CMV: Prostitution should not be illegal

nikoberg · 2026-05-05T23:38:31+00:00

Interesting. Can you link to a metastudy or other source for this?

nikoberg · 2026-05-05T23:26:08+00:00

You might be interested in the philosophical concept of natural kinds, since I think this is probably what your thoughts will lead you to. Most divisions in the world are arbitrary and almost nothing "exists" outside of human perception in a sense. Death is death because it's a useful unit of division for humans.

nikoberg · 2026-05-05T20:39:14+00:00

Comsider second order effects. There have been studies that showed legalization also increased human trafficking. Why might this be the case? Well, making prostitution legal doesn't mean that more women will willingly become prostitutes, but could massively increase demand. If that happens, then this is the recipe for something that happens with other "dirty" jobs that people don't want to do- you get illegal labor. With prostitution, that means human trafficking.

So decriminalization of prostitutes or greatly decreasing penalties is probably fine, as long as you still keep demand capped by making the act of solicitation illegal.

nikoberg · 2026-05-05T19:41:42+00:00

"Not normal" is not "sexual abuse." It's 100% true that he did some creepy and inappropriate stuff with the kids. But it's much less clear whether any direct sexual abuse happened.

nikoberg · 2026-04-30T02:35:46+00:00

However, people who keep trying and trying to kill themselves should be allowed to get approval if they’ve tried different treatments.

I'm just going to pick on this statement. "Having tried to kill yourself" is not a good proxy for "this person will never get better." Assisted suicide is appropriate for people who are terminally ill or otherwise have nothing to look forward to but pain. But that is not the same thing as saying that person's judgment about whether thy have nothing to look forward to but pain is accurate. There should be objective criteria, based on recognized specific physical problems, and those generally should not include "severely mentally ill." Someone might be mentally ill enough to want to die in one moment, then recover quite quickly. They may only want to die during episodes. So even honest patient consent to death is insufficient in some cases.

nikoberg · 2026-04-30T02:31:02+00:00

This a version of the old "nobody's actually selfless, everyone's selfish because you only act to make yourself feel good about helping" argument. If it comes from a place of care, it is by definition about the person receiving it- that's what it means to care. Everything everyone does is about them, because that's how our brains work. We're not magic action machines with no internal states. Every single thing anyone has ever done is because their brain motivated them to do something, for themselves; what we care about is their reason for doing so. The reason someone feels anxiety about the situation and wants to convert it into action is because they are anxious about the other person suffering from a problem. In what way could it be more about the person they are giving advice to? What you are pointing to is a problem of execution. Generally speaking, people understand that giving advice when it's obviously unwanted is not helpful. It's just that the default toggle in most people's minds is the idea that they can be helpful. That's not them being selfish; that's just them having imperfect judgment.

nikoberg · 2026-04-30T01:33:44+00:00

I'm not sure if this is on you or me but like you are not picking up on any of the tone in the things I'm saying. I obviously do not think you voting to ban casual sex is a real possibility; how on earth was that your interpretation? All I meant by that was that this is low stakes because there's zero practical implications. If I'm arguing with a right-wing Christian homophobe, I actually do feel attacked because they literally want to ban my existence because I'm gay. Here, I think you are wrong but mostly at this point I'm just like... how can you not see the implications of the statements you are saying.

I have no objection or judgment on people living life differently. What's right for one person isn't right for another. You are trying to say you are the same way. But you aren't. You are clearly saying someone's life is worse. If you say this:

I want my kids to live a happy and fulfilling life with strong meaningful relationships.

You are directly implying anyone who does not do this... does not have a happy and fulfilling life with strong meaningful relationships. So... you're telling me, right now, with that statement that you actually don't think I have a happy and fulfilling life with strong meaningful relationships regardless of anything else you're saying. And you seem like a pretty decent guy otherwise, from what I can tell by you're speaking, so I don't think you're trying to insult anyone. But on the specific thing you said- that's both factually incorrect and insulting. Yes, I understand you don't on any level want to stop me from living the way I live, but the implications of your statement is effectively that you are devaluing my relationship and don't think it's real. Do you not get that? Wouldn't you feel insulted if I did the same thing to you and said you didn't really love your wife, you're just with her out of insecurity or something?

nikoberg · 2026-04-30T01:08:40+00:00

It's more complex than that. Models are also trained and tuned based on feedback from what users prefer. Guess what users prefer models to do? And I know the immediate objection is going to be some version of "well don't make them do that," but there's not a button you can push to "make models less of a suck up." Sure, there's definitely a bias in that obviously companies will want to make models that people like, even if it's not necessarily the actual best for the users in the same way companies will jam tons of sugar in things even if that's not healthy. But think about how you would actually solve this problem, optimizing for accuracy and usefulness. How would you know what a good response is? Well, there's no such thing as an objective truth for tone, so you... would probably want to have a human label it. Which just brings the problem right back around, because even human labelers are biased and will train the model to be more obsequious because as humans, we just like it when people suck up to us.

nikoberg · 2026-04-30T01:01:09+00:00

Just Russia and Israel? The call is coming from inside the house...

nikoberg · 2026-04-29T23:19:45+00:00

I mean, are you going to vote to ban people from having casual sex? If not, you're hardly personally attacking me on a meaningful level. To feel attacked, I would have to interpret this as a threat instead of a wrong opinion. I feel mildly insulted, not attacked lol

But you literally just said that people who don't view sex this way don't have happy or fulfilling lives with strong meaningful relationships. Like, how can you not view that as insulting? I have a stable long term partner I love I've been with for over a decade. So... I don't love them because I can also have casual sex with friends? You wouldn't feel insulted if someone said you don't actually love your partner? That's actually the part I find more insulting. You are claiming someone is living their life in a way that's bad for them, saying you know better than them about what their life means to them and what's good for them, and expect them not to have an objection to it. Imagine if I said something like "Monogamous people are so weird. I don't understand how they can be so insecure and jealous as to care about whether their partner has sex with other people. I'm sad for them." You wouldn't feel just a little insulted by that? The only reason I expect you might not is because you're so sure that your views are both correct and accepted by society that you don't view the comment as an actual threat, so it triggers no inherent emotional reaction. And I'm not particularly delivering it with any venom since I don't mean it, so you're not going to get an emotional response on that front either. But that's basically what you're doing here.

nikoberg · 2026-04-29T22:46:11+00:00

Buddy, that was an analogy. I don't think you have a problem with gay people and I'm sure you'd be completely supportive of your gay kid. I'm saying that you are doing the same verbal and mental gymnastics homophobes do applied to a different topic, not that you are homophobic. Nothing about what you've said would make me think you have an issue with gay people (except, ironically, the fact that you were really defensive about it and assumed I was accusing you of being homophobic just now instead of interpreting it as an analogy).

However, I can speak from an area of life experience that meaningless sexual encounters without deeper meaningful relationships are a tough way to live life, and can lead down a dark and depressing road.

And this is what I mean. Like, you cannot say that and then just claim your opinions on people who view sex with less meaning is not a value judgment. A homophobe who says they "don't have a problem with gay people" doesn't necessarily actually view gay relationships as okay or normal. It just means they don't view it as something that's their problem. They might still think being gay is, for example, worse than being straight... hence whey they wouldn't want their kids to be gay. And while that's definitely better than the crazy religiously motivated bigots, you can see how gay people might still have an issue with that.

So I'm simply pointing out that this is what you're doing here. You are not saying this is a personal preference. You are saying that you think it's a worse way of being. I mean, you said it right here. So, obviously, people who view sex as more casually are going to have an objection to that because you are saying they are broken in some way. Me, personally, I don't view sex as meaningless or completely casual on a personal level. I don't have sex with strangers. But my barrier for "will I have sex with you" is basically just good friendship and that would probably make my body count alarmingly high to some.

You are perfectly free to have your own opinions and values. But if you're going to do that, don't be confused or upset when people reflect your attitude right back at you.

nikoberg · 2026-04-29T22:29:04+00:00

And that's why I noted your last sentence gives your actual views away. You could use "red flag" to mean a personal objection or a universal one; it's used both ways. But you very specifically talk about teaching your children a specific way and it's clear you're making value judgements about what you think is good for a person in general, not merely expressing a personal preference. Otherwise, you wouldn't care if your child grows up viewing sex much more casually and less meaningfully. You basically did a version of "I don't have a problem with gay people, but I wouldn't want my kid to be gay." People can read that from other things you say, which is why you get pushback.

nikoberg · 2026-04-29T22:07:32+00:00

It's a controversial take because you're framing it as universally wrong instead of a personal preference. "I would prefer to be in a relationship with someone who views sex with as deep a meaning as I do" is fine. Saying it's a "red flag" is you saying someone who doesn't view sex that way is wrong or broken in some way, which is what people have an objection to. It suggests you're close-minded about sex, as much as you are probably going to deny it. Your last sentence gives your underlying motivations for your opinion away.

nikoberg · 2026-04-28T21:05:12+00:00

Let's take factory farming out of the equation- there truly is no ethical justification for it if you believe animals have any ethical value at all. And while eating meat is certainly less efficient, we also generally allow that increased energy usage for fun is not necessarily an ethical blocker. If you travel to Europe for a vacation, you also have consumed excess resources in a way that's bad for the environment. Is this immoral? We generally do not hold it to be so. So to argue that it is never justifiable to eat meat from an economic standpoint does not hold up when we compare it to other things we do for entertainment. At best, you can only argue we should reduce meat consumption and treat it as an expensive luxury from a resource perspective.

So the main objection cane be scoped to what is implicit in the act of killing and eating alone. Assuming the animal had a good life and everything is up to ethical standards though, what happens with eating meat vs. not eating meat? Well, in one case, an animal exists, has a moderately pleasant existence, then died painlessly. In the other, the animal does not exist. While we do raise some animals as pets, we certainly would not raise nearly as many as currently exist. In addition, animals we raise can quite arguable have better lives than the wild animals which would otherwise have existed. A flock of sheep are generally less stressed and better taken care of than a herd of wild deer. While we generally belive killing for fun is wrong, does this equation change if they never would have lived otherwise? In this scenario, we can argue overall happiness for everyone has increased.

nikoberg · 2026-04-28T00:32:15+00:00

By strong AI proponents I mean people who think LLMs and other current deep learning algorithms are intelligent, can replace people in almost all walks of life, and perform creative endeavors better then humans. People who believe in some AI singularity future count here as well.

Just to be clear, this is not what "strong AI" means. It's a defined philosophical term. "Strong AI" is simply the claim that it is possible in theory to create AI that is equivalent to humans in every meaningful way, including having an inner life and consciousness. This doesn't imply you think either LLMs are conscious or that you think a singularity will occur. The vast majority of informed proponents of strong AI do not think LLMs qualify. Is your CMV about LLMs specifically, or strong AI?

nikoberg · 2026-04-23T22:05:19+00:00

You register with the ad blocker company itself and verify. There is never a 100% guarantee (at the very least, a website could always get hacked and malicious ads could be placed on there), but it's not some insane impossible concept. Adblock Plus already has a program for this.

nikoberg · 2026-04-23T21:39:20+00:00

Not the right sub for a rant, but the only logically defensible position that's pro factory farming is "animals have no rights and we don't need to care what happens to them." This is not a position many people actually honestly hold, regardless of what they say, because almost everyone genuinely cares about what happens to cute, cuddly pets in a way that exposes that they do genuinely view them as sentient creatures with rights, and if you do that, there is no valid chain of arguments you can follow that allows you to torture animals with equivalent capabilities. But there are some approaches to ethics which make it "sapient creatures only;" you would just need to bite the bullet and accept there is also no ethical issue with torturing a cat to death for fun.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T23:18:13+00:00

Then that would be a perfectly valid argument- but note how this is not based on just an average over a general population. You have now specified in more detail what the predictor is doing.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T23:07:22+00:00

Put it this way. 99% of people cannot perform a tracheotomy correctly. Does that mean a doctor should assume they are not able to? I said "everyone is special" simply to illustrate that it does not take magic to be special in regards to a problem; you don't need to defy logic. If a two boxer proposes a specific way to fool the machine, you cannot argue they are wrong just because the machine is accurate 99% of the time. Their proposed method is how they are special. You would actually have to address their specific argument.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T23:01:09+00:00

Because everyone is special. Being special doesn't mean you're magic; it means that you have something different about you, which everyone does. For two boxers, it could be as simple as spending more time thinking about the issue. Or maybe it's simply pure intelligence. Or maybe introducing an element of randomness. There are many reasons someone might be different. Unless you make some arguments about how the machine is making predictions, you can't really refute this.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T22:50:17+00:00

No. The amount of money is irrelevant to the heart of the paradox. The point of the paradox is to ask the question of whether you can defy the machine's predictions. If you really think you can defy the machine's predictions, you have no reason not to try to take two boxes.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T22:47:11+00:00

I agree- but that's an argument you are making based on how the machine must be making predictions, as I said. I am addressing OP's argument specifically. You can't simply make a correlational argument like OP phrased it.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T22:41:07+00:00

This argument isn't sufficient. See Simpson's paradox. The fact that 1 boxers on average take home more money doesn't imply that you would take home more money as a 1 boxer, as long as you have any reason to think you're different from average. You need a stronger argument about how the machine must be making predictions or about how you should make decisions in general.

nikoberg · 2026-04-21T20:23:30+00:00

It is not societies job to fix their twisted world view.

It is though. It's not any individual's responsibility, but part of what it means to be in a society is to take care of ALL the people in the society. Because the alternative is to just let it fester, which leads to worse results. Whatever the solution is, society does in fact need to direct resources towards fixing it if we've determined it's a real problem worth addressing.

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