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There’s plenty of material that lands near the fine line and there’s plenty of material that lands nowhere close to it. Let’s start by saying “synthetically ge

There’s plenty of material that lands near the fine line and there’s plenty of material that lands nowhere close to it. Let’s start by saying “synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” This conversation is very very far from trying to figure out the intricacies of complicated cases. This is people saying, “there’s no relevant concept of consent” and “there’s no harm inflicted by pixels which just so happen to look like a real person.” For the former, you merely have to ask why we have any concept of consent anywhere at all, and the answer is: to make it illegal to do certain things which inflict certain harms. So here is a new specific way to produce a new specific harm. Don’t think it’s a harm? You merely have to ask someone who has had this done to them if they feel harmed or not. A bunch of 20-50 year old dudes on HN saying “I wouldn’t care lol” doesn’t qualify. I personally am more inclined to trust the victim advocacy groups and researchers who overwhelmingly agree that sharing nonconsensual sexual imagery of someone does inflict harm upon them. This argument is apparently so obvious that we in fact have curtailed freedom of speech along various boundaries of this area, and only complete weirdos or “I am very smart because I logic good” people have a hard time understanding why that is.

corethree 3y ago
If we just banned things because it harms people then journalism would be out of business. Any damning article with an associated damning photograph would be censored. In your blindness you crossed several lines already. It's your attitude that creates places like china where they censor and stop freedom of speech. I wouldn't want people like you in power. I would prefer someone like me who can see both sides of the story. > “synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” It's not of a real person. The argument can easily be made that the person just happens to look like the real person. I guarantee you for every nude painting of a fictitious person there is at least one person in the world who looks identical to that photo. In fact the science says there's roughly seven people per person. https://www.audacy.com/y98/news/you-have-at-least-six-doppelgangers-out-there-in-the-world https://www.audacy.com/y98/news/you-have-at-least-six-doppel.... That renders almost all realistic nude art of fictitious people illegal under your rules. >This argument is apparently so obvious that we in fact have curtailed freedom of speech along various boundaries of this area, and only complete weirdos or “I am very smart because I logic good” people have a hard time understanding why that is. Nah. I'm not like that. Let me spell out what your saying here without that "logic". You are calling me a pedantic over logical ass hole while trying to skirt the rules of HN. But your intention is clear you basically called me a weirdo. Haha well fuck you too. The opposite of that would be an idealistic idiot out to protect the sanctity of all women without rational thought. A simp who who tries to display his false confidence by getting angry at anything that even questions things that slightly harm women. And I'll be straight here, that sinp is you. You realize women have the upper hand in many arenas in life that are unfair towards men? They can ruin you by declaring rape or harassment. They can fucking end you on on just an allegation. In divorces they can take your child and half your wealth. And MANY women exploit this imbalance. The current status quo exists because of some idiot like you didn't think shit through and just wanted to "protect" women so they made these things into laws. This does not mean that what happened here is not wrong. This topic deserves fair discussion and women deserve to be treated as equals. But this blind allegiance to protect women at all costs and get fucking angry when someone even questions these things is blindness. You put women on some sort of pedestal. Wake the hell up. They are human and it's stupid to suddenly make sweeping censorship laws just to protect their sacred purity. Open your fucking mind. This topic and the intricacies and far reaching consequences deserves a genuine discussion without you trying to skirt the rules and call me some over pedantic weirdo. Don't be a Dick. Engage in conversation with people who talk about these things. Don't be all uppity like you're on some moral high ground and think you're 100 percent justified to just rage because your protecting women. I definitely don't see this type of behavior when people on HN talk about other issues. Those people who like to pretend to be overly "rational" don't get called out on other topics. But when it comes to women's issues then that's when cliche characters like you appear... trying to be all protective for no reason.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Glad I'm dealing with a sensible interlocutor here. I was not calling you a weirdo or logic pedant actually, I was referring to people who have a hard time understanding why we have already curtailed freedom of speech in similar areas, such as making it illegal to produce or distribute or view CSAM. Clear "violation" of free speech, yet we seem to be just fine having done it. If you also struggle with that concept due to "we could become China" then yeah, you're a weirdo and/or pedant, but I don't think you've made that argument. Rather my position is that you likely do see why we've made it illegal to produce/distribute/view CSAM, and the same logic powering that position can inform a position here. And yes I agree that this deserves genuine discussion, which is why I've been laying out my arguments for it and drawing analogies to existing protections we already have which already curtail freedom of speech, as a response to your "we could become China" refrain.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Csam laws make sense of course. But there are fuzzy boundaries here too. If your 18 and you have sex with a 17 year old. That can be classified as rape. Not sure the age of csam, but a 17 year old would enter this boundary. It doesn't make sense that it's illegal at 17 and suddenly legal at 18. I think this is a necessary downside to a necessary law. But the thing with AI generated art is that the boundaries are too fuzzy. You will get worse consequences then just the fuzziness of the 17 and 18 year old boundary. And those consequences are farther reaching. What you're not seeing is that csam despite it's necessity means we are already traveling down that path of "China." You are already using that law and laws related to argue for more laws. Draw the trend line. Personally I think censoring AI generated art could represent a sort of tipping point where everything changed.
cooper_ganglia 3y ago
>”Synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” I would agree with the premise, but not the line of reasoning that follows. Personally, I would say that the freedom of speech will always be more relevant and much more important than the subjective experience of perceived harm. Much like I don’t think the government should be able to dictate to a woman whether she’s allowed to have a medical procedure or not, I don’t think a corrupt group of politicians should be the ones to dictate what kind of images my computer is allowed to make, assuming that I’m starting with an entirely ethically-sourced dataset. I think it’s also worth considering why laws like these exist in the first place. They’re good and important, but I don’t think the root reason for them is to stop these kinds of images from being distributed. I think the root reason for these laws is to stop the production of CSAM using children, which absolutely is incredibly harmful and disgusting. I think that’s a good thing to stop, and if some guy in his basement looking at AI porn that stops him from supporting material that actually hurts real, living, breathing kids, then I think I’m conceptually okay with it. If it protects children and reduces the CSAM market, both consumption and production, isn’t that an overall good thing?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  The reason it's illegal to distribute and possess CSAM is, to my knowledge, not to mitigate demand for its production, but specifically because we have every indication that its distribution (really, knowledge of its distribution) does inflict subjective harm on the victims. The reason anything is illegal is because of the subjective experience of perceived harm. There is no harm that exists other than the "subjective", "experienced", and "perceived" kind. The question is just whether the rest of society empathizes enough with that harm to protect against it. I do find the argument around allowing (fully) synthetically produced imagery in order to satiate demand for CSAM without harming real people an interesting one. I'm not sure where I land but probably probably somewhere near "if it actually reduces demand for harm-producing imagery, then good, and if it does not reduce that demand, then bad." I.e. this position would probably increase everyone's chances of coming across synthetic CSAM which in turn might actually increase the market for "authentic" material. Not sure how this would play out.

corethree 3y ago

If we just banned things because it harms people then journalism would be out of business. Any damning article with an associated damning photograph would be censored. In your blindness you crossed several lines already. It's your attitude that creates places like china where they censor and stop freedom of speech. I wouldn't want people like you in power. I would prefer someone like me who can see both sides of the story. > “synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” It's not of a real person. The argument can easily be made that the person just happens to look like the real person. I guarantee you for every nude painting of a fictitious person there is at least one person in the world who looks identical to that photo. In fact the science says there's roughly seven people per person. https://www.audacy.com/y98/news/you-have-at-least-six-doppelgangers-out-there-in-the-world https://www.audacy.com/y98/news/you-have-at-least-six-doppel.... That renders almost all realistic nude art of fictitious people illegal under your rules. >This argument is apparently so obvious that we in fact have curtailed freedom of speech along various boundaries of this area, and only complete weirdos or “I am very smart because I logic good” people have a hard time understanding why that is. Nah. I'm not like that. Let me spell out what your saying here without that "logic". You are calling me a pedantic over logical ass hole while trying to skirt the rules of HN. But your intention is clear you basically called me a weirdo. Haha well fuck you too. The opposite of that would be an idealistic idiot out to protect the sanctity of all women without rational thought. A simp who who tries to display his false confidence by getting angry at anything that even questions things that slightly harm women. And I'll be straight here, that sinp is you. You realize women have the upper hand in many arenas in life that are unfair towards men? They can ruin you by declaring rape or harassment. They can fucking end you on on just an allegation. In divorces they can take your child and half your wealth. And MANY women exploit this imbalance. The current status quo exists because of some idiot like you didn't think shit through and just wanted to "protect" women so they made these things into laws. This does not mean that what happened here is not wrong. This topic deserves fair discussion and women deserve to be treated as equals. But this blind allegiance to protect women at all costs and get fucking angry when someone even questions these things is blindness. You put women on some sort of pedestal. Wake the hell up. They are human and it's stupid to suddenly make sweeping censorship laws just to protect their sacred purity. Open your fucking mind. This topic and the intricacies and far reaching consequences deserves a genuine discussion without you trying to skirt the rules and call me some over pedantic weirdo. Don't be a Dick. Engage in conversation with people who talk about these things. Don't be all uppity like you're on some moral high ground and think you're 100 percent justified to just rage because your protecting women. I definitely don't see this type of behavior when people on HN talk about other issues. Those people who like to pretend to be overly "rational" don't get called out on other topics. But when it comes to women's issues then that's when cliche characters like you appear... trying to be all protective for no reason.

ethanbond 3y ago
Glad I'm dealing with a sensible interlocutor here. I was not calling you a weirdo or logic pedant actually, I was referring to people who have a hard time understanding why we have already curtailed freedom of speech in similar areas, such as making it illegal to produce or distribute or view CSAM. Clear "violation" of free speech, yet we seem to be just fine having done it. If you also struggle with that concept due to "we could become China" then yeah, you're a weirdo and/or pedant, but I don't think you've made that argument. Rather my position is that you likely do see why we've made it illegal to produce/distribute/view CSAM, and the same logic powering that position can inform a position here. And yes I agree that this deserves genuine discussion, which is why I've been laying out my arguments for it and drawing analogies to existing protections we already have which already curtail freedom of speech, as a response to your "we could become China" refrain.
- corethree 3y ago
  Csam laws make sense of course. But there are fuzzy boundaries here too. If your 18 and you have sex with a 17 year old. That can be classified as rape. Not sure the age of csam, but a 17 year old would enter this boundary. It doesn't make sense that it's illegal at 17 and suddenly legal at 18. I think this is a necessary downside to a necessary law. But the thing with AI generated art is that the boundaries are too fuzzy. You will get worse consequences then just the fuzziness of the 17 and 18 year old boundary. And those consequences are farther reaching. What you're not seeing is that csam despite it's necessity means we are already traveling down that path of "China." You are already using that law and laws related to argue for more laws. Draw the trend line. Personally I think censoring AI generated art could represent a sort of tipping point where everything changed.

cooper_ganglia 3y ago

>”Synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” I would agree with the premise, but not the line of reasoning that follows. Personally, I would say that the freedom of speech will always be more relevant and much more important than the subjective experience of perceived harm. Much like I don’t think the government should be able to dictate to a woman whether she’s allowed to have a medical procedure or not, I don’t think a corrupt group of politicians should be the ones to dictate what kind of images my computer is allowed to make, assuming that I’m starting with an entirely ethically-sourced dataset. I think it’s also worth considering why laws like these exist in the first place. They’re good and important, but I don’t think the root reason for them is to stop these kinds of images from being distributed. I think the root reason for these laws is to stop the production of CSAM using children, which absolutely is incredibly harmful and disgusting. I think that’s a good thing to stop, and if some guy in his basement looking at AI porn that stops him from supporting material that actually hurts real, living, breathing kids, then I think I’m conceptually okay with it. If it protects children and reduces the CSAM market, both consumption and production, isn’t that an overall good thing?

ethanbond 3y ago
The reason it's illegal to distribute and possess CSAM is, to my knowledge, not to mitigate demand for its production, but specifically because we have every indication that its distribution (really, knowledge of its distribution) does inflict subjective harm on the victims. The reason anything is illegal is because of the subjective experience of perceived harm. There is no harm that exists other than the "subjective", "experienced", and "perceived" kind. The question is just whether the rest of society empathizes enough with that harm to protect against it. I do find the argument around allowing (fully) synthetically produced imagery in order to satiate demand for CSAM without harming real people an interesting one. I'm not sure where I land but probably probably somewhere near "if it actually reduces demand for harm-producing imagery, then good, and if it does not reduce that demand, then bad." I.e. this position would probably increase everyone's chances of coming across synthetic CSAM which in turn might actually increase the market for "authentic" material. Not sure how this would play out.