3 ms·

I prefer self-control to government legislation or peer pressure. There was an article here on HN about a spying app that lets your church community make sure

I prefer self-control to government legislation or peer pressure. There was an article here on HN about a spying app that lets your church community make sure you're not watching porn. So bizarre. Either you believe in what you're doing or you don't.

drdeca 4y ago
Is the reason you view it that way due to having anti-anti-porn sentiments? Suppose instead of a app where a church community can see whether the person who has installed the application has viewed pornography, you instead consider someone who has suffered from alcoholism and is trying to stay away from alcohol, and wishes to be held accountable to others for their decisions. (Now, of course, one difference between these scenarios is that alcoholism is like, a medical condition? but the analogy is about the type of intervention, not saying that the two scenarios exactly correspond.) What one might call a "revealed preference" might not be a preference that the person who has it, endorses. Suppose someone is finding that they keep distracting themself with some diversion (perhaps a videogame) when the course of action they endorse for themself is to complete some other task first. They might turn to their friend, hand them the (e.g.) video game console or whatever, and tell their friend to hold on to it until they've demonstrated to the friend that they've accomplished the task. Of course, if someone doesn't choose such an arrangement, and it is foisted on them by others, then that can be more questionable, but the general mechanism of using others, and the judgement of others, to guide one's actions towards what one wants one's future actions to be like, is legitimate, and can be useful.
a1369209993 4y ago
To be fair, enlisting peer pressure to help you keep your resolutions is a perfectly legitimate tactic if you're the sort of person that works for. The reason apps like are bad and should be felony-illegal is that they're mostly used to force victims to obey someone else's resolutions, to the point that the whole class of software is named after the fact that the typical intended victims are children: "parental controls" or "nannyware".

drdeca 4y ago

Is the reason you view it that way due to having anti-anti-porn sentiments? Suppose instead of a app where a church community can see whether the person who has installed the application has viewed pornography, you instead consider someone who has suffered from alcoholism and is trying to stay away from alcohol, and wishes to be held accountable to others for their decisions. (Now, of course, one difference between these scenarios is that alcoholism is like, a medical condition? but the analogy is about the type of intervention, not saying that the two scenarios exactly correspond.) What one might call a "revealed preference" might not be a preference that the person who has it, endorses. Suppose someone is finding that they keep distracting themself with some diversion (perhaps a videogame) when the course of action they endorse for themself is to complete some other task first. They might turn to their friend, hand them the (e.g.) video game console or whatever, and tell their friend to hold on to it until they've demonstrated to the friend that they've accomplished the task. Of course, if someone doesn't choose such an arrangement, and it is foisted on them by others, then that can be more questionable, but the general mechanism of using others, and the judgement of others, to guide one's actions towards what one wants one's future actions to be like, is legitimate, and can be useful.

a1369209993 4y ago

To be fair, enlisting peer pressure to help you keep your resolutions is a perfectly legitimate tactic if you're the sort of person that works for. The reason apps like are bad and should be felony-illegal is that they're mostly used to force victims to obey someone else's resolutions, to the point that the whole class of software is named after the fact that the typical intended victims are children: "parental controls" or "nannyware".