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You raise interesting points. One could hypothesize that the downvoting of the original article was due to its placement in the prominent Discussion thread, and seeing it in the open thread people would have not objected to it there. It seems an unlikely interpretation of the bulk of the votes, I agree. The serious downvoting of the original article does weigh heavily on this.
I think those who answered the poll were probably a biased sample in a serious way. Who read it? People who were interested in discussing this topic, and people who were not AND who were still motivated enough to be here to continue arguing for not discussing it. Those who didn't want it discussed were probably underrerepresented.
How my reputation went from -13 to -40 overnight is intriguing. It had been quite stable, and I made a few posts yesterday that were not especially controversial. I speculate that the tapped-out Viliam-Bur in his review of my posts downvoted them all. I guess that's fine, but maybe considered at a meta level gives one individual more power than is ideal? It is of course just speculation. I'm interested in alternative hypotheses.
That's very interesting. At what point can one start talking about implications of a poll without it being a spoiler?
I don't know the actual reasons why my original Discussion post "Assertion: a large proportion of pedophiles are celibate" was deleted -- I figure the community has its methods of operation and assume it was all done according to regulations. I am aware of reasons that were given in this thread for wanting it removed -- though I don't know the relationship of those reasons to why it was actually removed.
Survey results suggest considerable support in the community for discussing the topic in the Open Thread. A reasonable person might think it would be appropriate to repost that topic in the Open thread (I have the text of my original post). Such a person would also want to make sure that would not be considered hostile behavior, in the absence of knowing the actual reasons it was removed. I also don't know what is supposed to happen here when half a community thinks something shouldn't be discussed and the other half is OK with it.
Sometimes a sample is also a population. We might not be able to generalize to all nations, but knowing the effect on the US would be very interesting in and of itself.
Other times it seems reasonable to draw conclusions without a sample, if we expect little variability in the population on the measure in question. For instance, if Obamacare has been in effect in Massachusetts for a few years, you don't say "n=1" and that the results have no bearing on what will happen in other states. You might argue that there are reasons it won't apply due to differing conditions, but few would say that it is as irrelevant as "n=1" would imply.
I believe that they did look at crimes like murder and assault as a control for sex crimes in at least some cases.
I did hear of a study once (no, I don't have a citation) tracking US sex crime rates in relation to when the internet (broadband?) became widely available in different parts of the country, finding some tendency for rape to go down after the internet was available.
In any case, those are all helpful ideas for professional sex researchers but go beyond my competence.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand.
The sounds like you want to think about the issue of increased demand because you already made up your mind about the issue.
I have no idea how your comment relates to anything I said.
I think the ACLU positions is that even if there is increased demand and thus more production the harm that it causes doesn't outweigh the good of legalisation. Arguing such a position however needs analysis of the good that you create.
I think that's a fair summary of their position. I (and I think they) would defend the good of legalization as keeping the government from looking through people's private computer files and sending them to prison for years based on what's there. Another is avoiding the anxiety a lot of people feel constantly wondering if some download they made might have a bad image in it that they're not aware of, or there's something in the background of a shot they didn't notice, etc.
In contrast, the good of reducing demand is a long, tenuous, and indirect chain.
Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn.
This speculation seems unfounded, considering this has not happened in adult porn.
The production of real adult porn is as legal as virtual adult porn. Since the production of real child porn would remain illegal, one might expect a difference.
It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession.
No. Cryptography and covering your tracks by using anonymization services is trivial.
These methods are available in today's environment too where child porn possession is illegal. There are still a lot of convictions. If we divide the world into "those who can use tracks-covering services reliably" and "those who can't", we could argue that the first group is already consuming its fill of child porn and the second group would be as uncertain in covering financial dealings as they are in covering downloads today.
But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don't even think about banning possession of such things.
I don't think legalizing one harmful thing because other harmful things are legal is a good argument.
That's fair enough, but we can also consult our intuitions about how we'd like to handle that case. Would you with enthusiasm support efforts to make possession of such videos illegal? My reaction is, "Let's not go there, and just let people possess those videos."
You can run an experiment in a single large nation, such as the US. Policies are set at the national level in any case.
Thanks for the explanation. I was formulating a reply shortly after he made the post. At the time, Richard's post had a -4 karma, so I was actually prohibited from doing so (with my lowly karma ranking). I guess that is the system working as it should. As a newcomer in a situation where most reactions have been negative and none that I recall has moved beyond "grudging tolerance" to "friendly tolerance", it's easy to assume that any given opinion might be shared by lots of others.
The substantive posts I brought up are about matters of fact under conditions of great uncertainty -- for instance, drawing conclusions about a largely invisible group. I brought up the ideas of "civil rights", "taboo", etc. only in response to people saying it shouldn't be discussed here -- that wasn't my idea. And it looks like the predominant view among the regulars is that it isn't irrelevant to the mission of rationality, it isn't off topic, and that I am making cogent arguments. It's to be downplayed because it's too hot to handle, due to the expected reactions (quite possibly very much at odds with rationality) of the general reading public. I think there's considerable benefit on being clear about that.
It seems we have one key difference. Some of you believe that having this topic discussed in the open thread risks serious damage to LW because of the danger of a poor reputation. I am not convinced of this.
If it is not true, then I don't think anyone has suggested any other reason for harm. If this is true, then my participation may have been harmful, though the marginal harm from a little more discussion seems very small.
So far I made one post in the discussion thread suggesting some pedophiles do not molest children. Following advice there, I made my next post in the open thread, which is this current post. I made one more post in the open thread titled "Assertion: Child porn availability does not increase child sex abuse". I have responded to comments in all of these threads. My current plan, in response to community concerns, is to reply in these threads but not open any new ones. (I note that because of my low karma, I can't see the results of the poll, a side effect of the entirely reasonably restriction that I can't vote in it.)
The topic of child porn is one of the most socially toxic subjects out there, and even being peripherally associated with it can be a life-ending event. Careers have been destroyed, men have been unmade, and Bad Stuff Has Happened in the name of this topic.
For possession this is most assuredly so. Conceivably it's so for arguing in favor of looser restrictions on it. It's hard for me to believe that it is so for arguing against such changes or for being a contributor on the same forum where it is discussed. If anyone has such cases, I'd love to hear about them -- by private message is fine.
Your goal is to discuss these topics.
I have raised two specific cases where facts aren't clear and there are issues of different kinds of evidence to weigh in reaching a factual determination under conditions of uncertainty. Others have characterized this as my dressing up my concern for the topic in the guise of rationality. I disagree, and suggest that the reason may be mind-killer reactions -- but on your side only. It's hard to tell if they are representative opinions. There are many, many other ways I could have discussed this topic not related to rationality, and I didn't, and wouldn't.
Our goal is to spread rationality.
It would seem that your goal would be advanced by seeing how rationality considerations apply to any area of human endeavor, especially where they have not been widely discussed before. If rationality considerations could apply to the debate on incarceration policies for drug offenders, for instance, it would advance the goals of LW to discuss them. If this isn't true for celibate pedophilia, it is only because it is a taboo topic. That may be a sufficient reason, but I think it's worth being clear about that.
Through all of this, the profit margins are going ever downward. Producers want a good expected payoff to cover the risks of detection and criminal prosecution. Market forces should depress production for profit.
I don't like the idea of this forum becoming a haven for well-spoken advocates of taboo causes (in fact I'm unhappy with the extent to which it already is something of this sort), especially taboo causes I think are taboo for good reason.
Are these reasons because of the damage to reputation caused by the reaction of others, or do you see good reasons for the taboo that are more inherent to the subject itself?
If there were evidence that you were participating in the forum out of a general interest in rationality rather than just because you think rationalists would be a receptive audience for your cause, I'd be less perturbed by your posts.
I participated in the past. I was very excited by the basic concepts. I believe I read or at least skimmed all the major sequences. When it came to the details, I began to have a lot more questions. The interest in the AI singularity and cryonic preservation seemed like topics that were discussed a lot because of the interest people had in them, and did not in any sense proceed out of rationality considerations themselves. They didn't interest me personally. There was also a tendency for conversations to focus on the concerns of teens and 20-somethings.
I was in part hoping that the insights of people here could help me refine my own thinking, and to a small extent this has happened. Although I do not think as clearly as I would like (and there are probably limitations in my thinking others can see and I cannot), I hope my posts give evidence of an attempt to follow the LessWrong approach that goes beyond merely being well-spoken.
Is there, to your mind, some level of increased production given which it would be OK to criminalize consumption, or do you maybe believe that no realistic amount of increase in production could justify imprisoning people only for looking at pictures?
And can you give an estimate of the probability you assign to the proposition that production will increase if consumption is decriminalized?
Presumably what we want is instead a series of probabilities covering different values of how much the production would increase. I would estimate the probability of it doubling as 0.1 or less. There are, as I said, a number of parameters that could be adjusted. It is an experiment one could try and then reverse if parameters could not be found that yielded acceptable results.
Reasons for thinking the probability would be low is that the production is global, and criminal penalties are adjusted on a national basis. Another is that possession is already widespread due to a perception that anonymization protects people from detection.
Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand. Perhaps I am letting conventional wisdom influence me too much in wavering from that view.
I am interested in perceptions of the damage expected to be caused to LW from discussion of this topic and wonder if people can be more precise in their thinking about this. Here are some other scenarios:
If some established members discussed pedophilia and their opinions were within the commonly accepted range of views on the topic, would that reflect poorly on LW? For instance, suppose there was a debate where one pole of opinion was the status quo, and others were that child sex abusers should never be released from prison, or that execution would be an inappropriate punishment.
If some established community members who swore they were not pedophiles held a discussion where they expressed views similar to what I have been presenting, would that be damaging to the community? I gather people have now and then questioned whether adult-child sexual activity always causes harm.
In the above cases, would tagging posts "pedophilia" or "childsexabuse" cause damage?
Suppose a member made posts on ordinary LW topics that were of high quality, but noted now and then that they were a celibate pedophile and would like to remind people that such people are among us all the time, would that cause damage?
Typically in a community the people who care about a subject discuss it and those who don't do not. If a poll revealed that 90% of the community did not want the topic discussed but a small group kept discussing it, would that insulate the community from damage to any extent?
When people say with some heat that they don't believe what I say about my own actions and motivations, that seems pretty personal and has nothing I can see to do with identity.
"Celibate pedophile" is a pretty unusual identity. I think of it more as a description. It's hardly a bandwagon one jumps on. If (as seems true) a fair number of people have never heard of it before, then it doesn't seem like something that reinforces tired old patterns of thought. A far more common identity is more or less "NAMBLA" -- believing adult-child sex is just fine if only it was legalized. I decisively reject that identity.
n=4 (countries) is not enough to draw any robust conclusions.
That's pretty good for studies where we are counting "nations" to come up with our N.
Counting the reported amount of sexual abuse is problematic. It can a sign that people are less likely to report crimes that is in the case of the data for Japan particularly concerning as he suggests: "in these latter years the rapist was less likely to be known to the victim; proving lack of consent became easier."
He is certainly aware of the issue. I think the passage you quote strengthens rather than weakens his conclusion in that case.
The paper doesn't look like a regular academic paper. It has no abstract. The journal in which is published is named: "Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography, and the First Amendment". 101 isn't a usual name for a journal.
Right, it's a book, not a journal. When access to journal articles requires payment, citing them is problematic.
The fact that first amendment comes up in a journal name suggest that the journal is politically motivated.
There may be some bias in the book. Social science research in general is very politicized, and sex research more than most. Since these findings have potential implications that run counter to received wisdom on child pornography, the most eminent researchers who don't want to lose their grants might be reluctant to do this sort of work. All sex research has to be examined keeping in mind the political goals of the authors, including all the work on the harm done by pornography.
First, if this were true, I would rethink my position -- I agree it is a worrisome consideration..
I am not at all sure it is true. The 'ordinary' porn market is not so profitable any more because there is so much amateur material available for free. Virtual child porn might well crowd out a market for real porn. It should still be possible to follow the money to the producers. One could consider making the purchase of such material illegal but not its possession. Or one could change the penalties to a fine instead of prolonged imprisonment. One could also try various of these things in pilot experiments and see what happens.
All that said, in this one case we go to extraordinary lengths to suppress a market for something. For comparison, suppose someone stages a murder of a half dozen people. No one disputes it is a horrible crime. But to my knowledge, making a video of it which a person uploads or sells is not an additional crime, and possession is not a crime. Consider real, existing video of hostages being executed. People watching them creates the demand for their creation, but we don't even think about banning possession of such things.
There is no edit link when I do that, and I have an idea what might be going on. My karma is no longer sufficient to post in the Discussion area, so perhaps it has also removed my ability to edit the post. If so, this isn't a problem I can solve on my own.
In the discussion of mandated reporter laws, I was thinking not one iota of the interests of the perpetrators of the crime. I was thinking only of the best interests of the children.
There are awful situations, that's for sure. All I'm trying to address here is the differential between having a mandated reporter law and not having one. Reporting is of course very often the right thing to do, and it will of course be done a lot of the time without a mandated reporter law as well.
"Coming out" and making sure that society can protect itself is the only moral thing to do if you really are sincere here
This is pretty bewildering. I guess you are assuming that I pose a risk of hurting a child even if I am sure I don't. Or that I am providing demand for child pornography that I've never seen or sought out. For those of you who thought it was obvious that some pedophiles don't abuse children, I guess you've now found someone who doesn't think it's obvious at all.
The highest ideal of a civilized person is to do the right thing even if it's painful, and that means having the courage to accept the consequences of your actions.
What actions do you have in mind here?
I'll confess that in this case I was thinking of a 14-year-old girl, and I've been mostly focusing on prepubescents in other places. For younger children, their parents are of course much more likely to be involved and key players. They too should be able to get outside help without automatic triggering of mandated reporter laws.
all of your examples are tradeoffs, which was my entire point. ... you haven't actually made these arguments you say you have ...
Mandated reporter laws and the sex offender registry were intended to be trade-offs, but unexpected consequences have made them bad for kids too.
The discussion here doesn't even mention the effect on pedophiles. Pedophiles who are concerned they might offend against children with low probability know that if they tell a therapist about their attraction, they might be reported, if the therapist decides they are an imminent danger. Most pedophiles don't know what criteria their therapist would use, they don't want to risk it, so they do not seek help.
In some cases victims are discouraged from reporting too. Suppose a girl is being abused by her uncle. She doesn't experience it as terrible but she wants it to stop. But she doesn't want to face a formal investigation, which involves endless interrogations for her, embarrassing publicity, family strife, and perhaps sending her uncle to prison for 10 years. If she knew there could be a way of handling the situation privately in accord with her needs and wishes, she may be more likely to report it and get it to stop.
Sex offender registries often make it very difficult for an ex-offender to find a place to live. Here is Wikipedia's take on it. Here is a specific in-depth example. Once ex-offenders are breaking the law by going underground and feeling maltreated by society, there is less reason to obey other laws too, including ones against molesting children.
Since increased availability would presumably be causally linked to increased production,
Given how easy it is to make copies in this day and age, I don't think that's a necessary link -- but you're probably right. My assumption in any case is that a given child porn image is consumed thousands of times, so the effect on the consumer end would dwarf the effect on the producer end.
Also, when you say that child porn with real children should be illegal, do you mean that just production should be illegal or that possession should be illegal as well?
The production should be illegal. From descriptions I've read, I think that much of it is disgusting and I would urge people not to possess it or look at it. But there are many things that I don't like that I don't think should have criminal penalties attached, and child porn possession is one of those things.
The attributes of the person making an argument are often valuable evidence regarding the validity of the argument, especially in an area where one is not an expert.
You are right. I was mistaken about this. I guess rationality doesn't generally call for eliminating any source of information, though it may suggest downgrading some.
Consider participating in other discussions on this site as well, so that people don't get the impression that you're on here just to push this, shall we say "provocative" agenda.
Of course, if I want to have my comments taken seriously on other topics, it helps not to be linked to a low-status identity. Would you be any more comfortable thinking that I as a person participate more broadly under another identity? I'm not saying whether I do or not, but I'm asking.
advocacy for consumers of child porn (which I do consider objectionable).
To clarify, I am opposed to its production, which I think should remain illegal. I am opposed to criminal sanctions for the possession of child pornography. I suspect I would find much of it (both real and virtual) disgusting and revolting. It is advocacy for the consumers to the extent of not wanting them to face years in prison. It is definitely not approval for disgusting material.
I'm with you all the way on this. Your views are pretty far from the mainstream of US public opinion, though.
selling their own old pictures when the child becomes adult could become legal
That view in particular would make you a pariah in many social circles.
- if it is proven that the pictures do not increase the crime.
All I want is the absence of proof that it increases the crime. Since Diamond has evidence that it decreases the crime, that's pretty clear.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity. That's not true. Having a strict age of consent at 18 doesn't stop 15 year olds from having sex with each other.
If there are jursidictions where two 15-year-olds having sex with each other is breaking the law, they are rare.
In addition parents ban children frequently from having sex and they still have sex. The church in which a child is might forbid them from having sex before marriage but they still have sex. Laws that regulate the sexual behavior of children have roughly the same effect as laws that regulate drug use.
It is certainly true that children often break parental rules regarding sex -- many others choose not to have sex. But having sex with another person against their will is something that most people don't do -- I speculate because they think it isn't right. There is a danger with pedophile attractions, in that it is comparatively easy for an abuser to convince himself that the child really is inherently interested and enthusiastic. But I think a lot of pedophiles do understand that very well and so they abstain, a lot are deterred by not breaking a serious taboo, and many don't want to face prison.
Civil liberties are usually given to achieve some end. You give people the right for free speech to further political debate. You might convince a free extreme libertarians with that argument but not many people.
Whoa, do you have a source on that? In the US, I think a lot of people take civil liberties very seriously. We don't dole out freedoms for a specific purpose, we assume we have freedoms unless there is a compelling reason to take them away.
Nothing in the argument you made provides evidence for child porn reducing the abuse of children by pedophiles.
It is in the Diamond paper that I referenced before: "It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims."
Not all professionals agree with that, so I don't take it as established fact, but the idea that it does not increase child sex abuse is more firmly established.
If there is a decrease, we don't know the exact mechanism behind it, but the idea that pedophiles are looking at it is a very plausible hypothesis.
The wikipedia articles talks about a link to testosterone. Not masturbating increases testosterone. Watching porn often comes with masturbation so the data that the wikipedia article doesn't suggest that increasing porn availability is a good thing.
I was citing the Wikipedia article in answer to your comment "Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the environment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile? ", and I think the section I linked to does a decent job of showing very early effects.
The way you've used testosterone level as a mediating variable seems very weak and questionable. The relevant data there is the societal experiments studied by Diamond: If you make child porn freely available, what happens to society-wide levels of child sex abuse?
Thanks for the tips on how to make more persuasive arguments. One reason I don't source many things is because I don't know what is controversial and what isn't. I sort of rely on a (politely) adversarial process. If someone questions an assertion I make, I can see if I can find a source.
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn't support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn't change this aspect of the situation...
If that analogy is correct there little we can do with regards to pedophiles besides locking them up. Cyberporn legislation would be a tool to do so.
Few ordinary kids rape other kids or otherwise break the law with regard to their sexual activity. Pedophiles following that pattern would mostly not abuse children.
Besides you fail to provide any reason why this analogy should hold. Shall we believe that being a pedophile is genetic and the environment to which a person is exposed has nothing to do with them becoming a pedophile?
There is considerable evidence that it is determined early in life, perhaps in utero.
The wikipedia article suggests this.
As for abuse, what I've heard is that a rough childhood (which includes sexual abuse) is associated with criminal behavior of all sorts in adulthood (including sexual abuse) but the link is not specific. The preferential attraction to children is not caused by abuse. No, I don't have a source on that I can easily find.
You also haven't identified what welfare you care about. Is it about the pleasure of consuming child pornography? If so, is it basically about providing a way for pedophiles to wirehead themselves? If that isn't the goal what is?
The hypothesis for this discussion was a hypothetical finding that child porn possession reduces child sex abuse.
If it merely doesn't increase such abuse, a couple questions arise. One is the civil liberties goal of leaving people alone when they're not hurting anyone. "Wirehead" isn't a term I use, but as I understand it, people should be delighted if pedophiles did that instead of abusing kids.
I'm reluctant to say what might possibly happen in the future, especially a century or two from now.
But I do not see a path to its happening, and I do not want it to happen.
Penile plethysmography happens a lot for convicted sex offenders, and has also been used with lots of volunteers.
A great many men have some physical attraction to prepubescents -- 50 percent or more.
Sources: http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/97-048_article.html
Sarah Goode addresses the subject, citing several studies in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Addressing-sexual-Attraction-Children/dp/0415446260
You have done nothing of the sort. You have merely drawn a line around the class (a class of unknown size) of those who have such urges but have never acted on them. But is this concept a natural kind? Does it carve reality at a joint? Does this line on the map correspond to any line in the territory? Is it an empirical cluster in thingspace? I believe the answer is no. The reality appears to be that there are people who, alas, have urges of this sort, some of whom act on them and are caught, some who act on them and have not been caught, and an unknown number who have not acted. Is there anything to distinguish the latter class from the first two that is predictive of whether or not they will offend in future?
These are reasonable questions.
Let's consider a parallel plan for dividing the world: men attracted to women who have raped them and been caught, men who have raped them and not been caught, and men who have not raped women.
It seems like the more natural way of dividing the world is into concentric circles. A large group feels an attraction, a subset commits a crime, and a subset of that has been caught for the crime. Whether we can identify traits that might make men rape women isn't the point. The point is that as a matter of human rights, we assume people are innocent until proven guilty. In the case of pedophilia, the immediate goal is to let people entertain the possibility that they are innocent, even if vigilance remains.
Would you hire as a shop assistant a professed non-practicing kleptomaniac? As an accountant, a professed non-practicing fraudster? For childcare, a professed "celibate pedophile"?
I'm not suggesting anyone hire a celibate pedophile as a babysitter. The tolerance that celibate pedophiles seek is far more basic than that. Would you still be friends with one? Keep him on in his office job? Let him go to your church, even if he never goes near the kids? Invite him to the family dinner where there are children? (You are perfectly welcome to make him agree to never go off alone with one of the kids.)
I think this probably should be a taboo topic because a) the number of people possibly helped by better legislation about this issue is fairly low
Estimates of pedophilia in the male population are in the 1-5% range. That's a lot of people.
c) it's not actually something that we can easily get RIGHT.
I'm not sure why not. Of course the community doesn't seem eager to do so, but it's because of reputational hazard. Few people may believe me, but the reason I brought this subject up here is because I was genuinely interested in at least a few members of this relatively clear-thinking community here considering the facts and inferences around this issue; it's an issue where as I see it incorrect beliefs about matters of fact play a large role.
I think the balance between protection of children and the happiness of pedophiles is not something this where we'll find the right balance on in a discussion here,
The happiness of pedophiles in certain respects may work in favor of the protection of children. Being able to find a supportive community is likely to reduce offending. Consider http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/what-can-be-done-about-pedophilia/279024/
IF one took an interest in this issue, it is a case where a little effort could have a magnified effect. A single voice can have more effect moving from 2% to 4% tolerance for celibate pedophiles than an issue where the issues are widely known and we're trying to move from 40% to 51%.
The stigmatization of people who have certain feelings they can't control is likely to be harsher than is good but I can't actually picture reasonable policy changes that will help the situation.
I can. For starters:
- Elimination of mandated reporter laws
- Elimination of sex offender registries and residency restrictions
- Public education on distinguishing sex abuse from pedophilia -- get to the point where when someone says "He's a pedophile" the question that comes to mind is, "Is he an abuser or a celibate pedophile?"
- Decriminalization of child pornography possession.
The first three would help protect children -- I'm not saying it's obvious why, but I think I have arguments that would convince a lot of people. The fourth would save a whole lot of money in criminal justice costs.
I'm not agitating for people doing these things in this community. I'm responding to your assertion that there is nothing that could be done if someone wanted to.
If you think that celibate pedophiles might be more in the category of "leper" than "someone down on his luck", then this article could be taken as suggesting that celibate pedophiles are the very sort of people you might be trying to help, if you're so inclined to help anyone. Maybe people in general have poor intuitions about who needs help. People in general have poor intuitions about a whole lot of things, but we don't throw up our hands and not try to make anything better.
That saying contains a long chain of unsupported inferences. Each transition can happen, but each step can easily not happen. The referenced post has to do with habits of discipline, and that's quite different from the kinds of thoughts I have in mind.
Suppose I'm really mad at my mother and I find myself wishing that she were dead. I can berate myself for having such a terrible thought. But instead I might recognize that such thoughts are natural. If I find myself enjoying the thought and going back to it again and again, I don't think that's going to lead me to happiness -- though it might well not lead me one iota closer to harming my mother. But just noting that I wished my mother was dead is not something I feel guilty about or vow to never think again. I'd instead focus on why I'm angry at my mother, remember all her good qualities, and think about the situation from her point of view.
When I'm done thinking about it, I might decide to talk with my mother about what she did if I think that might improve the situation, or I might decide to say nothing. When I look back on the incident, it is on the basis of what I actually did that I will judge my morality, not the thoughts I went through to get there.
This is just one example, but hopefully it conveys some sense that we are in a different realm.
In the sexual realm, suppose there's some celebrity that an ordinary guy finds hot. He freely fantasizes about having sex with her because it's fun. Is he in danger of getting so obsessed that he starts stalking her and attacks her? No. It might happen and it will make the news, but from personal experience we know he's a rare and disturbed exception. If a pedophile does it, you might conclude that many or most pedophiles are in danger of doing that because you don't know all the celibate pedophiles who don't.
I buy the claim that most people with pedophilic tendencies do not abuse children, but it does not follow from this that most child sex abusers are not pedophiles.
I agree it does not follow, but as an independent matter, it may well be mostly true. If I had to guess, I'd say 50%. I've seen figures ranging from 20% to 80%. It depends partly on whether you are including sex offenses against post-pubescent minors (and there's a lot more sex offenses against them than prepubescents).
They can test this by hooking up sex offenders to a gauge that measures penis volume in response to pictures of naked children and pictures of naked adults. If you define a pedophile as someone with a stronger arousal to children than adults, then a lot of abuse is perpetrated by non-pedophiles.
One reason is that there are a lot fewer pedophiles than non-pedophiles. Then if an antisocial man (in the sense of not knowing or not caring about the welfare of children, or of putting the blame for his actions on other people, etc.) has a child available who can be manipulated into sexual activity, he sometimes will. A great many men have some physical attraction to prepubescents -- 50 percent or more.
Very little father-daughter incest is committed by pedophiles, i believe. For one thing, if the man were an exclusive pedophile, he wouldn't be married and have a daughter in the first place.
I will say up front that my intention in writing it is primarily to reduce the likelihood of you abusing any children; and only secondarily to help you feel any better.
No offense taken. My priorities are the same as yours. I've got the non-offending bit covered completely, but I'll here take the viewpoint of someone who doesn't, because it's interesting. The idea that thinking about something makes you more likely to do it is addressed (as an indirect consequence) in an "open thread" comment I made titled "Assertion: Child porn availability does not increase child sex abuse". Some thoughts are pleasant. If a person cannot achieve romantic or sexual satisfaction in the real world, spinning some fantasies about it may be about the best one can do. There is no evidence it makes offending against children more likely; it might make it less likely.
It also means that people who notice that they have intrusive thoughts of this nature should not draw the conclusion, "Aha! These thoughts mean that I must adopt a 'pedophile' identity!"
When young teens are worried they might be pedophiles, among my initial advice is that it might go away, and I always advise people to think about their attraction to appropriate-age partners and think about that most. I do not engage in recruiting.
Pedophilia is different from homosexuality in one very important way: it is not something that can be followed through ethically to a consummation in the real world. In that sense, homosexuality is just fine and pedophilia is not good. However, they are both sexual orientations. It's right in the new DSM5: If individuals "report an absence of feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety about these impulses and are not functionally limited by their paraphilic impulses (according to self-report, objective assessment, or both), and their self-reported and legally recorded histories indicate that they have never acted on their impulses, then these individuals have a pedophilic sexual orientation but not pedophilic disorder." It's controversial, but sufficiently mainstream in psychiatry that it made it into the official handbook.
Now, few people (other than heavy-duty social conservatives) would suggest that gay people just stop having those intrusive thoughts. The class of people one is attracted to sexually is just too important to be relegated to "intrusive thoughts".
Not much point in addressing the character assassination.
But when I look at the icons below a reply, I see an "edit" icon. That's my intuition as to how to get to a place where I can remove tags. I don't see any such icon for a main post.
Assertion: Child porn availability does not increase child sex abuse
There are a few different reasons why people oppose the existence of child pornography. One is the harm to the children when it is made. This is a valid objection. I think that putting children in sexual situations should remain a serious crime. It does not apply, however, to virtual child porn, made with young-looking actors or any of the variety of animation-related techniques.
I believe one major objection to all forms, including the virtual, is rarely formulated: people find it gross and disgusting. That's a reasonable reaction, and one I expect I would share to some of this material, based on descriptions I've read.
The main objection to such materials is that they might incite pedophiles into doing bad things. Courts have cited it as justification for these laws. (This is a dramatic step with regard to civil liberties, but that's not my topic here. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html). Regardless of whether it should influence policy, is it true?
One argument in favor of it is intuition. Looking at pictures of forbidden things might reasonably make it more likely you'd do those things. There is resistance in many quarters to applying this reasoning to the parallel situations of fictional violence in movies and to the degradation of women in pornography, in part because there is no convincing data.
Another argument in favor is the experience of clinicians. Here the sample bias is huge. The only population being studied is people who have offended against children. They may well find that a man went from thoughts about children to looking at child pornography to offending against children. It's reasonable to think that if he does not look at child pornography, the chain will be broken. But of course this doesn't address causality. Increasing desire and lowered inhibitions may cause both the child porn viewing and then the offense. And it leaves open the logical possibility that of two men who felt attracted to children, one looked at child porn and went on to offend against a child. A similar man might have had more and better child porn, satisfied his desires with it, and not gone on to offend against a child.
However, there is also a line of research that bears on this question directly. http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-effects-of-pornography.html Milton Diamond and colleagues examined several societies in which child pornography was very difficult to obtain, but then due to societal changes it became very easy to obtain. He looked at how the number of child abuse case reports changed in the society. One thing he never found was an increase in sex crimes against children -- if anything, they went down. Now, there are confounding factors in all these cases, but finding the same result across several societies makes them more convincing. They are avoiding the sample bias problem and looking at the society as a whole. This is the measure we care about.
There are implications here beyond child pornography. In related discussions here, for instance http://lesswrong.com/lw/it3/assertion_a_large_proportion_of_pedophiles_are/9vv9?context=3 some people have suggested that pedophiles would do better to think as little about their attraction as possible as a way of protecting children. But consider: If a pedophile views child porn, he sees people actually doing the things he would like to do; often the children seem not to mind. If that doesn't increase offending against children, why would thinking about it do so?
A reasonable analogy might be sex education. Some conservatives oppose it because they think it will make kids (teens especially) think about sex and become sexually active. The data doesn't support that, of course, and the explanation is that kids are thinking about sex already. Pedophiles are also thinking about sex; the fact that the people they are attracted to are always inappropriate partners doesn't change this aspect of the situation.
Few people suggest that child porn made with real children should be made legal, even if it became established that its availability decreases child sex abuse as opposed to not changing it. Non-consequentialists don't want to sacrifice the welfare of a few children to help the many. Even if that doesn't bother someone, the alternative of virtual child pornography should be tried first.
I might appear to have a vested interest in the availability of such materials. I don't, personally, though the number of men who are given years in prison for looking at pictures does distress me deeply. In any case, one of the rationality principles does say that arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not the attributes of the person making them.
Thanks for taking the time to lay out this position. It is quite interesting.
My sentence "If I express the existence of those thoughts in public, I am subject to severe discrimination." wasn't entirely clear. I do not mean on the bus or even at a cocktail party. I meant public to contrast with private (never told to anyone). I cannot tell close friends or family either. That's a good way to lose close friends and family.
There are mental illnesses where intrusive thoughts are a symptom and treatment is to try to avoid having them. I know there are many celibate pedophiles who think of their attraction in roughly those terms, though on the whole I don't think it is the most healthy approach.
My preferred model of the good emotional life is to entertain whatever thoughts come, realizing that thoughts can by themselves never be evil or immoral. It is good to discuss them with close friends. What is immoral or immoral is the actions one takes after considering all thoughts. I am not ashamed of my pedophilic thoughts and do not try to suppress them. My therapist has no problem with them either.
If what you have are truly rare unwanted thoughts that quickly disappear, then keeping them to yourself seems fine. But for thoughts that recur and remain, your list of comparable conditions is instructive. I think people who are very sad will often complain of suicidal feelings to their close friends, and it is appropriate as a way of working through the depression. It also may be helpful to work out with another person just how serious they are rather than keeping that conversation closed in your own depressed mind. Most adults will talk to their friends about who they are attracted to and might even spin a detailed fantasy or two. As for anger towards other people or "the system", it seems helpful to discuss that as well with others, and perhaps think through the bad consequences that would follow from acting on rage.
There are a great many things you might not say to avoid upsetting those around you. Budding liberals may not want to express their views in a conservative house. Gay people can certainly cause a lot of pain when they come out. But in the right circumstances those are necessary -- being true to yourself even if the revelations disturb others. It's true that when a gay person comes out, it might be prelude to finding a satisfying relationship -- though that can be done while in the closet too. It does not serve that function for celibate pedophiles, of course. But I think many gay people can relate to the idea that they want to be known for who they are. Pedophilia to me and many others feels far more like an important part of self than a mere series of intrusive thoughts. And your "boinking" characterization is a largely inaccurate stereotype. Among the pedophiles I associate with, complex romantic feelings are far more common than fantasies of specific carnal acts -- and romantic fantasies cannot be ethically acted upon either.
Of course it would be more personally comfortable to keep my thoughts to myself and not rock the boat. That's true whenever a person has a controversial opinion.
Thanks for the clarification on politics.
One way to diagnose it would be to start discussing a topic and waiting for the mind-killing dialog to begin. It might not. In this controversy there is no one else arguing on my side so far (and it's not even clear there is a substantive argument. All we're debating is whether it's OK to discuss the topic.) I don't think anyone can accuse me of ceasing to think or being impolite. And if it turned out that it's only the other side that stops thinking and goes into "hulk...smash" mode, that might say something in itself.
One might also hope that occasionally, every now and then, an issue might emerge from lizard-brain mode; things do change sometimes.
Well, if any of those 5 or more people who upvoted this think it's interesting enough to kick it up the chain rather than erasing the issue, you'll have to be the ones to do it. I couldn't even if I wanted to with my current karma ranking, and I don't really have the standing to, being a new member and being a member of the taboo group.
The community could end up deciding that it is a taboo topic, that's the way it is, end of story. Or perhaps there is fear that it could create a damaging controversy that would hurt the community? Or various other things that I can't predict.
But something feels wrong with a conclusion that "A public discussion about whether it's OK to talk about celibate pedophilia is taboo".
Thanks. I try. It is discouraging to get so much negative feedback, and when it gets personal it hurts, but I try to steel myself for it. I feel more than a bit like a sheep in wolves' clothing, though I realize others will suspect the opposite.
The ban on politics as I understand it is a ban on the vast, very complicated questions of how to run a society, political parties, etc.
Surely there is nothing that says the results of rational analysis cannot be mentioned in the world. Suppose someone argued the law should be changed so that a person cryonically frozen can have a will keeping his money for his own use when he's revived. (Has anyone here said that? I don't know. But it seems possible.) No one is going to say, "You can't mention that, because you're trying to change society."
Saying that "Lots of pedophiles don't abuse children" seems like a very specific statement based on (apparently trivial, to some people) rational analysis. Might it have some butterfly-wing effect on making pedophiles' lives better? Maybe. Is anyone saying that choice of topics related to rationality cannot be chosen with an eye to their relevance in making the world a better place?
Maybe I'm naive, but I'm no troll. People here pride themselves on open-mindedness, so I hoped for a better reception.
Maybe it will help to say that I am opposed to efforts to make adult-child sex more accepted in society, unlike NAMBLA. (Maybe it won't.)
I have certain thoughts in my head. If I express the existence of those thoughts in public, I am subject to severe discrimination. It does have much in common with a thought crime. If I post here about this situation, If I read the reaction right, it is to many people entirely unwelcome -- almost a meta-thought crime.
I'd happily remove the tags if I someone can tell me how. I thought there would be other posts with similar tags, so I thought they would be helpful.
The idea that topics come up here only because they make important points related to rationality seems entirely unclear. The whole idea of cryogenic preservation is popular here just because it's popular here, as far as I can tell. If one said its discussion should be limited only to aspects that made important points about rationality, there wouldn't be much said.
Pedophilia exists and it is a societal issue. I am genuinely interested in rational perspectives on it, and I tried to explore one issue in those terms to the best of my ability. Yes, there were assertions; I hoped that if people found them questionable, they would say so, so the assertions could be debated.
I made a post on the Open thread, as suggested, dealing with the meta-issue of whether pedophilia was a forbidden topic here or should be. I can't see it any more; maybe it's been downvoted into oblivion.
Is there an ad hominem aspect going on here? If I vigorously denied being a pedophile but raised the same issues, would the reaction be the same? I don't know, though I have seen other people posting on the general subject who did not incur wrath.
Candidate for a forbidden topic: Celibate pedophilia
I saw a post somewhere (can't find it again) asking if there were forbidden topics on LessWrong, with the implication that this would be undesirable.
This post I made to the Discussion section was seriously downvoted: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it3/assertion_a_large_proportion_of_pedophiles_are/ There is no attribution behind downvotes, so the reasons can't be determined.
Perhaps it belonged here in the open thread; I'm not experienced enough to judge that. There are also complaints that it was obvious and had no significant rationality-related issues, but I humbly invite people to consider whether these may be rationalizations -- when evaluated against the relevance of posts in this open thread.
However, there are also comments that have upvotes:
"The existence of the article has potentially severe downsides for the site, and while we may wish this wasn't so, reality is what it is."
"taints reputation of LW"
"Writing about low-status topics is low-status. This topic is low-status. Making LW low-status goes against the goals of most readers, I guess."
Let's think civil liberties issues here. All the interesting civil liberties issues are about low-status cases -- if a group or some idea is popular with the majority, then no one is complaining and the "civil liberties" concept never comes up. Sometimes you might want to override your ordinary feelings about status to consider an oppressed group.
I speculate that what commonly comes to mind when "pedophilia" is mentioned is child sex abuse. Discrimination against (and punishment of) child sex abusers is entirely appropriate. I have ruled out that case by calling the topic "celibate pedophilia", but after that restriction is in place I suggest these associations: a desire to change society so that adult-child sexual activity is legal and accepted (e.g. NAMBLA), a desire to inflict harm on children, looking at pictures of children being harmed, and perhaps insisting to others that they shouldn't be disgusted by these desires.
I am opposed to all of those things, and I know there are many other celibate pedophiles like me. Some of the points seem irrelevant from a civil liberties point of view, but they are relevant from a status point of view.
So there are questions here of whether people want to personally change their status judgment based on those clarifications.
With regard to "tainting the site", there is an issue as to whether those clarifications can be conveyed in some way to avoid the fears of harm to the site based on low status. Does anyone want to clarify the risk of harm to the site?
Perhaps the net judgment of the LessWrong community is that it should be a forbidden topic. But if so, I think it's worth making a conscious note of that fact.
Whether the norms and laws are appropriate or effective for reducing the unwanted behavior is an interesting and open question. Sex researchers tend to be opposed to mandated reporter laws, as they discourage pedophiles from seeking help: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/what-can-be-done-about-pedophilia/279024/. Young pedophiles are typically scared to death to tell their parents, and almost all (in my online experience) consider suicide.
Sex offender registries and residency restrictions on ex-offenders can also be very problematic and make problems worse. Civil commitment laws sometimes have people being detained indefinitely who have never touched a child. See for instance http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/14/130114fa_fact_aviv
Expecting a community to take this issue on as a major group effort would of course be inappropriate, but individuals modifying their own views is helpful and might be fairly easy. When a person in a social group says, "all pedophiles will abuse kids eventually", a single person who challenges that view (in a way people here consider obvious -- if they think about it) can be a high-leverage way to make a difference in public opinion.
I am not familiar with tags and the implications of their use. It was a good-faith effort to pick relevant topics. If there's a problem with them that can be explained, I'll certainly consider editing.
Is the reason you don't want it on the site really that it is off-topic? Could you formulate some criterion on the basis of which it is more off-topic than many posts in the open thread? Might it be more honest to say that it is a topic of negative value? On the verge of being a forbidden topic?
Celibate pedophiles face severe discrimination in society, including from people who hold the general libertarian view that people who don't harm others should be respected, however much one disagrees with them. I think underlying and supporting that discrimination are many beliefs that rationality is very relevant to.
I hoped that to the extent discrimination against a group that does no harm based on irrational assumptions would be of interest to people here. Of course it's a difficult topic, and considering it involves challenging common beliefs. I thought that was a large part of what LessWrong was about. Even on subjects that make people uncomfortable and have "negative associations".
Other topics I might cover (in the open thread, apparently) are a careful examination of just why adult-child sex is wrong (which I guess might be really preaching to the choir), a consideration of penalties against a background of crimes that do similar harm, and a look at child porn from a civil liberties point of view (however disgusting it may be).
OK. Child sex abuse is a serious societal problem, and certainly people think pedophiles are the ones who perpetrate most of it. Do you find it unusual that you had never considered the question before? If you had assumed without consideration that all pedophiles were child molesters, then it seems there was a significant rationality increase with very little effort or time expended.
I tried to avoid the complication of exclusivity. The argument that pedophiles offend because they have no other sexual outlets falls away for non-exclusive pedophiles -- though exclusivity is on a continuum.
If people find it obvious that most pedophiles don't pursue relationships with children, great! I suppose it's occasionally worth thinking about why what you think is obvious really is, though you of course might not get to it with other competing priorities. There really are a lot of vocal people who don't believe this -- maybe none of them are on LessWrong.
This post is step one. Others are coming if no one makes convincing arguments against it.
I am a celibate pedophile. That means I feel a sexual and romantic attraction to young girls (3-12) but have never acted on that attraction and never will. In some forums, this revelation causes strong negative reactions and a movement to have me banned. I hope that's not true here.
From a brief search, I see that someone raised the topic of non-celibate pedophilia, and it was accepted for discussion. http://lesswrong.com/lw/67h/the_phobia_or_the_trauma_the_probem_of_the_chcken/ Hopefully celibate pedophilia is less controversial.
I have developed views on the subject, though I like to think that I can be persuaded to change them, and one thing I hope to get here on LessWrong is reason-based challenges. Hopefully others will find the topics informative as well. In the absence of advice on a better way to proceed, I plan to make posts in Discussion now and then on various aspects of the topic.
I'm in my 50s and am impressed with the LessWrong approach in general and have done my best to follow some of its precepts for years. I have read most of the core sequences.