scholarly journals Moral psychology of sex robots: An experimental study − how pathogen disgust is associated with interhuman sex but not interandroid sex

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Koverola ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Jussi Palomäki ◽  
Juho Halonen ◽  
Anton Kunnari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Sex Worker ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Sex Robots ◽  
Monogamous Relationship ◽  
Attitudes Toward Sex ◽  
First Time ◽  
And Robotics ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThe idea of sex with robots seems to fascinate the general public, raising both enthusiasm and revulsion. We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married. We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes toward sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction. Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are also applicable in research on sex robotics.

scholarly journals Moral Psychology of Sex Robots: an experimental study -- How Pathogen Disgust is associated with interhuman sex but not interandroid sex

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Koverola ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Jussi Palomäki ◽  
Juho Halonen ◽  
Anton Kunnari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Sex Worker ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Sex Robots ◽  
Monogamous Relationship ◽  
First Time ◽  
And Robotics ◽  
Shed Light

The idea of sex with robots seems to fascinate the general public, raising both enthusiasm and revulsion. We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married. We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether or not using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes towards sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction. Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are applicable also in research on sex robotics.

scholarly journals Me, My Bot and His Other (Robot) Woman? Keeping Your Robot Satisfied in the Age of Artificial Emotion

Robotics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Rousi
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Sexual Partners ◽  
Sex Robots ◽  
Artificial Emotions ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Robotics

With a backdrop of action and science fiction movie horrors of the dystopian relationship between humans and robots, surprisingly to date-with the exception of ethical discussions-the relationship aspect of humans and sex robots has seemed relatively unproblematic. The attraction to sex robots perhaps is the promise of unproblematic affectionate and sexual interactions, without the need to consider the other’s (the robot’s) emotions and indeed preference of sexual partners. Yet, with rapid advancements in information technology and robotics, particularly in relation to artificial intelligence and indeed, artificial emotions, there almost seems the likelihood, that sometime in the future, robots too, may love others in return. Who those others are-whether human or robot-is to be speculated. As with the laws of emotion, and particularly that of the cognitive-emotional theory on Appraisal, a reality in which robots experience their own emotions, may not be as rosy as would be expected.

scholarly journals Revealing the threat of emerging SARS-CoV-2 mutations to antibody therapies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiahui Chen ◽  
Kaifu Gao ◽  
Rui Wang ◽  
Guo-Wei Wei
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Protein Receptor ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Uk ◽  
First Time ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
General Perspective

The ongoing massive vaccination and the development of effective intervention offer the long-awaited hope to end the global rage of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the rapidly growing SARS-CoV-2 variants might compromise existing vaccines and monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies. Although there are valuable experimental studies about the potential threats from emerging variants, the results are limited to a handful of mutations and Eli Lilly and Regeneron mAbs. The potential threats from frequently occurring mutations on the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) to many mAbs in clinical trials are largely unknown. We fill the gap by developing a topology-based deep learning strategy that is validated with tens of thousands of experimental data points. We analyze 261,348 genome isolates from patients to identify 514 non-degenerate RBD mutations and investigate their impacts on 16 mAbs in clinical trials. Our findings, which are highly consistent with existing experimental results about variants from the UK, South Africa, Brazil, US-California, and Mexico shed light on potential threats of 95 high-frequency mutations to mAbs not only from Eli Lilly and Regeneron but also from Celltrion and Rockefeller University that are in clinical trials. We unveil, for the first time, that high-frequency mutations R346K/S, N439K, G446V, L455F, V483F/A, E484Q/V/A/G/D, F486L, F490L/V/S, Q493L, and S494P/L might compromise some of mAbs in clinical trials. Our study gives rise to a general perspective about how mutations will affect current vaccines.

Aleksey Peshkov as an editor of Samarskaya Gazeta

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-138
Author(s):  
A. S. Bik-Bulatov
Keyword(s):  
Local History ◽  
Organizational Skills ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

The article uses little known letters of M. Gorky, many of which were published for the first time in 1997, as well as findings of Samara-based experts in local history to shed light on the writer’s work as editor-in-chief of the Samarskaya Gazeta newspaper in 1895. The researcher introduces hitherto unstudied reminiscences of the journalist D. Linyov (Dalin) about this period, which reference a letter by Gorky, now lost. The paper details a newly discovered episode of Gorky’s professional biography as a journalist: it concerns his campaign against a Samara ‘she-wolf,’ the madam of a local brothel A. Neucheva. Linyov’s reminiscences turn out to be an important and interesting source, offering an insight into the daily grind of the young editor Gorky, providing new evidence of his excellent organizational skills, and describing his moral and social stance. The author presents his work in the context of a recently initiated broader discussion about the need to map out all Russian periodicals for the period until 1917, as well as all research devoted to individual publications.

[I] ‘did write this Wyll with my own hand’

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Vassiliki Markidou
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
First Time ◽  
Shed Light

This article attempts for the first time to shed light on the politics of simulation and dissimulation in Isabella Whitney’s ‘Wyll and Testament’. It also argues that the poem both reflects its creator’s awareness of the celebrated English historical and topographical narratives and deviates from them by crucially omitting a seminal part of London’s history, namely its Troynovant tradition. In so doing, as well as by defining a paradoxical urban landscape, Whitney presents a tale not of the (mythic) founding of the English capital with its patriarchal and nation-building connotations, but of its (satiric) bequeathal by benevolent femininity, as such offering its reader a different angle from which to explore and interpret early modern London.

scholarly journals What voiced obstruents symbolically represent in Japanese: evidence from the Pokémon universe

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Shigeto Kawahara ◽  
Gakuji Kumagai
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
General Issue ◽  
First Time

Abstract Kawahara, Noto, and Kumagai (2018b) found that within the corpus of existing Pokémon names, the number of voiced obstruents in the characters’ names correlates positively with their weight, height, evolution levels and attack values. While later experimental studies to some extent confirmed the productivity of these sound symbolic relationships (e.g. Kawahara and Kumagai 2019a), they are limited, due to the fact that the visual images presented to the participants primarily differed with regard to evolution levels. The current experiments thus for the first time directly explored how each of these semantic dimensions—weight, height, evolution levels, and attack values—correlates with the number of voiced obstruents in nonce names. The results of two judgment experiments show that all of these parameters indeed correlate positively with the number of voiced obstruents in the names. Overall, the results show that a particular class of sounds—in our case, a set of voiced obstruents—can signal different semantic meanings within a single language, supporting the pluripotentiality of sound symbolism (Winter, Pérez-Sobrino, and Brown 2019). We also address another general issue that has been under-explored in the literature on sound symbolism; namely, its cumulative nature. In both of the experiments, we observe that two voiced obstruents evoke stronger images than one voiced obstruent, instantiating what is known as the counting cumulativity effect (Jäger and Rosenbach 2006).

Art, Forward Slash, Science

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 526-529
Author(s):  
Gwyneth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Iconic Memory ◽  
National Gallery ◽  
Horse Manure ◽  
Difficult Position ◽  
Internal Stimulus ◽  
First Time ◽  
Fiction Writer

Synesthesia … one day in 1997 (soon after the national gallery acquired the picture), i walked up the familiar marble stairs, crossed the rotunda, and was confronted, for the first time, by George Stubbs's Whistlejacket, the stunning, naked portrait—no groom or rider, no landscape—of a chestnut Arabian stallion. I smelled the stable, horse manure, and leather, and I had the thrill of knowing what was happening inside my skull. How the attention response had sent a cloud of fire leaping through my brain, tugging on associated traces, map on map of firing and partially firing neurons springing back into existence (never the same twice, yet continuous with my earliest childhood and the millions of years before that). Surprise and the power of the artist were making me read internal stimulus as external: recall had become once again perception (McCrone 194-217). This is an iconic memory for me. It holds, packed down and ready to unfold, both the direction my work has taken through my career and the context of that work: my own life and times; the history that made me; the Next Big Thing in science; and my privileged, difficult position as a science fiction writer, an arts graduate, and a woman.

scholarly journals Should society accept sex robots?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 428-442
Author(s):  
Eleanor Hancock
Keyword(s):  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Sex Worker ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Moral Objection ◽  
Current State ◽  
Sex Robots ◽  
Informed Opinion

AbstractIn early 2015, Kathleen Richardson announced the arrival of the world’s largest, organised resistance group against the production of sex robots in society: The Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR). Since the birth of the CASR, Richardson and other feminists have manipulated a combination of radical feminist rhetoric and sex industry abolitionist narratives, in order to promote the criminalisation of sex robots. Moreover, the CASR and Richardson have also made some rather unique claims regarding the “similarities” between sex workers and sex robots, which have not previously surfaced within the narratives of radical feminists in recent years. This article seeks to analyse if their analogous reference to sex workers and sex robots has credibility and viability in the context of the digitalised sex industry and in the wider teledildonic and sex robot market. Furthermore, this article will also formulate solutions for the ethical and social contentions surrounding the merge of sex dolls and robots within the contemporary sex industry. In order to disentangle the radical feminist arguments surrounding sex robots and the sex industry, the following contentions will be addressed:Is moral objection to female sex robots using client-sex worker analogies from feminists justified?Is opposition to sex robots based on informed opinion about the digitalised sex industry?To what extent are the positive considerations around sex robots/dolls and sex-technology ignored in the narratives of radical feminists and the CASR?What practical applications recommendations can be made to the sex robot industry from the stipulations of the CASR and the current state of sex dolls/robots in the sex industry?

Proactive Quality Control: Observing System Simulation Experiments with the Lorenz ’96 Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tse-Chun Chen ◽  
Eugenia Kalnay
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Simulation Experiments ◽  
Systematic Testing ◽  
Kalman Gain ◽  
Lorenz 96 ◽  
First Time ◽  
Shed Light

Proactive quality control (PQC) is a fully flow-dependent QC for observations based on the ensemble forecast sensitivity to observations technique (EFSO). It aims at reducing the forecast skill dropout events suffered in operational numerical weather prediction by rejecting observations identified as detrimental by EFSO. Past studies show that individual dropout cases from the Global Forecast System (GFS) were significantly improved by noncycling PQC. In this paper, we perform for the first time cycling PQC experiments in a controlled environment with the Lorenz model to provide a systematic testing of the new method and possibly shed light on the optimal configuration of operational implementation. We compare several configurations and PQC update methods. It is found that PQC improvement is insensitive to the suboptimal configurations in DA, including ensemble size, observing network size, model error, and the length of DA window, but the improvements increase with the flaws in observations. More importantly, we show that PQC improves the analysis and forecast even in the absence of flawed observations. The study reveals that reusing the exact same Kalman gain matrix for PQC update not only provides the best result but requires the lowest computational cost among all the tested methods.

scholarly journals Identity Theft: A Thought Experiment on the Fragility of Identity

Conatus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
David Menčik
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Identity Theft ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Temporal Proximity ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

This paper intends to discuss some aspects of what we conceive as personal identity: what it consists in, as well as its alleged fragility. First I will try to justify the methodology used in this paper, that is, the use of allegories in ontological debates, especialy in the form of thought experiments and science fiction movies. Then I will introduce an original thought experiment I call “Who am I actually?,” one that was coined with the intent to shed light on several aspects of the issue under examination, that is, the fragility of personal identity. Then I will move on to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, as well as to Derek Parfit’s ‘divided minds’ thought experiment, to further discuss the fragility of personal identity; next to identity theft, the prospect of duplication is also intriguing, especially with regard to the psychological impact this might have on both the prototype and the duplicate. I will conclude with the view that spatial and temporal proximity or coexistence, especially when paired with awareness on behalf of the duplicates, would expectedly result in the infringement of the psychological continuity of one’s identity.

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