I may never actually use this in a story, but in another universe I had thought of having a character mention that… call it the forces of magic with normative dimension… had evaluated one pedophile who had known his desires were harmful to innocents and never acted upon them, while living a life of above-average virtue; and another pedophile who had acted on those desires, at harm to others. So the said forces of normatively dimensioned magic transformed the second pedophile’s body into that of a little girl, delivered to the first pedophile along with the equivalent of an explanatory placard. Problem solved. And indeed the ‘problem’ as I had perceived it was, “What if a virtuous person deserving our aid wishes to retain their current sexual desires and not be frustrated thereby?”
(As always, pedophilia is not the same as ephebophilia.)
I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain. A vanilla rational agent (Bayes probabilities, expected utility max) would not see any need to change its utility function even if one of its components seemed highly probable though not absolutely certain to be eternally frustrated, since it would suffer no pain thereby.
Only vaguely relatedly, there’s a short story out there somewhere where the punch-line is that the normative forces of magic reincarnate the man who’d horribly abused his own prepubescent daughter as his own prepubescent daughter.
Which, when looked at through the normative model you invoke here, creates an Epimenidesian version of the same deal: if abusing a vicious pedophile is not vicious, then presumably the man is not vicious, since it turns out his daughter was a vicious pedophile… but of course, if he’s not vicious, then it turns out his daughter wasn’t a vicious pedophile, so he is vicious… at which point all the Star Trek robots’ heads explode.
For my own part, I reject the premise that abusing a vicious pedophile is not vicious. There are, of course, other ways out.
Problem not solved, in my opinion. The second pedophile is already unable to molest children, and adding severity to punishment isn’t as effective as adding immediacy or certainty.
The problem is solved by pairing those who wish to live longer at personal cost to themselves with virtuous pedophiles. The pedophiles get to have consensual intercourse with children capable of giving informed consent, and people willing to get turned into a child and get molested by a pedophile in return for being younger get that.
I may never actually use this in a story, but in another universe I had thought of having a character mention that… call it the forces of magic with normative dimension… had evaluated one pedophile who had known his desires were harmful to innocents and never acted upon them, while living a life of above-average virtue; and another pedophile who had acted on those desires, at harm to others. So the said forces of normatively dimensioned magic transformed the second pedophile’s body into that of a little girl, delivered to the first pedophile along with the equivalent of an explanatory placard. Problem solved. And indeed the ‘problem’ as I had perceived it was, “What if a virtuous person deserving our aid wishes to retain their current sexual desires and not be frustrated thereby?”
(As always, pedophilia is not the same as ephebophilia.)
I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain. A vanilla rational agent (Bayes probabilities, expected utility max) would not see any need to change its utility function even if one of its components seemed highly probable though not absolutely certain to be eternally frustrated, since it would suffer no pain thereby.
Only vaguely relatedly, there’s a short story out there somewhere where the punch-line is that the normative forces of magic reincarnate the man who’d horribly abused his own prepubescent daughter as his own prepubescent daughter.
Which, when looked at through the normative model you invoke here, creates an Epimenidesian version of the same deal: if abusing a vicious pedophile is not vicious, then presumably the man is not vicious, since it turns out his daughter was a vicious pedophile… but of course, if he’s not vicious, then it turns out his daughter wasn’t a vicious pedophile, so he is vicious… at which point all the Star Trek robots’ heads explode.
For my own part, I reject the premise that abusing a vicious pedophile is not vicious. There are, of course, other ways out.
Ah.. Now you understand the frustrations of a typical Hindu who believes in re-incarnation. ;)
Problem not solved, in my opinion. The second pedophile is already unable to molest children, and adding severity to punishment isn’t as effective as adding immediacy or certainty.
The problem is solved by pairing those who wish to live longer at personal cost to themselves with virtuous pedophiles. The pedophiles get to have consensual intercourse with children capable of giving informed consent, and people willing to get turned into a child and get molested by a pedophile in return for being younger get that.
I think the point of “normative dimension” was that the Forces Of Magic were working within a framework of poetic justice. “Problem solved” was IC.