TEDx Talks
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 14 months, 2012–2023
16:29 · 18M views · May 16, 2012
Gary Wilson's TEDxGlasgow talk argues that internet pornography hyperstimulates the brain's reward system and can cause symptoms that reverse when people stop. TED notes that several claims are not supported by respected academic studies.
HN commenters frequently recommend it as an eye-opening case against heavy porn use, though it is contested science.
14 comments from Hacker News
Midwest US, mid 30's. This sort of view is strongly held by the intellectual and political circles I support and follow. I think it is a very insidious and corrupting addiction, and the modern incarnation of it is orders of magnitude more stimulating than in prior eras. Infinite access to a stimulus that simulates in male brains "mating" with ever varied women, which is hijacking a strong biological imperative. As another comment mentioned a similar problem with "advertising" in general, I think sexualization and over stimulus of the population weakens people, and not to say there is some conspiracy purposefully pushing this (it may just emergent from technology and human instinct) I do think the corrupting influence weakens a population and makes them more easily dominated by strong forces... media, business, government, etc. All to say that, in terms of "what is best to cultivate a strong society and people" porn is extremely antithetical to this. A stronger society is one that would be avoiding, however necessary, consumption and production of pornography. This presentation [0] on the physiological effects of porn consumption is very informative. Observations mirror what strong opiates do to the brain A good overview of the public health problem of porn[1] The psychologically destabilizing and weakening effects of porn, and how they breakdown willpower to oppose stronger forces are illustrated by the time when the Israeli military broadcast pornography onto the televisions
Here is the truth - watch too much porn and you get erectile dysfunction: this video Why did it take me decades to find someone able to present that reasonably plausible reason as to why I should definitely not want to watch porn under any circumstances whatsoever? The argument (with science) in the above TED talk is that if you do watch a lot of porn then you are not going to aroused by real women as much as you should, leading to unsatisfactory bedroom performances. Yep, porn is actually that dangerous. I might not care for the traditional 'don't watch porn because it is porn'/'think of the children'/'porn exploits women' arguments, however, I do have enlightened self interest and loss of libido is so not what I want to have. If I was in the UK government I would want to get this message out to kids in schools, not to scare them away from porn for the sake of it, but because they deserve to have 'normal', happy sexual health. By censoring porn they are not going to get this message, in fact they will be further away from it than they are now, doing what they can to get the 'forbidden fruit' instead of knowing why they just should not bother. Instead of censoring they could have demanded that there be a banner on the pages of porn sites warning that use of porn leads to erectile dysfunction. This would be a proactive move, no harder to get into law than that stupid 'this site uses cookies' directive. They could get the ISPs to do it so porn from outer Mongolia would be suitably
Also, an often overlooked topic of modern times, high speed internet pornography + chronic masturbation and its numbing effects on our neural reward system which makes things like eye contact and social activities unbearable and highly disconcerting. This addiction isn't talked about much because it is almost a universal coping mechanism for guys beginning in adolescence, but you have nothing to lose in trying to abstain and see if your social anxiety melts away. At worst you just determine that it's something else like depression and can go seek out a proper medical diagnosis. The crazy thing about the social anxiety inducing effects of chronic masturbation is that it is not taught in medical school and doctors do not diagnose or advise that it can be detrimental to people's lives, granted you are oblivious to the hormonal imbalances it causes w.r.t. neuroscience (orgasm induced prolactin release suppressing dopamine in neural pleasure/reward system). Great Ted talk on subject: this video
this video ^^ This really opened my eyes to this problem for me.. It's really rather worrying, and I guess my generation (early 30s) were the last to avoid this so it's kind of invisible to us because of how awkward it is to talk about such things. We need to do something, perhaps better education and getting more comfortable talking about sex and relationships with young people is a better approach than failed-from-the-outset restrictions... Either way, the points in that video are imo, valid, and should worry everyone.
related ted talk on dopamine, the internet, and novelty seeking this video also related: the modern diet contains alot of calorically dense food, which means less stomach and intenstinal stretching, which means more ghrelin, which activates these novelty-seeking dopaminergic systems in the brain as for the original question: a) as far as optimizing, I think that approaching the optimal state is less important than making improvements to a consistent performance ethic. Better to do something a little better every day than to miss days trying to do it better than everybody else. b) with information, I tend to focus on information that relates to a particular goal relevant to job performance or general wellbeing and then take notes on any new information and review prior notes relevant to the newest information in order to build an intuitive mental logical structure of the problem/goal and all of its moving parts. But since so few things are scientifically provable, I try to "bet" on certain things based on how more or less likely they are and an informal cost-benefit analysis