Is Quark a Pimp?

[Spot261]

How do you figure?

Having fantasies about a certain thing, or activity, or person, does not mean that one wants that thing to happen IRL. That's why they call it a fantasy.

Fantasies in general are harmless, and oftentimes can be a healthy psychological outlet. Especially on a holodeck, where one can actually ACT OUT fantasies without harm to any geniune living creature.

Sorry dude, fantasies really are an indicator of likely offending,

https://eprints.worc.ac.uk/910/1/(20)Chapter_10.pdf

something the federation would be well aware of.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Geordi generated Dr. Brahms for professional reasons, but he also kissed her. In neither case, as far as we can tell, did the ship's computer tell on them.

Well, to be fair, the computer was the one that generated the Brahms hologram in the first place. Geordi just updated the program (with her real personality profile) so it would be easier to work with her.

The problem was not telling the real Brahms immediately when she came on board (and not deleting the program before she entered the holodeck).

Oh, and spot261, I'm still not buying it. Everyone has fantasies. You have them, I have them, everyone who ever lived (and will live) has them. It's a completely normal part of the human mind. The problem is not having the fantasies in the first place, the problem is for those very few people who act on them. Which is an entirely separate issue.

In any case, you can't report somebody simply for having fantasies - that way lies dictatorship and mind control.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I think that the idea that someone who has fantasies about something (and has therefore given thought to that something) is more likely to carry out an action related to that something than someone who hasn't is just obvious. There's a reason there are patterns that criminologists can look for. But, that doesn't mean that everyone who has fantasies lacks the self-control to separate that from their daily reality. In my opinion, the fundamental problem with the way you're looking at this, Mr. Laser Beam, is that you're assuming criminal consequences. In our corrupt and primitive society , the holodeck reporting "worrisome" fantasies would have shades of mental hygiene or pre-crime. But by the 24th century, either they've solved this problem (maybe a private holographic psychiatrist appears and talks to you a bit to make sure there's no problem, or maybe you talk to the ship's counselor, but such issues have been destigmatized as long as they aren't acted on against real people), or with the Betazoids around they've just gotten used to the possibility that people will be rummaging around in their heads all the time, anyway.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think that the idea that someone who has fantasies about something (and has therefore given thought to that something) is more likely to carry out an action related to that something than someone who hasn't is just obvious.

Hardly.

If you get cut off in traffic, for example, you may well have a fantasy go through your head about pulling out an Uzi and filling the bastard full of bullets. Does this mean YOU should be reported? Does this mean you're going to go out and buy an Uzi just so you can shoot the next poor sucker who cuts you off? No, it means you're pissed off and need to vent. It does NOT mean you actually want to kill somebody.

Another example would be married couples who tell each other their fantasies. Doesn't mean anybody's cheating - in fact it might even be a sign of a healthy relationship, that they can tell each other openly about their fantasies (maybe even put a bit of spice into the thing). Let's say my wife (if I had one ) said she had fantasies about, say, Hugh Jackman. Does this mean she'd jump Hugh's bones if given the opportunity? No, it means she has an imagination and is using it in a harmless fashion. Hell, most people who have fantasies would shit their pants if the actual opportunity came up to DO the thing. That's why they call them FANTASIES!

(And remember what I said earlier - having a holodeck available in which to act out one's fantasies probably makes it LESS likely that one will commit those acts IRL. You can get it out of your system without risk to anyone's actual life or property. Kind of like chopping wood)

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Sorry dude, fantasies really are an indicator of likely offending,

https://eprints.worc.ac.uk/910/1/(20)Chapter_10.pdf

something the federation would be well aware of.

This article refers to a lot of other articles but doesn't mention anything about the statistics.

Saying there might be a correlation between violent fantasies and violent acts is obvious, but that doesn't mean that making the transition doesn't require an internal willingness to do violence. Or else every Grand Theft Auto player would be out jacking cars.

Asserting vague correlational data and psychological theory as an excuse to police individual behavior is a dangerous practice that has been used to justify violence against minorities and homosexuals.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Hardly.

If you get cut off in traffic, for example, you may well have a fantasy go through your head about pulling out an Uzi and filling the bastard full of bullets. Does this mean YOU should be reported? Does this mean you're going to go out and buy an Uzi just so you can shoot the next poor sucker who cuts you off? No, it means you're pissed off and need to vent. It does NOT mean you actually want to kill somebody.

You've completely and utterly missed my point. Let me ask it as a question: Is someone who has thought of doing something, even as a fantasy, more or less likely to actually do the act than someone who has never even thought about doing it?

The answer to that should be obvious. As I went on to say, thinking of the act doesn't mean you lack the wisdom or control to keep yourself from actually thinking it is a good idea or doing it.

BUT, reinforcing behaviors with *actionable* fantasies - holodecks, video games, etc - *can* lead to a problem. Again, it doesn't mean one will act on their impulses. But there IS a reason that playing Grand Theft Auto used to make me sorta want to speed and run over people *in my real car* afterward. I didn't, of course, but someone with less impulse control might develop a problem.

If you've ever watched the TV show Criminal Minds, when they talk about how the unsub used to torture animals in his basement before moving on to kidnapping and torturing young women (or whomever), they're not just making that part up. Any 99 people out of 100 who live out violent sexual fantasies on the holodeck might be fine - just letting off steam, they're fine with the difference between that and reality, etc. But that 100th person is *practicing*. And if loading a program like that causes a virtual counselor to appear and ask a few questions at the beginning and end, I don't think that's an overbearing precaution - *especially* if no portion of it is ever reported, anyway, unless a problem is detected.

 

[scotpens]

My sympathy goes out to Broik or whoever it is who has to clean the holosuites

Please, we're NOT going to post a link to that Holodeck Janitor piece again . . .

 

[Timo]

Sorry dude, fantasies really are an indicator of likely offending

It should be noted that this is junk science at its worst. Seeing correlations in data is fine; drawing conclusions is where science ends and prejudice starts. "Social sciences" just pretend that the step down to the abyss doesn't exist and that they control the literally billions of variables in human studies to a level sufficient to claim that the correlation equals a causal connection.

It's not a problem when the subject matter is irrelevant, as in most social sciences. When it broaches into actually affecting people's lives as in here, one should try out asking the little questions like "how does one find out how often exactly women fantasize about sex daily?" and deciding "gee, they're the experts, surely they know" isn't cutting it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

In our society, we are seeing a slightly relaxed attitude towards prostitution as a victimless crime and a somewhat greater sympathy for prostitutes as "sex workers" who deserve to be protected by the law and treated with compassion. There is even a push to decriminalize prostitution to help prostitutes get help and have legal rights when they are abused/raped. I wonder where humans will be in 200 on the subject of the world's oldest profession. In ST, we see Starfleet officers encounter prostitution and sexual slavery with various reactions. Is it even made clear that prostitution is against federal law? Sisko, as a Starfleet Commander would never knowingly break Fedration law. Sisko and Kira both seem disgusted by Quark on a personal level but tolerate Quark's, and everything it offers, as a necessary evil.

This is quite a mature way of looking at it.

I do tend to err on the side of, the Starfleet officers have their moral code and principals, but maybe acquiesce to 'local custom'.... within certain boundaries. Perhaps the Starfleet environment provides those protections that wouldn't otherwise be available?

 

[JeffinOakland]

This is quite a mature way of looking at it.

I do tend to err on the side of, the Starfleet officers have their moral code and principals, but maybe acquiesce to 'local custom'.... within certain boundaries. Perhaps the Starfleet environment provides those protections that wouldn't otherwise be available?

We don't know. In TOS, we see the officers watch the Orion slave girls quite cheerfully and the girls themselves seem happy enough. Apparently, adolescent male fantasies do come true in the future.

 

[Lance]

^ True, "The Cage" would seem to indicate that prostitution is indeed alive and well in the 23rd century. Pike even seems to think becoming a pimp is a viable alternative career option for a former Starfleet officer!

Sure, ENT retroactively attempted to change the nature of what the Orion Slave Girls really were. But that clearly wasn't the intention in TOS.

 

[Spot261]

You've completely and utterly missed my point. Let me ask it as a question: Is someone who has thought of doing something, even as a fantasy, more or less likely to actually do the act than someone who has never even thought about doing it?

This, absolutely having the fantasy and seeking out an outlet is an indicator of likely offending. Law enforcement are well aware of this and using such intelligence in profiling offenders is standard practise.

Watching child porn (for instance) is a strong indicator of increased probability of being an active abuser and whilst correlation does not imply causality that misses the point. To be perfectly blunt Timo to claim social scientists do not get the distinction between correlation and causality simply demonstrates an ignorance about social sciences on your part. They understand it perfectly well, the misunderstanding lies in you inferring a statement that was never made

No one suggested causality, merely sign posts that suggest best allocation of investigative and safegaurding resources. This is standard practise today - i know this, dealing with detained offenders and monitoring risk factors on their discharge into society is my job. Disclosing fantasies is very much taken as an indicator of risk and factored into the decision making process. This isn't isn't armchair expertise, it's what happens in the real world and in no way does anyone suggest it represents prejudice, merely good practise.

Assertions that such leads to prejudice completely miss the point that law enforcement agencies already do use such intelligence when profiling suspects, not to convict people, but to facilitate effective investigative services and public protection. Because it works perfectly well in any time frame. There is no reason to suspect starfleet would have chosen to unlearn these lessons in a few hundred years time.

 

[Timo]

I'm not concerned about prejudice here - I'm just pointing out that the whole "study" here is bogus from the get-go.

It may well be that having sexual fantasies of certain types is related to being a sexual offender. But there is no science to tell us whether a person is having sexual fantasies. This is not something that can be studied by any method existing today - it would require working telepathy and we're not there yet.

So the statistics on which these kinds of studies are based are faulty at the root. What can be done is record the number of porn magazines found at a perp's lair, or the number of times he or she has googled for child abuse and then clicked on the "images" category. But this does nothing to establish what is going on inside the perp's noggin.

What the link offers is empty babbling by people who make baseless claims with authority. What the underlying studies may contain is statistics on that which can be measured - but this cannot tell even a tiny fraction of the story the people babbling here claim is being told. What the link instead shows is personal interpretations on individual cases being generalized without any justification, and that's definitely the antithesis of science.

Disclosing fantasies

is the relevant part here. Disclosing how? People always lie, and especially about the subject matter here. Different people lie differently, and for different reasons. If there's a correlation between an offender boasting about his fantasies and being guilty of the crimes he's being interviewed for, this provides no basis for declaring as offenders those boasting about their fantasies - there's no statistical validity on a study performed basically exclusively on actual offenders.

By all means perform empirical science here: do profiling, apply said profiling, and then study whether this helps in making more true positives (arrests of culprits) and true negatives (release of innocents) and fewer false positives and possibly also false negatives. But the profiling carries no validity a priori, not if based on mumbo-jumbo such as implied in the link here. Nor is something being "standard practice" exactly high praise, considering how so many trusted methods of crime-fighting have been proven to be bogus already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spot261]

Then in complete opposition to accepted practise in law enforcement you are suggesting that someone with a stash of child porn in their basement is no more likely a suspect than anyone else in a child abuse case? The fantasy is meaningless as a precursor to the act?

Please be serious

 

[USS Triumphant]

But there is no science to tell us whether a person is having sexual fantasies. This is not something that can be studied by any method existing today - it would require working telepathy and we're not there yet.

1. The Federation *has* telepaths, so you're no longer applying this properly in relationship to the original question.
2. You're correct - someone now *could* keep their fantasies perfectly secret. But again, this doesn't apply to running a program on a holodeck - especially not a holodeck owned by someone else. The computer would know, and the operator might, depending on the situation and/or their ethics. Quark would *definitely* know.

And, it also doesn't work very well even in the present, because the accumulation of the artifacts of the fantasy are material evidence that a person lacks the will or self-discipline to keep their fantasy completely internal - or possible to even intends to do so. I suppose it's *possible* that a quarter of the entire human population (that I'm not in) has completely secret internal fantasies about molesting jackalopes that they NEVER exhibit any outward sign of. I doubt it, but I also can't prove that isn't true. (God, you've got me sounding like a Fox News pundit talking about Democrats. >.< )

But as soon as someone begins any sort of real actions based on having those fantasies - acquiring jackalope porn or jackalope costumes or stuffed jackalopes "with realistic orifices", going out of their way to put themselves in places where jackalopes are, or whatever - then they're creating evidence that could potentially be seen by others. And/or monitored by law enforcement. Evidence that they might be less trustworthy alone around jackalopes than someone who isn't doing all of that.

 

[Timo]

Then in complete opposition to accepted practise in law enforcement you are suggesting that someone with a stash of child porn in their basement is no more likely a suspect than anyone else in a child abuse case? The fantasy is meaningless as a precursor to the act?

Just pointing out that there is zero scientific support for such a claim. And that the charlatans who participated in that article (and, by extension, you) are blind to their utter stupidity in maintaining the opposite belief.

If a child abuse offender is investigated, child porn may be found. What may also be found is that he or she has five toes in the left foot. Neither finding works in the reverse: there is no indication that having five toes makes you a likelier culprit in child abuse.

And that's just with the physical evidence of child porn, on which statistical studies can be made to ascertain whether possessing it is more or less common than having five toes on the left foot. Your utterly baseless claim that having sexual fantasies (in general, although you probably meant of a specific sort) is indicative of being an offender goes one step further in ignorance, as no evidence can be gathered on the prevalence of such fantasies.

By all means keep on witch hunting. No doubt it works, and it helps you get your offender - that's not something that would require a scientific basis, as we can readily tell from history (although a proper study might help to find a better way to get the witch). It just doesn't follow in any fashion that your claim about a correlation let alone a causation between fantasies and offending would have validity.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

1. The Federation *has* telepaths, so you're no longer applying this properly in relationship to the original question.

Very true - it only refers to the silly claim made about real-world correlation or causation, as intended.

In Trek, though, telepaths don't seem to do much in court. It would be a bit odd that they would be allowed to conduct statistical studies on the mental honesty of Joe Average if they can't testify in the case of Abe Abuser.

Then again, Picard does refer to screenings of some sort in "Justice", without going into specifics. Perhaps the UFP does know better after all.

2. You're correct - someone now *could* keep their fantasies perfectly secret. But again, this doesn't apply to running a program on a holodeck - especially not a holodeck owned by someone else. The computer would know, and the operator might, depending on the situation and/or their ethics. Quark would *definitely* know.

Hard to tell. I mean, it would be in the interests of the user to prevent others from knowing if such things did in fact matter in the UFP (or in other Trek realms where justice might be swifter and harsher). So it might be standard practice to prevent records from being stored, and any dealer who forbids the user from sticking her personal jammer chip in the isolinear port would go out of business overnight.

Exposing one's fantasies aboard a Starfleet vessel would of course be different, Starfleet being the de facto law enforcement organization of the UFP and all. But since we see that fantasies carry no consequences even for Starfleet employees (save perhaps for a chat with Troi, by TOS precedent potentially the equivalent of fifteen years in jail today), we have another angle on the issue: that the UFP either doesn't believe that fantasies are harmful, or doesn't act on the fact. Or then that it has solid data on which specific fantasy profiles require immediate therapy for the perpetrator.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spot261]

Just pointing out that there is zero scientific support for such a claim. And that the charlatans who participated in that article (and, by extension, you) are blind to their utter stupidity in maintaining the opposite belief.

Except there is evidence for such a claim, lots of it in fact.

As I have no journal access at home wikipedia will have to substitute:;

A 1987 report by the U.S.A. National Institute of Justice described "a disturbing correlation" between traders of child pornography and acts of child molestation.[6]

2008longitudinal study of 341 convicted child molesters in America found that pornography's use correlated significantly with their rate of sexually re-offending. Frequency of pornography use was primarily a further risk factor for higher-risk offenders, when compared with lower-risk offenders, and use of highly deviant pornography correlated with increased recidivism risk for all groups.[7

The majority of men who have been charged with or convicted of child pornography offenses show pedophilic profiles on phallometric testing.[8]

A study with a sample of 201 adult male child pornography offenders using police databases examined charges or convictions after the index child pornography offense(s). 56% of the sample had a prior criminal record, 24% had prior contact sexual offenses, and 15% had prior child pornography offenses.

According to the Mayo Clinic of the U.S.A., studies and case reports indicate that 30% to 80% of individuals who viewed child pornography and 76% of individuals who were arrested for Internet child pornography had molested a child, however they note that it is difficult to know how many people progress from computerized child pornography to physical acts against children and how many would have progressed to physical acts without the computer being involved.[10]

A study conducted by psychologists at the American Federal Bureau of Prisons has concluded that "many Internet child pornography offenders may be undetected child molesters", finding a slightly higher percentage of molesters among child pornography offenders than the Mayo Clinic study

The difference between causaility and correlation is undisputed, no claims have been made regarding causality, but for profiling all that is needed is correlation. As demonstrated above users of child porn are FAR more likely to also be active abusers. Drastically so in fact. To continue insisting ot the contrary would be ridiculous and smack of being ideological.

Law enforcement make use of this pretty much undisputed correlation in their profiling (profiling which has led to hugely improved conviction rates) and there is no reason to suppose that such methods would have been discontinued by the federation.

 

[JeffinOakland]

If a child goes missing and there's a convicted sex-offender in the neighborhood; you can bet the police are checking his place first and bringing him in for questioning first. It's not "profiling" if its common sense.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Then in complete opposition to accepted practise in law enforcement you are suggesting that someone with a stash of child porn in their basement is no more likely a suspect than anyone else in a child abuse case? The fantasy is meaningless as a precursor to the act?

Well, that's different, because child porn itself is illegal - real children are harmed in the making of it, so of course the creation, possession and viewing of it is justifiably a crime and also probably a precursor to other crimes.

With a holodeck, on the other hand, one can run any program desired with absolutely no consequence whatsoever to anyone else. Use of a holodeck is completely harmless to others, so therefore, no holodeck program can ever be a crime. And if it's not a crime, why report it or make a big deal about its use?

Like I said, even if somebody has rape or murder fantasies and acts them out on the holodeck, I'd argue that it makes them LESS likely to commit such crimes in real life, because they can get it out of their system in a pure fantasy setting with absolutely no harm whatsoever to anything or anyone else.