3 ms·
1) It’s 100% reasonable to have a high degree of skepticism within a low-trust environment. For example, I would never assume positive intent and allow my daugh
by Mz 9y ago
1) It’s 100% reasonable to have a high degree of skepticism within a low-trust environment. For example, I would never assume positive intent and allow my daughter to be alone with a registered sex offender just because the person claimed they had changed. I would also never trust an alcoholic with a house full of liquor. Once a person has violated trust against a particular metric, it's OK to take a different position in order not to put yourself in harm's way.
You can only assume positive intent in situations where intent is not clear and you need to infer or assume. Once there is a proven track record of bad acts clearly establishing intent, assuming positive intent amounts to deluding yourself.
If you don't know, then assuming positive intent and looking to situational factors as the source of problems can be surprisingly powerful. But, once you have affirmative evidence of bad faith, then you need to go with that. Assumptions about motive only make sense under circumstances where motive or intent is unclear.
- tertius 9y agoSo then we have to get very good at determining if something is unclear. This is where most people make the most mistakes, they assume their own judgement is sound. Hence the article.
- ue_ 9y agoA bit of a nitpick, but >I would never assume positive intent and allow my daughter to be alone with a registered sex offender I don't know, prehaps that's true in the case where one doesn't know what the sex offender has done (i.e what crime got them onto that list), but it's not sufficient in general. Although most people on the list are there for good reasons, there are not-good reasons too, such as urinating in a public park at night, having a lewd picture of your 17 year old girlfriend/boyfriend on your phone, and in some countries possessing/writing certain pornographic comics or stories. So I think it is too dismissive, similar to how it is also dimissive to say the same thing about an ex-convict.
- Mz 9y agoSubstitute "known child molester" for "registered sex offender" and see how you feel about that statement. I am sure he also would not want to leave his child with a child molester who was not yet known to be a child molester, but most people have no idea how to effectively screen out such people. So, they use metrics like registered sex offender. While I agree that most parents use crappy rubrics for deciding whom to entrust their kids with, I am not really comfortable with arguing in favor of trying to do some kind of justice for some edge case adult over a parent looking out for the welfare of their own child. The parent has a duty to their child. They do not have a similar duty to some guy who took a leak in the park, yet their dream job is babysitting. Depriving public urinators of some right to become a babysitter seems a rather small thing in the name of protecting our children from possible child rape. The place to fight this battle for justice is with the system that designates public urinators et al as sex offenders, not with parents trying to decide whom to leave their kids with.