Assertion: Child porn availability does not increase child sex abuse
There are a few different reasons why people oppose the existence of child pornography. One is the harm to the children when it is made. This is a valid objection. I think that putting children in sexual situations should remain a serious crime. It does not apply, however, to virtual child porn, made with young-looking actors or any of the variety of animation-related techniques.
I believe one major objection to all forms, including the virtual, is rarely formulated: people find it gross and disgusting. That’s a reasonable reaction, and one I expect I would share to some of this material, based on descriptions I’ve read.
The main objection to such materials is that they might incite pedophiles into doing bad things. Courts have cited it as justification for these laws. (This is a dramatic step with regard to civil liberties, but that’s not my topic here. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html). Regardless of whether it should influence policy, is it true?
One argument in favor of it is intuition. Looking at pictures of forbidden things might reasonably make it more likely you’d do those things. There is resistance in many quarters to applying this reasoning to the parallel situations of fictional violence in movies and to the degradation of women in pornography, in part because there is no convincing data.
Another argument in favor is the experience of clinicians. Here the sample bias is huge. The only population being studied is people who have offended against children. They may well find that a man went from thoughts about children to looking at child pornography to offending against children. It’s reasonable to think that if he does not look at child pornography, the chain will be broken. But of course this doesn’t address causality. Increasing desire and lowered inhibitions may cause both the child porn viewing and then the offense. And it leaves open the logical possibility that of two men who felt attracted to children, one looked at child porn and went on to offend against a child. A similar man might have had more and better child porn, satisfied his desires with it, and not gone on to offend against a child.
However, there is also a line of research that bears on this question directly.
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-effects-of-pornography.html
Milton Diamond and colleagues examined several societies in which child pornography was very difficult to obtain, but then due to societal changes it became very easy to obtain. He looked at how the number of child abuse case reports changed in the society. One thing he never found was an increase in sex crimes against children—if anything, they went down. Now, there are confounding factors in all these cases, but finding the same result across several societies makes them more convincing. They are avoiding the sample bias problem and looking at the society as a whole. This is the measure we care about.
There are implications here beyond child pornography. In related discussions here, for instance
http://lesswrong.com/lw/it3/assertion_a_large_proportion_of_pedophiles_are/9vv9?context=3
some people have suggested that pedophiles would do better to think as little about their attraction as possible as a way of protecting children. But consider: If a pedophile views child porn, he sees people actually doing the things he would like to do; often the children seem not to mind. If that doesn’t increase offending against children, why would thinking about it do so?
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn’t support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn’t change this aspect of the situation.
Few people suggest that child porn made with real children should be made legal, even if it became established that its availability decreases child sex abuse as opposed to not changing it. Non-consequentialists don’t want to sacrifice the welfare of a few children to help the many. Even if that doesn’t bother someone, the alternative of virtual child pornography should be tried first.
I might appear to have a vested interest in the availability of such materials. I don’t, personally, though the number of men who are given years in prison for looking at pictures does distress me deeply. In any case, one of the rationality principles does say that arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not the attributes of the person making them.
My intuition is, that viewing pictures is more a tension relief and prevents the real offence, rather than stimulating the crime. I would prefer to have hard scientific data. However, without those data, I would bet money on my stated hypothesis, rather than the opposite.
You should cite more sources, preferred are the research paper, and among them, metaanalyses, as ChristianKI correctly says.
I am not from USA, but worked there for 2 years in the past. I remember hearing about people facing prison for the possession of children pornography, and was genuinely surprised and sorry for the offenders (although I am a standard heterosexual woman). We had a long discussion with my that day US boyfriend, why is the possession punished so severely. I was surprised by the unproven, but unquestioned assumption, that having pictures stimulates the owner to commit the actual crime. Of course, pictures of children molested or having sexual intercourse should not be taken, because children should not have sexual intercourse or be molested. However, some people define children pornography very broadly, even children taking a bath, running around naked in the garden etc. Some 35 years ago, my parents photographed me naked on the beaches of Yugoslavia and it was pretty normal at those times. I would not be happy, if they were selling those pictures to strangers for pornography. However, I believe, selling their own old pictures when the child becomes adult could become legal once—if it is proven that the pictures do not increase the crime.
However, some people define children pornography very broadly, even children taking a bath, running around naked in the garden etc.
In the United States, at least, an image has to depict “sexually explicit conduct” in order to qualify as child pornography, so I don’t think most images of the sort you describe would qualify. It is probably true, however, that “sexually explicit conduct” is quite often interpreted by the judiciary in an implausibly broad manner.
Did you intend to talk exclusively about virtual child porn? If so, you might want to change the wording of your initial assertion, since “virtual child porn” is not what people think when they read “child porn”.
If not, I don’t think you’ve adequately supported your assertion. It may be the case that viewing child porn does not increase the probability of committing child abuse once you’ve conditionalized on relevant common causes. But it is the case that producing child porn (actual, not virtual) requires child sex abuse. Since increased availability would presumably be causally linked to increased production, ceteris paribus increased availability should be causally linked with increased abuse. Now it may be the case that there is some countervailing causal mechanism leading from increased availability to decreased abuse, but you haven’t really provided adequate evidence for the existence of this mechanism, or that it fully compensates for the increased abuse associated with production even if it does exist.
Also, when you say that child porn with real children should be illegal, do you mean that just production should be illegal or that possession should be illegal as well?
And this:
In any case, one of the rationality principles does say that arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not the attributes of the person making them.
This is not right. The attributes of the person making an argument are often valuable evidence regarding the validity of the argument, especially in an area where one is not an expert. For instance, I don’t know much about the research about the relationship between child porn and child abuse. You haven’t presented a comprehensive meta-analysis of this research, merely a selection. If I’m trying to evaluate whether your framing is representative of the actual state of the research or whether it is cherry-picked to favor a particular position, my beliefs about your personal attributes are very relevant.
As an aside: I’m really not comfortable with a single-issue poster whose single issue is pedophile rights, especially if this slides from advocacy for celibate pedophiles (which I don’t consider objectionable) to advocacy for consumers of child porn (which I do consider objectionable). Consider participating in other discussions on this site as well, so that people don’t get the impression that you’re on here just to push this, shall we say “provocative” agenda. I feel somewhat bad about saying this because I dislike the idea of piling on to posters who voluntarily identify themselves as low status, and also I do think your commitment to celibacy and the avoidance of child porn in the face of your unfortunate desires is commendable (although I don’t like your attachment to pedophilia as an identity). Still, I haven’t downvoted you yet, but if every top-level comment or post you make ends up being about pedophilia, I might start doing so.
Since increased availability would presumably be causally linked to increased production,
Given how easy it is to make copies in this day and age, I don’t think that’s a necessary link—but you’re probably right. My assumption in any case is that a given child porn image is consumed thousands of times, so the effect on the consumer end would dwarf the effect on the producer end.
Also, when you say that child porn with real children should be illegal, do you mean that just production should be illegal or that possession should be illegal as well?
The production should be illegal. From descriptions I’ve read, I think that much of it is disgusting and I would urge people not to possess it or look at it. But there are many things that I don’t like that I don’t think should have criminal penalties attached, and child porn possession is one of those things.
The attributes of the person making an argument are often valuable evidence regarding the validity of the argument, especially in an area where one is not an expert.
You are right. I was mistaken about this. I guess rationality doesn’t generally call for eliminating any source of information, though it may suggest downgrading some.
Consider participating in other discussions on this site as well, so that people don’t get the impression that you’re on here just to push this, shall we say “provocative” agenda.
Of course, if I want to have my comments taken seriously on other topics, it helps not to be linked to a low-status identity. Would you be any more comfortable thinking that I as a person participate more broadly under another identity? I’m not saying whether I do or not, but I’m asking.
advocacy for consumers of child porn (which I do consider objectionable).
To clarify, I am opposed to its production, which I think should remain illegal. I am opposed to criminal sanctions for the possession of child pornography. I suspect I would find much of it (both real and virtual) disgusting and revolting. It is advocacy for the consumers to the extent of not wanting them to face years in prison. It is definitely not approval for disgusting material.
But there are many things that I don’t like that I don’t think should have criminal penalties attached, and child porn possession is one of those things.
Legalizing possession would create huge demand for commercial child porn.
First, if this were true, I would rethink my position—I agree it is a worrisome consideration..
I am not at all sure it is true. The ‘ordinary’ porn market is not so profitable any more because there is so much amateur material available for free. Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn. It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession. Or one could change the penalties to a fine instead of prolonged imprisonment. One could also try various of these things in pilot experiments and see what happens.
All that said, in this one case we go to extraordinary lengths to suppress a market for something. For comparison, suppose someone stages a murder of a half dozen people. No one disputes it is a horrible crime. But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don’t even think about banning possession of such things.
The ‘ordinary’ porn market is not so profitable any more because there is so much amateur material available for free.
Amateur or professional, the demand is there. The payment might not be money, but other goods like reputation or porn. What’s the difference?
Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn.
This speculation seems unfounded, considering this has not happened in adult porn.
It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession.
No. Cryptography and covering your tracks by using anonymization services is trivial.
But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don’t even think about banning possession of such things.
I don’t think legalizing one harmful thing because other harmful things are legal is a good argument.
I think if you have a good reason to suspect you’re under active surveillance (by the NSA?), you’ve already failed.
Establishing perfect protection is impossible, but getting very good protection is trivial and accomplished by using simple to use software. That is, if you know what you’re doing. I admit that is a very special kind of trivial.
Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn.
This speculation seems unfounded, considering this has not happened in adult porn.
The production of real adult porn is as legal as virtual adult porn. Since the production of real child porn would remain illegal, one might expect a difference.
It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession.
No. Cryptography and covering your tracks by using anonymization services is trivial.
These methods are available in today’s environment too where child porn possession is illegal. There are still a lot of convictions. If we divide the world into “those who can use tracks-covering services reliably” and “those who can’t”, we could argue that the first group is already consuming its fill of child porn and the second group would be as uncertain in covering financial dealings as they are in covering downloads today.
But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don’t even think about banning possession of such things.
I don’t think legalizing one harmful thing because other harmful things are legal is a good argument.
That’s fair enough, but we can also consult our intuitions about how we’d like to handle that case. Would you with enthusiasm support efforts to make possession of such videos illegal? My reaction is, “Let’s not go there, and just let people possess those videos.”
Sometimes a sample is also a population. We might not be able to generalize to all nations, but knowing the effect on the US would be very interesting in and of itself.
Other times it seems reasonable to draw conclusions without a sample, if we expect little variability in the population on the measure in question. For instance, if Obamacare has been in effect in Massachusetts for a few years, you don’t say “n=1” and that the results have no bearing on what will happen in other states. You might argue that there are reasons it won’t apply due to differing conditions, but few would say that it is as irrelevant as “n=1″ would imply.
My assumption in any case is that a given child porn image is consumed thousands of times, so the effect on the consumer end would dwarf the effect on the producer end.
That assumes there is a non-negligible inhibiting effect on the consumer end. I don’t think this has been established. I realize you think the Diamond research is good evidence for this, but I’m not so sure. I admit I haven’t perused that research in any detail, but as far as I can tell, their claims are based on very basic correlations between time series. Moreover, in each case the time series in question change monotonically in the same direction (greater availability of child porn as time goes on, and fewer cases of child sex abuse as time goes on). So it’s not even like there are ups and downs in the two time series that track each other. The researchers also don’t offer examples of countries with the opposing trends (less access to child pornography coupled with increased child sex abuse), or even offer control data from countries with no change in child porn availability. Drawing straightforward causal conclusions from this research is questionable.
Would you be any more comfortable thinking that I as a person participate more broadly under another identity? I’m not saying whether I do or not, but I’m asking.
I would be more comfortable if I had reason to believe this. I don’t like the idea of this forum becoming a haven for well-spoken advocates of taboo causes (in fact I’m unhappy with the extent to which it already is something of this sort), especially taboo causes I think are taboo for good reason. If there were evidence that you were participating in the forum out of a general interest in rationality rather than just because you think rationalists would be a receptive audience for your cause, I’d be less perturbed by your posts.
To clarify, I am opposed to its production, which I think should remain illegal. I am opposed to criminal sanctions for the possession of child pornography. I suspect I would find much of it (both real and virtual) disgusting and revolting. It is advocacy for the consumers to the extent of not wanting them to face years in prison. It is definitely not approval for disgusting material.
To what extent does your belief that consumption of child porn should be decriminalized hinge on the assumption that decriminalizing consumption will not lead to an increase in production? Is there, to your mind, some level of increased production given which it would be OK to criminalize consumption, or do you maybe believe that no realistic amount of increase in production could justify imprisoning people only for looking at pictures? And can you give an estimate of the probability you assign to the proposition that production will increase if consumption is decriminalized?
I don’t like the idea of this forum becoming a haven for well-spoken advocates of taboo causes (in fact I’m unhappy with the extent to which it already is something of this sort), especially taboo causes I think are taboo for good reason.
Are these reasons because of the damage to reputation caused by the reaction of others, or do you see good reasons for the taboo that are more inherent to the subject itself?
If there were evidence that you were participating in the forum out of a general interest in rationality rather than just because you think rationalists would be a receptive audience for your cause, I’d be less perturbed by your posts.
I participated in the past. I was very excited by the basic concepts. I believe I read or at least skimmed all the major sequences. When it came to the details, I began to have a lot more questions. The interest in the AI singularity and cryonic preservation seemed like topics that were discussed a lot because of the interest people had in them, and did not in any sense proceed out of rationality considerations themselves. They didn’t interest me personally. There was also a tendency for conversations to focus on the concerns of teens and 20-somethings.
I was in part hoping that the insights of people here could help me refine my own thinking, and to a small extent this has happened. Although I do not think as clearly as I would like (and there are probably limitations in my thinking others can see and I cannot), I hope my posts give evidence of an attempt to follow the LessWrong approach that goes beyond merely being well-spoken.
Is there, to your mind, some level of increased production given which it would be OK to criminalize consumption, or do you maybe believe that no realistic amount of increase in production could justify imprisoning people only for looking at pictures?
And can you give an estimate of the probability you assign to the proposition that production will increase if consumption is decriminalized?
Presumably what we want is instead a series of probabilities covering different values of how much the production would increase. I would estimate the probability of it doubling as 0.1 or less. There are, as I said, a number of parameters that could be adjusted. It is an experiment one could try and then reverse if parameters could not be found that yielded acceptable results.
Reasons for thinking the probability would be low is that the production is global, and criminal penalties are adjusted on a national basis. Another is that possession is already widespread due to a perception that anonymization protects people from detection.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand. Perhaps I am letting conventional wisdom influence me too much in wavering from that view.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand.
The sounds like you want to think about the issue of increased demand because you already made up your mind about the issue.
I think the ACLU positions is that even if there is increased demand and thus more production the harm that it causes doesn’t outweight the good of legalisation. Arguing such a position however needs analysis of the good that you create.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand.
The sounds like you want to think about the issue of increased demand because you already made up your mind about the issue.
I have no idea how your comment relates to anything I said.
I think the ACLU positions is that even if there is increased demand and thus more production the harm that it causes doesn’t outweigh the good of legalisation. Arguing such a position however needs analysis of the good that you create.
I think that’s a fair summary of their position. I (and I think they) would defend the good of legalization as keeping the government from looking through people’s private computer files and sending them to prison for years based on what’s there. Another is avoiding the anxiety a lot of people feel constantly wondering if some download they made might have a bad image in it that they’re not aware of, or there’s something in the background of a shot they didn’t notice, etc.
In contrast, the good of reducing demand is a long, tenuous, and indirect chain.
Given how easy it is to make copies in this day and age, I don’t think that’s a necessary link—but you’re probably right. My assumption in any case is that a given child porn image is consumed thousands of times, so the effect on the consumer end would dwarf the effect on the producer end.
This argument is easy to turn on its head (just goes to show how easy these kinds of arguments are to make). If copying cp is easy, the same item is more difficult to sell multiple times. This creates an incentive to produce more material, because nobody is going to buy material that is easy to copy for free. Old material is more available for copying than new material. As was already argued, producing cp creates more abuse. In any case, there’s always going to be demand for novelty.
Through all of this, the profit margins are going ever downward. Producers want a good expected payoff to cover the risks of detection and criminal prosecution. Market forces should depress production for profit.
Some kind of an economic equilibrium between production and copying would develop. You could look into examples of other pirated media to get an idea how it would settle.
For those who want some interesting information about the background of child pornography industry Wikileaks made the decision to publish one letter that they got on the topic. Usually Wikileaks only publishes source documents but they made an expection because of the value of information to understand what going on with regards to filter the infernet from child pornography.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/An_insight_into_child_porn
One argument in favor of it is intuition. Looking at pictures of forbidden things might reasonably make it more likely you’d do those things. There is resistance in many quarters to applying this reasoning to the parallel situations of fictional violence in movies and to the degradation of women in pornography, in part because there is no convincing data.
If you care about the issue you are pushing, don’t make assertions like that without linking to relevant meta studies.
I might appear to have a vested interest in the availability of such materials. I don’t, personally, though the number of men who are given years in prison for looking at pictures does distress me deeply.
Motivated reasoning doesn’t score you points on Lesswrong. In a case like that you would profit from keeping your language as academic as possible.
It might be okay to make a joke about suffering that those men who are imprisoned face but making jokes in contexts like this isn’t easy so I wouldn’t recommend you to try.
In any case, one of the rationality principles does say that arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not the attributes of the person making them.
You yourself say that you are in the emotion of distress that indicates that you aren’t thinking clearly about the issue and it helps people to draw conclusions about your argument.
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn’t support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn’t change this aspect of the situation.
If that analogy is correct there little we can do with regards to pedophiles besides locking them up. Cyberporn legislation would be a tool to do so.
Besides you fail to provide any reason why this analogy should hold. Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the enviroment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile?
I believe one major objection to all forms, including the virtual, is rarely formulated: people find it gross and disgusting.
The fact that you think it’s rarely formulated says more about you than about the position against which you are arguing. There are plenty of people who do consider all forms of pornography to go against human dignity and to objective the objects that pornography shows.
Even if that doesn’t bother someone, the alternative of virtual child pornography should be tried first.
That leaves the question of how to decide if a given image is virtual or isn’t.
Non-consequentialists don’t want to sacrifice the welfare of a few children to help the many.
That no sentence that you should write in a context like. It raises emotions that you don’t want to get raised.
You also haven’t identified what welfare you care about. Is it about the pleasure of consuming child pornography?
If so, is it basically about providing a way for pedophiles to wirehead themselves? If that isn’t the goal what is?
You also muddle your goal. You start by pretending that you just want a discussion about whether child porn availability increases child sex abuse and end by calling for legal changes.
PS: Lean to format your links correctly. Not knowing how to format links signals your outsider status.
Thanks for the tips on how to make more persuasive arguments. One reason I don’t source many things is because I don’t know what is controversial and what isn’t. I sort of rely on a (politely) adversarial process. If someone questions an assertion I make, I can see if I can find a source.
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn’t support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn’t change this aspect of the situation...
If that analogy is correct there little we can do with regards to pedophiles besides locking them up. Cyberporn legislation would be a tool to do so.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity. Pedophiles following that pattern would mostly not abuse children.
Besides you fail to provide any reason why this analogy should hold. Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the environment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile?
There is considerable evidence that it is determined early in life, perhaps in utero.
As for abuse, what I’ve heard is that a rough childhood (which includes sexual abuse) is associated with criminal behavior of all sorts in adulthood (including sexual abuse) but the link is not specific. The preferential attraction to children is not caused by abuse. No, I don’t have a source on that I can easily find.
You also haven’t identified what welfare you care about. Is it about the pleasure of consuming child pornography? If so, is it basically about providing a way for pedophiles to wirehead themselves? If that isn’t the goal what is?
The hypothesis for this discussion was a hypothetical finding that child porn possession reduces child sex abuse.
If it merely doesn’t increase such abuse, a couple questions arise. One is the civil liberties goal of leaving people alone when they’re not hurting anyone. “Wirehead” isn’t a term I use, but as I understand it, people should be delighted if pedophiles did that instead of abusing kids.
One reason I don’t source many things is because I don’t know what is controversial and what isn’t.
If you write a post about a controversial topic you benefit from backing up as many of the claims that you make that you can.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity.
That’s not true. Having a strict age of consent at 18 doesn’t stop 15 year olds from having sex with each other.
In addition parents ban children frequently from having sex and they still have sex.
The church in which a child is might forbid them from having sex before marriage but they still have sex.
Laws that regulate the sexual behavior of children have roughly the same effect as laws that regulate drug use.
One is the civil liberties goal of leaving people alone when they’re not hurting anyone.
Civil liberties are usually given to achieve some end. You give people the right for free speech to further political debate. You might convince a free extreme libertarians with that argument but not many people.
“Wirehead” isn’t a term I use, but as I understand it, people should be delighted if pedophiles did that instead of abusing kids.
Nothing in the argument you made provides evidence for child porn reducing the abuse of children by pedophiles.
There is considerable evidence that it is determined early in life, perhaps in utero.
The wikipedia article suggests this.
Here’s a video
The wikipedia articles talks about a link to testosterone. Not mastrubating increases testosterone. Watching porn often comes with masturabtion so the data that the wikipedia article doesn’t suggest that increasing porn availability is a good thing.
Videos are not as good for sources because you can’t simple get the information. The best thing are peer reviewed meta studies.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity.
That’s not true. Having a strict age of consent at 18 doesn’t stop 15 year olds from having sex with each other.
If there are jursidictions where two 15-year-olds having sex with each other is breaking the law, they are rare.
In addition parents ban children frequently from having sex and they still have sex. The church in which a child is might forbid them from having sex before marriage but they still have sex. Laws that regulate the sexual behavior of children have roughly the same effect as laws that regulate drug use.
It is certainly true that children often break parental rules regarding sex—many others choose not to have sex. But having sex with another person against their will is something that most people don’t do—I speculate because they think it isn’t right. There is a danger with pedophile attractions, in that it is comparatively easy for an abuser to convince himself that the child really is inherently interested and enthusiastic. But I think a lot of pedophiles do understand that very well and so they abstain, a lot are deterred by not breaking a serious taboo, and many don’t want to face prison.
Civil liberties are usually given to achieve some end. You give people the right for free speech to further political debate. You might convince a free extreme libertarians with that argument but not many people.
Whoa, do you have a source on that? In the US, I think a lot of people take civil liberties very seriously. We don’t dole out freedoms for a specific purpose, we assume we have freedoms unless there is a compelling reason to take them away.
Nothing in the argument you made provides evidence for child porn reducing the abuse of children by pedophiles.
It is in the Diamond paper that I referenced before: “It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims.”
Not all professionals agree with that, so I don’t take it as established fact, but the idea that it does not increase child sex abuse is more firmly established.
If there is a decrease, we don’t know the exact mechanism behind it, but the idea that pedophiles are looking at it is a very plausible hypothesis.
The wikipedia articles talks about a link to testosterone. Not masturbating increases testosterone. Watching porn often comes with masturbation so the data that the wikipedia article doesn’t suggest that increasing porn availability is a good thing.
I was citing the Wikipedia article in answer to your comment “Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the environment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile? ”, and I think the section I linked to does a decent job of showing very early effects.
The way you’ve used testosterone level as a mediating variable seems very weak and questionable. The relevant data there is the societal experiments studied by Diamond: If you make child porn freely available, what happens to society-wide levels of child sex abuse?
Whoa, do you have a source on that? In the US, I think a lot of people take civil liberties very seriously. We don’t dole out freedoms for a specific purpose, we assume we have freedoms unless there is a compelling reason to take them away.
When it comes to doling out freedoms that historically means in the US the rights that God gave men.
I don’t think many Christian would say that God gave men the right to enjoy child pornography but democratic society took that right away from men to reduce the amount of child abuse by pedophiles.
I also don’t think you can reasonable argue that the founding fathers had in mind to protect child pornography when they wrote the first amendment.
To turn to the present, given the current way the US works saying that it’s citizens value civil liberties it sounds like a joke.
A lot of people here count themselves as utilitarian. The idea of civil liberties is nice but for most people it’s an means to an end and not an end in itself.
It is in the Diamond paper that I referenced before: “It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims.”
n=4 (countries) is not enough to draw any robust conclusions. That not even enough to run a linear regression. Even conclusions drawn through linear regressions don’t replicate well.
Counting the reported amount of sexual abuse is problematic. It can a sign that people are less likely to report crimes that is in the case of the data for Japan particularly concerning as he suggests: “in these latter years the rapist was less likely to be known to the victim; proving lack of consent became easier.”
The paper doesn’t look like a regular academic paper. It has no abstract. The journal in which is published is named: “Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography, and the First Amendment”. 101 isn’t a usual name for a journal. The fact that first amendment comes up in a journal name suggest that the journal is politically motivated. If I google the journal name + “imprint factor” I get no results.
Even if you would grant that increased pornography as such doesn’t increase child abuse by pedophiles, it might be still better to have the pedophiles being exposed to adult porn than child porn.
If you’re looking for a regular academic paper, this paper publshed in the Archives of Sexual Behavior appears to make the same point Josh was making. And that journal does appear to be a legitimate peer-reviewed academic journal.
Usually, the more relaxed law on pornography is a result of general sexual liberation of the society and, consequently, there is also higher avaibality of real “non video” adult partners. So, thoretically, the porn could intensify lust, but bigger pool of available real-life adult partners can counter the effect. Some abusers, which are not really pedophiles, but use children as substitute object, are also removed from the game by availability of real-life adult partners.
However, what is the situation with child porn specifically ? Is it a stimulant or inhibitor of the crime ? Are there any countries, which first had availability of adult pornography only, and later lifted the ban on child pornography as well ? What were the statistics of child abuse before and after ?
All I am trying to say is, that the 2 papers from Diamond are not a proof for me, that the availability of child porn leads to lower rates of real-life child abuse. (Intuitively, I guess it is probably so, but it is not proven.)
n=4 (countries) is not enough to draw any robust conclusions.
That’s pretty good for studies where we are counting “nations” to come up with our N.
Counting the reported amount of sexual abuse is problematic. It can a sign that people are less likely to report crimes that is in the case of the data for Japan particularly concerning as he suggests: “in these latter years the rapist was less likely to be known to the victim; proving lack of consent became easier.”
He is certainly aware of the issue. I think the passage you quote strengthens rather than weakens his conclusion in that case.
The paper doesn’t look like a regular academic paper. It has no abstract. The journal in which is published is named: “Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography, and the First Amendment”. 101 isn’t a usual name for a journal.
Right, it’s a book, not a journal. When access to journal articles requires payment, citing them is problematic.
The fact that first amendment comes up in a journal name suggest that the journal is politically motivated.
There may be some bias in the book. Social science research in general is very politicized, and sex research more than most. Since these findings have potential implications that run counter to received wisdom on child pornography, the most eminent researchers who don’t want to lose their grants might be reluctant to do this sort of work. All sex research has to be examined keeping in mind the political goals of the authors, including all the work on the harm done by pornography.
That’s pretty good for studies where we are counting “nations” to come up with our N.
Putting in effort in no way implies that you end up with the truth. If you want to know the truth you have to look into the underlying statistics. The underlying statistics don’t care that it’s hard to get data about multiple countries.
There no reason to look at countries. Crime statistics are available for US states. You have 50. Maybe you can also find data about pornography sales for each of those states.
There’s Google Trend data that you could use to find out how pornography distribution differs between US states. Google Trend data might even tell you something about the amount of child pornography in relation to other pornography.
You could add some sort of crime like theft to control for difference in the crime rate that aren’t sex related.
You could also control against factors that people frequently use to explain changes in amount of sexual assault. I’m sure the literature on that topic will suggest a few ideas that you should control for.
When access to journal articles requires payment, citing them is problematic.
Usually journals have freely available abstracts of their articles. There are also resources such as http://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar that provide access to articles for everyone.
Reading acadmic papers is a good way to increase one’s understanding of how the world works, even if they aren’t always perfect.
I believe that they did look at crimes like murder and assault as a control for sex crimes in at least some cases.
I did hear of a study once (no, I don’t have a citation) tracking US sex crime rates in relation to when the internet (broadband?) became widely available in different parts of the country, finding some tendency for rape to go down after the internet was available.
In any case, those are all helpful ideas for professional sex researchers but go beyond my competence.
He looked at how the number of child abuse case reports changed in the society. One thing he never found was an increase in sex crimes against children—if anything, they went down.
Assertion: If cp possession is suddenly made legal, there will be less clues of abuse to follow because less legal searches can be made. The crimes might even increase, but less will be reported.
In the countries in question, during the period in question, there is little reason to think that reporting rates went down; indeed, there were quite a lot of efforts at increasing awareness and encouraging reporting which seem to be widely regarded to have had some success. I expect that is why Diamond’s critics have generally not tried to use this approach to criticize his results; certainly I am not aware of any evidence in favor of this explanation.
Assertion: Child porn availability does not increase child sex abuse
There are a few different reasons why people oppose the existence of child pornography. One is the harm to the children when it is made. This is a valid objection. I think that putting children in sexual situations should remain a serious crime. It does not apply, however, to virtual child porn, made with young-looking actors or any of the variety of animation-related techniques.
I believe one major objection to all forms, including the virtual, is rarely formulated: people find it gross and disgusting. That’s a reasonable reaction, and one I expect I would share to some of this material, based on descriptions I’ve read.
The main objection to such materials is that they might incite pedophiles into doing bad things. Courts have cited it as justification for these laws. (This is a dramatic step with regard to civil liberties, but that’s not my topic here. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html). Regardless of whether it should influence policy, is it true?
One argument in favor of it is intuition. Looking at pictures of forbidden things might reasonably make it more likely you’d do those things. There is resistance in many quarters to applying this reasoning to the parallel situations of fictional violence in movies and to the degradation of women in pornography, in part because there is no convincing data.
Another argument in favor is the experience of clinicians. Here the sample bias is huge. The only population being studied is people who have offended against children. They may well find that a man went from thoughts about children to looking at child pornography to offending against children. It’s reasonable to think that if he does not look at child pornography, the chain will be broken. But of course this doesn’t address causality. Increasing desire and lowered inhibitions may cause both the child porn viewing and then the offense. And it leaves open the logical possibility that of two men who felt attracted to children, one looked at child porn and went on to offend against a child. A similar man might have had more and better child porn, satisfied his desires with it, and not gone on to offend against a child.
However, there is also a line of research that bears on this question directly. http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-effects-of-pornography.html Milton Diamond and colleagues examined several societies in which child pornography was very difficult to obtain, but then due to societal changes it became very easy to obtain. He looked at how the number of child abuse case reports changed in the society. One thing he never found was an increase in sex crimes against children—if anything, they went down. Now, there are confounding factors in all these cases, but finding the same result across several societies makes them more convincing. They are avoiding the sample bias problem and looking at the society as a whole. This is the measure we care about.
There are implications here beyond child pornography. In related discussions here, for instance http://lesswrong.com/lw/it3/assertion_a_large_proportion_of_pedophiles_are/9vv9?context=3 some people have suggested that pedophiles would do better to think as little about their attraction as possible as a way of protecting children. But consider: If a pedophile views child porn, he sees people actually doing the things he would like to do; often the children seem not to mind. If that doesn’t increase offending against children, why would thinking about it do so?
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn’t support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn’t change this aspect of the situation.
Few people suggest that child porn made with real children should be made legal, even if it became established that its availability decreases child sex abuse as opposed to not changing it. Non-consequentialists don’t want to sacrifice the welfare of a few children to help the many. Even if that doesn’t bother someone, the alternative of virtual child pornography should be tried first.
I might appear to have a vested interest in the availability of such materials. I don’t, personally, though the number of men who are given years in prison for looking at pictures does distress me deeply. In any case, one of the rationality principles does say that arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not the attributes of the person making them.
Josh,
My intuition is, that viewing pictures is more a tension relief and prevents the real offence, rather than stimulating the crime. I would prefer to have hard scientific data. However, without those data, I would bet money on my stated hypothesis, rather than the opposite.
You should cite more sources, preferred are the research paper, and among them, metaanalyses, as ChristianKI correctly says.
I am not from USA, but worked there for 2 years in the past. I remember hearing about people facing prison for the possession of children pornography, and was genuinely surprised and sorry for the offenders (although I am a standard heterosexual woman). We had a long discussion with my that day US boyfriend, why is the possession punished so severely. I was surprised by the unproven, but unquestioned assumption, that having pictures stimulates the owner to commit the actual crime. Of course, pictures of children molested or having sexual intercourse should not be taken, because children should not have sexual intercourse or be molested. However, some people define children pornography very broadly, even children taking a bath, running around naked in the garden etc. Some 35 years ago, my parents photographed me naked on the beaches of Yugoslavia and it was pretty normal at those times. I would not be happy, if they were selling those pictures to strangers for pornography. However, I believe, selling their own old pictures when the child becomes adult could become legal once—if it is proven that the pictures do not increase the crime.
In the United States, at least, an image has to depict “sexually explicit conduct” in order to qualify as child pornography, so I don’t think most images of the sort you describe would qualify. It is probably true, however, that “sexually explicit conduct” is quite often interpreted by the judiciary in an implausibly broad manner.
I’m with you all the way on this. Your views are pretty far from the mainstream of US public opinion, though.
That view in particular would make you a pariah in many social circles.
All I want is the absence of proof that it increases the crime. Since Diamond has evidence that it decreases the crime, that’s pretty clear.
Did you intend to talk exclusively about virtual child porn? If so, you might want to change the wording of your initial assertion, since “virtual child porn” is not what people think when they read “child porn”.
If not, I don’t think you’ve adequately supported your assertion. It may be the case that viewing child porn does not increase the probability of committing child abuse once you’ve conditionalized on relevant common causes. But it is the case that producing child porn (actual, not virtual) requires child sex abuse. Since increased availability would presumably be causally linked to increased production, ceteris paribus increased availability should be causally linked with increased abuse. Now it may be the case that there is some countervailing causal mechanism leading from increased availability to decreased abuse, but you haven’t really provided adequate evidence for the existence of this mechanism, or that it fully compensates for the increased abuse associated with production even if it does exist.
Also, when you say that child porn with real children should be illegal, do you mean that just production should be illegal or that possession should be illegal as well?
And this:
This is not right. The attributes of the person making an argument are often valuable evidence regarding the validity of the argument, especially in an area where one is not an expert. For instance, I don’t know much about the research about the relationship between child porn and child abuse. You haven’t presented a comprehensive meta-analysis of this research, merely a selection. If I’m trying to evaluate whether your framing is representative of the actual state of the research or whether it is cherry-picked to favor a particular position, my beliefs about your personal attributes are very relevant.
As an aside: I’m really not comfortable with a single-issue poster whose single issue is pedophile rights, especially if this slides from advocacy for celibate pedophiles (which I don’t consider objectionable) to advocacy for consumers of child porn (which I do consider objectionable). Consider participating in other discussions on this site as well, so that people don’t get the impression that you’re on here just to push this, shall we say “provocative” agenda. I feel somewhat bad about saying this because I dislike the idea of piling on to posters who voluntarily identify themselves as low status, and also I do think your commitment to celibacy and the avoidance of child porn in the face of your unfortunate desires is commendable (although I don’t like your attachment to pedophilia as an identity). Still, I haven’t downvoted you yet, but if every top-level comment or post you make ends up being about pedophilia, I might start doing so.
Given how easy it is to make copies in this day and age, I don’t think that’s a necessary link—but you’re probably right. My assumption in any case is that a given child porn image is consumed thousands of times, so the effect on the consumer end would dwarf the effect on the producer end.
The production should be illegal. From descriptions I’ve read, I think that much of it is disgusting and I would urge people not to possess it or look at it. But there are many things that I don’t like that I don’t think should have criminal penalties attached, and child porn possession is one of those things.
You are right. I was mistaken about this. I guess rationality doesn’t generally call for eliminating any source of information, though it may suggest downgrading some.
Of course, if I want to have my comments taken seriously on other topics, it helps not to be linked to a low-status identity. Would you be any more comfortable thinking that I as a person participate more broadly under another identity? I’m not saying whether I do or not, but I’m asking.
To clarify, I am opposed to its production, which I think should remain illegal. I am opposed to criminal sanctions for the possession of child pornography. I suspect I would find much of it (both real and virtual) disgusting and revolting. It is advocacy for the consumers to the extent of not wanting them to face years in prison. It is definitely not approval for disgusting material.
Legalizing possession would create huge demand for commercial child porn.
First, if this were true, I would rethink my position—I agree it is a worrisome consideration..
I am not at all sure it is true. The ‘ordinary’ porn market is not so profitable any more because there is so much amateur material available for free. Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn. It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession. Or one could change the penalties to a fine instead of prolonged imprisonment. One could also try various of these things in pilot experiments and see what happens.
All that said, in this one case we go to extraordinary lengths to suppress a market for something. For comparison, suppose someone stages a murder of a half dozen people. No one disputes it is a horrible crime. But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don’t even think about banning possession of such things.
Amateur or professional, the demand is there. The payment might not be money, but other goods like reputation or porn. What’s the difference?
This speculation seems unfounded, considering this has not happened in adult porn.
No. Cryptography and covering your tracks by using anonymization services is trivial.
I don’t think legalizing one harmful thing because other harmful things are legal is a good argument.
It is many things, but trivial is definitely not one of them.
As a related example, consider Bruce Schneier’s opinion that it is non-trivial to maintain as simple a thing as an air gap.
I think if you have a good reason to suspect you’re under active surveillance (by the NSA?), you’ve already failed.
Establishing perfect protection is impossible, but getting very good protection is trivial and accomplished by using simple to use software. That is, if you know what you’re doing. I admit that is a very special kind of trivial.
I’m a little amazed that you’re managing to lose this argument, Hypor.
The production of real adult porn is as legal as virtual adult porn. Since the production of real child porn would remain illegal, one might expect a difference.
These methods are available in today’s environment too where child porn possession is illegal. There are still a lot of convictions. If we divide the world into “those who can use tracks-covering services reliably” and “those who can’t”, we could argue that the first group is already consuming its fill of child porn and the second group would be as uncertain in covering financial dealings as they are in covering downloads today.
That’s fair enough, but we can also consult our intuitions about how we’d like to handle that case. Would you with enthusiasm support efforts to make possession of such videos illegal? My reaction is, “Let’s not go there, and just let people possess those videos.”
No, making localised experiment about such a topic is hard. You can’t effectively run localised experiments on the internet.
You can run an experiment in a single large nation, such as the US. Policies are set at the national level in any case.
That’s n=1. You won’t learn from a n=1 experiment about the exact effects of the policy.
Sometimes a sample is also a population. We might not be able to generalize to all nations, but knowing the effect on the US would be very interesting in and of itself.
Other times it seems reasonable to draw conclusions without a sample, if we expect little variability in the population on the measure in question. For instance, if Obamacare has been in effect in Massachusetts for a few years, you don’t say “n=1” and that the results have no bearing on what will happen in other states. You might argue that there are reasons it won’t apply due to differing conditions, but few would say that it is as irrelevant as “n=1″ would imply.
That assumes there is a non-negligible inhibiting effect on the consumer end. I don’t think this has been established. I realize you think the Diamond research is good evidence for this, but I’m not so sure. I admit I haven’t perused that research in any detail, but as far as I can tell, their claims are based on very basic correlations between time series. Moreover, in each case the time series in question change monotonically in the same direction (greater availability of child porn as time goes on, and fewer cases of child sex abuse as time goes on). So it’s not even like there are ups and downs in the two time series that track each other. The researchers also don’t offer examples of countries with the opposing trends (less access to child pornography coupled with increased child sex abuse), or even offer control data from countries with no change in child porn availability. Drawing straightforward causal conclusions from this research is questionable.
I would be more comfortable if I had reason to believe this. I don’t like the idea of this forum becoming a haven for well-spoken advocates of taboo causes (in fact I’m unhappy with the extent to which it already is something of this sort), especially taboo causes I think are taboo for good reason. If there were evidence that you were participating in the forum out of a general interest in rationality rather than just because you think rationalists would be a receptive audience for your cause, I’d be less perturbed by your posts.
To what extent does your belief that consumption of child porn should be decriminalized hinge on the assumption that decriminalizing consumption will not lead to an increase in production? Is there, to your mind, some level of increased production given which it would be OK to criminalize consumption, or do you maybe believe that no realistic amount of increase in production could justify imprisoning people only for looking at pictures? And can you give an estimate of the probability you assign to the proposition that production will increase if consumption is decriminalized?
Are these reasons because of the damage to reputation caused by the reaction of others, or do you see good reasons for the taboo that are more inherent to the subject itself?
I participated in the past. I was very excited by the basic concepts. I believe I read or at least skimmed all the major sequences. When it came to the details, I began to have a lot more questions. The interest in the AI singularity and cryonic preservation seemed like topics that were discussed a lot because of the interest people had in them, and did not in any sense proceed out of rationality considerations themselves. They didn’t interest me personally. There was also a tendency for conversations to focus on the concerns of teens and 20-somethings.
I was in part hoping that the insights of people here could help me refine my own thinking, and to a small extent this has happened. Although I do not think as clearly as I would like (and there are probably limitations in my thinking others can see and I cannot), I hope my posts give evidence of an attempt to follow the LessWrong approach that goes beyond merely being well-spoken.
Presumably what we want is instead a series of probabilities covering different values of how much the production would increase. I would estimate the probability of it doubling as 0.1 or less. There are, as I said, a number of parameters that could be adjusted. It is an experiment one could try and then reverse if parameters could not be found that yielded acceptable results.
Reasons for thinking the probability would be low is that the production is global, and criminal penalties are adjusted on a national basis. Another is that possession is already widespread due to a perception that anonymization protects people from detection.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand. Perhaps I am letting conventional wisdom influence me too much in wavering from that view.
The sounds like you want to think about the issue of increased demand because you already made up your mind about the issue.
I think the ACLU positions is that even if there is increased demand and thus more production the harm that it causes doesn’t outweight the good of legalisation. Arguing such a position however needs analysis of the good that you create.
I have no idea how your comment relates to anything I said.
I think that’s a fair summary of their position. I (and I think they) would defend the good of legalization as keeping the government from looking through people’s private computer files and sending them to prison for years based on what’s there. Another is avoiding the anxiety a lot of people feel constantly wondering if some download they made might have a bad image in it that they’re not aware of, or there’s something in the background of a shot they didn’t notice, etc.
In contrast, the good of reducing demand is a long, tenuous, and indirect chain.
This argument is easy to turn on its head (just goes to show how easy these kinds of arguments are to make). If copying cp is easy, the same item is more difficult to sell multiple times. This creates an incentive to produce more material, because nobody is going to buy material that is easy to copy for free. Old material is more available for copying than new material. As was already argued, producing cp creates more abuse. In any case, there’s always going to be demand for novelty.
Through all of this, the profit margins are going ever downward. Producers want a good expected payoff to cover the risks of detection and criminal prosecution. Market forces should depress production for profit.
Some kind of an economic equilibrium between production and copying would develop. You could look into examples of other pirated media to get an idea how it would settle.
For those who want some interesting information about the background of child pornography industry Wikileaks made the decision to publish one letter that they got on the topic. Usually Wikileaks only publishes source documents but they made an expection because of the value of information to understand what going on with regards to filter the infernet from child pornography. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/An_insight_into_child_porn
If you care about the issue you are pushing, don’t make assertions like that without linking to relevant meta studies.
Motivated reasoning doesn’t score you points on Lesswrong. In a case like that you would profit from keeping your language as academic as possible.
It might be okay to make a joke about suffering that those men who are imprisoned face but making jokes in contexts like this isn’t easy so I wouldn’t recommend you to try.
You yourself say that you are in the emotion of distress that indicates that you aren’t thinking clearly about the issue and it helps people to draw conclusions about your argument.
If that analogy is correct there little we can do with regards to pedophiles besides locking them up. Cyberporn legislation would be a tool to do so.
Besides you fail to provide any reason why this analogy should hold. Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the enviroment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile?
The fact that you think it’s rarely formulated says more about you than about the position against which you are arguing. There are plenty of people who do consider all forms of pornography to go against human dignity and to objective the objects that pornography shows.
That leaves the question of how to decide if a given image is virtual or isn’t.
That no sentence that you should write in a context like. It raises emotions that you don’t want to get raised.
You also haven’t identified what welfare you care about. Is it about the pleasure of consuming child pornography? If so, is it basically about providing a way for pedophiles to wirehead themselves? If that isn’t the goal what is?
You also muddle your goal. You start by pretending that you just want a discussion about whether child porn availability increases child sex abuse and end by calling for legal changes.
PS: Lean to format your links correctly. Not knowing how to format links signals your outsider status.
Thanks for the tips on how to make more persuasive arguments. One reason I don’t source many things is because I don’t know what is controversial and what isn’t. I sort of rely on a (politely) adversarial process. If someone questions an assertion I make, I can see if I can find a source.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity. Pedophiles following that pattern would mostly not abuse children.
There is considerable evidence that it is determined early in life, perhaps in utero.
The wikipedia article suggests this.
Here’s a video
As for abuse, what I’ve heard is that a rough childhood (which includes sexual abuse) is associated with criminal behavior of all sorts in adulthood (including sexual abuse) but the link is not specific. The preferential attraction to children is not caused by abuse. No, I don’t have a source on that I can easily find.
The hypothesis for this discussion was a hypothetical finding that child porn possession reduces child sex abuse.
If it merely doesn’t increase such abuse, a couple questions arise. One is the civil liberties goal of leaving people alone when they’re not hurting anyone. “Wirehead” isn’t a term I use, but as I understand it, people should be delighted if pedophiles did that instead of abusing kids.
If you write a post about a controversial topic you benefit from backing up as many of the claims that you make that you can.
That’s not true. Having a strict age of consent at 18 doesn’t stop 15 year olds from having sex with each other. In addition parents ban children frequently from having sex and they still have sex. The church in which a child is might forbid them from having sex before marriage but they still have sex.
Laws that regulate the sexual behavior of children have roughly the same effect as laws that regulate drug use.
Civil liberties are usually given to achieve some end. You give people the right for free speech to further political debate. You might convince a free extreme libertarians with that argument but not many people.
Nothing in the argument you made provides evidence for child porn reducing the abuse of children by pedophiles.
The wikipedia articles talks about a link to testosterone. Not mastrubating increases testosterone. Watching porn often comes with masturabtion so the data that the wikipedia article doesn’t suggest that increasing porn availability is a good thing.
Videos are not as good for sources because you can’t simple get the information. The best thing are peer reviewed meta studies.
If there are jursidictions where two 15-year-olds having sex with each other is breaking the law, they are rare.
It is certainly true that children often break parental rules regarding sex—many others choose not to have sex. But having sex with another person against their will is something that most people don’t do—I speculate because they think it isn’t right. There is a danger with pedophile attractions, in that it is comparatively easy for an abuser to convince himself that the child really is inherently interested and enthusiastic. But I think a lot of pedophiles do understand that very well and so they abstain, a lot are deterred by not breaking a serious taboo, and many don’t want to face prison.
Whoa, do you have a source on that? In the US, I think a lot of people take civil liberties very seriously. We don’t dole out freedoms for a specific purpose, we assume we have freedoms unless there is a compelling reason to take them away.
It is in the Diamond paper that I referenced before: “It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims.”
Not all professionals agree with that, so I don’t take it as established fact, but the idea that it does not increase child sex abuse is more firmly established.
If there is a decrease, we don’t know the exact mechanism behind it, but the idea that pedophiles are looking at it is a very plausible hypothesis.
I was citing the Wikipedia article in answer to your comment “Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the environment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile? ”, and I think the section I linked to does a decent job of showing very early effects.
The way you’ve used testosterone level as a mediating variable seems very weak and questionable. The relevant data there is the societal experiments studied by Diamond: If you make child porn freely available, what happens to society-wide levels of child sex abuse?
When it comes to doling out freedoms that historically means in the US the rights that God gave men. I don’t think many Christian would say that God gave men the right to enjoy child pornography but democratic society took that right away from men to reduce the amount of child abuse by pedophiles.
I also don’t think you can reasonable argue that the founding fathers had in mind to protect child pornography when they wrote the first amendment.
To turn to the present, given the current way the US works saying that it’s citizens value civil liberties it sounds like a joke.
A lot of people here count themselves as utilitarian. The idea of civil liberties is nice but for most people it’s an means to an end and not an end in itself.
n=4 (countries) is not enough to draw any robust conclusions. That not even enough to run a linear regression. Even conclusions drawn through linear regressions don’t replicate well.
Counting the reported amount of sexual abuse is problematic. It can a sign that people are less likely to report crimes that is in the case of the data for Japan particularly concerning as he suggests: “in these latter years the rapist was less likely to be known to the victim; proving lack of consent became easier.”
The paper doesn’t look like a regular academic paper. It has no abstract. The journal in which is published is named: “Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography, and the First Amendment”. 101 isn’t a usual name for a journal. The fact that first amendment comes up in a journal name suggest that the journal is politically motivated. If I google the journal name + “imprint factor” I get no results.
Even if you would grant that increased pornography as such doesn’t increase child abuse by pedophiles, it might be still better to have the pedophiles being exposed to adult porn than child porn.
A friendly nitpick: I think you meant “impact factor”. That doesn’t yield results either, of course.
If you’re looking for a regular academic paper, this paper publshed in the Archives of Sexual Behavior appears to make the same point Josh was making. And that journal does appear to be a legitimate peer-reviewed academic journal.
Usually, the more relaxed law on pornography is a result of general sexual liberation of the society and, consequently, there is also higher avaibality of real “non video” adult partners. So, thoretically, the porn could intensify lust, but bigger pool of available real-life adult partners can counter the effect. Some abusers, which are not really pedophiles, but use children as substitute object, are also removed from the game by availability of real-life adult partners.
However, what is the situation with child porn specifically ? Is it a stimulant or inhibitor of the crime ? Are there any countries, which first had availability of adult pornography only, and later lifted the ban on child pornography as well ? What were the statistics of child abuse before and after ?
All I am trying to say is, that the 2 papers from Diamond are not a proof for me, that the availability of child porn leads to lower rates of real-life child abuse. (Intuitively, I guess it is probably so, but it is not proven.)
That’s pretty good for studies where we are counting “nations” to come up with our N.
He is certainly aware of the issue. I think the passage you quote strengthens rather than weakens his conclusion in that case.
Right, it’s a book, not a journal. When access to journal articles requires payment, citing them is problematic.
There may be some bias in the book. Social science research in general is very politicized, and sex research more than most. Since these findings have potential implications that run counter to received wisdom on child pornography, the most eminent researchers who don’t want to lose their grants might be reluctant to do this sort of work. All sex research has to be examined keeping in mind the political goals of the authors, including all the work on the harm done by pornography.
Putting in effort in no way implies that you end up with the truth. If you want to know the truth you have to look into the underlying statistics. The underlying statistics don’t care that it’s hard to get data about multiple countries.
There no reason to look at countries. Crime statistics are available for US states. You have 50. Maybe you can also find data about pornography sales for each of those states. There’s Google Trend data that you could use to find out how pornography distribution differs between US states. Google Trend data might even tell you something about the amount of child pornography in relation to other pornography.
You could add some sort of crime like theft to control for difference in the crime rate that aren’t sex related.
You could also control against factors that people frequently use to explain changes in amount of sexual assault. I’m sure the literature on that topic will suggest a few ideas that you should control for.
Usually journals have freely available abstracts of their articles.
There are also resources such as http://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar that provide access to articles for everyone.
Reading acadmic papers is a good way to increase one’s understanding of how the world works, even if they aren’t always perfect.
I believe that they did look at crimes like murder and assault as a control for sex crimes in at least some cases.
I did hear of a study once (no, I don’t have a citation) tracking US sex crime rates in relation to when the internet (broadband?) became widely available in different parts of the country, finding some tendency for rape to go down after the internet was available.
In any case, those are all helpful ideas for professional sex researchers but go beyond my competence.
Assertion: If cp possession is suddenly made legal, there will be less clues of abuse to follow because less legal searches can be made. The crimes might even increase, but less will be reported.
In the countries in question, during the period in question, there is little reason to think that reporting rates went down; indeed, there were quite a lot of efforts at increasing awareness and encouraging reporting which seem to be widely regarded to have had some success. I expect that is why Diamond’s critics have generally not tried to use this approach to criticize his results; certainly I am not aware of any evidence in favor of this explanation.