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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4103 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

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The master of trolling is at it again. Hanania:

Let's say Jeffrey Epstein wants to have sex with a 14 year-old girl, and will pay her $10 million. The money will go into a mutual fund that will pay out when she's 21. The girl agrees, as do both of her parents. Should this be allowed? And are you male or female?

As of this writing, the results are:

  • "Yes, male" - 5.9%
  • "No, male" - 78.1%
  • "Yes, female" - 1.3%
  • "No, female" - 14.7%

Look at the engagement metrics on this tweet: 94,000 votes, 3.4 million views, 4,700 comments, 273 likes. This might be the most "popular" Hanania tweet of all time.

Now, I am one of the apparent sickos who voted "yes", but I can see some decent arguments for "no". I'm still surprised the results are this lopsided, and I'm also surprised that there appears to be no gender gap.

The whole thing just boils down to deontologists, consequentialists, and virtue ethicists failing to recognize that this is how other people think about morality, coupled with a layer of modern weirdness about just how destructive teenagers having sex is. The basic perspectives for those three branches are going to be:

  • Deontology - Prostituting teenagers is awful, we have a duty to reject it and try to prevent it. The price doesn't matter, teenage prostitution is unacceptable.

  • Consequentialist - Prostituting teenagers may harm them but receiving $10 million in the future helps someone a lot. This could be a significant improvement in total wellbeing and that's what to consider.

  • Virtue ethicist - Do you really want to be the kind of guy that enables Jeffrey Epstein prostituting teenagers? The price doesn't matter, I'm not that guy.

You have a straw consequentialist there. They should consider the second order effects of normalizing old guys having sex with consenting children for a lot of money; that being parents suddenly finding a previously untapped (wahey!) reservoir of them for old guys to fuck for lots of money.

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