Scholar

I'm just saying that we should not use "potential slippery slope" arguments to justify current, actual abuse of individuals. It has always proven to be unwise in the past. The interesting thing is that, most child molestors are not actually pedophiles. They are mostly opportunistic or sadistic abusers. They don't have any particular sexual attraction to children, rather they get pleasure from the abuse itself, independent of who they abuse. Children being the most vulnerable means those are the ones they tend to abuse. https://www.vice.com/en/article/most-child-sex-abusers-are-not-pedophiles-expert-says/

I'm comparing the arguments Emerald is using. She is basically saying society is too immature, so taboos and stigmatization is justified to continue until society grows up. But there is no evidence for this, and most importantly, part of growing up is actually the process of facing the problems and resolvng them over time. Yes, I am talking about people who have been born with an exclusive sexual attraction to children, but never abused or intend to abuse any children.

The question in this topic is how we change societal attitudes such that individuals afflicted with these conditions (who do not prey on children) are not stigmatized and dehumanized.

Yes, I don't disagree with any of this. In this case however we are not even talking about criminals, but simply people afflicted with the condition who never abused anyone.

We can't use these vague allusion to continue bullying and dehumanizing individuals. We could use these kinds of arguments to discriminate against anything that could be potentially problematic, including LBGTQ, prostitution, consanguinamory, useage of psychedelics. This isn't like we are going to have a lightswitch of acceptance turn on and suddenly everyone loves pedophiles. That's not how any of this work, it's like saying that we shouldn't advocate for animal rights because if we do, and all people go vegan, then where will we put all the chickens and cows? It's just an excuse.

I should have. I clarified it afterwards though, maybe you missed it.

That was a sarcastic post to illustrate why such attitudes in other contexts are barbaric. I don't see any compelling argument for how it would lead to the normalization of pedophilia. How else are these things going to progress but by having conversations about them? Remember, this isn't a neutral issue. People suffer from unjust stigmatization. The harm to pedophiles might actually outweigh the harm to children caused by child predation that is being prevented by this stigmatory stance. And I don't even see a compelling reason for how the stigma does anything but increase the instances of child abuse. I don't think it is serving the function you think it is serving. This just seems like very vague allusion and potential, abstract threats to justify the concrete rights violations against innocent individuals. Yes, any taboo in the past that was lifted initially lead to problems, but the entire point is to learn from the problems such that we can progress as a society. Most child sexual abuse is not committed by pedophiles in the first place. We could have justified stigmatization of homosexuals and transsexual on the basis of vague allusions about the risks of society not being able to handle such conversations and enabling dysfunction and abuse. This is just not the case with attitudes that are highly, highly ingrained in humans to be biased against. The most compelling argument here is that you are actually not showing how isolating and shaming individuals leads to less child abuse, instead of more. You are basically just fear-mongering about potential problems if we don't continue to commit contrete rights violations against individuals. If those problems occur, we will solve them once they do. This doesn't give us a right to perpetuate barbarism.

Then it cannot be the fault of individuals for not being able to survive, which you just implied, as a way to excuse the dangers of this technology and dismiss it's negative impact.

At this point I don't think he is likely to win.

I was going to say B12 too. I had some extemely vivid dreams sometimes when I took a high dose of B12 before sleep. It doesn't always occur when I take it though. And the dreams are Hyperreal. The vision is more real than reality, more intense and clear than when I was tripping.

Is the Destiny discussion really happening? Are you preparing for it Leo? I imagine it could be a challenging conversation.

It would never appear that way because one side is absurdly bad faith. The AI would fact check and correct everything Trump is saying, because Trump is lying non-stop. This would make the other side only more suspicious of the AI, and claim it is biased. Remember, republicans do the same in relation to basically every US institution that does not fall in line with Trump's charlatanism. They also the same to the moderators in this debate, even though Trump was actually treated favorably by them (he got the last word almost every time even though it was against the rules, and Kamala Harris was prevented from doing so when she attempted to have it even just once). AI is so dangerous because you can shape and teach it whatever you want. Like social media allowed bias to proliferate, so will AI, as it will give individuals the tools to basically confirm their bias in the most convincing way possible. Any AI is designed to appear convincing, so what you will see is over time multiple AI's that will be employed to convince the respective bias of their consumers, as you have seen occur in social media. You can prepare for a new age of misinformation and bias.

Yes Princess. My point is we can make all of these arguments for incest as well. But with incest, people argue that, even if sometimes it can be consensual (they will deny that it ever could be, so they don't have to admit they stigmatize and imprison innocent people), that shaming and imprisoning people for acting this way in all contexts will mitigate harm and dysfunction overall. If a society is to be consistent, the same would apply in the context of prostitution, among other things.

I was just trying to make a point about incest being treated this way. I don't actually believe we should put prostitutes in prison for engaging in such activity, obviously. That is barbaric, yet nobody bats an eye when we do that to minorities that we find disgusting and reprehensible despite not harming anyone. I was demonstrating the dangers of using the harm principle to dismiss the autonomy of individuals, and to punish and shame them for these behaviours. In the end, most of it is motivated not be concern for victims, but simply because we find the notion of certain acts reprehensible.

I know she is referring to incestuous rapes, but they are in no way different in regards to the pregnancy than a normal rape pregnancy. The problem here is that, as a society, we are incestophobic and intentionally conflate consensual incest with non-consensual incest such that we can maintain our discriminatory attitudes towards minorites that we deem as disgusting. If I live in a homophobic society, and refer to prison rape victims as "Victims of homosexuality", I am participating directly in homophobia and further stigmatization of homosexuality by association it with rape, and by specfically not clarifying that hat is mean is "victims of homosexual rape". It doesn't need to be clarified in such a society, because that society views the entire act as equivalent to rape, such that anyone who commits homosexuality ought to be treated the same way a rapist would, as we do with consensual incest. How rare incestuous relationships are is irrelevant, they do happen and are far more frequent than you believe. As a democratic society, we cannot use the status of a minority as an excuse to further discriminate against them, on the basis that they are rare. Given a society that stigmatized and criminalizes a certain sexual act, it is obviously to be expected that individuals will avoid engaging in such acts even though they might want to, and keep them secret from society if they do engage in such acts. You could have made the same argument in the past when homosexuality was highly persecuted, when a disproportionate amount of homosexual behavior was happening in the context of child abuse and grooming, and rape. In that case, you could have pointed to society and proclaimed consensual, healthy homosexual relationships are rare. If you want to have an exception for killing mentally or bodily handicapped people on the basis of inferior genes, then clarify that instead of making it about incest and further stigmatizing children born of incest as well as incestuous relationships by conflating them with rape. Incest is simply in no way relevant to the issue, as that is not actually what should grant something to be exceptional. A pregnancy, especially a healthy one, as can be determined through monitoring the pregnancy, resulting from consensual incest, is in no way different than any other other pregnancy, therefore, why would any kind of exception apply in that case? It simply makes no sense to use the term incest, other than to use it because everyone deems incest as abhorrent and disgusting in any context, whether consensual or not, whether the child is healthy or not. That is the truth of why she was using the term, because society has dehumanized individuals who engage in incest to such a degree that we view them as abhorrent monsters that need to be shamed and imprisoned for their love.

Well the same applies to incest, so to remain consistent we need to also ban prostitution. With incest, we don't even care if they are consenting adults, we would still put them in prison, and we would shame and call them disgusting. Society would collectively view them as reprehensible even if they are not harming anyone, and we would view both the potential victim and perpetrator this way. We clearly are not interested in being humane as a society, but we do need to apply the law consistently. I don't see what that has to do with being consistent in regards to the application of law.

Obviously we should imprison prostitutes and customers of prostitution because it will mitigate abuse and coercion. Prostitution threatens to undermine the institution of the family. Children born of prostitution suffering as a result. Prostitution often comes with coercion and dysfunction. Ergo, to remain consistent with incest laws, we ought to imprison both potential victims and perpetrators of prostitutional activity. We also should consider anyone who participates in the activity of prostitution as immoral, dysfunctional and disgusting.

Kamala also referred to someone as a "survivor of incest", contributing to the stigmatization of incestuous relationships and their equating with abuse and rape. Funny how this is a progressive talking point. I don't even understand how an incest exception in abortions makes sense? The rape exception already would include all "incestuous rape", and other than that I don't see any coherent reason why you would allow exceptions for incest in particular? Because the child might be born with genetic defects? But then the exception should be "retarded babies", not "incest", given that this kind of exception would also need to apply in those cases. And how exactly do I have to imagine this exception? Do we think 7 month old babies should be murdered because of "rape exceptions", or because the child was a product of incest? The conversation about abortion in the US is utterly insane.

True, I supposed my standards are just too high. It just feels alienating to know that 95% of people are like this. How do I continue taking them seriously? It's hard not to feel like some sort of arrogant prick when everything everyone says and thinks is just so utterly ignorant. It feels like I was born in the wrong century. Like, I'm walking around in ancient rome furious at how utterly stupid everyone is being.

I can't even sleep with ASMR on, let alone this horrifiying noise.

Academia is profoundly driven by peer pressure. In poland, in 2014, when the german ethics board declared that incest between adult siblings should not be criminalized, a polish philosophy professor posted on his blog that he thought that they should have an open discussion about the question of incest in poland as well, clarifying that he was not for legalizing incest. The public was so outraged about this that he was put under investigation for conduct unbecoming of a university member. He was accused of secretly participating in an incestuous relationship himself. And this kind of attitude against consensual incest is prevalent in all academic settings. Anything that is not a clear condemnation of incest, any investigation that could in any shape or form validate incest, comes at significant social and academic cost to university members, whether it be researchers or professors. It's fascinating to see that people truly do not change over time. You would think that, given spiral dynamics, people over time would grow more sophisticated and not be driven by inherent disgust mechanism as they were with homophobia, especially in settings that are supposed to be progressive and sensitive towards unjust discrimination. Yet you see the very progressives spear-heading the judgemental, emotional outrage about this topic, and showcasing a complete inability to engage with this in the sensitivity it requires. Any and all shaming, social and legal persecution is justified, all because of how disgusted people feel about, and the consequent mental acrobatics they do to justify the indulging in that disgust.

You're supposed to listen to it while sleeping? How is that even possible?

Yes, I know people don't like this topic, but I will speak about it anyway because it is an excellent example of how language informs and distorts our view of reality and subsequently our moral evaluations. I will use incest as an example here, because I find it is the most obvious and glaring example of language abuse in regards to how science today uses it to marginalize a minority. There is multiple ways you can evaluate what incest is and how harmful it is, and depending on where you draw conceptual lines it will completely determine the policies that you might find reasonable and just. Especially how we construct, use and apply our language will be the determining factor here, and I will demonstrate how this is the case with incest. Now, generally we frame incest as a singular concept that contains all incestuous interactions, and then evaluate whether or not "incest is harmful" on that basis. In that case, incest would include incest rape, it would include parent to child exploitation and so forth. A reasonable person might come to conclude that it is perfectly valid to say incest is abhorrent and dysfunctional, given how much of it would fall into that category. On that basis, one might want to ban incest, or heavily stigmatize it, because obviously nobody wants to say that it is okay to rape. But that is clearly unreasonable, we can just ban rape without banning consensual incest, so we can exclude that from our definition of "incest". We can say there is incest, and incest rape. But obviously there are risks even in non-rape cases of incest, as there are in any relationship between two humans. So now the question is, is it enough to generalize incest as a singular concept, if we have all sorts of different relationship constellations within that concept that are utterly different from each other? You can see here that we can draw the line anywhere, and on that basis make an assertion about how harmful, dysfunctional or risky a particular thing would be. The more granular we get, the more nuanced and sophisticated our notions will become. Obviously incest between a parent and a child is not the same as between two siblings, so does it really make sense to talk about incest as a generality and subsequently evaluate it's "risks"? Clearly we have to be more sophisticated than that, and make distinctions between the various types of incestuous constellations given they all have unique risk factors that will not carry over to each other. For example, we might find that parent to child relationships have a high instance of risk, whereas sibling relationships have a low instance of risk. It wouldn't therefore make sense to congregate those ideas into a singular concept. I want to point out that, we are actually not even that sophisticated in how we use our language even in the context of science. Science, if you look at publications about incest, generalizes incest as a singular concept all the time, and worse, the term, in the scientific literature, becomes synonymous with incest rape. So there is not even an effort made to distinguish incest rape from consensual incest, it is all just one term that is applied willy nilly. There is no need for clarification in the eyes of the authors of papers on incest abuse. The language is very loose and that actually informs how people perceive incest. This is essentual to understand because it shows you how language itself can impact your view of reality. To understand the problem, it would be like conflating homosexual rape and child-abuse with the term homosexuality in general, and given a scientific paper, basically use the word "homosexuality" as synonymous with the word "homosexual rape". The problem of this is obvious and glaring, but given the bias we have against incest, scientists don't really care. In fact, it is encouraged given our views of incest. So, let us be more sophisticated and make proper distinctions. We could say there is vertical and horizontal incest. Vertical incest would be incest between parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, aunt-nephew etc while horizontal incest is between siblings and cousins. The risk profiles for all of these will look wildly different, so if we want to make evaluate the reality we would address each of these individually rather than treat them as a general concept. In fact, even within the category of siblings, we might have wildly different risk profiles. For example, siblings with larger age gaps are susceptible to different risks than same ages siblings. If we are talking about power dynamics for example, it reasonable to believe that twins (independent if same sex or not) actually might have a more egalitarian and equal power-dynamic than the average heterosexual couple. If we are talking about risks of abuse, it might turn out that twins are less likely to abuse and exploit each other than the average couple. There is a further point to be made about how we contextualize data. Let us say we look at the data, and it gives us a certain number on how likely a same-aged sibling relationship is to be abusive. Maybe that data shows us it is more likely to be abusive than the average relationship, and therefore we conclude that same-aged sibling relationships are riskier than the average relationship. But here is where it gets tricky: In what context is this the case? What if, due to stigmatization and legal persecution of incest, it is far more likely that those who are willingly to violate such social norms will also be more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior? In that case we have a significant selection bias. It might actually be true that, in a society which deems incest between same-aged siblings as permissible, you would see that same aged siblings are less likely to abuse each other than the average couple. In that case, if we wanted to prevent abuse in society, it might be rational to permit such incest rather than prohibit it. It's actually perfectly reasonable to propose that the average same aged sibling would be less likely to rape, abuse or coerce their sibling than the average boyfriend would be to abuse his girlfriend. Just because it is the case that more sibling relationships are dysfunctional than non-incest relationships, does not actually mean that siblings are more likely to be dysfunctional if they pursue a relationship. We can understand this because, given a society in which homosexuality is illegal or highly stigmatized, it will likely be true that homosexual activity in such a society is dispropotionately problematic. In the past, the homosexual community actually had a real problem with grooming, where older, more experienced gay men would groom underage homosexual boys to "show them the ropes". This was driven by the stigmatization, but depending on how you use science, you could have framed it as the risks of homosexuality and therefore might have suggested to ban it on that basis. Imagine if homosexuality was a choice, if people were bisexual rather than homosexual. For how long would we have converted people who sought to engage in homosexual relationship under the guise "preventing abuse"? We have to be really careful here, because we are talking about severe stigmatization and legal persecution of individuals who engage in consensual relationships, and we might actually drive more dysfunction and abuse through this stigmatization, even though we claim we are trying to prevent it. None of this is even considered. We don't, scientifically, make evaluations about the risks of sibling relationships vs parent relationships and consensual vs rape and so forth. There is not even an attempt made to arrive at some sort of truth here, and yet we confidently assert that we have to stigmatize and ban such things because of our preconceptions about it. Because it is so dangerous, because it is inherently unnatural and dysfunctional. Because most cases are abuse (where is the evidence for this). Because individuals who engage in such things always came out harmed and traumatized (the only evidence on this shows the exact opposite, which I go into later). It's all basically rape and abuse and anything that validates any form of incest as anything other than that deserves to be viewed as highly problematic. People don't even have an intuitive grasp of how risky a certain relationship type would have to be to justify shaming and imprisoning people for engaging in it. If you ask them, they can't even give you a ballmark number. Becaue in the end, it's not about how risky it is. We have no clue how risky it actually is, and even if it was, there are probably ways to mitigate risks without shaming and imprisoning innocent people. All this is about is our revulsion, and science is used to basically justify our already present dispositions. Now, what I described with incest is even true with how we conceptualize inbreeding. We attribute an inherent risk to inbreeding, because of how we conceptualize inbreeding. We just say there is a higher risk of child-defect with inbreeding. It is in one way true, but technically inaccurate. It is only true if your view and understanding of it is unsophisticated. Two siblings might not put their children at a higher risk of birth-defect on the basis of inbreeding, given that they do not both carry the same recessive genes that would have to be present in their parents. Maybe their parents have particularly good genes and don't carry any terrible recessive genes, or the way those genes were transmitted to them was not such that both of them carry the same recessive genes. In that case, they might get a genetic test and it might be the case that there is not a particularly elevated risk of genetic disease. Their potential children might even be less likely to be unhealthy than the average couple. So, you can see how the unsophisticated notion of "inbreeding elevates risk of birth defects", actually does not tell the whole picture. And this is especially important if we want to make decisions about banning certain sexual activity on the basis of prevent birth defects in general. It wouldn't be reasonable to put two siblings in prison for engaging in the "risk of causing genetic defect in offspring", if they got a genetic test and either don't have a significantly elevated risk or can reduce that risk using pre-screening during early pregnancy. In the end they could engage in more responsible reproductive decisions than the average couple does. Saudi Arabia actually mandates genetic counselling before marriage, and interestingly enough, even they do not engage in eugenics the way western societies do when they justify the prohibition of incest on the basis of higher likelihood of birth defects. If you truly care about reducing genetic problems in your population, you would mandate the same and prohibit individuals from engaging in sex if they meet a certain threshold of risk to offspring. That would at least be reasonable and consistent in regards to how we treat inbreeding. You could say that would be an infringement of sexual liberty, but there is no way you could argue that mandating a test is more of an infringement on sexual liberty and reproductive autonomy than putting siblings in prison because they might be at an elevated risk of causing birth defects in their children. If you want to engage in eugenics, you at least have to be fair about it. So, in the case of incest we can see how using language, as well as how we interpret data, is done in a way that enables the marginalization of a sexual minority. You will notice that most people who evalute this topic will do so from an incredibly emotional place, and scientists are not exempt from this given that they are highly discourage from framing incest as anything but harmful. The best data (it is not amazing data but the best we seem to have) on consensual incest between siblings that I have found is from the 80s, in which Finkelhor found that 20% of incestuous interactions between siblings (a survery of 796) were coercive. Overall, 30% of those who made such experiences described them as positive, 30% as negative and the rest felt neutral towards them. 15% of females and 10% of males reported incestuous interactions (seems it is not so unnatural after all). All of this in a society in which incest is highly stigmatized. Finkelhors interpretation of that data was ridiculed, and the data was dismissed on the basis that, even between same aged siblings, there is an inherent power differential in society between men and women, and therefore such self-evaluations cannot be considered as valid. Since then, it does not seem that any research has been done that would look at anything but incest-rape, and it seems to be the case that scientists who do attempt to investigate it face significant professional repercussions and social backlash. Remember that, when homosexuality was viewed as inherently immoral and disgusting, you could have done a study that would have found that a significant portion of those who engaged in homosexuality came out of it traumatized. Not because homosexuality is inherently harmful and traumatizing, but because of the guilt and shame they would feel as a result of societies demonization of such actions. Yet, perversely, society will not take responsibility for causing this trauma and shame. Quite the opposite, they will use the shame and trauma to further validitade how wrong such actions are. Importantly, it is to note that there is no research that has been done on consensual incest between adults. Finkelhor's study still is in the context of adolescence and childhood. To contextualize the 20% number, it is actually the case, given a similar definition of coercion, that 43% of adolescent girls and 36% of adolescent boys experience similar sexual victimization. Should we ban sex between adolescent boys and girls, to prevent abuse? Should we shame and stigmatize them if they do engage in it? Or did we learn that these methods are inappropriate, cruel and cause more harm than good for the development of individuals, and that we ought to find other means to reduce instances of harm that do not involve the fundamental violation of individual's sexual autonomy?

So you will go on the Bridges Podcast?

@Salvijus posted a video in another thread about a person, or I guess a body, that is inhabited by two souls. I was very skeptical but watching the video, I am not sure what to make of this. Is it fake, a lie? Is it some sort of neuological condition? Or maybe an actual spiritual phenomena? Could this be related to reports of people switching bodies in India, and various reports of reincarnation? If it is just completely fake that is some genius level stuff to pull of. Maybe it isn't as impressive as I'm thinking, given someone were to practice this all day every day for years.