"my inner geek" <geek@ifeden.com> writes:
> Any idea of sexuality can be reprogrammed?
Currently, there doesn't seem to be any good ways of doing it (despite religious conservative claims to the contrary; the consensus among psychologists is that it doesn't really work). There are of course both social/cognitive and biological aspects of sexual preference. I guess we will unravel the neurobiology of sexuality within the next decades, and maybe then we can start considering how it could really be reprogrammed. My guess is that the reprogramming won't be as simple as a pill (due to the complex interconnections and associations), unless we are talking about the nanotech santa claus age where brains are rewritten on a daily basis and the streets decked with diamond :-) Most likely a real preference change therapy would involve both a bit of neural rewiring (a guess would be changing the limbic nuclei and which body-feature detectors they are linked to) and some cognitive therapy to bootstrap the new preferences; however, given the placebo effect I wouldn't be too surprised that just giving part of the cognitive therapy would help people change.
I wonder about the neuroscience of aesthetics...
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y