Causation vs. Correlation. Porn addicts have obviously watched porn. But that doesn’t mean that watching porn causes porn addiction.
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iopq@lemmy.world 7 months agoI mean, there’s such a thing as being addicted to porn. I fall to see how you get such an addiction without looking at it
dustyData@lemmy.world 7 months ago
iopq@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s like saying drug addicts have obviously used drugs, but it’s only correlated to their addiction
dustyData@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Not really. Drugs do have psychoactive components that can, provably and physiologically, cause addiction with a single use. Opioids famously have been observed to cause neural changes in rats consistent with addiction after a single dosage.
It’s more like, gambling. Millions of people gamble, a portion of them have a gambling addiction. Does that mean that gambling causes addiction? well, obviously, yes, but also, no. Or else how to explain the millions of people who can even take a vacation in Las Vegas but don’t feel a constant compulsion to gamble all of their money away. Equally, almost every single human being has sex in their lifetimes, but only a small portion of the population suffers a compulsion to have sex constantly. Does sex causes addiction? the question is in itself way too simplistic and disingenuous. Addiction involves so many other factors that it can’t be reduced to “being exposed to porn causes addiction”.
iopq@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Marijuana is a drug that does not cause physical addiction from one use. Yet people get addicted to it, even though most don’t. Would you say using marijuana causes addiction?
FishFace@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yes, but there’s such a thing as being addicted to sex, too, and pretty much any pleasurable activity. It’s generally pretty rare.