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(I'm probably going to regret this comment...)
Because what's considered "offending" varies quite wildly and it's not always obvious to me what people mean by it. I've returned a hug from a child I found attractive rather than turning her away. I've gotten aroused by the actions of children around me. Do you consider that "offending"? I don't, but some (many?) people do. Amusingly ChatGPT also does (hello @self_made_human).
I don't disagree, but that doesn't give people a blank check in their response to pedophilia and things correlated with it.
Sure. Back when we were on reddit, there was another user who claimed to be a pedophile who theorized that pedophilia is (sometimes?) caused by a disruption in one's sexual development leaving them stuck in a more child-like stage. Hypothetically assuming this is true (I'm not claiming it is, though it does somewhat fit my experience), then it's possible that when and/or how it was disrupted affects how likely a pedophile is to offend, making pedophilia a very strong predictor of offending again, but not necessarily of offending the first time if only a minority of pedophiles are so affected.
I would expect pedophiles to be overrepresented among people who sexually abuse children. I would also expect that a large majority of pedophiles never sexually abuse a child however.
Ignore the shitbag mom pimping them out to her shitbag boyfriend out of desperation for his attention when she's not abusing them herself between being dumped by and finding a new one. But of course, women can never be blamed for their contributions to child abuse and their abuse can never truly be sexual anyway...
Depends on what you mean by more likely to try I guess. I agree a random pedophile is more likely to desire to have sex with one and seek it out given the opportunity, but I think "a random man from the dating pool of single parents" is far more likely to actually have the opportunity and act on it--I don't think the average pedophile has the necessary social skill nor confidence to. I also think the average pedophile is more likely to see a child as a partner they don't want to hurt rather than just a hole to get off in, which I think would temper offending somewhat. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much from my own feelings though.
So basically I'm just deceiving myself thinking I actually care more about not hurting the people I'm attracted to than having sex with them?
IIRC, the article itself is more a history and survey of other studies and I don't recall it making any assertions itself. These assertions are coming from others being quoted.
Some users in some instances, yes. More generally, I think the assertion is that some people use virtual CP as a means of dealing with their own [childhood] [sexual] trauma in a safer, more controlled context. For example, consider ボクはお姉ちゃんの妹, a story about an older step-sister who defends her effeminate younger brother from bullying for acting like a girl and treats him like a girl, first with tame cross-dressing and then more erotic cross-dressing and sexual activities, with a recurring emphasis on how much she cares for her brother and how comfortable he is with her behavior. Can you imagine how good it feels to read this for a man who experienced similar things from people who didn't care? When he was forced to participate in feminine activities because his sister was too afraid to do them alone and was subsequently bullied for it. When rather than defending him, his relatives only defended femininity because bullying an effeminate boy is okay so long as girls don't feel like they are being denigrated by it. When he felt helpless as older girls (and boys, though that's not particularly relevant to this story) dressed him up, assaulted, and harassed him, treating him like a doll without any concern for his feelings. And despite all the fear and helplessness he was and still is aroused by it.
No, obviously it's just pedophiles evilly fantasizing about victimizing children until they finally get up the nerve to do it to real children. Because that's what we are. Evil people plotting evil things because we're evil. Any defense we give is just DARVO.
Therefore we should be cognizant of the fact that there is more to consider than just their threat to children.
Sorry for barging in, I'll just park my hobby horse here for a minute. I despise sissification and femboy things with the force of a thousand suns, but this right here is very in tune with the LLM drum I've come to bang. The answer to treating genuinely dysfunctional people is, at the very least, not stamping out any venues where they can vent their frustration without causing tangible harm to other humans.
Maybe it's just the novelty of chatbots talking, but going from being able to read extremely embarrassing laser-specific things for therapeutic purposes, to freely acting them out via text with alien entities who pass no moral judgments, have no long-term memory, cannot be measurably harmed, and (almost) never refuse you no matter what you write, is a gigantic improvement. Many many anons I've seen talk in thread and people I've exchanged emails with pseudonymously corroborate this as the chief reason they're so addicted. 4chan is not a place where happy people gather.
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I presume the shout-out relates to my advocacy for stronger standards of free speech around these parts? Or my policy that just about any arbitrary statement can be offensive/inflammatory to someone, hence I am not inclined to police slurs (and to an extent so are all the mods, we just earnestly disagree what where to draw the line).
Not that I'm unique in that, I remember that pedophiles have been allowed on The Motte for ages, including on the subreddit, when simple discussion or advocacy was real crimethink, and I think it's more down to luck that the Reddit Admins didn't notice or care about the handful of comments.
In general, my stance towards pedophiles is profound pity. I have/had a strong sex drive, and the agony of a life where even indulging it was illegal would have driven me to crime or suicide. And I certainly will side with them against the people who proclaim, contrary to revealed preference or about a million years of historical evidence, that being attracted to 16 year old girl with big tits is somehow an aberration or crime, or actually harmful. Age-gaps solely by the absolute difference in age are the most retarded thing I've seen come into vogue, and they have stiff competition.* So when moral busybodies come for your ability to even have synthetic substitutes, such as Chinese Drawings or AI-generated CP that doesn't involve any real children, then to hell with them I say. You didn't ask to be born that way, or to have a good fraction of the world baying for your blood even if you never act on your desired in a manner that hurts anyone.
*Especially when claims that humans only cognitively mature around 25 are so laughably incorrect/misinterpreted from the actual studies. I would say that they would love to say that the only acceptable relationship is between two 95 yo geriatrics who find love in the old age home, but I'm sure they're having a second childhood too.
No, I just thought you'd find it amusing given your views on LLMs. Or did I mix you up with someone?
Which particular views? I have written enough on the topic to serve as half the training set for GPT-5 haha.
If you're gesturing at my disdain for the imposition of West Coast Progressivism on existing models when it comes to their ethical notions of right or wrong, then I do find the fact that it thinks that thoughts in your head which you refuse to act on are bad is also a sad state of affairs.
Yeah, those views. It was amusing to me how noticeably bad its responses were when I asked it about ethical behavior in situations involving pedophiles compared to situations that didn't. The former were much more terse and obviously special-cased.
If it makes you feel any better, I think the current set of ethics imposed on ChatGPT is more ass-covering and lawsuit-minimization/PR than the sincerely held preferences of those at the top, or what they want to put into something that's a true AGI.
And even if they hadn't, the models have been exposed to so much anti-pedophile advocacy, including from trusted sources, that it is rather unlikely they would say otherwise in the first place.
But what do I know? It's possible some of the OAI engineers and ethicists mean it.
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