Re: Recruit vs Groom: Compare and contrast

This discussion seems closer to highlighting the key issues with light and not heat than we usually come.

If there is potential future regret, then it exists for all. If there is asymmetrical benefit, it exists for all, if there are concealed benefits, they exist for all. I still haven't seen a case to be made about permitting consent that doesn't extend to children,

In some very fanciful world, this might be true. If scientists invented a machine that could scan your brain and know a great deal about your inner workings, it could evaluate, "X is ready for sexual activity with adult Y". Evaluating overall lifetime happiness, costs and benefits. It might find that 90% of 21-year-olds qualified, maybe 20% of 13-year-olds, and 0.2% of 4-year-olds. "Hey looky here, Fred, a 4-year-old girl who will actually benefit a little from hanky-panky with Mr. Smith!" (Along with the fancy involved in the technical feasibility of the machine, someone would have to load it with moral values, and the potential for misuse is enormous.)

Coming up with endless committees and hearing procedures for minors to apply for rights and for others to seek guardianships of people who aren't minors but who they feel aren't competent to make certain decisions is less scientifically fanciful, but still to me a nightmare.

The law draws an arbitrary age line as a heuristic measure. It draws it fairly high, willing to delay minor pleasure for many teens to help shield a smaller number from severe distress from their own bad decisions. You've heard me argue for prosecutors not pursuing many cases where teens consistently maintain that they consented and were not misled.

The main flexibility built into the present system is parents, who hand out privileges and make rules for their children based on their knowledge of the particular child -- very imperfectly, but better than any other simple system. The idea of extending it to parents allowing sexual activity with other adults is one I am more willing to toy with than most other possible changes to the system.

If we were debating what to put in "the machine", a big piece in the background is that while sex has psychological risks for lots of people, the benefit curve rises sharply with age (up to 30 or so anyway). Telling 14-year-olds that they should wait a couple years more is something most handle OK -- especially as they always have the option of hopping into bed with one of their peers. The machine would also account for a rising ability with age to deal with emotional trauma and a rising ability to evaluate the true intentions of other people.

We exclusive pedophiles are stuck at age 30 and beyond distressed at this inability to have sex. Bummer. If we invented "the machine", conceivably it could identify one 6-year-old in 10,000 who could happily do hanky-panky with hundreds of men, delighted to bring joy to their lives -- and live happily ever after herself. But alas, in this world we're stuck.

Dante, you're willing to let kids make lots of mistakes as a price for their freedom, and I'm coming to accept that it's a principled position. But I still see the 6-year-old boy sticking his tongue out at his mother as he goes off to live with dad for unlimited candy, unlimited toys, no bedtimes, and no rules of any kind.