Honestly, dude, you seem to be sort of engaging in black-and-white thinking that I wouldn't expect from a LW reader. Yes, a noncentral example of porn use such as "looking at a candid picture of a nude woman and not touching your dick" is almost definitely harmless. A much more central example of porn use, however, is a guy who has been jacking off to porn four times a week since he was about thirteen, and has in that time seen probably hundreds of porn videos, of which he has selected a few that appeal very specifically to his particular tastes, which he watches regularly. There's obviously no boundary where as soon as you do something labeled "watching porn" your brain will "release waves of dopamine and ruin your mind". But it doesn't seem hard to imagine that maybe that guy would be healthier if he changed his habits and started jacking off to his imagination (which he would probably end up doing much less frequently, I imagine), and "don't jack off to anything but your imagination" is a much, much more effective rule to precommit to than "stop watching porn if you get the feeling that you might be falling for a superstimulus", or whatever.
Honestly, dude, you seem to be sort of engaging in black-and-white thinking that I wouldn't expect from a LW reader.
Ironically, I imagined myself as making fun of other people's black-and-white thinking. (Masturbation completely healthy and harmless: in the skeptics discussion I linked. Porn: superstimulus ruining one's mind and life.) I tried to find out how exactly the world would look like for people who believe both of these things; mostly because nobody here tried to contradict either of them. What would be the logical consequences of these beliefs... (read more)
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.