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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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So… does anyone on the motte want to actually debate the question posed? I’ll start.

No to child prostitutes because child prostitutes presumably cannot consent, and it is not ethical to commit a crime with a victim involved, just because it’s someone’s dying wish to do so.

Saying yes to adult prostitutes assumes that the dying child is capable of consenting to sex for themselves, which is the complete opposite of what we’ve just established for the “No to child prostitutes” case. If we want to keep “No to child prostitutes” while maintaining “Yes to adult prostitutes”, we’ll have to introduce a difference between the two scenarios: “A teenager can reasonably be expected to understand consent for sex alone (and this is why it is moral for teenagers to consent to sex with each other), but the concept of consenting to sex in exchange for money is too advanced for teenagers to consent to (and therefore immoral for a child to prostitute themselves even though it is moral for a child to have sex without money).”

At which point is it genuine nuance, and at which point is it just contorting yourself into mental gymnastics? Perhaps either saying yes or no to all prostitution in this scenario would be the most consistent moral positions to take. The case for “yes”: a being will miss out on having a fundamentally common human experience before they die. If we care about providing dying children with less fundamental human experiences (like going to Disneyland) before they go, why not provide them with one that matters more?

The case for “no”: children are not capable of deciding for themselves whether they truly want such experiences. Even adults make poor decisions that they regret because it harmed them, and it would be horrible to allow a dying child to harm themselves before they go. (Although, as I understand it, the main reason why it’s bad for an underage teenager to consent to sex with an adult is because they risk emotional manipulation by the more experienced adult. Making sure that it’s a one-off affair would seem to largely mitigate this risk.)

In fact, how much does the dying child part even matter? It seems it would only matter if we first establish that harm is always caused to children having sex, even if they ostensibly consent. Otherwise, this might as well be ethical even without the child in question being mortally ill. But if sex always causes children harm, the question is whether it’s ethical to allow kids to hurt themselves. Is it ethical to sell a knife to a teen who has just stated their desire to stab themselves, regardless of whether the teen was going to die anyways?

What perspectives am I missing?

Also, meta questions:

  1. Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before
  2. Why is the general populace so averse to calmly discussing the moral foundations of our sexual mores? Given how strong the societal taboo is, I should probably delete my account after this discussion. But I mean, why is there such a strong taboo, such that even bringing up the subject as Aella has leads to such accusations of pedophilia?

At the next Bay Area House Party: A startup which matches terminally ill underage boys and girls for consentual virginity-losing. (using advanced AI of course)

Played straight: I have a lot of respect for the concept and support it - but for practical reasons it would need to be done discreetly and quietly. It would be nice if Make-A-Wish or something like that very quietly facilitated things like this.

The case for "yes", in my opinion - as someone who's been in the healthcare field for a few years - is in my mind strengthened by their terminal illness. Part of the reason why children are restricted from making certain decisions is in order to increase the chance that they will grow up into healthy adults. We wouldn't allow ordinary, healthy 13-year-olds to hire adult prostitutes partly because we believe this to be harmful to the 18-year-old, the 25-year-old, the 40-year-old that they will almost certainly become.

With terminal illness, this isn't a consideration any longer. As such, a dying child's autonomy vs. security interests are tilted much more heavily in the direction of "autonomy". As such: I'm slightly in favor, in this case, but it is a nasty question to deal with and there is probably no good solution here.

Let's take a different scenario: the dying child expresses a wish to be able to shoot and kill a real life person (let's be agnostic on race here, but if you want the spicier version, make the dying child also a racist who wants to murder a specific minority of some kind).

What's the opinions now? Yes, No, Only if it's the same race as the kid, Only if it's a Bad Person (like a Trump voter), what?

After all, it's "ha ha only joking, can't you parse a hypothetical?" and not a real query, now is it?

If Aella is seriously trying to get at "why don't we let 13 year olds fuck, and why don't we let adults fuck 13 year olds?" with this stupid, stupid poll (and Hanania is even stupider for his provocation), then - well my opinion of the entire sub-culture remains unchanged, even if Burdensome Count thinks it is a matter of not being able to reconcile belief sets. I have no problem with my belief set around this entire view of what the purpose of sex is, and how we should conduct ourselves with it.

The obvious course of action there is to find a second child with the same wish and let them duel each other.

If that kid lived in a jurisdiction that practiced the death penalty and carried it out with firing squads, I don't think it would be beyond the pale for them to join in on one execution, probably with a few days' drilling beforehand.

The core difference between your "shoot a person" scenario and the "don't die a virgin" scenario is that shooting random people is something society expects nobody to do, while people having sex is not only allowed but implicitly expected. Children aren't told that they shouldn't ever have sex, but to wait until later, when they'll be more mature and have a better understanding of the situation and the consequences. But for terminally ill children, "later" is never going to come.

I think the Make-A-Wish Foundation is entitled to refuse or reject unreasonable requests. Regardless of whether we think this 13 year old girl would die happier with or without her virginity, I think the request for others to help her is unreasonable and anyone would be justified in refusing it.

I think the request for others to help her is unreasonable

Disagree here.

anyone would be justified in refusing it.

Agree - it's a difficult issue and reasonable people can be on either side.

Make a wish has supposedly received requests of that nature before and rejected them.

child prostitutes presumably cannot consent

Why not? Especially because...

In fact, how much does the dying child part even matter? It seems it would only matter if we first establish that harm is always caused to children having sex, even if they ostensibly consent.

This seems to be the route Wertheimer took. It's a bit unsatisfying, because we end up not being able to make such bold proclamations as, "[C]hild prostitutes presumably cannot consent." Instead, we have to say that, sure, they can consent, but we have reason to believe that it would be harmful to them, anyway (and so we simply refuse to accept their consent). He bit this bullet and concluded that it was actually just an empirical question. That is, if we did a proper utilitarian calculation and determined that maybe it's not necessarily so harmful, then from a theoretical perspective, we just have to settle for saying that children consenting to sex is totally fine.

This theoretical tool could be applied to hypothetical societies, too. For example, if we built an extremely sex-positive culture with tip-top comprehensive sex education at young ages, we could raise children who think, like many others even in these spaces think, that having sex is mostly akin to just playing a fun game of tennis with someone, being aware that there are risks like tearing your ACL. Then, they'd be able to consent just fine, no differently than we think that they can consent to playing a game of tennis.

Regarding child prostitution, there is the highly coloured and sensational campaign from 1885 by the journalist W.T. Stead which helped to push forward the the implementation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16.

Before beginning this inquiry I had a confidential interview with one of the most experienced officers who for many years was in a position to possess an intimate acquaintance with all phases of London crime. I asked him, “Is it or is it not a fact that, at this moment, if I were to go to the proper houses, well introduced, the keeper would, in return for money down, supply me in due time with a maid–a genuine article, I mean, not a mere prostitute tricked out as a virgin, but a girl who had never been seduced?” “Certainly,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “At what price?” I continued. “That is a difficult question,” he said. “I remember one case which came under my official cognizance in Scotland-yard in which the price agreed upon was stated to be £20. Some parties in Lambeth undertook to deliver a maid for that sum —-to a house of ill fame, and I have no doubt it is frequently done all over London.”

“But, “I continued, “are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transaction–that is, are they really maiden, not merely in being each a virgo intacta in the physical sense, but as being chaste girls who are not consenting parties to their seduction? ” He looked surprised at my question, and then replied emphatically: “Of course they are rarely willing, and as a rule they do not know what they are coming for.” “But,” I said in amazement, “then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?” “Certainly,” said he, “there is not a doubt of it.” “Why, “I exclaimed, “the very thought is enough to raise hell.” “It is true,” he said; “and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours.”

“But do the girls cry out?” “Of course they do. But what avails screaming in a quiet bedroom? Remember, the utmost limit of howling or excessively violent screaming, such as a man or woman would make if actual murder was being attempted, is only two minutes, and the limit of screaming of any kind is only five. Suppose a girl is being outraged in a room next to your house. You hear her screaming, just as you are dozing to sleep. Do you get up, dress, rush downstairs, and insist on admittance? Hardly. But suppose the screams continue and you get uneasy, you begin to think whether you should not do something? Before you have made up your mind and got dressed the screams cease, and you think you were a fool for your pains.” “But the policeman on the beat?” “He has no right to interfere, even if he heard anything. Suppose that a constable had a right to force his way into any house where a woman screamed fearfully, policemen would be almost as regular attendants at childbed as doctors. Once a girl gets into such a house she is almost helpless, and may be ravished with comparative safety.”

“But surely rape is a felony punishable with penal servitude. Can she not prosecute?” “Whom is she to prosecute? She does not know her assailant’s name. She might not even be able to recognize him if she met him outside. Even if she did, who would believe her? A woman who has lost her chastity is always a discredited witness. The fact of her being in a house of ill fame would possibly be held to be evidence of her consent. The keeper of the house and all the servants would swear she was a consenting party; they would swear that she had never screamed, and the woman would be condemned as an adventuress who wished to levy black mail.” “And this is going on to-day?” “Certainly it is, and it will go on, and you cannot help it, as long as men have money, procuresses are skilful, and women are weak and inexperienced.”

Sure. Rape is bad. I don't think that an example of someone being raped implies that all other people are incapable of consenting. Even if we try to draw a circle around a group of roughly similar people who are being raped because of a systemic societal failure. E.g., people could certainly recount horrible stories about black slaves being raped, and explain how a systemic societal failure led to this happening a bunch of times. Doesn't seem to imply that black people in general are incapable of consenting.

HOW GIRLS ARE BOUGHT AND RUINED Her story, or rather so much of it as is germane to the present inquiry, was somewhat as follows:–

As a regular thing, the landlady of a bad house lets her rooms to gay women and lives on their rent and the profits on the drink which they compel their customers to buy for the good of the house. She may go out herself or she may not. If business is very heavy, she will have to do her own share, but as a rule she contents herself with keeping her girls up to the mark, and seeing that they at least earn enough to pay their rent, and bring home sufficient customers to consume liquor enough to make it pay. Girls often shrink from going out, and need almost to be driven into the streets. If it was not for gin and the landlady they could never carry it on. Some girls I used to have would come and sit and cry in my kitchen and declare that they could not go out, they could not stand the life. I had to give them a dram and take them out myself, and set them agoing again, for if they did not seek gentlemen where was I to get my rent? Did they begin willingly? Some; others had no choice. How had they no choice? Because they never knew anything about it till the gentleman was in their bedroom, and then it was too late. I or my girls would entice fresh girls in, and persuade them to stay out too late till they were locked out, and then a pinch of snuff in their beer would keep them snug until the gentleman had his way. Has that happened often? Lots of times. It is one of the ways by which you keep your house up. Every woman who has an eye to business is constantly on the lookout for likely girls. Pretty girls who are poor, and who have either no parents or are away from home, are easiest picked up, How is it done? You or your decoy find a likely girl, and then you track her down. I remember I once went a hundred, miles and more to pick up a girl. I took a lodging close to the board school, where I could see the girls go backwards and forwards every day. I soon saw one that suited my fancy. She was a girl of about thirteen, tall and forward for her age, pretty, and likely to bring business. I found out she lived with her mother. I engaged her to be my little maid at the lodgings where I was staying. The very next day I took her off with me to London and her mother never saw her again. What became of her? A gentleman paid me £13 for the first of her, soon after she came to town. She was asleep when he did it–sound asleep. To tell the truth, she was drugged. It is often done. I gave her a drowse. It is a mixture of laudanum and something else. Sometimes chloroform is used, but I always used either snuff or laudanum. We call it drowse or black draught, and they lie almost as if dead, and the girl never knows what has happened till morning. And then? Oh! then she cries a great deal from pain, but she is ‘mazed, and hardly knows what has happened except that she can hardly move from pain. Of course we tell her it is all right; all girls have to go through it some time, that she is through it now without knowing it, and that it is no use crying. It will never be undone for all the crying in the world. She must now do as the others do. She can live like a lady, do as she pleases, have the best of all that is going, and enjoy herself all day. If she objects, I scold her and tell her she has lost her character, no one will take her in; I will have to turn her out on the streets as a bad and ungrateful girl. The result is that in nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, the child, who is usually under fifteen, frightened and friendless, her head aching with the effect of the drowse and full of pain and horror, gives up all hope, and in a week she is one of the attractions of the house. You say that some men say this is never done. Don’t believe them; if these people spoke the truth, it might be found that they had done it themselves. Landladies who wish to thrive must humour their customers. If they want a maid we must get them one, or they will go elsewhere. We cannot afford to lose their custom; besides, after the maid is seduced, she fills up vacancies caused by disease or drink. There are very few brothels which are not occasionally recruited in that way. That case which I mentioned was by no means exceptional; in about seven years I remember selling two maids for £20 each, one at £16, one at £15, one at £13 and others for less. Of course, where I bought I paid less than that. The difference represented my profit, commission, and payment for risk in procuring, drugging, &c.

My intuition is that a big part of the constraints upon the rights of children stem from trading the interests of their future selves off against those of their present selves - children have a long life ahead which they are particularly well-positioned to screw up. In the case of terminally ill children, this consideration disappears - if we can build a Schelling fence around them as a class, I see nothing particularly wrong with letting them drink, do drugs, skydive and consent to sex.

Yeah, fair enough - or at least, it's a hell of a lot less wrong. I think that there should be a lot of deliberation and consultation with psychologists and/or religious leaders or something before this...but if a terminally ill 14-year-old wants to go BASE jumping and he and his parents agree on comfort care only if it goes wrong, I'd let him have at it.

Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before

She's a prominent rationalist thinkfluencer/thought leader/blogger, similar to Julia Galef.

Aella leans heavily on her sex appeal; the first time I ever heard about her was on reddit from this famous NSFW photoshoot. More relevantly, she is known for doing weird twitter polls and conducting independent sex research.

She's been mentioned on ACX numerous times, such as in "There's A Time For Everyone" which talks about how Scott met his wife at one of her parties, and "Classifieds Thread 1/2022", in which she is described as a "shit-eating whore" (which is literally true, but resulted in the document being wiped from Google; here's the bowdlerized version).

How can she describe herself as a rationalist? She’s good at getting nerd affection. But she’s a female so rationally speaking selling sex by the hour makes no sense. Rationally speaking she should want to make 10 or so nerd babies. And make herself say lifetime money from that which pays much better than a thousand an hour.

Rationally speaking Musks seems to like making babies so shouldn’t she show up once or twice a month till she gets pregnant and repeat the process for a decade.

  • -13

Rationally speaking she should want to make 10 or so nerd babies.

Isn’t she in her 30’s? She’s not having 10 kids, want to or not.

And, uh, have you ever been around a large family with very smart children? Or gifted children in general? Precociousness can be cute, but it’s so aggravating to caregivers that it’s fairly rational to not want a gaggle of very high IQ children.

Sliders, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I’m pretty sure you’re not baiting, so…why do you think 10 nerd babies is rational for anyone?

Isn’t this the Idiocracy argument? We need more relatively high IQ fertility so it’s rational in the sense it advances humanity.

I don’t think a movie (or the reverse of a movie) should be anyone’s high-water mark for rationality.

Is the argument wrong - I only used it for a reference. Seems obvious if you believe in hbd that selective breeding matters.

Can you see the gap between “selective breeding matters” and “I, personally, should spend my life popping out high-quality babies?”

The first is rational from the most basic natural human instincts the second is irrational.

What does any of this have to do with minimizing cognitive bias and making accurate predictions? I'll admit, I haven't read anything from Big Yud in a few years, but your use of "rational" seems closer to "maximizing economic value" than anything capital-R Rational.

I smack my head against a wall whenever someone claims that x is not compatible with rationality, in the hopes that the ensuing brain damage will help ease the pain.

As much as I vehemently disagree with the religious, there is nothing inherently irrational with belief in God, even if I think they have malign priors and don't update on abundant evidence (which makes them irrational). If a Paperclip Maximizer strips me down for spare parts, I might have many choice insults to hurl its way, but irrational isn't one of them. It would need to go about its aims in an outright counterproductive way, like aiming for paperclips but ending up making safety pins.

Rationality is orthogonal to your desires, and for Aella, it's entirely possible and even likely that she genuinely enjoys her lifestyle and considers it preferential to the alternative of sniping some modestly wealth Silicon Valley engineer and settling down. Just because you disagree with her goals doesn't make them irrational, and I think she's enough of a moral mutant (I at least highly respect the high-decoupling as one myself) that the former is more likely.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing. As the other response says maybe she puts very high negative value on giving birth. Just declare something to be really bad (emotions/feelings) then therefore that behavior was in fact rational.

Rationality then becomes I am smart and I accurately verbalize my feelings therefore my behavior is rational. I’d say they are eating chocolate ice cream a normie eats it because they like chocolate ice cream but a rationalist eats it reasoning chocolate ice cream is 50 happiness points and being slightly fatter is -40 happiness points therefore they eat it.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing.

It boils down to rationality not being the destination, but compass that (together with accurate knowledge of the world in place of map) gets you to the destination in the most rational way.

What should be your destination? Rationality does not say, it is up to you.

I feel like this then boils down to rationality means nothing

Orthogonality Hypothesis

To put it as succinctly as possible, rationality is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There are a variety of behaviors that are usually rational to pursue, but there are always cases where that ceases to be true. For an average person with typical goals, being a sex worker might be suboptimal, but say what you will about Aella, she's not average.

So as I’m saying then rationality means nothing. Effective Altruism means nothing. Rationality just becomes I act like every other human who acts on emotions (I just call that my utility functions). EA well I’ve said it before they are just Democrats who gave themselves a different name to call themselves elites or above partisan politics. Which is basically true because people like SBF fairly universally just donated to Democrats.

Aella has talked about her troubles finding a man who is up to her standards before:

Aella: its v annoying that i seem to be searching for a romantic partner who's at least a little bit more powerful than i am

Geoffrey Miller: It's OK to be hypergamous.

Aella: yeah, it's just annoying. it dramatically reduces mate options. like 99% of guys i casually meet are less powerful than me

Aella: if i go to specific events that are selected for ppl doin cool stuff, then it feels closer to a normal mating market, but those events are pretty rare

It's not that she doesn't want to settle down, it's that, because of the way female hypergamy works, her own level of money, success, and status has drastically shrunk the pool of partners she considers acceptable.

Which is too bad, because Aella is 30; if she is looking for a husband and children, she is on her last chance.

What if she places very negative value on pregnancy/giving birth?

Not to mention that nerd children have to be raised in a demanding way to be able and willing to bring you "millions", and even then it's not a guarantee. A thousand per hour is a better rate than a million per 18 years.

I see. Thanks!

TIL Aella is the woman in the gnomes photo. Saw that way before I knew who she was.

Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before

Aella is a woman who sells her body in various ways, who is also rationalist-adjacent. She is locally famous for conducting polls in an attempt to, if one is very charitable, "research" the sexual values and proclivities of the community and her audience, and if one is not charitable, market herself and her services to said community.

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