" Potential regret is a society-level justification for why there are ages of consent."

This would be a first for you.

OTOH, I don't expect you to refrain from going back to the notion that is isn't a fiction to persuade the public, but is a real prospect for any girl regardless of what her parents may think in reading her assent as a clear statement.

And it seems to fly in the face of your other claims about the self-deluding propensities of humans.

But I'll take the one-time offer. ;p

"Swimming is part of the good life in some people's opinion."

But that's a cost-benefit analysis which allows not just one dead child but multiple unnecessarily dead children. And its not even one where the benefits outweigh the risk more overtly. At least in commuting a child to school there is the understanding by the parents that a four hour hike could deincentivize the child staying in school and possibly facilitate an assault by a stranger. Certainly the ride in an ambulance to the hospital is a clear-cut case of weighing two possible sources of death and siding with transit and treatment over no deadly transit at all.

But for someone who has viewed the even less likely sources of harm to girls as being too costly to warrant benefitting those who are unharmed, the hypocrisy over real dead children just seems rather self-serving. Particularly when the benefit outweighing dead children is on the order of "and some like a fine wine too."

"No one suffers from a lack of sex with much older partners before the age of 16, when they can masturbate or find same-age partners before then."

LOL.

I have no experience of that in life. Heck, entire posters have indicated in their posting history that they were Hetero teleios too who had struck out with all those they desired.

I can count three adult lovers; two of we rule out a one night stand.

If we were to impose miscegenation laws and rule out the one night stand as an octoroon, the ex-wife as 1/4 Amerind and the lover as Latina; then you'd be claiming that I have no need for out-race lovers and can masturbate or find a white woman.

You're lucky enough if you can find one person who wants to take you the places Melinda, Julia and Luz took me. Asking someone to forego the person they want because they can wait for another which society has approved of is just plain f*cked.

mutter mutter baby monkey studies mutter mutter

But you keep pitching 'em and I'll keep swinging. Every time you accidentally intercept reality there's some relevant counterpart in the real world. I've lived too long to not have encountered real people.

Dante