Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let me say it this way, some addictions have a much bigger societal look and porn is just not one of them, which makes it super hard. None of your friends are going to cheer you on. If you go on Twitter and say, “I quit porn,” they’re going to be like, “Well, that’s good for you but not everybody…” No one makes that argument with meth, right? No one’s going to be like, “Well, not everyone has to quit meth, okay. It’s actually a fine industry and people who are the ones producing it, they’re good also, right?” No one’s going to make that kind of argument. Whereas with porn, you’re going to have a whole thing and friends are going to think you’re dumb for doing it or whatever. It’s like you have… It’s a much more difficult one in just like that. So it feels accepted. And I think it’s also an addiction you can practice, participate in privately and hide it from the world. There’s certain addictions that are harder to hide from the world for prolonged periods of time. And porn addiction is probably one you can just have for many years and then it can deepen. That’s probably a serious issue. Boy, am I glad I grew up before the internet because porn is so accessible, so easy to go deep into that addiction. I mean, what can you speak about what impact it had on your life? Maybe some of the low points, but also how to overcome it? I’d say as far as impact goes is that you will have such a long and broken look at women. By the very, like I can… Again, I’m only speaking from a male’s perspective, that porn in its just most basic thing is that you use another person for your own desire or your own want. It’s not something that is deeply needed. There’s no need for porn. It’s purely a want-based activity or a lust, however you want, whatever word you can fill in there. And it is purely an objectifying activity. Someone else is on display for your own enjoyment. And so I think you carry this around. I do think that the women that I dated during high school or the women after high school and college, I looked at them as a means to an end. And I think porn greatly kind of shifted that perspective in my head that I did not give the value that was desired to another person. It really devalues humanity just in general, is my perspective of it. And then it makes people into commodities. And I don’t think people are commodities. I think everyone has value. And so during that, for me that’s like the great effect of porn, is that it’s just consumerism gone wild or materialism maybe, you could ask or argue, gone wild. And it’s extremely hard to quit, just like you said, because I can look at porn and then I can go out to lunch. No one’s going to know. No one’s going to have any ideas. It’s a very private, it can be very short session. It doesn’t have to be something that takes… You can’t take acid then go out to lunch, right? Your whole day is going to be a very different day. And so it’s very quick, easy, accessible. And then obviously there’s all the science and statistics, like men make worse decisions for some period of time after looking or being exposed to sexualized images. There’s the whole dopamine effect that’s just like you constantly need more and more dopamine. That’s why people typically don’t just watch five minutes of porn and call it a day. There’s like the hundred tab joke that’s always made on the internet. It’s because it’s just this constant dopamine cycle you’re constantly doing. And all that stuff is great to say. And I’m sure statistics and science and all that stuff is really great arguments for some amount of people. But for me it just comes down to, is it really a good thing to do? Is it really actually something we want, is to value people in such a profane or just disregarding way? I just really think it’s just bad for the soul. Even if all the stats said it was great for you, I still say it’s actually bad.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.