
Fruit machine (homosexuality test) - zeristor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_test)
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diggan
“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a
campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.”

This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite.
Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers
fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More
information on the subject here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militarie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece)

Seems we're constantly in a pendulum in terms of sexuality, what's ok or not.

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7952
I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It
could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups
are just a victim of that swing.

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thrwayxyz
Unlikely. When people talk about homosexuality being acceptable in ancient
societies they leave out the fact that it was acceptable for barely pubescent
boys to be the receiving partner for adults. So are we going to head down that
route in another decade or two when we become even less authoritarian?

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krapp
>So are we going to head down that route in another decade or two when we
become even less authoritarian?

Stupid as it is, anti-gay extremists do make that argument, that the cultural
acceptance of homosexuality is a slippery slope towards the eventual
normalization of pedophilia and even bestiality. That can be seen as an
argument pro Christian authoritarianism of a specific political bent.

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0815test
In many ways, it is the very opposite: the "egalitarian" model of homosexual
relationships was _itself_ a new development and a desirable _outcome_ of the
gradual "cultural acceptance" of homosexuality. You can see this even with
very recent developments such as same-sex marriage. The polar opposite to that
is the ancient, Graeco-Roman model of homosexuality (but also found today in
many parts of the non-Western world, and even reflected e.g. in stereotypes
about sex in prisons) as simply an exertion of male-on-male dominance and
power. (Though, to be fair about it, ancient "fornication" wasn't different
either! This is the underlying rationale for why a number of ethical
traditions in the Classical world, including Christianity, condemned both
sexual practices in very similar terms - both were incredibly far from
anything that could be considered "egalitarian" or, in even more modern terms,
respectful of "consent"!)

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varjag
Was this PKD's inspiration for Voight-Kampff machine?

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Theizestooke
Funny I thought of Clockwork Orange because of the dentist chair.

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zeristor
“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a
campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.”

O Canada

I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at
the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they
could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular logic.

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smcl
I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that
they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I
think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched
around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.

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DanBC
In the 1960's "I don't want gay men to work here" was acceptable and would not
have been seen as unpalatable. Same sex sexual activity was made legal in
Canada in 1969.

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quickthrower2
Also "Fruit machine" is a British term, referring to a slot machine.

~~~
borumpilot
The same in Dutch.

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zeristor
Compare this to the US Navy trying to root out the subversive cell of 'The
Friends of Dorothy'

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstanding)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c)

!! Facepalm concussion warning !!

If only they could get to this Dorothy then they could maybe get her to give
up a list of all the gay seamen, simples.

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mavihs
On the subject of pupil dilation, in the book Thinking fast and slow, Daniel
kahneman explains that for any mentally taxing task pupils dilate in
proportion to the difficult of the task. If the task is too difficult, they
don't dilate at all.

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diggan
That's interesting. I could imagine a video game to employ this somehow, as
basically the difficulty in designing video games is trying to make the game
not too hard or too easy, so the player gets a challenge but doesn't
experience it to be too hard.

Bit intrusive to get the pupil dilation currently, but maybe with future VR
gear we can get better information and adjust video game difficulty depending
on how the player is experiencing the game at the moment.

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ordu
There is a theoretical risk of player mind spotting the causal link and
abusing it. I cannot say definitely is it possible or not, but if pupils
dilated not only due to complexity of the task but for other reasons too, then
it would seem completely plausible for me.

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fbn79
Inspiration for [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-
Kampff_m...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Voight-
Kampff_machine)

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finnthehuman
2019: But this time when we use half-cooked classification to identify
undesirables and treat them badly it'll be different. We'll only target people
that are OK to shit on by contemporary social norms.

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prvc
Article contains some a priori speculative criticism of the test. I wonder if
its empirical efficacy has been assessed in the current epoch, and how that
would compare to using AI to assess facial features towards the same end.
Peculiar that the designers tried to measure interest rather than arousal
(which can be done somewhat reliably by taking readings from the genital
area).

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clarkey252
IIRC the Scientology E-Meter is quite similar to this, I can't quite remember
if one spawned the other.

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diggan
The concept of having a machine that can measure X attribute from humans have
probably been a thing for long before both of those. Probably the earliest
example of that (I can remember from the top of my head) is finding out if
someone is a witch by throwing them into water with a stone attached to them.
It's just with more technology, the "tests" become more advanced/elaborate.

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pferde
Indeed. See also: phrenology

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zeristor
Why has this article been flagged?

I take it this flag is down to users flagging it as an issue. But isn't that
exactly the point the article was raising?

