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#28 Mathilda Marie Mulert: Sex Robots, Simulation, and the Question of Moral Harm
16 Plays19 hours ago
In this episode of the AITEC Podcast, we’re joined by philosopher Mathilda Marie Mulert, a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, to explore one of the most difficult questions in contemporary tech ethics: when, if ever, is it morally permissible to simulate sexual violence? Drawing on her recent work on simulation ethics, Mulert examines video games, virtual environments, sex robots, and consensual role-play to challenge the assumption that “it’s just pretend.” We discuss the Gamers’ Dilemma, the limits of consent, and why moral context—not just content—matters when evaluating simulated wrongdoing.This conversation is philosophical, careful, and candid. Listener discretion is advised.Links:
- Mathilda’s Oxford Internet Institute Webpage
- Mathilda’s recent article
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Matilda Marie Mullard
00:00:16
Speaker
back to the atech podcast Today we're in conversation with philosopher Matilda Marie Mullard, a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.
00:00:28
Speaker
We'll be discussing her recent article, Contextual Negation by Moral Opposition, which examines the ethics of virtual simulations and with particular attention to simulations of sexual assault.
00:00:41
Speaker
So thanks a lot for joining us, Matilda. Thanks for having me.
Matilda's Academic Background and Influences
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, to just to get started, can you tell us a bit about your background, you know, maybe like where you grew up and what first drew you to philosophy?
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually grew up in the north of Germany in Hamburg and I was first drawn into philosophy in my teenage years when I was kind of looking into feminist philosophy for the first time. I read some Simone de Beauvoir and felt very intellectual. um And then I went on to study philosophy, politics and economics in London. So I moved to the UK for that and particularly enjoyed my philosophy modules.
00:01:21
Speaker
Later on, that degree, I spent a semester at the National University of Singapore. And there I was then confronted with a lot of sort of tech on campus. So, for instance, they had these little robots that were driving around to clear up trash. And when you try to check out at the local grocery store, you had to scan your palm, Mazzali, to pay.
00:01:43
Speaker
And so that was when I first started thinking about kind of ethics and technology together. um And that then prompted me to do a master's in ethics of AI data and algorithms at the University of Cambridge.
00:01:58
Speaker
What did you study in in Singapore? What was the the main reason for going again? So it was just a semester abroad during my um philosophy, politics and economics undergrad. So it was part of that, though I actually mainly did Arabic in Singapore. and The semester for me was kind of a try out things that you normally wouldn't try semester. um And so I mainly did philosophy and Arabic there. Yeah.
00:02:23
Speaker
Cool. That's really cool.
Ethics of Simulation Technologies
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, ah we have you on the show because we're going to be discussing the ethics of virtual simulation and simulation technologies. Think vr think robots for various purposes.
00:02:39
Speaker
ah But maybe at ah at a high level here, maybe you can just tell us about this area of ethics. ah What do they talk about in this in this domain? Yeah, so the way I understand simulation ethics, if we can call it that, is that we normally ask what is morally permissible in the simulatory realm. So one might think everything goes because nobody is harmed and simulations are just games, or one might think that there are actually restrictions based on and what's permissible in in real life. and
00:03:14
Speaker
And so I actually first became interested in simulation ethics when I was discussing the Gamist Dilemma, which we might get back to again later im during my Master's.
The Gamist Dilemma
00:03:24
Speaker
um yeah The main thing that fascinates me about this area of research, I think, is that our moral intuitions oftentimes aren't as strong here. so For instance, my supervisor at Cambridge, and Claire Benn, brought up this video game called Deism. I don't know. I hadn't heard of it before. In that game, you are God and your aim is to sort of keep the world under control. And you have the option to throw digital heretics into volcanoes. And so Claire asked me, do you think that's morally permissible? um that right? Is that wrong?
00:03:57
Speaker
And i don't know about you guys, but I didn't really have any strong moral intuitions. And so, yeah, I was then wondering how we're supposed to decide what's right and what's not in the absence of of strong moral intuitions.
00:04:12
Speaker
that Sam, to would you throw the heretics into the volcano? Well, it's, it's sound that's, that's pretty funny. That was my first reaction. That's kind of humorous, but yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting though. Like if you think, so I'm always thinking about, I'm, I'm often pretending with my, you know, four-year-old son, you know, we're like yesterday we were pretending to be gorillas who lived in a cave and anyway, you know, wherever things go, but,
00:04:44
Speaker
It's interesting to think about, yeah, like if I was like, hey, Frank, let's pretend to be ah religious leaders and let's kill some heretics. Like that would be like pretty weird and like potentially like we should not be pretending that. So it's kind of interesting how I i guess the other point being is that like the context of the simulation, the context of the pretending also
Ethics of Fantasy and Pretending
00:05:10
Speaker
um is relevant because like in the daism game, and it just sounds a little bit more like humorous and fun. But if it's me and Frank pretending to kill heretics, I feel like that's a little bit... I know. I mean, you guys could make it silly and fun, right? i mean
00:05:26
Speaker
It's true, yeah. Yeah, it's that's that's exactly what I mean. it's just It's just not as clear-cut, I think, as many other areas of ethics are.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, so so just to be clear, like, um for the listeners, like, you know, ethics of simulation, that can cover video games, it could cover VR, but also, i mean, simulation...
00:05:50
Speaker
in a way is just pretending. So the ethics of yeah what is like morally permissible in terms of like what me and Frank pretend to do together, yeah yeah that would fall under this as well. that's Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, you can also think about sort of board games, um what you're playing with Frank, all of all of this would be considered as forms of simulations. yeah And then, i mean, what about just, just pop into my head? Like, what about fantasy? Is that like ethics of things that you're permitted to fantasize about? I'm just thinking like, cause it's also kind of weird if I was just sitting here, Oh, I'm just, I'm just imagining killing heretics. Like, Oh, that would also be like, yeah. I mean, worrisome fantasies actually oftentimes come into the discussion. Um, particularly when people make arguments about how the morality of simulations
00:06:46
Speaker
hinges on the sort of desire behind the simulation. So you might say if you are pretending to kill heretics because you have an actual fantasy of doing so, so there's an actual desire of you wanting kill heretics and you're kind of playing out the simulation to satisfy that desire, then some people think um that that might be morally relevant. So fantasies do come in, although I probably wouldn't classify them as simulations in a straightforward sense. um
00:07:18
Speaker
Right, that makes sense. yeah yeah they're like a ja Is that because in ah in a simulation there's also like ah like a real-time kind of ah thing going to onto it, whereas a fantasy might just be like a ah a glancing thought? you know is Is that why? or i mean I think so. For me, it seems that ah simulation has to be kind of actionable. There has to be some concrete actions taken. I'm not sure if thoughts fulfill the conditions for for being a simulation. But actually, this term simulation is um controversial and different people have different definitions as it always is.
00:07:55
Speaker
So it kind of depends, I suppose, on your conceptualization. Yeah, people disagree about terms and philosophy. I wasn't aware of that. I'm kidding. ah So okay maybe one way we can kind of introduce the audience into what we're talking about today is through the aforementioned gamers dilemma. right So um maybe ah i don't even want to summarize it. I think you're going to do an amazing job.
00:08:26
Speaker
like What is the gamers dilemma for those of us who have never heard of it?
Challenging the Gamist Dilemma
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, so The Gamist Dilemma started in a really influential paper by a philosopher called Morgan Luck in 2009.
00:08:37
Speaker
And in that paper, he points out that many of us intuitively seem to find virtual murder, so for instance, murder in video games, morally permissible. There doesn't seem to be that much of an outcry over virtual murder.
00:08:52
Speaker
But at the same time, we seem to find virtual child molestation quite morally problematic. And crucially, Morgan Luck thinks that there isn't really an obvious um relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual child abuse that would justify this intuitive divergence.
00:09:12
Speaker
So the game is dilemma if you want to be a bit more Philosophically strict consists of these three claims. and So virtual murder is permissible, virtual child abuse is morally impermissible, and there's no morally relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual child abuse. And so these three claims all seem individually plausible, but collectively they present an inconsistent set of claims.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like, why does virtual murder seem morally acceptable in games while virtual child sexual abuse does not, even though you know both are just pixels, so to speak? it Yeah, so a lot of the sort of excuses that we might come up with for virtual murder, for instance, it's just a game, no one is actually harmed.
00:10:07
Speaker
These excuses also seem to apply to cases of virtual sexual child abuse, right? You might also say there, no one is actually harmed, it's it's just a game. um And in the original formulation, so in the original paper um of The Gamist Dilemma, Morgan Lack then goes through, i think it's five or six and initial arguments that somebody might bring forward to say, well, there actually is a morally relevant difference.
00:10:32
Speaker
For instance, one might well, child sexual abuse is just... much less socially acceptable than murderists because targets children and children are particularly worthy of a protection and Morgan-like kind of shows that none of these initial arguments hold up to philosophical um scrutiny.
00:10:54
Speaker
But ever since he's published that paper, there's been a very lively stream of philosophical debate. There's been rebuttals and re-rebuttals and Yeah, there's been a lot of attempts to resolving this dilemma, which I think also shows us why it matters, right? Because it puts us in a it put us in a really uncomfortable spot if we can't resolve it. um Because we seem to either be committed to saying that most video games, i mean, a lot of video games include some form of virtual killing, virtual murder.
00:11:24
Speaker
that that they are all immoral and seemingly maybe as immoral as games that include virtual child abuse, all were committed to saying that actually maybe games that include virtual child abuse just as fine as as all the others. So both both positions I think are quite uncomfortable to sit with.
00:11:45
Speaker
is Is it the case that many people want to like think
Expressive Disrespect in Virtual Simulations
00:11:49
Speaker
about expressive disrespect in terms of solving it? Like, um you know, in in certain cases, when you do a simulation or pretend, you're sort of expressing an attitude um, toward real Victor victims or vulnerable people, which is disrespectful. So, you know, maybe in the case of pretend child abuse, you know, um, you're expressing disrespect toward real victims of child abuse in a way that's morally degrading.
00:12:25
Speaker
Um, even though you're not harming them, even if you're not intending to harm them, you're still kind of expressing disrespect. if that Is that a kind of common...
00:12:36
Speaker
route or yeah, i don't know. just I'm just kind of curious. Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually quite similar to the position of a philosopher called John Tilson. He's written this paper called, Is it Distinctively Wrong to Simulate Wrongdoing?
00:12:51
Speaker
And in that paper, he he makes an argument along those lines that you just describe some. He kind of just says it's it's wrong because it's disrespectful and it's disrespectful towards a morally salient group.
00:13:06
Speaker
So One of the interesting things that i often think about is that it seems easier to say that a simulation of wrongdoing is morally impermissible if it involves existing people.
00:13:18
Speaker
So I'm sure you guys have also heard a lot about Grok these past few weeks and about, you know, using Grok to undress people. um We could also imagine using Grok to create videos right of of wrongdoing being committed to existing people.
00:13:34
Speaker
And it seems kind of easy to say that that's wrong. So if somebody created Grok video of me being tortured now, it seems fairly straightforward to say, well, that's wrong because it disrespects me.
00:13:45
Speaker
and But sometimes we have simulations, actually oftentimes we have simulations that don't target existing people, that target fictional entities, non-playable characters in video games whatsoever.
00:13:56
Speaker
And so it seems more difficult to say that those simulations are wrong because we don't have this direct connection between a victim and the simulation. And so the way John Tilson gets around that is by saying, well, all of these fictional entities are members of morally salient groups.
00:14:16
Speaker
And you can take that as broadly as you want. So for instance, you might say women are a morally salient group. and therefore it's wrong to have a video game that involves violence towards women. Or you could even say humanity as a whole is a morally salient group, and so therefore all simulations that target humans are disrespectful towards the entirety of of humanity.
00:14:41
Speaker
Fascinating, that's really helpful. um So, good. um I mean, it might be just very helpful just to kind of flag at this point for the the listeners that um this the simple positions and the ethics of simulation sort of don't quite work. Like, I'm just thinking you might want to say, oh you know, if something's pretend, if something's simulation,
00:15:11
Speaker
it's it's it's permissible. It's just like, you're allowed to do whatever you want. It's just pretend, right? So that would be a simple position, right? like that would um But that can't work because then it would be okay to engage and pretend.
00:15:23
Speaker
like It would be able be okay to play a video game that where there's pretend child abuse because that would be pretending. And so if all if all pretending was permissible, then that would be okay. So that so that simple position doesn't work.
00:15:35
Speaker
And then like another simple position, I guess, would be like, if something's
00:15:41
Speaker
wrong in the real world. then it's also wrong to simulate it. um is Is that position, what do you think about that kind of position? That like, yeah, if if something's wrong in the real world, like killing someone, then it's wrong to simulate it. What what's what do you think about that kind position? Yeah, I mean, i just think both of these positions, both of these extremes are just too simplistic to really capture the moral intuitions that we have about these cases. So when we say that the
00:16:13
Speaker
I guess, moral status of an act in the real world always translates into the simulated world. And that seems very extreme. It seems like you playing, I don't know, robbers and policemen with Frank,
00:16:28
Speaker
would be very much wrong because robbing in the real world is wrong. And it would also mean that acting, so if you think about theater, TV shows, movies, that all of these people are constantly engaging in forms of more wrongdoing.
00:16:45
Speaker
and i mean, it's a position that you can take if you want to, if you find a line of defending it without seeming entirely unreasonable, I guess. But... I just think they're both too far, too extreme.
00:17:01
Speaker
I feel the same way as you do, even though intuitively I do think that. So I remember Grand Theft Auto is kind of the last game that I played.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I remember thinking to myself in my early 20s, I probably shouldn't be killing hookers with a pipe. Like this is not, this is very strange. I don't like this, you know? I'm glad to hear that.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So, so I actually stopped gaming um in general, other than like really cartoonish games like Mario Kart. But, um, so a part of me thinks to myself, you think I think to myself, uh, yeah, you shouldn't, this it is kind of wrong, right? Even burning heretics, like what is that teaching you? It's like anyone who doesn't agree with you, you should die. Like that's, that's bananas.
00:17:47
Speaker
But at the same time, there's no way I can actually uphold that principle because I pretend to do things all the time. i very
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Wrongness in Simulations
00:17:52
Speaker
It's very easy to say i live by this principle, but when my yeah our our actual behaviors don't tend to match that because ah I'm sure I do. I watch violent shows, right? and And that's kind of the same thing. So, or it's adjacent at least. so Yeah. I think, yeah.
00:18:08
Speaker
there's No, sorry. I actually think you were raising an interesting point there because you just said that when you were playing that game, you were thinking, hmm, you know, or no, it was about the heretics. What does that teach you, right? Does that teach you that whenever people don't agree with you, it's fine to to harm them? um So that's actually a different line of reasoning that you could take compared to the one of John Tilson that we were just discussing. So you might either say that these kinds of simulations are wrong um because say they're disrespectful. So that would be ah a sort of intrinsic wrong. It would be something that's wrong in and of itself.
00:18:41
Speaker
Or you can think about downstream effects, right? And so when we worry about these sort of video games teaching us problematic values, then that would be a bit more of a of an extrinsic argument. So we'd be thinking more about the the causal effects that this might have on you. and And both are, I mean, viable strains of of reasoning that we could take.
00:19:05
Speaker
I wonder, sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I'm kind of wondering whether there's a way of going the route that Roberto was talking about, but keeping it intrinsic. Like, I'm just thinking about like a kind of like, I don't know, maybe Aristotelian type framework where you're like concerned with what a virtuous person would do maybe. And maybe it's like,
00:19:27
Speaker
the action is sort of intrinsically one that is corruptive of a virtuous disposition.
00:19:39
Speaker
And I don't know, I guess it's like, I guess that's sort of like an intrinsic extrinsic thing because if we're talking about like leading to the corruption of someone's character, but on the other hand, you might think that like, well, even if it doesn't lead to like a more,
00:19:58
Speaker
um bad action actions down the road, it's like it's intrinsically not the thing a virtuous person would do. Anyway, this this is maybe not very helpful. I think that's really interesting. um I actually think a lot about this intrinsic, extrinsic thing um because I'm kind of trying to determine right now where I place my research more and I indeed am more concerned with the intrinsic side of things um as it stands.
00:20:29
Speaker
But that's kind
Moral Divergence in Simulated Scenarios
00:20:30
Speaker
of for a different reason. and It mainly is because it's really hard to find evidence for all of these extrinsic claims. So if if there's one thing that the longstanding debate between violent video games and you know shootings has taught us, then it seems to be that it's it's just too hard to establish a direct causal link. and So as far as I understand the evidence between you know violent video games increasing real-world violence, it's inconclusive at best because there's so many other variables, for confounding variables, it's really hard to isolate two variables and establish a connection between them.
00:21:09
Speaker
And I also think just intuitively, if we imagine a case where somebody engaged in these simulations and they are completely isolated from the rest of society. So, don't know, say they live on a deserted island by themselves and they will never meet anybody else ever again.
00:21:26
Speaker
it still seems wrong to me um that they're engaging in these sort of simulations and we're completely bracketing out the possibility of them having you know downstream effects on society or on other people. so I mean, I guess your consideration around corrupting one's own character would still count there, but yeah, I think it's um it's an interesting line of thought.
00:21:47
Speaker
Great. So maybe now we can, because because what you just brought up, you know this concern with intrinsic versus extrinsic, wrongness of an action this is something that you you touch a lot touch on in your paper and dive into so maybe let's kind of shift more directly to your paper now so um your paper has a very interesting connection to a video game called no mercy um and it's basically a highly controversial video game you know morally disturbing to many people so um could you tell us a little bit about this game and then um
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, and and also maybe like the developers of the game, they kind of gave a defense of it. Anyway,
Controversy of 'No Mercy' Video Game
00:22:30
Speaker
can you just kind of introduce us to this game? Yeah, of course. So this game was released on Steam on the global gaming platform in March 2025. It made headlines pretty quickly because it is um yeah it's a self-proclaimed rape and incest simulator video game. So the game centers on a male protagonist who is encouraged to quote, become every woman's worst nightmare and to never take no for an answer. That was actually the the tagline that it was advertised with.
00:23:02
Speaker
and yeah So pretty quickly there was a media outcry around it and that resulted in bans in a couple of countries. So Australia ended up banning it Canada banned it and eventually the UK also banned um the game.
00:23:19
Speaker
And that then resulted in the developers of this game, they're called Zerad Games. they basically voluntarily pulled the game from Steam kind of to to avoid Steam from getting into trouble and because think the message was loud and clear that that the public wasn't too happy with this game.
00:23:40
Speaker
and Yeah, but very interestingly, they published this open letter to sort of explain themselves and to to give a statement about all of the all of the media crime.
00:23:51
Speaker
And in that open letter, they took an interesting route to defending their game. and Namely, they compared the game to sort of consensual role play and what we might call kink between consenting human adults.
00:24:07
Speaker
So they said, I've got a quote from them here from their open letter. They said, if someone plays with their partner at home, pretending to be a student and teacher who demands sexual acts in exchange for a grade, should we label them as sick and call them rapists, check their computer and lock them in prison?
00:24:23
Speaker
So I think that kind of captures their line of reasoning quite well. um They're basically claiming that their game is is part of this kink culture and that everyone that disagrees with the game is kink-shaming and maybe just not open-minded enough for for these sort of yeah sexual role plays.
00:24:43
Speaker
Fascinating. So it seems like the developers were saying like something like, you know um Pretend sexual assault among consenting adults, you know, like in a BDSM context, that's morally acceptable. So it should also be morally acceptable in a virtual context.
00:25:02
Speaker
um Yeah. So can you kind of, yeah what do you think of their line of reasoning? You know, kind of where would you agree, disagree with them? Yeah, so I think, yeah, what they seem to be saying is that role-playing these things in a BDSM context, as you just described them, is permissible, and that therefore the same content of simulation, so role-playing sexual assault with technological media, like with video games, should also be permissible, and...
00:25:31
Speaker
The implicit claim there then is that simulations with humans and simulations with technology are morally equivalent if they share the same content, if that makes sense.
00:25:44
Speaker
And so that's basically the claim that I am contesting in my paper. so The question that really comes out for me is, does the medium matter? So
Impact of Simulation Medium on Morality
00:25:55
Speaker
does does the medium with which we simulate these things matter for the moral evaluation of the simulation?
00:26:02
Speaker
And they seem to be saying no, they seem to kind of just implicitly assume that. And i in my paper, am saying, yes, actually, it does matter whether we're simulating this with consenting human adult or through a video game.
00:26:18
Speaker
And the point that I made earlier, i'm I'm noticing here that if someone were to say that we shouldn't pretend violence because it might inure you or or you know ah get you accustomed to it with other people, i think that would, in this case, you know maybe make it so that someone would say, well, BDSM itself then is actually impermissible. with it And so you're taking it a different tactic. that Am i right about that?
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, somebody might resist this entire line of reasoning by just saying, well, I don't think BDSM or roleplay amongst consenting adults is permissible at all.
00:26:57
Speaker
And that would also be a form of rejecting the reasoning of zeroed games. and That's good. And, you know, so just my own intuition is like,
00:27:08
Speaker
When it comes to BDSM, i i i go if that's what you're into, go ahead. right So there's a real conflict here of ah of intuitions. right So this is good. And you're going to provide some philosophical therapy to help us sort this out. I appreciate it.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like your work is kind of um dealing with like an intuitive moral divergence where you So there's a divergence in that some people find it intuitively morally acceptable for consenting adults to do BDSM and, you know, pretend to commit sexual assault.
00:27:46
Speaker
um You know, no one's actually harmed, let's say, but yeah, some people, you know, you find it morally acceptable for people to yeah engage in that kind of pretend the sexual assault in a BDSM context. But on the other hand, they want to say, you know, against the developers that, you know, of sexual assault in a video game where, you know, you're pretending to rape someone, that's morally wrong. So your work is kind of on this puzzle, like, why would there be this divergence? um
00:28:17
Speaker
is that Is that a fair yeah kind of description? No, absolutely. Yeah. And this actually came about because I was discussing this video game with a friend of mine. and Well, actually, I think we were discussing the case of and sex robots specifically designed to simulate rape.
00:28:34
Speaker
and as well. So we're talking about how that just seems completely morally wrong to us. And then this friend of mine, ah a mathematician, said, well, but what if I wanted to play this out with my girlfriend? And I was a bit irritated by the question. I was like, what? that That's completely different. um And he was like, but why?
00:28:53
Speaker
And then I realized that that was a really good question and one that should be turned into a philosophical paper. So yeah, I think it it always helps when you have um a a puzzle, so to say, that you can begin your moral inquiry with. um But I also think it's important that you're open to, i guess, finding out that your intuitions were were wrong. yeah,
00:29:16
Speaker
Starting in this line of inquiry, i was kind of saying, well, my intuitions seem inconsistent here. is that justified or is it not? I think it's also important to be open to the idea that that they might not be justified so that that your intuitions were off. But in this case, I thankfully think I found ah a valid and sound argument for our intuitions are right.
00:29:43
Speaker
Do you want to go with solution one, Sam? Well, i actually, I don't know if this is helpful, but I was just thinking like in comparison to the gamer's dilemma, like your kind of um puzzle versus the gamer's dilemma. I was thinking in the case of the gamer's dilemma, what you're doing is you're kind of holding the medium constant. So you're talking about video games. That's the medium. and And what you're varying, you're thinking about murder versus sexual abuse.
00:30:11
Speaker
And you're kind of thinking about the moral status of those different acts. Whereas you in your puzzle, you're holding the content content constant. So you're you're talking about rape simulation or sexual abuse simulation, pretend.
00:30:27
Speaker
sexual abuse but what's being varied is sort of the relational and structure of the situation so it's like in one case in a BDSM case you're dealing with you know multiple humans more than one human being whereas in the like a video game situation it's like um Yeah, it's like a human a machine in a machine.
00:30:52
Speaker
Anyway, I don't know. No, absolutely. and And yeah, that that also comes from the fact that some people think, some scholars argue that the medium isn't necessarily the most morally relevant feature. So there's this philosopher called Gary Young. and He's written this, what I think is quite a controversial paper called Enjoying Simulated Rape.
00:31:15
Speaker
And in that paper, he argues that the medium doesn't really matter morally. What's crucial instead is the kind of enjoyment that you derive from a simulation. So he kind of says, well, you might either enjoy the simulation as a substitution for the real deal that you can't get because you don't want to go to prison.
00:31:37
Speaker
or you might enjoy the simulation as the simulation itself. So argues that you might enjoy the simulation because it's taboo and you're kind of enjoying this tabooness of it all, but you have no desire whatsoever for real rape.
00:31:54
Speaker
And so he kind of says, as long as your desire pertains only to the taboo-ness of the simulation, then it's kind of fine and the medium doesn't really matter.
00:32:05
Speaker
Whereas if you're if you're enjoying it as a substitution, then it's it's morally impermissible. And again, the medium doesn't really matter. so Yeah, that was kind of a claim that I was trying to to test here. um But also one quick clarification.
00:32:20
Speaker
So although this all does pertain to video games as well, in the paper, I in the end decided to go with this um direct comparison between the BDSM case and the case of the sex robots.
00:32:33
Speaker
um instead of the video game. The main reason for that is just that I kind of wanted to preemptively avoid objections along the line of, well, embodiment, you know, in the video game, it's not comparable because you're engaging just, you know, through the screen. You don't really have this like body-on-body level of interactivity. And so that's why in the paper I ah speak more about the case of sex robots programmed to simulate non-consent. I call them rape robots instead of video games. But I mean, i have the intuition it still extends to video games as well.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah. But that's that's really good for the listener, right? I mean, you know, it would be like a rape bot, I guess, is what you're, you know, ah So, um yeah, so my immediate intuition upon getting presented it with the puzzle is, of course, there there is a disanalogy. And but the the important part is ah what is the morally salient difference between simulated sexual sexual abuse? and with um a robot and with a consenting partner.
00:33:43
Speaker
So I totally, I can understand why you mentioned that that the the gentleman's article was controversial. I had so many, i don't know if you saw my face, I was sc crunching it up like, no, I don't i don't like this at all. But, um But he I thought you were going because isn't that kind of, I think that's kind of interesting what he's, I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not sure if I agree with it, but I do think the idea of like where your pleasure is, is kind of morally relevant. I mean, I don't know. I just kind of associate that a little bit with like Aristotle and in Plato. And I feel like that's kind of an interesting idea that like,
00:34:19
Speaker
key aspect of your characters, like what you find pleasure in. So like, if you find pleasure in certain things, like that could be, anyway, I'm i'm just going to. So I just, you know, this is, I'm going to wreck this whole conversation right now, but I just read, i was reading this morning, an article on self-determination theory ah in digital environments. And, and the reason why this, i don't even know the guy's name, but. um ah philosopher Gary Young.
00:34:44
Speaker
very young, it sounds really atomized. And one of the core tenets of self-determination theory is that you will thrive and and your weird well-being is contingent upon, at least you know one of them is relatedness. And so if your pleasure is so atomized in that way, that seems like you're even you know, you sometimes you you want what you don't need and and you, you know think you need what you don't want, whatever, you know. So in this case, to go in that direction, I think is actually away from well-being, even though they might in the moment enjoy it. And so those are, that's my two cents. But ah does that land at all, Matilda? Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I also remember while reading Jan's article,
00:35:26
Speaker
that I'm kind of just skeptical of us being able to identify the source of our desire this specifically. and i guess I'm just finding it hard to imagine that, i mean, he even goes as far as saying that this applies to like child sex robots as well.
00:35:43
Speaker
um And that even in those cases, if you're enjoying the simulation just for its taboo-ness, just as a substitution, that that that might be morally relevant. And I guess just on a human level, I can't really imagine anyone enjoying a simulation of that sort if there's not something transgressive going on, but that might be that might be my bias. I wasn't really convinced of the idea of enjoying something for the taboo-ness of it all and strictly for that purpose only. but yeah Yeah, that sounds right. It doesn't sound plausible that someone could really
00:36:21
Speaker
just enjoy something like that for the tabooness there's a disordered mind indicator or something like that yeah um but yeah let's let's get into the solutions um to the to the puzzle so you know potential solutions and then we get to your solution so like you know one response to the moral divergence to this puzzle uh would be something like you know pretend sexual assault you know where no one is harmed i guess That can be morally permissible among consenting adults, um whereas you know simulated sexual assault or rape is morally wrong because the simulated victim consents in human-human scenarios, but there's no consent in the human-machine scenario. So anyway, this I guess the first solution is just trying to like use the concept of consent to distinguish.
00:37:09
Speaker
um Anyway, yeah. yeah what's what What you think of that? Yeah, so that's actually a really intuitive response that I've gotten from a lot of people that have had the the joy of discussing this with me while I was writing the paper. So people often say, well, it's obvious what the difference is. It's that the simulated victim can sense in one case, but not in the other. And that seems to matter morally.
00:37:32
Speaker
I don't think that that really holds up to philosophical scrutiny. And that mainly is because we need to think about what kind of um entity the simulated victim is.
00:37:44
Speaker
So in the way that I conceptualize, in the case of the paper, robots, they are objects. So I kind of bracket out all considerations around harm to the robot itself. I kind of say, you know,
00:37:57
Speaker
they're not conscious in my conceptualization and they're not sentient and they don't have moral status and in any other way. So they are equivalent to say ah sock, and just just an object.
00:38:11
Speaker
And so when we say that the morally relevant difference is that the robot doesn't consent, that doesn't really seem to make sense when we understand it as an object. so So for instance, you don't need to ask your water bottle, um for consent when you take sip out of it.
00:38:27
Speaker
And you also don't really need to ask, um yeah, sorry for the graphic example, you also don't really need to ask a condom whether it's fine with you know being used in that way. And so that argument, I think, also applies to the to the rape robots. So because they are not entities of which consent would be required to legitimize the act, that can't really be the morally relevant difference.
00:38:53
Speaker
Does that make sense? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, um okay. So then maybe we should move in the interest of time here to your solution so we can really flesh that out because we've already explored a couple of ah contenders and and it's not it's not taking us to the promised land. So why?
00:39:15
Speaker
Why? why Yeah, so start with the idea that simulating rape is generally what we call pro tanto wrong.
00:39:27
Speaker
So that means
Pro Tanto Wrongness and Moral Neutralization
00:39:28
Speaker
it is wrong to a certain extent. it is It is in principle wrong, but it might be outweighed by other considerations. and That idea is taken from the John Tilson paper that we were discussing earlier.
00:39:40
Speaker
I kind of just start by saying, look, it's it seems to be pro tanto wrong in both the case of BDSM or in both the case of role play and in the case of rape robots.
00:39:52
Speaker
The question then is whether that pro tanto wrong can ever be neutralized. So whether that can ever be outweighed by other considerations or whether it can even be negated.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I think that it can be negated in the case of BDSM, but not in the case of Ray Robots. The basic idea for why that is, is that the in context of the BDSM simulations seems to embody the values that stand direct directly opposed to those being violated in the simulation. So let me let me put that simpler. Basically, we've got a rape simulation. So the values that the simulation is violating are, say, sexual autonomy, respect for consent, respect for bodily integrity.
00:40:41
Speaker
And that's what const constitutes the the disrespect. But in the BDSM scenario, we have a context that relies on negotiations and the best case relies on really full grounding all participants, sexual autonomy and bodily integrity.
00:40:59
Speaker
We, in the best case, have safe words. So there's a lot of constraints um in place and the entire simulation is yeah guided by the respect for those very values that the simulation is violating.
00:41:14
Speaker
So we have a situation in which the context morally opposes the thing that is being simulated and and that seems to matter morally. Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
So that's great. So let's maybe I was thinking as a first step to making sure we understand the theory, um we could just highlight you. So we could maybe talk a little bit about more about a best case BDSM scenario. And you mentioned, you know, it includes negotiation.
00:41:45
Speaker
It includes safe words. And I think normally someone might think, oh, those are are important because that keeps everyone from harm. It it it prevents um a violation in the situation of someone's autonomy.
00:42:02
Speaker
But your point is like, it's also like, foregrounding a certain value, which is being sort of, anyway, so yeah, could you kind of maybe tell us a little bit more about what an ideal you know scenario looks like, how it includes negotiations and safe words, and why those negotiations and safe words are so important?
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, so just to preface this, it's very important that we emphasize the sort of best practice term here. so i have quite a long section in the paper kind of just caveating everything I'm saying because oftentimes in these BDSM cases,
00:42:41
Speaker
there are violations and boundaries are crossed. There are transgressions. And the point is absolutely not to just, you know, uncritically glorify BDSM as a practice that that always foregrounds autonomy and consent.
00:42:55
Speaker
But in the best practice scenarios, there is, There are extensive measures in place that make sure that nobody but not only that nobody is harmed within the practice, but that the desires, the autonomy, the integrity of the participants becomes the sort of central thing at play within the simulation. So we can see that, for instance, in the fact that a lot of sexuality scholars actually call for more convenient and sex practices. to to learn from BDSM community because in in more conventional sex practices, we often have more implicit forms of discussions around consent and autonomy.
00:43:39
Speaker
And so There also is actually empirical evidence that points towards the BDSM community holding lower rates of, for instance, rape myth acceptance, or they hold lower rates of victim blaming and of benevolent sexism.
00:43:58
Speaker
And we assume that that is because this practice of negotiating, of explicitly discussing, you know, what do you want, what do I want for,
00:44:08
Speaker
that that foregrounds sexual autonomy in a way that is even empirically measurable, which I think is is quite interesting. So yeah, does that make sense? We're learning so much about the BDSM community. That's, ah yeah, that that's definitely, i mean, it's it's so, hu I wouldn't want to say obvious, but, you know, it's so intuitive once you think about it, like, oh, yeah, well, obviously, you know, so much goes unsaid sometimes, but in the BDSM community, it is important to literally specify every detail of what is acceptable and what is not.
00:44:43
Speaker
And that's something that I think almost like every domain would benefit from, right? It doesn't have to be sex or anything. So, making our background assumptions explicit seems pretty important. And that makes all the difference because you can't do that or you don't do that with a robot.
00:45:01
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly.
00:45:07
Speaker
So, yeah, so it's like in the best case kink scenario, they're in the structure of the situation, you know, like people are talking about they're the limits, they're talking about their expectations.
00:45:21
Speaker
um Either person is kind of given the authority to stop things instantly using the safe word. um Afterward, there's going to be like, you know checking in with each other, making sure everyone's, you know, okay, no one was actually hurt. And so it's like all those things are important for like preventing harm in that situation.
00:45:44
Speaker
But, you know, you're kind of making the point that all these things are also important insofar as they are, you know, in sort of endorsing the values of autonomy and bodily integrity. And that's really important because in the pretend act, um right? Like it seems like you're violating that, right? Because if you pretend to engage in sexual assault, you're, you're, I mean, that's like,
00:46:16
Speaker
The pretend act is a violation of autonomy in some sense. Yeah, exactly. because were right yeah can but It seems like, it seems like to me at least to me, it seems like these negotiations, all of these practices, that're they're not only there to prevent harm from happening.
00:46:34
Speaker
they also transform the entire act of the simulation into a celebration of those very values, so of sexual autonomy, of bodily integrity. I mean, the the entire act of saying, you know, i'm I'm interested in performing these sort of acts, um how can we make sure that you can kind of perform the sort of acts that you're interested in. And even though they might kind of be quite out there, we're here to collectively respect each other and to to make those things happen.
00:47:08
Speaker
That to me seems like an enactment of those very values, right, of sexual autonomy and of respect for everybody's boundaries and of respect for consent. So it's not only that these values sort of accompany the simulation, they they are very much operationalized within them. So they constrain the simulation, they shape the simulation, they determine you know what goes and what doesn't go. It's it's very different to say,
00:47:37
Speaker
having you know a disclaimer in the beginning of a video game that says, oh, you know by the way, we don't condone any of this. Because in those cases, you don't have this sort of operalization. Is that what I'm looking for?
00:47:53
Speaker
Basically, you can either have these values accompany a simulation, for instance, by saying before you engage in a simulation like that, that you're not actually interested in any of it, or you can have the values shaping the entire simulation by you know setting boundaries and by kind of transforming the entire act yeah into into a celebration of those very values. And I think that's what's going on in best practice cases of BDSM.
00:48:24
Speaker
So it's it's super fascinating. I mean, I think it's very plausible that ah that point about, you know, the very same values that are sort of under attack in the pretend act, you know, namely like someone's autonomy, their bodily integrity.
00:48:40
Speaker
Those exact values are sort of um in a way being challenged or...
00:48:49
Speaker
reversed or something like that in the structure of the situation, right? um In this context of negotiation, in the context of safe words and so forth. um Now, um but can you could you maybe yeah speak more to to the idea that it actually transforms the very act? I mean, I'll just be, you know, to me, i have trouble...
00:49:13
Speaker
seeing that point because I feel like, you know, regardless of what it, what happens in the setup, it's like at the end of the day, the act itself rely, you know, the, the, the enjoyment comes from a felt sense of, yeah I don't know, some kind of pleasure from domination, from, you know, the negation of someone's autonomy anyway. So yeah. Can you just talk a little bit more about the transformation aspect, you know, the idea that by having these values foregrounded in the setup and the structure and the context,
00:49:41
Speaker
um that leads to a transformation of the act itself, of the of the you know simulated sexual assault. Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't seem obvious to me that um a practice that relies on a felt sense of subordination or domination necessarily goes against values of, say, sexual autonomy, especially if that very felt sense of domination and subordination comes from the sexual autonomy of somebody requesting that.
00:50:13
Speaker
So it's an expression of of agency in and of itself, right? To say, i particularly enjoy, I don't know, subordinating myself in these sort of contexts. And so it's it's true that you might say, well, I just reject the entire practice of BDSM because it seems, say, undignified is maybe what you're getting at.
00:50:36
Speaker
um But that doesn't really challenge the argument in its in its in its current form, because what I'm talking about is the fact that ah simulation of the violation of sexual autonomy that happens in a context that celebrates sexual autonomy much more than o conventional sex practices, that that sort of overrides and completely transforms the act because... and Yeah, because the central value at at play is sexual autonomy itself.
00:51:11
Speaker
I get that it's kind of hard to understand where the transformation itself happens. i I just think it comes out of the um out of the moral opposition that's at play here. yeah.
00:51:24
Speaker
yeah um Well, yeah, I mean, are is it kind of like, my understanding is like you're kind of starting from the... in you know you just correct me if I'm wrong, but like, you're kind of starting from the intuition that it's morally acceptable to do the, um, the, the, the the best case scenario BDSM practice.
00:51:44
Speaker
Whereas I i guess just personally, like I'm sort of starting from skepticism about that. I would probably be inclined more toward it being morally impermissible, although not necessarily anyway. Yeah. So like to me, um,
00:52:02
Speaker
I'm not like searching for an explanation for why it's morally acceptable. I'm still more like leaning in the direction that it's not. So then i guess like, I'm like, yeah. so like I'm ah more having trouble seeing that, that how the transformation occurs. Whereas you, It seems like from your position where if you begin with the intuition that it is more acceptable, then it seems like this is the explanation of how it manages to be transformed is through the the structure. Anyway, I don't know if that makes much
Moral Opposition in Simulations
00:52:36
Speaker
sense. Yeah. I mean, I think, no, that does make sense. I think it kind of comes from
00:52:39
Speaker
o why you think that the sort of BDSM practices may be not permissible in the first place. Like the the crucial part for me and for my argument was to say that sometimes simulating...
00:52:53
Speaker
um the violation of a value in a context that foregrounds that very value, transforms the simulation from a pretend violation of the act into earn affirmation of that very value.
00:53:07
Speaker
and and Yeah, I mean, the aim also isn't to to convince the audience or to convince you that BDSM is a great practice and that we shouldn't particularly reflect on it. There might be a lot of completely different arguments for why you might think that it's wrong, for instance, if you want to make dignity-based claims. and But this sort of moral opposition of the context and the simulated content is what really matters for my for my argument to get off the ground. Yeah.
00:53:40
Speaker
It seems like you can probably um bake quite a bit of bread with this principle, right? I mean, have you tried applying this to other domains, this this kind of insight that you had? Yeah. So ah one example that I was that I touched on in the paper is this idea of um anti-bullying workshops.
00:54:01
Speaker
where at least at my school, we had um this anti-bullying team come in and as part of the workshop, they conducted the sort of role play simulation of what bullying might look like.
00:54:14
Speaker
And so i think that might be an example where we can apply this, this mechanism too. So you have a simulation of bullying and you're role playing, you know, exclusion and you're role playing the violation of particular values, for instance, dignity, empathy, that sort of thing.
00:54:33
Speaker
But that's happening within this context of raising awareness for that very phenomenon that you're simulating. so There seems to be a similar moral opposition at play there.
00:54:45
Speaker
And then whether you think that suffices to transform the act, I think depends on the values that you identify as being central to to the simulation here. So I have a bit of a discussion in the paper around how the values need to be quite specific.
00:55:03
Speaker
and that that That originally came from the intuition that not all role-play cases of BDSM, we're getting back to that again, I'm sorry, are permissible. So for instance, if if two people now engage in a role-play of sexual assault, but it's not just abstract, generic sexual assault, it's the sexual assault of an existing person that, say, has been in the media,
00:55:33
Speaker
then I think the pretender wrong of that simulation remains. And the reason for that is that I think it we're then not only speaking about the general value of sexual autonomy, bodily integrity here anymore, but we're speaking about the value of the sexual autonomy of that specific person whose violation you're simulating. And because that person isn't involved,
00:55:57
Speaker
you don't really get this perfect moral opposition of having the exact value that is being violated foregrounded in the context. And i think this similar line of reasoning can be applied to the anti-bullying workshop as well or to to other settings that you might think of.
00:56:15
Speaker
What really matters is for you to say, okay, well, what is the central value that I think is being violated in this simulation? And what is the central value that governs the context of the simulation.
00:56:29
Speaker
And when you can find a way of arguing that these two values are indeed the same ones and that they morally oppose each other, then the mechanism succeeds. Does that make sense?
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah, so like the mechanism only works if there's like a point-to-point value lineup between um the good that the simulation pretends to violate and what the context prevent uh protects so the context needs to protect be protecting point for point the same um good that the simulated action is violating and so like that's like that's that's kind of the moral opposition element of the mechanism right exactly
00:57:20
Speaker
it is um Does enjoyment, just to bring it back to something we were talking about earlier, is that relevant to to the situation? Like if the person in the situation, if their pleasure is tied to the mutual agency going on in the BDSM context um or instead tied to domination and submission, is that relevant in your theory at all? Like the individual motivation of the actors or is that not...
00:57:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of it's kind of implied in this idea of foregrounding sexual autonomy. So it's interesting that you're saying, you know, is it either that the enjoyment is derived from this mutual agency or from this felt sense of domination and subordination?
00:58:05
Speaker
I actually don't think those two are mutually exclusive. So I reckon you might enjoy a simulation because of the mutual agency that's derived from the sense of domination and subordination in the ideal case, right? So that that both individuals might have a desire for this domination, subordination imbalance, and that they then, with their mutual agency, choose to enact that.
00:58:30
Speaker
But we can, of course, imagine simulations um in the BDSM context where you have somebody that is actually interested in the real violation of someone's sexual autonomy. They have a desire for for real rape and they kind of discard themselves in the BDSM community to play out those fantasies. um Yeah, in ah in a legal way. I think in that case, they they wouldn't foreground this value of sexual autonomy anymore. So that for me would just fall outside of the category of of best practice BDSM cases, though that certainly happens.
00:59:06
Speaker
yeah They would be like bad faith actors or they would withhold during the negotiation process. They would lie basically. So, okay. Yeah, exactly. It's lot of sense. Could we talk a little bit about the solitary dimension of the rape bot use? It seems like that's really important. So it's like um you kind of point out that like, you know,
00:59:32
Speaker
In the rape box case, you kind of have a solitary person alone and acting their sexual fantasies. Whereas um in the, you know, cooperative BDSM, you know, best case scenario, you have co cooperation, compromise.
00:59:53
Speaker
shared agency. Anyway, so it's like, it's really important, this element of how in the sort of virtual rape block case, the person is alone. And it's connected for you to this idea of like,
01:00:11
Speaker
when you're alone, you can like disrespect certain people, but you can't express respect or something. Anyway, can you can you get a little bit of a super interesting aspect to your paper? Yeah. Yeah. yeah so So one of the key differences between the BDSM case and and the ratebot case is that the ratebot case, at least in the way that I've conceptualized ratebots as like non non-moral patients, um only involves
01:00:41
Speaker
a singular being, namely the user. And so in that sense, the the structure of the simulation involves one being imposing their fantasies in an unlimited, unilateral way onto the object rather than, say, interacting with another agent and you know having these considerations for for another being there at all.
01:01:07
Speaker
And that matters morally because it makes it impossible for the simulation to foreground respect for another being or respect for the sexual autonomy of another being, because that there is no other being that you could respect in this scenario, right? so I even go as far as considering a case of ah a kind of a BDSM bot, I guess, that we can imagine where you have this rape robot and before the user engages in the rape simulation with the robot,
01:01:39
Speaker
he's forced to go through these sort of BDSM-like negotiations. and And even in that case, I think that the genuine moral opposition that we can see in best-case BDSM cases just cannot occur at all because the the only thing that could be achieved here is the simulation of respect for another being, but not actual respect for another being because there is no other.
01:02:08
Speaker
that can be respected and and there are de facto no boundaries imposed by another being onto the user at all, even if he sort of engages in this this pretend around consent negotiations before.
01:02:23
Speaker
and Yeah. So this is like a kind of a dumb, ah you know, kind of response, but I'm just, just want you to just, if you can, like, I feel like it'll help clarify the theory more, you know, what, again, i mean, you already touched on it a little bit, but you know, if the person who's playing it alone, you know, or doing the rate bot alone, what if, you know, if they were like write some kind of letter, you know, ah before playing where they like pronounce their, you know, appreciation and and commitment to, you know,
01:02:54
Speaker
like the value of autonomy and bodily integrity and all that. Like if they write a general like manifesto in, you know, in favor of these values prior to playing the game.
01:03:05
Speaker
um Why does that not suffice for saying, okay, that's a moral opposition built into the context? what Where is it failing there? Yeah. So I think that would be another instance of this um kind of disclaimer-esque situation where you have the values of sexual autonomy, for instance, um accompany the simulation, but not really govern it. So in the case of the user writing a whole whole book, if you like, on why sexual autonomy is to be respected,
01:03:39
Speaker
You still don't have a simulation that is practically structured and governed by this very norm of sexual autonomy. So at the end of the day, it just comes down to the fact that there still is no constraints um that come from the sexual autonomy of another being imposed on the user in the simulation itself.
01:04:02
Speaker
So it's this kind of distinction between accompanying values and and sort of structuring values, governing values. Yeah, that's helpful because it's like at any moment in in in a best case scenario, the person could say the safe word and that would end the situation. So that shows that the other person's autonomy is Yeah, it's it's it's structuring, it it has weight, it has force in that situation because if they say the same word best case scenarios, will- Absolutely. And crucially, it's also the case that in best practice BDSM, it's not like everything goes.
01:04:35
Speaker
It's not like you know you've agreed that everyone's allowed to do whatever they want and they can they hurt each other without bounds. there might be a practice that one participant might be interested in that the other participant just says in the pre-seed negotiations are off limits and then that is to be respected, right? And if that if they weren't respected anymore, then it wouldn't be a best it wouldn't be a best practice case of BDSM anymore. So as soon as one of the um I guess, guidelines that were discussed before the scene are violated or as soon as the safe word is uttered and that does not result in the immediate succession of the act, um the entire scene actually just transforms into sexual assault. um
01:05:20
Speaker
So, yeah, it's it's really crucial that these values are are actively operationalized and and are governing the simulation for this and yeah for this for this mechanism to work.
01:05:33
Speaker
Absolutely fascinating. um Okay. So just to wrap things up then, what are you working on next? And, you know, share share with us how we can ah follow your work. Yeah, so I'm actually now in the process of extending this kind of work for the PhD that I've just started here at the Oxford International Institute. So
Future Research on Gendered Violence Simulations
01:05:54
Speaker
I'm making my project much broader now. I'm kind of interested in technologically facilitated simulations of gendered violence more generally. So that also includes things like role play with chatbots. and There actually is a a growing group of
01:06:11
Speaker
users that are creating these sort of ai girlfriends with the primary reason of role play abusing them so that would also fall within that category and i'm trying to come up with a coherent account of the intrinsic morality of those technologies um yeah and you can you can follow my work by either looking me up on linkedin where i share where i share my work frequently o by just keeping an eye out um on you know the public that the popular journals like like Ethics and Information Technology. Hopefully they'll be more published soon.