this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Futurology

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[–] ItsAFake@lemmus.org 35 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Canadian researchers have found that men who hold virulent misogynistic opinions against women are more likely to express interest in having sex with robots

Wait, so the people more likely to want to control a woman are interested in a woman you can control...

Man how do you become a researcher, seems like an easy gig.

[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The 'this is plausible' is actually the first 0.01% of research, finding out whether the plausible explanation actually holds water statistically (or whatever) and making sure no sort of bias goes into your results is the part that's hard

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 9 months ago

Yeah, it's one thing to guess, it's another to have it in hard numbers.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I think it’s more like:

Men who think of women as objects are more interested in objects as women.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You could also interpret this as "men who hate women are more likely to want to replace women"

We can't know to what degree each dimension holds unless we do more experiments, but at that point how much do we really care?

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well, if you wanted to do therapy programs, that kind of information would be helpful.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sure. There's only so much grant money to go around, though...

This is the part where I'm not actually a researcher, but I wonder if taking robots out of it would help. The fundamental question is what misogynists want: to control women, replace women, or be neutral to women as they aren't considered fully human anyway.

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tbh, just isolate them from society. Not forcibly, if they havent committed a crime, but like just some island or something.

Hell, I bet a lot of them would be persuaded by some macho advertising.

Easiest solution in my mind.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if anyone's made a secular monastery. The problem, of course, is that self-confinement only works for the ones that really mean it. If I had to guess, most misogynists are actually in the control category, and most of the loud MGTOW kind are more interested in conflict itself than what they're actually talking about, so that doesn't leave many potential monks.

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 9 months ago

It doesnt have to be all or nothing. A dozen incels gone is a dozen incels gone.

[–] acastcandream@beehaw.org 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You can’t just make those kind of statements with authority/any degree of certainty if you don’t actually test it. It’s generously described as a theory otherwise. You still need studies to prove things you think you know.

[–] exocrinous@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Generously described as a theory, accurately described as a hypothesis

[–] acastcandream@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

spoilerasdfasdfsadfasfasdf

Getting tenure is the hard part, after that you're golden

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Surely this is a good thing right? Le them take out their urges on someone/thing who cant actually be hurt.

We may even see therapeutic sex robots some day.

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm a little annoyed by calling it 'sex with robots'. It's really just masturbation with an elaborate sex toy. Unsurprising result anyway.

[–] exocrinous@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Well, if I was gonna have sex with a robot I'd want it to be at least as smart as a human adult. A purely preprogrammed experience sounds like no fun at all, and if it has intelligence comparable with any member of the animal kingdom that member better be human or I'm gonna feel really weird.

[–] Lladra@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Brought to us by the journal of shit we already know.

[–] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 212 undergraduate Canadian students from an unnamed university.

Sample size sounds way too small to be throwing around "virulent misogyny" to me. For me, a sex robot sounds like two steps away from a more advanced fleshlight. In an economy where I'm not getting paid enough to have off time I could be cruising or dating with, and in an economy where I'm already spending MOST OF MY HOURS AWAKE toiling for capitalist pigs, plooking a robot sounds no different from rubbing one out with more steps; especially when the robot in question can't spontaneously pop out a kid that's gonna cost me a million dollars over the course of 18 years.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 months ago

It's depressing, but that's actually a pretty good sample size for social science.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

What definitions are they using for 'having sex' as opposed to 'masturbating'? Does their definition consider fleshlights as sex or masturbation? Is it really any surprise that incels would prefer to masturbate instead of have a sexual relationship with women? The methodology seems questionable at best.