
Slave Master: How Pornography Drugs & Changes Your Brain - reedlaw
http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo13/13hilton.php
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nochiel
The author of this article is a bit too addicted (pun intended) to appeals to
authority. Sentences like these, in a scientific article or expository essay,
throw me off:

"Dr. Eric Nestler, head of neuroscience research at Mount Cedar Sinai in New
York and one of the most respected addiction scientists in the world,
published a paper."

Alarm bells started ringing. Surely, we don't need to know that he's "the most
respected". We need to know if his ideas are provably respectable....

And then, "In this paper he said that..."

That is almost certainly elliptical, with the real meaning being, "his paper
couldn't conclusively prove or demonstrate this, but he said it, and he is
"most respected", so he must be right."

But in spite of all those potential biases, the author treads mostly
carefully, with good intentions and some apparent academic integrity so that
the article is a compelling read. That said, the author is a bit high handed
and sensationalist at times, drawing on Shakespeare and Lincoln for powerful
poetic effect, which should surely be unnecessary if he hopes to sway us by
power of reason and not emotion (or the lobe and not the limbic, to put it in
his own words). But we can forgive him, I think, for climbing high on his soap
box. He, after all, believes that we're at war.

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kiba
A sex therapist or psychologist only see individuals that are troubled. Worse
yet, they have every incentives to create more potential patients to treat.

Moreover, it does not treat the subject of sexual fantasies which would be
argued to be dopamine inducing vivid experience.

It also does not address the notion of a correlation between pornography and
reduced sex crimes.

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reader5000
"A sex therapist or psychologist only see individuals that are troubled. Worse
yet, they have every incentives to create more potential patients to treat."

What is the relevance of these two sentences?

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kiba
If you read the article, you'll find that somebody is talking about their
experience as a sex therapist. This to me, trigger a "conflict of interest"
alarm. It's also trigger a "skewed" perspective simply because the therapist
spend a lot of time treating individuals with bad sexual problems, not
spending time with healthy individuals.

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indrax
About Salvo Magazine:

Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of
the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death;

Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass
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Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with
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Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but
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Recovering the one worldview that actually works.

Published by The Fellowship of St. James (FSJ)

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evgenit
Anecdotes, surface connections to studies, weasel words and similes galore.
Not worth the bandwidth it's, erm, printed on.

~~~
rikthevik
Refreshingly content-free!

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GiraffeNecktie
Everything you experience drugs and changes your brain.

~~~
philwelch
Yeah, the problem about the "pornography is drugs because it stimulates
chemicals in your brain" argument is that everything is drugs for that reason,
including vigorous exercise!

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reader5000
You're being obtuse. It is the nature and types of chemical events that
pornography induces that is relevant.

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harshpotatoes
The article is interesting, but it failed to connect a few issues, and I don't
feel the conclusion follows from the evidence. The author presented much
evidence that people can become addicted to sex or food, but really failed in
connecting viewing pornography to becoming addicted to pornography. 85% of
college aged men are viewing pornography? Why are so few people becoming
addicted (actually, they gave no figures on addiction rates, I only presume it
is a small percentage)? Is this due to personality defect, or different
viewing habits? Or looking at the other addiction put on the same level, food,
6.5billion people eat, why are there so few food addicts?

I think more research is neccessary before I believe viewing pornography is
the only factor leading to addiction, or that viewing pornography will hurt
society. I do believe though, that once somebody has a sex addiction, porn
will be harmful to them and their addiction would be harmful to society.

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parallax7d
On answering why there are so few food addicts? I would suggest cost,
availability, and social pressure would be some factors that temper
overeating. Ever meet a broke starlet from an impoverished nation? Skinnay.

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helmut_hed
I was with him until this:

"Dr. Norman Doidge ... describes how pornography causes re-wiring of the
neural circuits. He notes that in a study of men viewing internet pornography,
the men looked “uncannily” like rats pushing the lever to receive cocaine in
the experimental Skinner boxes".

So if the subjects resemble rats to the observers, that proves it's the same
as cocaine addiction?

He started off well, but the axe he brought to grind was too heavy for him to
lift.

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Ratufa
My initial reactions:

1\. Yeah, it's true that there are some people who have addiction "issues"
with porn to that point that it negatively affects their lives. Some people
have obsessive/addictive reactions to lots of other things as well: alcohol
and other drugs, gambling, food (I'm referring to eating disorders, not our
need to eat to stay alive), WoW, etc.

2\. For most addictive things, there develops an "industry" around them that
thrives on sensationalizing and over-stating the problems caused. As one
example, this article tries to create a link by association between declining
birth rates and porn.

3\. The rise of anti-<whatever> groups usually leads to calls for legislation,
and such legislation quite often has nasty unintended consequences (cf
Prohibition, the war on marijuana use, etc). Even if that article is partially
accurate about the effect of porn on some people, the correct actions to take,
if any, are probably not the obvious ones.

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parallax7d
This article was full of unqualified statements, but also full of very
interesting tidbits. It's too bad it was so poorly done, but I think a case
for the main point could be easily salvaged.

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reader5000
It is clearly an area ripe for research.

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w00t
someone is addicted to bloging

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reader5000
Great article. As the irrelevant and otherwise ad hominem responses in this
thread demonstrate, it will be a while before internet pornography is widely
understood as the highly addictive substance it is and should be regulated
more strongly in the same way "traditional", non-electronic porn is (i.e.
through zoning, much stronger penalties for allowing access to minors, etc.)

