What I thought about child marriage as a cause area, and how I've changed my mind — EA Forum
forum.effectivealtruism.org
Summary: I have been working on a research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage. After 80 hours of research, I th…

saw this pointed out here and felt it deserved it’s own post

let me mention that this is exactly the sort of argument I’ve seen pedophilia enthusiasts break out many times:

hmm, we thoughtful inquirers should look at this incredibly tenous evidence I’ve curated. it raises questions about whether we should be superrrrr chill about sex with children. questions with answers that, I’m sold on!

  • sue_me_please@awful.systemsEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    What a bunch of fucking ghouls.

    From the replies:

    Thanks for this, really valuable work!

    I’m curious what the qualitative description of child marriage usually looks like in these cases- I have two very rough mental images:

    A 14 year-old girl learning very little at school/ barely attends school. She’s very unlikely to continue studying past the age of 16. Her (very low-income) parents struggle to continue supporting her and would rather she married earlier to reduce their burden and make a bit of bridewealth money (maybe to concentrate resources on another child). She gets married, her husband takes on responsibility for her (he might be more responsible/ caring than her parents), and her life outcomes don’t change much from if she were to get married at 17.

    A 14 year-old girl is learning quite a lot at school. She dreams of going to college/ sixth-form/ university and could even afford to if she got a part-time job, but family/ cultural pressure leads her to get married early. She has a child at 15, is forced to stay in her village, and all of her plans go to waste.

    Could it be that people like to imagine something more like the second scenario when the first is more common?

    These people are completely fine with child marriage/rape if the kids didn’t do well in school like they did. Their ability to empathize completely breaks down the second it meets their contempt for non-nerds.

    These are the psychopaths who think they’re effective altruists.

    • Treczoks@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Maybe that’s the reason why Republicans try to sabotage education wherever they can: Getting fresh young girls directly from the school benches right into their beds!

    • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      WHY ARE THEY DOING THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS THERE ARE REAL CHILD MARRAIGE SURVIVORS OUT THERE THEY CAN READ ABOUT

      • sc_griffith@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        they want to think about fucking children without feeling bad, so they’re doing the libertarian “what if the child consents tho” argument. because they’re rationalists they have to rephrase it in their preferred format to be allowed to ingest it, so now it’s “what if the utils consent tho”

      • sue_me_please@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Same reason they don’t talk to any of the minorities they Bayes about all day long: everything is a thought experiment to them because of their extremely sheltered lives and there’s no way they’re going to talk to some blue hair SJW, scary poor, or dumb immigrant. They’d be too woke, stupid and biased to be worth hearing from, anyway.