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Old Aug 12, 2013, 03:57 PM
hamster-bamster hamster-bamster is offline
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Member Since: Sep 2011
Location: Northern California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lycanthrope View Post
Well people who study brains tend to disagree with you. So I'll let you take it up with them. Porn releases huge amounts dopamine. Far more then exercise or even sex.
When you say "studies", you should then follow up by linking to "studies". That means articles from PubMed. You were not linking to studies. You were linking to some kind of a site whose editors are, quite obviously, complete idiots, if they posted a testimonial - and the FIRST one out of a series - from a guy who quit therapy because he was able to skip masturbating for two weeks.

The thing is - you are talking about Dopamine.

Have you ever seen dopamine?

I personally have not.

Nor am I equipped to assess claims with respect to dopamine, because I lack training in biochemistry (but if you link to studies in PubMed, and the articles you quote are peer-reviewed, then I might believe them because I have some faith in the peer review process). If a friend of mine with a PhD in biochemistry explains to me what is happening with dopamine, then I will try to follow, but every random piece of junk on the web that talks about dopamine does not gain credibility with me just because they use a scientific term. Most of the "scientific" claims on the web are junk science - probably 80% are. You cannot trust "junk science".

Since I am not able to assess the claims with respect to dopamine on their scientific basis, given my lack of training, I simply resort to making the assessment of whether the site shows basic common sense (since I am well qualified to assess that). The site does not demonstrate basic common sense based on the testimonials they select. It is true that testimonials might not be actually written by the site editors, but they were selected. The judgment that went into selecting the testimonials shows the true nature of the site's administration.

That is all - very simple.

If you can to continue talking about it, please, use peer-reviewed studies to bolster your claims. Even peer reviewed studies have problems with them, though, due to methodological difficulties. growlithing alluded to a couple of issues that makes such studies dubious, from the methodology standpoint; I am sure there are dozens more issues that are challenging.

So, not so straightforward as "porn=cocaine".