If "living a lie" was compelling enough... made everyone delightfully "happy" enough... would that be such a bad thing??
That is how I view it. If not having a romantic partner takes a major hit on your life, and it was possible to at least trick the brain into thinking this is fulfilled. Then how is that a bad thing?
I see many on here try to make it out to be synthetic = sex bot, but in reality a relationship is far far far more than sex.
The way I view it is like this. If sex is = to relationship. Then whores would be more out there vs people trying to get into or stay in a relationship. You can look at your family and maybe a few others and see how they might be with you at the end of the day. But family is forced, and anyone outside of a romantic partner you really aren't fully sharing in their life and your life into theirs.
Now do I think the majority realistically wouldn't off themselves if they had a romantic robot. No. But like for myself, while if I had a real person that wanted to be in a romantic relationship with me. That would keep me from offing myself simply because I don't want to put them through that and it would give me hope. It would give me hope since 2 people working towards a happier future is highly more likely than everything falling on 1 person. If I was with a robot, I would only be slightly less likely to off myself. Unless the robot can help provide, then everything is still on my shoulders. And chances are there will be extreme limits.
But yeah, they'd have to be truly advanced enough to the point where even if people know they're artificial, the differences are small. Even then though, people might still want to commit suicide for other reasons.
Ya I think that is the thing. It has to be good enough to trick your brain or it has to be basically fully self aware. I think apart of it is in a relationship is both sides have a choice and wants to be with each other. Now the reason could be bad, but there is still that want. IDK how it would work since I would think a robot like this would cost a stupid amount. And having it even if it cost $1 to walk away simply because you're not its type or whatever wouldn't be stand for.
I think on some level it has to simulate so it doesn't want to leave, but the user their brain believes everything is normal. However, I don't think this is hard. Depending on things, people have gotten tricked with far far less.
Why not take this a step further then and present everyone with fully simulated realities? You can adjust how much they know and make all aspects of their lives, not just love and sex, completely fulfilled for every person. Hopefully such technology also uses less physical materials than a line of sex robots would...
I'm not talking about sex robots. Sex robots their primary function is to have sex. Romantic robots are built for the other side. Like would it be great to have one you can fuck? Yes. But the primary function is talking, interacting with the person's day to day, and so on. Like think of all the things that happen with someone you would be in a relationship with vs someone you paid to fuck. If you paid to fuck, you most likely aren't going to cook a meal with them or whatever.
Same with a sex bot. Chances are is you're not going to go to the store and buy new groceries or go to the park with the thing that primary and most likely only use is to fuck. Where as with this, it is built to do things like that.
Now as far as why not a full sim. I think that should come, but the problem is resources, money, and tec. The majority of people live paycheck to paycheck as it is. And the ones who don't, the majority of them work 80+ hours a week on a normal bases. There simply isn't enough time for the majority. And then the tech required to do it would be much much much harder to make. As humans we already have a good idea on how to get a robot to walk on 2 legs, and we have a general understanding of how to make a good AI. Where as with VR we can't even fix the problem where many feels sick putting it on, and even the newest video games like Cyber Punk 2077 that just came out the other day is causing people to have real medical problems.
I think with the simulated part we can see how close we are based on games. Most games that have it where you interact with others it's highly scripted because current tech. But when the AI generates the conversation on it's own as if you're talking to a normal person. So like you could call up someone in a game and shoot the shit for hours as if it was a real person. At that point we are far closer than we are now.
Like raw resources, yes this would help. But it's just a matter of what is realistic to come first. And IMO we are far far far closer to a romantic robot vs the other.