Leftley wrote:

Loduwijk wrote:

What I was getting at with that statement was that I was not being sarcastic with perversions of Deadron's posts.

No, but you should be, because it would be a lot more productive than your current tactic of saying "I'm right and you're wrong" over and over again.

No, it would not be more productive, and my tactic is in no way a mear "I'm right and you're wrong" speach. I do not keep saying that over and over, instead I refute everything that people are trying to refute me with, and I am doing a good job of it.

Deadron took your argument--that 10 year olds are no less mature or mentally capable than 20 year olds--to its logical extreme. It's a debate tactic that attempts to examine flaws in an argument by stretching it, enlarging it, magnifying it. In this case, your argument breaks down because you have presented no evidence (other than your say-so) that development somehow occurs only at very young ages and at no other point.

If he has taken it to its logical extreme, then why am I still not proven wrong? My case does not break down, rather his does. I have shown how all of his evidence does not support his theory at all, and that much of it actually supports mine.

One of your earliest arguments was that there weren't "magic ages" when maturity suddenly kicks in--so how is it that 18 isn't a magic age when people suddenly become mature, but 3 (or whatever) apparently is a magic age when infants suddenly become self-aware?

I never said that 3 is a magic age when people become self-aware. I only said that those that are not self-aware should not be having sex, because Deadron implied that I allowed for them to engage in sexual activity as well.

Development occurs across the entire human lifespan, generally in small steps, although the rate varies from person to person and doesn't stay the same over their respective lifetimes. The fact that the individual steps are small does not mean that they do not exist; even though there's not much difference between the average person at age 17 and the same person at age 18, there's still a very large degree of difference between them at 10 and them at 20.

And there is a large difference between 20 and 30 as well, so why don't we increase the age to 28? Besides that though, you continually charge me with ignoring other people's facts, when it appears that you are ignoring mine. My argument was not that people of the age of 20 are more mature than 10, rather, it was about what to use as a line for who can or cannot have sex.

Even so, I have no more conjecture and hearsay than everyone else responding in this thread. (In fact, I have noticed that most of the people that seem to disagree with me supply no factual debate whatsoever, not even an argument. They simply state their oppinion as if that is enough.

I agree wholeheartedly. This whole huge sub-thread is just a group of people telling each other their opinions and presenting them in the manner of irrefutable facts. But you're the only person who has actually gone so far as to explicitly claim this.

I actually have less conjecture and hearsay in my arguments than everyone, it seems, except Deadron. And as I said before, I have shown how his facts do not go against my argument.

Actually, I'm too lazy to go through and read everyone else's posts over again, so I could be wrong on that point.

(The one that I cannot get off my mind is "The world should be safe for our children, but not our children's children, because our children shouldn't be having sex.")

It's a joke, son.

It may have been a joke, but that was all the person said in his(her?) reply. If your only argument is a joke, then it only goes to show that your view has no foundation.

But besides that, even my "conjecture and hearsay" is easily observable if you simply take the time to do an unbiased questioning into people's lives.

Oddly enough, this is exactly what many massive research programs have done (except for the fact that they're capable of doing such on a much larger and more statistically significant scale), yet you simply dismiss such findings outright.

I do not simply dismiss such findings, but I will argue that in my next point.

I do not take any "experts" findings to be any better than my own.

Translation: "I'm better than everybody else, therefore their opinions are irrelevant."

(If you notice, many of the "experts" facts that people seem to get ahold of for their argument come from someone who has performed a biased research, because most people get these facts from radio/tv media that brings in experts who have the same biased views as they do.)

Too bad only your observations can be trusted to be unbiased, o great and mighty one. It would speed up progress so much if people other than you were capable of doing valid research.

You are now perverting my words even worse than Deadron's sarcasm did. I never said that only my observations are unbiased. I said that the so-called experts that most people take their "facts" from are those that are hired by the biased radio/tv media in favor of their own views. If you wish to obtain facts that are less biased, then at least tearn to something other than the radio and television. But even after you hear what others have to say, you still have to judge what they are saying, because many people, even those who have their professions in such fields, will distort the facts to look as though it is in their favor. It is comical how you immidiately take my actions in that way, when I never said that at all. It only shows that you probably listen to "experts" who you know have your own view, then without questioning anything they say believe it whole-heartedly. [edit] You simply have to listen to all the experts, and then take that, along with your own observations into the world, to come to a final, knowledgable conclusion.

It appears to me that you are the one that is ignoring the arguments of those who disagree with you.

-The more people have sex, the more STDs get spread, and the more unwanted pregnancies occur.

-Effective use of contraceptives can mitigate, but not eliminate, the risks involved in sex.

Those 2 facts have nothing to do with this argument.

Translation: "LA LA LA, I can't hear you!" These two points illustrate one simple fact: sex is always risky. That's not relevant to a discussion of whether sex is healthy for a particular demographic?

Yet more sarcasm that perverts my words. Your 2 points there were about sex in general, which is not what this discussion is about. You portrayed them as if they were facts supporting your view when, in fact, they deal with everyone.

I do realize that your argument is primarily that adults are given free reign for self-destructive behavior, but even so it's a good idea to outline a foundation for one's argument. You see, unlike The Amazing Loduwijk my words are not automatically true, so I am building an argument step by step.

I never said that my words are automatically true. I simply observe the world in which I live, instead of being "brainwashed" by everyone else. I refuse to close my eyes to the world and be spoon-fed what someone else wants me to believe. Although my words are not automatically true, they are still relevent facts.

-Adolescents are less likely to make effective and consistent use of contraceptives, and rates of contraceptive use have been shown to rise with age. As people gain sexual experience they begin to use contraceptives more and more, but those that wait until a later age to begin having sex are more likely to use contraceptives from the start.

I have been there, and seen that, first hand. I know for a fact that many adolescents try, and are unable, to aquire contraceptives. For instance, where I was raised, the convenience store that sold such things would not sell them to anyone under age. One reason that adolescents use them less consistently is that they are not easily obtained by them. Even so, there is not much of a difference, as many adolescents that I know are actually more responsible and will not have sex untill they can finally get ahold of the contraceptives, whereas many adults that I know wouldn't give unprotected sex a second thought if there was some minor inconvenience.

Yes, a contributing factor here is lack of availability; however, if adolescents possess the superior judgement you claim they have, this should not be an issue. If adolescents are smart enough to know that having unprotected sex is a bad thing, why do they do it anyways? According to your argument, they couldn't possibly be having sex out of a lack of willpower, because adolescents are possessed of an indomitable force of will which they somehow lose when they grow up--so what's the deal?

Disgusting perversion of my argument yet again. I never said that adolescents possess an indomitable force of will which they lose when they grow up. That was not even the subject of that paragraph, but I do know of many adults who have sex often and no longer use contraceptives.

Did it ever occur to you that you're drawing your statistical sample here from a small and likely fairly homogenous pool? Here's an interesting, unbiased observation: all of the kids I went to high school with were Caucasian. Obviously, this must mean that the U.S. has a vastly smaller black population than those so-called "experts" at the Census Bureau claim, right? The fact that you know 1 kid, or 10 kids, or 100 kids who are bright enough to stick to "safe" sex does not have any bearing on the millions that are not--and neither does the fact that you might know 1 kid, or 10 kids, or 100 kids who seem or claim to be bright enough.

My statistical sample is not a mere 1, 10 or even 100 kids. I had the opportunity to travel throughout my life, and meet many people, becoming friends with them quickly. Not only did I travel, but I made several moves to new homes. My observations come not from 100's, but from 1000's, and not from 1 location, but from dozens.

I often look at the world around me as one giant research lab, and as such, I am allways taking these observations in wherever I go.

-Teen pregnancies are much more likely to have health complications for both the mother and the child than pregnancies in mature women.

The whole debate here is "pleasure sex", not child-bearing sex. Make the contraceptives more available, thus fixing the last argument you made, and that will begin to solve this one as well.

I would bring up the first two points I made (specifically, the second one), but apparently they are irrelevant. Naturally, they are irrelevant on the sole basis that you said so, but that's to be expected by this point.

They are not irrelevant on the basis that I said so. If you thought about the topic of this debate you would have understood as well that they are irrelevant because that is not what this argument is about.

Not only that, but why don't you tell women that are leaving the age of childbearing that they can no longer have sex anymore because they are too old?

They're considerably less likely to need being told. Some of them could use a refresher course, though; aging women sometimes stop using contraceptives out of the belief that they can no longer bear children anyways, only to find themselves pregnant in their fifties.

So children are to be kept away totally, but the older people are just to be given a suggestion? Just because they can no longer bear children does not mean that there can be no other consequences, and if they ignore everything else, then that brings up another argument that older people are also uninformed, just as adolescents are, and that maybe they should be kept away from sex on that basis (Which is just as bad of an argument. Instead of telling them not to have sex, it would be just as easy to tell them that they are still at risk.)

Moreover--and this, of course, is the point that has been made it every single counter-reply in this thread, which you adamantly refuse to even entertain as a possibility, despite the lack of any concrete evidence on your behalf--people do learn, mature, and change over time. People have vastly more experience at age 50 than they do at age 15, and are correspondingly more qualified to make decisions, even if you assume that their decision-making process is unchanged over that period.

I do not refuse the possibility. I have allready addressed it, but maybe you missed it the same as you missed everything else that I have said in my arguments, as I have noticed that I have allready addressed most of the things which you say that I have just ignored.

It seems that you are ignoring the fact that although someone at age 50 has more experience than someone at age 15, that person at age 15 still is fully able to make a concious decision for themselves. Saying that one person is more mature than another does not prove your argument. Explain why that has any bearing. (If we were deciding who should use the oxygen tank to dive down and retrieve an object under water, I could argue that I am more qualified because I have a license to handle volatile gases, but unless I explain the fact that handling such gases gives me experience with gas tanks, such as the oxygen tank, then it makes no difference how many times I argue my point.) As I have said before, I made my decision before I was 10. For someone not to be qualified to make the decision at all, that person would have to have been kept in the dark by those that should be filling him/her with knowledge. (Children are brought by a stork... If parents would stop using this lie and just tell the truth then many children would be better informed.)

Taken together, these imply that 1. even ignoring any physical and psychological implications of sex itself, sex is riskier and less healthy for adolescents than it is for more mature men and women, and 2. these increased risks are at least in part caused through the adolescents' own poor decision-making.

Taken together these do not imply any such thing.

You're right, how silly of me. They do not imply such a thing--they stand up and yell it. They erect a gigantic billboard with the facts spelled out in 20-foot-high letters, clearly readable by anyone--except those who conveniently don opaque sunglasses.

On the contrary, your argument was "Taken together, these imply..." You brought up no such things to be taken together to imply such. Maybe it is riskier and less healthy for adolescents than it is for more mature men and women, but if so then please enlighten us with the facts that make it riskier and less healthy. Or am I just to accept your argument because you say it is so? Although you seem to be saying a lot of "well you say it's so, so it must be so", it is blatently obvious that it is the other way around. You present me with your oppinion and get sarcastic and rude when I don't just accept it.

The only thing that it implies is that you make it hard on the adolescents, then you seek to punish them when "they screw up". It sounds like circular reasoning to me.

Where exactly do I imply any punishing? Are you suggesting that I'm going around with an infected hypodermic needle and injecting promiscuous teenagers with STDs like some sort of psychotic vigilante figure?

No, I am suggesting no such thing. By punishing, I was refurring to the fact that they screw up because you only give them enough information to hang themselves on, but not enough to know that hanging themselves is wrong.

They punish themselves when they screw up, and have nobody else to blame. No one is making them have sex, and much of the pressue to do so comes from their peers (you know, all the other infinitely mature adolescents they hang out with). If teens are really capable of making their own rational decisions, then why shouldn't they be held accountable for themselves?

If you had no idea how to opperate a chain saw, and the owner of the chain saw refused to tell you how to opperate it (maybe even saying something like "Just turn it on and a stork will drop the tree") and yet you wanted to cut down a tree (making your own rational decision to do so) and injured yourself, does that mean that you screwed up and have nobody else at all to blame? If you had been properly educated in the use of that chain saw, then you either would have decided not to use it or you would have used it with enough knowledge that you most likely would not have been injured.

If a bad decision is made, the blame primarily falls on the person responsible for making it. If you blame society for the bad decisions of individual teenagers, that's saying that society should be responsible for making teenagers' decisions for them. If I want to go sky diving but there aren't any parachute salesmen around, and I jump out of a plane without one, does that mean my next of kin can sue the parachute manufacturers?

I do not blame society for the bad decisions of individual teenagers, but I do blame the individual people who interact with the teenagers for either lying to them or telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

[assumtion(if this assumtion is incorrect then skip this section)]
It seems to me that you are of the mind that you are allowed to just ignore youths, then blame them for any mistakes they make while not being knowledgable, and then tell them that they cannot do things that they cannot make correct decisions about. If you ignore them (what you consider to be your problem), then they will have the same attitude and ignore their problems.

What you are making is purely a philosophical argument, and not a particularly airtight one. And that's fine--you are entitled to your own opinion. But no matter how strongly you believe in it, or how tirelessly you repeat it, or how adamantly you refuse to consider anyone else's input on the subject, it won't change the facts.

I am not repeating it. Rather, I am refuting your rebuttles. Also, I am not refusing to consider anyones input. Rather I am replying to that input, showing how it does not fit. And about it being an opinion: I have shown how my argument is at least better, if not the correct view. Your opinion, on the other hand, won't change the facts either, no matter how strongly you repeat it or refuse to consider my input. About it being airtight: if anyones argument is not airtight, then yours is the one that is not airtight. I mearly stated a view, and have not yet been proven wrong. If anyone can do these 2 things then I will gladly drop this argument:

1) Prove why adolescents should not have sex. If you wish to use the argument that adults are more mature (this also goes for any other argument, but being mature is the one most used in this debate by you people), explain why that makes it any better for adults than for children.

2) Prove why adults should be able to have sex, even though adolescents should not. Even if you prove me wrong, you still do not prove yourself right.

Parting note: one of the major fallacies of adolescent reasoning often cited in discussions of psychology is a sort of "Superman complex", the irrational belief that one is invincible, completely protected from the consequences of one's own actions. No matter how well one knows about a risk, they also "know" that that's just something that happens to other people--"A beer or two won't hurt--only raging alcoholics get into drunk driving accidents." (Obviously, this isn't a mistake exclusive to adolescents, but it does have a pretty good concentration there). I find it refreshingly ironic that in championing the superiority of adolescent reasoning, you have taken one of its most visible (or at least most publicized) flaws and applied it on your part to the group as a whole: you go on and on as if adolescents truly aren't capable of being harmed by their decisions, and on the very, very few ocassions that you admit that adolescents are even capable of making bad decisions in the first place, you blame other people--another tendency that's likely to pop up in youth psychology literature.

You are either lying, or one of us is ill-informed. I do not recall arguing that adolescents aren't capable of being harmed by their decisions. And about them making bad decisions, of coarse they will, but as I have said, so will adults. Deadron's argument about this (I will use his instead of yours, because your arguments are all about statements that are not backed up by anything, not even your own observations.) was that adults are more able to comprehend this and make a decision while knowing the consequences, and that was a legitament argument. I have allready dealt with that argument of his, but if you wish to bring up any more legitemate arguments, then be my guest. But if you do, please try to keep the sarcasm/rudeness and the like to a minimum, or you may give the administrators of this forum an excuse to lock this thread, claiming that is turned into a flame. Even if this thread does get locked though, I will have come out on top, because I have not yet had any legitemate arguments brought forth that could stand up under pressure.

I was tempted to not even reply to your argument, because I often ignore those posts which simply state an oppinion, or maybe have a fact but the fact is presented in a way that is sarcastic and/or rude, distorted quote, or arrogant. But I found that your argument wasn't as bad as most, and so I replied. My guess as to why you had so many sarcastic remarks and perversions of my statements is that you assumed things which I did not say.(That is where I think your quotes of me which I never said happened to come from) My suggestion is that you reply only to what I say, and not to what you may think is going on in my head. I made that mistake before when arguing with LummoxJR once. I assumed his intent was rude and derogative, so I argued on that basis. It turned out that my assumption was incorrect. I now try not to make assumptions about what people on the internet mean, and if you notice, I even made note of the assumption I made earlier, stating (before I even said what it was) that it was just that: an assumption.


My parting note: If the adults would simply be more a part of their childrens lives, enlightening them about the way things are, instead of lying and/or keeping their children in the dark, then those children would be much better equipped to do the very things that you claim they can not do. Be a part of a child's life. Bestow them with the information that they need to make the right decisions. I think you would be surprised at what came of it.

I think it's clear that all involved have said all they're going to without just rehashing the same points. Thread closed.