[Serataru]

Cruzandercerberus, on 08 September 2009 - 02:56 PM, said:

Minors can ride ATV's, Snow ski, Play Lawn Darts, operate watercraft, enter skateboarding competitions, ride in motorcross competitions and a host of other potentially harmful activities that have killed adults with or without their parental consent. I cannot possibly see how her actions could warrant state intervention under child endangerment and neglect premises if she is in fact an expert sailor.

I missed this quote earlier, bravo. Cruz has it right on the money here... and gives us a great word to use in lieu of words like "child" and "adolescent" and "teen" which are more subjective and evoke emotion. Minor is a great word. Let's use the word minor, ok? She isn't a child. Granted, she isn't an adult either, but you keep insisting on calling her a child because your argument would have zero merit if you didn't, even though it isn't accurate... so let's agree on minor. That is accurate and doesn't lend an emotional angle.

So... now she has the permission of people who are not under 18, and who, by your logic, have superior cognitive skills and decision making abilities simply because they are older than she. Remember, your whole argument here is that she's too young and thus, too stupid. Again, they're not forcing her to do something she does not want to do, or keeping her away from medical treatment she desires to have, so this is a different situation. The parents and the minor agree in this situation. So what bullshit rationale are you going to create now that would make the parents wrong, even though they are adults, and again by your logic, age makes you smarter and more capable? I'm waiting. I'm sure this will be another "exception" -- right?

Anyway, the government doesn't agree with their consensus. That's the problem. But the government's opinion means approximately dick in this situation -- or at least it should.

The minor wants ________________. The minor is able to care for herself: able to feed herself, to get dressed, to keep up on sanitary and hygenic tasks, do her own laundry... and did I mention she can sail a boat just as well as any adult can? The parents agree that she can __________________, because they feel she is prepared for the undertaking. They would know best, considering that she lives with them and they would have the most informed opinion of whether or not she is able to handle such things. ________________ is not illegal, and other minors have also __________________. But somehow this time, ____________________ is a bad idea? Regardless of what you consider her to be, her PARENTS have said it's okay for her to do it. And the government must stop it! Uhhhh no.

The logic doesn't hold up. Sorry. 2-3 years is not enough to make a difference at that late stage of development, and other minors close to her age can and have already done this.

You can't police everyone, Path. The government is sticking their nose someplace it doesn't belong.

[pathwriter]

firefeng, on 11 September 2009 - 12:25 PM, said:

The only position you are arguing is that the state knows her capabilities better than her own parents.

pathwriter, on 11 September 2009 - 09:51 AM, said:

The people of the Netherlands pay out a lot of money to ensure that she and all of her peers are well-educated and healthy, so they (by way of the state) have a stake in her surviving to adulthood and being a productive member of their society, thereby paying back the debts she incurred growing up.

Am I conveying this in some kind of language that is difficult to understand? Do I need to pull out a thesaurus and write it in that verbal wank you so favor? She is an investment and the state is presently assessing the risk to that investment.

And even here in the land of the free, the state regularly decides that parents are unfit to be the decision-making controller of a child's life (shy away into "minor" all you like, Sera). I'm certain that you, like me, immediately think of children of physically abusive and/or drug-addicted parents, but children in the US have been made wards of the state for reasons beyond that, too. If the Dutch government thinks that letting a barely pubertal girl float around the world for a year or two is abuse or abandonment, I'm not inclined to disagree.

My parents let me do some things of questionable legality because I wanted to do them as a kid of roughly her age (actually a little younger, but since there's this weird belief that pubarche equals maturity, I should mention how early that started for me). The difference? We didn't fucking tell the state of Ohio about it because we knew we were treading in a grey area. Had the state authorities found out that I was doing rather heavy labor, regardless of it being of my own volition, there would have been hearings. We'd make the same kind of arguments you're making now ("It was my choice" and "My parents permitted it and were in a position to supervise"), but we're at least cognizant of why they're dubious arguments. At the end of the day, the state could still have decided that I was fine and healthy and could continue, same as with this girl.

If her dream is deferred for two months in the name of due diligence, are you going to keep whinging on about crushed hopes and dreams? Apparently I'm the only one who remembers just how changeable one's dreams were in middle school. I'm sure this is a persistent one if only because of its scale, but in the meantime, she'll come up with and abandon several dozen other dreams that will get crushed by reality in one way or another. I cannot recall what culture says it, but there exists a saying, "May all your dreams but one come true." Think on it.

[Kenshiro]

To make a dumb-fuck comment: There's too many goddamn people in the world to let motherfuckers do whatever the fuck they want. Also, humans have emotional responses for a reason, they help us understand situations better on an empathic level. Not really relevant, but many people, when first starting philosophy tend to throw emotions away as worthless; which is just denying your humanity. Not the stupid romantic metaphysical notion of humanity, but the fact that your species is human type of humanity. Lots of people keep this notion, and it may or may not constitute mental illness or self delusion. Also, penis.

[firefeng]

pathwriter said:

Am I conveying this in some kind of language that is difficult to understand? Do I need to pull out a thesaurus and write it in that verbal wank you so favor? She is an investment and the state is presently assessing the risk to that investment.

Am I conveying this in some kind of language that is difficult to understand? Do I need to pull out a dictionary and define every word of the phrase "give me ethical justification"? Or should I just assume that you're actually asinine enough to believe that a financial cost-benefit analysis of her life somehow fits the criterion of a reasonable governmental response, rather than just being another unsubstantiated motive for action (a status that it shares with dithering emotional bullshit about children)? If anything, you're making your position more untenable with every word that escapes your mouth. It's improbable (and thus far completely opaque to logical examination) that the state might be more perceptive of this girl's capabilities than her own parents; it is wholly impossible that the state has the capability of quantifying her continued existence via financial return.

Why stop there?

• As the state invests in your safety, and your anonymity introduces too many security variables and raises the relative cost of protecting you, the state may protect its investment by expurging all elements of anonymity and may freely accost you for your identity no matter the present situation.
  
• As the state invests in the education of children, the state may intervene in the life of every child to enact a system of nurturing most likely to increase their end-contribution to society, and thus increase returns on the state's investment.
  
• As the state provides more services that are more suitable for the functionality of children in society upon attaining adulthood than a child's parents, the state has the moral obligation to replace the role of parents.
  
• As the state recognizes the threat posed to its economic investment into children by the failure of select ideologies to create productive adults, the state may outlaw ideologies seen as non-conducive to societal advancement to prevent further loss of investment.

Of course, this is all just balderdash and me wanking off to the sound of my own clacking keyboard keys anyway, because you and I both know that the cost of the state's contributions to this girl isn't paid by her future taxable benefits but rather the present generation of taxable income. Now, got any other half-assed sophistries to veil this discussion's "security vs. liberty" core so people don't reference your hypocrisy on the matter, or was that it?

kenshiro said:

There's too many goddamn people in the world to let motherfuckers do whatever the fuck they want.

Yes, because that's what we're arguing for. Secretly.

[Kenshiro]

Kenshiro, on 12 September 2009 - 01:04 AM, said:

To make a dumb-fuck comment

To make another dumb fuck statement before I go to sleep, I believe the post above mine contains a fallacy. Strawman or slippery slope or some shit. Anyway off to bed /blog

[Serataru]

Nah, Feng is making a valid point. I would really like to hear a response that addresses it directly instead of dancing around it though... doubt he'll get it. :/

[pathwriter]

firefeng, on 12 September 2009 - 06:58 AM, said:

the criterion of a reasonable governmental response, rather than just being another unsubstantiated motive for action?

Explain the difference. It is apparently unreasonable according to you because... well, for reasons you've yet to elucidate beyond some weird notion of pure liberty that doesn't exist anywhere.

As a warning, be wary of mirror imaging. The biggest mistake most amateur internationalists make is in assuming that everyone thinks about everything in the same way.

firefeng, on 12 September 2009 - 06:58 AM, said:

It's improbable that the state might be more perceptive of this girl's capabilities than her own parents

Based on what? Considering what a fuck-up you are (by your own admission), I'm going to assume your parents weren't the best in the world. Even if they had been, I'm certain we can point to case after case of parents who are unqualified to tell us what day it is, much less assess the capabilities of their children. What a profoundly stupid line of argument you've brought up.

Seriously, were your parents the best imaginable? Because you seem to have some very idealistic thoughts about how good and wonderful and capable parents are. I'm not saying that the state is better, but parents are a grab bag of failures and dangers with regards to their children and this shouldn't come as news to you. You keep asking me for an ethical justification for the state interfering with a child's life, but you reject my ethics. What's the point of this argument if your approach is basic denial? I've worked with children my entire life, I know their decision-making capabilities. I consider it ethically untenable to throw a teenage girl into a sailing ship alone and let her sail around the world. Where's your "ethical" response? I don't believe in true liberty and I certainly won't accept it for children. Go ahead and use a slippery slope fallacy to suggest that a policy of protecting children will result in a world like "Demolition Man"; it won't impress me.

[Serataru]

pathwriter, on 12 September 2009 - 04:21 PM, said:

I consider it ethically untenable to throw a teenage girl into a sailing ship alone and let her sail around the world.

I don't think anyone is attacking your opinion (though as I stated before, you have limited true knowledge of what sailing entails, so frankly you're ill equipped to assess this situation fairly imo.)

The point here is that it's nunya. You know what nunya is, right? It's not your business. Not yours, not Feng's, not mine, not the government's... Nobody's but that family.

[pathwriter]

Is it terribly important that I know what sailing entails? My concern is not that she is capable of handling a ship for a given stretch of time, my concern is that she is capable of handling herself alone for a given period of time. In a socialized society (which means pretty much every human society regardless of what people might want to believe), child abuse is always the business of the community. At issue here is the question of whether sending a 13-year-old girl, regardless of her sailing aptitude, out to sea constitutes abuse, endangerment, or abandonment. I contend that it does. I'd make the same contentions about the 15-year-old boys who have done this.

[firefeng]

pathwriter said:

Explain the difference.

You're really not dumb enough to require me to explain the difference between a motive and an ethically justifiable action. Be honest: are you trolling me? Every action may have a motive, that doesn't mean every action is ethical. I'm sure you can figure it out from there...

pathwriter said:

It is apparently unreasonable according to you because... well, for reasons you've yet to elucidate beyond some weird notion of pure liberty that doesn't exist anywhere.

The sole purpose for the existence of any government is the preservation of individual autonomy. We can veil it and describe it using different values, like security, but ultimately such concepts are derived from the ultimate matter of autonomy. A government exists solely to prevent people from impinging on the autonomy of others. In order to do this it must first and necessarily limit a certain degree of autonomy; thus every encroachment it makes upon an individual must be put through rigorous examinations of reason to ensure that such actions are necessary, and preserve a greater amount of autonomy than they remove. If you expect me to justify this from first principles, you're going to be sorely disappointed, because I am lazy and philosophers have done it better than I could centuries ago. If you're really interested in the nuts and bolts of it, though, you can start with a high school civics class. I sincerely doubt that will be necessary for you, though.

If you can show that the Netherlands' beneficence in this matter outweighs encroaching on the autonomy this girl and her parents, I'll concede to you. Spoiler: You can't, because its behavior does not derive from ethical principles but rather poorly-defined social ones.

(This function of governance is also why I'm staying quiet on the health care debate thread. I've voiced my disapproval of such a program in the past, but recently I haven't been able to decide if the autonomy taken away through increased taxation really outweighs that created by more healthy individuals, and whether such a program could create a greater degree of individual health in the first place.)

pathwriter said:

Based on what? Considering what a fuck-up you are (by your own admission), I'm going to assume your parents weren't the best in the world. Even if they had been, I'm certain we can point to case after case of parents who are unqualified to tell us what day it is, much less assess the capabilities of their children. What a profoundly stupid line of argument you've brought up.

"Based on what?" The only thing in this thread that even approaches the descriptor of "profoundly stupid" is requiring justification for the idea that individuals who spent 13 years with someone know them better than an impersonal governing body. Don't get me wrong; I'm fully aware that there are God-forsaken homunculi feigning parenthood whose children are better served being shunted into emotionally barren institutions, but those are in the minority. You're really not fucking dumb enough to require me to point out where the burden of evidence lies for your disagreement with this.

I had one divorced parent that gave me every honorable trait I own, and one bat-shit crazy one. Guess which one was the one that oppressed a healthy sense of autonomy. (Cue the red herring, "Oh, that's why you're arguing this point...")

pathwriter said:

My concern is not that she is capable of handling a ship for a given stretch of time, my concern is that she is capable of handling herself alone for a given period of time.

(You're gonna love this...) Based on what?

[pathwriter]

Your arguments about autonomy and self-determination are wonderful when we're talking about adults and I would agree with you. We're not talking about an adult. I've worked with children since I was a child myself, but I don't have a degree to wave in your face and prove my expertise. I'm sure, however, since you think that children should be treated like adults, you can explain why.

[firefeng]

I think parents should be treated like adults in regards to governing the choices of their children until they prove incapable of such a task, and I think a 13-year-old who has sailed her entire life is fully capable of understanding the weight of her decisions if given the permission of her better experienced parents.

Quit with the red herrings and make with a valid argument, already. Your efforts are depressing.

[pathwriter]

Letting their barely pubescent child attempt a long-term trip unaccompanied is a sign that the judgment of the parents should be questioned. How long are you going to ignore the tangible facts of this case? If her parents said that she could go to downtown Amsterdam and see an early evening concert and, at that point, the government stepped in and took custody of the girl from them, then I'd agree with you. We're talking about loosing a child on a 12+ month trip through the oceans of the world. Would either of your parents have let you hike from DC to NYC simply because you'd spent the 13 short years of your life running around? The dangers of New Jersey and the pirates off Somalia are roughly equivalent and let's not try to feed me bullshit about any 13-year-old being sufficiently able to protect herself in either case if something should happen.

[MrReinhardt]

IIRC there was a teen who attempted to do something similar in a plane or maybe it was a boat, only that person had a co-pilot who was an adult

[firefeng]

pathwriter said:

Letting their barely pubescent child attempt a long-term trip unaccompanied is a sign that the judgment of the parents should be questioned.

I'm playing a game. Every time you post with circular logic like with this statement, or by skirting the necessity of justification by finding a different tangent to go off on ("investment"? Really?), I respond by being a facetious prick and use a slippery slope, at least until you can be bothered to admit either that you are just espousing an opinion, or that you do have some sort of justification beyond gut instinct, and that justification is [a, b, c]. So, here we go:

The desire to own a firearm is proof enough that one is too emotionally irresponsible to own one. Similarly, refusing to allow an officer to search your belongings is a sign that you are hiding something from the officer, giving him reasonable suspicion to search you.

[Vax]

My father and sister sail a 50~ft boat around the Florida keys. I'd have to say, judging from experience, that no 13 year old should be allowed to sail unaccompanied for any distance unless they are under supervision from another sailboat close by.
It's physically and mentally draining to operate a sea vessel for long periods of time. It's dangerous enough for an adult who's been sailing for years to attempt a journey like this.

If they had another person with them who was an adult, maybe this could be acceptable... but not a solo trip.


On the other hand, most governments still allows people to smoke cigarettes and do other obviously self-harming things, so why should the be allowed to tell anyone that certain things are "too dangerous" to attempt?

[pathwriter]

All arguments are opinions, Firefeng. There would be no argument if there were facts involved (assuming all parties are reasonably sane, hence Republican birthers disputing simple facts). You want me to provide facts that prove that children should be allowed free rein to sail around the world regardless of their competence or the state's collective investment in those children. Those facts do not exist. Nor do there exist facts that prove your assertion that government exists to protect autonomy. And you've certainly yet to provide anything remotely approaching a reason why a child should be permitted to do whatever she wants so long as her parents approve. So let's try a related game: explain why a 13-year-old should be allowed to snort cocaine if her drug-addled parents whose judgment is clearly suspect say it's ok.

You keep dancing away from the simple fact that we're talking about a minor who is not legally able to make these judgments. The closest you've come towards acknowledging that is some pathetic attempt to claim that her parents are inherently reliable because they have raised her for 13 years.

You're going to continue playing this game because you want some unreasonable standard to be met so as to justify your untenable position that human beings are 100% reliable and should not be held accountable to anyone regardless of living in a socialized political system. You're not going to succeed, but at least flower up your uselessness with your typical lexical diarrhea so I have a better chance of tuning out your persistent malodorous discharge. Considering you've admitted time and again that you're a frequent troll, I do hope you don't imagine that I consider you to actually be forwarding a real opinion. I don't think you're capable of holding real opinions. If you were, you'd have been able to provide some kind of reasonable counter to my argument that I'd have acknowledged by now. I have a long history of doing so, but trolls never manage it.

Also, false circle on your logic claim there. "Sailing around the world is dangerous." "Children are ill-equipped to undertake taxing feats due to a simple lack of physical development." "Parents ignoring these two statements with regard to a child should be subject to scrutiny."



Oh, and Vax, I don't know of any government that permits children to smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if such a government exists, but I'm fairly sure none of Europe allows it.

[Cruzandercerberus]

pathwriter, on 12 September 2009 - 04:21 PM, said:

Go ahead and use a slippery slope fallacy to suggest that a policy of protecting children will result in a world like "Demolition Man"; it won't impress me.

Yeah, that is not happening all over Europe.