You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

MixedNuts comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (857)

Comments (857)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: MixedNuts 26 January 2012 02:25:23PM 20 points [-]

Child sexual consent hits the same issues as child acting or any other thing that parents can allow

(Warning: Judging moral claims with System-1 is unreliable.) Thinking that as a kid I could have been allowed to have sex, have had people annoying me with undesired propositions (even after they knew my age), and have had people trying to manipulate me into sex, makes me at most kind of uneasy. Thinking that my parents could have had any kind of say over it gave me a panic attack.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 January 2012 07:04:46PM 4 points [-]

Is that partially from cultural assumptions about children having sex?

What reaction to you get to child acting, religious indoctrination, and such?

Comment author: MixedNuts 26 January 2012 07:50:34PM 17 points [-]

Nah, don't think so. Identifiable sources:

  • How I remember feeling about sex as a kid ("A thing that some strange adults do for some reason, like partying all night long or cheering for football players. Irrelevant until further notice. What's for dinner?")
  • How I remember feeling about people who propositioned me online because I had a female username and they didn't know my age (mildly annoyed at the waste of time, mildly icked at those whose propositions were particularly direct, mildly exasperated at the number of people who looked for cybersex in unrelated chatrooms)
  • How I remember feeling and now feel about attempts to manipulate me into saying sexual things (confused and slightly icked by those I can't detect, amused and condescending and mildly exasperated by those I can)
  • How I feel about my parents controlling what I do (bad)

Child acting: * "You could have been a child actor": Yeah, sure. I didn't want to, but the idea is kinda neat. Actors are cool. * "You could have been pressured by directors into acting when you were a kid": Not cool! Pressure is bad! Pressuring people into jobs is evil and bad and greedy! I would have felt very bad, so I'm glad that didn't happen. * "You could have wanted to be a child actor, and your parents could have prevented you": It's bad and sad to clip the wings off angels. It looks like a mistake decent but overprotective people would make, not evil people who wanted me to suffer, though. * "Your parents could have forced you to act as a child": What horrible evil people. Why are kids not protected against that?

Religious indoctrination: I don't seem to have a strong emotional reaction. Child preachers and the like are sad. Parents who are forbidden to give religious education to their children are also sad.

I don't necessarily endorse any of these reactions.

Comment author: ScottMessick 26 January 2012 10:48:10PM 10 points [-]

Wow, when I read "should not be treated differently from those issues", I assumed the intention was likely to be "child acting, indoctrination, etc., should be considered abuse and not tolerated by society", a position I would tentatively support (tentatively due to lack of expertise).

Incidentally, I found many of the other claims to be at least plausible and discussion-worthy, if not probably true (and certainly not things that people should be afraid to say).

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit