7 ms·

I don't know the data, but it doesn't strike me as insane to think that decreasing the marginal cost of a subset of sex would increase overall amounts of sex.

by scarmig 11y ago

I don't know the data, but it doesn't strike me as insane to think that decreasing the marginal cost of a subset of sex would increase overall amounts of sex. It's just that optimizing over "minimizing sex" is idiotic compared to optimizing over "minimizing unsafe sex."

austenallred 11y ago
That's exactly what it is. Different groups optimizing for different outcomes. For most religious folk, teens having sex is bad regardless of whether it's safe or not, so it makes sense to push for abstinence-only education. Giving out condoms is like giving up. Or maybe even slightly worse than giving up - implicitly encouraging kids to go out and have sex. Of course, this doesn't stop kids from having sex, but it does make it so that when they do they're generally unprotected.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- GuiA 11y ago
  I've worked heavily with teenagers over the past 10 years, mostly in the context of summer camps (where 40 teenagers are spending 3 weeks of their summer in close quarter). Where I'm from, France, you need a state certificate to work as an educator (BAFA), which is issued after a few weeks of training. In my first week of training, which is mostly "theoretical", we had a debate about whether to carry condoms in the camp's sanitary supplies, to give them to teenagers if they ask for them. There is no legal imperative in France - it's mostly at the discretion of the camp director/organizer. I was against, because I was a 17 year old teenager full of convictions (albeit not religious ones) that having condoms available was implicitly encouraging teenagers to have sex. Then I worked in actual teenage camps and realized how much of an idiot I was. No matter how vigilant and organized the educators are, the fact is that you have 40 teenagers full of hormones living together for 3 weeks. If you don't want STDs/pregnancies, you need condoms. Anytime I hear people advocating the opposite, it becomes clear to me that they are deluded idealists and that they've never had to manage a community of teenagers.
  - pluma 11y ago
    To quote my grandmother: "there's nothing [adolescents] can do at night that they won't do during daytime". The religious right in the US has this strange obsession with other people's sex life. I think after roughly two millenia of Christians trying to prevent their kids from having extramarital sex it's safe to say that the exercise is ultimately futile and the only thing it's accomplishing is worse outcomes (e.g. STDs, pregnancies and bad decisions). Of course debating that point is entirely useless when the underlying idea is that extramarital (and therefore also teenage) sex is the worst possible outcome in and of itself. It's a failure of humanity that 40-odd thousand years into civilization we still haven't overcome our obsessions with valuing scripture over rational thought.
ma2rten 11y ago
I don't think it's about marginal cost, it's psychological. In these people's minds, giving a teenager a box of condoms sends a message: "It's okay to have sex".
- toothbrush 11y ago
  Thing is though, it is okay to have sex—safe and consensual sex, that is.
  - austenallred 11y ago
    Most people in the town I grew up in would disagree with that statement
    - webjprgm 11y ago
      And I disagree with that statement too. So do various researchers on families and marriage. (I'm horrible at remembering sources, I'd have to hunt them down if you really want them.) And I'm sure there's differing conclusions among researchers since there always are. But my point is that there are legitimate oppositions to the idea that consensual sex is OK, both religion/moral and scientific.
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
        I won't bother chasing down religious or moral objections, but please do back up your statement that there is scientific opposition to consensual sex.
  - kedean 11y ago
    That's where opinion comes in. You can't just force your opinion on people with deeply held, millenia old beliefs and expect it to suddenly work smoothly. It's not even as 'easy' as gay marriage, because now you're actually interfering with how people raise their children.
    - 11y ago
auganov 11y ago
Say if they use depo provera injections as the long term contraceptive it could very well reduce their willingness to do it. And help with [painful] periods btw.
- nsgi 11y ago
  Using depo provera injections could their willingness to have sex?
  - auganov 11y ago
    Well, more accurately speaking it should reduce/get rid of [testosterone]-induced libidinal impulses. Of course some inherent preference, cultural compulsion and your partner[s] are big factors too (I'm guessing haha). But yea, I'm willing to bet some money that if used for over a year it would significantly reduce sexual behavior in the treated population. Which also makes me surprised why pro-abstinence people are often opposed to such methods.
fineman 11y ago
I'm pretty sure you have enough data to know that that argument is actually bunk in this case. It's not like teens (and the poor, etc) are saving up to afford condoms and only having sex when they can afford them. The profusion of unplanned babies and the well-known tendency of the poor to have more children than they can support should prove this.
- scarmig 11y ago
  I would guess that the effect is marginal, though real and positive. Empiricism, however, is a stronger basis for policy making than personal anecdote and untested theories.
  - fineman 11y ago
    Exactly, and my answer is 1000 times more empirical than yours. You imagine some tiny butterfly effect that might impact something vague but are ignoring the masses of evidence of the straight forward problems. Hoofbeats, horses, etc. Also, when we deal with the horses we'll have a chance to check for any odd zebra. (ie, even if you're right, the way to check is deal with the other 99% of the problem first...)
    - scarmig 11y ago
      Your "empirical evidence" amounts to repeating anecdotes and strongly held suppositions with higher and higher levels of emotion. It's not at all convincing to me--someone who's predisposed to support very high levels of access to birth control, for everyone--and is certainly not convincing to anyone who's predisposed to oppose it. Also, a nit: the butterfly effect has nothing to do with this discussion. It's an effect in chaotic systems where a small perturbation in initial conditions leads to large, unpredictable, non-linear differences in later states. I'm arguing that it's not crazy to think a small perturbation in policy (an x% decrease in the total cost of having sex) would likely lead to a small and proportionate response in behavior (a roughly x% increase in the amount of sex had). Resolution of the truth-value of that requires, yes, actual scientific studies (which have almost certainly already been done already). The fact that some religiously-inclined folk might come to the "wrong" conclusion from a confirmation of this effect doesn't obviate the value of studying it. ETA: Just as an example of such a study, look at this one [0]. It's about how certain abstinence-only programs, which presumably doesn't include access to contraceptives, can legitimately prevent the onset of teenage sexual activity. I'm sure there's plenty of room for methodological critiques, and there are also plenty of studies that come to other conclusions, naturally. I personally still would expect those to be confirmed in the end. But this isn't a question that you can resolve by loudly proclaiming that anyone who asks for evidence is an idiot. [0] http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=382798 http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=38279...

by scarmig 11y ago

austenallred 11y ago

That's exactly what it is. Different groups optimizing for different outcomes. For most religious folk, teens having sex is bad regardless of whether it's safe or not, so it makes sense to push for abstinence-only education. Giving out condoms is like giving up. Or maybe even slightly worse than giving up - implicitly encouraging kids to go out and have sex. Of course, this doesn't stop kids from having sex, but it does make it so that when they do they're generally unprotected.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
GuiA 11y ago
I've worked heavily with teenagers over the past 10 years, mostly in the context of summer camps (where 40 teenagers are spending 3 weeks of their summer in close quarter). Where I'm from, France, you need a state certificate to work as an educator (BAFA), which is issued after a few weeks of training. In my first week of training, which is mostly "theoretical", we had a debate about whether to carry condoms in the camp's sanitary supplies, to give them to teenagers if they ask for them. There is no legal imperative in France - it's mostly at the discretion of the camp director/organizer. I was against, because I was a 17 year old teenager full of convictions (albeit not religious ones) that having condoms available was implicitly encouraging teenagers to have sex. Then I worked in actual teenage camps and realized how much of an idiot I was. No matter how vigilant and organized the educators are, the fact is that you have 40 teenagers full of hormones living together for 3 weeks. If you don't want STDs/pregnancies, you need condoms. Anytime I hear people advocating the opposite, it becomes clear to me that they are deluded idealists and that they've never had to manage a community of teenagers.
- pluma 11y ago
  To quote my grandmother: "there's nothing [adolescents] can do at night that they won't do during daytime". The religious right in the US has this strange obsession with other people's sex life. I think after roughly two millenia of Christians trying to prevent their kids from having extramarital sex it's safe to say that the exercise is ultimately futile and the only thing it's accomplishing is worse outcomes (e.g. STDs, pregnancies and bad decisions). Of course debating that point is entirely useless when the underlying idea is that extramarital (and therefore also teenage) sex is the worst possible outcome in and of itself. It's a failure of humanity that 40-odd thousand years into civilization we still haven't overcome our obsessions with valuing scripture over rational thought.

ma2rten 11y ago

I don't think it's about marginal cost, it's psychological. In these people's minds, giving a teenager a box of condoms sends a message: "It's okay to have sex".

toothbrush 11y ago
Thing is though, it is okay to have sex—safe and consensual sex, that is.
- austenallred 11y ago
  Most people in the town I grew up in would disagree with that statement
  - webjprgm 11y ago
    And I disagree with that statement too. So do various researchers on families and marriage. (I'm horrible at remembering sources, I'd have to hunt them down if you really want them.) And I'm sure there's differing conclusions among researchers since there always are. But my point is that there are legitimate oppositions to the idea that consensual sex is OK, both religion/moral and scientific.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      I won't bother chasing down religious or moral objections, but please do back up your statement that there is scientific opposition to consensual sex.
- kedean 11y ago
  That's where opinion comes in. You can't just force your opinion on people with deeply held, millenia old beliefs and expect it to suddenly work smoothly. It's not even as 'easy' as gay marriage, because now you're actually interfering with how people raise their children.
  - 11y ago

auganov 11y ago

Say if they use depo provera injections as the long term contraceptive it could very well reduce their willingness to do it. And help with [painful] periods btw.

nsgi 11y ago
Using depo provera injections could their willingness to have sex?
- auganov 11y ago
  Well, more accurately speaking it should reduce/get rid of [testosterone]-induced libidinal impulses. Of course some inherent preference, cultural compulsion and your partner[s] are big factors too (I'm guessing haha). But yea, I'm willing to bet some money that if used for over a year it would significantly reduce sexual behavior in the treated population. Which also makes me surprised why pro-abstinence people are often opposed to such methods.

fineman 11y ago

I'm pretty sure you have enough data to know that that argument is actually bunk in this case. It's not like teens (and the poor, etc) are saving up to afford condoms and only having sex when they can afford them. The profusion of unplanned babies and the well-known tendency of the poor to have more children than they can support should prove this.

scarmig 11y ago
I would guess that the effect is marginal, though real and positive. Empiricism, however, is a stronger basis for policy making than personal anecdote and untested theories.
- fineman 11y ago
  Exactly, and my answer is 1000 times more empirical than yours. You imagine some tiny butterfly effect that might impact something vague but are ignoring the masses of evidence of the straight forward problems. Hoofbeats, horses, etc. Also, when we deal with the horses we'll have a chance to check for any odd zebra. (ie, even if you're right, the way to check is deal with the other 99% of the problem first...)
  - scarmig 11y ago
    Your "empirical evidence" amounts to repeating anecdotes and strongly held suppositions with higher and higher levels of emotion. It's not at all convincing to me--someone who's predisposed to support very high levels of access to birth control, for everyone--and is certainly not convincing to anyone who's predisposed to oppose it. Also, a nit: the butterfly effect has nothing to do with this discussion. It's an effect in chaotic systems where a small perturbation in initial conditions leads to large, unpredictable, non-linear differences in later states. I'm arguing that it's not crazy to think a small perturbation in policy (an x% decrease in the total cost of having sex) would likely lead to a small and proportionate response in behavior (a roughly x% increase in the amount of sex had). Resolution of the truth-value of that requires, yes, actual scientific studies (which have almost certainly already been done already). The fact that some religiously-inclined folk might come to the "wrong" conclusion from a confirmation of this effect doesn't obviate the value of studying it. ETA: Just as an example of such a study, look at this one [0]. It's about how certain abstinence-only programs, which presumably doesn't include access to contraceptives, can legitimately prevent the onset of teenage sexual activity. I'm sure there's plenty of room for methodological critiques, and there are also plenty of studies that come to other conclusions, naturally. I personally still would expect those to be confirmed in the end. But this isn't a question that you can resolve by loudly proclaiming that anyone who asks for evidence is an idiot. [0] http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=382798 http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=38279...