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I don't really disagree with you, but to play devil's advocate - when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it'

I don't really disagree with you, but to play devil's advocate - when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best interest of everyone? Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with... AI-produced child porn? Rolling coal and other egregious pollution? Online gambling? Abortion? Fentanyl?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
goosedragons 1y ago
Laws.
RenThraysk 1y ago
It's not what, it's how is the problem. Side stepping local country government, and applying pressure to payment processors to enforce your own rules globally should not be able to happen. Even a government should not be able to dictate what other countries do.
- miohtama 1y ago
  The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising the will of God and do not need to mess with things like laws
martin-t 1y ago
If somebody things he knows better, he shouldn't be allowed to push his views on others from his position of power. All public policies should be subject to public scrutiny. Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. For his view to be even considered, he should be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that whatever he is against is actually harmful. And after that, only after that, should the voting whether this finding should influence public policy begin. People should be allowed to harm themselves when they are informed about the consequences. Similarly, society should be allowed to harm itself because not everything has to be a race to the bottom of productivity and strength. Do abortions lower the birth rate and are more populous societies stronger? Even _if_ the answers are yes to both, I don't see why any society should optimize this metric to the extreme. And theological arguments quickly fall apart in the first step of proving harm.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  > Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. The pragmatics of activism prove contrary to this ideal. The reality is that this is a failed argument and it will continue to fail regardless of how often it's repeated. I hate to say it, but the only way to counter is to win at the activism game rather than complain about the rules.
  - martin-t 1y ago
    Nothing failed. People always did things they had no right to, as long as they were allowed to do them.
- Saline9515 1y ago
  Your propositions are contradictory. If "society" decides to harm itself, and I'm part of it, I'll have to suffer from the choices taken by others.
  - martin-t 1y ago
    Are you, personally, harmed by someone having an abortion? Are you, personally, harmed by someone watching porn? Maybe it makes society as a whole weaker compared to other societies but that doesn't mean your society actually loses anything. Countries have nuclear weapons and multi-national defense pacts now. Just because China has several times the population of the US and could win a conventional war, doesn't mean it's gonna invade. We don't live in tribes of a few hundred people who are constantly on the brink of starvation and/or genocide anymore. But many people are still governed by instincts from that environment.
    - Saline9515 1y ago
      The issues you are talking about are not "society-wide" issues requiring compliance of others. A better example would be to consider that pre-op transgender people, namely MtF, can share the same spaces that were reserved to biological women. For instance in sport. If I'm a woman and now I have to compete with a biological man in MMA because society chose that it's the new normal, yes, I'm going to suffer from it. If society decides that it's fair to feed Tiktok to toddlers who end up having their neurons fried, I'm going to suffer from it as well when they grew up as they won't be able to do their job well. If society decides that it's fair to allow CSAM everywhere, I guess that a few children are going to suffer as it becomes mainstream. We don't live in a vacuum.
amelius 1y ago
It all depends on how much power a company has, and so how easy it is to find alternatives.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
>whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best interest of everyone? That lines creates justification for anything and even everyone to be banned, sadly. >Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with... AI-produced child porn? My line is "is there a victim harmed with the action". Shooting a gun? Yes, someone is often harmed and killed. We should and do regulate gun usage. simulated CSAM is repulsive but does not have a victim, in theory. The jury is out on how you train such content, so I won't saw "AI porn has no victim", but the animated stuff within Steam definitely has no victim (and Steam pretty much forbids live actors of any form for such content. They dealt with such a case in 2023)
- Saline9515 1y ago
  The problem with simulated CSAM is that there is a risk that the viewer develops a fetish for such repulsive practices. It has then destructive consequences for the viewer and, should he try to perform it, his victims. Either way, I don't see the harm of forbidding it. The web doesn't lack regular pornography alternatives, free or paid.
  - true_religion 1y ago
    Gay conversion therapy, which has an entire society backing it, failed consistently despite trying pairing it with torture and social ostracism. This seems to suggest that broad sexual preferences are remarkably stable.
    - drdeca 1y ago
      I would imagine that it is probably easier to make someone find something sexually exciting than to make them no longer find a thing sexually exciting? When a river had carved a canyon, it is hard to redirect it. That doesn’t mean the canyon was always there.
      - true_religion 1y ago
        By that logic, one would think that gay people would at least also be heterosexual because they're drowning in an ocean of heterosexual material.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition Evidence. If you think something is harmful to society, you have a hypothesis. The next step is to test it. Not assume it's true and ban everything. I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are harmful. If I had to hazard a guess, and this is again just a hypothesis, I'd actually suspect that a teenager exposed to porn games is less likely to suffer mental-health issues than one on algorithmic social media or forming intimate connections with chatbots.
- kreco 1y ago
  This is not the correct way. If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still see people getting mad without much evidence. The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer. Precautionary principle should always prevail. That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still not wait for any proof that "it's harmless". You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless. Additionally, without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette). TL;DR: You actually need a proof, but it's a proof that it's harmless and not the other way around.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer Yes. Then the evidence was suppressed for decades more. We have no analogy here. > Precautionary principle should always prevail Why? Why assume the status quo is perfect? Also, what part of pornography isn't embedded into the human status quo? > don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless There is no such thing as "full proof." > without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette) Now do vaccines, antibiotics, filtered water, the agricultural revolution and every other life-saving invention.
    - 1y ago
can16358p 1y ago
Governments should educate people instead of outright banning things. And in the case of addiction like drugs or gambling, instead of stigmatizing the victims, they should be there to support them. Let people make their own decisions, not the government.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

goosedragons 1y ago

Laws.

RenThraysk 1y ago

It's not what, it's how is the problem. Side stepping local country government, and applying pressure to payment processors to enforce your own rules globally should not be able to happen. Even a government should not be able to dictate what other countries do.

miohtama 1y ago
The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising the will of God and do not need to mess with things like laws

martin-t 1y ago

If somebody things he knows better, he shouldn't be allowed to push his views on others from his position of power. All public policies should be subject to public scrutiny. Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. For his view to be even considered, he should be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that whatever he is against is actually harmful. And after that, only after that, should the voting whether this finding should influence public policy begin. People should be allowed to harm themselves when they are informed about the consequences. Similarly, society should be allowed to harm itself because not everything has to be a race to the bottom of productivity and strength. Do abortions lower the birth rate and are more populous societies stronger? Even _if_ the answers are yes to both, I don't see why any society should optimize this metric to the extreme. And theological arguments quickly fall apart in the first step of proving harm.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
> Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. The pragmatics of activism prove contrary to this ideal. The reality is that this is a failed argument and it will continue to fail regardless of how often it's repeated. I hate to say it, but the only way to counter is to win at the activism game rather than complain about the rules.
- martin-t 1y ago
  Nothing failed. People always did things they had no right to, as long as they were allowed to do them.
Saline9515 1y ago
Your propositions are contradictory. If "society" decides to harm itself, and I'm part of it, I'll have to suffer from the choices taken by others.
- martin-t 1y ago
  Are you, personally, harmed by someone having an abortion? Are you, personally, harmed by someone watching porn? Maybe it makes society as a whole weaker compared to other societies but that doesn't mean your society actually loses anything. Countries have nuclear weapons and multi-national defense pacts now. Just because China has several times the population of the US and could win a conventional war, doesn't mean it's gonna invade. We don't live in tribes of a few hundred people who are constantly on the brink of starvation and/or genocide anymore. But many people are still governed by instincts from that environment.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    The issues you are talking about are not "society-wide" issues requiring compliance of others. A better example would be to consider that pre-op transgender people, namely MtF, can share the same spaces that were reserved to biological women. For instance in sport. If I'm a woman and now I have to compete with a biological man in MMA because society chose that it's the new normal, yes, I'm going to suffer from it. If society decides that it's fair to feed Tiktok to toddlers who end up having their neurons fried, I'm going to suffer from it as well when they grew up as they won't be able to do their job well. If society decides that it's fair to allow CSAM everywhere, I guess that a few children are going to suffer as it becomes mainstream. We don't live in a vacuum.

amelius 1y ago

It all depends on how much power a company has, and so how easy it is to find alternatives.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

>whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best interest of everyone? That lines creates justification for anything and even everyone to be banned, sadly. >Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with... AI-produced child porn? My line is "is there a victim harmed with the action". Shooting a gun? Yes, someone is often harmed and killed. We should and do regulate gun usage. simulated CSAM is repulsive but does not have a victim, in theory. The jury is out on how you train such content, so I won't saw "AI porn has no victim", but the animated stuff within Steam definitely has no victim (and Steam pretty much forbids live actors of any form for such content. They dealt with such a case in 2023)

Saline9515 1y ago
The problem with simulated CSAM is that there is a risk that the viewer develops a fetish for such repulsive practices. It has then destructive consequences for the viewer and, should he try to perform it, his victims. Either way, I don't see the harm of forbidding it. The web doesn't lack regular pornography alternatives, free or paid.
- true_religion 1y ago
  Gay conversion therapy, which has an entire society backing it, failed consistently despite trying pairing it with torture and social ostracism. This seems to suggest that broad sexual preferences are remarkably stable.
  - drdeca 1y ago
    I would imagine that it is probably easier to make someone find something sexually exciting than to make them no longer find a thing sexually exciting? When a river had carved a canyon, it is hard to redirect it. That doesn’t mean the canyon was always there.
    - true_religion 1y ago
      By that logic, one would think that gay people would at least also be heterosexual because they're drowning in an ocean of heterosexual material.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition Evidence. If you think something is harmful to society, you have a hypothesis. The next step is to test it. Not assume it's true and ban everything. I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are harmful. If I had to hazard a guess, and this is again just a hypothesis, I'd actually suspect that a teenager exposed to porn games is less likely to suffer mental-health issues than one on algorithmic social media or forming intimate connections with chatbots.

kreco 1y ago
This is not the correct way. If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still see people getting mad without much evidence. The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer. Precautionary principle should always prevail. That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still not wait for any proof that "it's harmless". You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless. Additionally, without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette). TL;DR: You actually need a proof, but it's a proof that it's harmless and not the other way around.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer Yes. Then the evidence was suppressed for decades more. We have no analogy here. > Precautionary principle should always prevail Why? Why assume the status quo is perfect? Also, what part of pornography isn't embedded into the human status quo? > don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless There is no such thing as "full proof." > without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette) Now do vaccines, antibiotics, filtered water, the agricultural revolution and every other life-saving invention.
  - 1y ago

can16358p 1y ago

Governments should educate people instead of outright banning things. And in the case of addiction like drugs or gambling, instead of stigmatizing the victims, they should be there to support them. Let people make their own decisions, not the government.