Yes, this is a discussion forum, so while you're welcome to pose ethical questions, you should also feel free to weigh in on them too ;) It's a challenging question.
Is it the mere fact of someone being aroused by children that makes child pornography offensive to society, or is it our belief that the creation of such materials necessary involves some degree of exploitation? If the latter, what about the well-documented risks of exploitation of consenting adult pornographic performers? Does access to pornography increase or decrease adults' tendencies to engage in unsanctioned sexual acts?
>…If the latter, what about the well-documented risks of exploitation of consenting adult pornographic performers?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here but your post kind of reads like “child sexual abuse material is equivalent to porn made by consenting adults.” Posing that as a philosophical “what if” and then moving on isn’t very different from just stating that as an opinion.
I am not really interested in engaging on this topic, as the sort of “Debate me!”-style hot take is (in my experience) not usually offered in good faith, rather it’s more often some sort of rhetorical dick measuring contest amongst internet strangers.
For an exceptionally loose definition of "equivalent" good faith and bad faith are equivalent (they’re both phrases that use the word “faith”), same goes for apples and oceans (mostly water)
The position that “things are equivalent in the case that I get to define all of the words “ isn’t the dialectical Judo throw that you think it is, buddy. It does not inspire confidence that a person is being serious.
Right now yes, but that will not always be the case. You can already (with some effort) get high quality results for incongruous juxtapositions like 'hamsters playing golf' or the like, and it's not hard to imagine bridging the different semantic gaps.
So we should discuss it as an ethical problem because it's going to become practical and affordable far sooner than most people think. I would bet money it's already been tried and maybe done successfully, but for obvious reasons not advertised.
Unless that input is newly created, why would using existing data (let's say, b the police, who collected it from various criminals in the past) be any more harmful than not using it?
Is it the mere fact of someone being aroused by children that makes child pornography offensive to society, or is it our belief that the creation of such materials necessary involves some degree of exploitation? If the latter, what about the well-documented risks of exploitation of consenting adult pornographic performers? Does access to pornography increase or decrease adults' tendencies to engage in unsanctioned sexual acts?