Talk:Scenario: End of Marriage

What a startilingly poor argument. --unknown

Hehe, I'd have agree with this sentiment, but I think the anonymous person who said it should have put it a little nicer, or at least elaborated.

I think that this wiki in general is obsessed with a sort of "false social logic". While I think that it is possible for marriage to disappear, I don't think that it is likely in the near future, and I certainly don't think it will have much to do with child rearing. It is a terrible mistake to assign such a simple purpose to child rearing in the first place. My wife is pregnant right now, and I personally don't look forward to any sort of "material" gain from having a kid, and yet I want a kid anyway. I think it is natural to want children, it is a deeply ingrained instinct, especially for a species like ours, whose children take years to develop and become independent.

All that said, there are social structures that could eventually take over the functions of marriage, or to put it differently, marriage could morph into something that it very different from what it is now. We could, for example, form communes in which the adults freely have sexual relationships with one another, and where everyone shares in the child rearing and other burdens. But I wouldn't expect us to stray from our current monogamous one-on-one type marriages anytime soon, and it may prove that this relationship is instinctual to us, to the point where we can't avoid it (until we start modifying our brains, perhaps).

There is also a possible distinction between "legal marriage" and marriage as a type of relationship. People may find it pointless to marry legally, as many do now only for those legal benefits. If those benefits went away, you might see more "informal marriages".

I predict that legal marriage, as it is already declining, may disappear as early as 2070, when the people who are now marrying have mostly died off. This may pave the way for "alternative" types of relationships to start working their way into the mainstream, but I don't think it could really take hold until after say, 2110, and it may actually never happen. One-on-one lifetime relationships could just *stick*.

-- cesoid 11 December, 2005

We think it is very likely that artificial intelligences of around human intelligence will appear around 2025-2040. This gives 30 years of improvements to computers and software before 2070.

It may well be the case that most "people" will actually be artificial agents by 2070. By 2110, I personally think it is unlikely that there will be any "humans" left in the world, though I can conceive of a reserve with some unaugmented humans, and low-tech cyborgs left on it.

Marriage, as you properly noted, is already on its way out. Just as you described, my girlfriend and I are unmarried, though we are deeply, profoundly commited to raising our now 4-year old daughter together.

Within my generation (2x now), 1-on-1 relationships do not seem to be sticking as much as they did in the past. I believe that Japanese & Korean society may serve as valid canary's, as we get involved with technology. Japanese "NEET" society is an interesting phenomenon, and it has been noted in the UK, and even in the US, where it is called "Twixter." (Most telling, read all the comments on this blog on Twixters. It is clear that it is the same phenomenon in all three countries.)

The use of pornography is now extremely common, and has even entered national dialog. This is a massive change that has occured in just 10 years. The pornography we will see in the next 10 years will be far more sophisticated than the pornography that we see now: It will be 3D, and there will likely be limited intelligence applied. We are starting to see this in pornographic computer games, now. As the beginnings of AI roll out from 2015-2025, pornography will become that much more sophisticated.

Real Doll production will likely be streamlined and distributed over the next 10 years to meet global demand (from the wealthy, world-wide.) At some later point, it may well be automated. (It is not, right now.) People have talked about the concept of sex-robots for ages; Now people are actually doing it. (And, customers are more than satisfied.)

When brain computer interface technology develops, (which we should be able to have around 2020-2030,) there will be the opportunity to create pornography without a separation in user interface. That is, the experience will be able to grow into something that feels totally real.

Once this point is reached, there is no interest in marriage. If there is a woman that you find attractive, you will be able to automatically recreate a 3-D model of her from camera feed, and simulate her personality features. Your AI software may even notice when you are attracted to a woman, identify the features and story line that is involved in the interaction, and start queing up an experience.

Any way I look at it, marriage seems doomed to me.

As long as there are people, and even afterwards, there will likely be some group of traditionalists that are interested in marriage. But as a public interest, it will likely go the way of the dodo.

This century is going to be pretty damn weird.

LionKimbro

Oh; I wanted to say:

I agree with what you said, about the possibilities of communes.

One scenario that I think that is very likely, even though it is incredulously otherworldly (and thus gives me a lot of pause,) is "Organized Culture," also known as "Tribes." In Diamond Age, they were called "Phyles." (I believe we are witnessing this right now, with the formation of the Bar Camps.)

But I doubt that children will be raised communally. This has been envisioned by people many times over, but I am not aware that it's ever really actually worked. Strongest in my mind are the efforts of the Twin Oaks commune,patterned after Walden Two. They intended to raise children collectively, but, ... ...things didn't quite work out that way. I need to go recheck Kat Kinkady's Is It Utopia Yet? (an incredible book, written with a good analytical eye); I can't remember why it didn't work out. But it didn't. I've met with poly people in Eugene, OR, who hold the dream, but I'm not aware of any successes. It seems that people aren't that interested in raising other people's children, given the freedom not to.

As a parent: I think society that grows up with technology holds mainly disdain for parents, and that this partly explains the lack of children amongst most of my peers. Another part is that a child is viewed as a one-way ticket to unaccomplished dreams, unless having a child was your dream all along. I am not aware of many stories that encourage youth that children are something to look forward to-- Quite the opposite! There are cultures that still hold those stories, but I think they mainly come from non-technological backgrounds, and that they will relinquish those ideas as technology comes to the fore, as it must.

LionKimbro

PS: Congradulations!

Raising a child is an amazing experience.

LionKimbro

Painlord2K, I disagree:
I don't think need for money causes marriage. It could also cause (say) group living arrangements, roommates, and so on.

I do think you have a good point about children: Raising children is much easier with a partner. And biological mother & father seems to make intuitive sense. However, that does not mean they must be married. (My girlfriend & I are such an example.)

Immortality does not, at all, seem to me to be a requirement for marriage obsolescence. That said, I see it as a helping factor: People would weigh "Till death do us part" much differently.

I'm not so sure about the Artificial Uterus. I don't see why it's necessary for the obsolescence of marriage.

Alright first making children look bad isn't cool its obviouly your opinion

Yes legal marrige is going down but just because there is a sex robot out there doesn't mean no love, sex isn't love its a biological survival mechanism --Matterfoot 20:30, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

End of marriage? sounds like fun.
oh goody a scenario that is actually happening right now since marrige over the years has become nothing more than a joke and is often seen as a contract as well as sad pethetic excuse to procreate with anything and anyone(including blood relitives in the name of "racial purity"). However since it is seen now only a contract all it takes is a paper shredder and a very good lawyer, I wouldn't be supprised if it was illeagal now that I would love to see.Crypto457 07:14, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

What about the flying cars?
Those time frame predictions are ludicrous. Multiply them by 10 and you may begin to approach a minimum realistic projection. A single bureaucratic objection to any of those changes will take years to move through the system, preventing change from taking place. There are a metric ****ton of conservatives in the world, and many of them make it their life's purpose to prevent change from taking place. In order for a societally-functional human-equivalent artificial intelligence to be created, researchers will need to first gain complete understanding of several areas of medical and technological knowledge; the intricate workings of the brain and central nervous system are currently only vaguely understood, and then this massively complex knowledge will need to be implemented as programming code, which means new algorithms of unprecedented complexity will need to created and then optimized to work as a single machine. Making such a program societally functional is more daunting than news articles may imply; specifically, the amount of memory and processors utilized by IBM to simulate the cortex of a CAT (meow meow) occupy 3,000 square feet and cost one million dollars in electricity per year to run. For a meow meow kitty cat AI, and it isn't even the full brain -- it's just the cortex. That amount of computing power reached 4.5% of a human brain's capacity. In other words, an eight-pound mobile version will not be available by the holiday season. What I'm getting at is, yes, it could happen as quickly as you've predicted, but only in a flawlessly-streamlined utopia populated entirely by hive-minded supergeniuses, preferably with the magical power to shrink computers. Oh, and make sure your hands are dry before touching the 25,000,000 watt battery.

Things are the way they are for a reason, and that reason is that people want it this way. The end of marriage? For that to happen, jealousy and envy would need to be purged from the primal mind, and romanticism would have to go out of style. Not going to happen. Marriage is an ancient practice that has endured for thousands of years, through the rise and fall of civilizations. It permeates every culture on Earth. The sole fact that numerous different animal species practice lifelong monogamy demonstrates marriage is programmed into us by nature. Of course, we can choose whether or not to get married, but primal characteristics do not simply die out, nor does evolution erase them quickly enough for us to notice any change. As for RealDolls and virtual sex... Really? Are you seriously implying people are going to start preferring masturbation over real sex within the next ten years... or ever? "Go away real girlfriend. I don't want to have sex with you right now. I'm busy masturbating."

66.215.60.242 11:39, June 30, 2010 (UTC)Gulfrost