Comment by const_cast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by const_cast | Hacker News Reader

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You might not be pushing for it, but certainly your fellow conservative Christians are.

The problem with moralistic thinking is that it's stupid and it blows up, and we've known this for hundreds of years. What you view as moral means fuck-all. I don't particularly care if you think something is degenerate, and in fact by using a term like degenerate I respect you less as a person.

So when morals are used as the sole reason to justify law, we have a problem. Morals were used to justify slavery. To justify a lack of suffrage. To justify legal domestic abuse.

What's changed since then? Time. The passage of time. But time does not stop. Where will we be in 10 years, or 20? Progressing forward, ideally, but that's not a guarantee. We're laying the ground work for abuse.

For a large part of the American constituency, anything containing homosexuals is degenerate pornography. Right now. So if "it's pornography" is our justification, we have a problem.

I think we agree that said laws are bad, but why they're bad matters. The wider-scale implication is that moralistic law making is bad. Listening to Christians and having them come up with laws based on their personal beliefs is bad. Appealing to the American purity culture is bad. This is all ripe for abuse.

No, some of them are. More evangelicals than my crowd.

Morality bears directly on what we consider to be a just society, so I don’t care if you don’t care. You’re broadening the scope beyond this particular issue, where I’m guessing I agree with you.

It’s not virtuous to act right because the state makes you, but the question of what we require and preclude is defined by our moral frameworks at some level.

I’m not sure with whom you’re arguing about the homosexuals point. I view a lot of things of degenerate I wouldn’t ban. Most adults I see are fat, thus gluttons, thus are committing a sin. It’s just not particularly my business to meddle in what’s between them and God and Satan. I didn’t suggest we “retvrn to Comstock” or something.

I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men, particularly if you think about the marijuana analogy and how it’s increased in strength and availability. Novel hyperstimuli are a big issue. Just like supernormal stimuli tend to increase obesity and cause metabolic dysfunction.

A ton of lawmaking is moralistic. Eg the way I grew up I think it’s fine for two guys to settle something with a fight provided it’s clean and nobody’s kicking someone when he’s down. A bunch of people with different morals (“all violence is wrong”) told the cops to start arresting people for that sort of thing. I think stealing is wrong and vote to tell the cops to arrest people for that, while others (because of their morality) say that “it’s systemic factors” and turn people loose for sub-$1k or so, or sometimes don’t believe in property rights the same way I do. I don’t believe that income tax is just, nor federally-administered welfare, but a ton of people voted to tell the feds to take money and do just that.

I’m not sure how you can suddenly flip to “moralistic legislation is wrong actually” in such a selective sense just because it’s movitated by Christianity or right-wing ideology for once.

> I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men

I ignore it because I've only ever gotten responses of morality. Which, as I've said, I think are stupid.

My point about morality is that it's the same morality that oppresses homosexuals, or previously black people and women. It's not a different morality - it's the same reasoning.

Some thing is immoral because of our beliefs, so we censor it or restrict actions. Throughout history, this has only gone poorly - no exceptions. I have no reason to believe it will work out this time.

You might say, "well it hasn't always gone poorly, what about murder?" Yes, murder has morality argument, but it doesn't only have morality arguments. It has real-world effects. It denies someone of their unalienable rights, mainly by ending their lives.

Pornography only has moral arguments, which is why I reject them.

This is actually a pretty sound framework and I mostly agree. Usually it's justifiable to intervene when somebody is harming someone else and not before. I think it's a bit oversimplified, though. Do you think it might contribute to the incel epidemic and the associated violence? In that sense one could make a similar line of argument to that of the temperance movement's talk of alcohol contributing to wife-beating (which it did). I don't believe that indirection leaves a clear enough link to justify state violence to ban something, but there do exist less explicitly moralistic arguments for it. Not really my position but it's not constructive to reduce every criticism to "moralizing".

> Do you think it might contribute to the incel epidemic and the associated violence?

No actually I don't, not at all. I blame the patriachy and feminism for the creation of incels. Not in the sense that feminism is bad, but the contrary.

What I mean is, incels have always existed. However, our tolerance for widespread misbehavior of men has grown thinner over the last 70 years.

When I was in college, it was typical to hear "oh man, don't go to that frat house, they roofie!" Looking back, it's almost comical. What? They... roofie? Is... anybody going to do anything about this? Should I tell someone? No, evidently - just don't go there.

Of course, it used to be worse. Men used to be able to just beat women, and nobody cared. Financial abuse was not only common, it was mandated by law.

We've come a long, long way. And, we've left a lot of men behind. Before, you could be a piece of shit and still be almost guaranteed a marriage, or at least sex. Our standards for behavior are much higher.

Men have been, understandably, slow to evolve. It's a much less sweet deal. This is compounded by the fact we've really never had a progressive movement for men. To this day, there are infinite ways to be a heterosexual woman - but there's only one way to be a heterosexual man. Men are closed in, trapped, by social expectations. We carry all the baggage of the patriarchy and misogyny of days gone, but we reap few benefits. We are not so liberated, not so open-minded.

It's a fine line. You must evolve, but not too much so that you may reject the performance of masculinity. You must be progressive, but not so much so. You must be traditional, but only in the right ways. Some men, even a lot of men, cannot keep up or fit into what is expected of them. And, there's no moving back.

> Men have been, understandably, slow to evolve.

It's true, and for all the reasons you list, men are in fact genetically inferior.

At this point all male babies should be aborted or otherwise discarded at birth. Babies born with two X chromosomes can simply transition into the gender identity role of "man" during puberty, if they so choose.

Bio-essentialism is an inherently patriarchal belief. I'm sure you're being sarcastic, but no - obviously men are not born evil. They're socialized in such a way that sets them up for failure, and they have to actively work to overcome this. Those that don't, fail.

For the record, I'm a man. If you want to argue against the things I say then actually address the things I say, instead of some obviously hyperbolic strawman.

> They're socialized in such a way that sets them up for failure, and they have to actively work to overcome this. Those that don't, fail.

I can unquestionably see what you are talking about with respect to white culture, but it's literally racist for you to presume that all other cultures (e.g. Asian cultures) socialize all of their men to be evil.

Come one man, it would be trivial for me to credibly argue that your religion has given scores of young men an absolutely dysfunctional relation to sexuality, woman, their own body, etc. Anyone could make that case as easily as your case about pornography (arguably with more proof in my case). Should we legislate both the same way?

I agree that some "purity gospel" teachings have made people uncomfortable with their own bodies. For example, I don't find myself bent out of shape by girls wearing shorter shorts and don't agree with the degree of taboo applied to nudity in America. I also think this only contributes to over-sexualization rather than reducing it.

I just don't see that as "my religion". That's not what I believe. In a certain sense an Eastern Orthodox Christian and a Missouri Synod Lutheran both have the "same religion", but for practical purposes they do not.

Yes, but "his religion" is over 2000 years old and has found ways to reform itself many times to re-centre itself towards the core teachings of Jesus Christ, namely compassion and piety. The Christians who sold indulgencies are not the Christians who burned witches are not the Christians who help those in need. It has existed for twenty centuries across continents and anyone who can corrupt it effectively wields the power of God. Of course it has been used as justification for heinous acts. Pretty much anything that has existed that long and is that powerful has been used that way.

It is irrational to hate the entire religion because of select elements, past or present. You are in effect committing the same act of hatred you are accusing Christians of.

I was pointing out that similar arguments could be made about the “badness” of both religion and porn to show that these arguments are facetious in both cases

Pauline Christianity, which represents the vast majority of Christian denominations worldwide including the more liberal ones, has little to do with "core teachings of Jesus". Starting with the claim that Jesus is God, given that the guy literally never once claimed to be one.

Haven’t all the reforms of christianity specifically brought the church away from the core teachings of Jesus Christ? Isn’t that why there are coptic and orthodox christians at all? Because they feel the catholic church out of Rome did not follow the core teachings of Jesus Christ?

> massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men

Can you provide any source for this?

> Most adults I see are fat, thus gluttons, thus are committing a sin.

This is not how fatness works.

Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight easily. Some people are literally just hungrier and have a higher satiety threshold. This is why "just eat less" is horribly ineffective.

Diet and exercise help but are more Band-Aids than a true long-term fix. Many people gain MORE weight after a period of intense dieting and exercise than before. There's a saying that summarizes this conundrum well: "Nobody knows more about diets than fat people."

I am sure that you mean well, but please understand that this is a very complex topic.

This is, as a matter of fact. Both sides of my family are essentially universally obese. I grew up with it. I saw lots of it. I am probably genetically predisposed, but I'm not giving my DNA to one of those sketchy testing companies, so I can't say for sure.

It's not an issue of metabolism. I've walked in on people sneaking a junk food binge at 1:30AM too many times to believe this. I've seen all the sneak-eating, all the extra oily sauce when they think "well it's a salad", to believe that.

Diet and exercise are actually great long-term fixes, they're just not easy. We can see this pretty well by how reducing appetite via a GLP-1 agonist helps to decrease body fat, even with older-generation drugs that act almost entirely by just reducing appetite and increasing satiety rather than by additional mechanisms. There are also benefits like increased muscle mass increasing one's BMR so the same-size meal might no longer cause one to gain fat.

I understand that it's complex. It doesn't mean I want to blame or castigate people. I can empathize strongly with struggling against impulses to sin.

Both sides of my family also have extensive history of alcoholism. This has caused me to be very, very careful around alcohol, because despite a predisposition, drunkenness is still a sin. Somebody may have anger issues, but clocking somebody is still a sin. Many of us will have all these impulses or commit these sins. Most of the time, my reaction is to sit and empathize, particularly for "victimless crimes" (rather, sins where the only victim is one's own soul.)

> Many people gain MORE weight after a period of intense dieting and exercise than before

That's because a period of intense dieting is unsustainable non-sense.

Diets as a temporary thing can only give temporary results. Permanent results require permanent changes.

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