NationStates

Telconi wrote:

LimaUniformNovemberAlpha wrote:And yet, for whatever reason, that wasn't your first response to my question. If you actually thought that was a good answer, why did you dodge the question?

Anyway, it's a false equivalence. The biology of sexual activity is pretty obvious. Teenagers masturbate, so they know the sensations involved. Then sex ed goes over the risks involved, which is basically filling the gaps left by our evolutionary-intuitive understanding of sex.

The biology of drug use not only has less evolutionarily precedent, but the education system has tarnished its own credibility on the matter with its lies about cannabis. Kids hear crap like "weed's addictive" and smoke weed and find out it isn't. They know they can trust personal experience more than that lobbyist-influenced health curriculum.

Of course, all this is still putting aside the harm that unsupervised drinking does that supervised drinking might not.

But weed is addictive...

Purgatio wrote:

LimaUniformNovemberAlpha wrote:And yet, for whatever reason, that wasn't your first response to my question. If you actually thought that was a good answer, why did you dodge the question?

Anyway, it's a false equivalence. The biology of sexual activity is pretty obvious. Teenagers masturbate, so they know the sensations involved. Then sex ed goes over the risks involved, which is basically filling the gaps left by our evolutionary-intuitive understanding of sex.

The biology of drug use not only has less evolutionarily precedent, but the education system has tarnished its own credibility on the matter with its lies about cannabis. Kids hear crap like "weed's addictive" and smoke weed and find out it isn't. They know they can trust personal experience more than that lobbyist-influenced health curriculum.

Of course, all this is still putting aside the harm that unsupervised drinking does that supervised drinking might not.

Because consent is a dealbreaker for me whatever the supposed 'educational' benefits, hence why that was my first response. A kid destroying his body without the mental competence to consent is bad regardless of whatever 'incidental side-benefits' or 'good consequence' you can point to. But clearly your response showed me you, amazingly, shockingly, you don't regard it as a moral deal-breaker for someone's body to be physically-injured without their consent, so I decided to shift to my even-if argument (ie even-if you think it's okay for kids to destroy their bodies without consent, here's why your argument's still wrong), why even then I don't agree with your alleged beneficial consequence.

Secondly, the fact that current information about weed is wrong doesn't get away from my argument that you don't need to give a kid poison to teach him how to handle that poison in a less-dangerous fashion in future. Teach your kid about the importance of drinking slowly (although obviously if you're a responsible parent you should discourage your kid from drinking in future, but naturally add that if he's gonna drink he should not it in a way that minimises harm to himself), testing his limits, not going too fast, keeping track of the impact one shot has on his mental faculties, does he feel nauseous, don't drink on an empty stomach, none of this requires giving an underage kid who can't consent to the physical injury of his own body the poison in question. In the same way as you don't need to physically have sex with a kid to explain how to have safe sex or how consent works. You just teach him all the important facts.

Scomagia wrote:

Australian rePublic wrote:We can't have 15 year olds getting drunk? Have you been living under a rock?

It's actually a bad thing for 15 year olds to get drunk. While a lot of them do, a lot don't because it's a shit thing to do with zero payoff.

Orange-Transvaal wrote:

Purgatio wrote:
Because consent is a dealbreaker for me whatever the supposed 'educational' benefits, hence why that was my first response. A kid destroying his body without the mental competence to consent is bad regardless of whatever 'incidental side-benefits' or 'good consequence' you can point to. But clearly your response showed me you, amazingly, shockingly, you don't regard it as a moral deal-breaker for someone's body to be physically-injured without their consent, so I decided to shift to my even-if argument (ie even-if you think it's okay for kids to destroy their bodies without consent, here's why your argument's still wrong), why even then I don't agree with your alleged beneficial consequence.

Secondly, the fact that current information about weed is wrong doesn't get away from my argument that you don't need to give a kid poison to teach him how to handle that poison in a less-dangerous fashion in future. Teach your kid about the importance of drinking slowly (although obviously if you're a responsible parent you should discourage your kid from drinking in future, but naturally add that if he's gonna drink he should not it in a way that minimises harm to himself), testing his limits, not going too fast, keeping track of the impact one shot has on his mental faculties, does he feel nauseous, don't drink on an empty stomach, none of this requires giving an underage kid who can't consent to the physical injury of his own body the poison in question. In the same way as you don't need to physically have sex with a kid to explain how to have safe sex or how consent works. You just teach him all the important facts.

In my opinion, your first argument don’t make any sense.
Giving your kid a bit of alcohol to desensitize them makes it so they don’t get drunk all the time when they become the age of consent. Sure, alcohol does kill some brain cells, but it’s better than getting a rockstar death from getting drunk on your 18th Birthday (I’m Canadian).
I get your second one looking from your point.

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:I don't believe in a drinking age, but then again I don't believe in a voting age either. The only thing I really agree with in terms of this sort of thing is that we need an age of consent.

Purgatio wrote:The whole idea of 'alcohol in moderation' has been debunked, there is no such think as a 'safe' level of alcohol. So you are basically defending giving poison to someone not mentally-competent to consent to taking poison. Just saying.

Purgatio wrote:

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:I don't believe in a drinking age, but then again I don't believe in a voting age either. The only thing I really agree with in terms of this sort of thing is that we need an age of consent.

So why are kids not mentally-competent to consent to sex, but mentally-competent to consent to physically-injuring themselves?

Black Moon Sodality wrote:

Purgatio wrote:The whole idea of 'alcohol in moderation' has been debunked, there is no such think as a 'safe' level of alcohol. So you are basically defending giving poison to someone not mentally-competent to consent to taking poison. Just saying.

You’d also want to argue that a disabled person should never be allowed to drink. Which i suppose might be the case if they could never be responsible with it, which a non-disabled person might be as well. I would think the point would be to encourage responsibility. The idea that a person under 21 can never be responsible just isn’t true.

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:

Purgatio wrote:
So why are kids not mentally-competent to consent to sex, but mentally-competent to consent to physically-injuring themselves?

The small level of injury from alcohol can be considered part of the background cost of living in society these days.

Purgatio wrote:

Black Moon Sodality wrote:You’d also want to argue that a disabled person should never be allowed to drink. Which i suppose might be the case if they could never be responsible with it, which a non-disabled person might be as well. I would think the point would be to encourage responsibility. The idea that a person under 21 can never be responsible just isn’t true.

Depends on what you mean by 'disabled'. Not everyone with a mental disability lacks mental capacity, the test for capacity under the MCA is not always easy to apply but it certainly doesn't apply to all with a mental disability.

There are some with a mental disability so severe that they lack mental capacity to consent, such that they are not allowed to do things like get married or have sex because it would be rape on the part of the other guy, in which case I don't see why they'd be able to consent to physical injury on themselves through the medium of a substance

Black Moon Sodality wrote:

Purgatio wrote:The whole idea of 'alcohol in moderation' has been debunked, there is no such think as a 'safe' level of alcohol. So you are basically defending giving poison to someone not mentally-competent to consent to taking poison. Just saying.

You’d also want to argue that a disabled person should never be allowed to drink. Which i suppose might be the case if they could never be responsible with it, which a non-disabled person might be as well. I would think the point would be to encourage responsibility. The idea that a person under 21 can never be responsible just isn’t true.

Purgatio wrote:

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:The small level of injury from alcohol can be considered part of the background cost of living in society these days.

It really isn't, alcohol is a voluntarily-ingested substance, there's nothing about living in a society that makes alcohol an inevitability like, idk, being exposed to traffic noise when you leave the house. The onus is on you and others who support your position to argue why consent isn't important when it comes to an unnecessary ingestion of a physically-injurious substance with negative health ramifications. When it comes to adults, the justification is the adult is consenting to the injury to his own body by voluntarily ingesting alcohol, but that argument holds no water with children.

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:

Purgatio wrote:
Depends on what you mean by 'disabled'. Not everyone with a mental disability lacks mental capacity, the test for capacity under the MCA is not always easy to apply but it certainly doesn't apply to all with a mental disability.

There are some with a mental disability so severe that they lack mental capacity to consent, such that they are not allowed to do things like get married or have sex because it would be rape on the part of the other guy, in which case I don't see why they'd be able to consent to physical injury on themselves through the medium of a substance

I have become increasingly opposed to the MCA over the last year or so. The standards for capacity that it sets out are just too rigid, and don't take into account the patients individual circumstances to an acceptable level.

Purgatio wrote:There are some with a mental disability so severe that they lack mental capacity to consent, such that they are not allowed to do things like get married or have sex because it would be rape on the part of the other guy, in which case I don't see why they'd be able to consent to physical injury on themselves through the medium of a substance

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:

Purgatio wrote:
It really isn't, alcohol is a voluntarily-ingested substance, there's nothing about living in a society that makes alcohol an inevitability like, idk, being exposed to traffic noise when you leave the house. The onus is on you and others who support your position to argue why consent isn't important when it comes to an unnecessary ingestion of a physically-injurious substance with negative health ramifications. When it comes to adults, the justification is the adult is consenting to the injury to his own body by voluntarily ingesting alcohol, but that argument holds no water with children.

I got injured on a water slide aged 4 once. Should I not have been allowed to go on it? We've got to let children live a little.

Black Moon Sodality wrote:

Purgatio wrote:There are some with a mental disability so severe that they lack mental capacity to consent, such that they are not allowed to do things like get married or have sex because it would be rape on the part of the other guy, in which case I don't see why they'd be able to consent to physical injury on themselves through the medium of a substance

To my knowledge disabled people are “allowed” to have sex. If some are not, that should be considered problematic. That person would have to fight for their rights. And some people considered disabled do end up fighting for their rights.

That would not of course mean preying on them.

Black Moon Sodality wrote:

Purgatio wrote:There are some with a mental disability so severe that they lack mental capacity to consent, such that they are not allowed to do things like get married or have sex because it would be rape on the part of the other guy, in which case I don't see why they'd be able to consent to physical injury on themselves through the medium of a substance

To my knowledge disabled people are “allowed” to have sex. If some are not, that should be considered problematic. That person would have to fight for their rights. And some people considered disabled do end up fighting for their rights.

That would not of course mean preying on them.

Purgatio wrote:

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:I got injured on a water slide aged 4 once. Should I not have been allowed to go on it? We've got to let children live a little.

Dude this is a blanket argument for removing all child protection laws entirely, like literally this is the kind of thing paedophile defenders on YouTube like Amos Yee says

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:I don't believe in a drinking age, but then again I don't believe in a voting age either. The only thing I really agree with in terms of this sort of thing is that we need an age of consent.

Purgatio wrote:

Orange-Transvaal wrote:
In my opinion, your first argument don’t make any sense.
Giving your kid a bit of alcohol to desensitize them makes it so they don’t get drunk all the time when they become the age of consent. Sure, alcohol does kill some brain cells, but it’s better than getting a rockstar death from getting drunk on your 18th Birthday (I’m Canadian).
I get your second one looking from your point.

Do I need to cite the study again? I think I do.

http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/alcohol-use/news/news/2018/09/there-is-no-safe-level-of-alcohol,-new-study-confirms

The whole idea of 'alcohol in moderation' has been debunked, there is no such think as a 'safe' level of alcohol. So you are basically defending giving poison to someone not mentally-competent to consent to taking poison. Just saying.

Greater vakolicci haven wrote:

Black Moon Sodality wrote:To my knowledge disabled people are “allowed” to have sex. If some are not, that should be considered problematic. That person would have to fight for their rights. And some people considered disabled do end up fighting for their rights.

That would not of course mean preying on them.

I'm quite an active campaigner for disability rights. I understand that, unfortunately, to gain more freedom for disabled people we must lose some protections. That's absolutely fine by me.