AI Romance and the Ethics of Care
Mar. 14th, 2023 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingWell lads, it took some research into real-life sci-fi technology (specifically Japanese caregiver robots) to get me here, but I finally started learning about "the ethics of care."
Apparently what happened is that, when they finally started letting women be college professors and publish in academic journals in the 1960s, many of these women began pushing back against "traditional" models of ethics. According to these older models, which were all formulated by men, we need to behave ethically because, if we don't, we will be punished by family, or punished by society, or punished by God, or punished by peers. Meanwhile, the "ethics of care" is just the idea that we should behave ethically toward other people because other people are human too.
This was and continues to be a "radical" system of ethics because it's difficult (for men? for Christians? for academics? idk) to conceive of people who don't share your ascribed status as fully human in the same way that you are. So like, are women fully human? Are children fully human? Are ethnic/racial minorities fully human? Are immigrants fully human? Are economically disadvantaged people fully human? Are disabled people fully human? Apparently "yes of course" is a difficult answer to arrive at, and it requires extremely sophisticated arguments to "prove."
Meanwhile, there's been a recent substream of "indigenous ethics of care" that applies to our relationship with the environment. This is also extremely controversial, as apparently the idea that "we should not harm other forms of life on this planet just because we can" is difficult to justify according to Greco-Roman systems of ethics that were formulated two millennia before the industrial revolution.
To me, this is just another reminder that I occupy an entirely different world than other people. Like, for me, the question of "are robots human" is meaningless in the face of the far more important issue of "can you romance them."
Apparently what happened is that, when they finally started letting women be college professors and publish in academic journals in the 1960s, many of these women began pushing back against "traditional" models of ethics. According to these older models, which were all formulated by men, we need to behave ethically because, if we don't, we will be punished by family, or punished by society, or punished by God, or punished by peers. Meanwhile, the "ethics of care" is just the idea that we should behave ethically toward other people because other people are human too.
This was and continues to be a "radical" system of ethics because it's difficult (for men? for Christians? for academics? idk) to conceive of people who don't share your ascribed status as fully human in the same way that you are. So like, are women fully human? Are children fully human? Are ethnic/racial minorities fully human? Are immigrants fully human? Are economically disadvantaged people fully human? Are disabled people fully human? Apparently "yes of course" is a difficult answer to arrive at, and it requires extremely sophisticated arguments to "prove."
Meanwhile, there's been a recent substream of "indigenous ethics of care" that applies to our relationship with the environment. This is also extremely controversial, as apparently the idea that "we should not harm other forms of life on this planet just because we can" is difficult to justify according to Greco-Roman systems of ethics that were formulated two millennia before the industrial revolution.
To me, this is just another reminder that I occupy an entirely different world than other people. Like, for me, the question of "are robots human" is meaningless in the face of the far more important issue of "can you romance them."
no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 07:23 pm (UTC)It's.....fascinating, for some definitions thereof, that the ethical models of men depend on "will I get caught" whereas the ethical model of care both.....ignores that question as irrelevant and *also* seems to pre-assume that one *will* be found out. I feel like this says a lot but I can't exactly tease out the details, but my brain went to such things as the crypto scandal with SBF and the fall of various financial institutions, all of which were tied in some way to being unethical because society would not punish you (which it didn't) even if you got caught (which you did).
no subject
Date: 2023-03-18 11:44 pm (UTC)I feel that the difficulty of entry of Soulslike games is different in a meaningful way. To give an example, Dark Souls itself is breathtakingly gorgeous, and it performs extraordinarily well if you're willing to make a moderate effort to learn how to play it. Meanwhile, every BioWare game seems to be an endlessly deep Uncanny Valley endlessly filled with unfortunate design choices and technical glitches.
But who knows, maybe this is just my fault for not playing BioWare games on PC while running mods. I'll probably never know.
And like I said, it's a shame. I sure would love to romance monsters and robots.
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Date: 2023-03-20 04:38 pm (UTC)(I've never played with mods; the one I want most is the one that makes spiders become not-spiders. But mostly I've played them as-packaged and sometimes that's regrettable.)
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Date: 2023-03-19 08:04 pm (UTC)I actually came back to this thread because I wanted to ask for your advice. I'd like to sit down with a BioWare game this summer and do my best to give it a chance. I'm not interested in in-universe continuity; rather, I'm interested in good writing with a minimum of gameplay hassle. I prefer fantasy over sci-fi, but both are good. What game would you recommend to a novice like me?
no subject
Date: 2023-03-20 04:36 pm (UTC)Honestly, I would recommend Dragon Age 2. It has the best companions; if you set the difficulty to Easy then most fights are pretty chill and you can bulldoze them with a minimum of fuss; and it's more self-contained in terms of the world than Origins/Awakening and presumably Inquisition (which I haven't played.) I've played it both on PC and console without mods and while there is the occasional hilarious glitch, there's not much that's unplayable. (Note: there is some kind of bug if you play both DLC missions, Legacy and Mark of the Assassin, in the same playthrough, that fucks up saves. I would choose Legacy every time, personally--and have, lol.)
The game isn't without flaws; the fact that it was shoved out the door too fast shows in reused maps and some odd writing choices with regard to timeline, but I just love the companions and the smaller, more personal nature of the story so much. (DAO and DAI--and the Mass Effect trilogy--are all about giant world-shaking disasters that you must save the world from. DA2 is about one city teetering on the edges of multiple disasters and you are just A Person Trying to Live and Everything's A Fucking Mess.)
Also it has Gideon Emery and Eve Myles among its star VAs, and I love that for it.