AI

August 3, 2025

Some Random Observations That Don’t Tell You What To Do

Here we go:

  • There is strength in numbers. We feel better with the support of other like-minded people who also benefit from our presence.
  • My old friend Mel was a child during the Great Depression. He made no big deal of it because his father supported the family, and Mel never thought he was in any peril. He was a kid, after all. Surviving a calamitous time under favorable circumstances is not the same as experiencing the trouble of others.
  • Those under pressure benefit from our kindness and assistance. The Greeks have a long tradition of hospitality toward the stranger. It goes back to the time of Homer and his Iliad and Odyssey. This sacred duty is called Philoxenia, the opposite of Xenophobia, the fear of strangers.
  • You will be loved, but also betrayed, sometimes by the same person or people you thought to be friends.
  • The world of AI is a bit of a mystery, but it’s worth understanding what is known. This nonhuman, nonliving agent is a growing presence in our lives. Youval Harari, a brilliant public intellectual, is among those who speak intelligently on the subject. He is all over YouTube.
  • I was born in the luckiest historical moment and place in history for white people, just after World War II. Those born later, including my children, have encountered a less favorable set of conditions.
  • My mother used to say, “God helps those who help themselves.” She was not religious, though she prayed to my dad and her mother. Mom wanted to die and asked for their help in the several months she lived after my father passed away. Make what you will of that.

  • When my friend Joe, also a psychologist, was recovering from a heart attack, I stepped in for him with one of his challenging patients. She believed herself the most unfortunate person in world history. This woman expected special consideration from others as a result. Her sense of entitlement was part of her problem.
  • Most of the young and middle-aged do not understand the physical pain brought by old age. I sure didn’t. Better that you don’t.
  • Love and let yourself be loved. OK, I said I wouldn’t tell you to do something, but I couldn’t resist.
  • One of the problems created by the pandemic was skin hunger. We need human or animal physical contact, but not of the cannibal variety.
  • About 13 years ago, I learned how to read in a new way. Instead of judging the author after reading a bit, I tried to understand what the author intended without judgment. I was also instructed not to read background material or expert opinions and explanations of the book’s contents. I came to ponder how the human strengths and flaws portrayed in words might apply to my life, my decisions, and the human condition.
  • Are we free? That depends on how you define freedom, free will in particular. To some degree, we have become the prisoners of algorithms. These early AI interventions into our online lives keep track of what we choose to see and read, and provide us more of it. Included are media that enrages us and contribute to the virality of untruth and conspiracy theories. The only way to achieve freedom from this algorithmic effect is to dispose of our phones and computers. I haven’t heard of anyone who has made this choice.

  • Among my favorite old songs is “If I Had a Hammer,” as sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Appropriate for our time. I like “My Boyfriend’s Back,” which has nothing to do with a body part, and “Rock Around the Clock,” as performed by Bill Haley and the Comets. “In the Mood” is a big band favorite from before my time. It still puts me in the mood, meaning thoughts of romance with the woman I love. Then, of course, the instrumental masterpieces of Mahler, Brahms, Beethoven, etc.
  • The 1950s and ’60s offered a proliferation of cowboy TV shows and reruns of World War II movies, not to mention the TV version of Superman. Thereby, kids my age absorbed a simplified version of right and wrong. Native Americans were among the bad guys, a more than unfortunate and dishonest depiction. Nonetheless, the abstract moral principles led me to buy in. I later understood how the white men mistreated the natives, something I never learned in school. More recently, I discovered we no longer agree on right and wrong.
  • Among the most thoughtful action movies of the time was Abandon Ship. An ocean liner on a pleasure cruise strikes a naval mine, which explodes and sinks the ship. The lifeboat has inadequate supplies, and those clinging to it in the ocean lack enough shark repellent. The commanding officer faces a moral dilemma. He considers how to save everyone, an impossible task. The single alternative is to select the hardiest among them for a challenging journey. The rest are forcefully put in the water, resulting in certain death as they float away.
  • We live in a world of ideas. There are more movies, classic books, and transformative, exciting, and uplifting music than one can enjoy in a lifetime of learning, watching, and listening. A friend rereads many of the books he considers the most thoughtful and provocative. If we read such works, the greatest minds of human history still speak to us. They wait patiently for us to listen to their words.

Enough for today. Be well.

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The three images are sourced from Wikiart.org.

They are Thinking Thought Bubble by FreyaSyangila, Orangutan Thinking by Dmitry Rozhkov, and The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.

August 2, 2015

Levels of Infidelity

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Joe and Laura Hawkins are having marital issues. Laura just left the house without explanation. Joe wonders if she has a lover. He is alone with Anita, the family robot: a “synth” or “synthetic” (pictured above). After a couple of drinks, Joe “turns on” the robot’s sex program and makes use of it. This scene comes from the AMC TV series, “Humans.” The fictional possibility will soon be a present reality.

Question: was Joe unfaithful to Laura? She certainly thought so and kicked him out. The fact that Anita wasn’t “human” was a defense Joe offered — one dismissed by Laura. Where is the line? When do our thoughts, conversations, or physical interactions constitute infidelity?

The easy answer: unfaithfulness consists of sexual intercourse outside of a relationship based on monogamy. But let’s think about other possibilities. You be the judge whether these fit your understanding of “cheating:”

  • Oral sex. Bill Clinton’s statement, “I did not have sex with that woman,” was not especially persuasive.
  • Intercourse with a non-human, including not only an artificial life form, but any living thing. I once treated a lonely woman who copulated with a large dog. She was not being unfaithful (there was no human lover to betray), but her example offers an unusual extra-marital option for those with a partner who is drawn from Homo sapiens.
  • Mutual masturbation.
  • Naked kissing and fondling short of either oral sex or intercourse.
  • Making out and fondling while clothed.

The above five categories all include physical contact with a person who is not your spouse. Might interaction without touching the other be a betrayal of the monogamous promise? Consider the following:

  • Phone sex or other electronic forms of sex play.
  • Fantasizing about someone else while having sex with your significant other.
  • Masturbation to an image of another. Not just pornography — perhaps only a face or a person clothed.
  • Masturbation to the idea (memory) of another without using a visual stimulus.
  • Intimacy without physical contact, e.g. shared personal revelations, and mutual psychological support.
  • Emotional preoccupation with a former lover without any present communication with the person. Indeed, he needn’t be alive any longer.
  • Closeness between a parent and child where the offspring is pressured to be a kind of surrogate spouse, but without sex. The adult shares his troubles with the child. The latter is relied upon to help solve the elder’s problems. Roles are reversed.

As you ponder the question, consider the following true story. An old friend wrote a freshman college essay. The required topic was, “Something to Make the World a Better Place in Which to Live.” My buddy proceeded to describe a masturbation machine. He reasoned that our civilization is full of lonely people without a sexual outlet. Moreover, he believed his invention would cut prostitution and sexual assaults. Such devices now exist, but didn’t then.

What was his reward for an idea before its time? A mandated visit with the school psychiatrist!

Would use of a masturbation machine constitute adultery?

Let’s look at the issue differently. Should infidelity be permissible if

  • your spouse refuses sex? You have not copulated in years.
  • your partner is or was unfaithful, the latter in the recent past?
  • the loved one can’t engage in conjugal relations with you because of a permanent infirmity?
  • the spouse is abusive?
  • you are stranded on a desert island with only one other person. Is it OK if, after a period of years with no hope of rescue, the two of you become Adam and Eve?
  • the husband or wife back home (in the desert island example) at last gives up and begins to date after the same long wait?

In these six conditions, do the special circumstances make the behavior acceptable? In effect, we now have two queries before us:

  1. What is the definition of infidelity?
  2. Are there any conditions which remove the moral stain? Put differently, do you believe fidelity is a moral absolute or dependent on the situation? A moral relativist would refrain from a uniform ethical condemnation without considering the details. The Ten Commandments and similar religious prohibitions, however, exemplify an absolute rule: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

If you believe in any mitigating circumstance — an instance in which adultery is OK — remind yourself that infidelity usually involves hiding the truth or frank lying. The ingredients in an extra-marital potion are a combination of breaking with promised monogamy and deceit.

I’d be delighted to read your comments, short or long, on these questions. I hope you will indulge me.

Remember one other thing: where there are already robotic cars, there will soon be synthetic humans with artificial intelligence (AI) superior to mortals. Not to mention bodies impervious to aging (or replaceable with ones as good or better). Human flaws will have been programmed out, but the creation will possess emotions.

The concerns I’ve raised about extra-marital contact will only get more difficult.

Sooner than you think.