Suppose you could wave a magic wand and end all pornography (you'll agree with whatever definition the wand chooses). Nobody will ever know it was you, porn stars will find other careers easily, and no porn site can ever come into existence again. Do you do it?
This is a mirror of an ACX Survey question, because I'm curious what Manifold will say.
I also have a market on what Manifold will want to ban most:
Related questions
My main concerns are the exploitation of women and the harmful effects on users.
It’s not hard to compare pimps and pornography studios. They invariably use women for profit and even in the US there have been former stars claiming they have been coerced for this purpose. And we are seeing more and more studies that suggest porn consumption can be addictive and cause substantial changes to the brain.
Based on the terms of this market, banning porn outright would not harm the economy, and there wouldn’t be any black market (online at least). Based on that, I see no reason why banning porn would outweigh keeping it.
@thepurplebull It’s banned in south Korea. People still watch it using a VPN. Also prostitution is more widespread than in the west (though I have no idea whether there is a causal connection).
Does porn include sextapes? Cuz then no, cuz my gf and I love recording those and it's a genuine fun activity. Porn has helped me a lot too. I just enjoy it.
My gf, when she was inexperienced and wanted to improve bj techniques, went through a lot of porn focused on it to learn how to give better bjs, and porn helped her as well. There's a lot of homemade content. There's a lot of "cam" stuff that's great as well - people wanna see something specific by someone specific, and they pay them to do it. Very much like how people want their favorite actors to say their name or their fav singer to play at their birthday party.
So, again, what's the line you draw? Porn is a service as well as a product. Are you talking about porn as a service, or porn as a product? What industry does not have its problems? Why are we ok with discussing banning porn but no one wants to give up their smartphones even if children were doing the assembly work for making them
@RanaG it's also good to transactionalise any productive work. Porn is a service with a huge value to most men, it's not good if we make it informal because the service providers end up losing (no cash exchange and smaller scale than latent demand)
@RanaG Most of the anti porn comments seem to be strictly in reference to the "industry" and harm it does to women. I.E @Shump "If I could end all NEW porn, I would in a heartbeat. There's enough already, no need for extra harm." I assuming he means "industry porn," since it wouldn't make much sense to suggest a woman exercising freewill then recording and selling that would be "extra harm." I'm curious if he feels the same way about sports such as Football. We have plenty of football games to watch. No need for extra harm.
@KeenenWatts what's 'industry'? If you mean things like Brazzers etc then that's still useful to women especially with current contracts. Not all women are great at managing their own freelancing, so Brazzers does all the admin and distribution work and the actresses only supply the service.
@RanaG in fact, I would argue more young women should try to make an early life income through porn (rather than having to resort to relying on a boyfriend for resources). There is an economic waste in not using a valuable endowment.
@RanaG Industry as in shady situations like GirlsDoPorn and other stuff where people were in positions of power and took advantage. Which happens all the time in all sorts of industries. In my experience most of the "porn is bad" are just antiporn people (which is their choice) and because they are antiporn they naturally have a negative idea about it and don't care to check the facts.
@RanaG I do personally question that it is "of huge value to men" for the same reason I question refined sugar would be "of huge value to men" (it smells a lot like reward hacking).
@RobertCousineau I feel like comparing masturbation to sugar is a great blow out of proportion. Sugar has clear harms on the short and long term. I'm not convinced masturbating to porn is net negative (given benefits to stress relief and to society by keeping low status men from being sexually frustrated)
My thoughts, going from the most hypothetical and idealized scenario to the least:
I think that while porn is not inherently bad, porn is much more often than not a waste of time for all involved (similarly to how I'd characterize sugar as much more often than not a waste of calories for all who consume it). Therefore, if I could re-initialize the universe and make it so that humans are not susceptible to the reward hacking that is porn, I'd think that is likely a good deal.
I would pay all of my lifetime earnings to have God give me this wand (and 10,000 years to deliberate (edit for clarity: in a pocket universe) before choosing to wave it or not).
I think that magically ending porn without also ending people's desire for it/memories of it is slightly net positive (for the same reason I'd say it is net positive to take away sugar even if people remember what food tasted like with it). Nevertheless, I do not think I am high enough confidence in this belief to justify waving a wand and making it so.
I would not pay for the privilege to be given this wand (although 10,000 years to deliberate (edit for clarity: in a pocket universe) would be nice).
I think that any current government banning porn (or restricting it, taxing it, etc) is likely very net negative, for similar reasons to those that make banning/restricting/taxing sugar (or cocaine/cannabinoids/opiates) production and/or intake net negative.
I would pay all of my lifetime earnings if I could be given a wand that makes sure this never happens in worlds with our organizational capacity (and 10,000 years to deliberate (edit for clarity: in a pocket universe)).
If I were only given 5 minutes (a la Joshua's finger devil), I'd have to pick option 2 (edit for clarity: neither pay for the wand nor wave it).
Some general opinions of mine on porn:
The joy added is minimal compared to porn-free masturbation (after your brains circuits re-normalize, similar to how food tastes mediocre soon after quitting sugar but then almost equally delicious not much longer after).
I'm not sure one way or the other if it serves as a substitute for sexual acts that are inherently bad/nonconsensual, but lean slightly towards this being the case.
Consumption is addictive for a noticeable portion of consumers in ways that porn substitutes are not (porn-free masturbation, sex, wet dreams). This makes it quite harmful, because for those who it is addictive for a lot of time gets wasted.
Production is likely no more harmful than other stigmatized/occasionally illegal jobs. The harm that those currently involved in production experience is almost all due to the fact that porn is stigmatized and somewhat illegal.
Consumption in a vacuum is not inherently bad. Thoughts crimes are silly.
I both think that porn somewhat devalues sex/overvalues masturbation and generally think that the world would be better with directionally more in person interaction (in this case, sex) and less solo (in)action (in this case, masturbation).
@RobertCousineau You would like 10,000 years - approximately the full duration of settled human civilization - to deliberate, but if forced to decide in five minutes, you would abolish not only all pornography for all time, but also apparently Grandma's cookies?
The zero or near-zero weight which most utilitarians place on thoughts such as "I don't have a right to do this" is actually bone-chilling.
(Please don't erase humanity in order to rewire our brains against our will either.)
@HarrisonNathan As a utilitarian, while I think the "I don't have the right" line of reasoning is silly and borderline nonsensical, I do think the "I (and likely any human) am not wise enough to be trusted to make the correct decision on something so irreversible" line of reasoning still works
@TheAllMemeingEye That was evidently insufficient to deter @RobertCousineau, likely because of the lack of a distinction between choosing not to choose and choosing the status quo.
@HarrisonNathan I think you misread my comment (or it is less clear than I hoped); I said if given 5 minutes to decide I'd go with option two (not paying to get/wave the wand). I've gone ahead and edited it to make that more clear.
On 10k years, I was meaning I would like a lot of time to deliberate before taking action that affects so many others so strongly. I was imagining doing so in a pocket universe (if God can end porn entirely, he can also give me some extra CPU cycles), which I've also now edited into the above comment. I tried to make my requirement for time to deliberate extra clear by saying I would go with option 2 if put on the spot, but you seem to have interpreted that the opposite of how I intended.
PS: I think you arguing against a strawmanned statist version of me. I will state I am constantly the most voluntaryist person of people I know; you are welcome to question that but by doing so you seem to be making erroneous assumptions and statements.
@RobertCousineau Oh, I did completely misunderstand you, then. And of course I don't know anything about you, so I was just extrapolating from that misunderstanding.
Ban these while you are at it too, then. https://www.theonion.com/report-confirms-no-need-to-make-new-chairs-for-the-time-1819576693
@HarrisonNathan A million people can watch a single porn video. A million people can't sit on a single chair.
@Shump There are also enough books for everyone to read, films for them to watch, and music for them to listen to. These things can be digitally reproduced at near zero cost, and there's an undeniable cost in resources, harm to the environment, and potential for injury due to accidents that occur during the creation of new ones. Clearly, let's ban all of that.
@HarrisonNathan because you keep strawmanning my argument and making analogies that are so flawed, that I don't think I even need to explain why they are so.
@Shump I take it you regard porn as something there can be "enough" of, unlike probably any other good I can name, and the reason for this is obvious to you in a way that it clearly isn't to me.
@HarrisonNathan I think the reasoning is that the creation of new porn often involves significant harm to those involved
@TheAllMemeingEye There is a widespread false belief that that is the case, and Shump's comment suggested endorsement of it, but I'm focusing on the perplexing concept of there being "enough." I'm not being obtuse here; I really don't understand why this applies to porn and not to chairs.
@HarrisonNathan My guess is that the idea of enough relies on the belief in harm in creation, which I'm not sure why you're so confident is false?
@TheAllMemeingEye Perhaps. I interpreted "enough" as suggesting that there is limited benefit to additional production, but he might have merely meant that the benefit is outweighed by the perceived harm.
As to why I'm sure that's false, overwhelming self-reported information from workers in the porn industry contradicts the lurid anti-sex-work activist stories that allege pervasive exploitation. In fact these narratives are so totally disconnected from reality that the activists obviously know it, and do not care.
@HarrisonNathan Yeah, I mean that the marginal benefit of more porn is very limited, and is outweighed by the harms. I don't see a significant harm is consuming porn, only in producing it.
There is widespread abuse in the porn industry, that is self-reported by sex workers. Many women report being pressured into sex scenes that they are uncomfortable with, a situation that is worsened by Mindgeek, Pornhub's parent company, holding an almost monopolistic market share in the industry, and blacklisting models who refuse too much or complain. There is also widespread violations of consent within filming, as evidenced by the James Dean controversy, that is not addressed by the industry. There's also human trafficking involved in the industry.
I'm not some kind of fundamentalist, and I believe ethical porn is possible, but the industry is far from there.
@Shump I'll start from the bottom. Given the tens of thousands of people involved in the mainstream porn industry, and the persistence of the belief in widespread human trafficking there for four decades, the lack of evidence sufficient to charge any mainstream studio with that pushes this to the level of conspiracy theory. (That is not to say there have not been abuses committed in shady and marginal operations like GirlsDoPorn, but that's the rare exception.) On the misleading narratives surrounding "sex trafficking" in general, I refer you to Elizabeth Nolan Brown - nine years old, but evergreen: https://reason.com/2015/09/30/the-war-on-sex-trafficking-is/
You bring up the MeToo era controversy about James Deen. Of course there are abusive men in every industry (another one from back then was Khan Tusion, who disappeared after multiple women made accusations.) But no evidence of "widespread violations of consent within filming."
And the first bit about there being a lot of whistleblowers and Mindgeek retaliating against them - this allegation (especially the latter part) is new to me, honestly, and a search turned up nothing. I will say it's rather hard to believe that lots of people are being pressured into porn given how competitive it is; it's common to hear them complain of not being able to find enough work. If you just mean cases of details of a scene changing after they were agreed upon, I'm sure that happens from time to time.
But as for the value being "very limited," well, since I don't listen to rap music and it all sounds more or less the same to me and there seems to be too much of it, but I wouldn't presume to eliminate an entire form of artistic expression for everyone else on Earth and all of eternity, which is what bothers me about the casual way the mainly utilitarian rationalists who hang around here are treating this question.
@HarrisonNathan Honestly it's beginning to seem like this is more of an empirical question requiring a meta-analysis by an unbiased third party than an ethical issue that can be resolved by debate
@TheAllMemeingEye Besides the empirical question, the ethical issue that bothers me here is the lack of respect for others' autonomy that some utilitarians demonstrate. I'd have a very high bar for banning any given thing for all time on my own personal whim.
The empirical questions are also frustrating; it feels similar to talking to people who are convinced we can't use nuclear power because radioactive waste is an intractable problem, except this one loses me massively more social status points.
@HarrisonNathan Can we pester Aella or Scott Alexander into doing a deep dive to unbiasedly answer this question once and for all lol?
@HarrisonNathan I mean I was kinda joking, but the trouble is, without spending a vast amount of time digging through all your sources myself, and no external judgement by a reputable unbiased third party, it kinda feels like your word against his
@HarrisonNathan Maybe we can make a market along the lines of "Conditional on there ever being a meta-analysis deep-dive by a reputable unbiased third party (as judged by Manifold poll) on whether there is indeed widespread abuse and human trafficking in the porn industry, will it conclude that there is?" with the competing empirical arguments previously raised in this thread from either side listed in the description
@TheAllMemeingEye You're free to write the question, but personally I'm not highly confident in the ability of Manifold betting to provide the clarity you desire.