3 ms·

Are there any actual studies on this? Does access to simulations of illegal or objectionable material make pedophiles, rape fetishists, etc. more or less likely

Are there any actual studies on this? Does access to simulations of illegal or objectionable material make pedophiles, rape fetishists, etc. more or less likely to try to access the real thing (or even worse, to try to commit crimes in the real world)? Because both possibilities are plausible, it’s hard to know which is correct.

kristopolous 1y ago
Even if there are I and likely you lack the qualifications of making any clinical takeaways from them. I'd really defer to experts. I try to make tools in good faith and hope they're used responsibly to make the world a better place. I'm not a clinical psychologist nor can I pretend to understand medical literature like someone with a PhD
- danw1979 1y ago
  I can’t tell if the part of this post after they have made this “thing of questionable safety” and then bury their head in the sand is satirical or not.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - kristopolous 1y ago
    Why is it controversial to state that medical expertise is a technical field that engineers should defer to experts in? It doesn't mean I can do things recklessly. Instead it's an acknowledgment of when I need to defer to somebody else just like I need to call up an attorney for legal stuff or an accountant for tax stuff.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      It’s not controversial but it doesn’t address my question at all. A: I’m curious about X. B: We should trust the experts! Sure, but what do the experts say? That was my entire question.
NikolaNovak 1y ago
My wife has recently joined board of directors for a local non-profit helping victims of childhood sexual abuse. They are not religious or pornography prescriptive - they are liberal atheist whose entire focus is essentially sessions to help people who are currently adults and carrying baggage and impact of dreadful acts committed to them decades ago. Anyhoo, The current "state of the art", as-scientific-as-we-currently have it findings are that for pedophilia, consuming content unfortunately normalizes and drives increasing urges, instead of giving them same outlet. It's a very very tricky area because current thought is also that pedophilia is "not curable" - it is sexual orientation thay we as society find unacceptable (me included, fwiw), so... Repression, wildly and rightly disawowed for other sexual orientations, is the current direction for pedophilia - I.e. Current thinking is that "victim-free" pornography consumption nevertheless tremendously increases actual risk to actual kids in the vicinity of the consumer. Until relatively recently I was the technologist on a highty horse about online freedoms and largely still very much am. But in this specific area I've also had some semi personal experiences with pedophiles and my level of empathy to them has dropped to near zero and my level of empathy toward their victims has gone even further through the roof. Sometimes in technologist circles we think of this as edge case not worth consideration, but reality, very very unfortunately, is much much darker. Don't get me wrong : I'm pro pornography freedoms, think it'd be huge fun to have a sexy high quality chatbot, and I find vast majority of those railing against it to be hypocrites with dishonest ulterior motives - and don't get me started on all the tangential "for the children" crap that religious rights tries to enact, as opposed to actually help children and families ;-< But to the question of "is harmless pornography Indulgence better for paedophile and society", current thinking is "very much no".
- slt2021 1y ago
  I agree you captured my thoughts exactly. most of the perpetrators of child sexual abuse are victim's close people: teacher/cousin/brother/uncle/father/etc. the reinforcement of their lust will only remove whatever remaining barrier against such repulsive behavior, and once the novelty from synthetic CP wears out, it will create urge to commit real crime with real victims
  - 1y ago
Aeolun 1y ago
I feel like the people that would be capable of giving you an answer would be very careful not to actually give you one. You can’t really research when the only thing you can be certain of is the known real cases. It’s much harder to quantify people that only have it in their head.
numpad0 1y ago
Science always says more porn/gore = fewer crimes statistically. So opinions like these rarely come with citations. It's not completely clear if it's just a spurious correlation or if there's a real causation, but eh, more training data + neutral alignment training is how humans train AIs, I don't see why would some says that's not how baby humans are to be trained.

kristopolous 1y ago

Even if there are I and likely you lack the qualifications of making any clinical takeaways from them. I'd really defer to experts. I try to make tools in good faith and hope they're used responsibly to make the world a better place. I'm not a clinical psychologist nor can I pretend to understand medical literature like someone with a PhD

danw1979 1y ago
I can’t tell if the part of this post after they have made this “thing of questionable safety” and then bury their head in the sand is satirical or not.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- kristopolous 1y ago
  Why is it controversial to state that medical expertise is a technical field that engineers should defer to experts in? It doesn't mean I can do things recklessly. Instead it's an acknowledgment of when I need to defer to somebody else just like I need to call up an attorney for legal stuff or an accountant for tax stuff.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    It’s not controversial but it doesn’t address my question at all. A: I’m curious about X. B: We should trust the experts! Sure, but what do the experts say? That was my entire question.

NikolaNovak 1y ago

My wife has recently joined board of directors for a local non-profit helping victims of childhood sexual abuse. They are not religious or pornography prescriptive - they are liberal atheist whose entire focus is essentially sessions to help people who are currently adults and carrying baggage and impact of dreadful acts committed to them decades ago. Anyhoo, The current "state of the art", as-scientific-as-we-currently have it findings are that for pedophilia, consuming content unfortunately normalizes and drives increasing urges, instead of giving them same outlet. It's a very very tricky area because current thought is also that pedophilia is "not curable" - it is sexual orientation thay we as society find unacceptable (me included, fwiw), so... Repression, wildly and rightly disawowed for other sexual orientations, is the current direction for pedophilia - I.e. Current thinking is that "victim-free" pornography consumption nevertheless tremendously increases actual risk to actual kids in the vicinity of the consumer. Until relatively recently I was the technologist on a highty horse about online freedoms and largely still very much am. But in this specific area I've also had some semi personal experiences with pedophiles and my level of empathy to them has dropped to near zero and my level of empathy toward their victims has gone even further through the roof. Sometimes in technologist circles we think of this as edge case not worth consideration, but reality, very very unfortunately, is much much darker. Don't get me wrong : I'm pro pornography freedoms, think it'd be huge fun to have a sexy high quality chatbot, and I find vast majority of those railing against it to be hypocrites with dishonest ulterior motives - and don't get me started on all the tangential "for the children" crap that religious rights tries to enact, as opposed to actually help children and families ;-< But to the question of "is harmless pornography Indulgence better for paedophile and society", current thinking is "very much no".

slt2021 1y ago
I agree you captured my thoughts exactly. most of the perpetrators of child sexual abuse are victim's close people: teacher/cousin/brother/uncle/father/etc. the reinforcement of their lust will only remove whatever remaining barrier against such repulsive behavior, and once the novelty from synthetic CP wears out, it will create urge to commit real crime with real victims
- 1y ago

Aeolun 1y ago

I feel like the people that would be capable of giving you an answer would be very careful not to actually give you one. You can’t really research when the only thing you can be certain of is the known real cases. It’s much harder to quantify people that only have it in their head.

numpad0 1y ago

Science always says more porn/gore = fewer crimes statistically. So opinions like these rarely come with citations. It's not completely clear if it's just a spurious correlation or if there's a real causation, but eh, more training data + neutral alignment training is how humans train AIs, I don't see why would some says that's not how baby humans are to be trained.