-why

Of course, the world of sexual fantasy is nothing new and it has preceded robot sex slaves by thousands of years, as the Kuma Sutra and other relatively crude historical sexual depictions prove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions

Starting in the 1960, America legalized the creation of pornography and its wide distribution in all forms. Increased cinematographic technology supplied a pre-existing, seemingly insatiable appetite, with increasingly explicit sexual  depictions, including those formerly categorized as deviant.

Along with this cultural evolution, a wide variety of relatively crude “sexual toys”, simple inanimate objects, “sex aids”, became widely available for purchase in “adult” book stores and XXX mail order outlets.

Depending upon one’s sexual appetite, perhaps the most laughable  invention was the inflatable sex doll, which was essentially a large  reconfigured inflatable plastic beach ball.

I judge that these cultural evolution’s have not been good for our society.

https://culturalsurvivalskills.me/2010/03/31/pornography-is-bad-for-america/

Fast forward to 2018 and consider the following dose of reality.

If the following offends you, I certainly apologize for what is a reality therapy session. If you think you will be offended by the display of sexual robots, do not open he following videos.

It is said that ignorance can be bliss. This may sometimes be true until, that is, our ignorance begins to damage our live’s, those of our loved ones…and others upon which the emotional health and welfare of our culture depends. 

I hope you will give some thought to how the following technological developments will likely influence the course of a population’s social and emotional development. 

Of course, the following videos tout the many personal advantages of owning sexual robots. Counter-arguments consider the dehumanizing of sexuality, the possibility of learning to dominate and sexually abuse real human beings and the the deepening isolation from real people it may bring to many.

Perhaps the presence of sexual robots could be an advantage to an overpopulating world. However, it seems likely that the correlation of education and the disposable income necessary to afford to own and maintain a sexual robot favors a reduction of procreation within the most capable segments of any developing population. This would not seem beneficial to any society.

But, if I could accuratley predict the future I would be a very wealthy man…I can not and I am not.

Still, this old psychologist doubts that the proliferation of robotic sex slaves will be an unalloyed evolutionary blessing. There is just too much room in this development for increasing unsocial and antisocial conditioning and learning outcomes within populations.

Assuming increasing popularity, the significant expense of these first generation robotic “sex slaves” ($4,000 to over $50,000) will lower their expense to the point that they will become affordable to large numbers of people in advanced societies.

What follows is XXX rated; well kinda, sorta…maybe not-so-much to many. 

You be the judge.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/apr/27/rise-of-the-sex-robots-video

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/5316114/transgender-sex-robots-could-be-coming-to-a-bedroom-near-you-as-bosses-reveal-interest-in-love-droids-for-any-sexual-preference/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5483178/sex-robots-doll-china-factory-smart-exdoll/

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 2/10/18


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