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X has new rules that officially allow porn

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Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just watch that one of 14 year old boys. If you're in a mixed gender school, you're basically in a building with hundred of potential candidates. > It is a minor miracle if you date at 14 years old. Just about everything is stacked against you I disagree. Your only competition is other 14-16(hopefully not higher) year olds, none of whom have careers! > It's completely OK if you're content with not having any romant…

Most of 14-15 years old girls are not romantically active as it seems, and when they are, they would overwhelmingly prefer older boys (with the 2 years rule et al). As a 14 years old boy you're not really going to date 12 years old girls obviously. 16 years old girls may date anyone from 14 to 35. Some of them are not romantically active and ones who are, will overwhelmingly prefer older boys and young men. That woul…

Speaking from personal experience when I was in school, there were a a decent amount of relationships between students in the same year(often sharing some sort of classes).

> Apologies, but I was reading that you are claiming that dating at 14 years old damages your future prospects. Perhaps I couldn't parse.

To avoid any confusion, my stance is: Regular pornography viewing (as a 14 year old or as an adult) hurts your perception of what normal relationships/sex are and will hurt your relationships, in the future or in the current. Additionally it creates complacency as it's easier to put on a website and rub one out than it is to improve yourself to be a good candidate, and go out and meet women. Additionally the porn industry is very harmful towards women (sex trafficking, and incentivizing 18 year old women to perform, when your prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed yet).

> I'm just at loss why you don't list the negatives of NOT watching pornography

I don't believe there's any beside quick release.

> such as feeling lonely, worthless and desperate, not having any meaning to your life, and not having any way to divert these thoughts

I disagree that pornography viewing actually helps combat any of those. I would say it actually helps those grow. Feeling of loneliness is at it's highest, and so is pornography viewing (but, correlation does not mean causation). I don't think you can replace real human interactions with pornography (or parasocial relationships, for that matter).

I'm curious, do you think AI boyfriend/girlfriend/friend is/will be a plus or a negative on society?

I do agree on what you said about dysfunction/pre-mature ejaculation, but I don't think it's the only factor. I think that porn can also contribute. Either through "death-grip", unrealistic expectation of sex/beauty, or requiring more "hardcore"/"extreme" content to become aroused.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of 14-15 years old girls are not romantically active as it seems, and when they are, they would overwhelmingly prefer older boys (with the 2 years rule et al). As a 14 years old boy you're not really going to date 12 years old girls obviously. 16 years old girls may date anyone from 14 to 35. Some of them are not romantically active and ones who are, will overwhelmingly prefer older boys and young men. That woul…

Speaking from personal experience when I was in school, there were a a decent amount of relationships between students in the same year(often sharing some sort of classes). > Apologies, but I was reading that you are claiming that dating at 14 years old damages your future prospects. Perhaps I couldn't parse. To avoid any confusion, my stance is: Regular pornography viewing (as a 14 year old or as an adult) hurts you…

> Feeling of loneliness is at its highest

The research attributes this mainly to the decline in alcohol consumption. Which I suppose isn't terribly surprising. Alcohol has been long known as the "social lubricant" for good reason.

> and so is pornography viewing (but, correlation does not mean causation).

Causation is not implied, but at the same time it wouldn't be very human-like to see that decline in alcohol consumption be replaced by nothing, so perhaps you are onto something. Perhaps alcohol consumption is on the decline because porn is taking its place. They do both target dopamine production, so it is not inconceivable.

The temperance movement putting more emphasis on pornography lends additional credence to the idea, although perhaps that is simply because they feel they are finally starting to "win the war" on alcohol.

> I'm curious, do you think AI boyfriend/girlfriend/friend is/will be a plus or a negative on society?

You can always tell when you are around tech people. Hint: The real world isn't binary.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#123
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic stability (and the lack thereof) makes it difficult to start / grow a family. This also extends to difficulties in family planning. The result of this is that it can be economically safer / more stable to live alone in an apartment than it would be to spend money on courtship, expectations of a wedding, and house. Lack of social support for families with children. Once you have a child, the costs and demands…

> And so, yea, guys aren't sexually active. The social, medical, and economic risks are too high for all people involved. I don't really see how you equate being sexually active with reproduction though. In this day and age they are very different things. And many men and also many women (though I believe less, they often have an urge to have them) simply don't want kids. Doesn't mean that they can't have a relations…

Up four comments in the chain we're replying and you get:

> Well, birth rates are below replacement rates in most western countries where pornography is consumed more than elsewhere. Also, more people are single, more men are not sexually active, high divorce rates, etc.

The implication is that porn is hindering the replacement rate of a population.

This gets into various other dog whistles (if you poke at dead comments you'll find even more overt ones). https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ICSR-Report-Sle... (page 22 is where the section on pornography begins) (the publisher of the document is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_the_S... )

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of 14-15 years old girls are not romantically active as it seems, and when they are, they would overwhelmingly prefer older boys (with the 2 years rule et al). As a 14 years old boy you're not really going to date 12 years old girls obviously. 16 years old girls may date anyone from 14 to 35. Some of them are not romantically active and ones who are, will overwhelmingly prefer older boys and young men. That woul…

Speaking from personal experience when I was in school, there were a a decent amount of relationships between students in the same year(often sharing some sort of classes). > Apologies, but I was reading that you are claiming that dating at 14 years old damages your future prospects. Perhaps I couldn't parse. To avoid any confusion, my stance is: Regular pornography viewing (as a 14 year old or as an adult) hurts you…

I believe that "AI girlfriend" is bullshit. Romantic relations are inherently socially validating. Having an AI talk to you does not validate you. It does not have any choice, after all.

"Decent amount of relationships" is bullshit. There's a decent number of housing and renting anywhere housing crisis is taking place. It is purely a question of supply and demand and therefore odds.

It is as reasonable to say "look, some students are having relationships so you're a-OK" as "look, some people are renting and even buying homes, why aren't you happy".

The demand formula is overwhelmingly stacked against young boys. They had their options a hundred years ago; and fifty years ago perhaps they were just supposed to cope in the late-adolescence doll-house setup, but today it increasingly looks like you have no mouth but must scream.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just rub one out instead of making an effort on meeting potential partners & improving yourself to make yourself suitable. It's not nearly as satisfying as the real thing though. For me it can never be a replacement. Just an addition.

For a lot, it's enough for them not to have to go out of their comfort zone and put in effort. It's a lot easier to open up a site than it is for an average guy to get laid.

> It's a lot easier to open up a site than it is for an average guy to get laid.

Well, yes, absolutely. It's quite difficult actually. Especially if your only goal is "to get laid" and don't want any other commitment. There's apps like tinder of course but even then it's quite difficult to stand out for men. I certainly don't manage that.

Personally I think it's more fair on the lady in question to just pay for it in those cases. Where both parties know what to expect and there is no pretense of more. No messing with hearts.

When it comes to that it's not like it difficult (though I suppose in the US it's illegal in some states, where I'm from it's quite normal).

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dedicated sites have the issue of being targeted from all sides, right wing hates them for porn, left wing hates them for not being able to filter out exploitation, revenge porn etc and then they also have to fight payment processors who, for some ridiculous reason, are still allowed to screw with any business with zero accountability. I think all those factors combine to make them have to be kind of politically neut…

I think you might be drawing a false equivalence. Left wing solutions to things like porn, gambling, drugs, sex work, abortion - is to regulate them so that they are "safe" (harm-reduced) & then find ways to reduce those activities in first place & provide support for people to get out of those activities. Left wing considers these as social problems - not legal. In contrast, right wing views these as problems to be…

Where do you see the group of people who are libertarian on the issue? In other words, people who think that the premise that drugs are immoral is flawed, and they should be regulated for safety, but society does not need to discourage their use and certainly does not need to ban them.

I see those people as on the moderately far left, at least in the United States. There are plenty of people on the moderately far left who are not libertarian in the vast majority of positions, but who would agree in the case of drugs.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#128
post #15

Well, I expect that Twitter will now be banned by every corporate filter in existence.

Twitter has always had NSFW content and adult content warnings as the article mentions. This change just clarifies the rules

However, a reason to leave the rules unclarified is that parties who want to look the other way are able to. I don't think it'll make much of a difference in this case, though.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide citations/links and references? Though, I'm afraid this will be hard to quantify for you. You will also need to satisfy the burden of proof that those links/citations are prevalent ideas and constitute a representative sample of more than just a few individuals. What's more though, such a representative sample only just informs us about the population of HN commentators. I don't think that is a partic…

LOL

Cool deal dude. Confirmation bias and false extrapolation are common tools of the human mind to avoid the fact that very little is known for certain. Which is to say, humans are often uncomfortable acknowledging profound ignorance, and for most things - that's exactly what we are.

Therefore, stating that a bunch of people on hacker news wrote something goes on to say absolutely nothing more than just exactly that.

This is to point out the extrapolations you made are totally unsupported without more than anecdata. The very well sourced article linked would indicate you are cherry-picking and/or misrepresenting.

Re: X has new rules that officially allow porn

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could people be spending more time single due to spending more time inside on the internet rather than a stronger causative effect of porn consumption. Out of cohorts that consume no porn, to what degree are those variables you cited different? If those cohorts are introduced to porn, do those numbers change? In those cohorts, is there full honesty about usage? It's very difficult science to fo. There are studies tha…

True, it's very difficult to attribute the reasons for big social movements, so I am doing some speculating. I do agree that internet contributes as well. My belief that it is a mix of reasons, and pornography is one of them, as it gives complacency. Just rub one out instead of making an effort on meeting potential partners & improving yourself to make yourself suitable. Interesting study. I agree that it's very diff…

Indeed. That speculation is where we get into trouble as human beings (we like to see rabbits in clouds, we're evolved to see patterns where often there are none). And of course - in sociology, and all the variability of human behavior and the overall human experience - sociology is perhaps the toughest field of any to create any form of scientific knowledge at all. For example, the "great replication crisis". I appreciate your being open to dialog and having had a reasonably pleasant exchange. Thank you
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