@ezra Ok in the same way a 30 year old could be said not to be fully developed compared to a 60 year old, the average 13 year old can get pregnant (I'm not saying they should but they can), isn't that an adult?

@ezra Although an adult who is sterile is still an adult I think...

@Jazzy_Butts

It's not, the reasons for this are twofold:

The primary sexual organs start functioning whilst still developing, around the middle of the process. In general this process starts around 8-11 for girls, and around 9-12 for boys, the process ends at around 16-18 for girls, and 18-20 for boys. Therefore, children who do not have fully developed sexual organs will have reproductive capability for several years before sexual maturity is achieved.

Secondly, sexual maturity is not directly linked to physical and mental maturity, girls stop growing physically at around 15, boys stop growing at around 21 (with some individual variation). Humans of both sexes reach mental maturity at around the age of 25.

Thus someone who is 25 years old is a fully developed adult, after this point there will be no further development. So a 30 year old and a 60 year old would be separated by experience (a psychological attribute) and possible physical degradation due to aging.

@ezra Yup I agree with all that, I just don't know where the line should be, society has its laws and consensus but each individual person has their own fluid perception of what's right or wrong. Is it wrong for a 30 year old damaged hottie to be brainwashed and used as a slave by some rich old fuck? Is it right for a 25 year old to rescue his 14 year old fiance from a dungeon?

@Jazzy_Butts

Well contemporary European society places the (average) age of consent at the age of female sexual maturity, and the age of adulthood at the age of male physical maturity. There's probably historical reasons related to marriage (for women) and entering the fully paid workforce (for men) attached to these otherwise fairly arbitrary age bracket choices.

But ultimately you have to put these limits somewhere, and the current places are as good as any given the way the education system, relationships, and so on work for the typical person.

@ezra @Jazzy_Butts
> given the way the education system, relationships, and so on work for the typical person

i mean, those should change too, youth sexual liberation is inseparable from other forms of youth liberation

@nep @Jazzy_Butts I'm not a youth liberation(ist) tho, I'm not even familiar with what that ideology is beyond what can be assumed from the name itself.

@ezra @Jazzy_Butts effectively that the concept of a "minor" (both legally and socially) should not exist (or be much lower) or have far less implications

for example: advocating for sudbury-like (voluntary and encouraging, rather than punitive) school systems

@nep

Hm right, to clarify if you remove the concept of a minor, what impact would that have on things like loan agreements, employment contracts, mandatory school attendance, and the age of consent ?

@ezra the answer to that question is "how do those work for people currently considered adults?"

some (communists & co) would argue that the first two you mentioned shouldn't be structured how they are today regardless of being a minor or not, i have read very little about communism so i don't have a strong opinion on that, but it sounds reasonable enough

@nep uhhh right yes this is not very close to what I believe I think

@ezra for the sake of argument, let's assume a conservative stance of "12 year olds should have the same rights as 'adults' do now", i'd go lower but let's start simpler, what reasoning would you use against that?

@nep

Well ultimately it depends on the right, I'll outline some examples:

I think people under 13 shouldn't be liable for crimes they may commit because they are less likely to understand the implications.

I think people under 18 should have additional rights to privacy that adults can be assumed to not require, in the realms of advertising and public information.

I think people under 18 should not be liable to repay any money loaned to them, since it's unreasonable to expect young people to enter into usury type contracts.

I think that children have a right to education, so employment contracts for people at still at school should be limited in a way that prevents them interfering with the young person's education.

I think that children have the right to a family, or if that isn't possible, for all their care, housing, food, and income needs to be provided by the state, even where adults are not entitled to the same.

And so on.

@ezra
>I think people under 13 shouldn't be liable for crimes they may commit because *they are less likely to understand the implications.*

What makes you think that would be more the case than, say, an 18 year old and a 23 year old? (same age difference, different absolute numbers)

>I think people under 18 should have additional rights to privacy that adults can be assumed to not require, in the realms of advertising and public information.
>I think people under 18 should not be liable to repay any money loaned to them, since it's unreasonable to expect young people to enter into usury type contracts.

Why?

>I think that children have a right to education, so employment contracts for people at still at school should be limited in a way that prevents them interfering with the young person's education.

A right to education is different than being forced into education, any interference should be possible but voluntary. Why should that not be the case?

>I think that children have the right to a family, or if that isn't possible, for all their care, housing, food, and income needs to be provided by the state, even where adults are not entitled to the same.

Touché, though I'd still argue adults should be able to receive more assistance than they currently do.

@nep

Well I think it's unreasonable to hold people liable for crimes before they even take civics classes and so on, most of what I outlined is related to predictable development of knowledge and understanding, we aren't born with a detailed understanding of the law, finance, contractual obligations and so on.

Regarding mandatory schooling, I'm a strong supporter of outlawing all the homeschooling and "unschooling" related loopholes, school attendance should be mandatory without an opportunity for anyone to opt-out (except for medical purposes like being hospitalised of course). This is connected to my own personal experiences and my perspective on fundamentalists, among other things.

@ezra
>Well I think it's unreasonable to hold people liable for crimes before they even take civics classes and so on, most of what I outlined is related to predictable development of knowledge and understanding, we aren't born with a detailed understanding of the law, finance, contractual obligations and so on.

Many places don't even have such classes, yet they're doing just fine, formal education isn't the only form of education. I have not learned (read: reliably remembered after the exam I needed it for) a single thing at school since ~6th grade, life experience (which very quickly reaches diminishing returns at an acceptable level) and voluntary learning are enough for anything, if people aren't pushed into learned helplessness. The last part is especially important, as being told, both de jure (e.g. diploma requirements) and de facto (e.g. professional elitism), that the only way to learn something is by having it *taught* to you *causes* people to feel hopeless (which in turn can decrease someone's ability to do it).

>This is connected to my own personal experiences and my perspective

And what makes you believe your personal experience is representative of the world in any way? Relying on that would effectively mean everyone is right about everything they believe, someone's personal experience says very little about the world.

@nep my personal experiences are what shape all my opinions on everything, there's nothing I believe that isn't based on something I saw or did or had happen to me in some way

@ezra Plato's cave seems pretty relevant in this case, personal experience only represents a specific kind of distortion of reality, to understand reality itself it's necessary to dig deeper (well, in that allegory it would be ascension instead, but colloquially people say dig deeper lol). And as I said, that has the implication that you then wouldn't be able to judge someone for *anything* they do, even if you find it extremely wrong (e.g. mass murder), if they would be following the same process you are (basing their beliefs on personal experience).

@nep I don't believe in a reality beyond my perception, methodological solipsism is closer to my views than Plato (I don't think I agree with Plato on much)

@nep @ezra @Jazzy_Butts

Imo, the biggest reasons youth liberation hasn't caught up yet are:

1) Unlike with other ideas like socialism, no one knows what youth-liberated society would look like. If in the near past socialist societies and community existed, then societies where youths had more freedom are too distant for others to remember, meaning that such a society is thought in an abstract (rather than concrete) way.

2) Consequential issues affecting young people (like voting, drinking, the AoC, getting a job, etc...) aren't taken seriously, and young people (i.e., legal minors) still need to conceptualise themselves as a subaltern that needs to liberate itself.

So while youth lib does have some potential, I think that it will take a very long time until something drastic occurs that favours youth liberationists.

@Artaxerxes @ezra @Jazzy_Butts it's extremely hard (arguably impossible as far as we know) to make any long term predictions like that, even 50 year predictions are a big stretch, and considering how absurd mainstream age discourse has become, maybe it will collapse out of its own confusion

@Artaxerxes @nep @ezra @Jazzy_Butts

Re: #1. Ever go to Albania? I think there's a glimpse of what it can look like .

Also, I think old America had a certain amount of it, just because it was a chaotic society with lots of homeless and orphaned kids. I've previously given the example of the Newsie Strike to make the point that kids are smart and capable without adult supervision

@Pinkpawn @Jazzy_Butts @ezra @nep

No, I don't know much about Albania apart from the fact that its history goes back to the 12th century, it was formerly a communist country, and alongside Bosnia is one of the only two Muslim majority countries entirely within Europe due to Ottoman policies (even though actual practicing Muslims are a very small minority).

I would like to hear more about it relation to youth lib. Do you have any resources that I can start with?

> Humans of both sexes reach mental maturity at around the age of 25

https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

@Twig this is not a reliable source

@ezra @Twig while it's not a reliable source it's still false to say no further development will take place. the brain continues to develop throughout our entire lifetime and the concept of maturity is mostly built on experience rather than age or biological markers.

@pv6hd8ws6v

Well yes, but also contextually not exactly what I was trying to talk about. They are kinda misunderstanding my point, the brain does indeed change all our life, but there is a consensus on when those changes stop improving the neurological capabilities of the brain, i.e there's no more room for physical improvement. This is around 20-25 years of age. After this my understanding is that it remains constant in terms of physical health, but starts to degrade around 30-40, slowly becoming worse until we become "senile".

So although the term "maturity" has a lot of different meanings, here it's a reference to the prime physical condition of the brain as an organ, not to any particular level of experience or psychological ability. I think this was probably confusing because I didn't specify that and this is an area of the internet where maturity is normally defined in terms of experience in the purely psychological sense.

https://childlove.su/@nep@cannibal.cafe/posts/AbycKUfy5v9znW73po

@Twig 404

Here's a screenshot:

@nep
at the end of the day, it's a m…

@Twig oh that I just ignored because it doesn't seem related to anything I said

@ezra @pv6hd8ws6v >there's no more room for physical improvement. This is around 20-25 years of age
iirc the study that came up with the 25 magic number just didnt actually include anyone over 25 in the sample

the majority of brain physical development is actually extremely early on and the rate of development rapidly decreases at like... 5

@ezra @pv6hd8ws6v IQ actually peaks at 13-15 tho:
>"Visual acuity, for example, peaks around the time of puberty. "Incidental memory"—the kind of memory that occurs automatically, without any mnemonic effort, peaks at about age 12 and declines through life. [...] In the 1940s pioneering intelligence researchers J. C. Raven and David Wechsler, relying on radically different kinds of intelligence tests, each showed that raw scores on intelligence tests peak between ages 13 and 15 and decline after that throughout life. Although verbal expertise and some forms of judgment can remain strong throughout life, the extraordinary cognitive abilities of teens, and especially their ability to learn new things rapidly, is beyond question. And whereas brain size is not necessarily a good indication of processing ability, it is notable that recent scanning data collected by Eric Courchesne and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, show that brain volume peaks at about age 14."
https://drrobertepstein.com/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf

@HinamizawaShokogun22 okay this is interesting but this is also even less relevant to what I was talking about than previously, the physical development of the prefrontal cortex is entirely unrelated to "grey matter" or "IQ" or "memory" and so on. There's probably applications for all these things but I don't see them being connected to the finality of the first stage in the brain aging process

@ezra
prefrontal cortex actually peaks earlier, at 12:
>"The constantly developing cognitive and executive capabilities occur parallel to the neurophysiological changes within the PFC and its connected areas and seem to reach a plateau in teenagers (around 12 years in human, around P50 in rodents)"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01137-9

@HinamizawaShokogun22 in mice, yes

@ezra
>12 years in human