On pornography, fantasy and games

Introduction

Human beings are not living in the environment they evolved in - and as a result of this they engage in a variety of irrational behaviours which fail to promote their own goals.

The modern environment contains pleasurable drugs - which provide the brain with a reward signal without it doing anything useful.

It contains sweets, cakes, ice cream - and other foodstuffs rich in dietary energy, but low in desirable nutrients.

This video is concerned with some other relatively-new phenomena that cause humans to act in an irrational manner.

The entertainment industry

These funds typically do not produce anything worthwhile. They do not feed anyone. No housing or shelter is provided. The world does not wind up better irrigated as a result. No more useful elements or minerals come into circulation. Scientific knowledge is not advanced - and nor is very much technical progress made.

It is not just the funds that are wasted. Precious natural resources are needlessly depleted as well. Human time and effort - which could usefully be spent in other areas - are also used up. Both the consumers and society as a whole are adversely affected.

What is produced as a result of all this expenditure is entertainment.

What is entertainment?

Upon receipt of certain kinds of sensory input, the human brain produces drug-like compounds associated with positive behavioural reinforcement.

Various types of entertainment cause different types of stimulation. Comedy activates the nucleus accumbens - a brain area which is known to be involved in the rewarding feelings that follow monetary gain or the use of some addictive drugs. The shock/relief cycle horror movies repeatedly put the viewer through works as another type of drug-based conditioning - based on endorphins. Action adventure games are fuelled on adrenaline. Pornography works on the brain's sexual reward centres - and so on.

The result of all this drug-related stimulation is a high level of fantasy addiction in the population.

Addicts tend to become couch potatoes, often with various other associated pathologies: eye strain, back problems, malnutrition - and so on.

Some exposure to story-telling and fantasies may be beneficial - since it allows humans to gain exposure to the experiences of others quickly and in relative safety. This explains why humans are attracted to this sort of thing in the first place.

Unfortunately, the levels of stimulation available today tend to go beyond what is healthy and beneficial. They typically represent a super-stimulus, in order to encourage a rapid response and subsequent addiction.

In the ancestral environment, a taste for images of naked bodies of members of the opposite sex was probably adaptive. However, in modern times, there is a whole industry devoted to pumping people as full of such images as they like - and people have considerable appetite for this - because of such images would have been historically connected with making babies.

Similarly, in the ancestral environment, a taste for concentrated sources of dietary energy was probably adaptive too. However, these days, there are fast food chains devoted to encouraging people to buy this type of junk food - and the more they buy the better.

Drugs are another similar problem. Large corporations peddle addictive drugs - like nicotine - to susceptible members of the population - and they use some of the money they earn to lobby the government to allow them to continue with such activities. The government doesn't mind too much - this is a good source of immediate tax dollars for them - and the costs appear too far down the line for a government to care very much.

As time passes, technological progress means that these phenomena will become increasing effective. Drugs will get better; foods will taste better; movies will be more engaging; music will sound better. pornography will become more stimulating; and computer games will become more realistic.

The wirehead problem

Here is Steve Omohundro on the problem:

[Footage of Steve Omohundro]

The scale of this problem is enormous - billions of dollars are wasted each year - while bringing little or no benefit to either individual consumers or the state. The young are among the most vulnerable.

What can be done? The resolution that Steve mentioned - that of letting the evolutionary process take its course - seems likely to work rather slowly. Fortunately there are some other options to consider.

Looking at drugs, society uses several techniques to limit their abuse. Education is used - to make people aware of the problem. Legal constraints, regulation and taxation are used to make access harder. Also, theraputic interventions are employed for those whose lives have suffered from becoming addicts.

The role of copyright law

Since the copyright laws are the proximate cause of the problem, one obvious solution is to strike these from the books. That would have the effect of cutting off the air supply to the entertainment pushers.

"Useful arts" that are genuinely beneficial to the population would not be adversely affected by this - since anything which is genuinely useful to the population would then receive government sponsorship instead.

What would suffer are things like video games, pornography, violence and horror - the material widely regarded as being the least desirable - and therefore the least likely to attract arts council funding.

In fact even abolishing the copyright laws would not be enough. The prevalance of the wannabe-pop-star syndrome - where individuals are naturally attracted to jobs involving exhibiting themselves on stage surrounded by adoring fans - means that humans are likely to spend too much energy producing entertainment - even if there were no copyright laws to help finance it with artificially-created monopolies. Additional deterrents - such as entertainment taxes - might be needed to redress this tendency.

Unfortunately, abolishing the copyright laws, would not get to the root of the problem. The vast throngs of fantasy addicts represent a large proportion of the population - and they would simply vote in new politicians, get the copyright laws reestablished again - and then continue to writhe in their entertainment-induced ecstacies, blissfully uncaring about the billions of dollars their actions are collectively wasting.

One thing that might help is peer-to-peer networking. Encryption technology will ultimately mean that regulatory authorities will have to establish surveillance that extends into everyone's homes - if they want to effectively regulate the distribution of copyrighted material on the internet. Such ubiquitous surveillance may ultimately become commonplace - on security grounds - but until it does it seems likely that copyright violations will increase in frequency - perhaps to the point where copyright law is weakened, so it is not treated with such contempt.

The scale of the problem

To give one example, audiences paid over $900 million dollars to watch Spiderman 3 recently. That's almost a billion dollars wasted on one movie.

At this stage in our development, humans need to concentrate on establishing colonies on other planets, and on technological development - in order to be able to avoid problems during our development - and avoid being assimilated by the first aliens we encounter.

In the short term, that involves feeding and sheltering each other, medical, technological, and scientific progress, irrigation projects - and other worthy endeavours.

Vast expenditures of resources on pornography, games and escapist fantasies is not just not a high priority. Indeed, it represents a management disaster that may contribute to our premature demise as a species.

In my view, humanity needs to recognise this issue as a problem that needs fixing, and work on fixing it.

Enjoy,

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