Comment by tokenizer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenizer | Hacker News Reader

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I understand and agree with your point, as it is scientifically based. I remember seeing a great TED talk on the effect this is having.

But to play the Devil's advocate, if this person doesn't do this, wouldn't someone else? I mean, in a market with such a great demand, how can you ever detract users from this?

While we can both agree on the detriments this can have on people's lives, what can one person do to fix it? I know that not building this sort of site is a start, but you do have to understand that whether or not this person does this, the world will be roughly the exact same.

Censorship can't be the answer either, as that trades one negative aspect for another, and there's also good evidence to suggest that there are some good from porn sites (people in relationships stimulating it?).

Anyway, I guess what I'm asking is, how do we fix this problem, without trying to tell someone to avoid making money? Because that's not going to work IMO.

I agree that censorship is not the answer. I feel it would do more harm than good.

And I agree that one more cookie-cutter porn site won't make much difference (but it would be part of the problem). The problem is really the porn available in aggregate.

What can we do to fix this?

* Make people aware that this is a problem, and that if they find their sex+relationship lives are suffering that they don't have to continue watching porn. (I'm not convinced this would be an effective tactic --- look how many people still smoke. Then again, fewer people smoke now than a generation ago, at least in the West.)

* Well, this is a business site, can we make money by getting people to not watch toxic porn? Perhaps by getting them to watch non-toxic porn instead? There was a story posted here earlier this week about somebody trying to do that. (But can this ever be more than a niche in the porn market? And does the person behind that site know how to make non-toxic porn, or is it just a hunch?)

So no, I don't have any answers really.

You did accomplished the first point, which I agree with. Here's the link to the TED talk for those interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/zimchallenge.html

>I understand and agree with your point, as it is scientifically based. I remember seeing a great TED talk on the effect this is having.

Going off a tangent here, but I would agree with that even if it was not "scientifically based".

For a lot of stuff, especially cultural stuff related to societal norms, the philosophy of it (the "how we want to live" part) is more useful than science.

That is, even without any papers or clinical studies, one can deduce things like the above. It's not like we need scientists to tell us even the more basic things of our everyday existence. Some cannot even be measured or quantified objectively, because they relate to what we want to be the norm, and not what is "objectively right" or "natural". Not to mention that what is a "scientific result" in this kind of issues (i.e outside of physics, math, etc) is prone to lots of biases and/or interests.

It's better to ask "what kind of world we would like to live in" in those cases, and judge by that.

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