No, he’s essentially right: the brain is still developing during adolescense, and teens are not as good at assessing risk.
This piece seems to go a little further than that, in fact.
Does this mean teenage brains aren’t capable of making good decisions, should be belitted, can’t be trusted? No. And I hesitate to draw conclusions about all teens. You can’t pick an age and say “everybody’s mature by this age.” But he’s right that it’s more difficult for teens to make an informed judgment about the risks they’re getting involved in.
It’s not quite what the article you linked says, either. Increased risk-taking != not being good at assessing risk. If you’re willing to go skydiving, knowing that there’s an X% chance of breaking your neck, but I’m not, it doesn’t follow that one of us must be calculating the wrong value for X.
Exactly. If my risk tolerance is higher than yours, that doesn’t mean my judgments are any less informed; it means we have a different set of priorities.
I suspect Diogenes meant something else by being “emotionally capable of evaluating and appreciating the consequences”, though.
If there is, I don’t think the basis has been explained yet.
Your first quote is heavy on speculation and light on evidence. Todd’s experiment showed that teenagers respond less with the frontal region and more with the “emotional region” when evaluating facial expressions: fair enough. But then she piles on the speculation: since the frontal region in adults is responsible for executive functions such as planning, perhaps (1) teenagers have a nonfunctional frontal region, and perhaps (2) teenagers can’t use any other regions of their brains for planning, so perhaps (3) certain behavior in teenagers can be blamed on a biological inability to plan ahead.
But teenagers manifestly are capable of planning ahead and considering the consequences of their actions. Saving up for a big purchase, coordinating strategies in a team game… someone who was incapable of planning ahead wouldn’t be able to do either, and yet they do. That’s the trouble with any attempt to blame unwanted teenage behavior on a lack of basic mental ability: they demonstrate the same abilities in other contexts all the time.
Later in the same interview you cited, Ms. Todd says “Just because they’re physically mature, they may not appreciate the consequences or weigh information the same way as adults do.” The former is more speculation, unrelated to her experiment. The latter is essentially just a difference of opinion. There’s no one right way to weigh information: if you feel the thrill of skydiving (or sex) outweighs the risk, who am I or anyone else to tell you you’re wrong?
I hope no one would try to argue that teenagers are incapable of knowing the consequences of sex. Those are easily taught and tested; anyone who finishes health class knows the risks. The argument is apparently that this information doesn’t make it into the decision-making process. But so far it seems indistinguishable from having a different set of priorities, doesn’t it? Certainly if you asked a teenager about their decision-making process, you wouldn’t hear “whoops, for a minute I forgot that’s where babies came from” but something more like “I just wanted it so bad that I didn’t care” – avoiding risk was a low priority.
Has anybody contended they can’t plan ahead at all? They’re teenagers, not vegetables. The issue is more specific than planning, though: it’s about recognizing consequences and risks.
Having different priorities is fine. If you have trouble weighing risks and rewards, though, you’re less likely to make good decisions.
And that’s exactly the problem. (I don’t think a self-assessment is really relevant here, though.)
On this we can agree. At least make the Sex Offender list a list of dangerous guys- not strippers, streakers, flashers and gay guys who had sex in their car. No statutory rape offenders either.
I want it to be real violent rapists and child molesters. I don’t know about for life, but they should at least be old men coming off a 20yr to life sentence.
This started with “They’re not emotionally capable of evaluating and appreciating the consequences.” Sounds like a contention that they can’t do it at all, wouldn’t you say?
And that’s what’s been missing from all these cites. I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that teenagers can’t recognize consequences or risks - only that they’re willing to take bigger risks. Even a quote like “teens rarely consider long-term consequences” really just boils down to differing priorities: everyone who uses credit is trading off long-term consequences for a short-term benefit, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so.
But, er, you just agreed that having different priorities is fine. Are you making an exception for priorities regarding risk tolerance?
Loss of privacy weighs a liiiittle bit less in the balance compared to ostracism, especially if you’re not aware of the fact that your privacy is compromised. Note also that there is a reason for the loss of privacy. Why would you assume more people would be watched though ?
As for the priorities, I don’t know that it’d require more manpower that active stings. Right now, a cop or team of cops spends weeks, sometimes months chatting with one guy. That takes up all of their time - they can’t chat and organize meetings with N suspects at once, their focus is on that one guy. By comparison, rummaging through logs looking for important keywords (like meet, house, parents, home etc…) can be done rapidly, and could even be automated. Similarly, a phonebug doesn’t involve a policeman sitting in front of the switch all day long waiting for calls, they can be reviewed in bulk at the end of the day.
So essentially, I would say that the same number of policemen could be able to watch more perps.
The “problem” is that they would have to do it for a longer period of time. But such is the price of good police work. It’s also faster and easier to tase people into submission rather than talking them down peacefully - but we don’t accept that. It’s faster to plant drugs on a suspect than investigating whatever the hell he did, and will certainly get him off the streets - we don’t accept that either. Which is what I hinted at in the man-in-a-bar scenario : I wasn’t really concerned with the details of it, rather than the abstract concept at heart, that is to say : is it admissible for policemen to hasten (and possibly incite) the commission of a crime for convenience ? And why do we accept it in this, and only this case ?
Regarding the debate with Mr2001, I must admit that’s also something that went through my mind during the debate - essentially when and how do you decide one is capable of handling their sex life. **Bricker **said earlier “I don’t care, it’s the law” which, while right, isn’t exactly satisfying intellectualy. Laws can be changed and laws can be wrong. Being a former 21 yr old virgin, was I any more prepared for sex and its consequences (what consequences anyway ? are we talking babies and STDs, or more fuzzy emotional ones ?) that I would have been at 17 ? Don’t think so - although I wouldn’t have scoffed at the resulting self-assurance and general feeling that life might not be *totally *shitty back then :).
What I find weird when it comes to US laws is that you are willing to let teenagers handle the decisions and consequences of something as dangerous as a car before sex. If a teenager can be entrusted with the responsibility of not driving under the influence, or too fast, or unsafely (something which can result in loss of life and limb not only for the teenager himself, but innocent victims as well), how can he not be entrusted with the responsibility of handling his own body and mind ?
Loss of privacy isn’t a big deal if you yourself don’t know about it? I strenuously disagree. It’s a lesser penalty than ostracism, but the ostracism is the result of being accused and convicted of a crime rather than being privately suspected of one.
The number of people being watched is always going to be greater than the number of people actually charged.
I disagree, partly because you’re assuming a team of cops has to spend weeks working up each suspect. I think it’s probably one or two conversations and then go time. I wouldn’t know for sure, but I think you’re making some incorrect assumptions.
That could probably be made to work.
That infringes on the rights of innocent people, and these chat stings don’t do that.
I don’t think this is the only case where we allow it.
It’s a very complicated issue, although in most of the cases we’re dealing with here, I don’t think it really comes into play.
Laws regarding drivers licenses and age of consent vary significantly from state to state, so I wouldn’t overgeneralize. But hey, I didn’t write the laws. If it were up to me, the age of consent, voting and drinking ages would all be lower. But I doubt that’s a popular view.
It could manifest as an inability to list the consequences when asked, or as I suggested earlier, as a post-hoc explanation of why a decision was made.
We already know that teenagers are aware of the consequences of their actions in every measurable sense: ask them what those consequences are, and they’ll tell you, and in many common situations it’s easy to observe them making choices based on their knowledge of the consequences.
It seems suspicious, therefore, to suggest that this awareness somehow bypasses their decision-making process in certain situations, especially when it only seems to happen when parents disagree with the decisions.
So let me turn that question around: is there any observable difference between a person who is unable to consider risk in his decision-making and a person who simply has a higher tolerance for risk? If not, is there any reason to prefer the convoluted former explanation, other than that it lets you justify taking the decision out of his hands?
I suspect we’d find something similar in thrill-seeking adults. But in adults, we recognize it as a preference, not a handicap.
Well, yes, but some rapes only involve the implicit threat of violence. Someone may give in before the rapist gets violent out of fear…or perhaps they’re unconscious and don’t know what’s going on.
It is if you assume that there are pedos out there the cops are fully aware of but don’t sting. I was operating on the assumption that whenever they are made aware of them (either through cops in the chatrooms or through teens/parents filing complaints) a sting and conviction promptly follows.
But they have to stay in the chatroom all day, interacting with an untold number of people and keeping the pretenses until they’re finally IM’d by one who isn’t merely whacking off to the idea but is into cruising for real. Then that one has to work up his trust that the kinky teen isn’t another 40 yr old trucker - or a police officer for that matter. I don’t doubt that for some bright and sparky Bubbas, it can be as fast as “u wan fuk ? In a our ? See u there”, but I would think the majority needs a little more than that.
Care to elaborate? What pattern of risks would you expect someone with an above-average risk tolerance to take (compared to someone who’s incapable of considering risk at all), and how is that different from the pattern of risks teenagers actually do take?
Yes, it’s just like punching someone in the face, and then having an orgasm. Or running them over with your car, and then having an orgasm. Just another one of those violent acts that culminates in ejaculation.
Um…did I say it was done to relieve a man sexually? I just said that not all rape is as violent as others. If a man puts a drug in someone’s drink and she passes out and he has sex with her, it’s still rape, however it’s probably not as violent as a rape where someone is held down and beaten and also raped. You don’t have to come away with bruises or serious injuries to have been raped.