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Comment by hvis | Hacker News Reader

Sugar is addictive. And it might have more effect on your lifespan than the consumption of pornography. Quality of life, too.

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Yes it is, and that's why we teach our children about nutritional health and, in some places, regulate things like school dinners and products aimed at children.

What point are you making in relation to the topic at hand?

I can't read GP's mind, but sugar doesn't require ID verification to buy in the state of Utah, for example.

No, but driving a car or possessing a gun does. Different solutions for different issues is hardly a contentious proposal.

Earlier you were concerned about the possible risk of addiction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35788237

Are cars or guns regulated because of addiction? No. So GP compared porn to sugar, which is considered addictive and has probably more concrete evidence of self-harm than porn. I think the comparison is apt? Certainly fairer than comparing porn to driving a car or gun possession, which is sort of absurd.

Addictiveness was one of the multiple points I made about pornography. The other aspects apply to pornography and not to sugar. So it was apples and oranges to begin with.

But in terms of addiction potential alone Utah already has precedent in legislating for that. Example: Utah doesn't allow minors to purchase alcohol because of its addictive nature.

Most of your other points related to how pornography is produced, not to its consumption. Thus it wouldn't matter who is watching it, and thus ID check seems irrelevant.

Some of the aspects of the porn market are not great, but they should be investigated by the relevant authorities. Hiding them from only certain people won't make them go away.

They might if sugar was able to be consumed for free with virtually unlimited access. I'm not sure it's a very good analogy.

It more or less is? It's extremely inexpensive.

Extremely inexpensive is infinitely expensive when you're a 13 year old with 2 dollars to your name.

It does not need to be literally the same thing to be a useful point of comparison, which is the nitpick argument bumby was making.

I was replying to your own position of it being extremely inexpensive. I understand that comparisons and metaphors are never 1 to 1. If you have another point to make then I'll gladly hear it out.

Not nitpicking, I’m just saying a weak analogy doesn’t strengthen your case. Equating sugar to porn misses some of the important aspects of what makes porn potentially dangerous.

Lottery tickets are extremely inexpensive. But what do you think would happen to consumption of lotto tickets if they went from $3 to free, especially in a frictionless environment where you can just download them?

Lottery tickets are substantially more expensive than sugar. And if lotto tickets were free, (1) there would be no harm in consuming them and (2) you would also win $0, and no one would buy them.

That’s kinda the point. Sugar is also "substantially" more expensive than "free" pornography. With your analogy of sugar, there isn’t the same asymmetry of risk/reward as there is with “free” pornography.

The reward of lotto tickets is a function of cost with the current approach, but that’s the wrong point to get wrapped around the axle. Consider instead that if the lotto reward is funded by taxes. The point is the risk/reward profile gets skewed.

As an aside, I’m pretty sure you can find evidence that excessive gambling is a net negative.

It is free. It LITERALLY is in unlimited access. It's in everything you eat...unless you live in a cave and only eat squirrels and rabbits. Especially in the US where High Fructose Corn Syrup is in nearly every product that's consumed. Pornography is no where near as dangerous as the obesity epidemic in the United States, which costs the citizens and corporations billions and billions of dollars a year on healthcare alone. But sure, let's focus on porn.

Nobody is claiming obesity isn’t a risk. But it’s an error to equate sugar to the obesity for one. It is also not "literally" unlimited access unless the cost of sugar is zero and that's easily falsifiable. I'm assuming your point is that people can have as much sugar as they want. Two, food is necessary to life but porn is not. That makes controlling food much, much harder. It would be like someone addicted to sex having to walk through a brothel every day to get to work. Sugar is inexpensive (but still not free) and we’re experiencing the bad effects so I’m not sure what you’re pointing out other than as vices get more free and more accessible, the scale shifts towards worse outcomes. Your whole point boils down to whataboutism rather than debating the actual points.

Lastly, I’m not sure you made any case that pornography is relatively safe.

We can tackle multiple issues at once. My country taxes sugar already.

And does Utah have a strong sex education curriculum, to teach children about it?

I assume no - it's just a ban on sinful behavior.

Let's hope they are also exploring the avenues indeed.

Sounds more like an argument for regulation targeting externalities surrounding sugar and artificial sweeteners than against regulation targeting pornography.

Why do I see this fallacy all over anti-porn threads? Keto diets might be a fad and about as difficult as quitting porn, but still.

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