Porn causes brain damage I mean true chat JB doesn't give a deal. So what you're saying is that we need a healthy game, our own events. No what? I'm saying at all. All right? Maybe one day I was thinking about the inundation of porn and graphic sexual content in today's culture I was wondering what would be Dr K's thoughts on how this is affecting the human mind and mental health Israel I Feel that genuine human intimacy is going down in this day and age? but it could just be me.

What's the sexuality is something so common and frequent feels to humans. naturally. However, that it just seems natural that in the internet age, it would be everywhere. However, I feel that as I said, this is affecting human intimacy and it at least in my eyes seems to be making sexuality and sexual experiences not as special or exciting as they should be.

Just some thoughts in the community. Would love to hear people's ideas. Okay, let me think about this. Oh man.

So I think this is such a complicated question. Like, so the simplest questions actually have the most complicated answers because it depends on what level you want to talk about. Okay, so if we want to try to understand the inundation of porn and sexuality and like sexually explicit, not even sexually, absolutely implicit things on the internet, right? So if you look at things like the hot tub meta on Twitch that's not sexually explicit, but sexually implicit. So we are absolutely being inundated and bombarded with sexual stimuli.

Yeah, so the question is, what does that do to us and the short answer is like no one really knows but I suspect it, it ain't great. So here's what we do know if we look at content on the internet. What? I have come to realize is that like the content that does well is the stuff that from an evolutionary or sort of takes advantage of like the evolution of our brains. Yeah so our brains have evolved to be attracted to particular things and though that attraction in our brain led to survival benefits.

So a good example of this is like we're attracted to high calorie density food. So we're attracted to food that is like sugary fatty delicious, right? We call it delicious. Like food that is like low calorie is not usually considered delicious. And so then what happens is we've our brain is our body has evolved to have a preference for this one thing because it used to be a survival advantage.

and then we started making like you know, Twinkies and then suddenly people are now dying of diabetes because their body has evolved to tell them to like eat this unhealthy food. And what we have is we have industries that have adapted to this evolutionary preference like fast food right? So like we have calorie dance Pizza all this kind of stuff I Had pizza last night. it was delicious I haven't had pizza in a while and I ate like a thousand calories and like our so we have entire industries that have adapted to Meats that's branded and then what happens is like the industries are sort of like we're just making the pizza like we're not. You know people can choose to eat it or not.

Even it's like we're just making pizza right and so there's like personal freedom, arguments and all that kind of stuff. But I think Industries are adapting to fit the existing architecture of our brains. and I think this is essentially happening with the internet, dopamine and like sexuality. So you know the last big revolution that was predatory on the way that our brains and bodies have evolved may have been like the food industry and now what we've got is this whole cognitive like technology like predatory kind of stuff.

I don't think they're oh I mean some of them are trying to be predatory, some of them aren't trying to be predatory right? So if like you're a game designer, some of them are like you know sitting there like see his CFO This is a simple try to be perfect but I don't Right knowing that that it's overall it could be bad and not playing to it is one thing when it annoys bad and doubling down is another thing. Yeah, we're trying to think very different behaviors extract more juice from this sweet, sweet, pudgy gamer. and then like some people are like you know, how can I make the game that I want to play, how can I make a game that's more fun than anything I've ever played before and and so both of those things will end up with with arguably like things that will be predatory on our on our circuitry. And so I think we're seeing this in sexuality as well.

We're like content people are sort of figuring out loud Instagram is a good example right? So like everyone is like editing Instagram photos and I saw that there was recently legislation in Norway where you have to like let people know that your Instagram is edited and so like what everyone is doing is they're like gravitating towards Like These People aren't really sure they don't know if they're not neuroscientists, but if I if I'm an Instagram model I'm gonna read like I'm gonna figure out from a darwinian sense right? I'm gonna try this post and it's not gonna work I'm gonna try this post, it is gonna work. Oh what did I do there Oh I was wearing something skimpier. Okay now I'm gonna try it but this is too skimpy and now people think that I'm kind of like, you know, ho-ish so like people didn't like that as much. So I need to be like just hoeish enough, right? So that's sort of like the idea behind like and they figured this out.

They figure out like how the brain is wired and what leads to the most kind of like pull. So some of the impacts that we're seeing are: you know we're seeing things like pornography addiction so we're seeing that. for example, the more likely you are to get addicted to pornography. like depends on how early you were exposed to pornography and also the intensity of the pornography that you're exposed to.

So we are seeing real like, like psychiatric consequences. We're also seeing as this person suggests like some confusion around intimacy and expectations. so a lot of people who you know grow up watching porn will have particular expectations of what the appropriate response is. So I one time had a patient who told me and again if this was a case study then I'll be one of the most brain rotted then I'd be I'd be like a lost cause able to have an orgasm when they masturbate and as I talk to them I realize like actually when they masturbate, they are having an orgasm.

it's just in the pornography. There's like so they used to say that I get I can get to the first part of orgasm I was like what do you mean the first part of orgasm they're like well I get a little I get like a small amount of ejaculate but I don't get to the full of Jacqueline I was like what do you mean the full ejaculate and then I realized that like when you watch pornography, there's such a copious amount of ejaculate that like this person had what I assumed to be like a normal ejaculation. oh my God Jesus Remember like after an appointment I looked up what is the average amount of human what does it mean ejaculate in milliliters and so pornography had given them this idea that like orgasm is this like just explosion of like buckets of ejaculation and they just didn't understand that right? So like they would actually masturbate and they like they thought they were like busted in some way so like you know and that way this guy wouldn't be um years of consumption and that is not a kind of Sword but it just doesn't watch a lot of it because you watch a lot I mean you make an average of how much and then you should have an idea because he's stupid. The impact to pornography is their pornography addiction.

Absolutely. Is it affecting with intimacy like I think so. And then there are all these other like unexpected outcomes that we just don't. We're Not Gonna know right? Like you can't predict that if people watch a lot of pornography like teenagers are gonna get confused about when they have an orgasm that's not like you just can't make that prediction.

but it's It's an effect and so you know what effect does it have In the short answer is like we sort of don't know So we're certainly seeing some of these things like you know death grip syndrome and some of these other things where our brain is like wiring to expect a certain kind of stimulus and then it takes some time for us to like rewire to like regular stimuli. And so you know there are a couple of things like this but the short answer is like is it affecting us absolutely And the reason that we don't know is because pornography and sexually sexual, sexually explicit and implicit material is evolving so quickly. Yeah, that we can't even study it like we can't study it fast enough. So if you think about you know five years ago like only Fans didn't exist.

but at least I don't think so. Maybe this is a child and a wife and Bro sure that only Fans the parasocial element of Only Fans is going to create intimacy issues and real relationships two months for a long time. Partners have always been concerned about what was I saying oh yeah, only Fans So you know partners for a long time have been concerned that like oh, if my partner watches pornography like it feels like they're cheating right? like Partners have all like been concerned about you know, watching pornography and like you know, whatever and then like I think that there's an emotional component, there's a parasocial component on Only Fans which is is going to exacerbate those kinds of feelings and the people who are like are vulnerable to them right? So like it's completely possible that you know their majority of the population. or maybe the minor I have no idea Real? you know 100 or a thousand dollars of content a month on only fans like some Partners may be like comfortable with that, right? because polyamory is also growing.

like open relationships are growing like there's everything's changing. so so there are the degrees of it. and then he's saying that oh, it's more intense and and people been in some of the more personal things only fans who would have thought only five like I said the argument earlier but at the same time I Think that like the reason that only fans are successful is because pornography has evolved and what people have figured out is that like there's an element to pornography that's purely physical and it started off with a magazine right? There's like zero interaction and then like how much will it prey on our brain if I get like interaction with that woman I can lust for a particular I'm just sort of think about the heteronormative here and a masculine perspective. but you know if I yeah, I'll Defenders take it because I think only family consumers and Pleasures because I think only fans creators? Well, it implies um, but it's not.

So if you want to live in a world but it does. um Soviet but if I'm a man and I'm lusting for a woman I don't give a not my problem, That's fine. How is that My problem? Attention like I'm able to like, have more contact with it is something. If I do something you don't understand it, Not my problem.

Your problem. If I say something that is objectively one thing and it's true, right and you don't understand it? That is not my problem. This is your problem with her. We just saw from a post earlier today that like you know, people can get addicted to Twitch and stuff because these parasocial interactions so there's like this like you know what effect is it having Honestly, as a scientist, the right answer is I don't know and no one does and at the same time we are clearly seeing signs of Something's changing in our brains in the way that we interact with each other.

Now I'm not going to be quite as doomsday as many people will. Everyone's like oh my God the world is coming to the end like like only fans will be the death of all relationships and I'm sure that someone out there believes that, but I Also think that you know the reason we stream on Twitch is because we can sort of Fight Fire with Fire right? So like we can, um, we can people can become addicted to Twitch and people can hopefully watch Twitch which I know, sounds kind of weird to like help themselves not become addicted to Twitch It's bizarre, but I think that we can probably like. We can teach people how to have healthier conversations and relationships I've done that before. Um, in terms of like you know, pornography and only fans and stuff like that like how can you communicate with your partner because that kind of communication education like hasn't been available for most of the history of humanity.

So it's possible that we can just build healthy relationships despite all this up by just learning more about ourselves. So what you're saying is that we need a healthy gamer. All events. Yeah, wouldn't you have a severe candidate dissonance? No If you if you're exposed to this while development and every wishable and then somebody says well, they they wore it out for you and they're like yo, it's actually like this and like that, it's It's gonna be hard to latch off though.

No, if it's really built in then I'm wired in. At that point you have to really pull it out. You guys remember, it's always way harder to change an idea to pull away from it. Then it is to build the the first idea.

Initially, the first idea you build will be much easier to intake and ingrain. It'll be to change it down the line. It's much harder kind of dissonance. I'm happy on Twitch chat I don't remember what the other things called me right? And so this is where.

Like it's is this the same person that was asking is this why Magneto is never depressed Just to be clear, the world is changing. We don't know how it's changing. Is it causing problems? Yeah and or yes And I don't think that that means that the world should stop changing right? So like the whole goal of humanity is that new challenges around that was good. Like as the human race like we have to figure out how to like unscrew ourselves from all the screwing over we've done.

Let's move on Now you know the Industrial Revolution happened and we started like using fossil fuels a time and now there's like concerns around classes, reforestation projects and like you know all kinds of things that that is the human race hopefully will you know start doing and so that there's happening, there's a cognitive Revolution as well. There's like a cognitive change. There's like like you know we're doing a lot of things that cognitively offer short-term benefits and there's almost like a cognitive climate change happening right now with the human race and the reason that we're seeing so much more mental illness and why mental illness is getting worse and suicide is getting a little bit worse if not significantly worse. Depression is increasing, anxiety is increasing I Think it's a sign of this cognitive climate change.

So does pornography have something to do with that? Sure as only fans have something to do with that. Sure is YouTube has something to do with that? Sure switch have something to do that. Sure! and are these things evil? Do we want to stop advancing Is a human race and like stop advancing technology just because it has some downsides. I Personally don't think so I think this is where like we can learn about ourselves and we can manage it.

Yeah, So when when VR develops haptic feedback that is going to eliminate the human race, I gave a talk about this at a Have A Feedback A Video Game Developer conference a few years ago that my biggest concern about the pornography industry is when you can have haptic feedback. Oh yeah yeah I said that too and like then like literally people may stop having children so I actually did say that brother I've acted I actually didn't pre-watch this video I'm actually impressed and how much things that I've said that that are the same, Incorporate things like Ai and stuff like and you have like a family virtual girlfriend that will throw temper tantrums and frustrate you and then yeah AI waifu with haptic feedback then it's like you guys might take it. So you know there's that. if I get a robot and I get all the juice possible and and it's busting and it's dank in every way, right? and it's not annoying you I don't know why the would I get a real one I Just get a robot like what it's a no-brainer sometimes.