Spoken exactly like someone who's never actually read a single book, article, essay, or probably even paragraph of theology. You can as easily say "There's no logical basis for any type of philosophy. It's all guessing and wishful thinking."
This says nothing about philosophy or theology, however, and only demonstrates that you have the intellectual depth of a teaspoon.
Inadvertant ignorance can be cured. Willful dogmaticism such as this is terminal - it's going to be with you until you die.
I felt this comment of mine: And if they think it's obvious, I'm inclined to say they're not really any different, in terms of their fanatic dogmaticism, than the religious nuts they criticize. deserved a little more elaboration.
The proposition that prayer has no effect is a negative one. And as any scientist should know, proving the non-existence of something is pretty damn tricky. Furthermore this is the first evidence I know of that directly upholds the proposition that faith does nothing.
So for a scientist to have believed it "obvious" that prayer has no effect the scientist would have to have done two decidedly unscientific things: 1 - Believed a hypothesis "obvious" prior to any scientific research 2 - Believed a negative hypothesis "obvious" based on a single study.
Sure, some things are obvious without needing to be studied. There is no convention of 10' high scaly dragons every Nov 1st in Times Square has probably never been studied. But what we know about Times Square, how news reporting works, and the existence of 10' high scaly dragons means we've got a lot of evidence we can bring to bear.
The same is not true of prayer. Prayer, like most spiritual things, is difficult to quantify or directly observe and so the proper scientific default position on prayer should be utter neutrality: neither for nor against. That is what should be obvious.
I don't know how many flamewars I'm going to have to go through before the message starts sinking in, but because I'm an obstinate fellow I always seem to be good for at least one more. There are two main points: 1 - You can be devoutly religious and also logical/rational/scientific. 2 - Some "scientific" and anti-religious people are just as bigotted, and illogical as the religious nuts.
1 - Devoutly Religious and Also Scientific
Where's the big surprise here? Take a look at the Jesuits. In other surveys, the level of activity a Mormon has in his or her religion is actually positively correlated to the level of education. There are tons of religious doctors, lawyers, physicists, etc. I'm a statistician moving into systems engineering - and I have no trouble at all distinguishing between religious beliefs and scientific beliefs. This point is so obvious I shouldn't even have to bother restating it.
2 - The "Scientific" Bigots
It's pretty simple. You can be religious and you can be bigot (or not). You can be a scientist and you can be a bigot (or not). Anyone that thinks that being a scientist somehow frees people from their biases and prejudices needs to do a little research into things like eugenice. Hell, even setting aside nasty racism and such there's the simple fact that scientists, mathematicians, etc. are people. They have egos. They like to be right. And a lot of the time they don't care whether they're stating their opinion based on research or based on personal bias. They should - but they don't.
Anyone that believes in "blind faith" - the type of faith that essentially amounts to wishful thinking - is a religious nut in my opinion. There's no logical basis for this type of theology, but it is nonetheless extremely prevalent in American society. But there are also those who believe that faith should be reasonable or who at least make an interesting case for blind faith. Existentalist philosophy, for example, was started by Christian theologians like Kierkegaard.
In short, I'm sick of this tired old bullshit: Those people can trust science to make more fuel efficient SUVs, better bombs for Iraq and cure diseases. But when it proves that the earth is round, that the universe is 13-15 billion years old and that prayer doesn't really do anything, they think its hogwash. Those nutjobs are a SUBSET of religious people. A proper subset, if you want to get technical.
Meanwhile: And the people who scientifically minded already think that this fact is just plain obvious. is just plain wrong. Plenty of scientifically minded people believe in the efficacy (under certain conditions) of prayer. The types of people who think it's "obvious" that prayer does nothing are (again) a proper subset of scientifically-minded people. And if they think it's obvious, I'm inclined to say they're not really any different, in terms of their fanatic dogmaticism, than the religious nuts they criticize.
It comes to this: I don't care if you're religious or an atheist. All I want to see is that you're not a knee-jerk adherent of whatever worldview you subscribe too. It's the reason that people believe - more than the object they believe in - that really matters. As long as you believe rationally and honestly - you're always in a position to be proved wrong, admit mistakes, and develop improvements to your own worldview. But if you are dogmatic in your belief system then you are doomed to perpetual, slavish obedicance to concepts you never question or challenge. I don't care of those concepts are Newtonian physics, Einsteinian physics, quantum physics, or the 10 Commandments. It's the slavish obediance itself that I find most reprehensible and dangerous.
When someone makes a broad, sweeping generalization of history the onus is on them to back up their point.
I said "all major world religions value chastity" and I can point to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, some types of Buddhism, etc. Someone says "only the patriarchal ones". That's fine - but where are the matriarchal ones? I'm not the one that needs to provide evidence here.
And I'm contending this is a myth - or at least an over generalization. I lived in Hungary for 2 years. Alcoholism is much more prevalent there than it is here. So the whole "forbidden fruit -> alcoholism" is clearly not universally true.
Do you really want to actually debate the scholarship on this issue? Or is this another "fact" like the one about how in Europe they expose their kids to alcohol so they have no alcoholics?
It's amazing to me the "facts" that people adopt purely because they prop up their cozy world view. The drive-by AC strikes again.
The "overrated" mod always strikes me as cowardice. Instead of actually contesting my points, some faceless mod comes along and mods me own.
I usually don't care about this - sometimes my posts may not really be worthy of the +5 or whatever. But a post that gets this much back and forth implies to me that the people downmodding are really being partisans more than anything else.
The "overrated" because-I-don't-like-what-you're-saying crowd is even more obnoxious than the ACs.
Wow, thanks for the apology. I wasn't really all that offended by your response to begin with. I was actually just more confused by it than anything else. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to read my reply and even re-read what I wrote to realize what I was saying. Most people who initially assume that I'm just another right-wing religious nutter never pay as much attention - nor are they upfront about it.
So apology completely accepted. And my faith in humanity meter just kicked up a notch too.
If that's your definition of "police state" then fine - I'm with you. The gov't definitely regulates way too much. Just because the gov't regulates too much in general, however, doesn't mean the gov't should regulate less of everything.
I get into trouble because I'm essentialy a libertarian in that I think we need far less gov't, but I'm also pro-life and think porno isn't really free speech. So while I'd love to see a dramatic net loss in gov't regulation, I'm actually in favor of (from a certain perspective) move gov't regulation in these two areas and a lot less in other areas (checkpoints, public smoking, campaign finance, etc.)
You'll also note (please) that I'm not here on Slashdot calling for legislation against porno. I'm not against such legislation on principle (though I'd be wary of any more do-good legislators), but my point here is not to argue for or against the legality of porno, but for or against porno itself. My (unrealistic?) goal is to influence people and present new ideas - not impose new regulations. The same goes for abortion, while I'm at it. If I had the chance to impose a law outlawing abortion (except rape, incest, etc) or impose a law mandating simply that all women be given a small informational packet on fetal development and abortion alternatives before an abortion and maybe 24 hours to think it over - there's no question which one I'd support. The education is more important than the legislation any day of the week.
That all sounds very reasonable and it would be great if everyone could be so tolerant to the differences of others. Unfortunately that is most often not the case. Pretty much summed up human history there, didn't you?:-) Just because it has never worked in the past (the whole being tolerant and resonable of people thing) doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying however. One of the things that I'm a little proud of as far as my religion goes is that one of our core beliefs is religious freedom. Both as theology and from historical experience, we know how important it is to grant people to worship how, when, where and what they will.
we all have something to learn about ourselves and each other by exposure to the things we most object to or fear.
That's true to a point - but it can get carried away. Some things we object to are just plain objectionable. I know it's a bit cliche - but take Nazism. Extermination of an entire race is pretty muchjust plain bad - and I don't exposure to it is really necessary to make us better people (although awareness of it as history probably is).
I'mnot a moral relativist at all. I think some things are just plain wrong. Porno is one of those things. It's just that I realize that most people never think about morality or ethics long enough to realize that "thou shalt nots" are only there to try and teach a deeper lesson.
Take "don't lie". It's a nice rule as far as it goes, and in general the moral thing to do is to follow the rule. But there are plenty of times when the moral thing to do is lie. If, to use another cliched example, I was harboring a Jewish family and the Gestapo comes to my door and asks "are you harboring a Jewish family" I'm going to lie. Whether I say "of course I am, officer" as a joke to get them to go away or outright speak an untruth the principle is the same: I'm going to attempt to convey to this guy a perception about reality that I know is false. That's lying, and in this case it's the moral thing to do. This doesn't mean morality is relative, it just means it's not as simplistic as a list of rules somewhere.
Anyway... we're drifting out to sea on this one...
Anytime someone breaks your argument into pieces and then comes to the same conclusion you already came to, you know something is wrong. This is what I wrote:
We have the same essential urges.
Then you break down my argument and get to your conclusion:.My point, and I think the point that many others here are trying to make, is that we DO have these base urges
Note the capitalized "DO", as if this was somehow contrasting what I had written. Strangely, however, this is exactly the same conclusion I had. We are biological creatures with several million (at least) years worth of evolved behavior to deal with. As rational creatures, however the urges are inevitable but resulting behavior is utterly evitable. That's what makes us human.
My point is not that we should somehow coerce people into not watching porno. If we want to ban it, I think that's fine. But that's a constitutional issue. If we want to start doing house-to-house searches or monitoring peoples computers - that's another thing. And in any case, how useful will it really be to make porno illegal? What would we have to do to the openness of the internet in order to make such a law enforceable? Hasn't really worked so great for marijuana, etc. I'd rather have our cops focus on the really nasty stuff - the child porn. Those guys need to be shot or castrated or both.
But in the meantime I'm just trying to convince people, of their own free will and volition, to maybe think twice about their own porn usage. That's all.
Believe me, I know an attack on my religion when I see one! I don't consider this in any way to be an attack, and I'm not taking it personally at all.
The first thing I want to point out is that my chief aim is just to be a voice out there going "hey, not everyone watches porno, and some people think it's uncool". I figure that on any given issue you've got people who are decided one way or another, and people who haven't really made up their minds and might be receptive to either alternative. If there are any people out there who might question porno, I just want to be sure that along with the cacophany of voices going "porno made the internet!" and "porno makes people happy!" they can also hear a voice saying "porno is a bad thing". I want to influence people's individual choices - not institute any laws or regulations.
What this means is that I don't really have to come up with a generic definition of porno that applies to all people. If you have two people watching a movie and both of them are opposed to porn and it gets to a scene that is arousing to one and not to another it's perfectly valid - on an individual level - for one to get up and leave and the other to sit and watch. Everyone knows what stimulates them, individually, and so everyone is capable of deciding for themself what constitutes pornography. Because of my background and my culture and my history a topless shot would do it for me. I'm sure I have a low tolerance to porn, and so I avoid movies with any nudity in a sexual context. I'm not saying everyone else should follow the same standard. If some guy has grown up among nudists and the site of a couple of boobies just does literally nothing for him - then there are a lot of shows that I would not watch that he could.
But we can get carried away with the whole "individuality" thing. As Americans (I'm assuming you're American) our culture has its own (admittedly fluctuating and general) definition of modesty. We're accustomed, as a culture, to girls in form-fitting outfits. In general I'd say that's not necessarily pornographic.
But if the intent of the film is to accentuate actual sexual feelings (as opposed to cuteness, beauty, or sexiness that's culturally acceptable) then it's pornographic. If you have a couple in bed about to have sex and you fade out at the moment of the first kiss, or first glance, then I'd say the point was not to convey sexual feelings, itw as to say "guess what - they have sex now" because it's part of the story. The farther you take it, the more pornographic you are becoming.
And as a final note I can't emphasize enough that it's about intent - not content. You could have enough camera shots of quivering body parts, slowly gliding hands, etc. to make a movie more pornographic even if people keep their clothes on and the scene ends before they make it to the bed whereas a series of shots that are less intense could take a couple all the way into bed without conveying as much sexual load.
In the final analysis there's no way to quantify sexual intent. So I'm not going to be able to draw the line in the sand for you. But I think you can see that individually we all know exactly what is porno to us personally (just ask yourself why you're watching and you have your answer) whereas generally you just have to ask "what's the intent of this shot" and if the intent is to specifically arouse people then, in general, you have your answer.
I didn't take your post as a flame at all. I'm really quite happy to have people disagree with me as long as they can do so intelligently - and I think you make several good points of contention.
For starters I want to clear up some misconceptions you may have about me based on the fact that I'm Mormon. I did have a rather unique home environment in that both of my parents are also devoted Mormons. I'm extremely close with them, and I was able to discuss matters of sexuality in an open and honest way. But I also grew up in Richmond, VA (not Utah) and was one of only 2 or 3 Mormons (depending on the year) in my entire high school. My circle of friends was very diverse, and includes a devout Muslim who shared my standards as well as a completely secular Muslim who lived only to deflower virgins and everything in between (in terms of attitudes towards sex). I have been friends with gays, straights, bisexuals, have-sex-for-fun types, have-sex-for-love-types, save-sex-for-marriage types and an even an avowed asexual. So it's not as though I was somehow living in a world where Playboys were hard to find or sex was never talked about or there was a uniform message to not have sex.
Next I want to respond to your implied characterization of waiting until marriage (which may be later than age 24) as "starving yourself". While you state that sex is extremely important to me in my life you seem to actually imply that it's at least equally important to you in your life - otherwise you would not be "starving yourself" by waiting until marriage.
Furthermore, it's really not that hard. We live in a world where we get the constant message that you just need to have sex. Like it's some irresistable urge. In my experience if you make the conscious decision not to do something you really only have to do it once. I decided that I would not drink. So I didn't drink. Now and then I'd re-evaluate my stance - but never when I was at a party. That's no place to decide your stance on alcohol. Same goes for sex. Make your decision on your own good time and don't question yourself when it's an immediate option. I had several girl friends throughout high school and college - and all but a couple were not members of my faith and several did not share my views on sex (which did cause a couple of the relationships to end). If I were to wait until I was alone with my girlfriend to think about what my position on sex was, there was no way I'd still be a virgin.
All I'm saying is: it's not that hard. It's not starvation of self. But it is hard. I'm not going to lie and say it was totally easy either. But I think it's important that it be hard. If you think about it the fundamental step of mastering any power is the ability to know when not to do something. While most kids my age were trying to get some tail I was serving a mission where I wasn't even allowed to be alone with a girl, hug a girl, or hold hands with a girl - let alone have sex with one (age 19-21). The result? In my opinion I've got more self control and more ability to put long-term goals ahead of short term urges. I think it has helped me in my relationship with my wife (been married less than a year still).
Look - there's a reason (in my opinion) that chastity is an important part of virtually every major world religion. And it's the fact that sexual morality has deep ties to what it means to be human. Leon Kass has written some fascinating stuff on this topic. I won't try to summarize. But I'll just point out that there is, in my opinion, some fundamental wisdom to the traditional life plan: stay a virgin (and more than that, stay chaste), get married, and stay with your one wife. Sex becomes a shared experience, a private communion shared by you and your spouse and no one else. An additional bond to keep a marriage together when times get tough.
Anyway, I've kind of gone overboard in explaining my general position on sex. That's just the way I think things should be in the sense that I think people
I respect the fact that you disagree with me, but the fact of the matter is that neither one of us is actually quoting any studies, so neither one of us can conclusively say "science is on my side". As far as I know the studies on the effects of porno are conflicting. I've read a few that appeared to show no ill effects - but these studies were flawed in my opinion. And I'm still looking for that Zillmann and Bryant study that apparently was so powerfully conclusive that it's been hard to do controlled studies every since because ethics boards are no more likely to let you get people to watch porno than they are to let you get people to smoke. It's fine if people want to volunteer as smokers or porno-watchers, but that makes controlled double-blind tests impossible.
So while "let's get some scientific evidence on this subject" sounds fine in theory - the fact is that the scientific evidence has been so heavily in favor of "porno is harmful" that it's hard to get more direct evidence. And furthermore you don't always need to wait for studies to argue (coherently and rationally) against or for something.
I think porno does not constitute meaningful speech, I think porno degrades and objectifies women, and I think porno causes emotional and sexual problems with people exposed to it. Claims 1 and 2 can be pretty comprehensively argued without scientific study. Question 3 is the one where you can't really study it because as far as college ethics boards are concerned the question has already been answered - it's harmful. We've known this for decades, it's only the fact that vast #s of people do it - and get rich from it - that we keep it up. Look how long cigarettes were around before we realized how bad they were for us, and cigarettes don't tap into our psyches as fundamentally as porno. I'm aware that porno has been with Western civ longer than tobacco has, but I'd argue that internet porno is bringing it to acceptance in a way it never has before. And this acceptance will bring the kind of criticism that will lead, eventually I hope, to it becoming about as socially acceptable as smoking.
I'm much more eager to see porno socially disgraced than I am to see it censored.
Not really. It's in TFA. I'm assuming people have read TFA. Have you?
And if you're alluding to the lack of double-blind studies (most of TFA is interviews which we all know aren't scientific) then I refer back to point from original post (back in the day) about Pornified. After a Zillmann and Bryant study from (I believe) the early 80's it's been extremely hard to get a controlled study on porno past ethics boards. Why? Because the evidence was so overwhelming in that study that it was harmful that you can't get permission to expose people to it.
It's as though there was a new drug on the market. They run a human trial. The results of the trial are overwhelmingly clear that the drug is harmful. So further trials are banned. I come along and say "that drug is obviously bad!" and you respond "don't be ridiculous - one study is not sufficient to prove that!".
Before I even respond to the actual porno points I just want to take a second to vent a little irritation here. America is a not a "police state". Anyone that thinks America is a police state is either living in la-la land or has no idea of what a real police state is really like.
Go to Budapest one day and visit 60 Andrassy Ut. That was the headquarters of the communist-backed secret police up until the '56 revolution (it's a musueam called "The Terror House" now). These are people that know about oppression and police states. They know what it is like to really be afraid to speak your mind for fear of a raid in the middle of the night to take you away from your family. These are people that risked their lives just to keep pictures of the 1956 Revolution - knowing that merely possessing pictures that depicted the cruelty of the Soviet occupiers or the popularity of the crushed rebellion could result in torture, a life sentence to the gulags, or death.
So it annoys me when people start squawking about a police state on the internet (or in person). Any country where you can mouth off about how the country is a police state without legitimate fear of ANY political reprisal whatsoever is not, in fact, a police state. Not even a little bit. And it just adds irony that whereas in actual police states the images they risked their lives to guard told the truth about their desperate struggle for freedom from oppression while all you're so damn scared to lose is your naked pics. That's just disgusting to me.
There are a lot of people who want to ban pornography and implement a whole Big Brother type system.
This is just silly. It would be perfectly reasonable to ban pornography w/out a Big Brother system. You seem to think that somehow pornography and polical free speech are inextricably tied together. If we loose pictures of men raping sheep, next thing you know we'll all be fascists. I don't know how any resonable people believe this. There are limits to free speech. There always have been. This is not some shock. It's not like we've been living in a garden of libertarian free-speech where you could say ANYTHING and evil people want to bring vicious and oppressive censorship into our fair land from the dark nether regions. It's just a matter of how much crap society has to protect. I see now reason why my national gov't needs to protect your right to soil your keyboard. If pornography is considered outside the realm of free speech this isn't going to all of a sudden ALSO negate your personal right to private property. There's this paranoid and hysterical fear that if porno is illegal that means the gov't has the right to search your computer and invade your home to look for it. Guess what - kidnapping is also illegal and yet (strangely enough) the police aren't in the habit of breaking down doors to see if you've stolen your neighbors kids or not. Theft is illegal, but we don't have to carry receipts around with us for every item we've ever bought ever.
The radical pro-porno nutjobs have done a great job of portraying any affront to porno as a threat to the very sanctity of free speech and private property (ala Demolition Man). But it's just hysterical rantings.
I tend to be a libertarian. I'm against helmet laws, seatbelt laws, etc. But I'm for smoking bans because of the societal cost. Your individual freedoms do not extend to the point where I have to pay for them. Same thing goes for porno - there's actual harm going on here. Harm to you as a person (which is difficult to make illegal) and harm to society - which is not.
You're trying to complicate something that's actually really very simple.
Porn is not defined by content - it is defined by intent.
Nudity is just a lack of clothes. It's not fundamentally either moral or immoral. The human body, as far as I'm concerned, can be a beautiful thing. But let's not overly romanticize it either. Most human bodies in reality are really not all that much to look at. As for sex - I think sex is wonderful. It's a part of the human experience both as biological creatures and as thinking, communicating beings. I've got no problem with sex. But nudity and sex are not pornography. At best they're necessary, but not sufficient, for porno.
Porno is defined by the intent to stimulate and arouse the consumer. This is obviously going to be relative to different cultures and even different individuals. But there's really no need to go and check off every single piece of media as either "porno" or "not-porno". The general rule is good enough for practical purposes: if the intent of the "art" is to stimulate sexual feelings it's porno.
I think that's a pretty clear definition for porn.
If you feel some types of media, like pornography, are bad, that is fine. I respect your decision. Like gambling, recreational drugs, or anything else, I can see how many people would see it as a little scary.
It's not a question of scary - it's a question of harm. If porno is, as I believe, harmful to participants, the women it victimizes, and soceity in general than we have grounds to make it illegal or at least to put limits on it. Frankly, however, I'm far more interested in getting people to quit watching it of their own free will - or refrain from getting into it in the first place - than I am for any kind of a censor ship.
But when you want to steal my money from me to give to some special interest group to "study the health effects of porn", that is bullshit. This hadn't even occurred to me. The problem with studying porno isn't lack of funds in any case, it's a hot-button issue and I'm sure there are plenty of academics who'd love to study it. The problem is that porno is harfmul and therefore it's hard to get ethics boards to let you run controlled experiments on it.
When you want to create a whole censorship infrastructure, just so you might not be accidentaly exposed to porn, that is bullshit. A - This is at best a secondary concern for me. B - Calling someone's opinion "bullshit" isn't much of an argument. I happen to think your reading of the Constitutions free speech clause is "bullshit", but I'll go further and state that, as Thomas Jefferson said, the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of the Framers, and the Framers intended religious and political and other intellectual "speech" to be free. The idea that you're allowed to say whatever you want is ridiculous. You can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater because it may cause harm. If porno causes harm than we're in the same category.
When you want to filter Gay Rights websites, or Sex Education websites, Huh?
[when] you want to force Google to turn over private information to the government What?
you have crossed the line, and YOU are the problem! I'll tell that to the next person I see that wants to filter out Gay Rights websites or sex education web sites and force Google to turn over private information to the gov't. Trouble is - I don't know anyone that holds those viewpoints. Do you?
I am far less afraid of pornography, than I am afraid of a police state. Very reasonable of you. I am too.
But that WASN'T a well researched article. It was an opinion backed by a bunch of interviews and some paraphrasing of a poorly-researched book, which in turn was mostly a bunch of interviews.
In order for this criticism, and my own original claim, to make any sense we have to do something to define "well-researched". I'll be the first to admit that if we're going to talk about something be harfmul we want to go straigh to statistically-valid, double-blind studies. But, as I've already mentioned, you can't do these types of studies on human subjects. Why? Because when they tried them back in the 70's the effects were so harmful that from then on it's been impossible to do controlled studies on the effects of porn. So by normal stadanrds of "well-researched" you're right - these don't qualify. But given the contraints I think the book (moreso than the article) does a good job.
It's just too easy to sit back and say "there's no good evidence" when you know damn well there's no way to get good evidence. I personally do not believe that porno is bad because it's addictive. I'm not even sure that "addictive" and "addiction" are useful scientific terms. I'm persuaded by the interviews which, given the sheer number that have been conducted and the fact taht we can't really ask for anything more at this point, lead me to believe that there is a good case to be made for porno to be bad intrinsically and not merely because it is addictive.
I'm not saying that in the absence of real studies we should just default to trusting interviews as if they were studies. They're not. And so we can't have the same degree of certainty as we would if there were a vast literature of studies. But we do have at least one study (that lead to the effective ban) and we have the interviews. I'd say that's enough evidence to make a serious case even if not to be concrete proof.
I mean seriously, if there was some new drug on the market and they ran one human trial and said "holy cow - this stuff is dangerous - we can't authorize any more tests" would you then take ths position that we can't really know if it's dangerous or not because we can't do enough tests? The whole point is that the one test was deemed conclusive that the metaphorical drug (porno) was harmful.
How did this post get +5 "insightful" when the central thesis doesn't even make sense?
The argument goes something like this
"Our society thinks sex is dirty" "Therefore when people watch porn it's harmful"
The exact quote from the post is: Thanks to the abhorrent way our society has rejected natural sexuality by demonizing it and calling it "dirty" it kind of make sense that exposure to it would cause "harm"
I'm I the only one scratching my head and wondering if there's any actual logic behind this raw assertion? And what's with the ""s on harm? Last time I check the effects of porno were so detrimental that you can't even study them anymore because no test that involves showing porn to human subjects will pass ethics boards.
On top of this most of the people downloading porn are not the ones who think sex is "dirty". Yes, thanks to our Puritan ancestors America has a more traditional take on what constitutes modesty. In Europe going topless is no big deal. In America baring the midriff is no big deal. In other cultures even that is considered immodest and in Saudi Arabia.... you get the idea. It's not noteworthy to point that we have different conceptions of morality and chastity from one place to another. What's accepted in one culture is taboo in another.
But porno isn't defined by the % of body area revealed. Porno is a relative thing. This should be obvious to anyone who knows how porno has gotten a harder edge as culture standards for deceny become lax. Porno means you take the taboo of the people and you violate it. If the taboo in some country is "don't show ankles" then you get girly mags that show a little ankle. If the taboo in some country is "don't show boobies" then you get girly mags that show boobies. Etc.
Anyone that says there's some healthy level of human flesh is just silly. It's culturally relative. And anyone that says "the body is beautiful" leads to videos of anal sex is also off their rocker. The intent is obviously different from an appreciation of the beauty of the naked form to a picture or video designed to appeal to biological lust.
No matter how liberal the standards of the US get with regards to what is considered decent clothing porno will be one step ahead. Otherwise you'd see no porno in Europe - they'd all be so enlightened that pictures of naked people would be as commonplace as a pretty bird or a lovely horizon.
And what is this joke: In many countries wine and beer are a normal part of life and young people are exposed to it accordingly. You don't typically see alcoholism problems or alcohol abuse in general in these countries.
I'd love to see some evidence for this. It's a supid bsaeless claim that has no basis in fact. Sure - alcoholism may be lower in the UK (I don't know) but I can guarantee it's far higher in other parts of Europe. The only European country I've lived in is Hungary - an dI can testify it's a national crisis there.
Obviously there are exceptions. Exposing a 6 year old to scenes of graphic rape fantasies would probably be a bad idea. But exposing that same child to a naked form won't harm them at all.
This just shows what a superficial understanding of porno the post author has. Porno is not about what you show (content) it's about what that content means to the viewer. Porno is defined as porno not because it shows naked people but because it is culturally designed to be sexually stimulative. The whole thesis that you can show people the beauty of the human body and somehow make the immune to porno is ridiculuous. We could all live in a nude society and there would STILL be porno. Sure, as Americans it may only take a photo of a naked person to be sexually stimulative. And that may be silly. But if we cure that (minor) problem we've still not even begun to address what porno really is.
I can only expect to get flamed for this comment, especially given my nickname, but I'm really sick and tired of how the Slashdot community (as any internet community would) almost universally reacts to any and all evidence that pornography might be *gasp* a bad thing with a combination of rationalization and equivication.
It's not that I actually disagree with some of the coutnerpoints that are made. Porn probably has had a significant impact on bringing us broadband. Some people have little or no problem with porn. But the general tone strikes me as annoying because it's obvious to me that the vast majority of you guys are not actually trying to discuss the issue: you're trying to excuse/justify your behavior in the face of overwhelming evidence that pornography - like smoking (as an example) is bad for people and bad for society. Or you're just dismissing a rather well-researched article because you don't like the conclusion.
The most obnoxious claim I hear is that "every male looks at porn". I'm sorry - but they all don't. I don't. I never have. I'm 24, I'm happily married, and I've just never looked. According to most of you (especially the ones that like porn the most, in my experience) this is because religion has warped my brain. Whatever - I'm hardly in a position to prove that I'm sane over the internet (and by definition I'm not 'normal' in this aspect of my behavior). I'm not the only one either. I have other friends (not all of them Mormon) who have similarly never looked at porn.
Look, if you think this is some "holier than thou" preach-fest, you're missing the point. My point is just this: knock it off with the "everybody does it" routine. Most people do. A lot don't. Whether or not 66% or 75% ot 95% or 99% of males look at porno should have nothing to do with 1 - whether it's a good thing or a bad thing 2 - whether you do it or don't.
Final point: not looking at porno doesn't mean you're not interested in sex. Nor is it a form of ascetism. There's a little something that makes us human: rational self control. Animals mate based on sheer biology. They eat based on sheer biology. Humans are biological creatures. We have the same essential urges. But what makes us human is the capacity not to bash in someone's skull when they really piss us off, not to eat to the point of becoming morbidly obese, and (in this case) not to go stare at pics/vids of porn whenever we feel sexual drives. Just because we don't fight everyone that pisses us off doesn't mean we don't feel anger. Just because we know how to control our weight/health doesn't mean we don't experience hunger or enjoy food. And just because we don't look at porno doesn't mean we don't have sexual urges and enjoy sex.
What do you mean Huh?. Did you RTFA? I'm not responding to the poster, I'm responding to *gasp* TFA. TFA included many other types of reactions to electrical interference, including some that took place over much longer periods of time. It even included one study (although it wasn't double-blind and no real details were provided) of a school where filters were installed. They were switched on for 3 weeks, then off for 3 weeks. Apparently the students and teachers did react to it. Furthermore there's apparently a leukemia connection to high-voltage power lines.
So all I'm saying is that if there are long-term effects and someone becomes aware of them then there could be short-term psychosomatic effects. If I realize that being near TVs for hours gives me headaches I might get started on thinking about all the awful ways these invisible waves are interfering with my brain, and next thing you know - through just the power of self-suggestion - I'm claiming that my eyes water whenever I walk into a room with a lot of electronics.
I think the tests haev proved pretty conclusively that a lot of people making those short-term claims are rubbish. They can't really tell when they are in the presence of EM and when they're not. Some posters have taken this to mean the entire theory is rubbish.
I'm just saying that even if we prove that most people have no discernible short-term reaction (eg the "eyes watering" is a power-of-suggestion/placebo effect) that doesn't mean that there are not legitimate reasons to be worried about long-term effects (back aches, fatigue, migraines, etc.)
As someone who's relatively web-savy (I've used Dreamweaver and Flash extensively in the past and I've grown to loathe Frontpage) I've got to say that I think GooglePages is a truly awesome innovation. Sure - there's no one thing about it that's really that great. But think about the fact that they've bundled the web-hosting, domain-name, and web-creation all into 1 package, made it simple, and made it free.
This isn't just for people who don't can't learn HTML. This is for anyone who wants to get a decent site on the itnernet but simply has better thaings to do than to learn to make attractive web pages from scratch. Face it - the GooglePages look pretty sweet (especially compared to Geocities, etc.)
There are a lot of people out there who would benefit from being able to create and maintain their own webpages who simply don't have the time to learn more tech stuff. I tried it out and was immediately convinced it would work perfectly for my dad (an English professor - http://terryl.givens.googlepages.com/ ). He doesn't need SQL, PHP, etc. No messageboards, no forums, no online-shopping, no registering. Just text, images, and some pdf/doc docs.
My dad's a smart man. He could learn all about web hosting, html, etc. if he wanted to. But he's got a PhD in Comparative Literature and he's a litle busy with doing his actual job to start learning how to do tech stuff. There are lot of professionals and other busy people out there like him. They would benefit from a very simple web site. Not just simple to design, but simple to order (try explaining domain names vs. web hosting to most non-techies) and maintain. Not to mention free.
GooglePages is not rocket science - but in my opinion it goes a long way towards hitting the sweet spot where convenience and function are optimized for people who want to be able to make web pages with no serious training.
I also think it's not a bad idea for techies either, if you're too busy with other stuff. I'm working full time, I do consulting part time, I have my own small company on top of that, and I'm about to start a masters program. I don't have time to mess with a web site, but it's important to keep a presence on the web (resume stuff). GooglePages is perfect for that.
Well, if that isn't the most dumbass thing I've ever read. And Michael Moore is telling the truth, George Bush has killed millions and Hillary Clinton will be the next President.
If your parents paid for your education, they should demand a refund.
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken exactly like someone who's never actually read a single book, article, essay, or probably even paragraph of theology. You can as easily say "There's no logical basis for any type of philosophy. It's all guessing and wishful thinking."
This says nothing about philosophy or theology, however, and only demonstrates that you have the intellectual depth of a teaspoon.
Inadvertant ignorance can be cured. Willful dogmaticism such as this is terminal - it's going to be with you until you die.
-stormin
I felt this comment of mine:
And if they think it's obvious, I'm inclined to say they're not really any different, in terms of their fanatic dogmaticism, than the religious nuts they criticize.
deserved a little more elaboration.
The proposition that prayer has no effect is a negative one. And as any scientist should know, proving the non-existence of something is pretty damn tricky. Furthermore this is the first evidence I know of that directly upholds the proposition that faith does nothing.
So for a scientist to have believed it "obvious" that prayer has no effect the scientist would have to have done two decidedly unscientific things:
1 - Believed a hypothesis "obvious" prior to any scientific research
2 - Believed a negative hypothesis "obvious" based on a single study.
Sure, some things are obvious without needing to be studied. There is no convention of 10' high scaly dragons every Nov 1st in Times Square has probably never been studied. But what we know about Times Square, how news reporting works, and the existence of 10' high scaly dragons means we've got a lot of evidence we can bring to bear.
The same is not true of prayer. Prayer, like most spiritual things, is difficult to quantify or directly observe and so the proper scientific default position on prayer should be utter neutrality: neither for nor against. That is what should be obvious.
-stormin
I don't know how many flamewars I'm going to have to go through before the message starts sinking in, but because I'm an obstinate fellow I always seem to be good for at least one more. There are two main points: 1 - You can be devoutly religious and also logical/rational/scientific. 2 - Some "scientific" and anti-religious people are just as bigotted, and illogical as the religious nuts.
1 - Devoutly Religious and Also Scientific
Where's the big surprise here? Take a look at the Jesuits. In other surveys, the level of activity a Mormon has in his or her religion is actually positively correlated to the level of education. There are tons of religious doctors, lawyers, physicists, etc. I'm a statistician moving into systems engineering - and I have no trouble at all distinguishing between religious beliefs and scientific beliefs. This point is so obvious I shouldn't even have to bother restating it.
2 - The "Scientific" Bigots
It's pretty simple. You can be religious and you can be bigot (or not). You can be a scientist and you can be a bigot (or not). Anyone that thinks that being a scientist somehow frees people from their biases and prejudices needs to do a little research into things like eugenice. Hell, even setting aside nasty racism and such there's the simple fact that scientists, mathematicians, etc. are people. They have egos. They like to be right. And a lot of the time they don't care whether they're stating their opinion based on research or based on personal bias. They should - but they don't.
Anyone that believes in "blind faith" - the type of faith that essentially amounts to wishful thinking - is a religious nut in my opinion. There's no logical basis for this type of theology, but it is nonetheless extremely prevalent in American society. But there are also those who believe that faith should be reasonable or who at least make an interesting case for blind faith. Existentalist philosophy, for example, was started by Christian theologians like Kierkegaard.
In short, I'm sick of this tired old bullshit: Those people can trust science to make more fuel efficient SUVs, better bombs for Iraq and cure diseases. But when it proves that the earth is round, that the universe is 13-15 billion years old and that prayer doesn't really do anything, they think its hogwash. Those nutjobs are a SUBSET of religious people. A proper subset, if you want to get technical.
Meanwhile: And the people who scientifically minded already think that this fact is just plain obvious. is just plain wrong. Plenty of scientifically minded people believe in the efficacy (under certain conditions) of prayer. The types of people who think it's "obvious" that prayer does nothing are (again) a proper subset of scientifically-minded people. And if they think it's obvious, I'm inclined to say they're not really any different, in terms of their fanatic dogmaticism, than the religious nuts they criticize.
It comes to this: I don't care if you're religious or an atheist. All I want to see is that you're not a knee-jerk adherent of whatever worldview you subscribe too. It's the reason that people believe - more than the object they believe in - that really matters. As long as you believe rationally and honestly - you're always in a position to be proved wrong, admit mistakes, and develop improvements to your own worldview. But if you are dogmatic in your belief system then you are doomed to perpetual, slavish obedicance to concepts you never question or challenge. I don't care of those concepts are Newtonian physics, Einsteinian physics, quantum physics, or the 10 Commandments. It's the slavish obediance itself that I find most reprehensible and dangerous.
-storrmin
Basics of Arguing 101:
When someone makes a broad, sweeping generalization of history the onus is on them to back up their point.
I said "all major world religions value chastity" and I can point to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, some types of Buddhism, etc. Someone says "only the patriarchal ones". That's fine - but where are the matriarchal ones? I'm not the one that needs to provide evidence here.
-stormin
And I'm contending this is a myth - or at least an over generalization. I lived in Hungary for 2 years. Alcoholism is much more prevalent there than it is here. So the whole "forbidden fruit -> alcoholism" is clearly not universally true.
That's my point.
-stormin
Riiiiight.
Do you really want to actually debate the scholarship on this issue? Or is this another "fact" like the one about how in Europe they expose their kids to alcohol so they have no alcoholics?
It's amazing to me the "facts" that people adopt purely because they prop up their cozy world view. The drive-by AC strikes again.
-stormin
The "overrated" mod always strikes me as cowardice. Instead of actually contesting my points, some faceless mod comes along and mods me own.
I usually don't care about this - sometimes my posts may not really be worthy of the +5 or whatever. But a post that gets this much back and forth implies to me that the people downmodding are really being partisans more than anything else.
The "overrated" because-I-don't-like-what-you're-saying crowd is even more obnoxious than the ACs.
-stormin
Wow, thanks for the apology. I wasn't really all that offended by your response to begin with. I was actually just more confused by it than anything else. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to read my reply and even re-read what I wrote to realize what I was saying. Most people who initially assume that I'm just another right-wing religious nutter never pay as much attention - nor are they upfront about it.
So apology completely accepted. And my faith in humanity meter just kicked up a notch too.
-stormin
If that's your definition of "police state" then fine - I'm with you. The gov't definitely regulates way too much. Just because the gov't regulates too much in general, however, doesn't mean the gov't should regulate less of everything.
I get into trouble because I'm essentialy a libertarian in that I think we need far less gov't, but I'm also pro-life and think porno isn't really free speech. So while I'd love to see a dramatic net loss in gov't regulation, I'm actually in favor of (from a certain perspective) move gov't regulation in these two areas and a lot less in other areas (checkpoints, public smoking, campaign finance, etc.)
You'll also note (please) that I'm not here on Slashdot calling for legislation against porno. I'm not against such legislation on principle (though I'd be wary of any more do-good legislators), but my point here is not to argue for or against the legality of porno, but for or against porno itself. My (unrealistic?) goal is to influence people and present new ideas - not impose new regulations. The same goes for abortion, while I'm at it. If I had the chance to impose a law outlawing abortion (except rape, incest, etc) or impose a law mandating simply that all women be given a small informational packet on fetal development and abortion alternatives before an abortion and maybe 24 hours to think it over - there's no question which one I'd support. The education is more important than the legislation any day of the week.
-stormin
That all sounds very reasonable and it would be great if everyone could be so tolerant to the differences of others. Unfortunately that is most often not the case. Pretty much summed up human history there, didn't you? :-) Just because it has never worked in the past (the whole being tolerant and resonable of people thing) doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying however. One of the things that I'm a little proud of as far as my religion goes is that one of our core beliefs is religious freedom. Both as theology and from historical experience, we know how important it is to grant people to worship how, when, where and what they will.
we all have something to learn about ourselves and each other by exposure to the things we most object to or fear.
That's true to a point - but it can get carried away. Some things we object to are just plain objectionable. I know it's a bit cliche - but take Nazism. Extermination of an entire race is pretty muchjust plain bad - and I don't exposure to it is really necessary to make us better people (although awareness of it as history probably is).
I'mnot a moral relativist at all. I think some things are just plain wrong. Porno is one of those things. It's just that I realize that most people never think about morality or ethics long enough to realize that "thou shalt nots" are only there to try and teach a deeper lesson.
Take "don't lie". It's a nice rule as far as it goes, and in general the moral thing to do is to follow the rule. But there are plenty of times when the moral thing to do is lie. If, to use another cliched example, I was harboring a Jewish family and the Gestapo comes to my door and asks "are you harboring a Jewish family" I'm going to lie. Whether I say "of course I am, officer" as a joke to get them to go away or outright speak an untruth the principle is the same: I'm going to attempt to convey to this guy a perception about reality that I know is false. That's lying, and in this case it's the moral thing to do. This doesn't mean morality is relative, it just means it's not as simplistic as a list of rules somewhere.
Anyway... we're drifting out to sea on this one...
-stormin
Anytime someone breaks your argument into pieces and then comes to the same conclusion you already came to, you know something is wrong. This is what I wrote:
.My point, and I think the point that many others here are trying to make, is that we DO have these base urges
We have the same essential urges.
Then you break down my argument and get to your conclusion:
Note the capitalized "DO", as if this was somehow contrasting what I had written. Strangely, however, this is exactly the same conclusion I had. We are biological creatures with several million (at least) years worth of evolved behavior to deal with. As rational creatures, however the urges are inevitable but resulting behavior is utterly evitable. That's what makes us human.
My point is not that we should somehow coerce people into not watching porno. If we want to ban it, I think that's fine. But that's a constitutional issue. If we want to start doing house-to-house searches or monitoring peoples computers - that's another thing. And in any case, how useful will it really be to make porno illegal? What would we have to do to the openness of the internet in order to make such a law enforceable? Hasn't really worked so great for marijuana, etc. I'd rather have our cops focus on the really nasty stuff - the child porn. Those guys need to be shot or castrated or both.
But in the meantime I'm just trying to convince people, of their own free will and volition, to maybe think twice about their own porn usage. That's all.
-stormin
Believe me, I know an attack on my religion when I see one! I don't consider this in any way to be an attack, and I'm not taking it personally at all.
The first thing I want to point out is that my chief aim is just to be a voice out there going "hey, not everyone watches porno, and some people think it's uncool". I figure that on any given issue you've got people who are decided one way or another, and people who haven't really made up their minds and might be receptive to either alternative. If there are any people out there who might question porno, I just want to be sure that along with the cacophany of voices going "porno made the internet!" and "porno makes people happy!" they can also hear a voice saying "porno is a bad thing". I want to influence people's individual choices - not institute any laws or regulations.
What this means is that I don't really have to come up with a generic definition of porno that applies to all people. If you have two people watching a movie and both of them are opposed to porn and it gets to a scene that is arousing to one and not to another it's perfectly valid - on an individual level - for one to get up and leave and the other to sit and watch. Everyone knows what stimulates them, individually, and so everyone is capable of deciding for themself what constitutes pornography. Because of my background and my culture and my history a topless shot would do it for me. I'm sure I have a low tolerance to porn, and so I avoid movies with any nudity in a sexual context. I'm not saying everyone else should follow the same standard. If some guy has grown up among nudists and the site of a couple of boobies just does literally nothing for him - then there are a lot of shows that I would not watch that he could.
But we can get carried away with the whole "individuality" thing. As Americans (I'm assuming you're American) our culture has its own (admittedly fluctuating and general) definition of modesty. We're accustomed, as a culture, to girls in form-fitting outfits. In general I'd say that's not necessarily pornographic.
But if the intent of the film is to accentuate actual sexual feelings (as opposed to cuteness, beauty, or sexiness that's culturally acceptable) then it's pornographic. If you have a couple in bed about to have sex and you fade out at the moment of the first kiss, or first glance, then I'd say the point was not to convey sexual feelings, itw as to say "guess what - they have sex now" because it's part of the story. The farther you take it, the more pornographic you are becoming.
And as a final note I can't emphasize enough that it's about intent - not content. You could have enough camera shots of quivering body parts, slowly gliding hands, etc. to make a movie more pornographic even if people keep their clothes on and the scene ends before they make it to the bed whereas a series of shots that are less intense could take a couple all the way into bed without conveying as much sexual load.
In the final analysis there's no way to quantify sexual intent. So I'm not going to be able to draw the line in the sand for you. But I think you can see that individually we all know exactly what is porno to us personally (just ask yourself why you're watching and you have your answer) whereas generally you just have to ask "what's the intent of this shot" and if the intent is to specifically arouse people then, in general, you have your answer.
Have I made this any more clear?
-stormin
I didn't take your post as a flame at all. I'm really quite happy to have people disagree with me as long as they can do so intelligently - and I think you make several good points of contention.
For starters I want to clear up some misconceptions you may have about me based on the fact that I'm Mormon. I did have a rather unique home environment in that both of my parents are also devoted Mormons. I'm extremely close with them, and I was able to discuss matters of sexuality in an open and honest way. But I also grew up in Richmond, VA (not Utah) and was one of only 2 or 3 Mormons (depending on the year) in my entire high school. My circle of friends was very diverse, and includes a devout Muslim who shared my standards as well as a completely secular Muslim who lived only to deflower virgins and everything in between (in terms of attitudes towards sex). I have been friends with gays, straights, bisexuals, have-sex-for-fun types, have-sex-for-love-types, save-sex-for-marriage types and an even an avowed asexual. So it's not as though I was somehow living in a world where Playboys were hard to find or sex was never talked about or there was a uniform message to not have sex.
Next I want to respond to your implied characterization of waiting until marriage (which may be later than age 24) as "starving yourself". While you state that sex is extremely important to me in my life you seem to actually imply that it's at least equally important to you in your life - otherwise you would not be "starving yourself" by waiting until marriage.
Furthermore, it's really not that hard. We live in a world where we get the constant message that you just need to have sex. Like it's some irresistable urge. In my experience if you make the conscious decision not to do something you really only have to do it once. I decided that I would not drink. So I didn't drink. Now and then I'd re-evaluate my stance - but never when I was at a party. That's no place to decide your stance on alcohol. Same goes for sex. Make your decision on your own good time and don't question yourself when it's an immediate option. I had several girl friends throughout high school and college - and all but a couple were not members of my faith and several did not share my views on sex (which did cause a couple of the relationships to end). If I were to wait until I was alone with my girlfriend to think about what my position on sex was, there was no way I'd still be a virgin.
All I'm saying is: it's not that hard. It's not starvation of self. But it is hard. I'm not going to lie and say it was totally easy either. But I think it's important that it be hard. If you think about it the fundamental step of mastering any power is the ability to know when not to do something. While most kids my age were trying to get some tail I was serving a mission where I wasn't even allowed to be alone with a girl, hug a girl, or hold hands with a girl - let alone have sex with one (age 19-21). The result? In my opinion I've got more self control and more ability to put long-term goals ahead of short term urges. I think it has helped me in my relationship with my wife (been married less than a year still).
Look - there's a reason (in my opinion) that chastity is an important part of virtually every major world religion. And it's the fact that sexual morality has deep ties to what it means to be human. Leon Kass has written some fascinating stuff on this topic. I won't try to summarize. But I'll just point out that there is, in my opinion, some fundamental wisdom to the traditional life plan: stay a virgin (and more than that, stay chaste), get married, and stay with your one wife. Sex becomes a shared experience, a private communion shared by you and your spouse and no one else. An additional bond to keep a marriage together when times get tough.
Anyway, I've kind of gone overboard in explaining my general position on sex. That's just the way I think things should be in the sense that I think people
I respect the fact that you disagree with me, but the fact of the matter is that neither one of us is actually quoting any studies, so neither one of us can conclusively say "science is on my side". As far as I know the studies on the effects of porno are conflicting. I've read a few that appeared to show no ill effects - but these studies were flawed in my opinion. And I'm still looking for that Zillmann and Bryant study that apparently was so powerfully conclusive that it's been hard to do controlled studies every since because ethics boards are no more likely to let you get people to watch porno than they are to let you get people to smoke. It's fine if people want to volunteer as smokers or porno-watchers, but that makes controlled double-blind tests impossible.
So while "let's get some scientific evidence on this subject" sounds fine in theory - the fact is that the scientific evidence has been so heavily in favor of "porno is harmful" that it's hard to get more direct evidence. And furthermore you don't always need to wait for studies to argue (coherently and rationally) against or for something.
I think porno does not constitute meaningful speech, I think porno degrades and objectifies women, and I think porno causes emotional and sexual problems with people exposed to it. Claims 1 and 2 can be pretty comprehensively argued without scientific study. Question 3 is the one where you can't really study it because as far as college ethics boards are concerned the question has already been answered - it's harmful. We've known this for decades, it's only the fact that vast #s of people do it - and get rich from it - that we keep it up. Look how long cigarettes were around before we realized how bad they were for us, and cigarettes don't tap into our psyches as fundamentally as porno. I'm aware that porno has been with Western civ longer than tobacco has, but I'd argue that internet porno is bringing it to acceptance in a way it never has before. And this acceptance will bring the kind of criticism that will lead, eventually I hope, to it becoming about as socially acceptable as smoking.
I'm much more eager to see porno socially disgraced than I am to see it censored.
-stormin
Not really. It's in TFA. I'm assuming people have read TFA. Have you?
And if you're alluding to the lack of double-blind studies (most of TFA is interviews which we all know aren't scientific) then I refer back to point from original post (back in the day) about Pornified. After a Zillmann and Bryant study from (I believe) the early 80's it's been extremely hard to get a controlled study on porno past ethics boards. Why? Because the evidence was so overwhelming in that study that it was harmful that you can't get permission to expose people to it.
It's as though there was a new drug on the market. They run a human trial. The results of the trial are overwhelmingly clear that the drug is harmful. So further trials are banned. I come along and say "that drug is obviously bad!" and you respond "don't be ridiculous - one study is not sufficient to prove that!".
-stormin
Before I even respond to the actual porno points I just want to take a second to vent a little irritation here. America is a not a "police state". Anyone that thinks America is a police state is either living in la-la land or has no idea of what a real police state is really like.
Go to Budapest one day and visit 60 Andrassy Ut. That was the headquarters of the communist-backed secret police up until the '56 revolution (it's a musueam called "The Terror House" now). These are people that know about oppression and police states. They know what it is like to really be afraid to speak your mind for fear of a raid in the middle of the night to take you away from your family. These are people that risked their lives just to keep pictures of the 1956 Revolution - knowing that merely possessing pictures that depicted the cruelty of the Soviet occupiers or the popularity of the crushed rebellion could result in torture, a life sentence to the gulags, or death.
So it annoys me when people start squawking about a police state on the internet (or in person). Any country where you can mouth off about how the country is a police state without legitimate fear of ANY political reprisal whatsoever is not, in fact, a police state. Not even a little bit. And it just adds irony that whereas in actual police states the images they risked their lives to guard told the truth about their desperate struggle for freedom from oppression while all you're so damn scared to lose is your naked pics. That's just disgusting to me.
There are a lot of people who want to ban pornography and implement a whole Big Brother type system.
This is just silly. It would be perfectly reasonable to ban pornography w/out a Big Brother system. You seem to think that somehow pornography and polical free speech are inextricably tied together. If we loose pictures of men raping sheep, next thing you know we'll all be fascists. I don't know how any resonable people believe this. There are limits to free speech. There always have been. This is not some shock. It's not like we've been living in a garden of libertarian free-speech where you could say ANYTHING and evil people want to bring vicious and oppressive censorship into our fair land from the dark nether regions. It's just a matter of how much crap society has to protect. I see now reason why my national gov't needs to protect your right to soil your keyboard. If pornography is considered outside the realm of free speech this isn't going to all of a sudden ALSO negate your personal right to private property. There's this paranoid and hysterical fear that if porno is illegal that means the gov't has the right to search your computer and invade your home to look for it. Guess what - kidnapping is also illegal and yet (strangely enough) the police aren't in the habit of breaking down doors to see if you've stolen your neighbors kids or not. Theft is illegal, but we don't have to carry receipts around with us for every item we've ever bought ever.
The radical pro-porno nutjobs have done a great job of portraying any affront to porno as a threat to the very sanctity of free speech and private property (ala Demolition Man). But it's just hysterical rantings.
I tend to be a libertarian. I'm against helmet laws, seatbelt laws, etc. But I'm for smoking bans because of the societal cost. Your individual freedoms do not extend to the point where I have to pay for them. Same thing goes for porno - there's actual harm going on here. Harm to you as a person (which is difficult to make illegal) and harm to society - which is not.
-stormin
You're trying to complicate something that's actually really very simple.
Porn is not defined by content - it is defined by intent.
Nudity is just a lack of clothes. It's not fundamentally either moral or immoral. The human body, as far as I'm concerned, can be a beautiful thing. But let's not overly romanticize it either. Most human bodies in reality are really not all that much to look at. As for sex - I think sex is wonderful. It's a part of the human experience both as biological creatures and as thinking, communicating beings. I've got no problem with sex. But nudity and sex are not pornography. At best they're necessary, but not sufficient, for porno.
Porno is defined by the intent to stimulate and arouse the consumer. This is obviously going to be relative to different cultures and even different individuals. But there's really no need to go and check off every single piece of media as either "porno" or "not-porno". The general rule is good enough for practical purposes: if the intent of the "art" is to stimulate sexual feelings it's porno.
I think that's a pretty clear definition for porn.
-stormin
If you feel some types of media, like pornography, are bad, that is fine. I respect your decision. Like gambling, recreational drugs, or anything else, I can see how many people would see it as a little scary.
It's not a question of scary - it's a question of harm. If porno is, as I believe, harmful to participants, the women it victimizes, and soceity in general than we have grounds to make it illegal or at least to put limits on it. Frankly, however, I'm far more interested in getting people to quit watching it of their own free will - or refrain from getting into it in the first place - than I am for any kind of a censor ship.
But when you want to steal my money from me to give to some special interest group to "study the health effects of porn", that is bullshit. This hadn't even occurred to me. The problem with studying porno isn't lack of funds in any case, it's a hot-button issue and I'm sure there are plenty of academics who'd love to study it. The problem is that porno is harfmul and therefore it's hard to get ethics boards to let you run controlled experiments on it.
When you want to create a whole censorship infrastructure, just so you might not be accidentaly exposed to porn, that is bullshit. A - This is at best a secondary concern for me. B - Calling someone's opinion "bullshit" isn't much of an argument. I happen to think your reading of the Constitutions free speech clause is "bullshit", but I'll go further and state that, as Thomas Jefferson said, the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of the Framers, and the Framers intended religious and political and other intellectual "speech" to be free. The idea that you're allowed to say whatever you want is ridiculous. You can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater because it may cause harm. If porno causes harm than we're in the same category.
When you want to filter Gay Rights websites, or Sex Education websites, Huh?
[when] you want to force Google to turn over private information to the government What?
you have crossed the line, and YOU are the problem! I'll tell that to the next person I see that wants to filter out Gay Rights websites or sex education web sites and force Google to turn over private information to the gov't. Trouble is - I don't know anyone that holds those viewpoints. Do you?
I am far less afraid of pornography, than I am afraid of a police state. Very reasonable of you. I am too.
-stormin
But that WASN'T a well researched article. It was an opinion backed by a bunch of interviews and some paraphrasing of a poorly-researched book, which in turn was mostly a bunch of interviews.
In order for this criticism, and my own original claim, to make any sense we have to do something to define "well-researched". I'll be the first to admit that if we're going to talk about something be harfmul we want to go straigh to statistically-valid, double-blind studies. But, as I've already mentioned, you can't do these types of studies on human subjects. Why? Because when they tried them back in the 70's the effects were so harmful that from then on it's been impossible to do controlled studies on the effects of porn. So by normal stadanrds of "well-researched" you're right - these don't qualify. But given the contraints I think the book (moreso than the article) does a good job.
It's just too easy to sit back and say "there's no good evidence" when you know damn well there's no way to get good evidence. I personally do not believe that porno is bad because it's addictive. I'm not even sure that "addictive" and "addiction" are useful scientific terms. I'm persuaded by the interviews which, given the sheer number that have been conducted and the fact taht we can't really ask for anything more at this point, lead me to believe that there is a good case to be made for porno to be bad intrinsically and not merely because it is addictive.
I'm not saying that in the absence of real studies we should just default to trusting interviews as if they were studies. They're not. And so we can't have the same degree of certainty as we would if there were a vast literature of studies. But we do have at least one study (that lead to the effective ban) and we have the interviews. I'd say that's enough evidence to make a serious case even if not to be concrete proof.
I mean seriously, if there was some new drug on the market and they ran one human trial and said "holy cow - this stuff is dangerous - we can't authorize any more tests" would you then take ths position that we can't really know if it's dangerous or not because we can't do enough tests? The whole point is that the one test was deemed conclusive that the metaphorical drug (porno) was harmful.
-stormin
How did this post get +5 "insightful" when the central thesis doesn't even make sense?
The argument goes something like this
"Our society thinks sex is dirty"
"Therefore when people watch porn it's harmful"
The exact quote from the post is: Thanks to the abhorrent way our society has rejected natural sexuality by demonizing it and calling it "dirty" it kind of make sense that exposure to it would cause "harm"
I'm I the only one scratching my head and wondering if there's any actual logic behind this raw assertion? And what's with the ""s on harm? Last time I check the effects of porno were so detrimental that you can't even study them anymore because no test that involves showing porn to human subjects will pass ethics boards.
On top of this most of the people downloading porn are not the ones who think sex is "dirty". Yes, thanks to our Puritan ancestors America has a more traditional take on what constitutes modesty. In Europe going topless is no big deal. In America baring the midriff is no big deal. In other cultures even that is considered immodest and in Saudi Arabia.... you get the idea. It's not noteworthy to point that we have different conceptions of morality and chastity from one place to another. What's accepted in one culture is taboo in another.
But porno isn't defined by the % of body area revealed. Porno is a relative thing. This should be obvious to anyone who knows how porno has gotten a harder edge as culture standards for deceny become lax. Porno means you take the taboo of the people and you violate it. If the taboo in some country is "don't show ankles" then you get girly mags that show a little ankle. If the taboo in some country is "don't show boobies" then you get girly mags that show boobies. Etc.
Anyone that says there's some healthy level of human flesh is just silly. It's culturally relative. And anyone that says "the body is beautiful" leads to videos of anal sex is also off their rocker. The intent is obviously different from an appreciation of the beauty of the naked form to a picture or video designed to appeal to biological lust.
No matter how liberal the standards of the US get with regards to what is considered decent clothing porno will be one step ahead. Otherwise you'd see no porno in Europe - they'd all be so enlightened that pictures of naked people would be as commonplace as a pretty bird or a lovely horizon.
And what is this joke: In many countries wine and beer are a normal part of life and young people are exposed to it accordingly. You don't typically see alcoholism problems or alcohol abuse in general in these countries.
I'd love to see some evidence for this. It's a supid bsaeless claim that has no basis in fact. Sure - alcoholism may be lower in the UK (I don't know) but I can guarantee it's far higher in other parts of Europe. The only European country I've lived in is Hungary - an dI can testify it's a national crisis there.
Obviously there are exceptions. Exposing a 6 year old to scenes of graphic rape fantasies would probably be a bad idea. But exposing that same child to a naked form won't harm them at all.
This just shows what a superficial understanding of porno the post author has. Porno is not about what you show (content) it's about what that content means to the viewer. Porno is defined as porno not because it shows naked people but because it is culturally designed to be sexually stimulative. The whole thesis that you can show people the beauty of the human body and somehow make the immune to porno is ridiculuous. We could all live in a nude society and there would STILL be porno. Sure, as Americans it may only take a photo of a naked person to be sexually stimulative. And that may be silly. But if we cure that (minor) problem we've still not even begun to address what porno really is.
-stormin
I can only expect to get flamed for this comment, especially given my nickname, but I'm really sick and tired of how the Slashdot community (as any internet community would) almost universally reacts to any and all evidence that pornography might be *gasp* a bad thing with a combination of rationalization and equivication.
It's not that I actually disagree with some of the coutnerpoints that are made. Porn probably has had a significant impact on bringing us broadband. Some people have little or no problem with porn. But the general tone strikes me as annoying because it's obvious to me that the vast majority of you guys are not actually trying to discuss the issue: you're trying to excuse/justify your behavior in the face of overwhelming evidence that pornography - like smoking (as an example) is bad for people and bad for society. Or you're just dismissing a rather well-researched article because you don't like the conclusion.
The most obnoxious claim I hear is that "every male looks at porn". I'm sorry - but they all don't. I don't. I never have. I'm 24, I'm happily married, and I've just never looked. According to most of you (especially the ones that like porn the most, in my experience) this is because religion has warped my brain. Whatever - I'm hardly in a position to prove that I'm sane over the internet (and by definition I'm not 'normal' in this aspect of my behavior). I'm not the only one either. I have other friends (not all of them Mormon) who have similarly never looked at porn.
Look, if you think this is some "holier than thou" preach-fest, you're missing the point. My point is just this: knock it off with the "everybody does it" routine. Most people do. A lot don't. Whether or not 66% or 75% ot 95% or 99% of males look at porno should have nothing to do with 1 - whether it's a good thing or a bad thing 2 - whether you do it or don't.
Final point: not looking at porno doesn't mean you're not interested in sex. Nor is it a form of ascetism. There's a little something that makes us human: rational self control. Animals mate based on sheer biology. They eat based on sheer biology. Humans are biological creatures. We have the same essential urges. But what makes us human is the capacity not to bash in someone's skull when they really piss us off, not to eat to the point of becoming morbidly obese, and (in this case) not to go stare at pics/vids of porn whenever we feel sexual drives. Just because we don't fight everyone that pisses us off doesn't mean we don't feel anger. Just because we know how to control our weight/health doesn't mean we don't experience hunger or enjoy food. And just because we don't look at porno doesn't mean we don't have sexual urges and enjoy sex.
-stormin
Well, I'll be 25 in less than 2 months. I still seem to hear those transformer noises all the time. High-pitched noises just really bug me, I guess.
-stormin
What do you mean Huh?. Did you RTFA? I'm not responding to the poster, I'm responding to *gasp* TFA. TFA included many other types of reactions to electrical interference, including some that took place over much longer periods of time. It even included one study (although it wasn't double-blind and no real details were provided) of a school where filters were installed. They were switched on for 3 weeks, then off for 3 weeks. Apparently the students and teachers did react to it. Furthermore there's apparently a leukemia connection to high-voltage power lines.
So all I'm saying is that if there are long-term effects and someone becomes aware of them then there could be short-term psychosomatic effects. If I realize that being near TVs for hours gives me headaches I might get started on thinking about all the awful ways these invisible waves are interfering with my brain, and next thing you know - through just the power of self-suggestion - I'm claiming that my eyes water whenever I walk into a room with a lot of electronics.
I think the tests haev proved pretty conclusively that a lot of people making those short-term claims are rubbish. They can't really tell when they are in the presence of EM and when they're not. Some posters have taken this to mean the entire theory is rubbish.
I'm just saying that even if we prove that most people have no discernible short-term reaction (eg the "eyes watering" is a power-of-suggestion/placebo effect) that doesn't mean that there are not legitimate reasons to be worried about long-term effects (back aches, fatigue, migraines, etc.)
That's all I'm saying.
-stormin
As someone who's relatively web-savy (I've used Dreamweaver and Flash extensively in the past and I've grown to loathe Frontpage) I've got to say that I think GooglePages is a truly awesome innovation. Sure - there's no one thing about it that's really that great. But think about the fact that they've bundled the web-hosting, domain-name, and web-creation all into 1 package, made it simple, and made it free.
This isn't just for people who don't can't learn HTML. This is for anyone who wants to get a decent site on the itnernet but simply has better thaings to do than to learn to make attractive web pages from scratch. Face it - the GooglePages look pretty sweet (especially compared to Geocities, etc.)
There are a lot of people out there who would benefit from being able to create and maintain their own webpages who simply don't have the time to learn more tech stuff. I tried it out and was immediately convinced it would work perfectly for my dad (an English professor - http://terryl.givens.googlepages.com/ ). He doesn't need SQL, PHP, etc. No messageboards, no forums, no online-shopping, no registering. Just text, images, and some pdf/doc docs.
My dad's a smart man. He could learn all about web hosting, html, etc. if he wanted to. But he's got a PhD in Comparative Literature and he's a litle busy with doing his actual job to start learning how to do tech stuff. There are lot of professionals and other busy people out there like him. They would benefit from a very simple web site. Not just simple to design, but simple to order (try explaining domain names vs. web hosting to most non-techies) and maintain. Not to mention free.
GooglePages is not rocket science - but in my opinion it goes a long way towards hitting the sweet spot where convenience and function are optimized for people who want to be able to make web pages with no serious training.
I also think it's not a bad idea for techies either, if you're too busy with other stuff. I'm working full time, I do consulting part time, I have my own small company on top of that, and I'm about to start a masters program. I don't have time to mess with a web site, but it's important to keep a presence on the web (resume stuff). GooglePages is perfect for that.
-stormin
Hear hear!
-stormin