Against Aella's "AI Child Porn Will Probably Save Real Children"
Porn probably increases the tendency to seek out the real thing
Today, infamous prostitute and rationalist influencer Aella released an article arguing that AI child porn (CP) should be legal, because it will reduce the rate of child molestation.
Here, we will review the evidence against her position. In summary, there are studies showing that porn usage increases the likelihood that someone seeks out sex. While there are no studies on CP usage in particular, we can extrapolate with a few very basic assumptions.
Pedophilia is innate
If people view porn, they view porn that depicts what they are innately desire
When people view this porn, it increases their tendency to seek what they desire in real life
I provide evidence for 3 for non-pedophiles. By assuming 1 and 2, we assume the logic does not break for pedophiles.
The Evidence
This is a classic causal inference problem. Not all ways of measuring the causal effect of porn usage on sexual behavior are equivalent. Consider the different methods shown in this 2020 meta-analysis:
We have here all small positive effects (pornography increases aggressive sexual behavior) except at the population level. The effects are the largest in experiments.
These results suggest that the correlational and population data are confounded by an omitted variable which reduces aggressive behavior and correlates positively with porn usage. Most likely, weaker men with less sexual access are more likely to use porn. At the population level, less violence societies are more likely to allow porn. Who does the sexual violence in Europe and what does their religion say about porn? How does porn usage in their countries compare to porn usage in Europe?
Another meta-analysis from 2015 found across the board positive effects of porn usage on violence from correlational studies:
These are possibly underestimates given the results of the 2020 meta-analysis. The average effect size here was .22 (uncorrected) and .28 (corrected).
A meta-analysis of only experimental studies from 1995 found a pooled effect size of .13.
A 2020 survey of 2533 people found that the past year’s porn usage predicted dominant behaviors (eg, spanking, choking, name calling, performing aggressive fellatio, facial ejaculation, penile-anal penetration without first asking/discussing), even with lifetime porn usage controlled for. Plausibly this gives some indication that sexual behavior follows the random fluctuation of porn usage — more porn means more porn-coded behaviors. Porn users seek out real life manifestations of the porn they watch.
A 2024 paper studying 5600 people found porn use predicts adultery, group sex, and hookups when controlling for masturbation, age, and sexual frequency:
There are only two econometrics studies on this topic, one used a poor IV and found null results, and the other found positive results for the relationship between porn use and divorce using a better IV and a bunch of fixed effects. A less rigorous literature review concurs, saying the evidence for porn increasing infidelity and divorce is strong, but weak for it increasing rape. This is probably because men don’t watch rape porn very frequently, but they do watch infidelity / harem porn. Hence, they pursue what they see. Pedophiles with more porn exposure can likewise be predicted to seek out real children more than otherwise.
Conclusion
The above evidence provides some experimental and broad correlational support for the proposition that when people view porn, it increases their tendency to seek what they watch in real life. While the quality of this literature isn’t great, the results all point in one direction, except at the population level.
Any data poster knows, however, that population correlations are almost always misleading and confounded. My work on the origins of leftism broadly predicts a spurious negative correlation between population level porn acceptance, and the actual amount of sex happening in the population. That doesn’t mean that at the individual level, porn doesn’t act as an aphrodisiac.
It almost certainly does — to an extent. As usual with environmental stimulants, the effect sizes are much smaller than differences due to nature. A good estimate of the effect of porn usage on “real life sex seeking” broadly is r = 0.10. This means that if AI causes CP to be more available to pedophiles, increasing the amount of CP usage among pedophiles, it will increase the tendency of those pedophiles to seek out actual children to a small degree.
She is just making excuses for her perverted friends. Nothing more.
This paper goes over the data from Denmark as well as the other countries mentioned and the claims contained therein. It found that violent sexual assault and rape actually increased when porn proliferated as many other sexual crimes such as voyeurism, "peeping," incest, and others were simultaneously decriminalized, which incorrectly demonstrated an overall drop in sex crimes over that period.
It also studies the effects of Sexually Oriented Businesses (SOBs) in a couple of major cities and found:
♦ Austin, TX -- 1986 - in four study areas with SOBs, sexually related crimes were 177%
to 482% higher than the city's average.
♦ Indianapolis, IN -- 1984-1986 - Between 1978-1982, crime in study areas was 46%
higher than for the city as a whole. Sex related crimes were four times greater when
SOBs were located near residential areas vs. commercial areas.
♦ Garden Grove, CA -- 1981-1990 - On Garden Grove Blvd., seven adult businesses
accounted for 36% of all crime in the area. In one case, a bar opened within 500 feet of
an SOB and serious crime within 1000 feet of that business rose 300% during the next
year.
♦ Phoenix, AZ -- 1978 - Sex offenses, including indecent exposure, were 506% greater in
neighborhoods with SOBs. Even excluding indecent exposure, the sex offenses were still
132% greater in those neighborhoods.
♦ Whittier, CA -- In comparison studies of two residential areas conducted between 1970-
1973 before SOBs, and 1974-1977 after SOBs, malicious mischief increased 700%,
assault increased 387%, prostitution increased 300%, and all theft increased 120%.
Virtually all SOBs, regardless of the city in which they are located, have similar negative
effects upon their surrounding neighborhoods. The Indianapolis study concluded that: Even a
relatively passive use such as an adult book store [has] a serious negative effect on [its]
immediate environs. It is difficult to miss the implication that these harmful secondary effects
simply reflect something harmful in the nature of the material.
Further, "high-frequency pornography consumers who were exposed to the nonviolent, dehumanizing pornography
(relative to those in the no-exposure condition) were particularly likely to report that they
might rape, were more sexually callous, and reported engaging in more acts of sexual
aggression. These effects were not apparent for men who reported a very low frequency
of habitual pornography consumption.The authors noted that the effects of exposure
were strongest and most pervasive in the case of exposure to nonviolent dehumanizing
pornography, the type of material that may in fact be most prevalent in mainstream
commercial entertainment videos.
The study found that more than twice as many men indicated at least some likelihood of
raping after exposure to this material 20.4 percent versus 9.6 percent. Detailed analysis
revealed that these effects occurred primarily for high P (psychotism) subjects those
who are inclined to be rather solitary and hostile, lack empathy, disregard danger and
prefer impersonal, non-caring sex (although not meeting clinical criteria as psychotics)."
A lot of data has been parsed more broadly on this subject and it doesn't bode well for the argument in favor of the proliferation of AI child pornography to combat real child exploitation, in spite of Aella's claim of "I Would Change My Mind If: ....We don’t actually have good data for most of this."
https://www.protectkids.com/effects/justharmlessfun.pdf