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philh comments on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If there is a question of sexual morality on which:
You grew up in a culture in which people tend to give one answer, which you agree with, and
People who grew up in Spain tend to give a different answer,
Then I think there's a reasonable chance that: in the counterfactual world in which your parents moved to Spain shortly before you were born, and you grew up there, you would give the Spanish answer instead of your current one.
That's an obvious point.
I don't think such questions exist to the extend that the answer is much different.
Is it usually wrong for two 13-year-olds to have sex with each other? What about a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old? 20 and 13?
In general I don't believe in a moral system where the central criteria of whether something is right or wrong gets decided by a straight rule.
What I do believe is wrong is when 16-year-old or a 20-year-old projects power in order to make the 13-year-old decide to have sex with them. Additionally I see responsibility to act afterwards in a way that the experience creates no emotional wounds or other damage.
Pregnancy would be damage because even if the 13-year-old gets an abortion getting a child killed inside himself leaves some emotional trauma. That means the older person would be responsible for seeing that the 13-year-old is on the pill and use condoms.
In practice I think there probably some level of wrongness in most cases where a 20-year-old has sex with a 13-year-old.
I suggest that, due to the anchoring effects of formal law, there exists some combination of ages such that you (and probably the average German) would say this and the average Spaniard, including hypothetical-you who grew up in Spain, would not. It may not be precisely 20 and 13, but I strongly suspect that such a pair of ages exists.