In his introduction to “The Worst Epidemic,” Sam Harris warns that the subject matter might be difficult for listeners. The topic is the global epidemic of child sexual abuse involving children as young as one year old. Sam is joined by Gabriel Dance, a NYT reporter who has thoroughly investigated this issue. Until I forced myself to listen, I had assumed that this predatory behavior was relatively rare, but I was shocked to learn that sexual predators have exploited every corner of the Internet. To illustrate, Dance mentions that law enforcement experts estimate that of the 9 million citizens of New Jersey, 400,000 have been exposed to these highly illegal images and videos, some of this exposure being inadvertent, but much of it being intentional. It makes you wonder who we are, as a nation, that so many among us are willing to torture children. The tragedy is widespread, making the technical challenges and law enforcement needs overwhelming.
As a public service, Sam has put this episode in front of his paywall. The topic spirals in many directions, including the misleading concept of “child pornography,” the failure of governments and tech companies to grapple with the problem, the tradeoff between online privacy and protecting children, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, photo DNA, the roles played by specific tech companies, the ethics of encryption, 
“sextortion,” and the culture of pedophiles.
I am proud to say that I have been a paid subscriber of Making Sense for years. Sam Harris does a great job of exploring complex and oftentimes thorny issues unflinchingly, week after week. From Sam’s About Page:
His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
If you are unfamiliar with the work of Sam Harris, I invite you to listen to this Episode, or any Episodes of Making Sense.
Looking at images does not torture children, however. For instance, we live off the graces and values of people from WW2 who were human experimenters. Their inhuman actions towards other people graced us with so much medical knowledge that today we owe them a debt for having found these things out. Maybe we should condemn them and say the debt we owe is “paid off” because of what they did to others. But nevertheless we still exist largely on their contributions.
People who use ill gotten gains are not themselves evil. If seeing some pictures stops real predation, then why not make it a mental health issue that all people can find and wank to this stuff if it prevents going out and harming real kids?
I suspect that you did not listen to the podcast. If you had, you would know that many real-life young children are being sexually abused every day to make more images and videos. It disturbs me immensely to think of someone deriving sexual pleasure from coercion and abuse of children, even from images employed years after those encounters. To me it is all the worse to consider the ongoing sexual abuse of young children. Did you really think through your comment before posting it?