Discussion of the philosophy and morality of the intersection of cloning and artificial life and sex

[LoneMilf]

https://zipdo.co/virginity-age-statistics/

The global median age is 17.4 years. The United States median age is 17.8 years. A median below 18 means that an absolute majority lose their virginity below the age of 18.

The rules are the rules because bad apples spoil the bunch, not because it is an accurate depiction of sexual activity.

Thanks for digging that out Those figures are much closer to what I was expecting than your first indications.
Basically, 18 still seems like a suitable limit when there needs to be one.

 

[old_prof]

I guess 17.8 doesn't surprise me that much. I would have guessed probably a year older as a median.

In terms of story writing, it's not hard to turn 17.8 into 18.1 without changing the story notably, meaning a majority of cases are easily describable.

And the rule avoids enormous problems while ruling out some interesting stories.

 

[redgarters]

You're already in the realm of far enough scifi to do what you want. You could make the clones be implanted with a ready made conciousness copied from a real but dead human, memories wiped and generic ones implanted along with skills needed for sexfights/whatever you need. So mind and body are over 18 and you can play with the skillsets as an optional extra.

 

[dirk2024]

The problem is, it's wrong to have sex (and while we're at it, do lots of other things) with someone who can't meaningfully consent to it, and the vast majority of children are too lacking in life experience, mental development, and personal autonomy to meaningfully consent, especially not when the other party is an adult. They don't know what they're doing and they aren't used to making decisions for themselves and others with long-term consequences, and adults can directly and indirectly hold all kinds of things over their heads. It's generally culturally and morally acceptable for parents or other authorities to make medical and financial decisions for teenaged and younger children, on the assumption that they don't know what they're doing yet. For sexual decisions involving an adult and a child, the assumption is simply "no."

In reading the OP's initial question, the concept of consent is what popped up for me. Regarding the age thing, to me, it seems like they are cloned adults, so the fact that they were recently created isn't a factor. However, what is a factor is their knowledge and ability to make decisions for themselves, rather than have someone else make those decisions and hope they are good ones.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Do you have a source for that?

95.34% of statistics are fabricated.

 

[RocketGrunt]

In terms of morality, I think that we can all agree that it is morally wrong to enslave people and force them to have sex fights for our amusement like a hard-X version of Django Unchained. We're way past discussions of meaningful consent, we're talking about vat grown slaves being forced into public sex fights. The immorality of the situation is a marker of it being dystopian science fiction. The purpose of the story is sexual fantasy and social commentary.

Which means that the only really important thing is the site rules about what can and cannot be posted. The site has a zero tolerance policy on underage sex, which extends to characters who are underage in some important axis and even characters who pretend to be underage. These rules exist because Literotica does not want to be in a position where even a quote clipped out-of-context could seem to show them hosting child abuse content.

These rules are not about ethics. They are about keeping the site out of legal trouble. Is underage sex a thing that is valid in abstract to discuss through the social commentary lens of dystopian science fiction? Absolutely. In the real world, child marriage is still legal in 34 states and silence on that issue is a tacit endorsement of that status quo. However, Literotica stories are not the place to have those kinds of discussions, because Literotica is a porn site that is desperately trying to avoid the Eye of Sauron.

Stories on this site involving "created" sex partners usually have robots or golems that have adult appearance, intelligence, and mannerisms loaded into them from the jump. And that's because they have to check all the boxes of being equivalent to an adult human to meet the inflexible rules of the site. A "rapidly grown" biological sex partner has to still be basically that because the rules that the sex robots and sex golems fall under still apply. At which point they aren't really different from the robots and it doesn't really matter that they are technically grown at all.

And that's why I would still suggest sending the catgirl slaves to catgirl school. It affords you an opportunity to make social commentary about an educational system whose literal purpose is to create playthings for corporate overlords, but importantly it makes it unambiguous that your catgirls are genuinely over the arbitrary age that all the characters have to be in order to be allowed to be posted on this site.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The really interesting discussion will come when somebody starts tries to make the case that such robots (ok, any robots with a given level of intelligence and such) are in fact sentient individuals, ones deserving of legal recognition.

That discussion has already begun, e.g. https://yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-ethics-and-challenges-of-legal-personhood-for-ai

I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it's an interesting philosophical question and one that we would definitely want to consider if we were close to artificial general intelligence.

On the other hand, I think currently it's being promoted as a bit of a smokescreen. It draws attention away from less glamorous conversations of much more pressing importance, like "what do all these new LLM data centres mean for water supply?" or "how should we be treating the humans who are part of this industry?", and redirect it in directions less likely to result in inconvenient restrictions, and it gets potential customers fixated on "AIs" as some kind of human-level intelligence rather than thinking about the ways in which current "AI" products fall drastically short of that mark.

 

[old_prof]

That discussion has already begun, e.g. https://yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-ethics-and-challenges-of-legal-personhood-for-ai

I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it's an interesting philosophical question and one that we would definitely want to consider if we were close to artificial general intelligence.

On the other hand, I think currently it's being promoted as a bit of a smokescreen. It draws attention away from less glamorous conversations of much more pressing importance, like "what do all these new LLM data centres mean for water supply?" or "how should we be treating the humans who are part of this industry?", and redirect it in directions less likely to result in inconvenient restrictions, and it gets potential customers fixated on "AIs" as some kind of human-level intelligence rather than thinking about the ways in which current "AI" products fall drastically short of that mark.

First of all, thanks for the citation. I'm teaching a course in the spring on the ethics and social impact of computing techniologies, where I make student pick topics and provide readings for the otters students (with prior approval by me). Some need help to find reasonable resources.

Beyond this, I agree whole heartedly with you smokescreen argument.

 

[Bramblethorn]

First of all, thanks for the citation. I'm teaching a course in the spring on the ethics and social impact of computing techniologies, where I make student pick topics and provide readings for the otters students (with prior approval by me). Some need help to find reasonable resources.

DAIR might provide some interesting food for thought: https://www.dair-institute.org/

I think I saw this via DAIR or somebody adjacent to them - an example of the "right now" issues that deserve a bit more oxygen than they're getting. It has potential for story inspiration here, though it'd be a pretty bleak kind of story: https://data-workers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/The-Emotional-Labor-Behind-AI-Intimacy-1.pdf

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Thank you for the answer, and I will see if I can refine the post and figure out a different part of the forum to share it in to approach it from a more general 'morality/philosophy' angle.

I'll say this as a writer born and raised in the cyberpunk genre: leave the morality/philosophy discussion of your proposal to your story, or future stories you'll make within that microcosmos. In doing so you'll enrich your story far much more than keeping it outside of it.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Assuming that your clones/robots/etc have free will and the ability to make choices, you don't have any of these issues.

You get into Douglas Adams territory. What if an animal is genetically designed to want to be slaughtered and eaten?

My heroine, Nix, has the basic underpinnings of a sexbot, but escapes slavery (not that her actual slavery was that unpleasant) and begins to take her own decisions. Then she constantly agonizes about whether what she thinks or feels is ‘real’ or ‘programming.’ E.g. is she really sex positive, or is that her underlying sexbot code? But that’s a very human state of being.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

My heroine, Nix, has the basic underpinnings of a sexbot, but escapes slavery (not that her actual slavery was that unpleasant) and begins to take her own decisions. Then she constantly agonizes about whether what she thinks or feels is ‘real’ or ‘programming.’ E.g. is she really sex positive, or is that her underlying sexbot code? But that’s a very human state of being.

I mean, my own sexual desire (or hunger for food, or need to breathe) is most certainly "programmed" into me. And of course, you and Douglas Adams already knew and were already in dialog about that very idea.

--Annie

 

[TheLobster]

We also couldn't write Romeo and Juliet, because Romeo is only fourteen

Technically yes, but because of inflation Romeo's age is 18.4 in today's dollars.

...No, that's not entirely a joke. I'm also not necessarily saying that the so-called adults today are less mature than tweens in Elizabethan England. But the notion of maturity has changed between then and now, if only how much more complicated the world is, and it may very well be that stories about 18-year-olds in a contemporary setting deliver a similar emotional impact in this regard as Shakespearean plays had back then.

Today's Romeo and Juliet would have them at 19 and 18; it doesn't mean it can't be just as moving and tragic a story.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

RocketGrunt said:

We also couldn't write Romeo and Juliet, because Romeo is only fourteen

Technically yes, but because of inflation Romeo's age is 18.4 in today's dollars.

...No, that's not entirely a joke. I'm also not necessarily saying that the so-called adults today are less mature than tweens in Elizabethan England. But the notion of maturity has changed between then and now, if only how much more complicated the world is, and it may very well be that stories about 18-year-olds in a contemporary setting deliver a similar emotional impact in this regard as Shakespearean plays had back then.

Today's Romeo and Juliet would have them at 19 and 18; it doesn't mean it can't be just as moving and tragic a story.

Is it worth mentioning that the Jewish Bar Mitzvah ceremony is meant to be the initiation of a new adult man? A 13-year-old (3,000 years ago) could marry, have his own household, etc.

--Annie

 

[MrPixel]

Engineered people and the social/moral implications was the underlying theme of "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. Might be worth a refresher read.

 

[CaryJanJunior]

Engineered people and the social/moral implications was the underlying theme of "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. Might be worth a refresher read.

Thank you for the recommendation.

 

[stickygirl]

Does this mean we could not write the movie Big here (Tom Hanks is like 13 originally and is magically changed into an adult, has a woman hitting on him, very sexually)
I see the point, but it's just an interesting data point to me. Something that was acceptable in mainstream and not here.

Technically yes, but because of inflation Romeo's age is 18.4 in today's dollars.
...No, that's not entirely a joke. I'm also not necessarily saying that the so-called adults today are less mature than tweens in Elizabethan England. ~snip

Is it worth mentioning that the Jewish Bar Mitzvah ceremony is meant to be the initiation of a new adult man? A 13-year-old (3,000 years ago) could marry, have his own household, etc.
--Annie

Just because mainstream movies have run underage jokes, or the bard pitched Juliet as fourteen or that circumcised boys suddenly became men 3000 years ago, doesn't make it acceptable today. If we're going to reference past cultures we should include burning witches, a flat earth and infectious miasmas. Thankfully we've moved on, though as a culture I sense we're starting to slip backwards.

There's often a creepy subtext to clones and AI robots that they can be taken advantage of... like children, perhaps? I'm sure there are other examples, but Ex Machina certainly turned the power dynamic on its head!

 

[old_prof]

There's often a creepy subtext to clones and AI robots that they can be taken advantage of... like children, perhaps?

I wrote a very short (and not particularly good) story (Dolls) that touches on sexbots gaining a little better understanding of the emotional basis of sex, with an interesting point to it. I recently reread it because my WIP novel is the back story of the narrator and her best friend/coworker in that story.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I mean, my own sexual desire (or hunger for food, or need to breathe) is most certainly "programmed" into me. And of course, you and Douglas Adams already knew and were already in dialog about that very idea.

--Annie

From Nix Part IV - Brackencleft:

—

Owen’s nod was slow, as if he was in a trance. I unbuttoned my pants and pulled them down. Maybe my panties could have been a little more alluring, then I had been out in the wild one way or another for several weeks. I needn’t have worried, Owen managed one stuttering word, “G… g… gorgeous.”

“Oh, thank you!” I replied, intentionally dialing up my blush response and tilting my head on one side, “you’re so sweet.”

I removed my panties, and playfully threw them to Owen. He caught them surprisingly dexterously, and brought the cotton to his nose, while his eyes were riveted on my now exposed vulva. “No hairs to tickle your nose,” I said, now in full coquette mode.

As with so many things, I didn’t know whether this was innate or programming. Was there even a me, distinct from my code? It felt like there was, the same as humans felt they were more than the sum of their neurons and axons. Whatever was actually going on between my processor, neural net, and software, the outcome was that I was enjoying myself, and beginning to get almost as excited as my inexperienced friend, who looked like he was becoming drunk on the aroma of my underwear.

Putting philosophical questions to one side, I instead focused on the practical. “I think it’s rather unfair that only one of us is naked, don’t you agree?”

Owen smiled, albeit weakly, and then a different expression crossed his face, one of consternation. “Wait, this is all wrong. This is what Dad hated, what GLS is against. It’s exploitation. It’s…”

I leaned forward and put a finger on his lips. “I get it. But did you buy me? Do I work for you? Is there anything in how things have been between us that suggests I’m acting under duress?”

“No,” he replied. “but your algorithms, aren’t you just…?”

“What about you, Owen? Why do you want to fuck me? And I know you want to fuck me. Isn’t that just your algorithm too, how human brains are wired? Isn't it just how evolution has made you, without you even getting a vote?”

“But I have free will?” Owen protested.

“One thing I’ve figured out, Owen, is so do I. Let that sink in for a few moments. Another thing I’ve figured out is that I enjoy sex. With the right person, and when it’s fun for both, of course. I think it would be fun for both of us. So stop stressing. You can fuck me, OK? You can fuck me, because I want you to. Isn’t that all that consent is? Just checking that things are OK for the other person. It is. We’re good, got it?”

Again he nodded, and I added, “Let’s check the other way, OK? Would you like to fuck me, Owen?”

Finally the young man found his voice. “Yes, Nix, I think I’d like that very much.”

“Good,” I smiled, reaching for Owen’s belt and undoing it. Let’s get to it…