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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2024

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  • Yet more oppressive shit for no good reason.

    Who fucking cares if someone knows, or doesn’t, who, or what, a legislator is? It doesn’t matter. 99.999% of voting adults might just about be able to name the President, but we don’t need them to confirm that. All they need to do is put a mark next to a candidate whom presumably they’ve heard about. Or maybe they haven’t. Who gives a shit? The important thing is that we do not exclude people who do give a shit.

    The sort of tests you propose historically have been used to disenfranchise black voters, and you’re just suggesting that they be used to disenfranchise young voters. More phrenology vibes.

    Your whole “private poll booth” thing is again just needless and exclusionary. Again, what’s to stop an adult child being coerced into voting a certain way, or an adult with an abusive partner, or even just housemates? All of these people and more are very capable of manipulating others into serving their interests, and yet you are only interested in abridging the rights of children. Maybe we should also force disabled people to come and vote in person, too? And if they can’t, because their wheelchair doesn’t fit, well… at least they weren’t coerced!!

    We know a lot about how brains develop, what parts of the brain do what, and so on

    I’m not convinced that we do. We think we know a few things, but a lot of what we “knew” about brains has been proven completely wrong time and time and time again. This is just the latest, wrong, thing. So yeah, phrenology. I’m not interested in it at all.

    This obsession with making something which is not measurable (maturity) into something which is (number of days alive on the planet) isn’t helpful. So god knows why we add that extra hoop of “brain development” into there, it’s just yet another unknown unmeasurable.


  • I disagree with you quite strongly on the topic of elections, I don’t see why being able to demonstrate knowledge of trivia is necessary for being able to express your political preference.

    Personally, I would open it to anyone who is interested in voting may do so. There is basically no good reason against this, in my opinion.

    Again, the pre-frontal cortex development stuff is as close to pseudoscience as it gets. We don’t really understand how a lot of brain function works, so the entire field absolutely reeks of phrenology to me.

    Oh, and what a surprise! It’s being used to justify oppression. Isn’t that fun? Just like good old times!!


  • Again, this argument is extremely weak and fails under even the slightest investigation.

    Firstly, the claim that kids brains are developing but adults’ brains aren’t is just factually untrue. Redditors love to repeat a little “factoid” about 25 being the age that the brain matures, but it’s just not true. Everyone develops differently and some people may be functionally mature in their mid teens, others may take much longer. Additionally there’s not really an end point where the brain stops developing, so everyone’s brains are always developing. So now you have to draw a line about, how much development is enough? and that asks the question, how do you measure brain development? And there’s actually not really any good answer to that question.

    Even if you had some vague range under which brains are developed, which again, we don’t have - where would you draw a line? Anywhere you put it is going to be arbitrary and exclusionary. If you place it somewhere, let’s say, 18, then ask yourself - is it conceivable that there could be a 17 year old who would be capable and mature enough to take on this responsibility? If your answer is yes, then by making that line 18, you’re being ageist.

    99% of all oppressions against young people are not justifiable.






  • I would highly recommend listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast about the book “The Anxious Generation”. I feel like it’s probably one of their weaker episodes, if I’m honest, because they kind of have a preconceived bias against social media, but I think they basically come around to the conclusion that there is basically no compelling evidence that social media is particularly harmful to young people, in a general sense, and that on the whole, it’s also very useful for young people.

    This is just yet more oppression of young people dressed up as if it’s for their best interests.