Re: Post-sexual?

Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Mon, 7 Sep 1998 17:26:03 -0700

> I had a posthuman "wet dream" about AI sex. It was based on the
> assumption that pleasure for the AIs equalled solved problems/gained
> information, so AI sex involves a complex folding together of
> subprocesses of two or more AI systems so that they support each other
> and give each other an efficiency boost. There were constant
> references to Bach fugues. The visuals were interesting, luminious
> clouds of code linked by complex webs of function calls and message
> passing floating over a plain of hardware.

Very interesting and visual. I was thinking this morning about posthuman sexuality in similar terms. It would seem logical to rewire the brain's reward system so that it got pleasure directly from solving problems. The sexual drive would be sublimated into problem solving. Actually there are people who seem to be able to do this kind of rechannelling to some extent, and I believe they do get direct mental pleasure from their activities, but probably not of the intensity we associate with sexuality.

I'm not sure how it would map to the sexual pattern of excitement/ plateau/orgasmic release. Problem solving sometimes does have this pattern, working towards a solution, feeling that you are "almost there", and then the "aha" as you realize that it all works. However this is not universal and sometimes the solution appears without warning, while other times the realization that a solution really works requires a long period of verification and testing.

Hal