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I personally wouldn't step foot in college if someone had a gun to my back. Have you spoken to others who have taken these exams? They could let you in on what these exams require you to know. Why not spend one year eating and breathing nothing but your field of study? That's dedicating all of your time to absorbing everything and even if you have to take those extra exams, you'll be all the better for it because you had to go through learning it on your own. You'd certainly fly past the others who didn't have to acquire that skill as hard.

I wouldn't support the work of someone who I knew was activley abusing people no one person or group can represent "Hollywood" because Hollywood isn't a borg. It's a bunch of individuals providing their talents and services, some abusive some not. That just comes down to the individual, like it always does.

Is the claim here that child abusers profit from adult pornography? Obviously child abusers profit from child pornography but you're arguing that adult porn incentivises people to abuse their children so they can go and make more adult porn when they get older? I don't understand. A father who neglects his daughter emotionally profits from people clicking a link to a video of her when she's an adult? And I'm not just talking about full-blown production porn. I'm talking about amateur anonymous stuff, animated even. Any kind of sexually stimulating content at all is what I'm referring to as porn here. Would the same logic apply to going to see UFC matches or paying to see a horror film? These things also have a high correlation of childhood trauma being the genesis of the urge to pursue/create these things.

Here's a slightly out-there proposal. Should people feel responsible for bad things that may have occurred due to a seemingly unrelated act? For example: Bob is driving home one night. Bob drives 10 miles over the limit and accidentally hits a deer and kills it. Bob is responsible for killing the deer. Same situation, but Bob doesn't stop quick enough to not bump the deer's leg. The deer limps off into the woods, bob is responsible for hitting the deer. Now that deer 2 weeks later is crossing another road. A car is going the speed limit but the deer bolts out, not fast enough to get away due to its hurt leg. The car crashes into the deer, the deer goes through the windshield and kills the driver. Is Bob responsible for the death of the driver? If Bob wouldn't have been going so fast he wouldn't have hit the deer's leg and so on. Is this a legitimate way to assign responsibility, or are there degrees? This argument is really interesting and I don't see a way to refute it because nowhere between Bob hitting the deer and the deer killing the driver is there another fork in the road of free will.

@Elizbaeth If you introduce them to sexuality during the appropriate time in puberty and help guide them through the changes, as well as raise them with kindness and interest, porn won't ever be a problem for them. My parents didn't say a word to me about the changes I went through and never had a discussion about sex. I had to discover all of that on my own, along with having no bond with my mother or father and being mentally isolated during that whole time. As long as you keep on that path of actually getting to know who your kids are, being interested in them, they won't need porn to make them happy because they'll already be happy to have you in their life.

@Elizbaeth What is your opinion on animated pornography? What about porn drawn by artists that takes advantage of no actors? Would I then be taking advantage of the artist's proclivity to draw this stuff? I'm on my third week of having not looked up any kind of porn and it's totally unbearable. There's this erotic comic that I followed before I heard this argument and I feel this deep life-threatening urge to look at its progress again. This probably sounds all hella weird to you but I appreciate the thought you're putting into this. In a way I want one of you to give me an argument that invalidates mine more than anything else right now so I can go back to what I've known for so long, but if not then I won't touch the stuff again because of what it would do to my conscience. Even if I would go back, I'd regulate it and keep it under control like I used to, but until then I'm gonna suffer through. @Tyler H, @smarterthanone, @Jot, any input?

@smarterthanone @Tyler H I guess this argument has me in a bind personally so I'll just come out and say it. When I'm about to search for porn I think about my visiting that site, clicking on a link, and viewing a video. Through my actions the site gets ad revenue, clicks, and views. By racking those up, I am increasing the likelihood of someone vulnerable to addiction finding this stuff and having it ruin their lives. Maybe that person is a 14 year old kid who knows nothing else besides finding ways to kill pain, and I'd hate for that kid to get hooked onto that stuff and have it warp his brain. I've stopped all viewing of porn at the moment because this whole argument makes porn watching unconscionable to me. I refuse to click another porn link because right now it seems like if I do I'm potentially throwing someone into the throws of porn addiction which is something I don't want on my conscience. Also sorry about these late replies. My content is being moderated so sometimes it can take a while before they're approved.

@Tyler H Right, and he would combat the non-initiation of force argument by positing: Is it immoral to expose children to sexual material? Yes. Is viewing/supporting porn increasing the likelihood that children will come in contact with sexual material? Even by a small margin, yes. So; if a child was sitting right next to you when you were about to open a porn link, is the argument that "I'm not initiating force and the parents should be monitoring him" enough to make opening that porn link in front of that child ok? Why does morality change if the kid is halfway across the country and browsing the internet on his own? Shouldn't you not be taking actions that increase the risk of others finding/having access to material that could consume their lives and maybe even destroy them? One problem with this is that the same argument could be used against playing/buying videogames. Videogames consume young people probably even more than porn, but nobody would argue that videogame purchasing/playing is immoral (maybe Sarah Palin). But videogames don't go as deep into the brain as sexuality does.

I had another thread on Self Knowledge similar to this but maybe the philosophy board can help me out with this one. I was conversing with someone who is very anti-porn and after considering FDR's perspective, he gave an argument that I can't seem to rebut on why it is immoral to consume porn. The argument goes like this: Harming children (or anyone) is morally wrong (considering it's not self-defense). Consider the fact that IT IS POSSIBLE that there is a child, young adult, or likewise out there that is emotionally needy or unstable. This child COULD go onto the internet and seek out ways to combat his anxiety and emotional emptiness. Porn is one of the most common methods of pain erasure. If you go onto a porn site and click a video, that video has a counter for views and most likely has ads that support the site financially. By doing this, you potentially give money to the site allowing it to stay up that much longer, expand that much bigger, and increase that particular video's popularity to the point where it's more likely to show up on searches. Now considering all this, your actions COULD have led to this kid or person finding this video and becoming aroused/addicted to this new form of pain management which has a chance of consuming their lives due to their lack of innate self-knowledge. Therefor, porn consumption is wrong due to the possibility of it doing harm to others. You will never know whether or not clicking on that porn video will have that butterfly effect, therefor not clicking in the first place is the only moral option. This argument seems to make logical sense but the total condemnation of porn based on what could potentially happen to someone somewhere that you'd have no idea about just seems a little self-attacky for me. I can't put my finger on why though. Thoughts?

If you wanna debunk AnCap then you gotta debunk voluntarism. If you wanna debunk voluntarism you need to be able to justify one person using coercion against another in a room.

Firstly, the age at which this was done is of note. Being that young, you have a long ways until full brain maturity, and this is the age at which sexual development is really just getting started. But I understand that the whole "you were a kid" argument may not be enough. What I think may be more prevalent on your mind is the question of incomprehensibility. What I mean by this is the confusion you might have as to why you did this thing while at the same time retaining empathy and the capacity for this kind of conversation. In a way it just doesn't fit, right? This is a common thing and I personally believe you should take this lack of comprehensibility as a sign that something hasn't been discovered yet. The narrative that may be in your head of "i must be a bad person" is only there because your history is foggy and obscured. In a way it's like having a puzzle piece marooned by itself on a table top with a slowly but uniformly developing puzzle around it. You may look at that piece as you build and say... "I have no clue what that piece connects to, what picture it forms, or if it's even supposed to be there. It's a different color than all the other pieces. It being there by itself makes no sense. Is my puzzle broken?" In reality, that piece IS a part of the puzzle, it does form an image, it does serve a purpose, and when you do form that whole image and the puzzle is figured out, there is where you will find that self-empathy that you need. Therapy is what I would recommend for starting to find those missing pieces. Maybe someone who specializes in sexual dysfunction because they may have an understanding as to how these urges develop or maybe they've had success with others of a similar situation. Another thing I'll say that I think is of incredible use that will keep you oriented is that your opinion of yourself is the only thing that matters whether you believe it or not. It's common for us to worry about other people's opinions of us, but in reality what we're really worried about is our opinion of ourselves. Remember that because it's a very useful and empowering fact that can help keep your mind on track. This is a very sensitive topic and barely scratches the surface but I believe this is something you can find self-empathy for. And remember, once you can empathize with yourself, it's universal, so others will be able to do the same. If you need to discuss anything more in depth that you're not comfortable with putting on here, I'm totally fine with PMs.

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Ok so 2/3 of these are beliefs of how porn is effecting people, but none are moral arguments. What I'm asking for is an argument from morality on why pornography consumption is wrong. My current belief is that morality doesn't play a part in it because it is UPB compliant. Everyone can consume porn and want others to consume porn (unlike rape/theft/murder). I think there are arguments to be made as to its addictive qualities, again, Your Brain On Porn is a goldmine of info, but I don't think a moral argument exists.

@Philociraptor I'm still ambivalent about this kinda stuff. I just get a bad feeling when I'm exposed to stuff like what was mentioned above. Even if I find some of it appealing, that feeling that something is wrong that I can't put my finger on lures me away from it. It may just be historical self-attack or maybe it's my intuition telling me it's a bad idea. Maybe if someone had a moral argument about this then I could put this to rest but until then I'm kinda floating around.

IMO, having one good person in your life is infinity preferable to having a whole network of bad people or sub-par people.