MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
1d ago
Finally, the data don't seem to indicate that teenage girls are too young for pregnancy; the negative causal effects on their pregnancy are extremely mild and don't justify banning a 20 year old from dating a 15 year old.
It's important to disentangle physical readiness from mental/financial/social readiness. Teenagers are not ready to raise children. They're still in high school, if they drop out of school they'll have to get a low paying job and will have worse financial prospects for the rest of their life. If they try to stay in school the baby is likely to get a poor upbringing (or the burden falls on their parents, IF they have good parents). They're probably never going to college. It's not automatically guaranteed to ruin their life, but it's likely.
Unless, of course, the father takes on a proper father role and earns money and helps raise his child because he's a proper and responsible adult.
This almost never happens (and probably still wouldn't even if it were legal to admit to being the father). What's more likely is she just aborts and and then we have more dead babies and more psychological trauma. I wouldn't object in principle to a teenager marrying an adult ahead of time and then having marital sex, because this handles the pregnancy issue, and also prevents a lot of the potential for predatory relationships where a high status man convinces a gullible teen girl that he loves her and her bullshit detectors haven't finished developing. I would also have a lot less objections if birth control were free, widely accessible, and perfectly reliable, though I still think the emotional and sexual dynamics are unlikely to turn out well.
15 year old girls demonstrate adult intelligence
is just flatly false. You can score high on an IQ test, but it takes a lot longer for people to develop some emotional maturity and shed off their childhood naivety. I don't think it's impossible for an adult and a teenager to fall in love, but there's such a huge variety of predatory and charismatic people who tell all sorts of lies to get into someone's pants. I don't think this is good.
If we lived in a more monogamous, more honorable, more high-trust society where a girl's father and brother could beat the crap out of and/or ostracize creeps who make false promises and break her heart, I think a lower age of consent would be fine. If we had a magical mind reading or future forecasting machine that could pick out people acting in good faith I think a lower age of consent would be fine if restricted to people who passed this screening. But in the world we live in, where we have to make a law and apply it fairly to everyone, something like "15-17 years old if the other person is within a certain age range, 18 otherwise" is fine, which is what a lot of U.S. states have. Statistically, this reduces bad outcomes while still enabling normal behavior in most cases. What Epstein did is horrible and wrong. It's much easier to convinct if we have clear lines that were broken instead of having to pick and choose "well, this girl was maybe kind of taken advantage of but I guess he didn't break any laws... oh well, guess you can go free."
And keep in mind that an adult who genuinely falls in love with a teenager with good intentions can just date them without having sex until they're old enough, so it's not like these laws are causing tons of harm to people. The laws only get people too impulsive, impatient, or predatory to wait, which is exactly who we want off the streets.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3d ago
or with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detainer of any person
Seems like this obviates the need for malicious intent. Do people not know what "or" means?
MathWizard
Good things are good
5d ago
First time I've been the one being responded to for someone else's Quality Contribution (the credit card one), which is often a position of "you're about to get pwned by an effortpost destroying you with facts and logic and everyone else agrees with them instead of you", but the response was mostly informative and began with "you're half right", so I got out mostly unscathed.
And an important point to note is that there are scenarios in which I legitimately would advocate for violent resistance to law enforcement. And the most extreme and exaggerated claims about ICE would probably qualify if true. If the President of a country literally threw together a bunch of armed thugs and attempts a genocide by rounding up everyone of a certain race and sending them to death camps, and the rest of the government was unable or unwilling to stop it, violence from civilians would be an appropriate response. If that was what was actually happening, I, and I expect most good Americans, would be in favor of the protests. Well, at that point protests wouldn't really be appropriate, it would probably be more efficient and effective to throw a coup (a counter-coup? Since the President would have had to done a coup to get to this point) and/or civil war.
The point being, there are worlds where good people fight against law enforcement against evil governments. If you are deluded into thinking you live in such a world when you don't, that doesn't automatically make you a bad person. Though it does suggest a lot of lack of humility and rationality. You should be extremely sure of what's going on and the justifications before resorting to violence, not just "the news told me". Motivated reasoning taken too far. I consider the protestor's crimes to be negligence, rather than malice. But it's still a moral failure.
I tentatively agree with your more moderate points.
Sure. I think the age of consent laws Should have generous exceptions for young adults crossing the boundary. There's a difference between a 21 year old dating a 17 year old in his dating pool, vs a 40 year old teacher dating their 17 year old student. Yes, it is technically possible for them to actually fall in love and get married and form a stable family, but 90% of the time that's not what's going on there.
...maybe. If it was actual literal rape then yes, it should be a felony. If it's consensual but she only consented due to lies and deception (man tells girl he loves her and will divorce his wife for her but has no intention of doing so) then I'd say it's right on the border: minor felony or major misdemeanor. If they actually just like each other and there's no shenanigans going on then it's probably fine.
But... how do you tell the difference? In a legal sense, how does the law get set up in a way that you can prove one or the other beyond a reasonable doubt?
Now, in a lot of cases you don't make things illegal just because they might be bad, but in a lot of cases you do, when the probabilities are sufficiently strong. We make it illegal to drive while drunk, even if some people might be really good at driving and not crash even while drunk. Some people might be really good at holding their liquor and barely deteriorate in skill even if they blow a 0.08% BAC. Is it fair to jail simply for driving drunk if they haven't crashed or caused any harm or damage? Yes. Because they might. It's an irresponsible and negligent thing to do, and making it illegal causes more good on average than harm. Are innocent people inconvenienced by the inability to drive themselves while legally intoxicated but practically competent due to their unique situation? Sure. But a lot more people are saved in comparison to the minor harms that people can easily account for and compensate for.
I am tentatively in favor of decreasing the penalties for sex with teenagers. I don't think it should count as "rape" or use the term "rape" unless it's clear that there was actual force involved. But it should be punished, because it's not something adults should be doing. It's significantly more likely to cause long lasting harm than it is to make anyone's lives better.
Cool. I re-iterate that I agree age of consent laws should have exceptions for people close in age together. For people with larger age gaps, as far as I'm aware it is 100% legal for a 15 year old and a 40 year old to date while not having sex. Maybe it's super out of fashion to date while not having sex. Maybe this diminishes their likelihood of staying together when either of them could have sex with their peers. But if they actually fall in love they can be patient and keep it in their pants for a few years. If they're actually in love with each other specifically then they have their entire lives ahead of them, there's no need to be impatient. That's the thing here. It's not saying "you can never be together" it just says "wait, take things slow, and make sure before leaping into something you might regret". Teenagers are impulsive. I remember classmates in highschool getting in a new relationship every 3 months on repeat (this is also bad). If these chain relationships had been with 40 year old, wealthy, sexually mature/greedy/desperate men this would have likely been a lot worse. Saying "hey, slow down" seems like a good thing to me. Again, anyone acting in good faith can just date them without having sex for a couple years and everything is fine.
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