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”.
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”.