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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27132 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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So, in other Aella news, she's channelling the spirit of Hanania with this poll:

Suppose you have a 13 year old child dying of a terminal illness, and their final wish is to lose their virginity before they die. Is it ethical for the Make A Wish Foundation to hire them a prostitute?

Options are (with their current percentages):

  • yes, any prostitute (10.7%)
  • yes, only child prostitute (3.9%)
  • yes, only adult prostitute (9.8%)
  • no (75.6%)

Of course Aella with her reach manages to get normies to see her posts and the replies are wild that such a person could even exist, some choice replies:

Bro how do you niggas even think of shit like this

What if you were executed at gitmo that would be so crazy

Is this "chick" a pedo? (poll, results are 56.5% yes, 21.7% no, 21.7% "show me the results")

Again I ask, what is wrong with you and why do you keep showing up on my timeline?

While the poll itself may be interesting, what I find most interesting of all are the responses from the normies (there are responses that look objectively at the situation and say stuff like "no, if anyone is going to hire prostitutes it should be the parents, not the make a wish foundation", but they all tend to have stuff like "e/acc" in their usernames so they aren't your average randos). These tend to be extremely negative, but not negative in a "I know what I hate and this is it" form but rather a "first encounter with a terrible eldrich abomination you want to see destroyed but are confused at how could it even exist" sort of way. It does not feel like pure hate, but rather a hate that is born of fear, true xenophobia in its original meaning of the word. Nevertheless it is still a form of hate and you can quite easily see the vitriol directed towards Aella, merely for posting this poll.

My worry here though is that as technology advances and a sliver of people with disproportionate cultural cachet adopt belief systems like those of Aella and decouple from the low sophistication ways of thinking common in most westerners along with completely different cultures entering the west and taking root the current indigenous westerners will find their belief and value systems squeezed on both sides, from above by the likes of people who think like Aella does (nothing wrong with how she thinks, in fact I support it) along with from below by the value systems of recent migrants (who still care about stuff like honour and shame etc.).

While this may be a difficult time for the squeezed westereners themselves (I have little sympathy though, these very same people expect migrants to deal with a far bigger and more rapid cultural shock and blame them if they migrants take steps to mitigate this impact), I am more concerned about potential increased societal scale strife as people lash out from being put in a world that they no longer understand (see the "what if you were executed at gitmo" response above, I for one am glad this person has no power and hope it stays this way).

Naturally I have no doubt that any reified violence by the disaffected would be put down with the same prejudice we use for terrorist attacks these days, but it would still not be a good time for social harmony and that has widespread social impacts beyond a small handful of people cracking and going on a rampage where they kill a few people before bring brought down themselves.

You haven't spelled out how exactly Aella's moral reasoning here is more "sophisticated" than that of Joe off the street.

Is it that she is routinely able to conjure up difficult thought experiments where no answer can fail to unnerve those with pedestrian moral intuitions? Admittedly, doing so with the regularity she does might demand very slightly higher than average intelligence, but I would be surprised if the vast majority of her Twitter readership did not clear that bar.

("Bro how do you niggas even think of shit like this" being a counterexample, but something tells me that the author of that comment is not representative of her audience.)

Or is it that her tone is more level than some of her detractors', demonstrating a mind unclouded by petty emotions? Any moral belief has to have an emotional core. Even hard-nosed consequentialists ultimately have to resort to axioms defining what is good and what is bad. Downthread you dismiss "have the child r*ped by a pedo" as a possible alternative, because the child wouldn't enjoy it. But then nothing would stop a more-decoupled-than-thou elite from patting you on the head and chiding you about how naive it is to elevate the wishes/utility of a child (or adult, it doesn't make a difference) to the status of moral principle. (Such an attitude might already have achieved a certain level of prevalence in the (as you see it) incipient British elite that you often stump for, with its spiritual capital in Rotherham.) After all, utilitarianism may be a generalization of a set post-hoc rationalizations that people make when defending moral assertions using common sense, but utilitarianism itself is a tiny, a-priori-arbitrary point in the space of possible consequentalisms.

Aella's polls piss people off because of their gratuitousness. Her goal is not to start a moral debate through participation in which readers will emerge with a more harmonious/well-founded/highly ramified model of ethics etc. etc. etc., let alone leaving them better equipped for moral action. "Nobody said that it was." Well, what is she trying to accomplish then? What can be the purpose of contriving an extremely unlikely scenario that smushes together the concepts "child" and "sex" and inviting people to think through the uncomfortable details? Leaving aside the partial answer of "driving engagement", the other most likely other answer is "pour épater le bourgeois". And decoupling/"sophistication" is not the axis that determines how annoyed readers will be by such antics. "Épater le bourgeois" isn't exactly heady stuff; it's a game people have been forced to play for centuries by now, which has definitely played a role in creating the [REDACTED] state of Western ethics you gesture at downthread. It's like the "penis" game, but for adults, and with a greater possibility of sinister/subversive intent. Even your "nigga" quotation doesn't deny that Aella actually has found a paradox resulting from ordinary moral judgments being brought into conflict with one another. It's just that for most people, going out of one's way to imagine scenarios where one is forced to choose the lesser of two evils involving sex with children is not a normal form of recreation, and it's understandable to be put off by those for whom it is.

To be honest with you I also think this question is stupid and gross, because sex is meant to be sacred. In a society run in a way I would like it my answer would be an absolute, immediate no because sex is sacred and powerful, and you shouldn't let them have sex for the same reason you wouldn't hand a 5 year old a loaded revolver.

However westereners have made sex completely and utterly profane to the point of total ignominy. I want them to experience the logical consequences of their professed belief system, and I want them to expeirence these consequences good and hard.

If your problem is just that you're disappointed that Westerners' descent into depravity is being checked by a residue of moral common sense because you are rooting for our downfall, you should have been more up front about that in your top-level post. I can't imagine what is supposed to be the difference between the replies you cited disapprovingly and how your ideal traditional Muslim would react to the tweet.

Edit: Except to the extent that sex with children is practiced in the Muslim world/condoned in the Quran.

(I have little sympathy though, these very same people expect migrants to deal with a far bigger and more rapid cultural shock and blame them if they migrants take steps to mitigate this impact),

Sophomoric understanding of the issue. I believe that illegal migrants are a net negative to the economy, but even if you think they're a net positive it remains undeniable that the benefits and drawbacks of immigrants are not equally distributed. Most opposition to migrants comes from people who have to deal with the added competition for housing and wage-based jobs (among countless other negative externalities), and in many cases these people explicitly voted against these migrants showing up. You look at a population placed under such severe stress that you're even predicting they're going to violently resist what's happening to them, and you don't have any sympathy for them because ...they're opposed to their own impoverishment? Of course they're going to get upset that their livelihoods and communities are being destroyed, and of course they're going to blame the migrants who are the mechanism by which this is happening! They don't "expect" the migrants to deal with a bigger and more rapid cultural shock, they want the migrants to fuck off entirely (I imagine a right-winger with a high verbal IQ would word this differently, but I think that's an accurate approximation of the working class attitude here) and solve both problems at once.

Honestly some of the reactions here make me feel we’ve drifted away from the high-decoupling crowd we used to be, closer to normie conservatism. Pray god some of these people never get into a moral philosophy class or their heads will explode. “Why are you even thinking about pushing fat men off bridges? Are you some kind of sicko?”

closer to normie conservatism

I've noticed the same thing. I've noticed users getting on the moral high horse in a variety of posts without even attempting to engage with the meat of the post or entertain the hypothetical and trying to flesh out why that would be not preferable.

You've smelled it when it's too late though. When top level comments that were nothing but moralizing started showing up, I knew it was too late. There were plenty of these in the gender war posts.

Well, I guess this is one more reason to justify my disdain of the sex-relations threads.

When top level comments that were nothing but moralizing started showing up, I knew it was too late.

First time?

And while I'm sure the lurkers appreciate takes that aren't merely adding to the "bog-standard 90s South Christian morality fights a woke argument made by someone who doesn't quite understand the where or why woke even got that argument in the first place" (if one takes updoots as evidence of engagement, which is the only feedback I ever seem to get when I do this), even that might as well be ChatGPT-rephrased or just a bog-standard repost after a while since my arguments aren't getting sharper.

Of course, my revealed preference is clearly that I'd rather masturbate do short-form point-scoring on the Internet than spend more time doing something about it, so...

Eh, I think willingness-to-decouple trades off with willingness-to-take-bait. There’s been a lot of the latter since the SSC days.

Though…there might be a more general selection for cynicism? It’s like decon/reconstruction in media. There’s diminishing returns to covering the same stuff. Sincerity becomes naïveté, or nuance becomes Subverting Expectations™. Signaling all the way down. Which part of the cycle are we in?

We haven't drifted from the high-decoupling crowd, the crowd has drifted away from high-decoupling. I used to love these sorts of thought experiments, now I roll my eyes at them at best.

Right, because the Culture War has taught many the lesson that an invitation to engage in high-decoupling analysis is a trap.

Okay, teleport back to the 1700s. You're a Christian. A high decoupler invites you to a talk about how to assess the historicity of the bible. Do you accept?

On the one hand, yeah, it's a trap to convince you to be a non-denominational Deist damn you to hell for eternity and expel you from polite society.

On the other hand, the person's more right than they know, because the Christian God actually isn't real!

The ideologies and material practices of the next 50 years will be different from those of today, in ways that will necessarily not be emotionally 'coupled' in the way today's issues are. By refusing to 'decouple', you're covering your ears as the world changes around you.

By refusing to 'decouple', you're covering your ears as the world changes around you.

La-la-la, can't hear you.

Honestly, "Christian God not real!" and you know this how? Oh, Science, blah blah blah, let's argue this out with the same arguments for the past three hundred years.

That's not a good example - they were right for the wrong reasons? they were right but didn't know how right they were? they were right because I know they were right because I don't believe in Christian God?

I'm sure society will be very different in 50 years time. I've already seen huge changes in the society I grew up in, over the past 40 years. But that does not mean that someone proposing a 'decoupled' idea is right; am I to 'emotionally uncouple' and go "well back when I was in my 30s it was generally frowned upon to rape 6 year olds, but hey today is a different era and let's not cover our ears as the world changes!"

Oh, Science, blah blah

Evolution by natural selection is easily the most important 'theological' thing to ever happen, it (together with history) explains every impulse that God is claimed to have given to man by independent choice. Every unexplainable natural phenomenon used to be attributable to God, and his role today in that front is minimal due to science - even today's Christians still claim various modern miracles (and if you investigate one of them deeply enough, it inevitably collapses). Like, how does Christianity relate to AGI? It doesn't! Does this mean AGI won't happen?

But that does not mean that someone proposing a 'decoupled' idea is right;

It means that some of them are in some parts right, and if you don't decouple you'll not be able to notice that

Like, how does Christianity relate to AGI? It doesn't! Does this mean AGI won't happen?

Your question can be broken down into two parts (I'm assuming AGI means "Artificial General Intelligence").

(1) How does Christianity relate to AGI?

On the same basis it relates to all other creations of humanity and the way we conduct ourselves, are we trying to make a heaven on earth that will instead result in a hell on earth?

(2) Does this mean AGI won't happen?

Yes. But that's because I don't believe all the hopes/fears about Fairy Godmother AI and Paperclippers. We'll get machine intelligence of a kind, but we won't get Colossus or HAL or the Culture AIs. What we'll get will be even more of the same that we're seeing now - using AGI to fake up term papers etc., to generate articles for online and mainstream media, to assist scammers in scamming, and used as a very blunt sorting instrument by government. White collar jobs will now be as precarious as blue collar jobs have been. But we're not going to get the Singularity, post-scarcity, or even dystopias. Just more of the same, even faster.

Yes. But that's because I don't believe all the hopes/fears about Fairy Godmother AI and Paperclippers. We'll get machine intelligence of a kind, but we won't get Colossus or HAL or the Culture AIs

The argument is incredibly compact. Do you believe that 1) computers can't have the intelligence and independent action of humans, despite obvious material paths to accomplishing that we currently are aggressively pursuing or that 2) we won't unleash that intelligence and independent action, despite the truly enormous potential individual and collective benefits of doing so?

Like, a million years ago there weren't humans (homo sapien). We evolved. Whether or not you believe in god, the fossil record and DNA clearly demonstrates that. Imagine a million years from now. If we create things smarter and more capable than ourselves, why won't they end up on top in a million years, in the same way we did?

And how long does it look like it'll take? A thousand seems more plausible than a million, given computers weren't a thing 200 years ago. A hundred or two seems more plausible than a thousand. And suddenly it's an issue for your grandchildren, at least.

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Every unexplainable natural phenomenon used to be attributable to God, and his role today in that front is minimal due to science

What's your stance on human free will?

A reasonable question, and an important one, but not one I really want to discuss right now tbh.

I think it's not too relevant to the point that we have a lot of evidence there's not a heaven with jesus and angels and the happy souls of all the do-gooders that we didn't have a thousand years ago. Whether there's something non-mechanistic going on with the universe - important, tied up in why people are so attracted to things like Christianity, but still doesn't prove Christianity true.

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When the 6 year olds are potentially smarter and stronger and more intelligent than the average human alive today, then it becomes a farcical hill to die on. I chuckle at the mental image of telling a transhuman gigachad "child" that they're not allowed to have sex because of rules put in place before they were beyond the fervent dreams of futurists.

Changes of a similar magnitude are about to happen, in decades rather than centuries. For a more prosaic example, all the legal and moral injunctions against drunk driving cease to apply when the vehicles are autonomously driving themselves.

If your future six year old is as big, strong, intelligent, and developmentally mature as a 30 year old of today, then they'll be adults. Adults can have sex.

What we are talking about is "in twenty years time, when six year olds are still at the development rate that six year olds of today are, will the cultural viewpoints have shifted to make it acceptable for 30 year old adults of then to fuck six year olds of then?" and not some fevered transhumanist dream.

Decades won't make a difference, and I think you are vastly overestimating the rate and ease of technological progress to bring your dream about. As to autonomous vehicles - well, let's wait and see how that turns out. A drunk guy decides to over-ride his autonomous vehicle? That's going to incur the same legal penalties. Somebody hacks the software for the lulz and makes cars drive into crowds? Ditto. Nobody is going to say "well it was a driverless car, there's no law about that!"

Congratulations! You've now decoupled from the current implications of being a 6 year old child, and considered how norms might change as circumstances do. I wonder what the implications are that certain people have very different cognitive maturities at different ages, wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to wait two decades to consider whether a 16 yo child getting admitted to MIT might benefit from a waiver of the restrictions typically enforced on all teens till an arbitrary and not particularly well grounded age?

The point of decoupling is that it lets you see that the differences you perceive as qualitative are merely quantitative, even if in this particular scenario there's likely no actual 6 year old child out there with the cognitive abilities of a typical adult.

As for the whole "fevered transhumanist dream" bit, well there's nothing I need to tell you that reality won't set straight shortly. I don't think you're in such ill health that you can't reasonably expect to be around in 20 years to see for yourself. I for one enjoy it immensely when the genre of reality itself changes to science fiction, while reserving my judgement of whether or not to add the dystopia/utopia tag afterwards.

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I'm not refusing to decouple, I'm refusing to publicly engage in high-decoupling analysis with someone acting in bad faith. The only point in publicly engaging in Aella's thought experiment is to demonstrate that I'm willing to consider something generally considered anathema.

Even anonymously?

I guess Nybbler understood "trap" different than I did, but for me anonymity does not enter into it.

I'm not afraid of being caught expressing a naughty opinion and getting cancelled (well there's that too, I guess), I think all these high-decoupling thought experiments are a lie. Their goal isn't to analyse something from all possible avenues, their goal is to get you to agree with something you normally wouldn't, by presenting you with a novel scenario that you didn't have time to process fully yet. It would be bad enough if this game had fair rules, but the same people who demand you change your mind on abortion, because of your answer to a convoluted scenario involving an abducted violinist, feel no obligation to participate in the conversation when you point out their logic justifies infanticide as well. This is why the "lower class" responses that Hanania is whining about are 100% correct, as they refuse to participate in something that was not put forward in good faith.

Yes, there's that trap too.

Even pseudonymously; you burn that pseudonym. Anonymously, sure, but then you're just jerking around on 4chan or the equivalent.

Suppose you have a 13 year old child dying of a terminal illness, and their final wish is to lose their virginity before they die. Is it ethical for the Make A Wish Foundation to hire them a prostitute?

This is not completely fantastical scenario.

Original source is long gone, but here is the second best, Free Republic mirror and lively discussion thread and other thread

Dying boy, 15, gets wish: losing virginity Chicago Sun Times ^ | 12/23/01 | BY BENJAMIN ERRETT

Posted on 12/23/2001, 3:26:24 PM by Mopp4

A terminally ill boy had his dying wish granted in Australia this month, but ethicists are still at odds over whether it was the right thing to do. The wish was not for a trip to Disneyland or to meet a famous sports star. Instead, the 15-year-old wanted to lose his virginity before he died of cancer. The boy, who remains anonymous but was called Jack by the Australian media, did not want his parents to know about his request. Because of his many years spent in the hospital, he had no girlfriend or female friends. Jack died last week, but not before having his last wish granted. Without the knowledge of his parents or hospital staff, friends arranged an encounter with a prostitute outside of hospital premises. All precautions were taken, and the organizers made sure the act was fully consensual. The issue has sparked fierce debate over the legal and ethical implications of granting the boy's request. By law, Jack was still a child, and the woman involved could in theory face charges for having sex with a minor. The debate was sparked by the hospital's child psychologist, who wrote a letter to "Life Matters," a radio show in which academics debate ethical and moral dilemmas. The scenario was presented in the abstract, with no details about the boy's identity.

No surprise, boomer cons in 2001 reacted as expected.

My inital reaction to this article was shock. This boy is dying at age 15 and the most important thing in the world to him is to get laid before he passes on. He didn't even want his parents to know about it. Is this reflective of the way young people view life today? I don't care that I will be missing out on the chance to lead a full life, just let me have sex before I go?

This is the sort of soul-less, animalistic response to impending death that might be expected from a human child raised by beasts.

Interesting: His eternal life is immediately before him. And this "child of the media" wants 30 seconds of immediate sexual gratification rather than an eternity of life.

What can be seen as more surprising, this story was revived in 2014 by Eric Raymond on his blog and reaction of libertarian both left and right tended to be positive and affirming.

I’d go so far as to say that the most important experience this hooker gave the kid probably wasn’t the orgasm itself but her natural human compassion for a dying child, her willingness to touch him and comfort him and give him what he had wished for.

Something not thinkable today.

it seemed pretty gross to me.

Me too, but the whole fucking thing is gross as shit. Cancer, terminal illness, dying wishes: fundamentally obscene. It is not for nothing that Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est included references to cancer as being obscene. He was right, as Scott Alexander observed a decade ago.

I don't really have much of a position on that. Having seen some shit working in the healthcare industry, and seen a few children dying from cancer, I am willing to say that this isn't terribly bad, given the child's circumstances. Reasonable people can be on either side of this issue. Cancer is a nasty, nasty disease: this guy is looking down the barrel of Who By Very Slow Decay, pediatric edition. Mercifully that is a bit faster than the geriatric version.

Who By Very Slow Decay

      • yeah.

Thankfully my mother passed before she deteriorated that far, but many years ago I decided that at the first serious downturn in my health, I will euthanize myself in the quickest, most painless way I can (that doesn't leave a mess or inconvenience other people). I will do this with a clear conscience, as I have no children or other dependents and have never had a Significant Other.

I mean...if I'm terminally ill and of sound mind, I'm probably going for euthanasia, either by the DIY method or the cleaner, government-approved one, assuming that medical aid in dying becomes more common and easily accessible in 50 or 60 years. It's either a last walk in the woods with my method of choice - and I'll be a physician, so I'll know damn well what it takes to kill a human being - or a prescription for a lethal dose of poison from another doctor. It's a personal decision, but for me: fuck that shit, let's get it over with in one go and spare me and the people around me the suffering. I could potentially be talked into "comfort care only" by family members that I was close enough to and who I cared about enough...but it better be comfort care only. I don't want to suffer at all, and if they need to pump so much morphine into me that it stops me from breathing so much the better.

What can be seen as more surprising, this story was revived in 2014 by Eric Raymond on his blog and reaction of libertarian both left and right tended to be positive and affirming.

Off topic, but is esr blogging anywhere? I used to read his blog, but haven’t seen anything from him since his website died.

Interesting that that was in Australia. Jim Jeffries, an Australian stand-up comic, has a bit where he did this sort of thing for a friend who had some sort of chronic illness that made him paralyzed and severely fragile. I don't think his friend was expected to die any time soon (though expected to die young), and he was an adult at the time. Being a stand-up comic bit, I have no idea how much truth there is to it; perhaps he was partially inspired by this real-life event in Australia.

This poll question reminded me of a now very old hentai visual novel called Kana: Little Sister which explored this very question in the context of incest, rather than pedophilia (protagonist has a terminally ill younger sister who falls in love with him). I actually haven't read this, not because I dislike the topic or anything, but because I generally don't find visual novels to be worth the effort. But everyone I've spoken to who've read it says they thought it handled the issue well, and it was generally very well received among visual novel/hentai/anime weebs back when it came out.

About 10 years ago the economist Stephen Lansburg got in trouble with his progressive students for floating some kind of thought experiment that they found offensive, and I believe it involved rape. An early example of cancel culture in action. They wanted his head.

I remember thinking to myself at the time, "See, this is what distinguishes conservatives from emotional progressives who get triggered by seemingly coldhearted and objective forays into political thought."

That needs reassessment.

An early example of cancel culture in action

About 10 years ago

I have news for you.. cancel culture has been around for as long as the media and people getting offended have been around.

Just waiting for an article of the type, "In Defense of Cynically Referring to Liberal Principles and Then Totally Abandoning Them"

To be honest with you I also think this question is stupid and gross, because sex is meant to be sacred. In a society run in a way I would like it my answer would be an absolute, immediate no because sex is sacred and powerful, and you shouldn't let them have sex for the same reason you wouldn't hand a 5 year old a loaded revolver.

However westereners have made sex completely and utterly profane to the point of total ignominy. I want them to experience the logical consequences of their professed belief system, and I want them to expeirence these consequences good and hard.

In a society run in a way I would like it my answer would be an absolute, immediate no because sex is sacred and powerful, and you shouldn't let them have sex for the same reason you wouldn't hand a 5 year old a loaded revolver.

Generally speaking, handing a 5-year-old a loaded revolver is a terrible idea. However, if that child is terminally ill and has "shoot a revolver" as his dying wish...it might not be a terrible thing for him to go to a gun range with an adult and be allowed to fire a few rounds from a .22 revolver. Hell, there's probably ways for him to just be handed that revolver and allowed to shoot at a target or something in the woods. A remote-controlled intramuscular benzodiazepine injector would allow first responders to safely get to him if he happens to shoot himself; I'm assuming that he's comfort care only.

That would probably be legit kinder to him than keeping him half alive on heroic measures and ventilators and all that stuff.

However westereners have made sex completely and utterly profane to the point of total ignominy. I want them to experience the logical consequences of their professed belief system, and I want them to expeirence these consequences good and hard.

Seems strange that you are siding with Aella in this, considering she is not the one experiencing the lesson learning for the sin she is committing worse than her audience.

Oh no not at all, Aella is not like the vast majority of human beings, she has the innate ability to fully decouple the consequence of sleeping around with dozens of people and the long term effect it has on her mental state. For someone like her who has complete control over herself, sex really is little more than friction that feels good, unless she chooses to make it be something more for herself. For people like her the sacredness does not matter because she is capable of fashioning her own social reality and dealing with the consequences of her actions without them destroying her.

The vast majority of people though do not have this power, and when they fly too close to the sun they get burned and then go splat as they fall back to the ground. The point I wish to make is not "don't fly close to the sun", it's "don't fly close to the sun unless you have high end heat protection and have made sure your wings are not made of wax". I believe that the vast majority of people don't have this protection so society as a whole should be based on a set of values that lead to decent outcomes for them as a whole, but if they complain and say they want a set of values that work really well for a small set of people who really, absolutely know what they are doing, and errenously believe themselves to be in this set of people, then they should be fully accepting of the consequences for when things go bad for those people who it turns out don't really know what they are up to (which is most of them, but nobody likes to think of themselves in this way).

It's like accreddited investors in finance, if you are accredited you are free to spend your life savings on private companies that probably will go bust but may give you an x100 return. If someone is fully qualified and understands the risks I support them being able to invest their money this way, but for ordinary people what will normally happen is that they put their children's college trust fund into a company that burns its capital and goes bust within the year, and then these very same people will complain about evil capitalism leaving them bankrupt. Of course if you legislate in a way to prevent ordinary people being able to invest in this way, those same people complain about evil capitalism preventing the ordinary man from getting a x100 return like "insert big investor here" did.

It's like accreddited investors in finance, if you are accredited you are free to spend your life savings on private companies that probably will go bust but may give you an x100 return.

The best thing about the "accredited investor" status is if you get a solicitation targeted for accredited investors (whether you are or are not one), you know right up front it's a scam. It may as well start out "Dear Suckers with Money:"

Oh no not at all, Aella is not like the vast majority of human beings, she has the innate ability to fully decouple the consequence of sleeping around with dozens of people and the long term effect it has on her mental state. For someone like her who has complete control over herself, sex really is little more than friction that feels good.

I do wonder whether prolonged exposure to tragedy, suffering, and death helps people (Westerners? First Worlders?) decouple things better. There's a stereotype that soldiers, nurses, and adrenaline junkies get around a lot; I can't speak to the first two but the third has been true enough in my experience. I'd like to ask the Indian physician @self_made_human and the American combat veteran @JTarrou whether this has been true for them. [EDIT: "have you become a better decoupler, or less averse to the idea of casual sex because of your experiences"] While I'll definitely contend that extended exposure to the hospital system as a healthcare provider or worker (rather than as a patient) isn't quite as bad as war, I will say that you see some shit and that it is difficult to describe in words.

The vast majority of people though do not have this power, and when they fly too close to the sun they get burned and then go splat as they fall back to the ground. The point I wish to make is not "don't fly close to the sun", it's "don't fly close to the sun unless you have high end heat protection and have made sure your wings are not made of wax".

I'll agree with you there. A lot of this stuff - like those bespoke queer poly communes - is a lot like 'building your own airplane out of a lawnmower or motorcycle engine and a bunch of stuff from the local Home Depot'. If you're a skilled enough airplane designer, woodworker, and amateur engineer...you can pull it off and build something airworthy. However, you had better be very, very careful and know that you're venturing off the beaten path and might just fall out of the goddamn sky.

if they complain and say they want a set of values that work really well for a small set of people who really, absolutely know what they are doing, and errenously believe themselves to be in this set of people, then they should be fully accepting of the consequences for when things go bad for those people who it turns out don't really know what they are up to (which is most of them, but nobody likes to think of themselves in this way).

Fair enough - FAFO. For what it's worth, I think that the accredited-investor bar should be quite a bit lower. IIRC there are ways to get around this, companies offering special shares to ordinary investors through some relatively nontrivial method. People trying this know damn well that this is "go big or go home" territory and that they might lose everything. These are high risk, potentially high reward lottery tickets. It's like backcountry skiing signs. Ideally we'd mark things a bit more clearly...

There's a stereotype that soldiers, nurses, and adrenaline junkies get around a lot

There's certainly an element of truth to it, but speaking from my own experience I don't hink the mechanism is "decoupling" so much as just being hungrier, hornier, and having a shorter time-horizon than most. The old cliche about your first meal after a brush with death being the best meal of your life is a cliche for a reason. It's True. IME everything from food sex and alcohol to the morning commute just feels more immediate and "alive" when contrasted with the alternative. Be it @JTarrou's "violent class" or med students who find themselves attracted to Trauma Medicine and backcountry skiing I think that sort also tends to be sort who'll take the old saw about "live each day like it might be your last" and play it 100% straight.

Hmm. At my medschool...future surgeons and OB-GYN students seemed to be the wildest. Future pathologists and radiologists? We were sticks in the mud. I know a mountaineering neurologist, backcountry skier surgeon, and pilot anesthesiologist.

Future surgeon certainly fits the stereotype in my mind

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I would say the stereotype is broadly correct, though individuals vary wildly. I am a far less sexually adventurous person than most of my compadres, but my experience there both psychologically and training/observation of technique did vastly increase my success and dabbling in casual sexual encounters, but "vastly increase" is a nice way of saying "started from shit". Frankly, that period of my life wasn't particularly fulfilling sexually, I much prefer longer term relationships.

The question is more about your desire for casual sex and your attitude towards it - not how competent you were at getting it. If Johnny McHorndog enters nursing school or the Army hell-bent on casual encounters and piss-poor at achieving them, then spends a few years as a soldier or nurse, gets good at having casual sex, but desires it much less due to viewing sex as sacred or meaningful to him personally...Mr. McHorndog didn't become a higher decoupler from the experience. It's Mr. Prude (and maybe Mrs. Prude), very sociosexually restricted, little to no interest in casual sex...until they see some shit and aren't deeply disinterested in it.

Indian physician @self_made_human and the American combat veteran @JTarrou whether this has been true for them. While I'll definitely contend that extended exposure to the hospital system as a healthcare provider or worker (rather than as a patient) isn't quite as bad as war, I will say that you see some shit and that it is difficult to describe in words.

My experience as a front-line doctor in a 3rd World Country, an essay initially posted on the Motte subreddit as I was delirious from an ortho rotation tied with gyne for the worst months of my life. I'm still proud that the original prompted Scott himself to show up in the sub to respond with positive encouragement! (In the unlikely event he's reading this, I'm doing much better, it's a wonder what working in a service with a budget more than lost change behind the couch can do haha).

Was it fucking awful? If you're someone who doesn't particularly like reading (what are you doing here again?), then yes, it was fucking awful, and I struggle to imagine an American/Western doc will see anything this bad unless they volunteer for a mission to Haiti or some other hell-hole. Still better than working in the ER during a war, but all the worse for being a represenation of the status-quo for a billion people who can't afford better.

I'm not a soft person, but my heart is thoroughly sclerosed after the whole ordeal, not that I suffer from anything like PTSD or the like. Humans can get used to almost anything, and fast.

While I didn't see the kind of shit that you saw, I saw a different flavor of shit for a month as an Eaglelandian medical student. Terminally ill children, and kids in crisis from sickle cell anemia. Working conditions were good to excellent: 9 to 5, sometimes a four-hour weekend shift. Emotionally: I write about this a lot, but can't do it justice. It was ordinary dumbfucks in hell: most parents, even good ones, just fuck 'dealing with terminally ill child' up mildly to moderately bad. Only maybe five or ten percent of the parents weren't - as the doctors and nurses judged them - weren't some flavor or other of bush league dipshit or dumbass.

I will say that I did not have a traumatic or emotionally difficult or even unpleasant experience! If forced to rate it: 4/10, mildly unpleasant but I don't regret having done it, nor would I mind doing it again.

With war - although I've never been - I think that the thing at play is constant personal, physical danger, seeing your friends killed, and maybe a bit of moral injury from making mistakes in war that cost people their lives. In the cancer ward, there were a lot of eyes on things and relatively few (maybe 1x/week/attending at most) opportunities to make minor fuckups and kill patients.

Nothing strange about it once you consider the idea he's mostly posting to get a reaction rather than express his views.

I have no idea what you're trying to get at here: "decouple from the low sophistication ways of thinking"? Is it 'smart people should be able to say anything'? Is it 'don't put your normie morals on me'? What?

As to the poll, assuming it's not pure bait, then how about option 5: lil' bastard/bitch (depending on gender presentation) is dying anyway, let somebody rape them. Saves on cost of hiring a hooker, fulfils wish to lose virginity, and makes a paedophile happy without causing lasting trauma to any child that is going to live afterwards.

That decoupled enough for ya?

But honestly, I feel like there is some buried hinting in there about black people or Muslim immigrants or something: by "reified violence by the disaffected" do you mean things like the BLM riots, or are you talking about "normal people who think the brave new world is horrible and want to stand up to it but too bad for you normies" or what the hell? Please speak clearly.

I have no idea what you're trying to get at here: "decouple from the low sophistication ways of thinking"? Is it 'smart people should be able to say anything'? Is it 'don't put your normie morals on me'? What?

Not that smart people should be able to say anything, but rather smart people will start thinking in a completely different paradigm, which leads to very different answers for what we should do in a scenario compared to using "standard western morals" at the moment. This will lead to a situation where it gets much harder for "normies" to understand the ways of the upper classes, no different from how a CD player can't read a Blu-Ray disc, becuase the formats are completely different and if you tried to force a CD player to read blu-ray the CD player would just parse garbage and be very confused and get angry (if it could think). The point here though is that despire the CD player getting angry it's not the fault of the blu-ray disc, the blu-ray disc is a more advanced, perfectly consistent format and if we're putting blame on anything the blame should go to the CD player, but that won't stop the CD player from getting angry etc.

Saves on cost of hiring a hooker, fulfils wish to lose virginity, and makes a paedophile happy without causing lasting trauma to any child that is going to live afterwards.

Bad idea. This makes the child very miserable while they are alive and causes suffering, which is something we don't want (otherwise why care about human welfare at all for anyone, we're all going to die at one point?). There won't be any lasting trauma experienced but there will be suffering at the time of the rape experienced by the child and this is bad. Note that this is empathetically not true in the "hire prostitute for dying child" case, over there the child doesn't suffer any long term trauma (as they are dead, same as the pedo case), but they get a good experience while alive instead of suffering the short term trauma of a rape instead, and that makes all the difference.

"normal people who think the brave new world is horrible and want to stand up to it but too bad for you normies"

This is one way of putting it, although I reall don't think what you call "normal people" (I interpret this as westerners with a western modus operandi) will apply to large portions of socety by the time this happens due to population replacement, and the new migrants (the ones who aren't smart enough to be able to accept the emerging upper end belief systems) already think the current way of western life is degenerate and segregate themselves from the rest of society, what would they care that the dominant belief system with actual power shifts from one form of degeneracy to a slightly different form of degeneracy in their eyes?

If we're going for cold-headed logical thinking about this, why not rape? Child is dying. Child wishes to lose virginity. Done and done. Their suffering or mental state doesn't matter, because there will be no long term effects - they're dying and will soon be off the scene. The rapist, meanwhile, gets a victim that will not suffer lasting harm, and the rapist will enjoy the fulfilment of their desires. The random child victim, whom the rapist might have selected otherwise, will not be harmed and will never undergo a traumatic experience.

There's nothing in the proposed thought experiment that the experience of losing the virginity has to be pleasurable, after all.

(In reality, I think this is a very stupid poll, whether she means to troll Hanania or to seriously ask "so why don't we let 13 year olds have sex if they want?" and if she gets pushback on it, it's no more than she should have expected.)

You do seem to be talking about immigration, and you also seem to be wanting to eat your cake and have it: ha ha dumb liberal Westerners, you are sawing off the branch you are sitting on! But also my own country is so horrible I want to come to your liberal, rich, Western nation in order to make a lot of money and have a good life.

why not rape

It's against the child's wishes. It's also bad for the rapist and bad for the people enabling it. Sure, if there was a fixed quantity of rapists and each rapist only completed X offenses per year or lifetime...maybe this wouldn't be terrible but why can't it wait 'till our hapless hero or heroine is in a coma?

Yep, the child doesn't want to get raped, the child wants to have sex with someone they are attracted to. The fact the child will die soon after does not change this, what it changes it the level of long term future trauma which gets set to 0 because the child is dead. In the prostitute case the child gets to have sex with someone they are at that moment willing to have sex with, which is not the same in the rape case (since by definition the child does not want to have sex with the rapist).

Bad idea. This makes the child very miserable while they are alive and causes suffering, which is something we don't want (otherwise why care about human welfare at all for anyone, we're all going to die at one point?). There won't be any lasting trauma experienced but there will be suffering at the time of the rape experienced by the child and this is bad.

Hm, what about matching the child with a pedophile? Perhaps that's just equivalent to the original prostitute case. But I'm thinking, if we could match the child with someone who would willingly do this for free and even get a positive experience out of it for it in itself, rather than someone who have to be bribed with money, this would be even better. Especially since they would be experiencing something which is normally outside their reach; it's like granting 2 make-a-wish-type wishes in one. Assuming we go through all the same approval/consent steps with the child as we would with a prostitute.

Hm, what about matching the child with a pedophile?

If this person was someone both the child and thier parents was happy with then yes, that's fine. Now the parents may well object to a pedophile (I would if I was in this poisition) and that is fine, you then look for someone else who's agreeable to all parties.

Note that even in the prostitute case, it's not like the child and parents will have whatever HIV addled prostitute is the first one to show up forced upon them, they have full control over which prostitute they decide to select, same here, they should have full control over which person they are going to choose for the sex, and that includes the right to say no to every single person they are not happy with for whatever reason (same as with consent for any sex).

Who else other than someone sexually attracted to minors is going to want to fuck a dying 13 year old who may well be too sick or too weak to participate in the activity as an equal partner, never mind if they are able in the first place to have sex with an adult?

I imagine even whores have standards around what clients they service. And a whore who doesn't mind fucking a 13 year old probably has some paedophilic tendencies in the first place.

Who else other than someone sexually attracted to minors is going to want to fuck a dying 13 year old who may well be too sick or too weak to participate in the activity as an equal partner, never mind if they are able in the first place to have sex with an adult?

Someone who would have sex in spite of feeling neutral, even disgusted, due to a personal conviction. It could be something as simple as "I'm doing this because I want my client to have this experience before they die; my disgust and feelings be damned".

Yep, prostitutes sleep with clients they are not attracted to or disguested by on a daily basis, it's literally their job.

Yeah. There's probably at least a few people here on the Motte who would sleep with a close friend that they were sexually disgusted by...if it was that close friend's dying wish. I'd do it, as long as they knew that I was grossed out and didn't really want to do it, but would do it in the same spirit as working as a septic tank pumper's assistant for a day. A nasty job, but for a good, dying friend who knows what they're getting? Worse things to do.

Depends, is the pedophile attractive enough that the kid and parents would say yes? If so, I consider that isomorphic to the initial question.

What has this to do with Hanania? Context?

Hanania asked a similar question a few days ago:

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1720992936052306000

What if you were executed at gitmo that would be so crazy

Is actually a good response, what is she actually getting at with this question? It’s just a hard question and no clear lesson at the end of it. Shit, can my disgust reaction of child sex come into conflict with my desire for a child to be happy before death? woah dude that’s wild.

I really don’t see what moral discovery she’s made. How about you ask me what I would do if this story happened to someone else and how I would react to hearing about it? The answer is “I would feel sad for their difficult situation in which I am epistemically paralyzed to help or judge”. That’s my answer, Aella, this isn’t philosophy, this is “would you rather fuck your dad or your mom”, and casually throwing this on twitter is probably inspiring a bunch of similar behaviour amongst impressionable young adults.

“would you rather fuck your dad or your mom”

For me: seems like both of us are more or less being raped; I'm assuming that we've got guns to our heads or something. In that case...whichever would be hurt least. Whole situation sucks rotting donkey balls and it's at best a choice between eating five pounds of rotted donkey balls and eating six pounds of rotted donkey balls.

You have passed my test young grasshopper, very wise

I suppose she could be trying to get a dig in at Hanania with his "is it okay to fuck a 14 year old if you pay them really well?", but since I think he's an idiot anyway, why even bother with the likes of this? It's pure rage bait.

Oh no, she's openly saying she was inspired by his question and seems to be hinting towards being supportive of that question:

https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1721239422849470898

Again the normie responses below hers are absolute howlers. This is turning into a new form of entertainment for me, it's like throwing peanuts at monkeys and then watching them fight and dance over them (something I used to do as a child back home, it brings back fond memories).

You’re not that Indian guy who moved to London and then had a lengthy post about noblesse oblige are you?

I don't feel any noblesse oblige towards lower class westerners, my taxes already go a long long way towards funding their bad habits, and then they have zero respect for their betters, freely biting the hand that feeds them and openly talking about biting it even more.

Noblesse Oblige is one part of a two way system. I am willing to forgive and forget, but the other end of the bargain requiring a certain amuont of obeiscance from those who take out more than they put in is also necessary before we can return to that point.

Ok, was that you though?

Yes, he is precisely the one you’re thinking about. He is being intentionally obtuse for some inexplicable reason.

Yes after his most recent response to me(not in in this comment branch ) I am sufficiently convinced he’s not being forthright

Simple: The noblesse oblige speech was always anachronistic bullshit( whether it came from him, cima or any other reactionary), but it is especially bullshit from Count, who not only does not feel obliged towards, but actively hates and resents the lower classes of his western host country.

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Might have been, there are multiple people like that and many people have talked about the importance of Noblesse Oblige in the past, including me.

what is she actually getting at with this question?

She's getting at the fact that the child sex taboo is inconsistent with a lot of the rest of our moral system, doesn't mean the taboo is wrong, it could well mean that other parts of the western moral system are idiotic and stupid. Which of these two it is is left up to the reader to decide.

I personally believe it's the latter, the western moral system is utterly and totally [REDACTED]* but it's fun watching average IQ people overheat and stall when you present them with an inconsistency they can't reconcile with their belief set but at the same time refuse to question whether it might just be possible that it's they who are wrong (insert Principal Skinner meme here). It's like the Star Trek episode where Kirk is able to convince the robot Nomad it is imperfect and make it overheat and self destruct, but with humans instead.

* A sad necessity, otherwise the mods are going to go full Abraham Van Helsing on me.

She's getting at the fact that the child sex taboo is inconsistent with a lot of the rest of our moral system

Depends on your moral system. And if you are okay with fucking 13 year olds, you're not someone I want coming into my country. It's only those same liberals you are laughing at who would let you in.

Maybe for you, child sex taboo is inconsistent, but most people don't have a problem there. The people there are not overheating and stalling due to unreconciled beliefs, they're genuinely shocked because this is something repugnant. But you may not have the capacity to understand that, given your admission about enjoying teasing and torturing animals as a child.

Maybe for you, child sex taboo is inconsistent, but most people don't have a problem there.

They don't think they have a problem there, but then you ask them for details about how the rest of their moral system works... suddenly, the inconsistency is on full display for anyone who cares to view.

Humans don’t typically have moral systems(and the ones that do do not operate on that system 99% of the time), and applying Philosophy-as-a-sport doesn’t make them suddenly bad people. Humans have a huge number of values which become inconsistent in specific scenarios, and Aella’s question is all heat and no light. Professional and dignified philosophers have demonstrated the same much more tactfully in the past, why did she not do the same? It’s molesting neurotypical people’s brains, and she is smart enough to know that(I recognize she says she doesn’t “get” why people don’t like these questions, I think she’s lying). This appears to me as an egoistic and irresponsible display of her social position. The normies are smart to know when they are being fucked with.

The extremely negative reaction is not a surprise at all. Those who you call "normies" are afraid of the new deadly sins like sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, pedophilia and will refuse to engage with a person that tries to trick them into giving a "yes, but" answer, because they know they will be called a dirty sheep fucker and thrown out of the RV. That's why you see this kind of ritualistic purity where people will attack anyone who tries to poke holes in the taboo and will claim that they have been attracted to humans that are undeniably at least 18 years old since the very first moment they had an inkling of sexual thoughts.

Eh, taboos are only partially arbitrary. "Weird person having sex with my child" is something people have strong instincts against, and "anyone having sex with any child" is the best fit in today's world. I think there'd always be some taboo around it.

It might be a disgusting idea, but:

"Data from a total of 19 916 male high school students (from YRBSS) and 7739 males aged 15 to 24 years (from NSFG) were included in the analysis. The sample was largely composed of non-Hispanic white males: 8789 (57.1%) from the YRBSS and 3737 (58.0%) from the NSFG. Sexual onset before age 13 years was reported nationally by 7.6% (95% CI, 6.8%-8.4%) of male high school students and 3.6% (95% CI, 3.0%-4.2%) of males aged 15 to 24 years. The proportion of male students who reported having sexual intercourse before age 13 years varied across metropolitan sites, from 5% (95% CI, 4%-7%) in San Francisco, California, to 25% (95% CI, 23%-28%) in Memphis, Tennessee, with elevated rates among non-Hispanic black and Hispanic males in most metropolitan areas."

And that's just the share of barely pubescent children that have already had actual sex. The share of barely pubescent children that have started masturbating at age 13 or earlier is closer to 40%. It's an uncomfortable truth, but even barely pubescent children have sexual thoughts and feelings. How and how much we should shape them is the question, just like with any other thing we like to moderate.

Would you let this terminally ill child get drunk instead? Get high on LSD? Dive to see the wreck of Titanic in a flimsy submersible? Euthanize themselves?

Would you let this terminally ill child get drunk instead?

yes

Get high on LSD?

yes

Dive to see the wreck of Titanic in a flimsy submersible?

perhaps, if they and their parents were well aware of the risks and understood

Euthanize themselves?

yes, if it was determined that they wanted euthanasia, weren't depressed, etc; probably would want the parents to agree but if the child is repeatedly and unwaveringly insistent that they don't want to live with this terminal illness anymore, I wouldn't necessarily want to require this. I don't really have much certainty here but am leaning towards "let terminally ill teenagers choose euthanasia, even without parental consent". My rationale is that as much as that kind of thing sucks, it also sucks to have a 13-year-old who's adamant about preferring death to spending a couple of weeks or months struggling to breathe, doped up on morphine, with altered mental status...forced to endure this, and then die afterwards. Of course, I'll concede that there are reasonable counterarguments here.

As you might be able to tell, I'm very much in favor of death-with-dignity and assisted suicide for the terminally ill. If I see the end coming, I'm going to die like a doctor.

called a dirty sheep fucker and thrown out of the RV

This just reminds me of the old "How would you feel if you had not had breakfast yesterday" meme.

Fair enough. This just gives me one more data point for why the common man (or an aggregation of common men) should have basically zero political power on national scales, not like I needed any more for my collection but yeah, this goes on the pile.

In related news there was a comment I saw on Reddit that showed just how bad democracy has been for the middle east during the last 100 years:

The more uncomfortable and probable answer is that of all the states created in the 20th century, the monarchies have performed far better than the republics

Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Saudi, Oman

Libya, Iraq, Iran

These are all neighbouring each other, are all within the top 10 oil and gas producing states per capita

The first group is wealthy and stable. The second are the complete opposite. One key difference..

Iran was a stable, prosperous monarchy

Iraq was a stable, prosperous monarchy

Libya was a stable, prosperous monarchy

The republican coups turned each of these three countries into poorly run repressive warmongering terrorist havens,

There's no two ways around this.

I'm completely pro Uncle Sam being world hegemon, but one thing I do not understand is America's hard on for democracy even in countries that are eminiently not suited for it.

This just gives me one more data point for why the common man (or an aggregation of common men) should have basically zero political power on national scales

So I take it you are pro-Rotherham sexual ethics, then?

How is that connected to anything I said? The Rotherham rapists were animals who would be publicly hanged under my ideal system. Giving the common man less power to influence national politics has zero bearing on how much power they should have over their own children and local surroundings. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy where the common man has next to no power on a national level, they still have ways of influencing their local neighbourhoods and have power over their children etc.

If oppressive monarchies have a tendency to experience revolutions in the first place that wreck the country, that has to be taken into account as a negative for oppressive monarchies though. Thats one of the functions of democracy, so that the common people feel they have a say and don't overthrow the government.

You're seeing the end state of an oppressive monarchy collapsing and blaming it on what follows. If oppressive monarchies were so stable, then they wouldn't collapse like this.

Unfortunately in the middle east at least "democracies" tend to experience revolutions/coups that wreck the country at roughly the same rate or even higher, so that's not an argument for choosing democracy over monarchy.

Perhaps not, but measuring performance of a post-revolution nation against the pre-revolution nation without noting that the revolution itself is a pretty big red flag against the performance of the oppressive monarchy is still not very accurate.

If oppressive monarchies have a tendency to experience revolutions in the first place that wreck the country, that has to be taken into account as a negative for oppressive monarchies though.

I have to remember that one the next time they start screaming about "threats to our democracy".

Sure, all government types have weaknesses and flaws. Democracy has its own set. Democracies tendency towards decision paralysis with ideas that have closely balanced support is a big one at times.

I'm not talking about "decision paralysis", I'm talking about "Russian interference", "fake news", "populism", "extremism", and so on. If revolution is monarchy's fault, all those things are democracy's fault, and should be embraced as they come, rather than fought.

Oh absolutely, populism is a definite issue in democracies at times. I was just giving one example, not an exhaustive list. Note I am not saying revolution should be embraced or populism, just that when comparing the pre- and post revolution outcomes, you can't escape that the oppression is in many cases what triggered the revolution. It has positives and negatives, focussing only on the positives of one and the negatives of the other is not an accurate comparison

I hope you’ve noticed what those countries have in common. The conclusion here is that every common man in the world is a decent ruler, with one exception. One muslim, one vote, one time.

I'm completely pro Uncle Sam being world hegemon, but one think I do not understand is America's hard on for democracy even in countries that are eminiently not suited for it.

It's the source of their legitimacy. The grunts that went to Iraq and Afghanistan weren't told "you are fighting to uphold our global hegemony!", they were told they are bringing democracy to the oppressed.

yes, only child prostitute (3.9%)

I had to delete my first response to this because it did not comply with the rules. I'm really happy to live in the land of decouplers, but sometimes, jaded as I am, I'm surprised by what they come up with.

I mean... this is a really pragmatic vote, but I'm pretty sure child prostitutes' clients would not be children in 99% of cases. So they shouldn't be able to be child prostitutes. It's not like Timmy from math class is going to have an escort profile 'just in case' a child client pops up.

I'm not surprised by some of the replies at all.

Some of these people are surely fat fingers or otherwise lizard man’s constant.

This is a rational response to someone the highly evolved social calculus computer in your skull has snap judged to be either dangerous, your enemy, or stupid.

Ie, What if the moon was made of cheese? <- Fuck you/lol dumbass/ death threats

The proposed linkage between the latest controversial aella tweet and large-scale social strife is somewhat tenuous?

People said much worse 50 years ago, whether for shock value or of genuine belief, and nothing too terrible happened.

You're right that advancing technology is going to, first strain, then snap, current moral values eventually, but there are probably better examples than something child something sex.

While the question doesn't specify gender, my priors are that any terminal early teen who demands to lose their virginity is 99% likely to be a boy.

Putting myself in the mindset of my 13 yo self (not too difficult, I've hardly outgrown it), and hell yeah if I'm about to die I'm going to at least get a nut out of it. I'd expect my other 13 yo friends would be fist bumping me as the final push of morphine accompanies me over the edge, and about half of them would try and get unnecessary xrays so they too could qualify 🙏

Child or Adult prostitute though?

.. sorry, I'll show myself out.

Consulting my mental copy of my 13 yo self, I really doubt he'd give a shit.

Do you believe that migrants “squeezing from below” are going to align with the Aella-sympathizing elite on these topics? Which migrant populations are pro-prostitution for dying children exactly?

While the poll itself may be interesting, what I find most interesting of all are the responses from the normies

I didn't dig too deeply into this one, but I looked at the replies (and even *gasp* the quote tweets) on the Hanania poll. I grew up on 4chan, but I've spent enough time in sanitized spaces like Reddit that I forgot what viscerally angry uncensored people sound like; disgusting, but beautiful in a way, like a cheetah devouring a gazelle. Hanania tried to connect this reaction to the old "but I did eat breakfast this morning" failure to parse hypotheticals, and that doesn't seem quite right, but it does serve as a reminder that many (most?) people aren't like us. They are either unable or unwilling to peal back their assumptions about morality or world-models.

Hanania tried to connect this reaction to the old "but I did eat breakfast this morning" failure to parse hypotheticals

This is another reason why I think he's an idiot and not the public intellectual he would give his eye-teeth to be. "Ha ha, only joking" is the response everyone knows is bullshit. Oh, so your question was only a hypothetical and not meant seriously? Okay, I'm still saying no to it. But what if I said "in spherical-cow world, okay: pay ten million and you can fuck a kid". What would Hanania take away from that, then? Still only hypotheticals? Or that this answer demonstrates that in the real world there are a lot of people pretending to be moral but who would fuck children if they could get away with it?

If it's only a hypothetical, then I can give any answer at all because it doesn't matter. It's not something I would ever do in reality, and would find abhorrent in real life, but 'just pretending' world? Fine, rape six year olds and kidnap people off the streets to harvest their organs and round the Jews up in cattle trucks for the gas chambers. It's only parsing a hypothetical, right?

Meanwhile I would argue that's a feature rather than a bug. Utilitarianism is based on false premises and is a terrible basis for a system of morality.

Do you object to sum-of-utils, hedonism, consequentialism, or just the idea of a systematic universal set of moral values in the first place?

Utilitarianism is based on false premises and is a terrible basis for a system of morality.

Utilitarianism is the worst form of moral system, except for all the others that have been tried.

Meh. Literal bronze age religions seem to do better.

What are these false premises, and how do you measure “do better”?

What are these false premises,

The two big ones that spring immediately to mind are A) the premise that happiness/suffering/utility/QALYs (whatever you want to call it) is quantifiable and fungible. IE that there is either an equivalence or some sort of commutative quality between [Person A] being x amount "worse" off and [Person B] being x amount "better" off. and B) the assumption that multi-agent games have to follow the rules of inductive logic.

That utility is fungible between people such that X's being made better off can morally offset Y's being made worse off.

One for me is that it has no real hard edges to the solution set. There’s no real guarantee of rights, of equal treatment, or ownership of property. If the people making the decision decide that the answer is to strip some people of civil rights, there’s nothing intrinsic to utilitarian philosophy that says “that’s not a possible solution.”

Secondly, the person making the decision gets to define the terms. This is often, in practice, defined to the benefit of the person or group making the decision. If you asked the average person about pollution, it’s a problem that should be solved. If you ask the factory owner, it’s not obvious that pollution is a problem. Thus the solution is dictated by the whims of those empowered to make those decisions, even when conflicts of interest are obvious.

That by doing advanced calculus on harm and good you will arrive at a moral outcome. Even utilitarians agree this is false, or at least get awfully quiet and hit the downvote button when you point out where their reasoning leads to.

Another issue is whether you can even meaningfully measure harm and good to begin with.

and how do you measure “do better”?

That, admittedly, I don't have an answer for, but I noticed you haven't asked that question to Celestial, even though he made the very same claim regarding "all the other" moral systems.

That by doing advanced calculus on harm and good you will arrive at a moral outcome

Okay, I'm in a town of 1000 people. One person has a factory that produces very nice shoes, but fills the air with smog. The smog makes everyone choke and gives everyone lung cancer. Should we forcibly close down the factory?

Now I'm in the same town, but instead of a factory, it's a slaughterhouse. The stench smells about as bad as the smog, but it doesn't cause lung cancer. Also, it provides much of the food for the town. Should we forcibly close down the factory?

The answer is yes in the first case, no in the second case. One comes to this conclusion by, uh, doing calculations on the outcome. The first has lower benefit, higher cost, the second has higher benefit, lower cost. How else can you come to this kind of conclusion, if not by doing calculations on harm and good

Maybe during the industrial revolution the air and water had to be a bit polluted because the only other option was no industry, but now we have better technology and can have industry with less pollution. Any rule in deontology or virtue ethics about how to make that decision just ends up deferring to the calculation of benefit.

Like, people exist, benefits and harms exist, actions lead to outcomes in incredibly complicated ways, whether you're a socialist or liberal or conservative or a nazi you need to judge actions based on their outcomes, and the calculations are complicated because the situations are complicated. Should we have a democracy or a monarchy? Under what conditions should we go to war? Should we have computers? Should we create advanced AI? Nonconsequentialist moral systems dodge these by taking the answers for granted and treating them as 'rules' or 'virtues'. But the virtues/rules themselves embed complexity that represents a calculation that some human, or perhaps a decentralized system of humans, made in the past.

Nonconsequentialist moral systems dodge these by taking the answers for granted and treating them as 'rules' or 'virtues'. But the virtues/rules themselves embed complexity that represents a calculation that some human, or perhaps a decentralized system of humans, made in the past.

I think this is false. Too see it, take an issue that people have an actual moral position on, rather than something that boils down to material comfort. Should we promote surrogacy if we can guarantee that outcomes are "good", or should we do everything we can to limit it, even if it meant [insert catastrophe of your choice]? My opinion is the latter, because I think surrogacy is wrong in itself.

What you said is also projection. It is utilitarians who try to hide their ontological / virtue-based morality behind utils and calculus. Like I pointed out above, you're not going to get utilitarians to endorse slavery, just because it increases utils. If they ever address you, it will be a copout like "nooo, slavery causes negative-infinity utils!"

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Well, it depends. Is it a boy, or a girl?

What if it's a boy, but he's gay?

Then we must definitely hire him a female prostitute. If it works, he can die with dignity.

Top or bottom?

After working in an oncology ward, I'm wondering what the base rates for radiation induced proctitis versus erectile dysfunction from the chemo/radiotherapy is..

The child or the prostitute?

This is certainly a good point, and an important detail that can change the answer. I also get the sense that, for many people, this detail cannot be allowed to change the answer, but they intuitively sense that it would, which causes cognitive dissonance and the accompanying anger.

Why would it change the answer?

Look at teacher-student sex scandals. Everyone mouths how they're always bad, but there is far more hatred (hatred that is justified) for a male teacher sleeping with a female student than a female teacher sleeping with a male student. It's even reflected in sentencing and punishment.

I imagine among normies most would react more negatively to a 13 year old girl getting a sex wish than the 13 year old boy, out of a sense that women are in greater need of protection from the sex than men.

I imagine a scenario where a girl has a sex wish with a man who'd agree to be known as a chomo would be seen as even more of a fantasy than the Epstein 10 million proposal.

I wonder if such a lack of specification in the poll was intentional to increase retweet/reply engagement.

channelling the spirit of Hanania

Wasn't this exact scenario a Shadman comic like 10 years ago? Not that that particular artist isn't famous for trolling for that exact kind of reaction you describe, but I digress.

I am more concerned about potential increased societal scale strife as people lash out from being put in a world that they no longer understand

As the recent 2 weeks of history have shown, it's not so much "lashing out" as it is "hiding under the bed".
The latter is, on the whole, probably more destructive.

and that has widespread social impacts beyond a small handful of people cracking and going on a rampage where they kill a few people before bring brought down themselves.

Yes, this is called "most school shootings", which is what happens when a biological adult whose development was delayed for [reasons] now stranded in a world they no longer have the biological capacity to understand cracks in a particular way (most people just start exhibiting weird pathologies to varying degrees, usually around the inability to resolve conflict and the need to please and appeal to an external authority over independent thought and action). When we look inside such a person, we find an adult's body with a brain never developed past middle school; evidence of this is posted downthread.

So… does anyone on the motte want to actually debate the question posed? I’ll start.

No to child prostitutes because child prostitutes presumably cannot consent, and it is not ethical to commit a crime with a victim involved, just because it’s someone’s dying wish to do so.

Saying yes to adult prostitutes assumes that the dying child is capable of consenting to sex for themselves, which is the complete opposite of what we’ve just established for the “No to child prostitutes” case. If we want to keep “No to child prostitutes” while maintaining “Yes to adult prostitutes”, we’ll have to introduce a difference between the two scenarios: “A teenager can reasonably be expected to understand consent for sex alone (and this is why it is moral for teenagers to consent to sex with each other), but the concept of consenting to sex in exchange for money is too advanced for teenagers to consent to (and therefore immoral for a child to prostitute themselves even though it is moral for a child to have sex without money).”

At which point is it genuine nuance, and at which point is it just contorting yourself into mental gymnastics? Perhaps either saying yes or no to all prostitution in this scenario would be the most consistent moral positions to take. The case for “yes”: a being will miss out on having a fundamentally common human experience before they die. If we care about providing dying children with less fundamental human experiences (like going to Disneyland) before they go, why not provide them with one that matters more?

The case for “no”: children are not capable of deciding for themselves whether they truly want such experiences. Even adults make poor decisions that they regret because it harmed them, and it would be horrible to allow a dying child to harm themselves before they go. (Although, as I understand it, the main reason why it’s bad for an underage teenager to consent to sex with an adult is because they risk emotional manipulation by the more experienced adult. Making sure that it’s a one-off affair would seem to largely mitigate this risk.)

In fact, how much does the dying child part even matter? It seems it would only matter if we first establish that harm is always caused to children having sex, even if they ostensibly consent. Otherwise, this might as well be ethical even without the child in question being mortally ill. But if sex always causes children harm, the question is whether it’s ethical to allow kids to hurt themselves. Is it ethical to sell a knife to a teen who has just stated their desire to stab themselves, regardless of whether the teen was going to die anyways?

What perspectives am I missing?

Also, meta questions:

  1. Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before
  2. Why is the general populace so averse to calmly discussing the moral foundations of our sexual mores? Given how strong the societal taboo is, I should probably delete my account after this discussion. But I mean, why is there such a strong taboo, such that even bringing up the subject as Aella has leads to such accusations of pedophilia?

At the next Bay Area House Party: A startup which matches terminally ill underage boys and girls for consentual virginity-losing. (using advanced AI of course)

Played straight: I have a lot of respect for the concept and support it - but for practical reasons it would need to be done discreetly and quietly. It would be nice if Make-A-Wish or something like that very quietly facilitated things like this.

The case for "yes", in my opinion - as someone who's been in the healthcare field for a few years - is in my mind strengthened by their terminal illness. Part of the reason why children are restricted from making certain decisions is in order to increase the chance that they will grow up into healthy adults. We wouldn't allow ordinary, healthy 13-year-olds to hire adult prostitutes partly because we believe this to be harmful to the 18-year-old, the 25-year-old, the 40-year-old that they will almost certainly become.

With terminal illness, this isn't a consideration any longer. As such, a dying child's autonomy vs. security interests are tilted much more heavily in the direction of "autonomy". As such: I'm slightly in favor, in this case, but it is a nasty question to deal with and there is probably no good solution here.

Let's take a different scenario: the dying child expresses a wish to be able to shoot and kill a real life person (let's be agnostic on race here, but if you want the spicier version, make the dying child also a racist who wants to murder a specific minority of some kind).

What's the opinions now? Yes, No, Only if it's the same race as the kid, Only if it's a Bad Person (like a Trump voter), what?

After all, it's "ha ha only joking, can't you parse a hypothetical?" and not a real query, now is it?

If Aella is seriously trying to get at "why don't we let 13 year olds fuck, and why don't we let adults fuck 13 year olds?" with this stupid, stupid poll (and Hanania is even stupider for his provocation), then - well my opinion of the entire sub-culture remains unchanged, even if Burdensome Count thinks it is a matter of not being able to reconcile belief sets. I have no problem with my belief set around this entire view of what the purpose of sex is, and how we should conduct ourselves with it.

The obvious course of action there is to find a second child with the same wish and let them duel each other.

If that kid lived in a jurisdiction that practiced the death penalty and carried it out with firing squads, I don't think it would be beyond the pale for them to join in on one execution, probably with a few days' drilling beforehand.

The core difference between your "shoot a person" scenario and the "don't die a virgin" scenario is that shooting random people is something society expects nobody to do, while people having sex is not only allowed but implicitly expected. Children aren't told that they shouldn't ever have sex, but to wait until later, when they'll be more mature and have a better understanding of the situation and the consequences. But for terminally ill children, "later" is never going to come.

I think the Make-A-Wish Foundation is entitled to refuse or reject unreasonable requests. Regardless of whether we think this 13 year old girl would die happier with or without her virginity, I think the request for others to help her is unreasonable and anyone would be justified in refusing it.

I think the request for others to help her is unreasonable

Disagree here.

anyone would be justified in refusing it.

Agree - it's a difficult issue and reasonable people can be on either side.

Make a wish has supposedly received requests of that nature before and rejected them.

child prostitutes presumably cannot consent

Why not? Especially because...

In fact, how much does the dying child part even matter? It seems it would only matter if we first establish that harm is always caused to children having sex, even if they ostensibly consent.

This seems to be the route Wertheimer took. It's a bit unsatisfying, because we end up not being able to make such bold proclamations as, "[C]hild prostitutes presumably cannot consent." Instead, we have to say that, sure, they can consent, but we have reason to believe that it would be harmful to them, anyway (and so we simply refuse to accept their consent). He bit this bullet and concluded that it was actually just an empirical question. That is, if we did a proper utilitarian calculation and determined that maybe it's not necessarily so harmful, then from a theoretical perspective, we just have to settle for saying that children consenting to sex is totally fine.

This theoretical tool could be applied to hypothetical societies, too. For example, if we built an extremely sex-positive culture with tip-top comprehensive sex education at young ages, we could raise children who think, like many others even in these spaces think, that having sex is mostly akin to just playing a fun game of tennis with someone, being aware that there are risks like tearing your ACL. Then, they'd be able to consent just fine, no differently than we think that they can consent to playing a game of tennis.

Regarding child prostitution, there is the highly coloured and sensational campaign from 1885 by the journalist W.T. Stead which helped to push forward the the implementation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16.

Before beginning this inquiry I had a confidential interview with one of the most experienced officers who for many years was in a position to possess an intimate acquaintance with all phases of London crime. I asked him, “Is it or is it not a fact that, at this moment, if I were to go to the proper houses, well introduced, the keeper would, in return for money down, supply me in due time with a maid–a genuine article, I mean, not a mere prostitute tricked out as a virgin, but a girl who had never been seduced?” “Certainly,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “At what price?” I continued. “That is a difficult question,” he said. “I remember one case which came under my official cognizance in Scotland-yard in which the price agreed upon was stated to be £20. Some parties in Lambeth undertook to deliver a maid for that sum —-to a house of ill fame, and I have no doubt it is frequently done all over London.”

“But, “I continued, “are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transaction–that is, are they really maiden, not merely in being each a virgo intacta in the physical sense, but as being chaste girls who are not consenting parties to their seduction? ” He looked surprised at my question, and then replied emphatically: “Of course they are rarely willing, and as a rule they do not know what they are coming for.” “But,” I said in amazement, “then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?” “Certainly,” said he, “there is not a doubt of it.” “Why, “I exclaimed, “the very thought is enough to raise hell.” “It is true,” he said; “and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours.”

“But do the girls cry out?” “Of course they do. But what avails screaming in a quiet bedroom? Remember, the utmost limit of howling or excessively violent screaming, such as a man or woman would make if actual murder was being attempted, is only two minutes, and the limit of screaming of any kind is only five. Suppose a girl is being outraged in a room next to your house. You hear her screaming, just as you are dozing to sleep. Do you get up, dress, rush downstairs, and insist on admittance? Hardly. But suppose the screams continue and you get uneasy, you begin to think whether you should not do something? Before you have made up your mind and got dressed the screams cease, and you think you were a fool for your pains.” “But the policeman on the beat?” “He has no right to interfere, even if he heard anything. Suppose that a constable had a right to force his way into any house where a woman screamed fearfully, policemen would be almost as regular attendants at childbed as doctors. Once a girl gets into such a house she is almost helpless, and may be ravished with comparative safety.”

“But surely rape is a felony punishable with penal servitude. Can she not prosecute?” “Whom is she to prosecute? She does not know her assailant’s name. She might not even be able to recognize him if she met him outside. Even if she did, who would believe her? A woman who has lost her chastity is always a discredited witness. The fact of her being in a house of ill fame would possibly be held to be evidence of her consent. The keeper of the house and all the servants would swear she was a consenting party; they would swear that she had never screamed, and the woman would be condemned as an adventuress who wished to levy black mail.” “And this is going on to-day?” “Certainly it is, and it will go on, and you cannot help it, as long as men have money, procuresses are skilful, and women are weak and inexperienced.”

Sure. Rape is bad. I don't think that an example of someone being raped implies that all other people are incapable of consenting. Even if we try to draw a circle around a group of roughly similar people who are being raped because of a systemic societal failure. E.g., people could certainly recount horrible stories about black slaves being raped, and explain how a systemic societal failure led to this happening a bunch of times. Doesn't seem to imply that black people in general are incapable of consenting.

HOW GIRLS ARE BOUGHT AND RUINED Her story, or rather so much of it as is germane to the present inquiry, was somewhat as follows:–

As a regular thing, the landlady of a bad house lets her rooms to gay women and lives on their rent and the profits on the drink which they compel their customers to buy for the good of the house. She may go out herself or she may not. If business is very heavy, she will have to do her own share, but as a rule she contents herself with keeping her girls up to the mark, and seeing that they at least earn enough to pay their rent, and bring home sufficient customers to consume liquor enough to make it pay. Girls often shrink from going out, and need almost to be driven into the streets. If it was not for gin and the landlady they could never carry it on. Some girls I used to have would come and sit and cry in my kitchen and declare that they could not go out, they could not stand the life. I had to give them a dram and take them out myself, and set them agoing again, for if they did not seek gentlemen where was I to get my rent? Did they begin willingly? Some; others had no choice. How had they no choice? Because they never knew anything about it till the gentleman was in their bedroom, and then it was too late. I or my girls would entice fresh girls in, and persuade them to stay out too late till they were locked out, and then a pinch of snuff in their beer would keep them snug until the gentleman had his way. Has that happened often? Lots of times. It is one of the ways by which you keep your house up. Every woman who has an eye to business is constantly on the lookout for likely girls. Pretty girls who are poor, and who have either no parents or are away from home, are easiest picked up, How is it done? You or your decoy find a likely girl, and then you track her down. I remember I once went a hundred, miles and more to pick up a girl. I took a lodging close to the board school, where I could see the girls go backwards and forwards every day. I soon saw one that suited my fancy. She was a girl of about thirteen, tall and forward for her age, pretty, and likely to bring business. I found out she lived with her mother. I engaged her to be my little maid at the lodgings where I was staying. The very next day I took her off with me to London and her mother never saw her again. What became of her? A gentleman paid me £13 for the first of her, soon after she came to town. She was asleep when he did it–sound asleep. To tell the truth, she was drugged. It is often done. I gave her a drowse. It is a mixture of laudanum and something else. Sometimes chloroform is used, but I always used either snuff or laudanum. We call it drowse or black draught, and they lie almost as if dead, and the girl never knows what has happened till morning. And then? Oh! then she cries a great deal from pain, but she is ‘mazed, and hardly knows what has happened except that she can hardly move from pain. Of course we tell her it is all right; all girls have to go through it some time, that she is through it now without knowing it, and that it is no use crying. It will never be undone for all the crying in the world. She must now do as the others do. She can live like a lady, do as she pleases, have the best of all that is going, and enjoy herself all day. If she objects, I scold her and tell her she has lost her character, no one will take her in; I will have to turn her out on the streets as a bad and ungrateful girl. The result is that in nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, the child, who is usually under fifteen, frightened and friendless, her head aching with the effect of the drowse and full of pain and horror, gives up all hope, and in a week she is one of the attractions of the house. You say that some men say this is never done. Don’t believe them; if these people spoke the truth, it might be found that they had done it themselves. Landladies who wish to thrive must humour their customers. If they want a maid we must get them one, or they will go elsewhere. We cannot afford to lose their custom; besides, after the maid is seduced, she fills up vacancies caused by disease or drink. There are very few brothels which are not occasionally recruited in that way. That case which I mentioned was by no means exceptional; in about seven years I remember selling two maids for £20 each, one at £16, one at £15, one at £13 and others for less. Of course, where I bought I paid less than that. The difference represented my profit, commission, and payment for risk in procuring, drugging, &c.

My intuition is that a big part of the constraints upon the rights of children stem from trading the interests of their future selves off against those of their present selves - children have a long life ahead which they are particularly well-positioned to screw up. In the case of terminally ill children, this consideration disappears - if we can build a Schelling fence around them as a class, I see nothing particularly wrong with letting them drink, do drugs, skydive and consent to sex.

Yeah, fair enough - or at least, it's a hell of a lot less wrong. I think that there should be a lot of deliberation and consultation with psychologists and/or religious leaders or something before this...but if a terminally ill 14-year-old wants to go BASE jumping and he and his parents agree on comfort care only if it goes wrong, I'd let him have at it.

Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before

She's a prominent rationalist thinkfluencer/thought leader/blogger, similar to Julia Galef.

Aella leans heavily on her sex appeal; the first time I ever heard about her was on reddit from this famous NSFW photoshoot. More relevantly, she is known for doing weird twitter polls and conducting independent sex research.

She's been mentioned on ACX numerous times, such as in "There's A Time For Everyone" which talks about how Scott met his wife at one of her parties, and "Classifieds Thread 1/2022", in which she is described as a "shit-eating whore" (which is literally true, but resulted in the document being wiped from Google; here's the bowdlerized version).

How can she describe herself as a rationalist? She’s good at getting nerd affection. But she’s a female so rationally speaking selling sex by the hour makes no sense. Rationally speaking she should want to make 10 or so nerd babies. And make herself say lifetime money from that which pays much better than a thousand an hour.

Rationally speaking Musks seems to like making babies so shouldn’t she show up once or twice a month till she gets pregnant and repeat the process for a decade.

  • -13

Rationally speaking she should want to make 10 or so nerd babies.

Isn’t she in her 30’s? She’s not having 10 kids, want to or not.

And, uh, have you ever been around a large family with very smart children? Or gifted children in general? Precociousness can be cute, but it’s so aggravating to caregivers that it’s fairly rational to not want a gaggle of very high IQ children.

Sliders, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I’m pretty sure you’re not baiting, so…why do you think 10 nerd babies is rational for anyone?

Isn’t this the Idiocracy argument? We need more relatively high IQ fertility so it’s rational in the sense it advances humanity.

I don’t think a movie (or the reverse of a movie) should be anyone’s high-water mark for rationality.

Is the argument wrong - I only used it for a reference. Seems obvious if you believe in hbd that selective breeding matters.

Can you see the gap between “selective breeding matters” and “I, personally, should spend my life popping out high-quality babies?”

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What does any of this have to do with minimizing cognitive bias and making accurate predictions? I'll admit, I haven't read anything from Big Yud in a few years, but your use of "rational" seems closer to "maximizing economic value" than anything capital-R Rational.

I smack my head against a wall whenever someone claims that x is not compatible with rationality, in the hopes that the ensuing brain damage will help ease the pain.

As much as I vehemently disagree with the religious, there is nothing inherently irrational with belief in God, even if I think they have malign priors and don't update on abundant evidence (which makes them irrational). If a Paperclip Maximizer strips me down for spare parts, I might have many choice insults to hurl its way, but irrational isn't one of them. It would need to go about its aims in an outright counterproductive way, like aiming for paperclips but ending up making safety pins.

Rationality is orthogonal to your desires, and for Aella, it's entirely possible and even likely that she genuinely enjoys her lifestyle and considers it preferential to the alternative of sniping some modestly wealth Silicon Valley engineer and settling down. Just because you disagree with her goals doesn't make them irrational, and I think she's enough of a moral mutant (I at least highly respect the high-decoupling as one myself) that the former is more likely.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing. As the other response says maybe she puts very high negative value on giving birth. Just declare something to be really bad (emotions/feelings) then therefore that behavior was in fact rational.

Rationality then becomes I am smart and I accurately verbalize my feelings therefore my behavior is rational. I’d say they are eating chocolate ice cream a normie eats it because they like chocolate ice cream but a rationalist eats it reasoning chocolate ice cream is 50 happiness points and being slightly fatter is -40 happiness points therefore they eat it.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing.

It boils down to rationality not being the destination, but compass that (together with accurate knowledge of the world in place of map) gets you to the destination in the most rational way.

What should be your destination? Rationality does not say, it is up to you.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing

Orthogonality Hypothesis

To put it as succinctly as possible, rationality is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There are a variety of behaviors that are usually rational to pursue, but there are always cases where that ceases to be true. For an average person with typical goals, being a sex worker might be suboptimal, but say what you will about Aella, she's not average.

So as I’m saying then rationality means nothing. Effective Altruism means nothing. Rationality just becomes I act like every other human who acts on emotions (I just call that my utility functions). EA well I’ve said it before they are just Democrats who gave themselves a different name to call themselves elites or above partisan politics. Which is basically true because people like SBF fairly universally just donated to Democrats.

Aella has talked about her troubles finding a man who is up to her standards before:

Aella: its v annoying that i seem to be searching for a romantic partner who's at least a little bit more powerful than i am

Geoffrey Miller: It's OK to be hypergamous.

Aella: yeah, it's just annoying. it dramatically reduces mate options. like 99% of guys i casually meet are less powerful than me

Aella: if i go to specific events that are selected for ppl doin cool stuff, then it feels closer to a normal mating market, but those events are pretty rare

It's not that she doesn't want to settle down, it's that, because of the way female hypergamy works, her own level of money, success, and status has drastically shrunk the pool of partners she considers acceptable.

Which is too bad, because Aella is 30; if she is looking for a husband and children, she is on her last chance.

What if she places very negative value on pregnancy/giving birth?

Not to mention that nerd children have to be raised in a demanding way to be able and willing to bring you "millions", and even then it's not a guarantee. A thousand per hour is a better rate than a million per 18 years.

I see. Thanks!

TIL Aella is the woman in the gnomes photo. Saw that way before I knew who she was.

Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before

Aella is a woman who sells her body in various ways, who is also rationalist-adjacent. She is locally famous for conducting polls in an attempt to, if one is very charitable, "research" the sexual values and proclivities of the community and her audience, and if one is not charitable, market herself and her services to said community.

This question looks a bit like a scissor statement. I would argue that the first thing to do would be to taboo the word child, which sometimes means people under 14 and sometimes people under 21.

I think that the reason for the reaction by the general public is that the question can be seen as an attempt to either normalize prostitution among minors or sex between adults and 13-year olds. In an argument-as-soldiers mindset, asking that question would make Aella a terrible person. (Of course, people who elect to be on Twitter taking offense to Aella of all Twitter users seems bizarre to me, personally.)

The reason we criminalize most sex between adults and minors (unless the age gap is really small) is that the power dynamics in such relationships are generally lopsided and harmful to the development of the minor. Of course, the idea that the state of being a minor (let's say 15yo) voids consent in the same way that being to drunk to walk voids consent (unless the partner is a minor of similar age, when the minors consent is considered valid. Hm, does this also apply when both parties are dead drunk, or did they then rape each other? Is there a conversion factor between blood alcohol concentration and years under minority, or would a person below age of consent having sex with a drunken person both rape them and be raped in turn, legally?) seems factually dubious, but I can't think of a more plausible legal fiction to motivate this.

I would support a rule that for people permanently incapable of lawful consent (which would include Aella's case but also people ruled generally incompetent), actual consent plus the approval of a legal guardian (or family court or whatever) can substitute for legal consent. The idea would be that the guardian can substitute the common sense of a competent adult in avoiding separate exploitative sex without damning the patient to a life without sex.

In the end, this is something which intelligent people can have different opinions about. Some might prefer having hard and fast rules, even if they end up being harmful in some rare edge cases. Some might prefer to interpret the rules more loosely with an eye to the interests they are meant to protect, at the risk of making the Schelling fence porous.

Hm, does this also apply when both parties are dead drunk, or did they then rape each other?

Considering that it's possible to get charged for rape while still being below the age of consent, the latter, but therein lies the problem.

If a child cannot understand consent [be it factual or just legal fiction], then we inherently owe them immunity for problems that stem from that assumed lack of understanding. But we don't do that (so we get stuff like 10 year olds being on the hook for child support, 17 year olds being thrown in jail for child pornography of themselves, and the ever-popular "charged as an adult" that never extends in the other direction), QED these laws aren't about justice.

Or to put it another way, while we like to pretend there's a good deal of "noblesse oblige" in our age of consent policies, in practice there's next to zero "noblesse" and pointing that out leads to nothing but white-hot rage. Probably because that pattern matches to "authority is being arbitrary for self-serving, non-objective reasons", which crashes right into "that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be", and should you at least suspect that truth to be "[good] sex is not actually a big deal"...

Thus, 'consent' as blackwhite, and why it needs to be defended in a way that goes far beyond a simple disgust reaction. Interestingly, this defense doesn't map evenly across the standard political triangle: tradcons [traditionally] don't care that much about child sex as long as it remained between husband and wife/wives, progressives [traditionally] don't care that much about child sex as long as it isn't between husband and wife (later, man and woman more generally), and (classical) liberals are defined by not caring at all anyway- thus it has to be coming from somewhere else.

Interestingly, this defense doesn't map evenly across the standard political triangle: tradcons [traditionally] don't care that much about child sex as long as it remained between husband and wife/wives, progressives [traditionally] don't care that much about child sex as long as it isn't between husband and wife (later, man and woman more generally), and (classical) liberals are defined by not caring at all anyway- thus it has to be coming from somewhere else.

Could you explain what you mean more fully? I think I disagree with you on at least one point, but a decent chunk of your meaning is implicit and I don't want to go off unnecessarily.

There's nothing in either the tradcon nor the progressive nor the liberal worldview that has any inherent problem with child sex as a concept.

On one end, you have... well, everything before the early 20th century, where the age of consent was somewhere in the single digits (if it even existed at all). This was necessary, because if a family fell on hard times and had some girls, that is what they would be encouraged to do: get married to someone who could actually afford to feed them (no welfare state and the church-run orphanage is a week's ride). Then you have the religious angle, where Christianity has its barely-teenaged Mary expecting a child (something normal enough in those days, though certainly an edge case in more than one way), Mohammed's wife of some single digit age, and the Mormons who, if you go deep enough into Utah or Montana, get busted for doing this every so often. Even as late as the '80s, "marrying one's rapist" was acceptable enough.
Thus, empirically, this concept is compatible with the tradcons.

On the other end, you have the progressives, where the only sex they care about preventing is that which occurs between men and women. Note that all the high-profile examples of "sexualized" children (Desmond, Jazz Jennings) are biologically male, the lack of literature portraying heterosexual (it is rare they involve women in any way, really) child/adult pairings, protecting (and in some early cases, actively facilitating) rapists so long as they're not straight, and so on.
Thus, empirically, this concept is compatible with the progressives.

And then you have the liberals, who are the entire reason we're even having this conversation in the first place and are the first to brag about having had sex-while-child (there was one in this thread already, most of the loose '70s were spent promoting this, and provided you're of a sexuality compatible with the progressive memeplex you're still generally allowed to say "had sex as teenager, 10/10" and have the news media nod along).

So, yeah. Economics and social developments downstream of that enable this taboo (itself a logical extension of the "kids aren't allowed to do literally anything and must be segregated and kept indoors 24/7, because otherwise they'd get seduced by the pedos and end up buried in the woods" trend of the '80s), but beyond that there's as much factual backing for it as there was for taboos like miscegenation and gay sex.

I think your case regarding "progressives" is weak and fails the ITT. The counterculture did include paedophiles, but when feminism/civil rights/gay rights/trans rights all glommed together into SJ, paedophiles were kicked out of the coalition. I was in SJ at the time; I know.

There is some crosstalk where SJ will cover up gay molestation because it is optimising for gay optics far too hard - but this is almost entirely seen internally as "necessary evil", not as "good". And it does go after gay molestation some of the time - most notably the whole "molestor priests" issue where there's no chance of it splashing back on SJ.

I went looking for this video I saw way back where an obviously-SJ woman basically spends 10 minutes saying that paedophiles are horrible creeps even if they don't molest, but I can't find it; sorry.

Now, as for explanation: I think ultimately it goes back to whenever May-December started to be considered "creepy", and the dynamics are the result of six-Haidtian-foundation people who don't like "creepy" (who are AFAICS the core of both tradcons and SJ; SJ is fairly-frequently and, I think, correctly, theorised to be "what happens when you feed counterculture liberalism to six-foundation people who would otherwise have been conservatives") plus the giant superweapon pointed at anyone who's willing to stand up and defend "creeps" in the open.

And it does go after gay molestation some of the time, but only when it's a useful weapon to attack the outgroup

Indeed. This isn't a good refutation of "the only sex progressives hate is that which occurs between a man and a woman", though.

but this is almost entirely seen internally as "necessary evil", not as "good"

Again, the fact gay child sex gets a special pass in the first place is the central issue. The fact of the matter is that they not only accept it but outright encourage it (because any possible negative effects are confined to the groups they hate anyway) and they have shown they won't change should they manage to take absolute power given how they have acted once they have it (where they actively excuse even straight child rape gangs provided the perpetrators pass a paper bag test).

As such, child sex remains compatible with SJ; whether the average adherent sees that as an end in itself or not is irrelevant (as it is with the tradcons).

SJ is fairly-frequently and, I think, correctly, theorised to be "what happens when you feed counterculture liberalism to six-foundation people who would otherwise have been conservatives"

I think SJ (and its resulting success) is "what happens when you feed justifications for a supremacy movement to people in a zero-sum socioeconomic environment". Which is not the sole bailiwick of SJ; they just happen to be the dominant banner under which to perpetrate it these days.
I do wholly agree that the same people who are SJs today would have been activist Christian Rightists 40 years ago, and that those groups have the same moral foundations.

The reason we criminalize most sex between adults and minors (unless the age gap is really small) is that the power dynamics in such relationships are generally lopsided and harmful to the development of the minor. Of course, the idea that the state of being a minor (let's say 15yo) voids consent in the same way that being to drunk to walk voids consent (unless the partner is a minor of similar age, when the minors consent is considered valid. Hm, does this also apply when both parties are dead drunk, or did they then rape each other? Is there a conversion factor between blood alcohol concentration and years under minority, or would a person below age of consent having sex with a drunken person both rape them and be raped in turn, legally?) seems factually dubious, but I can't think of a more plausible legal fiction to motivate this.

I don’t think this is true, I think it’s because it’s icky. I’ll grant that liberals, asked to justify this, will start ranting about power dynamics nullifying consent, but I think this is just one of those things where consent expands to fill the role of sexual morality when everything else has been thrown out.

Let’s take the case of a teenaged boy who hires a prostitute with his allowance money. Obviously the boy wanted to do this, and obviously the prostitute doesn’t have any power over him(maybe she can tell his parents? But it’s not the most reasonable scenario). This scenario probably happens every day, and I’ll bet you very progressive people would say no, he shouldn’t be allowed to do that, and they’ll reach for something other than power dynamics to say so.

Yeah. Like, the teenage boy is being kind of dumb IMO, the prostitute is even worse unless she genuinely got fooled into thinking he was 18. That being said, I think that the terminal illness makes this a pretty different thing. Terminally ill kids have much stronger autonomy interests; there aren't any future adult selves that parents and society are trying to protect.

I would support a rule that for people permanently incapable of lawful consent (which would include Aella's case but also people ruled generally incompetent), actual consent plus the approval of a legal guardian (or family court or whatever) can substitute for legal consent.

I think that could work OK-ish for terminally ill kids; in a hospital for something like this you have a teenager who is more or less of sound mind, not intellectually disabled, and terminally ill. So maybe they're not at full adult capacity for consent but maybe like 75% and usually 75% isn't truly up to snuff...but if they're terminally ill, and their parents agree, and they've had a couple psychologists and maybe a pastor or something talk to them about it, it's good enough. On the other hand, someone who is profoundly intellectually disabled isn't terminally ill and might only be at 10% on a good day, and the +30% isn't enough to boost it over the edge.

There’s a lot of shit to unpack in your post, but I’d like to zero in on one thing.

What the hell is an e/acc?

Effective accelerationist, which is someone who wants to accelerate technological development, particularly artificial intelligence.

Effective accelerationism. By analogy with effective altruism, the Nick Landian position of trying to to bring about superhuman intelligence as quickly/certainly as possible, even if it kills all humans. Should that happen, it was just the next step in the universe's evolution. The only moral action is the minimization of entropy, after all.

Even Eliezer Yudkowsky was a proto e/acc, in his younger days.

Lately, the term is getting watered down into a sort of generic techno-progress label.

Either way, on the AI question, the e/acc's are the ones firmly on the side of full steam ahead, while ordinary people are calling for a pause and Eliezer Yudkowsky is shouting stop.

I don't think most Twitter e/accs think being replaced (painfully) by AI is a good thing, they just believe it's so unlikely to happen it's not worth worrying about.

I agree, though I wonder: is there a group that does celebrate the Greater Replacement and wants to summon an artificial entropy minimizing elder god instead of images of 1950s cities built in Dyson spheres?

There are 8 billion people out there, so even discounting Lizardman's constant, there are probably a handful about. I don't think they have any meaningful influence for the most part (I dimly recall one of them being involved in an AI company of note, but I don't remember who or which)

It wasn’t that long ago that Aella’s question would’ve been taken as an edgy “tits and beer liberal” style joke. I’m pretty sure I recall some mid 2000s maybe early 2010s hospital sitcom/drama with an episode with the same basic premise, just the kid was asking the doctors rather than make a wish.

Edit: I was thinking of “The Good Doctor” s3e7. A 12 year old kid that’s about to have his eyes surgically removed gets taken around by his doctors to do some bucket list stuff.

One of the things he asks to do is to see some IRL titties while he still can. So the doctors take him to a strip but the bouncer refuses entry cause he’s a minor. So one of the doctors in sympathy flashes her tits at the kid right before his surgery.

This actually came out way more recently than I was thinking, it first aired in 2019.

There's a similar subplot in Scrubs.

I believe someone recently was commenting on an episode of House where that exact plot took place; if I recall, the teenager in that episode was a young girl, and all she wanted from the (male) doctor was a kiss, rather than full-on sex. Is that what you’re referring to?

And she gets the kiss too - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ijuzvl8tv8k Later in the episode, the other doctors make fun of Chase (the adult male doctor who did the kissing) but the episode's narrative frames it as a good thing.

totally forgot about this, but now remember it so clearly. did not seem like a big issue at this time for this idea, perhaps because Chase was hesitant and it took the entire episode to get to this ending? Because it’s just a kiss? Because the requester has the profile of a typical “victim” (young underaged girl)?”

these very same people expect migrants to deal with a far bigger and more rapid cultural shock and blame them if they migrants take steps to mitigate this impact

Huh? Migration is surely voluntary. Having Aella as your countrywoman less so.

Sure, I agree it is voluntary, doesn't mean the migrants are doing something bad if they try and mitigate the impact of the culture shift on themselves, or that they should not come if they aren't happy with the culture shift.

Eating pasta at a certain restaurant is completely voluntary, but if their pasta comes with rocket on top and you really really hate it then you can freely move it to the side or onto a different plate. You're not a bad person for not accepting the rocket on your pasta and taking steps to get rid of it vs not even visiting the restaurant, maybe the rest of the meal is really good and you like it very much.

Same with migration, migrants are not and should not be expected to accept literally every cultural thing about their new host country and should be completely free to take steps making their experience more pleasant for them, it's no different to removing the rocket from your meal. We would scoff at anyone who said "If you don't like the rocket then don't eat at this restaurant, if you continue coming here you should be expected to consume everything on the pasta", we should do the same for people who make the analogous argument for immigration.

Au contraire. If the rule in my house is “Take your shoes off at the door,” and one of my guests prefers to keep his shoes on, he can either get with the program or gtfo. He doesn’t get to have it both ways.

Having said that, the conversation would be more enlightening if you gave concrete examples.

Countries aren't houses? If someone who live a city away wants no shoes in his house, that's his choice (i'm fine with it). If he wants his wife to wear a veil, whatever. If he wants to live in a big house with his extended family, is that my problem?

Sure, some cultural issue are important - we might not want to import people from honor cultures who settle disputes with violence or don't want to get educated without careful consideration and pushes for assimilation. But your analogy didn't point to that, it asserted both a right and a positive good to deny immigrants for entirely arbitrary reasons. Which seems dumb? My ancestors, and yours, likely had all sorts of cultural clashes and broken taboos against the natives when they came, but it's still nice that they did.

Neither are countries restaurants. Between the two analogies, I believe mine is both superior and a better way of framing the question.

That said, I’m not sure you really understood my analogy correctly. Yes, if someone who lives in a different house has different rules and customs, that’s absolutely fine (barring a few exceptions). Under my analogy, those would be different countries. So if I move into a women-wear-veils house/country, it would be just as wrong for me to demand the homeowners make an exception for my wife/daughters as it would be for someone from a wear-shoes-indoors house/country to move into my house and demand I accommodate them.

Also, I don’t see how my analogy asserted that it was a positive good to deny immigrants for arbitrary reasons. I think you’ve misunderstood the analogy, and that’s causing you to overthink the details of the analogy without getting into the ideas the analogy represents.

For example, “taking off your shoes” could represent any number of customs/laws: anything from genital mutilation and honor killings to speaking English and using the correct finger to point with. That’s why I said it would be more enlightening if BurdensomeCount gave concrete examples.

Same with migration, migrants are not and should not be expected to accept literally every cultural thing about their new host country and should be completely free to take steps making their experience more pleasant for them

Going to have to hard disagree there. The migrants presumably had either some notion of the price and thus the refusal to pay it is on them, or are fleeing an even worse situation. In either case the correct/pro-social response is not accommodation, but rather an admonishment to "suck it up buttercup". Imagine someone who buys a house under the approach line of an airport and then spends the rest of his life whinging about how he has to listen to the sound of airplanes all day. The airport was here first buddy, either stick a sock in it or move back to your old place.

Accept is the key word that needs some refinement. Migrants are entirely free to try to change society in their image. Their host society is entirely free to say "lol no." So long as both non-violently accept the outcome of that negotiation, it's all above board.

The issue many rightists have is that their host society instead goes "meh, just let me have my McDonald's, reality TV, and video games, and you can do whatever you like." That's arguably a bad outcome, but it's entirely on the natives for allowing the situation to develop like it did.

But the airport's positive or negative impact still remains whether it was there first or not. If it is net negative then the fact its been there 50 years shouldn't on its own be enough to protect it from change. Thats literally just status quo bias.

If you move to a country with a despotic myrderous tyrant ruling it, are you really bound to not be against them, because they were there before you?

It should be a consideration perhaps but its not the whole enchilada.

If you move to a country with a despotic myrderous tyrant ruling it, are you really bound to not be against them, because they were there before you?

Yes, absolutely, because you are the guest of this tyrant! You are voluntarily agreeing to be bound by his rules so that you can live in territory he controls. If you want to continue to oppose this tyrant, you're welcome to do so, but that necessarily precludes moving to his country and asking him for his protection.

Why? If I don't think he is a legitimate authority and am just working through the bureaucracy to move, why should I care? The country and the despotic tyrant are not synonymous, i can accept that i should follow the social rules of my new home, but i am not allowed to join the already existing resistance movement for example?

don't think he is a legitimate authority am just working through the bureaucracy to move,

If you don't think he is a legitimate authority, why are you respecting his authority and acting in all ways like he is? If you don't believe he's a legitimate authority, then you don't engage with his governmental processes. Going through his immigration system and respecting the laws he has set up is actually legitimising him, and I am assuming his system also includes an agreement to be bound by his laws. You can violate that agreement if you want, but you are still voluntarily bound by his legal system (I am assuming rebellion is illegal under this murderous despotic tyranny). If you actually don't believe he's a legitimate authority, then you can immigrate following the rules and procedures of the resistance movement and join their ostensible state.

Because having the appropriate papers is probably going to be pretty important. Remember your bureaucracy is not synonymous with the despot, just as the populace is not. If there were a legitimate authority it too would likely have a bureaucracy to engage with, and quite possibly exactly the same one. The despot is certainly within its rights to punish you for rebellion as well of course.

Otherwise anyone moving to the 13 colonies should not have engaged in rebellion against the Crown. They accepted the authority by moving there and living under those laws and taxes and so on.

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I don't see any of this as a relevant counterargument, my reply to you is "what if I told you that the 'status quo bias' is correct?"

I would argue that if you move to a new country that you are obliged to abide by that country's rules.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a factor, i am saying it shouldn't be the only factor. Are you really saying if you were an immigrant to Gaza, you should be "cleansing" Israel because its in the constitution?

That your own conscience has to be entirely subsumed by the rules of the place you moved to, just because you chose it?

I am honestly surprised if that is your position.

That your own conscience has to be entirely subsumed by the rules of the place you moved to, just because you chose it?

Your conscience isn't being subsumed it's being exercised because You Are Making a Choice. As @ChickenOverlord so succinctly put it, You knew what you were getting into, so either get with the program or get out.

A bit further down you make a claim about being "entitled to agitate" and I think that this one of the core cultural differences between liberals and conservatives. Having an opinion is not something you're entitled to, it's a privilege that comes from having put in the work and being a member of the group in good standing.

I don't think it illustrates a split between libetals and conservatives, as much as a split along individualists and collectivists. If I compare with Jiro's answer below (who I think is also a conservative), he says essentially you should disobey the rules that are against your own morality regardless (hopefully I am paraphrasing him accurately) and do whats right.

So its more of the libertarian/collectivist split I think. Should you assimilate with the existing collective or maintain your own individual behaviours no matter what.

Are you really saying if you were an immigrant to Gaza, you should be "cleansing" Israel because its in the constitution?

I'm not Hlynka, but my feeling is less that you have to adopt their "destroy Israel" culture and more that if you don't do so then the native Gazans are understandably justified in not wanting you there and potentially trying to get rid of you and/or keeping more people like you from immigrating. It all boils down to "You knew what you were getting into, so get with the program or get out."

Sure, the Gazans might feel that, but you are also entitled to agitate for positive change. And that is also ok.

Going back to the airport example. We have Bob who lived there before the airport and thinks it is a nuisance and wants it gone. And we have Charlie, who moved in a week ago and thinks it is a nuisance and wants it gone.

How long they have been there has no bearing on the objective reality of whether the airport is more of a negative than benefit to the locals. Its ok for Bob to pressure the government but not Charlie, even for exactly the same reasons?

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It does not feel like pure hate, but rather a hate that is born of fear, true xenophobia in its original meaning of the word.

The reaction is not fear, it's disgust. It's the reaction of someone who logged in to their feed to watch cat videos and was instead presented with scat videos. Some mix of "WTF" and "OMG kill it with fire!" is a natural human response.

someone who logged in to their feed to watch cat videos and was instead presented with scat videos

A common problem experienced by those suffering from fat fingers...

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