Scholar

Given how much of an incoherent mess this is, I am not surprised you have no clue what my position on palestine is and utterly failed to understand it.

This wasn't the argument. I said that the harm prevented by stigmatization of pedophiles might not outweigh the harm that is collectively experienced by innocent individual. Teenagers are pedophiles too and experience incredible psychological harm as a result of stigmatization and dehumanization of pedophile. If you would listen to some stories of pedophiles, you would know that. There is no evidence that stigmatization and dehumanization of pedophiles prevents any abuse, and in fact I find arguments that it increases child abuse far more compelling. Pedophiles aren't criminals. Most pedophiles never abuse children. You can say this at any stage of human development and nobody could possibly say anything to disprove that we "aren't ready". This is the flaw with this type of intuitive argument, you simply cannot use it, ever, to justify concrete rights violations, unless you have actual data supporting what you are saying, which you do not. Taboos are largely guided by completely irrational feelings and dispositions, and many of them do not fulfill any function and in fact have a harmful function, especially as we transition into modernity. I have had a conversation with a teenager today who understood perfectly well the distinction between a pedophile and predator after it was explained to him. If he can understand that difference, anyone can. This isn't some sort of savant boy who is intellectual rigorous. People are perfectly capable of understanding these differences, we are far beyond the cognitive development stages to assert that this is a concept individuals cannot grasp or hold. It is not this complex, and if you want to sustain a position of maintaining discriminatory attitudes against victims of nature, you better have more than your personal opinion to do so. We aren't the Aztecs anymore, we don't sacrifice the few because we think it will give us a greater benefit. If we want to do so, we have to have rock solid evidence for such things. Right now, the evidence is on the side of the taboo being harmful rather than preventative in any way.

To not feel incredibly ashamed about something that part of who they are, sadly. And if they do get exposed, they shouldn't feel like they are monsters who should get killed.

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?