A Boring Dystopia

These things make me wonder if some sort of bias is clouding my self judgement. Im against the death penalty, think abortions are a medical decision that one should make for themselves and dont think pornography or gambling is a moral issue, but a vice that should be managed carefully.

But apparently there is only a 50/50 chance of me being the above, and it throws me for a loop.

The submission says that this is a list of moral priorities, like it’s a list of what the American people think is most immoral to least immoral.

But it sounds like the data is listing what things are most widely agreed on to be immoral, to least agreed upon. Which is not the same thing.

This, on top of many others, shows how mind-bent in a bad way Americans are.

No wonder they have a shithead for "President".

People will just say whatever they think their peers want to hear. What people say doesn't tell you what they think or do.

Definitely more than 50% of people watch porn, despite this. A significant % of 'homosexuality is immoral' types have grindr accounts. Many women who say abortions are wrong also say their case was special and unique which makes it okay. That using marijuana one would definitely be higher before it become widely legal. Gambling too would've had more disapproval before private gambling rings were allowed to advertise at sport games.

These stats reflect public policy, rather than guide it (to a large extent) is my point.

I know there’s some clowns out there who think it’s morally wrong as in “sinful” but I do wonder if some of those were people worried about the murkiness of whether exploitation was involved in the making of some films.

I’m not against porn but I have heard the above argument, and those folks would be okay with, say, literotica and independent sex workers.

What about spanking my mistress?

None of this surprises me. Some of this is probably a uniquely American perspective with shitty American priorities (marijuana, death penalty).

But, without any other data from any other country there isn't any quantifiable context. This gets a good beat on America the nation, from one american to another..... but there's no clue about what priorites here are uniquely American vs just modern society/culture. There's literally no data being presented here to make that comparison. Like, poll a middle east country, and many will say it's immoral to be gay, way more immoral to watch porn. Poll India, and it'll be immoral to eat meat. Poll the UK, they probably have the same opinions on spankings, being rich....

Different countries have different, and arguably equally, stupid/fuckedup priorities. In that vein, anyone looking at this and going "omg, Americans are so dumb" is pretty fucking dumb. For all you know, your modern western country might have the exact same priorites, and be just be just as fucked up. There's no evidence here that proves/disproves that. So stay off the high horse.

8% of people think contraception is morally wrong?!

Yikes - that's practically 1 in 12 people.