Men phased out?

[Cognisant]

If genetic engineering gets to a point where sperm can be synthesised and natural selection has been made irrelevant by the speed/extent of modifications being performed (which would be much at all) should males be phased out?

We would be completely obsolete so why keep us around?

The human brain is a highly efficient, highly portable, reasonably reliable and incredibly powerful processor (specifically in terms of audio/visual recognition) so I doubt AI will outcompete us anytime soon, I think it's more likely that we will be the interface by which AI will deal with an ineffable reality and it just doesn't seem like good business to keep males around when we have no real advantages and we can't be utilised in any meaningful capacity to produce more humans.

Like farming cattle but you don't even need bulls anymore.

 

[Auburn]

Well, males are first and foremost humans - and humans have much to offer still, as you noted. Our maleness may become obsolete though, yes. Per example, we may transition to a genderless race that reproduces via other means.

 

[Pyropyro]

If genetic engineering gets to a point where sperm can be synthesised and natural selection has been made irrelevant by the speed/extent of modifications being performed (which would be much at all) should males be phased out?

We would be completely obsolete so why keep us around?

The human brain is a highly efficient, highly portable, reasonably reliable and incredibly powerful processor (specifically in terms of audio/visual recognition) so I doubt AI will outcompete us anytime soon, I think it's more likely that we will be the interface by which AI will deal with an ineffable reality and it just doesn't seem like good business to keep males around when we have no real advantages and we can't be utilised in any meaningful capacity to produce more humans.

Like farming cattle but you don't even need bulls anymore.

Cog, it's already been done You simply need to introduce new genetic material to Spermatogonia (sperm stem cells) and you can have your very own sperm cell line I think it's the ethics that causes the problem IMO.

I hate imbalance so i suggest gender be phased out instead. Males can use their own artificial wombs (which will phase out women) while females can carry their own sperm (which will phase out men).

So the question becomes: Why keep human sexuality around?

 

[Rook]

What of traditional roles?
Many men, and women, will be against this system becuase they may see it as going against nature or their god/s.

To implement such a system worldwide would be near impossible, as an overarching world government with full athourity will be needed.
Furthermore, how would one prevent the populace from having sex?

Sex is not just for reproduction, but also for pleasure.
People will keep on doing it, even if reproduction is taken from their hands.
The only way to prevent natural birth, then, would be to make all men sterile.
This would be one difficult task.

 

[Cognisant]

Many men, and women, will be against this system becuase they may see it as going against nature or their god/s.

Orly

To implement such a system worldwide would be near impossible, as an overarching world government with full athourity will be needed.
Furthermore, how would one prevent the populace from having sex?

I'm assuming infants conceived by natural means can be tampered with to be born as homosexual females with other alterations including things such as resistance to certain diseases and optimised physical/mental ability, indeed they might not even look traditionally female instead being broad shouldered and muscular.

 

[nanook]

aren't men needed to advance the machine take over? because women rarely appear insane like that.

like auburn said: synthesize genders into one or else you are just getting rid of organs, in which case: also get rid of uterus, it's painful and unreliable.

make robots that grow a brain inside of their skulls, after being orally injected with the equivalent of semen and egg. by another robot, of course.

 

[Cognisant]

aren't men needed to advance the machine take over?

Only one.

make robots that grow a brain inside of their skulls, after being orally injected with the equivalent of semen and egg. by another robot, of course.

Typical German taking a fetish too far.

 

[Duxwing]

@Cog You seemingly assume the status quo is bad: do you, and why? If it is not bad, then sex is best left to the individual.

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

Good is not bad but nor is it better.

 

[Brontosaurie]

i think men and masculinity will be redundant not just reproductively but also mentally and socially.

 

[walfin]

This was predicted in some of Asimov's stories (those about a planet called Solaria where humans evolved into hermaphrodites after being isolated for millennia.

Who knows. Could happen in the distant future.

Religion? Even the Bible contains the phrase "neither male nor female"

 

[Cherry Cola]

Wouldn't it make more sense saying that sexes would be phased out?

 

[nanook]

Only one.


Typical German taking a fetish too far.

Haha, yes, we germans have an obsession for carefully cultivated brainz. The intellectuals and the common zombis.

 

[kora]

Would be pleased if social and cultural gender roles died out. They are nothing but psychologically limiting.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

This was predicted in some of Asimov's stories (those about a planet called Solaria where humans evolved into hermaphrodites after being isolated for millennia.

what a coincidence, i've been meaning to start a thread for ages about what human society might look like if we had evolved as hermaphrodites (less ridiculous?). guess i'll just read this book instead.

 

[Pyropyro]

what a coincidence, i've been meaning to start a thread for ages about what human society might look like if we had evolved as hermaphrodites (less ridiculous?). guess i'll just read this book instead.

I'm imaging that we will have love darts and penis fencing like other IRL hermaphrodites. Making love and making war would be one and the same.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

I'm imaging that we will have love darts and penis fencing like other IRL hermaphrodites. Making love and making war would be one and the same.

well they look like...fun. funny that in penis fencing the winner gets not to be the female!

but actually i was slightly misremembering high school biology. it was thinking about different types of plant reproduction that led me to the idea and what i was actually wondering about was asexual reproduction/parthenogenesis and how human culture might have evolved if there was a single gender with the ability to reproduce without the need for transfer of genetic material from another individual.

 

[Cognisant]

Not well, replication errors build up rather than being bred out.

In my envisioned future artificial intelligences have made males obsolete by offering intelligent design which evolves A LOT faster than natural selection, now of course women can still choose to reproduce with men but when the alternative is objectively better why choose to raise inferior offspring?

Males can still clone themselves in artificial incubators but without AI driven genetic engineering their offspring won't have much of a chance to compete.

Or I could be totally wrong and whichever males choose to clone themselves will reproductively thrive in a world of beautiful bisexual women until their genes (if not their chromosomes) dominate the human gene pool.

 

[Pyropyro]

Not well, replication errors build up rather than being bred out.

In my envisioned future artificial intelligences have made males obsolete by offering intelligent design which evolves A LOT faster than natural selection, now of course women can still choose to reproduce with men but when the alternative is objectively better why choose to raise inferior offspring?

Males can still clone themselves in artificial incubators but without AI driven genetic engineering their offspring won't have much of a chance to compete.

Or I could be totally wrong and whichever males choose to clone themselves will reproductively thrive in a world of beautiful bisexual women until their genes (if not their chromosomes) dominate the human gene pool.

Uh, dude shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, the females being the ones opting out of the system? If males can opt out then why can't they?

Resource wise it's freaking hard to be pregnant. Have you been around pregnant women? I can't imagine how hard it would be lugging such weight around for 9 months. AI or male, I'm pretty sure the females in your future would like to outsource pregnancy one way or another (which in a sense makes them obsolete).

BTW, cloning is a dead end. The telomeres in the cloned chromosomal DNA is still frayed. Your cloned males would only last for a few generations, each one having less lifespan than the last. I think you could induce a male type of parthogenesis (the closest natural type of cloning IRL) if you figured out how to make male egg cells.

 

[Pyropyro]

well they look like...fun. funny that in penis fencing the winner gets not to be the female!

but actually i was slightly misremembering high school biology. it was thinking about different types of plant reproduction that led me to the idea and what i was actually wondering about was asexual reproduction/parthenogenesis and how human culture might have evolved if there was a single gender with the ability to reproduce without the need for transfer of genetic material from another individual.

Bad idea IMO. The species as a whole might be wiped out by a disease like malaria since it isn't genetically diverse enough to resist it.

Consider the Gros Michel banana. The cultivar is sterile so all plants were basically clones. Then came the Panama disease and wiped it out. Farmers had to switch to the more hardy Cavendish to help plantations recover.

Sharing of genetic material provides offspring with a more varied immune system that may take on different diseases. Then there's mutations. Some mutations are beneficial so they are passed on by successful individuals through sexual intercourse.

 

[Cognisant]

Resource wise it's freaking hard to be pregnant. Have you been around pregnant women? I can't imagine how hard it would be lugging such weight around for 9 months. AI or male, I'm pretty sure the females in your future would like to outsource pregnancy one way or another (which in a sense makes them obsolete).

Well from the AI perspective it would be best if all humans were females that could be artificially inseminated so that if more are needed they can be quickly made with the least infrastructure, for example aboard a colony ship.

For AIs we're an easy interface with reality, rather than wasting processing power on interpreting sensory data they can just rely on us to do what we're told while they do all the abstract figuring out for us, a pretty effective symbiotic relationship.

 

[Pyropyro]

Well from the AI perspective it would be best if all humans were females that could be artificially inseminated so that if more are needed they can be quickly made with the least infrastructure, for example aboard a colony ship.

For AIs we're an easy interface with reality, rather than wasting processing power on interpreting sensory data they can just rely on us to do what we're told while they do all the abstract figuring out for us, a pretty effective symbiotic relationship.

If you're going for efficiency then I suggest that they make organic avatars that they can customize as they see fit. Humanity may not have enough genetic diversity to be able to survive different types of planets. Heck, we can't even survive on most of the Earth's surface without specialized infrastructure like igloos etc..

If the AI is that advanced then they should forego using humans in the first place. It's like using a pocket calculator for a computer desktop's job.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

i didn't mean to claim it would actually be possible, i realise there would be many implications for the gene pool and the survivability of the species etc, i really don't know enough about genetics to speculate.

what i'm intrigued by is the hypothetical scenario where humans did evolve to successfully reproduce asexually and the impact that the removal of one of the strongest driving forces which shaped our evolution would have had on humanity.

to put it simply what might a world without gender and sexual competition and everything that those things entail look like?

 

[Pyropyro]

i didn't mean to claim it would actually be possible, i realise there would be many implications for the gene pool and the survivability of the species etc, i really don't know enough about genetics to speculate.

what i'm intrigued by is the hypothetical scenario where humans did evolve to successfully reproduce asexually and the impact that the removal of one of the strongest driving forces which shaped our evolution would have had on humanity.

to put it simply what might a world without gender and sexual competition and everything that those things entail look like?

Ah I see. I'm not that familiar with social studies but I guess a little imagination won't hurt.

We might be a bit more pacifistic than the present humans but at the cost of having a more stagnant society. People tend to get lazy when there's fewer pressures in their lives. So our hermaphrodite humans might live happier lives but they're stuck in the Bronze Age.

Oh yeah, weaponry won't develop as well since they'll use their penises to engage in fencing rather than swords.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

@ Cognisant, what are your thoughts on this post? I had the same questions.

I hate imbalance so i suggest gender be phased out instead. Males can use their own artificial wombs (which will phase out women) while females can carry their own sperm (which will phase out men).

So the question becomes: Why keep human sexuality around?

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbCh9Jh2Vw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFCcAneqNho

c0ntext.

 

[Polaris]

No, men are important.

Fatherhood.

From first source:

"Children with involved, caring fathers have better educational outcomes. A number of studies suggest that fathers who are involved, nurturing, and playful with their infants have children with higher IQs, as well as better linguistic and cognitive capacities. Toddlers with involved fathers go on to start school with higher levels of academic readiness. They are more patient and can handle the stresses and frustrations associated with schooling more readily than children with less involved fathers.

The influence of a father's involvement on academic achievement extends into adolescence and young adulthood. Numerous studies find that an active and nurturing style of fathering is associated with better verbal skills, intellectual functioning, and academic achievement among adolescents. For instance, a 2001 U.S. Department of Education study found that highly involved biological fathers had children who were 43 percent more likely than other children to earn mostly As and 33 percent less likely than other children to repeat a grade"

"The way fathers play with their children also has an important impact on a child's emotional and social development. Fathers spend a much higher percentage of their one-on-one interaction with infants and preschoolers in stimulating, playful activity than do mothers. From these interactions, children learn how to regulate their feelings and behavior. Rough-housing with dad, for example, can teach children how to deal with aggressive impulses and physical contact without losing control of their emotions.https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm#fn19


Generally speaking, fathers also tend to promote independence and an orientation to the outside world. Fathers often push achievement while mothers stress nurturing, both of which are important to healthy development. As a result, children who grow up with involved fathers are more comfortable exploring the world around them and more likely to exhibit self-control and pro-social behavior.https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm#fn20
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm#fn20

One study of school-aged children found that children with good relationships with their fathers were less likely to experience depression, to exhibit disruptive behavior, or to lie and were more likely to exhibit pro-social behavior. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm#fn21This same study found that boys with involved fathers had fewer school behavior problems and that girls had stronger self-esteem.https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm#fn22 In addition, numerous studies have found that children who live with their fathers are more likely to have good physical and emotional health, to achieve academically, and to avoid drugs, violence, and delinquent behavior."


I would argue the opposite, we need more male integration.

 

[PhoenixRising]

[MENTION][/MENTION]

No, men are important.

Fatherhood.


I would argue the opposite, we need more male integration.

Entirely agree with your notion. Some of the material in the articles you've posted reminds me of Jung's writings on child psychology. He posits that we're born with a place in our psychology that can only properly develop when there is a father figure present.

I think, if we were to become a male-less species, it would be best if the change happened as a slow progression. That way, we would have time to adapt and evolve to suit our new state. Though, if we were to abandon the male gender, I wonder if it might be more socially/psychologically balanced to rid ourselves of the female gender as well (as these aspects of humanity seem to be dual counterparts in many ways). I'd actually be fascinated by what psychosocial dynamics might emerge in a genderless race o.o

 

[Variform]

I do not like all this self-loathing by men.

I know why this is. In society we have been victimized, us men, to become sissies. Female values have grown rampant. A man is no longer allowed to be what he was born to be. Evil bra-burning women have caused this as they fought for their rights.

Seriously though, male values are not bad. They aren't applied properly in society. That doesn't mean we should start hating ourselves because we are men.

We should start burning...hmm..shorts. Or something.

In public. With women around. You should observe how quickly we're all gonna get laid.

Away with them feisty women!

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

"Do it to Julia, not me!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patellar_reflex

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I know, i know, many posters here are not familiar with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
But, isn't it weird that we seem to have been conditioned into a reality in which the moral rejections that were normal to the majority of the population one hundred years ago, have been liquidized so far that it does not even come to our mind to raise those questions again, which our ancestors raised to begin with?

 

[Vrecknidj]

Just a few thoughts...

1) There are probably differences between men and women beyond the genetic differences between XY and XX. Just because a subset of women might be able to use reproductive technology to sustain a line of human females doesn't mean that would be best, even for them.

2) Given that there are probably at least 3,000,000,000 people without the resources to access such technology, but who also out-reproduce those that do have access to the technology, I don't see, in fact, such an elimination of males happening. In practice, in most of the world, reproduction the old fashioned way is far preferable.

3) Imagine there are two large sets of populations, one all female, one mixed. Without vast military and other advantages, the all-female population isn't going to "win" when there are conflicts. (This isn't merely a point about sexual dimorphism, though that's part of it. Unless the female-only population has a lot of aggression bred into it, the mixed population is going to have the aggression advantage when there are resource disputes.)

4) What about all the people who are neither male nor female, or both male and female?

5) The world would be disappointing for a lot of teenaged girls, young women, etc. From what I understand, for a lot of females, sex with males (and arguing with males, and dancing with males, and loads of other activities) is particularly attractive.

 

[Variform]

It is amazing that it is even discussed. 4 billion years of evolution thrown out because we now have the technology to map our genome? That we think or speculate that we might soon have the technology to just wipe out all men as inferior undesirable not needed elements in nature?

It is again, the technological and scientific paradigm in our world.

I think people here are blindly forgetting that from birth, they have been indoctrinated extremely deeply with the scientific model as a base assumption, indeed, a paradigm, that obviously is clouding any logic here.

It is assumed we have the moral prowess to even begin to understand the implications of the whole idea. The grand sweeping ststements about how we will just genetically alter genomes, download our minds into computers and all that nonsense is beyond any sort of capability or justifiable moral value.

It is like seeing children debate genetics. Sorry to offend you all but please stop with this paradigmatic self delusion? We aren't even able to provide food and shelter for poor people in poor nations, not even get mentally ill people off the street in our own rich nations and taken care of and you people wanna discuss this?