By contrast, though the production of such pornography is indeed more severe and can create harms, the consumption of child pornography in and of itself is non-consensual sexual exploitation of a child's image. If P and J having consensual relations can be a harm to C, surely non-consensual exploitation of a child is a worse harm to the child. — InPitzotl

Ok, I’m actually quite persuaded by this reasoning here. I think the consent aspect of this is something that I really failed to consider. I actually want to elaborate further on this to show how I think this consideration is the key thing that I think makes possession of child porn worse than adultery.

The consideration I had is that it’s usually illegal in every country to be a peeping Tom and I think that law is indeed justified. If somebody is knowingly watching a nude image of someone for the purposes of sexual gratification and they know for sure that the person in question did not consent to the image being produced then I see no reason to think that this is better than being a peeping tom. Given this, if being a peeping tom ought to be illegal than possession of porn obviously made without consent should also be illegal.

Initially, one might think that this line of reasoning implies that the possession of some adult porn should also be illegal. But, I think there are several practical considerations that would make an exclusive focus on child porn more feasible and immune from locking up innocent people. For one, all instances of child porn are non-consensual while it’s hard to tell if a piece of adult porn is consensual. Also, it’s easier to get people to care about this issue if it involves kids because people often reason with their emotions and targeting pedophiles has political advantages. Thus. I must concede that my OP was wrong regarding my comparison between adultery and child porn.

You keep thinking that harm is the primary reason for criminal law to enter the fray, but it is not. It is only one of the considerations. — Tobias

I agree that harm is not the only consideration but I think it’s one of the most important ones for sure. I think the other big consideration is whether or not it’s the government’s role to prevent the harm in question. I actually just came up with another argument for why curtailing the demand for child porn isn’t within the duties of our government. That argument involves the consideration that the average person that watches child porn probably mostly watches child porn that was produced in foreign countries. This is especially true in a very small country like Sweden for example.

Presumably, the government of a nation has no duty to prevent the abuse of children in other countries. At the very least, it probably have more of a duty to protect the dignity of its adult citizens. So, they should probably focus all the money and energy to target the producers and distributors of child porn. That way they are actually helping children within their borders rather than arresting people for essentially foreign aid reasons.

We accept that love sometimes goes bad. We do not like adultery and disapprove of it, but we do not see it as severe enough to allow criminal investigations with the aforementioned violations of privacy. And again the level of harm is only one issue, the feelings of resentment against a state allowing violence against children is another. — Tobias

Suppose there was a hypothetical society that felt that adultery should be illegal but child porn should be legal. Why should I think that this society is inferior to our current society on the topic in question? My whole argument is that this hypothetical society has better attitudes on this issue than how our current society feels on these matters.

Moreover, sexual abuse concerns violence and force adultery does not. The state has the monopoly of violence so any violent crime is perscuted more heavily. — Tobias

The possession of child porn is not violence though. It has an extremely indirect causal relationship to the actual sexual abuse of children in our own country.

When you engage in a personal relationship, like love is, we keep it personal. — Tobias

We also usually keep people’s Internet history and pornographic preferences personal and private as well. Why do you think that adultery is a violation of privacy but having the police take someone’s computer to check if they have child porn on it isn’t a violation of privacy?

It does, As 180 pointed out, consumers keep demand running for the production of it. Therefore, in order to decrease demand it is criminalized. You confuse questions of criminalization with questions of morality. By an large the same logic applies to money laundering. Crime also runs in chains. — Tobias

I think it’s worth pointing out that it seems that a single person that consumes child porn produces a very minuscule percentage of the cause of the child being abused. The producer and distributor of that content is the primary party responsible for the abuse and the audience of the porn only contributes in a minuscule way unless you add them all up as a collective. In contrast, the primary contributors to adultery are adulterers themselves. So, even if child porn produces more harm than adultery overall, I still think it’s reasonable to believe that the average adulterer causes more harm in our society than the average person that watches child porn. Thus, I think we should either make both activities legal or make both of them illegal.

The law simply has no business protecting your dignity. — Tobias

Then why do you think that it has business preventing the sexual abuse of children? After all, isn’t a big reason for why sexual abuse is bad is because it violates a person’s dignity? There are other seemingly justified laws that we have to protect people’s dignity like the fact that spitting on someone’s face is illegal. Technically, a little of spit in your face could do you no physical or financial harm. But, it is disrespectful for someone to spit on you and this is why it’s illegal(and rightfully so it seems).

Add to that that it is very difficult to enforce. People have all sorts of relationships in this day and age. Mind you that a crime is a crime regardless of someone actually pressing charges, so all kinds of alternative lifestyles would be criminalized. — Tobias

I think it’s even more difficult to enforce laws against possession of child porn without locking up innocent people. Someone could put child porn on your computer without you knowing it and it would be impossible to determine who exactly put the porn on the computer if multiple people had accessed the computer. In addition, I heard stories of people getting hacked and having law enforcement think that they were visiting child porn sites. Also, it’s possible for your neighbor to steal your WiFi and use it for child porn and potentially get you in trouble. So, I would say that child porn laws have their own set of enforcement problems to deal with.

I also think that we can protect people that want to have something like an open relationship if we only make adultery illegal for those that signed a legal agreement that promises that they would stay faithful to their partner. We can then start encouraging people in monogamous relationships to sign such agreements and people willing to sign these agreements might be more desirable in the “monogamous relationship market”. And everyone who signs the agreement seems to be basically consenting to having this law imposed on them so I don’t think they can rightfully complain about the punishment. Also, the couple can agree on the punishment. For example, they can make it a civil case with a financial settlement instead of a criminal sentence if they want. You can’t really do that with child porn though and so that’s another important advantage for adultery laws over child porn laws in my opinion.

But when it comes to causing harm to C, P is just as responsible for causing this harm to C as J is. I can see a qualitative assessment of this as P being less responsible, but I cannot see a reasonable assessment where P is far less responsible. — InPitzotl

Ok, I would like to present an analogous case to you as an argument for I think it makes sense to think that P is far less responsible for the harm caused to C. Suppose that T stole some trade secrets from Company B that he used to work for. He sold those trade secrets to Company F. Company F knows that he violated his agreement and Company F knows that this will harm Company B. Nonetheless, I think it makes sense to say that Company F is far less responsible for the harm caused to Company B than T is. I think this is precisely because it is T that had an agreement with Company B to not sell those trade secrets and Company F had no such agreement. Because of this, Company B can only sue T for violating the agreement but they cannot sue Company F for buying the trade secrets regardless if they knew that T was violating the law. I think this is how the law should be too.

I think this case that I had presented is analogous to the case that you have presented with P, J, and C. I can’t think of any ways that it is disanalogous but I’d love to know if you see anything relevant that is not analogous between the 2 cases.

Were P not to consent, P would not be responsible. Whatever J might do in this case with Q were P to refuse consent appears to be irrelevant to me. — InPitzotl

I think the existence of Q isn’t irrelevant here. I think it actually changes the causality of the harm caused to C. I would argue that, in order P to have caused harm to C, it has to be the case that the relevant harm to C would have not have occurred had P not had sex with J. If it’s extremely likely that it would have occurred regardless then I think the primary causal force for harm caused to C is J’s motivation and intention to cheat. If J had no intention of cheating on C then the harm caused to C would have not occurred. By contrast, P refusing to serve J only seems to have a minuscule chance of changing the ultimate outcome regarding C being harmed by J cheating on her. To use another analogous example, imagine that you had a vicious drug lord that was planning to set your car on fire and it’s extremely unlikely that you would be able to stop him so you just accepted your fate. I hear about this and I decide that I want to set your car on fire instead because I think it would be fun. The drug lord shows up and sees me set the car on fire and he just smiles and sees someone already did his chore and decides to leave. Would you really be mad at me for burning your car down in this scenario? I would imagine that you probably wouldn’t care because you know that the drug lord would have done it anyways and I only decided to burn it down because I knew you were screwed regardless. I think the situation with P, Q, J, and C is kinda analogous.

That is different from child pornography, because the state protects individuals who do not have the power to protect themselves. (That is why sexual abuse of a patient is a criminal matter for instance and sex with a minor is even if it is consensual). — Tobias

I want to clarify that I was only talking about people that watch child porn in my OP rather than those that actually produce the content. It doesn’t seem to me that your point here applies to people that just watch the stuff and have it on their computer.

Drug adiction is a problem for the state because it destabilizes pubic order (at least that is the argument for drug related prosecution). — Tobias

I think adultery also destabilizes public order. I think the lack of legal persecution of people that cheat leads partners that have been cheated on to feel like they must seek justice for themselves and that results in them trying to take revenge against the person that cheated on them. This is often even celebrated by people who hear of such revenge tales and I think this sort of thing helps promote the narrative that vigilante justice is good and that you can’t rely on the law to stand up for your dignity. If we had laws against adultery, then I think we can help civilize the process of the victim of adultery getting the justice that they might indeed deserve to have. Though, I do think there are strong arguments against making adultery illegal too. I just think that there is a stronger case for making adultery illegal than there is for making drugs illegal.

Another potential way that adultery destabilizes our society is by the way it potentially helps destabilize our families and family structures. Adultery often leads to divorce and that tends to weaken family bonds. Family bonds are often understood as the staple of our overall social bonds. It’s not clear if we can have a functioning society with too many dysfunctional families. I think adultery helps create dysfunctional families.

Euthanasia is decriminlized uner certain condditions in the Netherlands, but the case may be made that it should be a matter of state interest because it has the monopoly of violence and euthanasia undermines that monopoly. — Tobias

I wouldn’t consider selling euthanasia drugs to be violence though. According to the first online dictionary that I have consulted, violence is “behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury”. It appears to me that there is no physical force exerted by a euthanasia drug and thus it isn’t violence. I would say violence is more akin to hitting, cutting, or shooting projectiles at someone. It usually causes suffering and only sometimes death. Euthanasia typically causes death with no suffering.

The OP seems to consider that moral wrongs should be dealt with by criminal law, but that assumption is false. — Tobias

I’m actually more sympathetic to just making all the stuff I mentioned legal rather than making adultery illegal. I’m quite sympathetic towards social libertarian causes. Though, I was merely trying to talk about the ways in which I think that our laws are inconsistent and based on vague principles.

I don't see legal harm (re: US penal or civil codes) in your descriptions of so-called "victims" of adultery, prostitution, drug use/possession, etc in the OP. Only child pornography which cannot be produced without criminal sexual assault / abuse of minors. — 180 Proof

I was actually only talking about people who have possession of child porn and viewing child porn in my OP. I agree that production of child pornography is far worse than adultery. I’m just not convinced that merely watching child porn produces more harm than adultery. Do you think that someone having child porn on their computer constitutes a legal harm also or were you only talking about the people that produce and distribute the stuff?

You're conflating legal and moral claims. The topic at issue concerns legal prohibitions, not moral blame. Unless I misread the OP, you're now moving the goalposts. — 180 Proof

I think I was mostly talking about legality of the issues at question in my OP especially regarding the 4th paragraph of my OP here:

Another thing that I think makes the case for making adultery illegal more compelling is that a lack of legal recourse often leads disgruntled individuals to take matters in their own hands and engage in vigilante justice. I think a big reason why we created laws in the first place is to curtail vigilante justice and the chaos that it brings so we can live in a peaceful society. Adultery has quite a high level of vengefulness that comes with it. The likelihood of any given partner taking revenge against their partner after they catch them cheating is actually fairly high it seems. I hear about it all the time. We often even encourage such vengefulness. By contrast, I think few people are motivated to take revenge against drug users or prostitution clients or prostitutes or even someone who provided euthanasia drugs to their loved ones or someone that watches child porn. This is because those activities either do not concern them or they might feel like revenge isn’t appropriate even if it does concern them. You do have vigilantes that go after pedophiles but I think they overwhelmingly prefer to target child rapists or molesters instead of just some guy watching child porn. — TheHedoMinimalist

This was meant to be like a Hobbesian contractarian sort of argument that appeals to the idea that the purpose of law is to preserve social peace and minimize vigilante violence that often took place before the law and the government was there to resolve disputes. Basically, what I was trying to say is that people tend to take revenge against their cheating partners and many people think it’s understandable for them to do so. Ideally, people shouldn’t have to resort to revenge to protect their honor and dignity in these situations. I’m suggesting that maybe it is quite appropriate to have the law and the government punish cheaters on the behalf of their partners so that we can have a civilized means of preserving the dignity of the victim rather than an uncivilized means of revenge which tends to characterized by unlawful vandalism and violence. Though, I personally don’t necessarily think that we should make adultery illegal but I think it has more compelling arguments than the arguments for making prostitution, drugs, assisted suicide, and maybe even possession of child porn illegal.

Well here, the analog would be to prostitution; though, more specifically, in this case we've qualified this to the level of possession of child pornography specifically made via exploitation of children, versus just generic prostitution, so this analogy isn't quite analogous. To make it so, we should qualify the prostitution... something along the lines of, prostitution specifically where the prostitute knowingly caters to a person involved in a monogamous relationship. That analog being made, given that exploitation is worse than adultery, presumably possession of such child pornography should be worse than prostitution. — InPitzotl

I agree that possession of child porn is worse than prostitution. I actually don’t think that prostitution is really that bad though. Yes it can enable adultery but I think that’s a pretty minor downside since it isn’t adultery and I think it only plays a small causal role in any given instance of adultery that it causes. If some guy decides to cheat on his wife with a prostitute, I think that prostitute is far less responsible for that adultery than the guy himself is. Him cheating on his wife is probably not solely dependent on the existence of that given prostitute or even the existence of prostitution in general. He probably would have found a way to cheat regardless. That prostitute that helped him and prostitution only made things somewhat more convenient for him. I think that just doesn’t give us too much reason to be strongly opposed to prostitution. I also think there are a lot of social benefits to prostitution that are often overlooked and under-respected. Though, I won’t go into that rabbit hole unless you really want me to.

Ok, I understand

You're conflating legal and moral claims. The topic at issue concerns legal prohibitions, not moral blame. — 180 Proof

I’m not sure if you are responding to my OP or to my previous reply to your comment. It would be helpful if you can quote the passage in question

I'm embarrassed to even have to make this argument. Web pages usually get paid by advertisers based on how many people click on their web pages. If you go to a porn website, you are contributing financially to the site's owner. You are helping to make it financially worthwhile for people to sexually abuse children. — T Clark

Ok, you have a point. The average person who watches child porn might give a small amount of profit to the producer. I still think that cheating causes way more harm though. I know countless of people that have been cheated on and it causes quite a great deal of emotional devastation. It might not be as much emotional devastation as what child abuse causes but I think you should consider that the harm produced by cheating is solely caused by the cheater. In contrast, a single person that consumes child porn produces a very minuscule percentage of cause of the child being abused. The producer and distributor of that content is the primary party responsible for the abuse and the audience of the porn only contributes in a minuscule way unless you add them all up as a collective.

So, someone sexually abuses a child and makes a film of it. Then he says "Hey, THM, would you like a copy of the video?" You say "sure" and download and watch it. Is it your position that you do not share any responsibility for the abuse of that child? — T Clark

If someone doesn’t play a causal role in the creation of the video and the video would have existed even if that person was never interested in child porn then I don’t understand how it would make sense to say that this person is responsible for abusing a child that would have been abused regardlessly. I guess you can argue that there’s some probability that the person who made the video specifically made it for that person but that’s kinda speculative. I think it really comes down to the disgust that people have towards pedophiles and I understand. They are pretty disgusting people. It’s like a person that likes to eat his own feces or a person that fantasizes about torturing animals. There’s just something gross about it.

Nonetheless, I would appreciate if you can provide me with an argument for why you do think that watching child porn that you got for free still makes someone somehow responsible for the abuse if the abuse would taken place regardless. I think we normally wouldn’t say that someone is responsible if the issue was less emotionally charged than child porn. For example, suppose that someone had robbed a jewelry store a long time ago and there were a few pieces of jewelry that they wanted to give me as a present. If jewelry store is already out of business and the jewelry can longer be returned then it seems that it would be perfectly acceptable for me to take the stolen jewelry even if I knew they were stolen. Just as you cannot take back the jewelry to a store that no longer exists, you also cannot take back the child abuse that might have occurred in the past. So, what is the difference between those cases then?

It's breaking an agreement to cheat in a monogamous relationship, but it's not breaking an agreement to take photos of a child in a shower without their knowledge and share it online. We can't use the fact of agreement versus not to compare the latter to the former (I mean we can, but it doesn't seem to properly compare using this metric).

FYI, this is just an example of agreement breaking versus exploitation. Also, judging from the topic, this appears to be the point as I understand it... to compare cheating to drug use/prostitution/suicide/child pornography. — InPitzotl

I want to clarify that I was specifically talking about the possession of child porn as opposed to the production of child porn. I agree that taking a video of a child taking a shower is worse than adultery. I just don’t think that having a copy of that video of your computer is worse than adultery. I think there is a quite big difference between producing child porn and simply watching it.

Are you so blind to the difference between adultery and these other things you think they should be classed together as collectively either all criminal or all legal? — tim wood

I did not list all the differences between these things in the OP because I wasn’t looking to write an essay on the topic lol. I gave you 4 paragraphs to work with in my OP. I’d be surprised if you actually read the whole thing much less agree to read a much longer analysis that I might have on the topic. Personally, I think a good OP is one that gives a very basic and rudimentary version of an argument or critique and then allows people that want to respond to the OP to contribute further. It’s supposed to promote conversation and not bog people down reading your OP. So, I want to pass the question off to you. What do you think is the difference between adultery and the other things that I have mentioned? You don’t have to give me a full list but it would help if you can provide a notable example or something.

And adultery between unmarried persons? That is not even a thing. Perhaps make it all illegal and permit bounty payments to persons who report other persons? — tim wood

By adultery, I meant cheating in general. I think it matters much if it occurs between a married or unmarried couple. Yes, we can do the bounty payments though I think police can just investigate suspicions just as they would with any other crime.

I get that monogamous relationships involve an agreement; but broken agreements are not the only moral considerations. I'm not sure I agree that if Bob pinky promises to buy Jane ice cream next week if Jane buys him some this week, that Bob in violating this promise is more in the wrong than if he stole ice cream from Jane. — InPitzotl

I agree that there being an agreement is not the only moral consideration. I think that cheating is quite harmful to people and I think that harm cannot be excused because you made an agreement not to cause that harm.

I don’t think that adultery is victimless. I think it obviously harms the person who gets cheated on and it causes them a great deal of emotional distress. I don’t think any of those activities are completely victimless though. Drugs and Suicide seem to harm the family members of the person that engages in them. Prostitution could enable adultery and that could harm the spouse of the prostitution client.

How would someone get the pornography if there were not a financial transaction of some sort? — T Clark

Well, one could scam or hack someone that has child porn. But, most porn is free on the Internet right now because it is funded by scam advertising. I don’t know if that’s a thing for child porn as well but if it is then I don’t think that a person who downloads child porn and doesn’t fall for scam advertisement would be doing anything to help the creators of child porn profit. So, I’m not seeing how they actually would play a causal role in creating the content. Another non-financial way that someone might get child porn is if it is free distributed by a pedophile that wants to help other pedophiles out. There are pro-pedophilia political advocacy groups out there such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association. It wouldn’t surprise me if they like to freely hand out child porn to their members or supporters.

You have a good point here. The severity of having family members do drugs or commit suicide might be more severe. Though, there is another factor that I considered here as well and that was whether or not a person has a right to do drugs or commit suicide. I think it’s more reasonable to assert that a person has a right to do drugs or commit suicide because they never really made an agreement not to do those things while a cheater has made an agreement not to cheat by choosing to have a monogamous committed relationship. Also, in regards to assisted suicide, I think it’s also more controversial to blame a person that provides euthanasia drugs to help a person commit suicide for that suicide as this person only played a partial causal role here. I think the person that actually went through with the suicide is most appropriate person to blame if someone really insisted that suicide is blameworthy. I think this kind of factor is ultimately my most important point here as I think we can accept that drugs and suicide produce a comparably bad outcome to adultery but there is at least more reasons to defend the actions of drug users and suicide assistants.

Visual child pornography - videos or photographs - requires that children engage in sex acts. It is not likely that any child would do that unless coerced. In most places, children do not have the ability to give consent. Even if there is no legal restriction, it's just plain wrong. Children are among the most vulnerable of us. They deserve to be protected. Child pornography cannot be made without abusing and exploiting children. — T Clark

People that possess or watch child porn of any kind do not necessarily play a causal role in the creation of that content though. It is only if they produce it or distribute it or pay for it then I think one can argue that they have actually seriously contributed to the abuse of children. Otherwise, I think that content would exist even if one particular person who watches child porn didn’t watch child porn. In contrast, if one partner gets caught cheating on their romantic partner then there doesn’t seem to be any question that this partner would have prevented the suffering that his infidelity has caused to his partner if he decided not to cheat. So, I think the causal relationship to harm is more clear and obvious here.

You deserve an award for this, you know. — TheMadFool

Well, thanks :)

I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children. You don’t need to be a parent to be in a position where children might ask you interesting questions. In fact, I would imagine school teachers get these questions more often.

It seems wrong to take advantage of someone (they don't have the awareness to realise they are being taken advantage of). If we tested that with a reductio, say the worker being taken advantage of had special needs. — Down The Rabbit Hole

But, what if the boss has special needs also and he’s also unaware that he is exploiting the worker?

Well, the point of this wasn't to show someone's reaction on behalf of others, per se, though that can be a possible avenue to explore. What it is illustrating is that the ethical onus fell on the owner, not the worker's reaction to being exploited. The implication being that, if someone is imposing on another, it can still be wrong despite the person being exploited perhaps not minding. I wanted to use a different example than the usual one I use about slavery, but it is similar. A slave who may not know they are being imposed upon unjustly, may not seem to care. This doesn't mean the slaveowner is thus absolved of doing the imposing or should keep persisting. — schopenhauer1

I think we normally think differently about the case of the slave owner and the slave because it is often imagined by the listener of that hypothetical that the slave is uneducated and has been indoctrinated into believing that his slavery is good. The slave owner is also presumed to know that he is exploiting the slave. But, I think this interpretation of this hypothetical would make it dis-analogous to procreation because a procreator is no more aware of his alleged wrongdoings than the adult offspring is of his alleged exploitation. In addition, every procreator is also an offspring. That seems to mean that the alleged exploiter has also been exploited by another procreator but feels that he is neither exploited nor exploiting. So, it would be like a slave owner that is also a slave to someone else.

But, then I think we have a problem with the argument here. My question is if someone doesn’t have an expectation to be aware that they are being exploited then how can they have an expectation to be aware that they are exploiting someone else? Or by analogy, if someone doesn’t have an expectation to know about their alleged cognitive biases and how that gives them a false perception that their life is good overall, then how can they be expected to know that procreation is wrong? I tend to think that if 2 individuals have an equal ability to figure out that exploitation is taking place, then the person who is being exploited should have the greatest expectation for several reasons:

1. Psychologically, people usually have less bias regarding the question of whether or not they are being exploited. I think it’s because it’s really hard to get someone to hold beliefs and to avoid doing things that are greatly contrary to their perceived self interest. For example, how many antinatalists do you know that had actual serious plans to get married and have children prior to accepting antinatalism? How many antinatalists do you know that decided to divorce their natalist spouse which they married before they realized that antinatalism is true? I would be surprised if you can even name one person who is like that. I think almost every antinatalist would avoid procreation even if they weren’t antinatalists. So, I think antinatalism is almost pointless from a persuasive standpoint.

I think it’s actually more effective for an antinatalist to argue that having children is bad for the parent in some manner. I think this can actually be highly persuasive and I have actually heard a decent amount of drama stories on reddit where someone married a spouse that wanted to have children only to spontaneously change their mind after acknowledging how hard and unpleasant it can be and this unfortunately has to lead to divorce. I think this shows that people are more willing to make great sacrifices for their own overall welfare.

On a final note, I think it makes more sense to hold a person responsible when we can make an easier case that they should have known better. For example, you probably wouldn’t want to hold a mentally challenged person responsible for not knowing that procreation is wrong and subsequently procreating. Even though having an unconscious tendency to reject beliefs because it doesn’t align with your interests isn’t quite like intellectual disability, it’s still something that can be used to argue that maybe an individual is in a better position to be able to know that there life isn’t good overall.

2. It seems to me that a person is more likely to be wrong about whether or not someone else’s life is worth starting than they are to be wrong about whether or not their own life is worth starting. I think this might become more intuitive to you if we imagine someone who thinks his life is worth starting but also thinks your life was worth starting and all your problems with life would be solved if you just started going to church or taking anti-depressants. Who is this person more likely to be right about in his evaluation? Well, surely himself rather than you as his evaluation of your life is quite silly. Even if he’s likely to be wrong about the quality of his own life, it’s at least more controversial that he is wrong here as it’s unclear to what extent humans are really biased towards the quality of their own life. On the other hand, he has to resort to some really silly reasoning to try to argue that your life was worth starting. By analogy, if someone says that their life is bad overall then that’s probably much harder to dispute than the claim that most people’s lives are bad overall. Because of this, maybe it makes more sense to give the onus to every individual to decide whether or not their life was worth starting and if it happens to be the case that assisted suicide does actually provide reasonable accommodation for people that wish that they hadn’t been born then it seems that there would be no onus on the procreator.

Is the boss wrong in what he is doing? Is he being exploitative of someone's comparative willingness to work? Is this just? Is this too much of an imposition? — schopenhauer1

I would say no to all questions here and I think a lot of other people would as well. I don’t think we have any reason to care about some seemingly abstract and hypothetical harms done to others if they aren’t even expressing a grievance and they aren’t even willing to do anything to stand up for themselves. The employee in your hypothetical seemingly could tell the boss to give him less work but he chooses not to. In addition, he isn’t even forced to work for this terrible boss and with his go-getter attitude he could easily find a better job. So, why care about this person’s well being? If his well being is bad, then isn’t it completely his fault for not doing anything about it?(if there’s lots of things that he can do to alleviate his harm with not too much effort). I think that we have the greatest expectation to be able to help ourselves and pursue our own interests. If someone isn’t even willing to put thought and effort into their own welfare then it’s hard for me to understand why others should take their welfare considerations seriously either.

I also think that the expression of grievance should probably play a pretty big role in morality because it allows us to know what people have problems and how they want those problems resolved and that allows us to efficiently allocate the energy that we are willing to put into moral matters in domains where it will have maximum appreciation from others. Having that appreciation from others also really helps motivate people to care about others as it usually makes people feel good about what they are doing and ignoring grievances makes us feel guilty and that causes us to suffer.

I have no issues with that. However, your OP is about justifying incest using homosexuality by claiming the two are equivalent and if one is permissible, there are no grounds on which to object to the other. This argument is unsound because homosexuality isn't equivalent to incest. — TheMadFool

I actually changed my mind about the truthfulness of my OP after having a conversation with darthbaracuda. I think he/she pointed out a meaningful practical difference between incest and homosexuality. Just out of curiosity, what downside do you think comes with incest that you think would tip the scales to make incest worse than homosexuality?

Do you think that suicide is easy for people? — schopenhauer1

I think it shouldn’t be too difficult for someone that wishes that they had never been born if they could just go to the store and get euthanasia drugs. After all, if someone really hates their life then would you expect them to fear death that much. I personally don’t think that I fear death but I’m absolutely terrified of dying in a brutal fashion. Euthanasia can solve that problem though.

I guess if someone believes in an afterlife then they might fear the afterlife but I would imagine the vast majority of people that wish that they haven’t been born don’t believe in that. If they do believe in that, then I imagine that they probably would also believe in there being life before birth and that would also seemingly nullify antinatalism.

And do you think the difficulty of doing something like that is a reason why life is then a good thing for that person? — schopenhauer1

Nah, I’m not making the judgement that most people have lives worth living. I just don’t see why that question would particularly matter if people say they are glad to be born. After all, if someone wants to eat a shit sandwich, then why try to encourage people to stop feeding shit sandwiches to them? I think that as long as there is reasonable accommodation for those who don’t want to continue eating the shit sandwich, there is not much of an issue here. I believe that easy access to euthanasia would be a reasonable accommodation but unfortunately it doesn’t exist because our society imposes life on us on a much deeper level than simply rejecting antinatalism.

Can you state the circumstances in which your statement (above) is true? — TheMadFool

Ok, so the crazy person points a gun to your head and says you need to have sex with a stranger of the same sex or your child. You are infertile and you have all been tested for STDs and nobody has STDs. Your child is 30 years old and has expressed her desire to have sex with you long before this incident. She seems to be horny at the moment. You know that your child has had casual sex with plenty of her friends and it has never caused any drama or strain in her friendships. So, she appears to have a proven record of avoiding creating social problems out of sex. The stranger of the opposite sex also says he wants to have sex with you and he seems very horny to you. So, you don’t seem to have any reason to doubt the sincerity of his word. Under this scenario, I don’t think it morally matters who you choose to have sex with. I think it would just be a matter of your personal preferences. For example, you might feel less discomfort about having sex with one person over another. Maybe you’re the type of person that couldn’t help but have the sex impact your relationship with your daughter so you might choose the stranger just because of that. I just don’t think that incest is inherently bad in any way.

You mean to say homosexuality = incest — TheMadFool

Not really, I’m saying that homosexuality and incest are morally equivalent unless certain practical considerations such as the risk of pregnancy are mentioned. Saying that something is equivalent isn’t the same as saying something is identical. For example, 10 dimes are monetarily equivalent to a dollar bill but they are obviously not the same thing as a dollar bill. I don’t think it matters who you have sex with unless someone can mention some kind of a practical reason for why you maybe shouldn’t have sex with a particular person.

If so, one only has to read the book of Genesis to realize that if humamity started off with one man (Adam) and one woman (Eve), incest was/is inevitable. — TheMadFool

I’m pretty sure the Bible does have some bad things to say about incest though. I think it probably contradicts itself on this issue.

Question 1. Suppose you're a straight person held at gunpoint. Your captor gives you two choices. Either sleep with someone who's the same sex as you (homosexuality) or sleep with your child (incest). (Ignore the possibility that your child is the same sex as you in which case you would be an incestuous homosexual). What would you choose? — TheMadFool

I think we would need to know whether or not your child desires to have sex with you compared to how much the same sex stranger desires to have sex with you. Do you have to rape them or do they give reluctant consent or are they thrilled to have sex with you? If it’s rape or reluctant consent, then I think you are better off having sex with the same sex stranger because I think it’s better to harm a stranger than it is to harm your own child and if it’s enthusiastic consent then I don’t think it matters much either way. Though, I’m also assuming that you don’t want me taking into account factors like the risk of pregnancy and STDs or the age of the child or the same sex stranger for the purposes of this hypothetical.

It would have a considerable effect for those involved. Historically, this is one of the reasons why some for of incest was practiced by royal families. For those families, it was important to stay in power and to increase their power, and marriage was a strategic tool for this. As needed: sometimes, to keep the power all in the family, a marriage between close relatives; other times, marrying outside the family for political and economic gains — baker

You seem to think that incest is bad in the same sort of way that having lots of credit card debt is bad. But, I think most people think incest is bad in the same way they think that pedophilia is bad. They seem to think that it’s like full blown evil. I don’t disagree with you that incest might be prudentially unwise for a myriad of reasons and under a myriad of circumstances. I just don’t think it’s evil or anything like that. That’s kinda along the lines that I was comparing incest to homosexuality.

I bring in exhibit a) Pollyannaism b) lowering expectations, and c) adaptation to less ideal circumstances... Just because these are correcting mechanisms, does that mean employing them is good just because they are needed to get by? — schopenhauer1

If you believe that life is overall bad for most people then you can, of course, argue for antinatalism with that. I just don’t see how the consent argument makes a difference here. As someone who wishes that he had never been born, I think easy access to euthanasia drugs provides a pretty good solution for those who wish that they had never been born.

It operates at a different level, like bestiality or masochism, at best a kink, at worst an abomination or abuse. — NOS4A2

What’s the difference between a kink and a sexual orientation though? I’m pretty sure that, historically, homosexuality was viewed as a perversion just as incest or bestiality are viewed today.

The difference between incest and homosexuality is this: incest usually occurs between close family members--usually between persons of opposite sex--usually involving a significant age difference. — Bitter Crank

Out of the 3, I think the only meaningful difference is that it occurs between close family members as this can create awkward situations that I think are more difficult to avoid than say having sexual tension with your coworkers(I think quitting your job is much easier than avoiding your family usually). I’m not sure why the age difference would matter(unless someone is underage or something) and I’m not sure why it would be bad for it to be between persons of opposite sex.

Incest might be rare in part because it is seen as a taboo. Do you know how popular incest porn is? — darthbarracuda

I think incest porn is only popular because it’s taboo. In fact, almost all porn seems to have taboo themes. For example, if you search the word “wife” on a porn site, you will find videos of wifes having sex with everyone but their hubbies.

Probably incest is a taboo at least in part because it can really mess up family dynamics. Imagine a friend tells another friend they love them romantically or erotically, but the love is not reciprocated. Already an awkward situation that can sometimes end friendships right then. Now imagine this happening between siblings, who may live in the same house, who share the same parents, and cannot nearly as easily separate in their relationship. Very awkward. — darthbarracuda

I haven’t thought about that. I think that’s actually a pretty good argument against incest that doesn’t also apply to homosexuality.

That seems, alarmingly, to be the second option, although despite being asked you refused to clarify. — Kenosha Kid

I don’t recall you asking me to clarify anything. What question did you ask earlier?

So you are saying the complexities and known harms of life are the same as giving someone a million dollars? — schopenhauer1

They aren’t the same obviously but I think most people would rather lose a million dollars of their lifetime earnings than to have someone make it so that they have never been born at all. I don’t why this fact shouldn’t also be considered here.

If most people want something that has almost 0.000000001 possibility of harm and something that has demonstrable forms of known and unknown harms, you think this is analogous? — schopenhauer1

Given that there seems to be only like 3% of people who wish they had never been born at any given time, I think it could reasonably be seen as somewhat analogous. Even if I thought there was like a 3% chance that you wouldn’t want a million dollars(maybe because it would trigger a drug habit or something), I would still think it’s appropriate to make a decision on your behalf here since you are quite unlikely to be worse off.

Also, once born, its TOO LATE. — schopenhauer1

I don’t think it’s too late. In fact, with adequate access to assisted suicide, I think you can provide most people who wish they had never been born with a quite reasonable solution to their future suffering.

SINCE THAT PERSON DOESN'T EXIST YET TO NEED THIS TRADE OFF”. Thus it is an absolutely unnecessary cause of harm to that person. — schopenhauer1

Why do you think that being born is an unnecessary cause of harm and that avoid harming someone is necessary? I think one could reasonably argue that we don’t need to care about harming others(at least I don’t see why you think it’s more obvious that we need to care about harming others but we don’t need to care about creating additional benefits for others). I think this sort of mindset about morality relates to the bias of morality being treated like legal laws. For example, there seems to be a lot of talk of moral laws, moral duties, and moral prohibitions in moral discourse(which kinda seem strangely similar to the concept of legal duties and legal prohibitions). I think laws have a structure to them that emphasizes keeping everyone civil and that tends to prioritize punishing those that harm others as opposed to rewarding or punishing others that refuse to help others. This is because the law kinda seems to act as a mediator and peacekeeper to avoid having everyone engage in vigilante justice against their enemies. They typically choose to use legal proceedings instead. Because of this function of laws, laws are mostly about avoiding harming others. But, I don’t see why morality needs to be treated the same as laws and I think it’s quite common for people to conflate moral concerns with legal and sociocultural concerns. If such bias didn’t exist, then I think people wouldn’t gravitate much towards moral codes that focus on avoiding harming others. I think harming others would be equal in weight to benefiting others in a bias-free conception of morality.

Depends what you mean. If you mean that someone who knew they were HIV and therefore had a strong chance of harming another but had sex with them anyway, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a liberal who would disagree. If you mean that, since HIV was particularly rife among the gay community that they would, by my reasoning, be somehow retrospectively culpable, then you have not payed attention to my reasoning. — Kenosha Kid

No, I was wondering why you think the risk of bad pregnancies posed by incest is a major concern and a reason to condemn incest while also not thinking that the increased transmission of HIV by homosexual men doesn’t also give us reason to condemn male homosexuality. After all, incestuous couple can use contraception and minimize or even virtually eliminate the risk of them having children. So, why would those incestuous couples be worse than say homosexual men that are HIV negative having casual sex with a condom on? I don’t see why they are any worse people and that’s why I’m not against incest.

Again, this is the same problem with the Golden Rule, not everyone wants done to them what you would want done to you or its inverse (not done to them what you would not want done). — schopenhauer1

So, would you say that it would be more wise for me to tell the billionaire in my hypothetical that I can’t speak on your behalf and risk you not receiving a million dollars because of that?

Homosexuality may threaten some families, but incest is taken to threaten the concept of family. — darthbarracuda

I think incest would only threaten some families too. It seems that incest will always be extremely rare so I don’t see how it could threaten the concept of family for a whole society. I actually think that incest could actually strengthen family bonds in some open minded and tolerant families. For example, imagine that a guy marries his first cousin. In the past, the 2 nuclear families would only see each other once every few years on the holidays. Assuming that all the family members are tolerant of the union, they would now have more frequent holidays and parties together as both nuclear families want to spend time with their corresponding children(who are both married to one another which just makes family gatherings really convenient). It’s also really convenient to have your in laws to also be your uncle and aunt as this allows you to minimize the amount of time needed to spend time with all your family members and it may give you more time for other stuff. So, it actually seems like a superior arrangement if everyone could just get over the yuck factor(which also used to widespread for gay relationships). It’s also worth noting that incest used to be more acceptable in the past and I don’t think it really caused too many problems for society despite the fact that they even lacked contraception.

You want prove that there's no difference between homosexuality and incest and that if one is immoral, so is the other. — TheMadFool

My view is actually that both are not immoral. I don’t understand why we hate incest if we acknowledge that homosexuality is ok

Fucking your sister is probably going to destabilize family dynamics, no? — darthbarracuda

And homosexuality wouldn’t? I wonder how many family relationships got ruined because someone came out as gay and their family didn’t like it.