Interview with a darknet child porn site admin

[John_Doe]

Not Forever,

I am not against privacy, in the sense that I can agree if a person does not want images of themselves circulating on the internet, but I don’t believe the problem should be what people do with those images, nor do I think people should worry about what others do with their images.

I'm not sure I understand you here. If you're not against privacy (and I'm not pro-privacy intrinsically or absolutely) then you're not against people being able to control the spread of information about themselves (where this is possible, if you go out in public without a mask on you can't stop people from looking at your face), meaning you're not against the loved ones of a murder victim being able to ensure that the victim's autopsy pics or videos of his or her being killed don't circulate the internet. I don't understand your distinction between not releasing that information to the public (those pictures circulating the internet) and what people do with those images. I don't think that people should worry about what others 'do' with their images either (I do think that we should want other people to value the happiness of all people and that might impact what they 'do' with certain images) but I'm considering a practical human psychological need that many people already have (probably everyone to some degree). When privacy violation doesn't cause emotional distress it is harmless.

That is, this is not a claim about how people should feel, but rather about considering it one’s own responsibility to judge how certain things make us feel, and about the fact that it should not be taken for granted that people necessarily have a problem with this.

I won't take for granted that everyone would have a problem with this but I think it's common enough to consider when it comes to legal policy. When you talk about considering one's own responsibility to judge how certain things make us feel, I'm not sure if you're arguing that with some kind of perception adjustment it would no longer bother people (which I don't think is practical because everyone has some need or desire for validation, I don't think that can be completely eliminated even if it's much stronger or weaker in different people and people can work on requiring less social/external validation. I think this is a validation issue because privacy is largely about shame and if you value something you have to prefer that other people value that thing as well so even if you can emotionally handle callous disregard for your loved one's suffering or death, you're necessarily wired in such a way that you have to find it objectionable on some level).

Because in the end one adapts,

That's flat-out not necessarily true. It often is. I don't want people to have to adapt to some of the things that would cause them pain to begin with, although I'm not necessarily advocating that distribution of offensive material be banned in practice because the harm that government coercion causes must also be considered.

and if everyone has a problem with something, we end up convincing ourselves that we too have a problem with that same thing.

I think I can appreciate where you're coming from here. There are offenses that we tend to take seriously because 'we' have collectively agreed that a line is crossed or someone has said or done something that is socially unacceptable or that a problem is a 'big problem' and not a trivial 'first world problem' or something we're overly sensitive about and I think people tend to adapt to that (e.g. it's generally considered much worse to call someone the N-word than to call them a loser) but I'm not trying to persuade anyone that privacy has intrinsic value. In my view, all moral crimes boil down to a disregard for the suffering and/or happiness of others (or one's own welfare but it's harder to consider the welfare of other people or even one's long-term future self since our instinct is toward immediate personal gratification so you more or less don't really have to encourage people to care about their own happiness), that is the only thing that I think intrinsically warrants resentment or moral anger. If I clarify that, I think it's a matter of responding to an existing practical need that people have rather than trying to persuade them to take offense to something.

Pushed to the extreme, it can even be considered paranoid to feel uncomfortable about how people relate to a representation of one’s own person. And the moment such paranoia is considered normal, we all behave like paranoids. I don’t know if I’m managing to express my point of view well.

I'm not really sure what exactly you mean here but I think I've covered my point of view on this.

This view is further reinforced by the fact that I consider only the will of the individual to be valid: the feelings of a deceased person’s family have no value over the deceased, and the deceased, being dead, does not have… I think I have very unpopular opinions at the moment.

I agree (or rather assume) that it doesn't affect the deceased but I still think it's important to create a culture that normalizes valuing the happiness of all possible persons, an inherent implication of that would be valuing the happiness of past people and appreciating what they have lost, and whatever suffering they endured in their lives, even though there's nothing that we can do to actually help them. To be fair, I think that's besides the point since being exposed to the kind of images I have in mind isn't going to make people less sympathetic, I'm just worried about how demoralizing it will be to people to know that certain images that show their loved ones at their most vulnerable or highlight their misfortune will be picked apart and assessed by unsympathetic people.

I am also not a fan of discussions about happiness, let alone goodness.

I'm not a fan of the self-professed authority on the nature of happiness that psychologists, philosophers and academics might claim without being able to inter-subjectively demonstrate (so the discussion might trigger some insecurities in me) but I don't think you can talk about morality or justice and, by extension, public/legal policy without talking about goodness. Every policy, even just from a social contract point of view, is designed to preserve or produce some good. I can maybe understand people who don't want government to concern itself with the 'morality' of its citizens but that only makes sense to me if we're talking about their character or inclination towards acts that aren't unjust (if abortion, for example, is an injustice or a rights violation then it should be the government's role to interfere in one's decision to abort their pregnancy).

I think good and evil are social and personal constructs, not objective ones, just like individual happiness

I would disagree. We don't project value on to happiness/suffering based on subjective criteria, we actually experience happiness and suffering to be intrinsically good and bad and unlike sensory perception or memory, the experience of happiness isn't a simulation; it can't misrepresent itself. It's true that people often debate over what 'happiness' is but I think that's semantics, if we're talking about an emotional state then feeling good is what makes happiness 'happiness' and that's a statement about objective reality, we discover that truth via our actual experience of happiness and/or suffering.

Happiness can also be painful; it can also harm oneself and others.

In the sense that it can instrumentally lead to long-term suffering or the suffering of others maybe but that has nothing to do with the nature of happiness.

I see it as a feeling without a real, defined form, since everyone interprets it however they like.

See previous response. A lot of debates surrounding the true nature of happiness are just disagreements about how we should use the term.

considering necrophilia to diminish happiness because death is something negative for me is an interpretation, one that is as valid as its opposite. Since death is the conclusion of life, having a negative attitude toward death brings anxiety to the living person, which could, if one wished, be considered something negative. Someone else might interpret it as positive, since it is an anxiety that pushes people to act during life in order to settle their affairs before the inevitable death.

My position isn't so much that necrophilia (directly) diminishes happiness as it is that it de-values happiness (if you value someone's happiness you want them to exist, in ideal enough circumstances. The 'necrophiliacs' I have in mind are turned on by death as death, they're not just people who have a visceral sexual response to some corpses which probably everyone could under certain circumstances). I agree that the perception of happiness as good inherently wires people to respond negatively to its absence, this is something I've thought a lot about (although people also feel validated; and by extension happier, when you express agreement about whatever they consider to be bad). I still think that the everyone's/only happiness is intrinsically good view as a moral realist position justified by epistemic solipsism should be promoted because 1) it's the only position that can truly help us to make sense of reality given that we actually experience happiness and pain as inherently good and bad. Denying that pain is inherently bad despite it feeling inherently bad is effectively denying that it actually exists which creates a natural dissonance (this is at least one reason why I believe that universal compassion is as conductive to long-term peace and happiness as I do, and I'm using pain/happiness interchangeably because they are the same thing in reverse even though I'm specifically defending a pro-happiness view here) and 2) I want people to behave in ways that make them necessarily more likely to maximize happiness. If I were a negative hedonist I wouldn't see anything wrong with necrophilia (as in the fetishization of death). I also wouldn't really have a fundamental problem with the stigmatization of pedophilia or an adult attraction to minors (it's true that I would disagree with people who claim that it's inherently bad, I'd want to persuade everyone that only suffering is inherently bad, but I would see the idea that many things, including suffering, are inherently bad to be incoherent and philosophically erroneous without being immoral. As someone who is pro-happiness I don't agree with people who think that the moon is intrinsically good, I would even like to persuade them that only happiness is intrinsically good, but their position doesn't bother me, I don't think that they've made a moral error in their judgment. By contrast, the stigmatization of pedophilia does bother me because in arguing that ACSC is inherently bad you're trying to persuade people that it should not, on principle, be a source of happiness. If you view something as inherently bad, you fundamentally prefer that it not exist; even when it could be a source of happiness for someone. A lot of our insecurities that are triggered by the negative judgments of others come down to their not thinking that we should feel good about or take pleasure in something-insults/disrespect, body shaming, anti-porn rhetoric, homophobia, the stigmatization of pedophilia and significant age-gap relationships or attraction, the idea that adults shouldn't play with toys, the critique of 'cultural appropriation,' the degradation of your favorite movie or your favorite genre of music, etc. etc.).

Now, this is not so much to argue back, or to defend necrophilia; rather, it is a discussion about how I find this point of view too subjective to be extended to other people as if it were something obvious and natural. I do not see a clear logical consequence, but rather a series of interpretations that are gradually created as issues arise—interpretations that can be anything and its opposite, depending on one’s interests.

Again, I would argue that hedonism is the one ethical theory that isn't 'subjective' because we actually experience suffering as inherently bad even if we rationalize to the contrary upon reflection. People who deny that suffering is inherently bad are out of touch with objectively reality. Persistent unbearable pain makes things clear, at least with a solipsistic approach to epistemology.

In response to your point about zoophilia-I'm sure there is a connection for some people but my point is that I can imagine someone who's into sexual contact with non-human animals who is very un-sadistic. Zoophilia isn't defined by a pleasurable response to the perceived pain of others, you can 'theoretically' have one without the other.

[Not Forever]

meaning you're not against the loved ones of a murder victim being able to ensure that the victim's autopsy pics or videos of his or her being killed don't circulate the internet

Privacy should be one’s own; I don’t understand why one should extend one’s own privacy to one’s relatives. I wouldn’t tell my father to remove his images from the internet in order to protect my privacy, and once my father is dead he would remain an entity separate from me. In fact, the individual would no longer exist at all, and therefore privacy would no longer apply.

And relatives know nothing about the wishes of their deceased relative, but they put their own wishes into the mouth of the dead person.

I don't understand your distinction between not releasing that information to the public (those pictures circulating the internet) and what people do with those images.

The distinction between what is disclosed and what people do with those images is simple: a minor acts as a model for a mattress advertisement; a man somewhere in the world uses it as material for masturbation. Has the material now become child pornography? I don’t think so. And I think it is an unhealthy attitude, on a psychological level, to worry about how strangers use certain images.

is largely about shame

For me, shame largely derives from the context a person is in; someone who is in a context where being naked is considered normal will feel less shame about exposing parts of their body, and might even feel shame about being too heavily clothed.
Shame also comes from standing out from others, that is, from moving away from what is perceived in that situation as the default position.

Every policy, even just from a social contract point of view, is designed to preserve or produce some good.

I’m not convinced; to me, policies exist only to keep society itself standing. It matters little whether such laws do good or harm—the point is that they must prevent disorder severe enough to cause society to collapse in on itself. That is where all laws come from: is incest a crime? Because it is seen as wrong, because there is no desire for people to take to the streets, since incest is viewed as something negative by too many people—not because it is thought to actually cause harm. That element may exist, but it is instrumental; it works only because convincing the population that something is harmful can be a destabilizing factor that may lead to unrest and various forms of revolt.

And all of society has been built on this, scandal after scandal, social pressure after social pressure, and for its own survival the state keeps churning out laws to placate the population, organizations, and companies. So it simply adapts to interests, because it can survive only in this way.

1) it's the only position that can truly help us to make sense of reality given that we actually experience happiness and pain as inherently good and bad. [...]

For the central part, I’m closer to a nihilistic position, so I really can’t fit myself into the discussion. I don’t believe it’s necessary to give meaning to reality, since I think people subjectively invent it, and what we should be concerned with is making those subjectivities as limited as possible to the individual, allowing all these subjectivities to coexist. So I have an approach in which the context people have to live in should be as free and permissive as possible.

Persistent unbearable pain makes things clear, at least with a solipsistic approach to epistemology.

There are people who, under those conditions, would want to commit suicide, and people who, under those same conditions, would not. Do you kill a person who is suffering, or not? Do you kill them against their will? Or do you not kill them even though they want to die?

From that point of view, what emerges, I would say, is the right to self-determination, individual freedom of choice—the subjectivity of harm. One person might want to live despite atrocious suffering; another might want to die because of much milder suffering, or suffering of a different kind (such as psychological suffering). My position is that people can do whatever they want with their own lives, even if it may be considered by outsiders to be a harm to themselves.

This is without even considering that there are levels of suffering that can overlap with those of pleasure. Since they are connected elements and partially overlap, we are still talking about receptors: pain and pleasure are information that our bodies receive, responses to external stimuli. They are not so clearly distinct, and the brain has its own way of processing them—just look at how intense sport, which is something painful, can be interpreted by the brain as pleasurable.

The same applies to more psychological things, such as public humiliation, as well as the entire masochistic sphere, and so on.

[CantChainTheSpirit]

I enjoyed the interview but I wish he wouldn't run that site because he's taking a terrible risk for people who won't thank him for it.
It is clear that he's got a moral compass and he's doing what he feels is right, to help others. I do respect that about him. But he could get into serious trouble, it would be better for him to turn his skills and passion towards bringing about change in better ways.

[BLueRibbon]

The darknet site owner is now replying in the comments section of the article.

I decided to approve his comments, as he hasn't provided any identifiable info, and it's not illegal to allow admissions* of illegal activity in the course of discussion.

So, if you have any legitimate academic questions, ask away over there, but anything that incites illegal activity will not be approved, and I will not let the discussion go beyond the bounds of reasonable academic curiosity.

* Please note that this forum does not allow such admissions.

[John_Doe]

Privacy should be one’s own; I don’t understand why one should extend one’s own privacy to one’s relatives. I wouldn’t tell my father to remove his images from the internet in order to protect my privacy, and once my father is dead he would remain an entity separate from me. In fact, the individual would no longer exist at all, and therefore privacy would no longer apply.

There might be some ambiguity around what constitutes 'information about one's self,' the people you have close relationships with are related to you, but it's ultimately besides the point because even if I come to agree with you I don't value privacy as an end in and of itself. My point is that people are likely to feel demoralized if images of their loved one's dead bodies or videos of their being murdered are available to the general population. Whether or not that can be framed as a privacy issue, I believe there's an imperative to minimize human suffering in cost-effective ways. Some of what I have in mind could also apply to one's self (e.g. a video of someone being raped, they would probably not want it floating around the internet). From a desire-fulfillment point of view the fact that the individual themselves no longer exists might be irrelevant (we generally consider what a person wanted to be done with their property after they die in consideration of past wishes, for example. I would also argue that even when our bodies remain biologically alive we temporarily stop existing when we lose consciousness)

And relatives know nothing about the wishes of their deceased relative, but they put their own wishes into the mouth of the dead person.

If I adopted the desire-fulfillment point of view I could just as well argue against those images being made available from the standpoint of what the deceased themselves would have wanted but that would be circumstantial (would that affect your position if, stated in someone's last will and testament, they preferred that certain images or videos depicting their death or murder not be made available to the general public?). I'm ultimately only concerned with felt well-being so the loved ones are who I see as in need of protection.

The distinction between what is disclosed and what people do with those images is simple: a minor acts as a model for a mattress advertisement; a man somewhere in the world uses it as material for masturbation. Has the material now become child pornography? I don’t think so.

Neither do I. The mere depiction of death, murder, rape etc. is not inherently callous, but it puts people in a vulnerable position, and if someone doesn't want objectively neutral depictions of them circulating the internet for whatever reasons I'm sympathetic.

And I think it is an unhealthy attitude, on a psychological level, to worry about how strangers use certain images.

I think this is kind of a meaningless point. Average people are going to care whether or not people use images of their dead children or loved ones for dark humor or are generally callous or sadistic about what's happened to them. I guess it makes sense if the implication is that people can choose to not have a negative emotional response to the cruelties of others but they can't (they might have some indirect control over it, to some degree, but emotional states being involuntary is why MAPs can't simply choose to be attracted to or prefer legal adults. Perspective makes a big difference but realistically not everyone is going to adopt the most helpful view or coping mechanism and some people are naturally more sensitive by temperament. Much of what I assume you take issue with, in terms of discrimination against MAPs, is rooted in the need for validation that I have in mind, it would survive even the legalization of AMSC which is why a 40-year-old dating a consenting 16-18-year old would probably be social suicide even though no one's physically stopping him/her from doing so, there might not even be any 'material' consequences to it at all).

For me, shame largely derives from the context a person is in; someone who is in a context where being naked is considered normal will feel less shame about exposing parts of their body, and might even feel shame about being too heavily clothed.
Shame also comes from standing out from others, that is, from moving away from what is perceived in that situation as the default position.

I don't see the relevance. I also think you might be logic-ing (i.e. predicting that so and so will have this emotional response in practice because in theory...) depending on where exactly you want to go with this. Shame is a negative emotional response to one's social image (e.g. a man won't feel shame if he's picking his nose, but when people find out that he picks his nose their realization will bother him, it's not the act itself that he feels guilty about and the realization of that act is just a simulation of that act; it's the perception that other people have of him because of that act, it not validating the desirable image that he wants to have of himself). I don't want to appoint myself the authority on 'shame' but I can speak definitively about what I'm using the word to describe.

I’m not convinced; to me, policies exist only to keep society itself standing. It matters little whether such laws do good or harm—the point is that they must prevent disorder severe enough to cause society to collapse in on itself. That is where all laws come from: is incest a crime? Because it is seen as wrong, because there is no desire for people to take to the streets, since incest is viewed as something negative by too many people—not because it is thought to actually cause harm. That element may exist, but it is instrumental; it works only because convincing the population that something is harmful can be a destabilizing factor that may lead to unrest and various forms of revolt.

And all of society has been built on this, scandal after scandal, social pressure after social pressure, and for its own survival the state keeps churning out laws to placate the population, organizations, and companies. So it simply adapts to interests, because it can survive only in this way.

Societal collapse is seen as undesirable, whether one opposes it for purely selfish or altruistic reasons. There is no 'logical' reason to oppose it. In any event, you can't convince me to support or oppose any given policy without making an appeal to value, namely happiness/suffering, so at least some of us want governments to do good and minimize some harm.

For the central part, I’m closer to a nihilistic position, so I really can’t fit myself into the discussion. I don’t believe it’s necessary to give meaning to reality, since I think people subjectively invent it, and what we should be concerned with is making those subjectivities as limited as possible to the individual, allowing all these subjectivities to coexist. So I have an approach in which the context people have to live in should be as free and permissive as possible.

My basic worldview can probably be summed up in a sentence and after that, I'm going into detail (in terms of arguments and applications) or we're just going back and forth. I will say that without an objective standard you can't legitimately critique the beliefs and values you disagree with which, realistically, people want to do, they're not just expressing personal preferences to the contrary. I don't think nihilists/relativists really appreciate in a meaningful way what their position consistently implies. Even pointing out the internal inconsistency of a position is meaningless because consistency per se has no inherent value (the view that consistency is inherently good would be self-refuting since it implies viewing the same thing as good or bad depending on whether or not one is acting consistently) and if you reject the concept of inherent value you are necessarily acting inconsistently (in treating things that you claim to be neutral as good or bad).

There are people who, under those conditions, would want to commit suicide, and people who, under those same conditions, would not. Do you kill a person who is suffering, or not? Do you kill them against their will? Or do you not kill them even though they want to die?

Is this a general point about my position? I have 'no idea' what real-world policy should be in regards to suicide (as in I will never claim to know what the best choice to make in any given scenario should be, I lean toward putting people on maybe a year-long waiting list and if they are still dissatisfied with their lives, allowing them the option of a painless, convenient physician-assisted, or approved, method of suicide. If we're talking about physical pain from certain terminal or even just life-long medical conditions that's another matter; I feel there's more urgency when it comes to allowing them an escape if there's no practical hope that they could one day have a life worth living). What I am settled on is that nothing other than happiness gives life value.

From that point of view, what emerges, I would say, is the right to self-determination, individual freedom of choice—the subjectivity of harm. One person might want to live despite atrocious suffering; another might want to die because of much milder suffering, or suffering of a different kind (such as psychological suffering). My position is that people can do whatever they want with their own lives, even if it may be considered by outsiders to be a harm to themselves.

I don't accept that people are necessarily an authority on what harms/benefits them in terms of their beliefs or attitudes about the very concept of welfare itself. That said, because I know paternalism can be so obnoxious, I don't claim to know what will best serve their long-term happiness, or whether or not future happiness might compensate for their current misery, etc. I can acknowledge that while rejecting non-hedonistic theories of welfare for the exact same reason that I reject mainstream dogma about pedophilia and AMSC. Other people can be wrong in their judgments about what is good/bad so I don't have to take beliefs or attitudes about what is beneficial or good seriously simply because people hold those views (harm/benefit judgments fall under bad/good judgments). By contrast, the factual reality of my own conscious experience; and by extension the inherent value of suffering/happiness, is the one thing that I can be justifiably certain about. How best to maximize as much happiness/minimize as much suffering for as many minds as is possible, I don't know.

This is without even considering that there are levels of suffering that can overlap with those of pleasure. Since they are connected elements and partially overlap, we are still talking about receptors: pain and pleasure are information that our bodies receive, responses to external stimuli. They are not so clearly distinct, and the brain has its own way of processing them—just look at how intense sport, which is something painful, can be interpreted by the brain as pleasurable.


The same applies to more psychological things, such as public humiliation, as well as the entire masochistic sphere, and so on.

No, I think they are rather distinct. It's just that things can be pleasurable and stressful at once.

[JGHeaven]

I do admire his determination to do what he sees as right, even at personal risk. I don't think porn should be illegal, it's a form of art and expression and it is art and expression in all its forms that raises humanity above animals.

Cp is art of a sort. Greek art can be very erotic, even Christian art with naked cherubs with their adults angels in close contract is art. If they cameras and were creating Christian and Greek erotic art I wonder if we would be destroying it today of viewing it as art? I wonder if in a thousand years time, will cp be viewed as art from our classical period in history?

I don't have any cp and don't view it for different reasons. Firstly, most porn in general is made for men rather than women. Not all, there is porn for women but it tends to be story based and closer to erotica. I also don't have cp because I wouldn't know where to begin viewing it, it's hardly going to appear in a Google search. I also don't watch it because it's illegal and I don't want to get into trouble for it, the same reason I don't have bags of drugs sat about my home. But I don't judge people who do view it, no one really has the right to tell others what to think or view.

[Not Forever]

There might be some ambiguity around what constitutes 'information about one's self,' the people you have close relationships with are related to you, but it's ultimately besides the point because even if I come to agree with you I don't value privacy as an end in and of itself. My point is that people are likely to feel demoralized if images of their loved one's dead bodies or videos of their being murdered are available to the general population. Whether or not that can be framed as a privacy issue, I believe there's an imperative to minimize human suffering in cost-effective ways. Some of what I have in mind could also apply to one's self (e.g. a video of someone being raped, they would probably not want it floating around the internet). From a desire-fulfillment point of view the fact that the individual themselves no longer exists might be irrelevant (we generally consider what a person wanted to be done with their property after they die in consideration of past wishes, for example. I would also argue that even when our bodies remain biologically alive we temporarily stop existing when we lose consciousness)

Starting from the fact that I do not agree with banning something just because “probably” someone might not like it and could feel demoralized by it. If they don’t like one of their own photos being circulated, they can certainly file a complaint; if they don’t like other people’s photos being circulated, they’ll just have to deal with it. There are people who feel demoralized by seeing a homosexual kiss in public—who should be given priority? Those who suffer from seeing it, or the couple’s pleasure in sharing a kiss?

Bearing in mind that feeling demoralized by something will always be subjective, both in degree and in the triggering causes.

As for the wishes of the deceased, are we really sure it works that way? Are we even sure that we truly give value to the wishes of the dead? It seems to me rather that the current situation has been built around the concept of inheritance, in order to avoid conflicts within the same family (or household—these things also arose in contexts very different from today’s), or conflicts deriving from the issue of family honor (which nonetheless had survival-related reasons within society). The entire framework was built around this—not around any intrinsic value of a dead person’s wishes. A dead person, after all, can no longer experience happiness, so... in my opinion, the wishes of a dead person should be irrelevant to you if you want everything to revolve around “happiness”.

would that affect your position if, stated in someone's last will and testament, they preferred that certain images or videos depicting their death or murder not be made available to the general public?

For me, the wishes of the dead have no value in themselves, so if it were up to me, I would put pressure on—or at least try to persuade—the rest of the population to let go of this belief, which I think is mostly superficial, about respecting the dead, etc., with the hope of creating a perception that… well, if a graverobber exhumes a corpse, it can be considered a crime because they dug a hole in a public place, but it’s not something anyone should tear their clothes over. Underneath, there’s just a decomposing object. At most, it’s theft against the state.

but when people find out that he picks his nose their realization will bother him

I agree with this, but only partially.

I mean, I believe that one can get so used to considering something as negative in certain contexts that they would feel uncomfortable doing it even if no one were watching. I don’t think many people would go out naked even if they were certain that no one would see them, because they’ve already internalized the idea that you’re supposed to be dressed when you’re outside.

But aside from that, I think what you described also relates to the discussion we’re having. I believe an individual can feel discomfort (which, as I said, I don’t assign much importance to) simply because they have to be seen by others in a certain way. For me, many people feel obliged to be scandalized in public, because they would feel ashamed if they didn’t present themselves in that way in front of the public, their neighbors, their relatives, and so on. Because there is this expectation—not unlike… a man finding his wife offended and reacting violently because of it. Is his reaction violent because he’s violent? No, it’s because there’s an expectation from his friends and his wife… I’m not sure I’m managing to convey the idea.

Societal collapse is seen as undesirable, whether one opposes it for purely selfish or altruistic reasons. There is no 'logical' reason to oppose it. In any event, you can't convince me to support or oppose any given policy without making an appeal to value, namely happiness/suffering, so at least some of us want governments to do good and minimize some harm.

The world is full of subjectivity; of course, every subjective perspective wants to assert itself over others, just as I want to assert mine, and there are positions that will inevitably be in perpetual conflict with each other. But I believe that, even though every person might find something they dislike in my position, I consider it to be the one that best serves the interests—which I regard as subjective—of each individual as such. If a narrative about values is needed, I can always appeal to discussions about self-determination and freedom in general (in which someone might say that it’s the best context for pursuing one’s own happiness or escaping conditions of suffering without paternalism, although I don’t hold that view and that is not intended to be my point).

[...]

I place a lot of importance on consistency, but I don’t necessarily condemn someone who holds a position and doesn’t know how to apply it in every context or situation, etc. I don’t automatically consider them inconsistent, especially if the application occurs in a non-ideal scenario where one necessarily has to compromise with the real world. (Then again, you also have to see whether something is truly inconsistent—it might appear so from an external perspective, but not from an internal one.)

That said… does an objective standard even exist? I mean, I can’t really see good and harm as objective things. You could tell me: “This person lost an arm; losing an arm is obviously harm, right?” Well, it depends. If they suffered from body dysphoria and saw that arm as a foreign part of their body, and they desperately wanted it removed, would cutting it off be considered harm? For me, no. Does the concept of harm shift to the psychological sphere? Perhaps—but that seems precisely the realm of subjectivity.

You could tell me these are just exceptions: a person in a car accident doesn’t expect a doctor to ask them whether they want to be saved before helping them… although I know people terrified of healthcare because they live in countries where they’d rather die than pay a doctor. But let’s consider that a problem of a different kind… although now that I think about it, there are people who don’t want transfusions, who don’t want transplants, who don’t want anesthesia, who don’t want resuscitation… okay, I’ll stop—I know it sounds silly to make a long list of objections I’ve already posed to myself.

Honestly, I can’t even really see this as widely shared. On an emotional level, in terms of scandal… yes, I can see that, but not in private. In private, I see more people shrugging off the risk of thrombosis, with a tiny bit of enthusiasm if someone gets cancer, if in some way that helps them “win” a family argument, etc., with a certain indifference toward what, from an external point of view, could be considered “good” or “harmful” for themselves and those around them.

Nothing—I just can’t. Either I’m approaching the discussion in the wrong way, or I’m misunderstanding, or I simply can’t share this idea of suffering/happiness. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive, and I don’t even see them as necessarily that important. I see people, in their private lives, as much more apathetic.

[John_Doe]

Not Forever,

This is a very quick response.

-I would consider the degree of expected harm and the values that their complaint is rooted in, and the former is based on common sense (which is me conceding that I can't demonstrate the level of harm I expect many people to experience as a result of such images being available to the general public but I think it's intuitively obvious to most people). Being bothered by gay people kissing to the point of requesting that they not express their affection in public is probably going to be rooted in the idea that homosexuality is intrinsically bad, which I want to discourage. Not wanting unsympathetic people to invalidate the value of some personal tragedy in your life (e.g. the death or murder of a loved one) is not rooted in a value that I think should be publicly discouraged. Again, I don't need to frame this as a privacy issue.

-In the sense that no one has access to your first person emotional state, yes, but I don't see the relevance to my argument.

-I'm pretty sure it does but I don't ultimately value people's subjective preferences (by virtue of their holding those preferences without considering the actual nature of what they want/value) whether they are alive or dead. Again, you seem to be making an arbitrary distinction between the permanent cessation of consciousness that I assume comes with brain death and temporarily ceasing to exist during non-REM sleep (if we really want to get metaphysical, in what sense do I want x even when I'm conscious but all of my attention is devoted to other things? At any given moment I'm not experiencing a desire for x to exist. I suspect that the desire-fulfillment view of welfare has to consider past preferences but I don't ultimately care since it's not my view). As I said before, I understand that nothing can harm the deceased but I want people to create a culture that's rooted in universal sympathy/valuing happiness itself intrinsically and an inherent implication of that is valuing the happiness that people felt in the past, will or could experience in future and could have otherwise felt in some alternate reality (e.g. if they had otherwise lived). This is somewhat besides the point because the intended beneficiaries of the kind of censorship that I could possibly see myself supporting, in theory, would be the living, not the dead.

-See previous point. I don't ultimately care about the wishes of the deceased either, but I do value their happiness (as in I'm of the position that it would have been good, if it existed) and regret their death for that reason; because it negates any possible hope of their ever again experiencing any happiness (or at least that's my reflective attitude on death. I can't say that I'm not bothered by the deaths of others reflexively). Some of what you might have in mind is more of a character issue that I would encourage people to work on (i.e. by becoming more indiscriminately sympathetic) than something I would want to be prosecuted under the law.

-(in response to your three 'paragraph' reply to my point about nose-pickers) Sure. I can feel self-conscious about something when no one's around in realization of the attention that it would receive in social situations but it still ultimately comes down to my being a social animal. I'm not sure I understand the relevance in pointing out that people self-present in a certain way because it's considered the appropriate social response. It seems obviously likely that people do this but neither of us knows definitively when this is or isn't the case, if we're talking about other people and not ourselves.

-I'm not really interested in addressing your point about subjectivity (in response to my point about societal collapse being seen as undesirable).

-(in response to your last 5 paragraphs) I don't really understand what you're trying to say with your last two paragraphs, I can't really see the relevancy. Again, this is a quick response, I can't believe I replied to this much with the time I had (for someone like me). Maybe if I had time to digest more of your post. Like I said, after a point we're just going back and forth which can be entertaining but I'm not sure how much I can add on. I see the argument for pan-hedonism as indestructible. I don't believe that harm/value is 'subjective' (in the sense that it's not factual, that no one can be in error about what they consider to be good or bad; which even nihilists don't claim or that we aren't truly justified in wanting all possible people to experience happiness and to be free from pain under an objective standard).

We experience suffering as inherently bad. Our experience of suffering cannot misrepresent itself in the same way that our sensory perception of a physical world can misrepresent that presumed mind-independent reality (because it doesn't entirely match up with our perception of it or perhaps because it doesn't exist at all outside of the mind). You either deny that suffering feels inherently bad (even a nihilist can concede that we experience it as inherently bad even if they maintain that its apparent intrinsic badness is illusory); I can't logically counter this but I know that we do via personal experience (if you don't experience 'suffering' as inherently bad we're using the same word to describe different mental states, or you deny that our experience of suffering alone is what would give us a reason to believe that it is inherently good, bad or neutral; again I can't logically prove this, that one's own experience is self-evidently real is a first principle that you either accept or you don't.