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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4117 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 20, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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So the argument isn't that he's doing any harm in the present, but that his decision to solicit children to produce his artwork, rather than adults, is a red flag. That makes sense.

So the argument isn't that he's doing any harm in the present, but that his decision to solicit children to produce his artwork, rather than adults, is a red flag.

If I send you an email claiming to be a Nigerian prince who will pay you millions for your banking info, one could say that I haven't harmed you yet. In the same way, when I put a worm on a hook and cast it into the water, I haven't harmed the fish yet. And yet, both the email and the baited hook are preparation for harm, and when that harm can be foreseen, people want to treat it harshly.

Grooming is a general term for older or more socially-influential people building inappropriate relationships with younger or more socially-vulnerable people, where the latter end up vulnerable to exploitation. It is used without controversy to refer to gang recruitment of adolescents, cult recruitment, relationship abuse, and a variety of other contexts. Fraud and scams commonly exhibit the same psychological tricks, and in all these cases, the problem is well-understood and entirely uncontroversial: maneuvering people into positions where they can be easily exploited is bad in and of itself, and nothing good comes of it.

The red-flag works on two levels. At the object level, you cannot be sure that @Amadan specifically and his specific apple arrangement will remain purely channeled as he describes without any leaks.

On a broader level you are regularlizing and normalizing a fundamentally very unstable system. Providing open channels for to regularly interact with adults in two-way exchanges and providing, while normalizing adults requesting erotic-adjacent material from the former group, and destygmatizing then entire frame work around eprsonal kink shame, is basically asking for abuse all over the place.

One of the biggest concepts of conservatism vs liberalism is maintainance of the broad social value of institutional infrastructure and moral framework. When you erode that because isolated instances don't cause harm, you ignore that the only way to allow those isolated "harmless" incidents was to either open the same exact gate that does allow the harm or to be coupled with an extreme totalitarian surveillance against any harm.

Essentially you can't have safe, high trust neighborhoods, and no locks, and no social reprecussions for trespassers. You can only pick two. But the trespasser then points to harmless trespassing and uses something somethign "moral disgust" as a frame for why proscribing trespassing is arbirary.

You have a fence, a chesterton's fence. And some people believe they should be able to harmlessly pass through the fence. It is in fact an affront to their freedom that they cannot. Of course there are people who would do harm if they could pass the fence. So your choices are to 1. keep the fence, 2. remove the fence and accept, address, or police the harm on the other side of it, or 3. Put a high security gate in the fence.

Any version of 3 that still let's harm through is just a flavor of 2.

One might, in an appeal to liberty suggest that 2 is the only righteous solution. OK, make that argument, though I vehemently disagree. But we cannot frame 1 as simple disgust, aesthetics or moral dogmatism.

Some people, conservatives and progressives, prefer to live in a society with strong hegemonic barriers against harm whilest allowing a different kind of freedom and security inside the society dependent on that scaffolding.

On another level, this is probably your 'moral disgust' level. Regardless of whether @Amadan 's example would ever harm someone, what he is doing in the hypothetical is disordered. And is further involving a minor in their disordered act and there should be the highest reasonable obstacles from him doing so. Different definitions of reasonable are going to be socially navigated (you'll have burka's in one culture and open decadence coupled with a Terms of Service click through in another). I don't think reducing this social proscription to disgust or aversion tells the whole picture, remotely.

Essentially you can't have safe, high trust neighborhoods, and no locks, and no social reprecussions for trespassers.

What, exactly, is the point in having a high trust society if you still need to act as if you're living in a low trust society?

The point is that you don't if there are social repercussions for trespassers. High trust society doesn't mean no consequences society.

Essentially you can't have safe, high trust neighborhoods, and no locks, and no social reprecussions for trespassers. You can only pick two. But the trespasser then points to harmless trespassing and uses something somethign "moral disgust" as a frame for why proscribing trespassing is arbirary.

Brilliant analogy. Thank you for your post. I'd aware a delta if we did that here.

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