Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

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"Kids, marriage, TV, etc." can introduce strains or challenges in a relationship that can tear it down if not handled correctly. Pornography by its nature is harmful. It is poison to love. They are entirely different categories.

There is a lot of data to corroborate these ideas. There are many porn consumers who have recognized their addictions, even if they are not actively battling them. You can learn about these things by looking for them. http://obscenitycrimes.org/cline_unabridged.pdf is a 23-page (unfortunately magazine-like) overview of the research of one sex therapist; I couldn't find something more clinical in the brief time I was able to look.

Regarding the default tendency, there are many things that humans naturally prefer that are much, much worse than the alternatives. There is a default inclination toward drugs and other seriously harmful solutions, but that doesn't make heroin good, does it? Our attraction to these things is a very complex issue which I'm not fit to explain scientifically. That doesn't mean it's not real.

So I was reading through the PDF you linked to and I came to this:

Consider also the spread of sex education courses through schools in the United States. The assumption is that you can change attitudes and behavior about sex through some form of teaching and instruction. If you assume that this is so (still a controversial issue among researchers) ...

Still a controversial issue among researchers? Yeah, kind of like how evolution is still a controversial issue among researchers. So this guy is a sex therapist who doubts the value of sex education in schools? I then realised that this document is actually just thinly veiled social conservative propaganda. I then stopped reading and dragged it to the trash.

This Dr. Victor B. Cline obviously has a massive personal bias, I assume stemming from his own religious beliefs, though this in only a hunch. You're going to have to do better than this ready for Fox News crap.

This kind of binary, authoritarian view of any subject really gets my goat up. Who are they (the writer you cite) or you to be judging and telling anyone else how they should be living their life? Because face it, that's exactly what they're/you're doing.

There is a default inclination toward drugs and other seriously harmful solutions, but that doesn't make heroin good, does it?

Doesn't make it all bad either. Opiates are used as effective pain killers. The legal status of drugs seems to correlate very loosely with how harmful they are.

Right, sex isn't all bad, the things that make us attracted to naked bodies are good. Tearing those things out of context and exploiting them for personal enrichment (pornography) is just as wrong as tearing opiates out of their context in medical treatment and exploiting them for personal enrichment.

I don't know why you're coming in here talking about law because I never brought that up. It's a different issue.

I'm not telling anyone how to live his/her life. I'm just informing people and giving them facts I know. Each person is free to make his/her own choices and I don't endeavor to remove or abridge that freedom.

None of what you've said changes the fact that you're arguing for an absolute viewpoint. Porn == bad, no exceptions (unless I misunderstand you) and absolute viewpoints oversimplify the issues they pertain to.

I also don't agree with you that "tearing opiates out of their context in medical treatment" as you so negatively frame it is a bad thing either. Who are you to say that's the only legitimate context for them to be in? If people want to take smack or any other drug recreationally, then that should be up to them[1]. I trust you can see how I would look at this analogy relating to your view on porn.

I put in the line about law because it's a point I was reminded of as I was writing. I do that sometimes, including a thought that occurs to me in my writing. Even in replies I don't always feel the need to limit my prose to issues specifically raised by others.

These things you're informing people about may be something you "know" however you wish to define that, but I don't see many objectively verifiable facts. I will read the PDF you linked to when I get the time (I have only been able to scan over it at this point), but I don't expect to find anything that will persuade me that your absolutist view is justified.

[1] It's another thing entirely if they endanger others by e.g. driving while under the influence of said drug, but this as you have said to me on another matter, is a different issue.

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