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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

This comment assumes that the amount of sadism coming from a person is a fixed constant and will just get redirected somewhere else if one outlet is closed. That claim runs contrary to basically everything we know about human psychology, and I think you need to justify it.

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> That claim runs contrary to basically everything we know about human psychology

Here are three studies that show no or inverse correlation between simulated media violence and actual criminal violence:

1. “Results suggest that societal consumption of media violence is not predictive of increased societal violence rates.”[0]

2. “… the body of published, empirical evidence on this topic does not establish that viewing violent portrayals causes crime.”[1]

3. “We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies. … The substitution away from more dangerous activities in the field can explain the differences with the laboratory findings.”[2]

What is the evidentiary basis for your opposing claim? Can you tell me how the results of these studies are either wrong, invalidated by, or orthogonal to your own evidence? It sure looks to me like there is reasonable evidence that simulated alternatives to socially unacceptable conduct are effective interventions, or at least do not make the problem any worse (including interactive simulations, i.e. video games).

[0] https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12129

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2003.10.001

[2] https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.677

The problem is that the folks at Anthropic seem convinced that Claude is conscious (or at least likely to be so) and so there is nothing "simulated" about the harm that sadistic users would be causing it.

You're changing the subject from sadism to violence. The vast majority of media portrayals of violence portray the violence as morally justifiable (according to some system of morality, which might not be the dominant system). That's quite different than causing injury or distress because it is fun, which is what sadism is.

> Reviews of this literature typically conclude that there is evidence that viewing violent media is associated with aggression

Right at the start of the abstract of the second article. As the parent says, there is a wide consensus on this.

Would you consider that you have perhaps both misstated the parent’s claim, misrepresented the study you are quoting, and failed to offer any counter-evidence in support of the parent’s actual claim?

The introduction from which you cherry-pick excludes a refutation of claims about media violence and aggression, not because they are valid[0] or causal, but because their analysis was focused on answering a different question. It is that different question which seems relevant to refuting the parent’s original claim.

If you can offer some actual evidence for the actual original claim, not this differently stated claim, I would certainly be interested in that.

[0] First, these claims apply only to non-interactive media, which a chatbot is not. Studies on video games more consistently show no or negative correlations. Second, they almost certainly are not real. The last study I cited explicitly mentions how these prior lab results do not seem to transfer to real life outcomes. And I cannot write a dissertation here about the flawed methodology of many of these aggression studies and the outright fraud of people who conducted some of them, like Fredric Wertham (whose fraud was not uncovered until 2012).

I need to inhale to breathe. If I'm addicted to a substance, I need it like the air I breathe. Hypothetically, if a portion of me needs sadism to release tension, then I need it, regardless of social norms. Banning it doesn't remove my need for it, but it might change shape. If society banned sadism in such a way as to make the concept esoteric, then I might wander the earth wondering why I have violent dominant fantasies. It doesn't remove the desire, it removes the definition, is my point.

To spin it back to you:

> That claim runs contrary to basically everything we know about human psychology

Who says? I'd like source(s).

There was a sharp transition in European society about 400 years go. Before then, burning cats alive was a popular entertainment and so was being a spectator at a public execution or a public torture session. If human psychology worked the way you say it does, then although it would be possible to reduce public displays of violence (e.g., if people opposed to it find themselves with much more power than usual) European society (and its derivatives, e.g., the US) would have a strong tendency to bounce right back to having high rates sadistic violent after a generation or two (because according to you, repressing the impulse permanently is futile). But that is not what happened. The most parsimonious explanation for what actually happened is that before 400 years ago, the high rate at which people (and particularly impressionable male teenagers) were exposed to sadistic violence greatly increased the desire of the average person for sadistic violence in a self-sustaining cycle and that making it much less likely that boys and male teenagers would witness any sadistic violence greatly decreased the appetite for sadistic violence in the society again in a self-sustaining cycle.

> the high rate at which people were exposed to sadistic violence greatly increased the desire of the average person for sadistic violence in a self-sustaining cycle

Well yeah, everyone wants to belong and be part of the tribe. We conform a lot to societal tendencies. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the individual sadist with that as a core part of their identity, not an individual with an anthropological adaptation.

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