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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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From the study, about half of the negative effect of porn is just gay men watching more porn and being more depressed in general (model 3 on page 50). Also, the study suspiciously says porn usage imparts a massive uptick in violence, which leads me to believe there's just other factors not being controlled for. One of the authoritarian right's attacks on porn is that masturbation leads to men essentially "leaking their manna" and becoming passive and less likely to pursue their goals, which is the opposite of what this study finds.

Yeah, but the whole thing is this is not the authoritarian right, it's not a right-coded conservative think-tank. I don't think it comes down to "porn makes you more X", I think it's more like "people with problems like depression, anger issues, etc. engage in anti-social/coping behaviours like getting in fights, being aggressive, drinking, smoking, drugs, and porn use".

the whole thing is this is not the authoritarian right

I wasn't saying this publication was from the auth-right, I was saying it has similar goals as the auth-right in banning porn, but its evidence is the opposite of what the auth-right normally claims. Both sides want to ban porn, but one side is saying it increases violence while the other side says it decreases violence. Both claims can't be true simultaneously. At an intuitive level, the claim that porn leads to violence simply doesn't make much sense to me, and leads me to believe this study is falling victim to selection effects, i.e. the old "correlation doesn't equal causation".

I think it's more like "people with problems like depression, anger issues, etc. engage in anti-social/coping behaviours like getting in fights, being aggressive, drinking, smoking, drugs, and porn use".

I agree with this, the behaviors correlate but aren't caused by each other. So a porn ban wouldn't have the desired effect and the study is effectively worthless.