Nifft said:
With no voice or reason to speak, speech centers wouldn't develop. You'd end up with something that lacks several key human capabilities -- it would be an animal. And I honestly don't care if you like to sleep with a purring human-shaped dumb animal, especially if the animal were "hardwired" to enjoy it. I wouldn't particularly respect you, but neither would you horrify me.
Who says they are
dumb? They have been given human or near-human intelligence to their designers in most cases...
Yep, that's worse. Unless the shivering made it taste better... mmm, carbonated brain-shrimp!
- - -
But what all these horror-cases overlook is the massive expense inherent in educating a potential individual such that it actually becomes an individual capable of recognizable conscious thought. Babies are cute, and I don't care to see them eaten, but they could not ever shiver in the horror of their abject helplessness, because they are not conscious of it.
These expenses are much, much lower in the Transhuman Space era. If you are creating biological androids ("bioroids"), you can create the body relatively quickly. After that, it takes about three years (or less, for less detailed programming) in a full virtual reality environment to teach the bioroid the skills an adult human might conceivably have learned.
In the beginning, the bioroids generally will enjoy their enslavement, since that's all they have been trained to do and their bodies are hardwired for it. But as they grow older, they
can learn to understand their situation. And in most jurisdictions where such "sex bioroids" can be created (there are other variants, such as for combat and extreme environments), they have few if any rights.
As for the sentient snacks, they are actually controlled by a tiny, computer (which can be safely swallowed) run by an artificial intelligence of sorts. This won't be the brightest of programs, but it is just barely possible to put a low-res personality copy of a human being into it, with the recognizeable personality of the original.
If copying & pasting consciousness were possible, then the door to horror is wide open, because the logistical expense of education disappears...
And indeed, that is entirely possible. Most people still prefer to raise kids the normal way (that is, artificially inseminated, checked for genetical problems, adding some new and improved genes, and possibly putting it into an artificial womb for the duration of the pregnancy) - but the alternatives are becoming more common all the time.
