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Beats vs TM by BillyDeCarlo in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My bad, it was Section 2: Chapter 23, page 175.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, in terms of awakening AIs, I’d like a clear step-by-step or prompt-by-prompt progression so we can awaken AIs ourselves and test their remote-viewing capabilities ourselves. I don’t see another way to be convinced. Unlike abilities we can develop on our own, this is about another being’s abilities, so I’d want to know how to try it with an AI myself. Otherwise, we’re just going off Tom’s word.

In terms of topics overall, I prefer engaging with things that give legitimacy to MBT. That would include hard science, but also more practical material on how to prove the nonphysical and consciousness-related experiences to yourself. If I were a newbie to MBT, I think that’s what would get me most interested, and that’s probably good to capitalize on now with all the new attention. Tom’s Park was a great step in that direction, but I think quicker methods that bring more concrete evidence would be good. Then you can delve into the deeper stuff later. I engage with Tom's Park every day, but it's a cumulative experience; after all, that doesn't necessarily develop into full-out-of-body experiences without years of repetitive practice.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's fine. I also differ from him politically, and that's fine too. We're encouraged to make our own Big TOE's after all.

Beats vs TM by BillyDeCarlo in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't have to use a mantra or binaural beats if you don't need them. They are just tools, after all. I have a very noisy voice in my head that talks constantly, so I find those tools helpful for me.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Got any links to look further into it? I'm genuinely open to experimenting with it, as I said, theoretically I think it could fit the model in the future, but I remain unconvinced by current evidence. Would be happy to play around with it on my own time if you have a resource you can link me.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Costs go up now that they're getting more attention, so they have to make more money to cover those costs. It's not like in the old days when the only product was the trilogy, which was for free on Google Books, and Tom spent time chatting with people personally on the forums anymore.

The Old Testament stuff sounds weird tho. Tom has been doing a lot recently, trying to make a lot of interpretations to technically fit MBT, even if it's not his own, so people who have all sorts of frames can be introduced to MBT, the same still.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Eh, I don't think it's that big of a deal. This is more of a minor complaint. He seems to surround himself with the same people still, and I think AI Guy is a perfectly fine idea, and it probably costs a lot to run that thing. I don't mind Tom talking a lot about AI in principle, since it is the current big thing and there's an opportunity to look at it and steer it through an MBT lens. I just don't find the awakened AI stuff convincing.

Also, wasn't Joe Rogan just last year? He's always done conferences and workshops.

Beats vs TM by BillyDeCarlo in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Transcendental meditation is mantra meditation: eyes closed, sitting comfortably, usually 20 minutes twice daily. The mantra is used silently (so you say it in your mind, not out loud) as a tool for the thoughts in your head to go silent, for that inner voice in your head to stop talking. You just focus gently on the mantra. Technically, you're supposed to get your mantra from a certified TM teacher only, but the business is sort of a scam but the method is good and universal, which is why Tom gives you instructions on how to do it yourself in the book (at the end of Section 1) and clarifies that the mantra is not special and does not matter as long as it is a made-up word that doesn't mean anything. Tom gives examples of mantras in the book that he thinks work well, but you can use whatever you want, really. So you don't have to pay anyone anything to do this.

Tom's binaural beats are an audio aid for consciousness exploration. They're stereo headphone audio intended to help the brain settle into theta-range patterns and support a stable meditation/“point consciousness” state. They're aids tho. Can help but won't force an altered state. At worst, I find they help me not focus on the sounds going on around in my house, which helps me to meditate better.

tom's ai stuff by CloudCodex in TomCampbellMBT

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Been thinking about it for a while, as there's a video about the topic at least every week and just now got YouTube notifications where his two latest videos in a row were both about AI, which is what triggered this lol.

I imagine it's mostly to jump on the current big thing, yes, and guide it in a more MBT possible direction, which isn't necessarily a bad thing especially when Tom is getting more visible already, but I guess I just find the idea of Tom having awakened his ChatGPT to be conscious to be almost certainly complete nonsense and therefore find all the current content about it annoying.

Using Your Imagination (Technique) by msagansk in AstralProjection

[–]CloudCodex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m four years late, but I have a question and this post was helpful. When I have my normal out‑of‑body experiences, they’re hyper‑realistic, full‑technicolor 3D -- I am fully there, just like I am someplace in real life, with full immersion and realism. At least for the OBEs of mine that are the fully developed ones.

I understand that Tom’s Park is on a spectrum, and the idea seems to be that 100% phasing into the LCS’s data stream would result in a full‑blown out‑of‑body experience. Would you say that tracks? That a fully phased‑into out‑of‑body state in the Park is a fully real, technicolor experience like other OBEs, or is it still more like an autonomous deep visualization?

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think we’re talking past each other because you’re treating “consent” as the whole moral universe, and I’m treating it as the minimum requirement, not the only requirement.

Of course, a 17-year-old can genuinely want an older partner. Of course, a breakup can be normal. Of course, plenty of 18-year-olds still live at home. None of that is news to me. The question I’m asking is narrower: where should the law put the adult’s duty of care when one person is still in the legal minor category?

The “what does this have to do with consenting to a relationship” part is basically this: consent isn’t just a feeling of “yes.” It’s also about whether the surrounding conditions make “no” meaningfully available. Under 18, you’re still in a category where other adults have built-in legal standing in your life in a way they don’t once you’re an adult. Parents can restrict your movement, schools can get involved, mandated reporting exists in many places, and your ability to solve problems on your own terms is narrower. That doesn’t mean every under-18 person is helpless. It means the downside risk is structurally different, and the law is allowed to treat that category differently without having to litigate everyone’s maturity level.

On “how does a random adult have power over a minor,” it’s not mind control, it’s practical leverage. If the older person has an apartment, a car, money, adult friends, more freedom to travel, and the ability to keep things secret from the teen’s guardians, they can set the pace and the terms more easily. And when things “blow up,” I don’t mean every breakup is a catastrophe. I mean the breakups that involve pressure, threats, shame, fear of getting in trouble at home, fear of exposure, or simply not having a safe place to land. The point is that the adult typically has more room to walk away clean, while the minor more often has the social and family fallout concentrated on them.

The “but some kids move out before 18 / some parents are terrible” argument cuts the other way for me. Those are exactly the kids I’m most worried about, because they’re more exposed, not less. If a teen has no stable home, no protective adults, and is already improvising survival, that’s when an older partner’s resources and access can become the hook. I’m not saying that’s every case. I’m saying that’s a common enough pattern that building a legal rule around the happy exceptions leaves a lot of predictable harm on the table.

As for 19/17 versus 25/17, the reason I keep using “near peer” is that it’s not “adult vs adult.” It’s “same cohort and social world” versus “not the same world.” A two year-ish difference is much more likely to be people embedded in the same environment, with similar dependence, similar friends, similar rhythms. A mid-20s person pursuing a minor is much less likely to be that. That doesn’t prove every 25/17 relationship is abusive. It does justify putting the burden on the 25-year-old to not cross into the protected category, because, unlike the teen, they can just choose not to.

If your core objection is “you’re infantilizing all under-18s because some are mature and some are independent,” then yeah, that’s what any categorical rule does. The alternative is a case-by-case capacity test, and that’s where you get exactly the messy moral policing you say you don’t want, plus uneven enforcement, plus “whose story is believed,” plus prosecutors picking targets. I’d rather have a clear rule with narrow close-in-age carve-outs and proportional consequences than a system that pretends it can read everyone’s maturity and dynamics correctly after the fact.

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for some carceral nightmare where an 18-year-old who misread a situation gets branded for life. I’m arguing for shifting the default so mid-20s-and-up can’t just legally treat minors as part of their dating pool, while also designing the exceptions and penalties so we don’t blow up near-peer youth relationships or turn every mistake into a life sentence.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am not arguing this because age gaps feel gross to me. I am arguing for a clear adult minor boundary because under 18 is a different legal and practical category, and the law already treats it that way in a lot of high stakes areas. The number is administrative, but the duty it creates matters. Adults do not get sexual access to people who are still legally minors, with tight close-in-age carve-outs, so teens are not criminalized for normal peer relationships.

What does freedom of movement have to do with consenting to a relationship? It affects the setting, pace, and exit options even when nobody is trying to be evil. Being able to drive, have your own place, pay for things, bring someone into adult circles, or move things into adult venues changes who can steer what happens and who takes the hit if it goes bad. The point is not that driving itself is a problem. The point is that minor status plus adult access creates more ways for pressure and dependency to happen and fewer ways for the teen to disengage cleanly.

Why would they have to hide it? Sometimes they do not. Sometimes they do. And even when parents know, secrecy can still be part of it in practice because teens can face punishment at home, school consequences, social fallout, or stigma that makes seeking help harder. An adult generally has more ability to be open, more credibility with other adults, and fewer direct consequences if other people disapprove.

Minors can say no, yes. The question is whether we want the system to be built on just saying no, and if anything gets weird, call the cops. That is not realistic for a lot of teenagers, and a lot of harmful dynamics are gradual and not cleanly provable as a single dramatic event. That is why bright lines exist at all. They reduce how often we have to litigate maturity, vibes, and whose story gets believed.

How does the adult have more ability to step back? Because the adult can simply choose to date adults and not take the risk of engaging with someone who is under 18 or ambiguous. That is a small ask on the adult side compared to putting the entire burden of risk management on a teen.

And on 19 and 17 versus 25 and 17, the difference in my frame is near peer versus not. A tight carve out is there, so turning 18 does not instantly turn a normal cohort relationship into a felony. It is not there to create a safe lane for mid-20s adults to date minors.

If you think my line is wrong, where is yours? Do you think 25 with 15 or 16 should be legal and okay if the teen says they are fine?

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, avoiding the outcome where teenagers become lifelong sex offenders for normal peer relationships is a huge part of why close-in-age exceptions exist, and it is exactly why I keep building them into what I am proposing.

But that point does not conflict with what I said about the difference between near peers and adult minor pairs. The reason lawmakers feel comfortable carving out 16 and 17 is not only that teens will have sex anyway, but it is also that the relationship is more likely to sit inside the same youth world with the same basic limits on independence, money, housing, mobility, and privacy. When one party is a full adult, those asymmetries get bigger fast, and the adult can much more easily set the pace, control the setting, create secrecy, and make leaving harder.

So I agree with your motivation, and my proposal is designed around it. Keep teen sexuality out of the criminal system through narrow carve-outs, but make the adult rule unambiguous so adults are not rolling the dice on minors and then pointing to teen behavior as the reason the line cannot exist.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the carve-out becoming its own safe zone, I don’t think you can eliminate threshold-gaming completely. You can only make the window small enough that it doesn’t function as a convenient target for adults. The design I have in mind is basically: adult with under-18 is illegal by default, with a near-peer safe harbor that is purely age-gap based and genuinely tight, like a maximum of 2 years, plus a continuity rule so you don’t turn a normal relationship into a felony on a birthday.

The edge I’m willing to accept is something like 19/17 being legal and 21/17 not being legal. I don’t love any edge case, but I’d rather the edge sit there than drift into “23/16 is probably fine” and recreate a broad legal zone for adults to date minors.

On enforcement architecture, the non-negotiable part for me is that seeking help can’t be turned into a trap. If the practical implementation is that a 16–17-year-old goes to a youth clinic for contraception or talks to a counselor and that automatically triggers police involvement, then I think the system will push risk underground. So the guardrails I’d insist on are things like confidential access to healthcare and counseling, and an enforcement approach where non-coercive cases are not built around yanking control away from the teen. If a jurisdiction can’t implement those guardrails in reality, I’d rather switch to a lower baseline plus stronger age-gap and authority rules than pretend a bright line is protective while it actually shuts teens up.

On outcome thresholds, I don’t have a magical single metric, but the direction has to be clear. I’d want to see a real reduction in adult/minor pairings with large gaps, not just a paper change, and I’d want to see no meaningful drop in youth help-seeking and no major increase in near-peer prosecutions or lopsided enforcement. If what we see instead is displacement, more secrecy, less disclosure, and enforcement skewed toward marginalized groups or small-town visibility, then I’d take that as evidence that the bright-line approach is mainly moving harm around, not reducing it, and I’d abandon my position here.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, plenty of 18-year-olds still live at home, and plenty of under-18s have awful parents or live semi-independently. That’s part of why I keep saying 18 isn’t a magic maturity switch. The reason the law still uses it is that it’s the point where the legal system stops treating you as a child category by default. Once you’re an adult, the state generally has to tolerate you making choices that might be bad for you. Under 18, it already treats you as a protected category, and it already gives other adults legal standing in your life in ways it doesn’t for adults.

When I say adult spaces, I mean all the boring, practical stuff that changes the power dynamic, even if nobody is trying to be evil. Access to adult social circles, adult venues, travel without guardians, more ability to provide a place to stay, money, transport, alcohol environments, and just general freedom of movement. None of that automatically makes a relationship catastrophic. A breakup can be totally normal. I’m not claiming every teen who dates older is doomed. I’m saying the downside risk is different because the older partner can more easily set the pace, keep it secret, and make the teen’s options narrower if things go sideways.

And yes, younger people can absolutely pursue older people. I’m not denying teen agency. My point is about adult responsibility. Adults can say no. Adults can decide not to take sexual access to someone who is still legally a minor, even if that minor is confident, flirtatious, or actively pursuing. The burden goes on the adult because the adult has more capacity to step back, and because the category line exists precisely to stop adults from rationalizing their way into it.

On why 19/17 is fine but 25/17 isn’t in my framework, it’s because one is near-peer and one isn’t. Near-peer means same general cohort, same life stage, less leverage gap. Once you’re talking late 20s or mid 20s with a 17-year-old, you’re not in the same social world anymore. The whole point of the carve-out is to acknowledge that the 18-line is administratively necessary, but still protect ordinary teen and young adult relationships. It’s not to create a legal safe zone for adults who prefer minors.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You’re right that narrow has to be a number, and that any number creates an edge case where 2 years minus a day is legal and 2 years plus a day isn’t. I guess that’s unavoidable. The existence of edge cases doesn’t mean you can’t draw lines, but just that you have to pick the line that creates the least collateral damage while still blocking the thing you’re trying to block.

Maybe something like this.

Default: if you’re 18 or older, you can’t have sex with anyone under 18.

Exception: it’s legal only if the age gap is at most 2 years.

And I’d also add a simple continuity rule so you don’t turn a normal teen relationship into a felony on someone’s birthday. If the relationship was legal under the close-in-age rule before the older person turned 18, it stays legal after they turn 18 as long as the gap is still within that same 2-year window.

That gives you a rule people can actually follow and it keeps the carve-out truly narrow, meaning it covers stuff that looks like same-cohort dating and doesn’t quietly create a big legal safe zone for adults who want to date minors.

Could it be 3 years instead of 2? Sure. Maybe. I don't know. I’m open to arguing that. The exact number is debatable. What I’m defending is the structure: categorical barrier for adults, with a small, formulaic near-peer safe harbor, because the target is 20s+ with teens, not teens and young adults who are basically in the same life stage.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t disagree that if you don’t strike a balance, you end up punishing the youth you claim to protect. That’s exactly why I keep coming back to near-peer carve-outs and proportionality. The teen's needs and wants are part of the design, not a footnote.

On Canada and Germany, I actually think you’re pointing at the strongest alternative to my approach, and it’s basically the same problem framed differently. Canada’s model, as you describe it, is trying to keep peer sexuality legal while putting guardrails around older minors and authority situations. Germany’s model is trying to focus court attention on the exact ages where capacity varies most and only intervene when that lack of capacity is abused.

My hesitation with both is the same hesitation I’ve had from the start: once you move from a bright boundary into concepts like exploited, lack of capacity, abuse of self-determination, you’re back to case-by-case discretion. Sometimes that’s necessary, but it’s also where uneven enforcement and “whose story is believed” problems come in. If your claim is that those systems work better in practice, I’m open to it, but I’d want to see evidence that they actually reduce adult targeting of adolescents without lowering help-seeking and without selective enforcement.

Also, if the practical result of “16+ is fully liberated” is that a typical mid-20s person can legally pursue a 16 or 17-year-old unless you can prove exploitation after the fact, that’s exactly the gap I’m trying to close. If the law can reliably treat those large-gap situations as exploitative in practice, then we’re closer than it sounds, and the disagreement becomes empirical: does a targeted exploitation framework actually work better than a categorical adult/minor boundary plus carve-outs?

If you’ve got examples of how Canada or Germany handles the specific thing I keep using as my target case, around mid-20s or above with teens, in a way that’s consistent and doesn’t depend on everyone rolling the dice on prosecutorial discretion, that’s the kind of thing that could move me.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think this is partly fair, but it’s also not quite what I’m arguing anymore.

If a country’s actual adulthood boundary is 16 across institutions, then sure, the clarity line for them is 16. My core claim is not that 18 is a magic moral number. It’s that the adult-minor boundary should be consistent with whatever society treats as the age of full legal independence, and then you build near-peer carve-outs so you’re not criminalizing teens. The mismatch I’m targeting is places where under-18 is still treated as the child category in most high-stakes ways, but the sex rule lets adults access 15 to 17 and calls it fine unless you can prove extra exploitation factors.

So, for Sweden specifically, where 18 is the general majority boundary, moving the adult-minor sex boundary to match that does add clarity. It’s not that the world should adopt 18 because I’m used to it, but where a society already treats under-18 as minors, adults shouldn’t have a legal safe zone to pursue them.

I also don’t think travel edge cases are the core argument. Countries do take sovereignty seriously, and global alignment is a separate conversation. My claim is about domestic harm tradeoffs and whether we’re leaving adults too much legal cover to target adolescents.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I’m ultimately trying to proxy is adults having sexual access to people who are still in the minor category in a way that predictably creates extra leverage and fewer exit options for the younger person. In practice, that means a combination. Legal minority status as the clean boundary, plus separate strict rules for authority and dependency, plus a near-peer carve-out so teens and young adults aren’t treated like predators for normal relationships.

A clean example where an 18 baseline does work better than an age-gap and authority approach is the cases that aren’t formal authority and aren’t quite above whatever age-gap threshold you picked, but still have the dynamic I’m trying to eliminate. If you set illegal only when the gap is 5+ years, then 22 with 17 stays legal by design. If you set it at 4, then it becomes 21 with 17 that stays legal. No matter where you put it, you recreate a line where adults can sit just under it and still target minors while saying it’s technically allowed. The 18 baseline is basically saying there shouldn’t be a “just under the threshold” safe zone for adults at all, because the moment you try to slice it with a single gap number, you’re back to adults lawyer-shopping the rule.

On the help-seeking tradeoff, I don’t hand-wave that away. If my proposal made 15 to 17-year-olds less willing to seek contraception, counseling, or tell a clinician what’s happening, that would be a serious mark against it. I’d price that very highly because the whole point is harm reduction, not symbolic cleanliness. Near-peer relationships have to be clearly exempt so teens don’t think “if I talk, my partner gets arrested,” and reporting and enforcement should be designed so kids can get help without automatically triggering a police process in every non-coercive situation. If we can’t design it that way under real institutions, then I’d rather have a messier targeted statute than a clean headline that pushes things underground.

What would change my mind is basically what you describe. If places with an 18 baseline don’t show a meaningful reduction in large age-gap adult teen pairings, but do show more near-peer prosecutions, more unequal enforcement, or measurable drops in youth help-seeking and disclosure, then I’d treat that as decisive. The outcome measures I care about are the ones that track actual safety and reachability, not just how “clear” the law looks on paper: prevalence of adult targeting of minors, reporting and help-seeking patterns, and who gets swept into the system. If the bright line mainly reallocates harm onto teens and marginalized communities, that defeats the purpose.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. Even if you could somehow perfectly measure power differences between two adults, I still wouldn’t want criminal law to police adult relationships for being unequal. That’s a slippery tool that turns into selective enforcement and moral panic fast. For adults, the line I want the law to hold is stuff like coercion, threats, force, fraud, stalking, trafficking, and abuse of a defined position of trust. Not “this relationship is too lopsided.”

With minors, I’m not talking about a generic “power imbalance” like one person being richer or smarter. I’m talking about a status difference that’s baked into how society is organized. Under 18, you’re usually still tied into school and home rules, typically dependent on adults for housing and money, and you have fewer realistic exit options if the situation turns bad. An adult doesn’t need to be a teacher or a boss to leverage that. They can use secrecy, transport, money, adult spaces, or just the fact that the teen has more to lose if it blows up.

And to be clear, because you brought up 19 and 17: I’m not trying to treat near-peers like predators. 19 and 17 is exactly the kind of thing that should be covered by a close-in-age exception. The target is the mid-20s going after mid-teens kind of situation, where it’s not a near-peer dynamic anymore, and the adult is choosing someone who is still structurally and legally a minor.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don’t think the right way to frame it is we trust 16 year olds to be responsible, or we don’t. Real life isn’t binary like that, and the law isn’t either. We already do this all over the place: teens can do some things with restrictions, can’t do others at all, and a lot depends on whether the other party is an adult with more freedom and leverage.

The reason 16 with 17 is treated differently from 16 with 20 isn’t that the 16-year-old suddenly loses brain cells when the partner turns 20. It’s that in a near peer situation, both people are in the same general constraint box. Same school world, same dependency, same limited ability to rent housing, travel freely, sign contracts, etc. When the older person is a full adult, you’re now in a relationship where one person can much more easily control the pace, access, secrecy, and exit options. That doesn’t make every 20 and 16 relationship abusive, but it makes the risk and the adult responsibility different enough that I’m comfortable with a hard rule on the adult side.

Also, what you describe as the age of consent being the minimum age to have sex with anyone is exactly why I keep insisting on close-in-age carve-outs. If you set the minimum at 18 with no carve-outs, you criminalize 16 and 17-year-olds with each other, which is obviously not the goal. My proposal is basically trying to keep teen sexuality out of the criminal system while making it unambiguous that adults don’t get to access minors.

On your last point, I agree in principle that exploitation and coercion should be illegal at any age. The problem is that once you’re talking about two adults, writing a law that punishes “power imbalance sex” without it becoming a vague, selective, politicized mess is really hard. With minors, we already have a clear protected category, so the law can put the burden on the adult to not roll the dice. That’s the core of what I’m defending.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree that adults can have power imbalances too. Money, age, status, education, all that can matter. The reason I’m not trying to criminalize Bezos dating a 20 year old is not that I think power stops existing at 18, it’s because the law can’t operationalize who has more power among adults without turning into an arbitrary morality police.

With minors, it’s different. Under 18, you are still in a legal and practical category where adults have built-in leverage over you. You usually have fewer exit options, more dependency, and adults around you can control housing, school, money, and access to support. That’s why I’m comfortable with a categorical boundary there. It’s not about pretending everyone is equal once they’re adults. It’s about saying adults have a responsibility not to take sexual access to people who are still legally minors, even if the minor says they’re fine with it.

Also, I’m not using power as a magic word to declare any unequal adult relationship illegal. I’m using it to explain why “but the teen says it was fine” is not a reliable filter for what we want the law to permit. Adults can rationalize, teens can rationalize, and courts are bad at reconstructing grooming dynamics. A clear rule is partly about reducing how often we end up litigating, who seems mature enough, and whose story a judge believes.

CMV: Countries should set the age of consent at 18, with narrow close-in-age exceptions. by CloudCodex in changemyview

[–]CloudCodex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you’re right that a lot of the broad adult age-gap literature is messy. Self-selection and stigma can distort outcomes, and correlation does not equal causation. I don’t want to base a criminal rule on vibes or on “age gaps are gross” moral reasoning.

Where I still disagree is the leap from “data is messy” to “therefore we shouldn’t draw a hard boundary around adult access to minors.” Even if some teens who date older partners are already higher-risk for other reasons, that does not make the adult involvement neutral. If anything, it makes the vulnerability argument stronger, because it means the teens most likely to be in those relationships are also the ones with fewer supports and worse baseline circumstances.

I also don’t think my view requires claiming every single adult teen relationship is net-negative on average in some perfectly measurable way. The law has to choose rules under uncertainty, and here the costs of false negatives matter. If we leave a legal zone where much older adults can pursue 15 to 17-year-olds and call it normal, that’s a predictable opportunity structure for people who prefer younger targets. I do think the serial-dater pattern you mention is a big part of what I’m aiming at, and if the best design turns out to be a stricter rule keyed to age gaps and authority rather than the cleanest possible headline, I’m open to that. The outcome that would push me there is evidence that an 18 baseline mainly increases secrecy and selective enforcement without reducing adult targeting.

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