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alexflint comments on Our House, My Rules - Less Wrong
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We would have to enforce each of these below some age. It's never going to be a good idea to let two year olds hold political office and drive cars, and I think this holds for every one of the items you've mentioned. The debate is only which age is the correct cutoff, and I agree that this parameter may need re-evaluating.
Religious services? medically unnecessary genital mutilation? I'm not sure you need an age cutoff at all for those two.
"and can be forced to take psychoactive medications against their will." is one I had... opinions... about. And yes, while I was being forced to do so. (to this day, I'm not sure my parents ever managed to really comprehend what it was that I objected to)
Seconded. <shudder>
Even if 'right to make medical decisions' is an unrealistic solution to the problem, I think 'right to refuse care' would fix this problem without too many repercussions. It would've done the job perfectly in my case (and did, when I turned 17 and gained the right to refuse).
Or at least, there ought be rather strict rules about when medical care can be forced. I guess forcing a kid to take an antibiotic in the case of them having a nasty bacterial illness that doesn't go away on its own, etc etc... is one thing. ie, if there's a clear unambiguous no one could reasonably dispute it "you're unhealthy now, you'll be better off with this" thing, then okay.
But "well, kids are teasing you, you're a bit different, we're not even really going to diagnose you with anything, but it's just easier for the teachers and everyone if we make you take ritalin 'to make you focus' and supposedly 'help you cope'", well... zah? (excuse me? You want to forcibly chemically hack my mind, that which makes me, well, me... and without even a really compelling justification?) (yeah, they did mean well, but...)
But yeah. I do admit though that, like most things in this world, pretty much any rule we adopt is going to probably have nontrivial downsides.
I suspect that your suggestion wouldn't've helped in my case. I did fine on the ritalin; it was when I decided that I wanted to learn how to function without it that the problems started: They decided I was being oppositional because I was depressed, and forced antidepressants on me. I had bad reactions to every single one, and wasn't believed when I told them about the issues. (It turns out the 'my thoughts feel fuzzy' issue I had on the prozac was probably a result of me being unable to code things into long-term memory - my memory is pretty sharp for events before and after that two-year stretch, but nearly nonexistant for events during it. I'm still horrified.) I actually became depressed while on the antidepressants, because of how poorly I was being treated, so even an objective evaluation of whether I was having a problem 'worth forcing treatment of' wouldn't've helped at that point.
Limiting the situations where treatment can be forced to physical issues would be safer for the kind of situation I'm concerned with, but there's also the issue of kids with, say, cancer, where the parents may want to signal 'being a good parent' by doing everything possible, and the kid knows from experience that the treatment is worse than the disease. I don't want to screw them over, either.
Well, my suggestion is more along the lines of "the justification for forcing a psych medication against the consent of the patient/victim had better be really strong. Not just 'you do okay' with it but that + 'the situation is really absolutely unambiguously no question about it vastly worse in a reasonable objective sense without it, so much worse that the extreme level of violation of forcibly hacking someone's mind is actually not as bad as letting the situation continue'"
So that rule would have probably taken care of your situation, I think.
As far as the last, tricky... hrm...
Who gets to decide if it's 'unambiguously worse', though? And how do you make sure that they're deciding rationally, and from unbiased information? My mother had very little trouble getting the doctors to go along with her way of seeing it, and never mind that I'd never actually been violent or threatened suicide or anything.
Also note, I'm specifically talking about the situation with the antidepressants. While I wish in retrospect that I'd been more informed about the side effects of the ritalin (gee, maybe my dangerously high blood pressure as a kid wasn't because of 'too much salt', especially given that I eat about as much salt now as I did then and it's fine), I didn't have any objections to it for the first 8 years I was on it, and wouldn't've chosen to refuse it. If we're going to talk about how to make it so I never would have been on it at all, that's a bit of a different conversation, and I'm not actually sure that I agree that that's a worthwhile goal.
Well, as far as the anti depressants... did they clearly unambiguously show that you were to such an extent clinically depressed (rather than just saying "heh, he's oppositional. We can't be wrong, we can't even be forced to consider his own opinion on its own merits, therefore it's clearly a symptom of something") to the extent forcing you (rather than giving you the choice) on them against your will would have been acceptable even under a strict standard?
She had the power, she had a goal. She was going to get what she wanted either through greater experience in the arts of influence or by finding out which doctor was the best candidate for a preferred 'second opinion'.
What Wedrifid said. (And I'm female, by the way.)
The stated rationale, at least at the beginning, was that it was clearly not in my best interests to go off the ritalin, because keeping my grades up was just that important, and thus justified to take other measures to ensure that I kept taking it. I disagreed about the importance of the grades compared to the importance of learning to function without being drugged. Your (Psy-Kosh's) 'dramatically objectively worse' qualifier isn't clear enough to detangle this issue, because it doesn't talk about what should be measured. If grades were the measure, I should have stayed on the ritalin and not objected to it strenuously in the first place: My grades did indeed drop dramatically when I went off it, as I expected them to. The same issue comes up with the antidepressants: My mother swears that I was easier to get along with while I was on them, and that they were therefore justified. (I can't comment, because I don't remember. D: ) If that isn't an appropriate thing to measure, what is?
You know, I agree with the general thrust here about the suboptimal treatment of children, but my reaction to this particular sub-thread is to be somewhat envious of those whose parents were actually informed enough to have them put on psychiatric medication for these types of issues. Myself, I was in graduate school before I found out that I needed this sort of treatment. My parents, I think, always viewed my difficulties as character flaws, blamed me (and themselves) for them, and attempted to correct the problem mainly through shaming and punishments of various sorts.
In contrast to the experiences of a lot of other people, I tend to think that if I had been given something like Ritalin from an early age (say middle school), I might not have nearly flunked out of high school (which resulted in my having to attend a run-of-the-mill state university, and so on).
Wow, I just read about Ritalin on wikipedia... ugh. I would be nearly as worried by doctors prescribing ritalin for gullible adults as for children.
I was on it for quite a number of years actually. I forget exactly. Actually, for a while, they started throwing other things into the mix, for a bit had me also on meleril(a depressant, IIRC) at the same time. but yeah.
You assume that age is the correct parameter. There are others that are perhaps more relevant.
More relevant, maybe, but age seems to be the simplest and the easiest to put into law.
Other viable conditions could be some academic achievments, or financial independance ... these would be good, but age is just simpler.
In the case of political office, how about simply the ability to get the suckers to vote for you?
That one's easy, it's self-correcting. Others - alcohol, sex, voting - are not.
alexflint: We would have to enforce each of these below some age. It's never going to be a good idea to let two year olds hold political office and drive cars, and I think this holds for every one of the items you've mentioned. The debate is only which age is the correct cutoff, and I agree that this parameter may need re-evaluating.
When I saw this my answer was, "No, age is not how we should decide this. Skill and comprehension is. But these two made me rethink the matter. . .
wedrifid: In the case of political office, how about simply the ability to get the suckers to vote for you?
Emile: That one's easy, it's self-correcting. Others - alcohol, sex, voting - are not.
If we had a tests to see if we were ready to assume the responsibilities involved then the tests might be flawed, or even deliberately sabotaged to prevent or mislead the thought processes of those taking it.
Maybe this is why they rely on age instead. It will block those already prepared to handle whats involved, but reduces mistaken or malicious meddling .