This is paranoid, but even if it wasn’t: The more people living in one house the LESS likely someone is to get away with molesting someone else unnoticed.
As the other anonymous said, this doesn’t follow at all. A group living situation creates a larger field of “trusted adults” per child. Unless all the adults are mindful of these risks, a situation arises where any adult may at any time be put in charge of watching any child or children. This is frankly the textbook definition of what not to do.
If the adults are mindful of the risk, then they can be open about it, and ensure that two or more adults are always tasked with watching children, so that the adults can watch each other. And even this may eventually cease to be necessary.
Also, I find that your definition of paranoid must be different from mine if you look at those statistics and think “nothing risky going on here”. I have to assume you have no personal experience with this issue. I can’t help but feel like people in this thread are conflating a feeling of “I don’t want this to be true and I don’t want to have to think about it” with “this is obviously overly paranoid”.
I think the statistics you quote are exaggerated in order to terrify. When I tried to look up “4% of adults are sexually attracted to children,” for example, I found nothing. Similarly, the news is often full of stranger danger fears because terror is what gets attention and therefore revenue and funding. And as others have said, they also include stuff like 18 year olds having sex with 17 year olds, which some people may find unacceptable but I don’t.
Note also that “4% of adults are sexually attracted to children” is a very different statement from “4% of adults are likely to molest children if left alone with them”.
(I suspect rather more than 4% of adults are sexually attracted to Angelina Jolie[1], but that doesn’t mean they’d molest her if left alone in a room with her.)
[1] Chosen by putting “famous actress” into Google and picking the first name it gave me. If she isn’t your type—she isn’t particularly mine, as it happens—feel free to imagine I chose a different name.
Even if 4% of adults are sexually attracted to children that doesn’t mean that they are going to abuse children. There are guy’s in this communities who are sexually attracted to women but who never had sex and also wouldn’t rape a woman just to have sex.
If it’s clear a rationalist that abusing a child will mean that he get’s expelled from the community in which he lives and might face legal challenges than I think most of the people in this community wouldn’t act on a system I desire to engage in sexual abuse because their system II is strong enough to think through the situation.
Practically that means that it’s important to have an environment where open communication happens so the expectation that a child will communicate about situations with whom they are uncomfortable exists.
I think a lot of abuse does happen in environments where that open communication is lacking and a child will stay silent about abuse.
I was being quite serious. When given a quantitative argument you responded with a grab bag of abstract objections not backed by data but vaguely supporting your original viewpoint. A natural human response designed to keep one from changing their mind, generally called rationalization. I encourage becoming aware of when this is happening and use that awareness to improve your model of the world.
Numbers are not particularly magical and being quantitative doesn’t imply the argument is more likely to be correct. After all, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
You could also subtract properties or multiply or divide them.
More trusted adults might increase the chances that the child isn’t isolated and talks about his experiences with someone which makes them less susceptible to be a victim.
being isolated in the community or lacking a support network
a breakdown of support in child rearing from the extended family.
If your true concern is the children not getting abused it makes sense to look at the actual risk factors that the literature supports.
Children in this project might actually be less at risk because there’s a support network. The textbook says “have a strong support network” and not keep the support network small to reduce the number of trusted adults.
ensure that two or more adults are always tasked with watching children, so that the adults can watch each other.
This may feel exaggerated, because many people not living in communities are not following this rule consistently either. People often leave their children alone with grandparents or babysitters. Sure, there is a risk involved, but… life sometimes gives you constraints.
A group living situation creates a larger field of “trusted adults” per child. Unless all the adults are mindful of these risks, a situation arises where any adult may at any time be put in charge of watching any child or children. This is frankly the textbook definition of what not to do.
Could you point out a textbook that describes that is isn’t what should be done?
That seems entirely unjustified. More people and ore space means more threats and more opportunities. Most child molestation happens from a SINGLE close and trusted family member, acting alone. Yet your same argument could be applied to the single-family household—with a family living together it is more likely that someone else in the family will notice. But the data doesn’t seem to support that.
This is paranoid, but even if it wasn’t: The more people living in one house the LESS likely someone is to get away with molesting someone else unnoticed.
As the other anonymous said, this doesn’t follow at all. A group living situation creates a larger field of “trusted adults” per child. Unless all the adults are mindful of these risks, a situation arises where any adult may at any time be put in charge of watching any child or children. This is frankly the textbook definition of what not to do.
If the adults are mindful of the risk, then they can be open about it, and ensure that two or more adults are always tasked with watching children, so that the adults can watch each other. And even this may eventually cease to be necessary.
Also, I find that your definition of paranoid must be different from mine if you look at those statistics and think “nothing risky going on here”. I have to assume you have no personal experience with this issue. I can’t help but feel like people in this thread are conflating a feeling of “I don’t want this to be true and I don’t want to have to think about it” with “this is obviously overly paranoid”.
I think the statistics you quote are exaggerated in order to terrify. When I tried to look up “4% of adults are sexually attracted to children,” for example, I found nothing. Similarly, the news is often full of stranger danger fears because terror is what gets attention and therefore revenue and funding. And as others have said, they also include stuff like 18 year olds having sex with 17 year olds, which some people may find unacceptable but I don’t.
Note also that “4% of adults are sexually attracted to children” is a very different statement from “4% of adults are likely to molest children if left alone with them”.
(I suspect rather more than 4% of adults are sexually attracted to Angelina Jolie[1], but that doesn’t mean they’d molest her if left alone in a room with her.)
[1] Chosen by putting “famous actress” into Google and picking the first name it gave me. If she isn’t your type—she isn’t particularly mine, as it happens—feel free to imagine I chose a different name.
Even if 4% of adults are sexually attracted to children that doesn’t mean that they are going to abuse children. There are guy’s in this communities who are sexually attracted to women but who never had sex and also wouldn’t rape a woman just to have sex.
If it’s clear a rationalist that abusing a child will mean that he get’s expelled from the community in which he lives and might face legal challenges than I think most of the people in this community wouldn’t act on a system I desire to engage in sexual abuse because their system II is strong enough to think through the situation.
Practically that means that it’s important to have an environment where open communication happens so the expectation that a child will communicate about situations with whom they are uncomfortable exists. I think a lot of abuse does happen in environments where that open communication is lacking and a child will stay silent about abuse.
Sounds a lot more like rationalization than rationalism.
This is why we need downvotes.
I was being quite serious. When given a quantitative argument you responded with a grab bag of abstract objections not backed by data but vaguely supporting your original viewpoint. A natural human response designed to keep one from changing their mind, generally called rationalization. I encourage becoming aware of when this is happening and use that awareness to improve your model of the world.
I think an accurate qualitative argument is better than a sourceless quantitative argument.
Numbers are not particularly magical and being quantitative doesn’t imply the argument is more likely to be correct. After all, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
Do you have sources that suggests that having a larger circle of trusted adults per child increases the likelihood of getting abused?
Summation of probabilities.
You could also subtract properties or multiply or divide them.
More trusted adults might increase the chances that the child isn’t isolated and talks about his experiences with someone which makes them less susceptible to be a victim.
The WHO for example says that among the risk factors for abuse there are:
If your true concern is the children not getting abused it makes sense to look at the actual risk factors that the literature supports.
Children in this project might actually be less at risk because there’s a support network. The textbook says “have a strong support network” and not keep the support network small to reduce the number of trusted adults.
This may feel exaggerated, because many people not living in communities are not following this rule consistently either. People often leave their children alone with grandparents or babysitters. Sure, there is a risk involved, but… life sometimes gives you constraints.
Could you point out a textbook that describes that is isn’t what should be done?
That seems entirely unjustified. More people and ore space means more threats and more opportunities. Most child molestation happens from a SINGLE close and trusted family member, acting alone. Yet your same argument could be applied to the single-family household—with a family living together it is more likely that someone else in the family will notice. But the data doesn’t seem to support that.
most single family households have a lot fewer than 10-20 people in them.