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Ishaan comments on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm going to come at this from descriptive ethics, rather than a prescriptive ethics, because I find that more interesting for this particular case.
The popularly termed "age creepiness rule" (don't date under age/2+7) appears to be a weirdly accurate reflection of what most OKCupid men proclaim is reasonable (see: male chart, youngest allowable match) and this is despite the human male inclination towards choosing younger mates (as okcupid shows, actual messaging rates differ from declared values)
Let's just suppose that outwardly stated preferences on OKCupid mimic (at the very least) the moral intuitions of Western men, and that the "age creepiness equation" is not well known enough to actually alter anything.
What would we predict about our laws, given age/2+7?
14=14/2+7
Making 14 the age at which people can start exploring sex without violating the equation.
18=22/2+7
Making 22 the age at which it is inappropriate to have sex with anyone under 18.
Another equation conforming pair which seems to correspond to legally important ages: 16 & 18.
Does this information hold any predictive value for how nations tend to make laws? Does the equation change based on cultural variables? Do you think that the equation reflects anything important about human maturity levels? Does it reflect anything about which behavior would be adaptive ancestrally? Does the equation makes sense from a proscriptive ethics perspective?
My answer to these is generally "yes" with increasing uncertainty and qualifying for each successive question.
I'd be weary of applying these kinds of "rules of thumb" at extreme ends of the scale.
I was less "applying" and more observing the way this "rule of thumb" conforms to many people's moral intuitions, and its possible implications. I'm not denying that at the older ends of the scale there comes a point at which increasing age does not mean decreasing vulnerability to exploitation. For example, I wouldn't say 35 and 55 is an immoral pairing, despite violating the equation.