Slashdot Mirror
Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Australian Study Finds (sky.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Girls given imitation babies to look after in an effort to deter teenage pregnancy could actually be more likely to get pregnant, according to a study. Researchers in Australia found 8% of girls who used the dolls were expecting by the age of 20, compared with 4% of those who did not. The number of girls having at least one abortion was also higher among girls given the dolls: 9% compared to 6%. 'Baby Think It Over' dolls were used in a Virtual Infant Parenting (VIP) programme which began in 57 schools in Western Australia in 2003. During the three-year study, published in The Lancet, 1267 girls aged 13 to 15 used the simulators -- which need to be fed and changed, while 1567 learned the normal health curriculum. The idea originated in the United States and is used in 89 countries. Researchers from the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia are now warning that such programmes may be a waste of public money.
I find robots very effective at birth control. I've not managed to get one pregnant yet.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Australian Study Finds
Depends on where you install them.
You know what makes good birth control? Robot sex dolls with real AI!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They'll find out about it themselves; the Adult Conspiracy only holds so much power.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It would be nice if the conservatives started admitting that birth control is effective birth control.
This just in from Australia: Robots do not prevent sex.
"No sane man will dance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Actually, blaming it on either Conservative or Liberal is probably misleading. While the idea of "waiting" till you're able is likely conservative, even liberals would tend to agree. And it would be typical of a Liberal to label an unwanted baby as "Punishment", and they would likely want to deter it with such a program that basically enforces that idea.
Therefore, it is my conclusion that REALLY bad ideas come from trying to fit Conservative ideas with Liberal problem solving.
Schools should stick to Reading, Writing and Math, and drop the stupid social experiments that usually cause more problems than they solve.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Until the dolls literally spray genuine, authentic baby shit and vomit on you in the middle of the night, they are going to be inadequate to the task of dissuading girls from wanting to make babies.
If you can't actually fill them with a truly realistic substitute for unwanted infant fluids, they're worthless.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am no sure I understand your comment - since there would be not much point in "trying" a proven experiment...
Schools should stick to Reading, Writing and Math, and drop the stupid social experiments that usually cause more problems than they solve.
If we do that, where else can we attain such valuable data that benefits society?
Female brains are hardwired to care for a baby in need. All these robotic babies do is trigger those responses quicker. It's basic biology.
Yes, some women will decide babies aren't for them.. some out of practicality, but most out of an inability to process those biological imperatives nature has embedded into mammalian female brains.
simulated electronic dolls only teach children the approximate modes and methods of caretaking an infant. drop sensors detect potentially lethal impacts that are factored into scorecards, and rand() algorithms activate and deactivate pre-recorded audio through a speaker to simulate crying.
Children dont learn the complex consequences and repercussions of what it means to have a child our of wedlock or unplanned, For example, markedly lower income and education. They do not correlate the robot child in their arms with statistical increases in drug abuse and crime. Children are in many municipalities instead taught to avoid pregnancy but arent given viable options to do so such as condoms birth control or emergency abortifactants despite their safety for use in ages as young as 12. the doll program in the United States served no purpose than to drive sales of D cell batteries for all intents and purposes.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Not to mention more efficient?
Handing out condoms and showing how to use them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm a centrist. I believe in birth control and sex ed for all children.
However, before today's results, I would have thought the robot baby IN ADDITION to sex ed and teaching about birth control was a good idea. I've not read the nitty-gritty of Australia's tests. (Are the robot baby girls getting less Sex Ed teaching) so I won't rule out Robot Babies as a viable option- it certainly shouldn't replace learning.
I'd be interested in knowing WHY the robot babies failed. Do the girls consider the experience "not that bad". Do they think "I've done it with a robot, I can handle my own child". Or is it simply that they didn't receive as good sex ed teaching as the control group?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
How about educating them in tools to avoid pregnancy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What lack of sleep? All you need is a glue gun to plug the holes that could leak and put it into the basement so you don't hear its sound module.
If someone complains, tell them to call CPS and take that little pest with them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's far better birth control than giving girls robot babies.
I think she was about 15 yo when this was assigned as homework in public school (in N Carolina, USA). She's from an affluent household and always said, I'll never have kids. After? Now she is looking forward to having children, someday. She's a Sr in H.S. now and picking her universities for next year. An all around great young lady.
My niece was given one to look after for a couple of days, the whole thing sparked a family conversation and it was fun and I suspect it was educational. It may not have met its political purpose but it had other value. I think the only thing they should have done differently was to pick some of the class at random and given them two or three at a time to take home.
Nullius in verba
I have seen the "baby effect" in action. When a women shows other women a new baby, it can cause the other women to have a stronger desire to have that experience (of holding a newborn) again. I don't see this leading to a sudden number of new pregnancies in said social group, but it does seem to heighten maternal instincts.
Just like smelling food may increase one's hunger, perhaps stimuli that elicits a similar instinct in women also has the effect of increasing desire to have a real child.
Just a speculation that crossed my mind.
This. As well as "give them to the boys too."
It is unwise to ascribe motive
The articles referenced post nothing about the socio-economic factors of these girls, which many believe has a lot to do with unintentional pregnancies, with our without any education. Additionally, I see nothing discussed about interviews with the teen-mothers to indicate if they were already thinking of becoming mothers prior to the sex-ed/robot baby teachings. Seems a lot of data is missing if you ask me.
Your reading, writing, and math list is pretty dated unless you are talking about the lower portion of grade school. A purely practical program needs to include science, engineering, and computer programming. Without those things a school curriculum would be pretty useless today. About the only thing you'd be qualified for would be pumping gas or management.
Yes, definatley. But no harm in taking multiple angles!
We must make these robot babies uglier, more colicky, & stinkier.
True. If nothing else, these dolls at least give them enough convincing arguments to get rid of the parasite should the condom fail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The one impact that robot babies don't have is financial. They might take up a lot of your time, but they don't take your money as well.
Boys will be boys, especially when society all but encourages them to skip town once the deed is done. In some situations, the consequences are far less significant for males - for starters, they are not the ones pregnant, dealing with morning sickness, and possibly giving birth.
Sounds plausible doesn't it? Show the young lady exactly what it is like to have a child, but without them having one. That should scare them into not wanting children, right?
However, when I read about this I thought "Aren't they risking priming and further activating all of the reproductive programming that women (and men) are subject to at that age?" I mean really, haven't we noticed yet that reproduction is a dirty trick that our biology plays on us? The drive to procreate is definitely not rational, in light of population pressure, economic well being, and lost opportunities swallowed up in the time it takes to raise young. But in spite of this it persists at a rate that is greater than necessary to sustain the species. What does that tell you? It tells me that reproductive motivations have root access to the wetware OS and are using that access to control the system subtly and pervasively.
Personally, I am surprised it isn't more effective at driving up pregnancy rates than it is.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Perhaps because human females are hardwired genetically to like babies?
Actually, this whole notion is from a very old science fiction story. Main characters had to deal with robot baby before they could get a license to have a real one. Very funny story.
But, as it turns out, completely unnecessary, since higher standard of living seems to reduce reproduction rate nicely in the Real World (tm).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What does that tell you? It tells me that reproductive motivations have root access to the wetware OS and are using that access to control the system subtly and pervasively.
Change the root password. :)
The bottom line is that the "conservatives" advocating abstinence training are actually right. The only actual way to reduce teen pregnancy is to encourage them to stop fucking so much.
That's like saying the most effective way to stop the tide coming in is to stand on the beach and tell the tide not to come in. I mean it works perfectly when it works.
But much like the tide won't stop when you tell it to, there is nothing you can say to teenagers to stop them fucking.
Back to your stats, condoms are pretty effective when used correctly--98%, not 82%. When used badly they have high failure rates. The CDC data indicates that you should be telling teenagers how to use condoms properly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
But, as it turns out, completely unnecessary, since higher standard of living seems to reduce reproduction rate nicely in the Real World (tm).
In less "developed" nations, large families are an economic necessity where families need children to support the household (example in farming). Having many children is seen as a sign of favor from God among other groups. Also, a lack of birth control no doubt plays a large role.
Not the one you dream of. The CDC's numbers are correct.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Change the root password. :)
That's what psychedelics and disassociatives are for.
Straight off a Google search result quoting a CNN article:
To raise a child born in 2013 to the age of 18, it will cost a middle-income couple just over $245,000, according to newly released estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture."
Yeah, that's a big of money!
Speaking as a father of two, nothing prepares new parents for what happens when one of these little creatures stops being a robot and starts being real:
- Sleep deprivation
- Loss of anything resembling free time unless a kid activity is involved
- Loss of money -- they're expensive at every age and stage, just in different ways
- Loss of sanity -- $deity help the teen parent who happens to get a perpetually fussy kid
Of course, there are huge upsides to it (it's the best thing I ever did, bar none...) but I'd think those would be drowned out quickly among the stresses of being poorly educated, underemployed, and always broke. I can see why young parents tend to be more abusive and neglectful.
I think it's silly to promote abstinence as a preferred form of birth control, which is what typically wins out in conservative areas of the US. These kids are teenagers -- if you tell them not to do something, and even show them examples of why you might not want to, they're going to go do it more. All the options need to be presented -- it's terrible luck of the draw for a kid who happens to be born to parents who can't properly care for it, and that kid shouldn't have to suffer because religious conservatives are afraid of exposing the real world to kids.
I wonder if they may have been granted leniency or other special perks and rewards while having a robot. That may have given them a positive reward for having a baby that could make them inclined towards having children.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I agree it's a terrible excuse. Some males do the right thing after they get a female pregnant, and they should be applauded. Does our "look out for number 1" society applaud this?
No.
1) Expecting young humans to be rational
2) Expecting humans of any age to be rational about one of the most powerful hardwired instincts: reproduction.
Girls that are going to give in to their hormone-driven instincts are going to do so no matter what you do, unless you physically or medically restrain them somehow. Giving girls in that category babydolls like they did just 'trains' them to take care of the infants they'll eventually have too soon anyway, it doesn't deter them; more likely it just softens the impact of the reality of having a child to take care of.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You have figures for all the other methods. What are the figures for "encouraging them to stop fucking so much"?
The figures quoted say otherwise. True, the worst contraceptive you mention is successful with 72% of users across a year never having a problem, however the pill is successful for 91% of users (over a year), and the CDC includes reversible birth control measures that are more than 99% effective in the chart you mention.
It's also worth mentioning that the failures aren't necessarily a function of the devices themselves so much as user error. Condoms usually "fail" not because they break or anything else obvious, but because people who rely upon them frequently decide to chance not using them. Almost all versions of the pill can be rendered useless if combined with certain drugs - notably many antibiotics - and are more than 99% effective if used properly.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I think that would be more like running /etc/password through a shredder and expecting to still logon without issue.
Also, AC et al, STFU with this identify-portion-of-political-spectrum BS and talk about pros and cons of specific policies.
Requiem for the American Dream
I am sure it's awful. Just curious why. I don't know anything about it. Of course, the fact we have libido's as teens means that nature wants us to have children at that age. So why exactly is it the case that modern societal norms are correct and that nature is wrong?
End of story...
Playing with feed and change dolls is something American girls have been doing for decades. As this wires in "be a mommy it is fun! You are a baby making machine!". As a result Yes, they get knocked up. If all it is is feed and change then this encourages reproduction.
You want a robot baby that works?
1. Install colic v4.2 135Db deluxe. Robot now screams at all hours of the day and night for weeks.
2. Install Explosive diarrhea v5.0 This makes sure that the human safe bacteria in the robots milk storage tank, break the milk down into the most foul and stench ridden substance known to man, and randomly expel it out of one end of the robot or the other at high velocity (or sometimes when RNG comes up right, both).
3. Install chunky milk burps v1.0. This takes milk from the storage tank and has it leak out on you whenever you burp the baby. Failing to burp the baby after feeding leads to reengaging colic v4.2 or firing off SIDS 10.
4. Install SIDS 10. Failing to take proper and constant care of the robot according to its sensors, makes it die and the girl gets an F for the class.
5. Install No more free time or friends v3.2. Robot will now make demands all the time or it will engage SIDS 10.
6. No more nice things v3. This leads the robot to crawl around and ingest things its pattern recognition identifies as valuable. Things which are too big to be eaten will be dealt with using Explosive diarrhea v5.0.
Pulling the batteries from the robot leads to an F, Failing to keep it charged leads to an F.
I'll lightly disagree with the drive to procreate not being rational, if only because one can take the perspective of the individual, and one can take the perspective of the species - from a species point of view, procreation is definitely rational.
That all being said, I think part of the larger picture is that, whether driven primarily by biology, one can argue being a mother is a free(ish) choice. We "rational" folks pooh-pooh it as something we should scare people out of, but what if, making different assumptions about the world, it's actually a rational and conscious choice on the part of the woman?
That's unfair, the underage pregnancy problem apparently existed already whereas the some-company-doesn't-have-lots-of-public-sector-cash has likely been fixed.
Potentially, various other corollary issues involving politicians lacking holiday homes have been at least partially remedied.
Requiem for the American Dream
This kinda makes sense, with multiple possible effects in play, but I think the greatest effect may be love/emjoyment and fear.
Removal of the fear of the unknown. Once a girl understands all the responsibilities of caring for a child, she may find that her fear of getting pregnant is reduced, and may possibly enjoy the idea, thus possibly increasing her desire to now have a real baby.
She may also find the experience enjoyable, and may actually like taking care of a baby.
In either case, I don't think either of these effects are bad. We should be teaching both boys and girls the responsibilities and skills necessary when having a child. This will allow them to fully understand what it takes, and will help them make better more informed choices.
If the program doesn't also include boys, it should. One of the worst problems we face in inner cities is the 'absent father' syndrome. Boys need to take this responsibility seriously as well.
It's simpler than that. These are dolls. Girls who play with baby dolls have always been more likely to want a baby. Then they add a game aspect (having to feed and change) to make it even more fun. Of course they don't worry about having a baby so much after that when you've taught them it'll just be a fun game.
If you want to make them consider the consequences, take them to an alley to talk to a homeless teenage single mother crackhead about her regrets.
This space intentionally left blank
Without those things a school curriculum would be pretty useless today. About the only thing you'd be qualified for would be pumping gas or management.
So just like today's high schools then but without all the bullshit classes.
Time to offend someone
Maybe not a good prophylactic, but perhaps it makes these mothers better parents?
I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that humans, particularly young human females, have an innate desire, probably driven by hormones, to reproduce, and no amount of scolding, cajoling, lecturing or whatever is going to override that.
Proverbs 21:19
There are plenty of unwanted babies already.
Pass those around and have the high schoolers take care of them. You'd only need to run the program for a week at each school.
Yeah, but nobody will be spending that on a robot baby. It'll only be pretend food, pretend diapers....
Enjoy living in your cave.
I had to get a signoff from my wife at age 29 for a vasectomy. I was told they wouldn't do it if i were single or if I had been married with no children.
This has always bothered me especially with the whole "It's my body you can't decided for me" line of thinking that is trotted out in the abortion debate. If a girl can be the sole decider about an abortion then why can't a guy be the sole decider about a vasectomy. For IUDs I don't know if there is some medical reason for a 16 year old couldn't get them especially considering that they are temporary but for thing like getting your tubes tied or getting a vasectomy done I would say as long as you are 18 and aren't under the legal custody of someone else, i.e. you aren't a nut case or have limited mental facilities, you should be able to get either done.
Time to offend someone
Wow that stat is bad. American guys/girls really need to learn to use a condom.
And the effective solution, is just to use a condom, and the pill together. If used correct this combination should land you below 1%/year unwanted pregnancy.
Oh go to hell. There are more than enough men out there who want to be fathers and be there for their children. In case you hadn't noticed, divorce court is heavily biased against giving custody to the father.
Bigoted Keyboard Warriors like you need to get out more and meet some real people. But I'm sure in your head, you're the One Good Man, and your Hunnies would never, ever turn into psychotic liars after they've lured a man in with marriage and had a kid.
Some men get lucky and are able to get sole custody of their children. The Hunny will pull out all the stops in that instance, finding whatever allies she can (who have never met the guy) such as pastors, women's shelters, etc, etc. I had to stop dating a guy once because having a trans faggot like me in the picture would have made things ugly quick, and I did not want to be the reason that battle was lost.
Others aren't so lucky. Your idea of a "deadbeat dad" is plain and simple sexism. It's discrimination. On the other site, we had a debate about whether sexism can exist in the absence of power. Let's presume it can't. This is very much a place where power exists. You're working off a bigoted notion that men are always at fault when divorce occurs. You seek to back this notion up with laws and policies that allow women to gain exclusive custody, laws and policies that allow women to take half a man's possessions with divorce no matter how little she had before marriage, laws that allow the woman to collect child care, and laws to put men in prison who cannot pay child care.
We got rid of debtor's prison for a reason. Some men who are not allowed to even talk to their children have to work two or three jobs simply to keep up with child care for bitch who took out a restraining order after lying about domestic violence. This is called slavery.
I am so glad I'm t3h gay and do not want kids. Even if I did want kids, I'd rather wait for biotech to be able to give me a fully functional female reproductive system. Surrogate mothers, attempting a lesbian relationship, all very very risky things.
I'll get modded to oblivion. It's just a matter of time before you run across the wrong Hunny and realize that yep, old insane Vel who's lived as both genders might just have had some reason based on real reality she kept posting shit like this.
Giving boys robot girlfriends might have worked better :)
Have gnu, will travel.
Actual effectiveness ratios for birth control:
US CDC document on actual effectiveness
Highlights:
Condoms are about as effective as the withdrawal method, sponges, or the rhythm method. 20% or so failure rates. [snip]
... when used inconsistently you should add. With perfect use you get (Trussell J, Contraceptive failure in the United States.) way better numbers:
Our estimate of the proportion of women becoming pregnant during a year of perfect use of the male condom is [...] 2%.
Which means with a proper education you can lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies significantly.
What you said is certainly true. Also, I would bet the dolls don't wake the girls up every two hours and apply a clamp to the their nipples for 30 minutes. I would bet that while changing the doll, the girls didn't get a squirt of diarrhea to the face.
By misrepresenting the difficulties, you encourage them to have babies rather than discouraging them.
Robot Babies! Now with Fecal Mist!
This reminds me of a class that was offered in my high school where the students were given a 10lbs sack of flour (it may have been salt) and that was their "baby" that they had to take care of for the quarter. One of my buddies took that class for what ever reason and got to cart that damn sack of flour around for 3 months our senior year. I forget who has the pictures but we tormented the hell out of him about that and tried to get him into trouble. We took Polaroid pictures with it posed holding a screw driver about to go into an electrical socket in the computer repair class, sitting on the 3 axis milling machine, having a heater while holding a oxy-acetylene torch. I believe he learned from that class to not leave kids with his friends unattended. He was the first one to have kids and the only one to have them outside of marriage (3 kids by 3 women) although he has full custody of the first 2 and is happily married to the 3rd woman.
Time to offend someone
They don't have the wisdom, common sense, skills, or anything else that qualifies them to be parents.
Just make BC mandatory for all of them (yes, guys too when they come up with it) and condoms don't count. The idiots will fuck that up too.
Yep, best thing for the species is for those individuals willing and able to recognize long term problems to voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool... /sarcasm
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This doesn't prove anything. The research is missing the point...it's not to prevent pregnancy per se...
The program is to encourage birth control use, which is different than percentage who are pregnant at age 20.
Also, number of abortions is not a proper measure either!
One can argue more OR less abortions prove this program is successful...it depends on how you view abortions and their use.
Thank you Dave Raggett
An educated society that can read, write and do math correctly, is a benefit. All the other social experiements have proven to be ineffectual at best, and at worst has added to our existing problems.
I mean, whose values do you want to indoctrinate our kids with, yours? Mine? The Radical Muslim? The WBC? The Militant Atheist who wants to kill everyone that believes in a deity?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Any insightful psychologist would have warned against positive expectations for this plan bc they would understand that simple boredom lies at the root of most societally problematic behaviors, including risky sex. Give them not lectures nor surrogate babies (after all, didn't Japanese companies sell a lot of dolls and video games about constantly caring for something?) but something else to fill the time.
No, not Midnight Basketball...
And, no, not coding, either.
Of course procreation is rational - you're simply assuming that your mind is relevant, and not recognizing that it (and your body) are simply tools created over hundreds of millions of years by genes optimizing their ability to reproduce. Any individual which doesn't procreate is irrelevant to the species, and those who are particularly good at it become the ancestors of most of humanity in a few dozen short millenia.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The consequences for males is less, because society starts off by saying boys have nothing to say in the matter of birth control and abortion. When you start the conversation by excluding the other parent as irrelevant, you should at least understand that part of that is how you frame other aspects of the same event.
This isn't a commentary on Abortion at all, but rather the framing of "my body my right" logic that then gets changed after 9 months.
For instance, Family court is one area where Men are at a complete disadvantage. Not that anyone cares.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Really? Because I find that most talking about the three "R's" are actually seeking to minimize public education and thus their financial contribution to it and are usually especially anti-science. Even where this is not the case they want to minimize other forms of math like music and art which nurture the type of creative thinking required for engineering, science, and higher math. Most of their arguments tend to be attempts to disguise their negative anti-team player self serving philosophy into arguments proposing practical schooling. They usually fall pretty flat when someone argues for purely practical schooling that would require more funding than is present now rather than less. Oddly, these people don't argue for cutting physical education and sports which have absolutely no educational benefit.
All of this presumes that people do not have a will of their own and are more or less working off pure instinct / animalistic nature.
This assumption, that people CANNOT control themselves (default behavior) is how we get into this mess. Because we assume people cannot control themselves, we then excuse behavior. And then when we start excusing some behaviors, we allow for that logic (when it actually starts applying again) to replicate to all sorts of other "instinctual" aspects, like boys raping girls who are passed out.
How about we stop saying people CANNOT control themselves, and say that they WILLNOT control themselves. IMHO we should be teaching self control and willpower. But that doesn't create a subservient sheeple class in society.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My high school didn't have robots, but certain students had to carry around bags of flour that were supposed to be their "babies" to take care of. I remember both sexes being quite proud of having to take care of their sacks of flour, and dressing them up/showing them off.
I didn't read smooth wombat as being misandrist sexism at all. Rather, what I read him say was that it's not his responsibility to raise, or instill values in boys that were not his. He said nothing about not instilling values in his own sons. Rather, he suggested that if he was gonna be expected by society at large to be responsible for other people's children (i.e. ones he had not created), then it was up to him on what tactics he used.
Cool!!! I'll happily quit my job and have you take care of my food and medical bills. After all, we're all in this together, right?
Uh, no. It's women who usually want marriage, so that they can force the man to pitch in and do his fair share of the child-rearing. The men who do want to be a part of their kids' lives are usually happy to marry, so that they can provide a healthy environment to their kids. The deadbeats who just want to screw around are the ones who try and avoid both marriage & childrearing responsibilities
People like to have sex. Having a robot baby isn't going to deter people from having sex... but it may make some people desensitized to the downsides of being an ill-prepared parent.
The bottom line is that the "conservatives" advocating abstinence training are actually right. The only actual way to reduce teen pregnancy is to encourage them to stop fucking so much. The birth control available to them _does not work_. They should all just screw bareback from what I can see.
Obviously we must fit all teenagers with chastity belts! By Everlast!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Places of formal education (AKA state run child indoctrination centers) have no business teaching children what the Parents should be doing from day 1.
I for one welcome being the parental overlord in my family! ;)
If they had to put up with one of these things and they still go out and get knocked up, presumably at least part of the reason why is that they feel the task was rewarding and they feel confident in their ability to handle it. Sounds like a win, to me.
See this, kids? That's why we need Sex Ed, or you will end up believing total bullshit about birth control.
> The bottom line is that the "conservatives" advocating abstinence training
> are actually right. The only actual way to reduce teen pregnancy is to
> encourage them to stop fucking so much.
Like many things, the theory is perfect -- I agree, abstinence is 100% effective, and other forms of birth control are less than that. But in the real world... how, exactly, do you stop teens from fucking?
The old joke is 100% true: What do you call someone who advocates abstinence-only education? Grandma.
Just like with computers: security in layers. How about teach abstinence and make birth control available?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The climate argument - in x billion years or so, the sun will expand and pretty much roast all of us, if we haven't managed to flee the earth already. So stop bothering about that and do whatever you have to - procreate or not. It won't make a difference to the rest of us - one way or another - than it already has for everyone else doing the same thing
n/t
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Men can use condoms or do a vasectomy or use one of the new drugs.
Men have as much to say as women.
Your court point makes no sense. Father is a father is a father. The courts usually only make sure that he pays, rightfully though!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nuance is for chumps.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You'll never convince teens to get on their knees and kiss where they pee with half-baked campaigns like that
When we were teens (and legal age where we lived at the time), my girlfriend and I tried that based on recommendations from friends who said it was great. No promotional campaign needed. Also, we preferred (and still prefer) 69. (Not saying we don't fuck regularly. We do (and did). And a lot of oral, especially 69.)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
The CDC agrees with you that Condom use currently has a failure rate of 12% due to the fact that people don't use condom use perfectly and while they regularly practice safe sex with condoms they don't always, hence this "random day" thing.
The real bottom line is where a condom is available and used the chance of pregnancy drops to 1-2%.
12% is quoted for "typical users" which includes all the wonders of "I don't have one with me right now", "trust me I'm on the pill", "yeah I'm sure this strange sized one will fit", and my personal favourite from parents to children "Why do we find this in your room!" which leads back to excuse 1.
Only the CDC is stupid enough to quote the "typical use" numbers in a frigging family planning campaign. Every other government medical department for countries quote the perfect use figure of 1-2% because the NHS actually encourages use while the Americans seem content to say "well we're not using them correctly right now, so clearly we should advertise to people that they don't work. That'll improve it, now pass me another beer I'm falling behind."
In my world, we rely on practical tests of functionality *with the actual users* rather than theoretical measures of effectiveness
Some actual users do use the methods properly, so the theoretical measures are not as theoretical as you seem to think.
My girlfriend and I were well educated about sex. We got her pregnant exactly the one time we planned for. The rest of the time, we've always used the precautions properly and effectively. And sex has always been a lot of fun for us. By the time our daughter turned 10, we had decided no more children, so I got a vasectomy. Yes, we can now be a little more spontaneous about fucking, but honestly, that made no difference in the level of fun.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
I don't think it presumes a lack of free will. I think it presumes that a very small percentage of young people, in certain situations and with certain preconditioning, will tend toward activities that result in pregnancy. People can control themselves. Those young women that became pregnant, they controlled themselves in such a way that they became pregnant. Was that decision made easier by the stimulus they experienced? Well, it looks like in about 2-4% of them, the answer is yes.
One thing you need to remember is that you, and I, and everyone alive on this planet for that matter, comes from ancestors who all did one thing right, without fail, 100% of the time, each and every generation, going all the way back to the very first humans ever on this planet. That singular thing that every single one of your ancestors have in common? They procreated successfully and created offspring that procreated successfully.
Think about that for a moment and let's compare. What if every ancestor of a certain person from the beginning of human history was a murderer. How surprised would you be when that person committed a murder? Murder is, admittedly, a more complex behavior than sex so it is easy to argue that sex would be even more likely.
Also, it's not like there aren't tons of papers, experiments, and conjecture on the psycho-sexual motivations of humans. I have read that just about every human behavior has been related to or attributed to sexual drives by psychologist, psychiatrists, philosophers, and pundits. Everything from the drive to work and earn money and upwardly mobile social movement to speech patterns, vocabulary choice, and clothing. So it's not about whether or not people have free will, its about how people choose to use that free will, and how the world occurs to them when they make choices. Its about how people choose to have sex, when they will choose to have sex, and even why they choose to have sex.
I also seemed to notice a slippery slope in your writing that was coupled with a pejorative view of sex. If that is the case I fear we may have difficulty discussing this subject without knowing each other better. When discussing topics like sex there can be heavy filters and unspoken assumptions that lead to misunderstandings between people that are not aware of each others presuppositions. My goal in replying is not to say you are wrong, not is it to argue, but merely to say that any discussion of free will and sex needs to include the possibility that people will choose freely to have sex, and that those free choices are influenced by antecedents, stimuli, and experiences. It is true that acknowledging that people can control themselves is a good first step toward controlling that behavior. It is also just as important to realize what you are dealing with when considering human sexual activity. To deny that there are incredibly powerful underlying components to the human makeup that can be manipulated to increase the likelihood of procreation is shortsighted and leads to useless therapies like teaching abstinence, non-communication on sexual matters between children and parents, and ultimately sending children out into the world drastically under prepared and unsupported.
As humans we are, at our basest nature, violent sexual beings that don't always make choices that fit with the predominant behavior patterns we display to the world on a daily basis. Forgetting this leads to all sorts of problems. Like assuming that people will, with he proper training and teaching, decide to not rape an unconscious woman when she presents herself as such. I would love to live in a world where everyone could be taught proper self control and willpower, and would use those skills without fail. However, this is not the world we live in, and this is not who humans are. Drop a fully sedated and unconscious supermodel in front of 10000 young intoxicated men and regardless of how well you train them, some of them will rape her. Its not surprising, really. Remember those ancestors that I mentioned earlier, the ones that have been batting 1000 on the procreation front? Many of them were rapists, too.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
You don't think if you put a fully sedated and unconscious male model in front of 10,000 intoxicated young women, some of them won't molest him? Drunk women can be worse than drunk men.
There's nothing like a whiny, demanding 11 year old throwing a tantrum and screaming about how much they hate you to make you wish you'd stuck to oral.
Maybe they should have been given robot sex partners instead of robot babies.
Aw, you're just trolling. Yes men can use condoms but we all know that those suck, both for reliability and for the act itself. Meanwhile, a vasectomy is permanent and "the new drugs" (I assume you're talking about RISUG) don't exist yet. Saying... actually, I had read that as "Men have as much say as women." and was trying to call you out on that as being baloney. But you actually said, "Men have as much to say as women." which is certainly true, I guess. Men do like to talk. ... Neither one of those statements make sense in context.
In the 19th Century, a group of women who were anti-alcohol bc their husbands spend their paychecks at the bar instead of bringing it straight home first invented organized sports as something else to do. They were so successful at it they went on to found the Women's Christian Temperance Union to ban alcohol in bars and everywhere else completely. This passed into our constitution, of course, but had to be repealed later, as it did not increase the relief from boredom.
If you want to make them consider the consequences, take them to an alley to talk to a homeless teenage single mother crackhead about her regrets.
Studies show that "scared straight" programs not only don't work, they can actually have a negative impact on the kids exposed to them.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I mean, of course, the leagues and playoffs. Basketball and baseball were the main beneficiaries of this movement, with local semi-pro play a reward for small-towners, but hockey and football also benefited at the national level.
I have seen the "baby effect" in action. When a women shows other women a new baby, it can cause the other women to have a stronger desire to have that experience (of holding a newborn) again.
There's even a name for it, baby rabies. "Oh my, it's so wonderful having a baby, you should have one too, you'll feel so fulfilled, it's a fantastic feeling, why don't you have a baby too, you'll be so happy, blah blah blah blah ad nauseum".
As for the courts In the past the woman was certainly a parent after all it came out of her however are you sure you are the dad? A while back when paternity testing first became popular a statistic came back that as much as 25% of children were the progeny of another dad- note I can't recall if was disputed cases only which is why courts tend to favour women in custody al other things being equal.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
The argument is about whether it's MORAL to murder children.
No, it isn't. Before we can even begin to argue that, we need to arrive at mutually acceptable definitions of "murder" and "children". It makes as little sense as arguing whether it's moral to murder bananas (but at least we have a fairly good agreement on what a banana is).
All resorting to hyperbole like "murder children" does is mark you as someone not worth inviting to a rational discussion.
Exactly. Does the robot baby have a colic mode? A persistent and painful ear infection mode?
Then you ultimately select for people who it does not work on.
If you persuade people to not have children or have children later, then you select for people who are not persuadable.
Vasectomy is not permanent. ... the later is pretty usefull if you are a young adult.
You can revert it and the likelyhood of success is something like 85% if you are younger than 60 and it is not longer ago than ten years.
There are new vasectomy ways which are 100% reversible.
And no, condomes don't change the feeling, actually with their plenty of variations of extra juice in them they can be quite usefull to intense your feelings or calm them a bit down (depending on the additions in them) to last longer
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Reversing a vasectomy is not a minor procedure and is not covered by most health care plans in the US. As such, it costs $10,000 or so according to my doctor. I discussed this with him at length at one point. And no, reversing a vasectomy only has a 85% success rate if you do it within the first year after you got it. The likelihood of success decreases over time until, after about ten years, it's basically zero.
I'm not sure what you mean by "new vasectomy ways" but I suspect that you mean vas clamps. I asked about those as well, there's a rumor that those are reversible since you can just take them off, but no: apparently having the clamps on damages the vas deferens over time, so the probability of reversing that is not much higher than with a regular vasectomy.
And this: "condomes don't change the feeling" is just wildly untrue. I don't know, experiences may vary, but my own experience is that there's a very dramatic difference and I've tried plenty of different types and styles and sizes of condom. Huge difference.
As such, it costs $10,000 or so according to my doctor.
Yeah, the states have absurd prices for medical procedures. In a private clinic in germany the price is about EUR4000 to 5000.
I discussed this with him at length at one point. And no, reversing a vasectomy only has a 85% success rate if you do it within the first year after you got it. The likelihood of success decreases over time until, after about ten years, it's basically zero.
That is wrong.
The success rate is 85% after ten years and then decreasing slowly by about 3% per year.
So for a 50 year old who got vasectomy at age of 20 it is still around 50%.
And this: "condomes don't change the feeling" is just wildly untrue. I don't know, experiences may vary, but my own experience is that there's a very dramatic difference and I've tried plenty of different types and styles and sizes of condom. Huge difference.
I only used condomes when I was young, basically the first 10 years: there is no real difference except the fact that you have to put them on at some point.
I suspect that you mean vas clamps. No it is just the opposite, you get inflatable small "balloons" injected into the spermatic duct, so they can not grow together as in the clamp way. There is even a super new thing with a kind of magnetic lock so you can basically activate and deactivate it at will.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The success rate is 85% after ten years and then decreasing slowly by about 3% per year. So for a 50 year old who got vasectomy at age of 20 it is still around 50%.
Can you cite this? Looking around for statistics it seems that my doctor may have been exaggerating a little, but I can find no figures higher than 30-40% after ten years. Regardless of those figures, the point that my doctor was making, namely that a vasectomy is a permanent decision, remains valid: even if the chance is "only" 15% that you'll never be able to have children, a vasectomy can't be looked at as a temporary means of birth control.
And getting back to the point of the discussion, even with a vasectomy the chances of pregnancy are not zero. The claim that you made was something along the lines of men being able to influence pregnancy to the same degree that women can, and the idea that you would need surgery to achieve anywhere near the reliability that a woman can get with a birth control pill, and still not the kind of certainty that a woman can get with an abortion, makes that idea pretty absurd. Even if it were true that there was some vasectomy procedure which was 100% reversible.
Regarding your experience with condoms: everyone's different, so I'm obliged to believe you when you say that you experience no change when using condoms. The change is so large for me, however, that it's difficult for me to believe you as I am obligated to do. I'm tempted to think that you might just be misremembering the experience.
They did this program in the homec class at my high school. It was universally hated by every student I ever spoke to about it, but if you didn't take care of the fake baby then you failed the class no matter what you did for the rest of it. Fortunately for me homec was not a required class until the year after me, because I would have refused to play the game.
I've yet to meet one that was decent, much less date one.
You have feminism to thank for that.
Damn, I wish I had mod points to give you. That was a rather accurate description of reality.
I only have one criticism, we never got rid of the debtor's prison, we just changed the name. Now you go to prison if you are behind on child support. In some states being a single month late will send you to prison, unless you happen to be female. If you are female then you don't have to worry about things like that, you will simply be given a pass for being female.
Well, looks like we've found the virgin.
Wow, that sounds pretty sad. I haven't had *that* much luck dating, but I can certainly say I've met plenty of decent women, things just didn't work out for us to date. You might want to look at yourself if you haven't met a single decent member of the opposite sex.
I would say an absolute minimum of 500 of them would, but more likely closer to 1500 of them would.
Women have all the same sexual urges that men have, but they know the chances of them ever being punished for their behavior lies on an asymptote of zero.
If you are a nutcase, or have limited mental capacity it should be easier to opt into not reproducing, not harder.