Homeless man's pastor told police of assault [rapist used library computers to view porn]

Phila. Inquirer ^ | 2/10/04 | Natalie Pompilio, Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and Jacqueline Soteropoulos

[general_re]

"The fact that many sexual criminals have gone to the time, effort, and expense of amassing porn collections strongly suggests otherwise [i.e., that the availability of porn is not merely an incidental for them]."

No, that's simply another opinion of yours, also unsupported. The "fact" you claim in the first part is far from established fact - you have asserted that many sexual criminals have amassed such collections, but you have provided no evidence to support such a contention, nor have you shown that the immediacy of porn is in any way linked to the incidence of sexual crimes.

Moreover, I could just as easily restate the whole thing as "The fact that many sexual criminals have gone to the time, effort, and expense of amassing porn collections buying groceries strongly suggests otherwise [i.e., that the availability of porn groceries is not merely an incidental for them]," and it would be just as meaningful as what you've said - i.e., not at all. Given that the reasoning - such as it is - is identical to yours, I presume that you are now prepared to whitelist what people can buy at the supermarket.

[Deliberator]

If you really see no more connection between a sexual criminal's use of porn and his crimes than between his use of groceries and his crimes, then I can't see the point in further discussion. (If you want to regard that as a "victory" of some sort, feel free.)

[general_re]

Oh, for crying out loud. Next time, go and deliberate some more before expecting people to believe you about something just because you say so. If it were half as self-evident as you seem to suggest, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?

[Deliberator]

If it were half as self-evident as you seem to suggest, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?

Frankly, I think you won't permit anything not supporting your predetermined conclusion to be self-evident to you. But that's just my opinion.

[general_re]

If by that you mean that you're unlikely to change my mind, you're right. I've heard it all before, and arrived where I am in spite of it - or maybe because of it - and I sort of doubt you're going to come up with anything stunningly new or original that will cause me to reconsider. Anything's possible, though.

Then again, I never expected to change your mind, and so I don't really care if you wind up agreeing with me or not. If you do, great, and if not, that's fine too. But there are a lot of folks here who will speak out in some way that you disagree with, and you can either challenge them about it, despite the fact that they'll probably never change their minds, or you can basically cede the field to them. I don't care if you agree or not - it's enough for me to simply get my argument out there and let people do with it what they will. At least try to put on a good show for the gallery, is my suggestion, unless you'd like them to think that my opinions are irrefutably correct by virtue of the fact that nobody tries to refute them.

[inquest]

If it were half as self-evident as you seem to suggest, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?

Are you honestly suggesting that because someone disputes a proposition, it therefore can't be self-evident?

[general_re]

I don't, as a general rule, do "self-evident" - "self-evident" is usually equivalent to "arbitrary", IMO, in which case you might as well come clean and admit that it's purely a matter of arbitrary personal preference, rather than being some deep universal truth. But in any case, give me a threshold, then. What percentage of people have to question the self-evidential status of some proposition before we can say that that status is truly in doubt? 0.001%? 1%? 10%? 50%?

[BSunday]

Hello! How about NO PORN IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES!

bingo! We have a winnahhhhhhh.

[Deliberator]

it's enough for me to simply get my argument out there and let people do with it what they will.

Ditto.

At least try to put on a good show for the gallery, is my suggestion

I believe I have.

[inquest]

OK, that doesn't really address my question, but I guess it'll pass.

[general_re]

I'm not sure what else I can give you, particularly when "self-evident" seems to be a rather subjective, individual judgement most of the time. You and I may agree on some things being self-evident, but it's also rather likely that you find certain things self-evident that I find totally counterintuitive, and vice versa. In most cases, saying something is self-evident appears to me to be not much more than a statement of faith - perhaps the proposition is, in fact, true, but whether it is or not, no proof is offered or required by the person asserting its self-evidence. Which doesn't mean that others will necessarily also find it to be so...

[inquest]

By the way, to (begin to) answer this question:

What percentage of people have to question the self-evidential status of some proposition before we can say that that status is truly in doubt? 0.001%? 1%? 10%? 50%?

A skillful dissembler or propagandist could probably get 75% of the people or more to question something they should intuitively consider self-evident based on their experiences, observations, and instincts. So I'd be wary of using that as a standard of measure for axiomaticity.

[general_re]

Well, we have to be careful about making axioms in general. We accept them as truthful because they're useful to us in doing something else, but we have to accept them as truthful because we can't prove them truthful - if we could, they'd be theorems or some such. And so the ends sort of determine the means, in a lot of cases - if you and I disagree about what that "something else" we should do is, we're likely to settle on different axioms as well. And so what's self-evident in one framework is not at all self-evident in another. It all sounds horribly relativistic, and it is, but then again, universal axioms are kind of a slippery thing, as I believe we've discussed previously ;)

[Tamzee]

I have a question about the Jeffrey Curley case. Was his body found stuffed in a 30 gallon oil drum, somewhere near Portsmouth NH? I remember hearing about such a case, and wonder if it's the same one. Thanks.

You are thinking of the same case, but it was a rubbermaid storage bin. His body was stuffed into it, it was filled with concrete and then Charles Jaynes and his buddy dropped the bin off of a bridge in NH. Jaynes was from Manchester, NH and I lived about half-an-hour from there at the time... I remember them dredging different rivers nearby for days trying to find Jeffrey's body.

I met his father a few months after this happened, BTW, we were both speaking at an event about Internet crimes against children.... parents going through an utter living hell when something like this happens to their child, and the torment never stops.

[plan2succeed.org]

Thank you, Antoninus, for bringing this to everyone's attention. We at http://www.plan2succeed.org/ have been fighting to prevent that very problem. (Town Refuses to Ask Citizens If Library Porn Should Be Filtered Out - Please Help Us! at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1049199/posts/ ) Sadly, the ALA and the library believes a perp's rights surmount a victim's rights. Like a terrorist organization that has a humanitarian wing and a terrorism wing, the ALA does a lot of good while their Office of Intellectual Freedom forcefeeds pornography on children. As to the article you cite, we use it on our main page for why filters are required. A $5/month filter would have prevented this very problem. This is very, very sad. Libraries and the ALA are directly responsible for this, and punitive damages should be awarded in light of US v. ALA making all ALA arguments moot.