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Konkvistador comments on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Thomas 07 October 2013 02:52PM

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Comment author: JoshElders 11 October 2013 06:05:12PM 4 points [-]

Candidate for a forbidden topic: Celibate pedophilia

I saw a post somewhere (can't find it again) asking if there were forbidden topics on LessWrong, with the implication that this would be undesirable.

This post I made to the Discussion section was seriously downvoted: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it3/assertion_a_large_proportion_of_pedophiles_are/ There is no attribution behind downvotes, so the reasons can't be determined.

Perhaps it belonged here in the open thread; I'm not experienced enough to judge that. There are also complaints that it was obvious and had no significant rationality-related issues, but I humbly invite people to consider whether these may be rationalizations -- when evaluated against the relevance of posts in this open thread.

However, there are also comments that have upvotes:

"The existence of the article has potentially severe downsides for the site, and while we may wish this wasn't so, reality is what it is."

"taints reputation of LW"

"Writing about low-status topics is low-status. This topic is low-status. Making LW low-status goes against the goals of most readers, I guess."

Let's think civil liberties issues here. All the interesting civil liberties issues are about low-status cases -- if a group or some idea is popular with the majority, then no one is complaining and the "civil liberties" concept never comes up. Sometimes you might want to override your ordinary feelings about status to consider an oppressed group.

I speculate that what commonly comes to mind when "pedophilia" is mentioned is child sex abuse. Discrimination against (and punishment of) child sex abusers is entirely appropriate. I have ruled out that case by calling the topic "celibate pedophilia", but after that restriction is in place I suggest these associations: a desire to change society so that adult-child sexual activity is legal and accepted (e.g. NAMBLA), a desire to inflict harm on children, looking at pictures of children being harmed, and perhaps insisting to others that they shouldn't be disgusted by these desires.

I am opposed to all of those things, and I know there are many other celibate pedophiles like me. Some of the points seem irrelevant from a civil liberties point of view, but they are relevant from a status point of view.

So there are questions here of whether people want to personally change their status judgment based on those clarifications.

With regard to "tainting the site", there is an issue as to whether those clarifications can be conveyed in some way to avoid the fears of harm to the site based on low status. Does anyone want to clarify the risk of harm to the site?

Perhaps the net judgment of the LessWrong community is that it should be a forbidden topic. But if so, I think it's worth making a conscious note of that fact.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 October 2013 09:20:53AM *  2 points [-]

I think it is important to remember that the current strong sentiments against pedophilia are somewhat anomalous. I wrote several comments touching the subject on Yvain's blog.

I in the past when discussing this with Athrelon proposed that in the 1970s it was not at all obvious Transsexuals would make the ingroup and that Pedophiles wouldn’t.

The ongoing anti-pedophile hysteria, which has now reached the point where adult men talking with children are considered suspect and pedophiles lie why they got into prison lest they be murdered or raped, clouds our view of the past. It can be hard to alieve that traditional society saw this as one sexual perversion among many and that for a short window in the 1970s many respectable people considered a legitimate orientation.

The “between consenting adults all is allowed in sex” coalition cementing deontological law hadn’t yet solidified at the start of the sexual revolution. The now mostly sidelined “free love” one was the key point for coordination.

It was only 1994 that NAMBLA was expelled from “the International Lesbian and Gay Association, having been the first US based organization to be a member.”

Dawkin’s recent gaffe ( http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3858647.ece ) on the subject is a window into how this recent but alien social reality. I call it a gaffe, because those are in the eye of the beholder (the media), if you don’t think it caused on net bad PR for him do a search or two online and then come back.

Of course today, here where we are calm and in Far Mode and have certain LWian norms, we can safely sketch out the basic harm-based explanation. While both Pedophiles and Transsexuals probably don’t chose their feelings and yes we clearly should treat pedophilia, the idea that we would accept children “consenting” to sex with adult men on an alternative earth instead of contributing money so some men are allowed to cut off their penis and have a vagina fashioned is clearly absurd.

I think the question isn’t absurd at all, once you notice just how post-hoc this reasoning is. After all the why would the people in the 1970s not understand the very simple harm based argument I’m sure conservatives made?

Now maybe Pedophiles will make the coalition some day. Perhaps in 20 years. But this doesn’t change they where thrown off the Prog bus and lost the sexual revolution they helped launch. And in line with the linked article, I’m pretty sure their inclusion or exclusion isn’t going to be decided based on any kind of “harm accounting” that is claimed by many intellectuals to guide modern moral change.

In an add on comment I make the basic harm based argument I'm referring to here explicit

“Children are greatly harmed by sex with adults in nearly all circumstances. Thus this should be taboo for their good.”

So I'm making the likely controversial case that this argument is the result of post-hoc reasoning that would not convince us in the alternative timeline I also tried to make alievable, not only believable, with my language.

I should also append this follow up comment to avoid this being understood as an on attack or insult to transexuals per se:

People asked for a plausible example despite being controversial, I gave one.

Now the debate is about pedophilia, sex with teenagers and transexuals. This would not be a problem if people directly used it either to attack or support the argument I advanced.

Some seem to want to have simplified it and are engaging the comment as if I just said “Pedophilia is not bad, transsexuals are bad.” This isn’t what I was saying, nor was it something I wasn’t saying. It isn’t what the argument is about. Indeed I for now refuse to comment on this in the hopes this thread can be salvaged. Or does everyone simply agree with the point I was making as plausible and only debates on this nearby topic remain?

...

Sure the meta arguments often change our opinion on object level political positions… but engaging just the political positions themselves without addressing the arguments for the meta is not a productive conversation for me.

This was in the context of me using it as an example of the the capricious nature of what is sometimes termed Moral Progress, the ongoing process of value drift in our civilization.

Comment author: hyporational 12 October 2013 10:44:59PM 0 points [-]

Extensive research about the harm based argument and transsexual happiness has been done and would have been done regardless of initial political decisions. This would have and probably has affected policy. Now that we have this research, why is wild speculation of historical political trajectories relevant?

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 October 2013 07:39:54PM 0 points [-]

Extensive research about the harm based argument and transsexual happiness has been done and would have been done regardless of initial political decisions. This would have and probably has affected policy.

I don't think that the primary reason for giving rights to transsexuals is because of real research. It's rather the result of political activisim by a certain coaltion of social justice thinkers.

Comment author: hyporational 14 October 2013 01:10:59AM *  0 points [-]

Primary reason or not, I bet the activism is easier with some research to back it. In Finland, sex change is done with taxpayer money after extensive screening for other mental disorders. It's done because it helps, not because of political advocacy.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 October 2013 08:22:31AM *  0 points [-]

There are hypothetical treatments that would reduce harm ("it helps") in this sense that we would not use because of our current set of ideology/values. Indeed I think it likely this is the case.

Comment author: hyporational 15 October 2013 11:32:35AM 0 points [-]

I think I finally updated in your direction, just had to let the argument sink in a bit and think of other examples. Abortion laws would be fertile ground for some likely true but controversial arguments.

I think there are also lots of hypothetical disorders that could be treated, but most people would think of it as "medicalization" because it wouldn't fit their values.

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