jbrown

> Afaik there are no wild animals exhibiting behavior that's comparable to human masochism

The context of this whole discussion is hedonism, utilitarianism, ethical theory, and philosophy in general. These ideas don't exist (to our knowledge) amongst animals, so I don't find it convincing to use animals to support your argument.

I've heard an accent that has trouble pronouncing the English "th" sound, instead approximating it with more of a "t" sound that misses the tongue thrust. Maybe that is what's happening here?

> What living things do you know that go actively out of their way to experience pain and suffering?

There are plenty of masochists out there in the world. Recently there was a pretty clear example of this described in the popular podcast S-Town.

You make a very good point. I think my observations are pretty similar to yours. My solution is to expand from the hedonistic goal of maximizing one's own pleasure, to the larger goal of maximizing the total amount of happiness in the world.

Open a CrossFit gym or be a tango dancer/teacher.

> I just think an approach less focused on a single aspect would be more beneficial overall.

Fair enough. I was focusing on the monogamy issue because it seems a lot more directly related to sexual trafficking and this thread than, say, how a couple manages finances or who cleans up the kitchen. :)

> The marriage as a whole.

How precisely do you think the things I'm saying harm the marriage as a whole? I'm still not seeing your point. I'm not talking here about causes of marriage failure. I'm talking about the graph structure of society's sexual relationships.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have monogamous marriages. I'm asking if changing society's expectations to the point where both monogamy and all variations of non-monogamy were perceived to be equally legitimate (with a likely corresponding increase in the number of non-monogamous relationships) could have an impact on the demand for sex trafficking. I don't think making this change would eliminate sex trafficking, but I think it could plausibly help the situation.

> It feel like you are pushing a specific aspect to the detriment of the whole.

Maybe. What detriment are you thinking of?

I'm just observing that since monogamy restricts us to this 1:1 gender ratio, and since in some cases one of those 1s is taken off the table (either literally or if not literally, maybe effectively due to low quality) this drastically restricts society's ability to meet a basic human need one a wide scale. To make matters worse, situations like China's gender imbalance add to the challenges that already exist when the gender split is close to 50-50. Wouldn't you agree that these kinds of challenges might be reduced if a many-to-one structure was just as socially acceptable as a one-to-one structure? Could the pigeonhole principle have something to do with the demand for sex trafficking? If this is an unreasonable line of thought, I'd love to understand why.

> Or perhaps if they are in a marriage that restricts a resource that isn't supplying enough of that resource, then the marriage should be reexamined.

There's a lot of social pressure against this because of the stigma associated with divorce.

> Marriage is a contract, if you don't like the terms you agreed to, attempt to change the contract, not to cheat it.

This is pretty much what I'm saying. The problem is that people are usually woefully naive and uninformed when they enter a marriage contract. Maybe we need to re-examine the societal default for marriage contracts...specifically the portion about monogamy / sexual exclusivity.

I really like your story breakdown here. Those are three pretty clear contributors to the overall forced sex trade story. But I feel like there is one more story that is much less obvious. The three stories you identify reside on the supply side of the issue. On the demand side I feel there is a story about how our social expectations of monogamy contribute to the demand for prostitution. How men in sexless monogamous relationships are forced to go underground to get a basic human need met. How even when a marriage isn't sexless men still may feel the need to fulfill unsatisfied desires. They can't do this openly and honestly because monogamy won't let them. I can't help but feel that if monogamy was not the expectation, and violations of it were not perceived as a deplorable offense, sex would be rendered a much less scarce resource and the demand for sex slavery would be significantly reduced.

How is exclusivity crucial to marriage in the maximal broadness sense? It might be crucial in the current legal landscape, but that's not what we're talking about here. I tend to think that in the broadest possible sense marriage is just a contract and there's nothing preventing it from including more than two parties. Or, even if you do create a compelling argument for it being a contract between only two people, why should that preclude me from making another similar contract with a different party?

Gay Marriage Advocates tend to be skittish of embracing poly marriage because that would make them look more extreme. If they can show that their position is not the most extreme one out there, then they have a better chance of seeing their agenda actually become reality. The funny thing is that while poly marriage advocates might not like that right now, in the long run it might actually help them because it will probably speed up the necessary changes.

As is so often the case with government bureaucracy, that's pretty ridiculous (although I'm not disputing its truth). I can totally see it being a violation to knowingly look at documents that are clearly marked or otherwise denoted as something for which you don't have the need to know. But with something public that probably doesn't have classification markings, how can you possibly know?

How is that a violation? My understanding is that it's a violation to disclose classified information. It doesn't really make any sense to prevent cleared people from reading these things because then who's going to be able to figure out the extent of the information leaked.

Wow, very impressive. Let's see someone do that in Swift. :)

I'm currently thinking about dipping my toes in Haskell web development, but am having a hard time deciding which web framework to use. Could you describe why you chose Snap over the other options?