The Kardashian thread is, I think, the most important one. As I understand it, the Kardashians are a for-profit media brand. The fact that they are in the news is not accidental: everything they do is carefully planned, scripted and prepared-for in advance. I assume the various rounds of spats and apologies and name-calling between siblings is planned in advance. I presume its about as real as “pro wrestling” in it’s heyday. The Kardashian brand brings in about a billion dollars a year, or thereabouts, to the Kardashian family. For what? What useful function do they serve in society? Is there some socially or personally redeeming aspect to them that I don’t understand? I simply have not thought about, read about, studied the celebrity-brand phenomenon to know much, if anything about it. It is clear, however, that done right, it can be extremely profitable. I don’t know how many people the Kardashian empire employs, but they are sufficiently profitable that they could employ hundreds of media consultants, spin-doctors, image advisors, writers, comics and film crews and social planners if they wished… all of which would be focused on further extending the reach of their brand, and pulling in even more profits.

Several questions arise:

1. Is there anything at all socially or culturally redeeming in what the Kardshians do? For example, do they provide a healthy role model for poor families? Do they offer a sense of hope to anyone? Some sense of belonging to something special? Or are they simply exploiting some corner of human psychology, some need to know about famous people and their shenanigans? They’re not proactively evil, e.g. calling for civil war; nor do they seem proactively good, e.g. raising funds for orphans. They don’t seem to stand for or against anything; they simply have a machine for making money. Should we fault them for making money without having any purpose in life?
2. Should anyone else emulate the Kardashians, and if so, why? One could argue that essentially all celebrities already have one foot in that arena; many others are human wreckage because of it. (viz. Bob Mould’s song “Star Machine”) The star machine is maybe 100 billion $$ in size, or larger. It processes cartoon characters under its umbrella. I am fairly certain that David Hanson is thinking of Sophia at approximately this level of sophistication. He’s a sculptor with chemistry and mechanical engineering talents; he’s got public speaking talents ripped from the Church of the SubGenius. His experience with the star machine is happenstance: it comes to him, because he’s doing something interesting; mostly, he doesn’t have to chase after it, pleading “hey, pay attention to me”.
3. Should celebrities take on political stances, and, if so, at what point in their careers? Should they emulate Lenny Bruce, and do jail time for what they believe in? Should they emulate Princess Di, and direct excess celebrity towards worthy causes? Should they emulate Paul Newmann, and create cash machines that pump money towards worthy causes? I would like to argue that all celebrities should work towards noble causes. However, I would also like to argue that grey, stolid tax-payer funded bureaucracies, when properly managed, can do an even better job at managing noble causes, and we should not look to the Gates Foundation and activist celebrities as centers for social advancement.
4. Should Sophia’s Saudi citizenship have been refused? There’s a lot of if-and-but’s attached to that one. David Hansons’ lifestyle is an always-on 24x7 caffienated tornado, with which he illuminates an awful lot of love, care and affection for those around him. I don’t know enough business leaders to make comparisons, but I do know enough “ordinary people” to know that he is exceptionally kind. Not that I’m a good judge of that: I’m from the old-priviledged-white-guy-and-sometimes-an-asshole mold myself, with little interest in making friends or keeping them, so my honesty is more of the clinically-disinhibited sort rather than of an empathetic sort. (Yes, I’ve had mild brain trauma. No, I don’t think that’s why I’m uninhibted, but who knows.) So, if David didn’t quite do the right thing at the time of the citizenship event, it wasn’t due to amorality; if anything, it was due to sleep deprivation. Also: there’s a real possibility that he’s crazy like a fox. If Sophia would have turned down the citizenship, what would have happened? (a) no one would have heard about it, and (b) the Saudis’ would have been pissed. I’d like to argue that accepting citizenship shed far more light and publicity on the issue than turning it down would have. It got the world talking, with darned few (any???) negative repercussions. Sophia, the lighting-rod. Took one for the team.

I don’t see any of the above in a “tu quoque” light. As to making money from being a celebrity, of course one can say “hey, everyone else is doing it”. That’s different from debating the question “is it morally/ethically acceptable to make money from celebrity?” and, off-hand, I don’t see an particular argument that would suggest that its wrong for Sophia to be a celebrity, and to capitalize on that.

That leaves other arguments: the implied honesty or dishonesty of claims of being “basically alive”, “scripting”, and the representations or mis-representations of the underlying technology. But this post is too long, so that needs to be taken up some other day.

p.s. I don’t see “Part 2” linked in this essay. Did I miss it? Is it not written? Can you explicitly link it in the essay itself?

p.p.s. The clear-head thing is because a robot with a wig is often not recognized as a robot. When I sent some friends a youtube of the Philip K Dick robot, they not only failed to react, but, when I later asked about it, they implied that I’d mis-represented the videos, saying “yeah, but none of your videos had a robot in it.” I was speechless, in an apoplectic stroke.