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... harms children more than anything else This is not a strong line of argument. We don't have to fix things only in order of harm. IF it is considerably har

... harms children more than anything else This is not a strong line of argument. We don't have to fix things only in order of harm. IF it is considerably harmful, we should do something about it. It doesn't really matter if it is the most harmful.

kazinator 12y ago
Yes it does matter! It matters if we could easily spend fewer resources to fix a much greater harm, but we are focusing on some scapegoat due to moralistic reasons not having anything to do with the scale of (or even existence of) harm.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  It matters, sure, especially if there are great alternatives handy that really do spend much less resources for much more benefit AND working on the example at hand rules out alternatives. But without those qualifiers, it is a weak line of reasoning. It's pretty rare that we can attack a social problem only one way at a time. Is it a reasonable argument to say that the USA's carbon emissions do not need to be worried about, because the USA does not emit more carbon than anyone else? China produces about 40% more carbon than the USA.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
That's assuming it's actually harmful, which we have absolutely no proof of, just "think uh duh childrens" gut feelings. Society hasn't collapsed just because kids have had access to internet porn for a few generations. A more libertarian perspective would be "unless you can prove something is causing demonstrable, serious harm, the government should not be involved in it at all, because at best you're wasting resources on something insignificant, or at worst you're unintentionally causing actual, demonstrable damage to society in pursuit of a misguided goal." Not that it really matters in this case, it's obvious that Cameron doesn't give a shit about porn and is just using this as an excuse to curb civil liberties and justify surveillance.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  How quickly do you need society to collapse anyway? Just because it hasn't collapsed yet doesn't mean it isn't collapsing. Wouldn't disturbing trends precede this collapse, like time magazine's report on millenials[0] or the abysmal state of technical writing? [0] http://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/millennials.jpg http://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/millennials.jp...
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    What on earth does that have to do with internet porn? I think you took my mention of societal collapse way too literally, but if you want my serious opinion on that, the real problems afflicting millennials are all directly caused by economic woes, while the moralistic whining about attitudes and porn and snapchat etc. is part out-of-touch curmudgeons being curmudgeons as they have always been, and part governments and their media lapdogs trying to point the finger away from said economic woes. See Japan, where porn and "parasite singles" are constantly blamed by the media for the nation's low birth rates, when the more logical answer is that Japan never fully recovered from its bubble and most people simply can't afford to get married and have kids these days.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  That's assuming it's actually harmful I had hoped "IF it is considerably harmful" covered that, but I guess I wasn't verbose enough. Please don't assume that, because I object to my parent's argument, I support the decision.
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    I caught that. I will also admit that I could have been more verbose and state that I was primarily objecting to >we should do something about it. because I believe governments and societies generally function better when they err on the side of permissiveness whenever possible. Even if we did agree that pornography is "bad," not every "bad" thing should warrant a response. Also, I think you were wrong to object to your parent commenter's argument, because there is a big difference between "us" choosing between "stopping" internet pornography or violence on the nightly news, and the government and media hypocritically attempting to censor one kind of (allegedly) traumatizing material while flaunting and sensationalizing an arguably much more traumatizing kind.
peterwwillis 12y ago
So what criteria do you use to determine what you should 'fix'? If you're going to do it arbitrarily, I suggest we just ban all images and videos on the entire internet. It's a much more elegant solution and it would fix more issues. Of course, we would need to create filters for ASCII pr0n, lest the kiddies on a BBS suddenly become paralyzed by a boob made out of markup.
Dylan16807 12y ago
Acting against harmful things is very often not a net positive. Children playing and scraping their knees, etc. In the cast of overreacting to nudity, uh, maybe you risk weird sexual hangups later in life that can interfere with intimacy? On top of negative effects that happen when you get as far as censorship.

kazinator 12y ago

Yes it does matter! It matters if we could easily spend fewer resources to fix a much greater harm, but we are focusing on some scapegoat due to moralistic reasons not having anything to do with the scale of (or even existence of) harm.

sliverstorm 12y ago
It matters, sure, especially if there are great alternatives handy that really do spend much less resources for much more benefit AND working on the example at hand rules out alternatives. But without those qualifiers, it is a weak line of reasoning. It's pretty rare that we can attack a social problem only one way at a time. Is it a reasonable argument to say that the USA's carbon emissions do not need to be worried about, because the USA does not emit more carbon than anyone else? China produces about 40% more carbon than the USA.

ANTSANTS 12y ago

That's assuming it's actually harmful, which we have absolutely no proof of, just "think uh duh childrens" gut feelings. Society hasn't collapsed just because kids have had access to internet porn for a few generations. A more libertarian perspective would be "unless you can prove something is causing demonstrable, serious harm, the government should not be involved in it at all, because at best you're wasting resources on something insignificant, or at worst you're unintentionally causing actual, demonstrable damage to society in pursuit of a misguided goal." Not that it really matters in this case, it's obvious that Cameron doesn't give a shit about porn and is just using this as an excuse to curb civil liberties and justify surveillance.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
How quickly do you need society to collapse anyway? Just because it hasn't collapsed yet doesn't mean it isn't collapsing. Wouldn't disturbing trends precede this collapse, like time magazine's report on millenials[0] or the abysmal state of technical writing? [0] http://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/millennials.jpg http://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/millennials.jp...
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  What on earth does that have to do with internet porn? I think you took my mention of societal collapse way too literally, but if you want my serious opinion on that, the real problems afflicting millennials are all directly caused by economic woes, while the moralistic whining about attitudes and porn and snapchat etc. is part out-of-touch curmudgeons being curmudgeons as they have always been, and part governments and their media lapdogs trying to point the finger away from said economic woes. See Japan, where porn and "parasite singles" are constantly blamed by the media for the nation's low birth rates, when the more logical answer is that Japan never fully recovered from its bubble and most people simply can't afford to get married and have kids these days.
sliverstorm 12y ago
That's assuming it's actually harmful I had hoped "IF it is considerably harmful" covered that, but I guess I wasn't verbose enough. Please don't assume that, because I object to my parent's argument, I support the decision.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  I caught that. I will also admit that I could have been more verbose and state that I was primarily objecting to >we should do something about it. because I believe governments and societies generally function better when they err on the side of permissiveness whenever possible. Even if we did agree that pornography is "bad," not every "bad" thing should warrant a response. Also, I think you were wrong to object to your parent commenter's argument, because there is a big difference between "us" choosing between "stopping" internet pornography or violence on the nightly news, and the government and media hypocritically attempting to censor one kind of (allegedly) traumatizing material while flaunting and sensationalizing an arguably much more traumatizing kind.

peterwwillis 12y ago

So what criteria do you use to determine what you should 'fix'? If you're going to do it arbitrarily, I suggest we just ban all images and videos on the entire internet. It's a much more elegant solution and it would fix more issues. Of course, we would need to create filters for ASCII pr0n, lest the kiddies on a BBS suddenly become paralyzed by a boob made out of markup.

Dylan16807 12y ago

Acting against harmful things is very often not a net positive. Children playing and scraping their knees, etc. In the cast of overreacting to nudity, uh, maybe you risk weird sexual hangups later in life that can interfere with intimacy? On top of negative effects that happen when you get as far as censorship.