I recall many times growing up when I felt like my inalienable fundamental human rights were violated in unjust autocratic ways, mostly at school. There was also the time of being a year older than my partner but the potential of ridiculous arbitrary laws having major consequences.
I feel like the age of 18 as some kind of moral benchmark is ridiculous. I feel like it is just tied to the age of conscription. Basing sexual morality on the age when the state can abduct and murder without recourse is nonsense. Most of us likely exist in a duality where we might cringe at “underage” of any kind, but not think twice when a couple of teens are dating and in a physical consensual relationship that is respectful and private.
So from a distant future culture’s perspective, like if Star Trek TNG existed in hard SciFi, and there is no need for our present arbitrary policy enforcement, what should be the basis of adolescent autonomous agency?
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Maybe it is weening, cultural pressures, and education.
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Maybe it is full independence and self sufficiency.
For the record, this is my favored idea as it pressures society to enable a balanced financial early life and opportunities. It also adjusts to account for real world maturity levels. IMO, it is either this or number 1 as these are derived from individual human life phases.
- Maybe you think it should be something else?
The purpose of hard age limits isn’t just to restrict the autonomy of minors.
It’s also to allow adults to know where they stand, with respect to the law, and eliminate ambiguities that could be used for selective enforcement.
As an adult, I can’t decide whether to sell alcohol to a minor, or have sex with a minor, etc. based on some concept of “real world maturity”. And if you give prosecutors flexibility in charging adults with crimes based on some mushy concept of maturity, you can probably guess who will get the shaft: poor folks, and black & brown & red folks.
I don’t know that hard age limits are “fair” to minors, I suppose I would probably agree that they are not. But we have to consider what is fair to the person who might be accused of a crime.
Of course they’re fair. That is the benefit of hard limits: their fairness. They are hard because they are simply defined, and that simple definition makes them fair because it means it applies equally to everyone.
We have to draw the age of consent somewhere, and better err on the side of “slightly older than it needs to be”.
As I get older, I feel the age should be raised to 25.
Younger me would vehemently disagree.
But ya, this comment sums up the issue n the least amount of words.
I mean, a bunch of Victorian ladies already came up with “half the older persons’s age plus 7” and I wouldn’t feel terrible about making that the official yardstick. Kinda makes sense to have an age of consent that’s relative to how old you are.
Even that gets kinda ridiculous as you get into higher ages. Like why should it be anyone else’s business if a 30 year old wants to get with a 60 year old? And at some point, the power dynamic shifts to the younger member of the couple, but that’s even more case dependent because you can have some cases where an 80 year old takes advantage of a 40 year old and other cases where a 40 year old takes advantage of an 80 year old.
I’d rather see a system that doesn’t restrict people so arbitrarily but helps minimize the damage that one person can do to another when taking advantage of them, which can happen with couples of the same age, too.
Fair points there.
I was introduced to the “half your age plus seven” as the acceptable minimum age for dating someone, and it does work reasonably well for a good range of ages. But then I found out that it was originally the upper age limit for an acceptable bride…
Peter pan laws help with slight age gaps, beyond that, in till the frontal lobe is more developed it would be irresponsible to allow children to do as they please it would also be cruel as some adults pray on children as they are much easier to manipulate.
Also the frontal lobe often isn’t fully developed till the age of 25. Laws must be concrete hense 18 being the hard limit in some country’s otherwise all we’d hear about is how 'she/he acted so much more mature"
I personally am thankful for these laws as I come from an abusive childhood and while the law didn’t fix my problems I know that it did end those problems. Children lack a voice
BTW, I have no intention of my question causing any harm. I understand it can be a tough subject, but I think it is worth discussing.
Thanks for commenting. As someone disabled by a car on a bicycle, every time I encounter an article about something similar it has a deep impact on me in that moment. I hope I have not had a similar impact on you. I’m simply trying to daydream about a better future.
It definitely is worth discussion, most people don’t understand the neurological side of age of consent and this makes for a great platform to discuss this. In regards to the future of age of consent maybe there will be brain scans that measure the ability for decision making but that is way to eugenics for me I much rather stick with age of consent as flawed as it might be.
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Sorry what are Peter Pan laws? I tried googling but I got a bunch of links about copyright, one that seemed like it might be relevant here (albeit with not-that-great probability) except that it was literally just a headline followed by a page of ads—no article—and something about Cuban children fleeing to America 60 years ago.
I’m familiar with the term Romeo and Juliet laws. Is it similar?
Yes its the same I believe, these laws allow people of similar age to have a romantic relationship without fear of prosecution
Edit: I also search the phrase peter pan laws and returned the same as yourself, it is a term ive seen before used to discribe this but not a legal definition. I can’t imagine Disney are too happy with they’re IP being used in this way
I can’t imagine Disney are too happy with they’re IP being used in this way
Disney doesn’t own Peter Pan.
Reality also preys on easy-to-manipulate children. Nobody has to be trying to hurt a child, for a child to hurt himself by making stupid choices that stick.
some adults pray on children
they already do, and in many cases it’s both legal and socially condoned.
Can you elaborated?
There are some things that aren’t all or nothing the day someone turns 18 in many jurisdictions, and more of that kind of thinking would probably be wise. Some examples:
- Driver’s licenses often have restrictions when people first start driving, such as limits on time of day or number of passengers
- In many jurisdictions, consensual sex between a young adult and a minor some small number of years younger (three, for example) is not criminal
- In many jurisdictions, teenagers under 18 are allowed to work, but there are stricter rules about working hours and hazardous conditions than for adults
- In many jurisdictions, school is mandatory for children, but becomes optional before the age of 18
- Minors in some jurisdictions may petition a court to be emancipated from their guardians and be treated as legal adults before they’re 18 if they can demonstrate self-sufficiency
That’s largely independent of conditions in schools being unfair to students or not especially conducive to learning.
This reply is meant to generate discussion. It is not sarcasm or meant to be taken negatively at all:
What is the purpose of any rules? Why have them? Is it possible to make a “perfect” rule or policy or public intervention whereby all affected persons are serviced fairly? Probably not. If you conclude we need rules, how do we balance their benefits with the disenfranchisement of some of the persons affected negatively?
In your specific case, how do you make the rules minimize negative outcomes without excessively sacrificing the potential positive outcomes?
I’m genuinely interested in your perspective from your age and place in time.
These are good and valid questions. If you’re passionate about them, you may consider studying political science and/or law in the future. One day, if you’re still passionate about this topic, you may be in a position to change the rules.
What purpose/Why Rules: The purpose of rules is to protect those that can not protect themselves against those with the power to harm them.
The possibility of perfect rules: This is my real key underlying curiosity. If a well developed AGI governance system is possible, then fractal attention in governance becomes possible in an objective and data based way.
This makes me curious about the current potential for more direct feedback mechanisms. Obviously basing maturity on a financial threshold of independent life and self sufficiency has its flaws, but I am curious if the massive impact on military, sex, and the bulk of the workforce’s need for early independent life would be a strong enough mechanism to override the negatives. I think any closed loop control system should perform far better than arbitrary open loop.
Regardless of the potential for closed loop regulations, how do you think fractal attention alters governance if we make the assumption that the laws themselves can be written as very specific AGI alignment in a system with adequate redundancy and watchdogs needed for 10 stigma elimination of the alignment problem? Now the law is not a generalization, but instead is an individualized balance and reasoning for the needs of each citizen separately. That can also include dialog with the individual to remove any push back from the perception of an autocratic limitation.
I think that creates a lot more autonomous agency where the governance is both a protection and guardian.
Thank you for your comments.
These are great philosophical questions.
Since I’m leaning towards anarchism but not an expert, I’d say that’s exactly the point of being anarchists: a set of people far removed from the community (like presidents and prime minister, state counselors,or ever city mayor) are not in s good position to even know what people actually need. And that’s when they do have theirs interests at heart.
Whereas the people in a community knows best what a community needs and are best suited to ask for rules that serve them, and impose consequences on a case by case basis that is not sustainable in current forms of government. So it would be totally possible to question every rule and make sure they make sense and benefit the community; and change it when it gets obsolete. Though my favorite part is the community decides how bad the rules were broken and that’s important for having s fair punishment.
There are things kids cannot consent to, but if you are asking about a utopian society where children were not at risk of abuse of any sort? I would say not an age based system but a competence based system. So prove you are able to do the things you want to do, and be allowed to do them. I’d still mandate education, but again, less age segregation, take classes as you are ready for them, move at your pace.
How would you address a situation where an adult does not qualify for a critical threshold that prevents them from being self sufficient?
The guy that disabled me was exactly this situation.
They may not qualify in that moment so it’s necessary to educate them until they can qualify. If you don’t know how to drive, go back to taking driving lessons until you can pass the test.
The problem is that when a social system fails to address alternatives, the test changes to accommodate.
Yeah I suppose that’s what’s happening with cops where they have to keep lowering standards otherwise they wouldn’t have so many people becoming cops rather than raising the quality of education to make them better. Instead they just make it easier for shitty people to become cops.
Age is a good way to do it because while we don’t want kids to be given too much power, we also don’t want adults’ power to be taken away.
Having to earn freedoms through competency tests means that freedom is a privilege and not a right, and that’s a bad core belief for a society to hold.
Freedoms are ours regardless of who we are, those are inherent to being a person. So bodily autonomy for instance, that belongs to everyone, competent or not, there’s no relevant exam you could take to assess that. (Though I guess technically I did not let my kids wipe themselves until they’d practiced a few times and I knew they were competent) But things like driving and smoking, using intoxicants and working or making contractual agreements or handling and using weapons, and most jobs that are currently unlicensed, I think you need to show you understand enough to do those, and that different people are able to at different ages. And yes some people will never be competent enough to handle weapons or vehicles.
I will wholeheartedly agree that age is a good threshold for things like body modification, and also think there’s a problem with “who decides what constitutes competence” but since OP said this was in a perfect world, I do mostly think what you can do safely with understanding is what you should be free to do.
well, we for sure know one of the worst ways and the result of that: the last 25 years of the US public school system
the systematic identification and obliteration of individuality and agency? the US public school system sees that as something to be immediately sought out, shunned, punished, and destroyed at all costs.
The concept of graduated-licensing is the right general idea,
remapping that idea from drivers’-licenses to citizenship makes sense,
but it must be evidence-based/responsibility-based, not arbitrary,
and there must be more than 1 punctuation between equilibriums,
like maybe 0-7, 7-14, 14-21, and within that 14-21, several levels of graduation that are nature/behavior based.
A human’s brain isn’t finished wiring-up until; about 21 years old, which is why the places which have NO-drinking-until-21 have MUCH lower road-deaths rates.
anyways, no region has the intellectual integrity to do anything that way, so there’s no point in working it out more completely.
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If you haven’t already, you should read John Caldwell Holt. “Escape From Childhood,” especially, addresses exactly what you’re talking about here.
Honestly it was like a spiritual awakening for me when I read it, just realizing I wasn’t the only one seeing the injustice.
I think easier access to emancipation would be incredible, when I was a teen in a bad situation I didn’t even know it was an option.
Perhaps the frontal lobes aren’t developed, but is that really a reasonable argument against freedom of action? Are we saying people who have less intelligence should not be given freedom? Why is the age 18 instead of 25? I think that’s a bad argument.
The frontal lobe isn’t “intelligence”. It’s executive function, or the ability to properly recognize long term consequences.
I’m not sure 18 is the number. You don’t need to wait until 25, though. That’s “fully developed”, not “over the threshold of capable of making responsible decisions”. Very few 18 year olds are.
It’s 18 instead of 25 for the same reason the drinking age being 21 instead of 25 on the same frontal lobe argument
Hard enough to enforce that shit with teenagers, imagine trying to police colleges and the early career landscape for that shit.
YTA
That is not a matter for a society to address. It needs parents, especially the father.
If it HAD to be changed the most I’d agree with is something like the Half Your Age Plus Seven Rounded Up rule with the additional caveat that both parties have to actually be capable of arousal to avoid young teens getting it on with near peers who are still prepubescent.
Plus it avoids abuse prone age gaps in adult relationships too. Someone hitting 40 probably shouldn’t be allowed to rob the cradle at college bars.
Strictly speaking, the “half your age plus seven” rule says no to relationships for under-14s. If you’re 14, half your age plus seven is, of course, 14. Any younger and you get a minimum that is older than you, and that person’s own minimum will therefore exclude you. So in the vast majority of cases it actually kinda has your caveat covered already
