Traditions and Rationality.

Facebook is supposed to have a semblance of privacy

Whaaaaa..?

That looks to me like a fundamental misunderstanding of teh intertubes and, of course, FB itself.

Netiquette has rules about what/how/when you could repost, but that doesn't mean that FB has any kind of privacy.

Good point. I agree. I think the point I was making could be abstracted away from it anyway, so I edited my post accordingly.

I want to address your specific points, but let me first clarify what I'm not saying: I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad move, EY might be right that it's good and should be considered. Maybe it's true that the sexual habits of children are unimportant to parents, and if we reach a world where they are no longer considered that would be a better one. It's also probably true that all things constant, laws that forbid this type of prostitution hurt more people than they help by building black markets. I am not disagreeing with him on any of those points.

I'm trying to make a much more subtle point, which is that when thinking through the possibilities we are often unable to decompose or understand some tradition, which doesn't mean it isn't still founded on a real and still actively useful reason.

To go back to why parents should care about the sexual habits of their children, I don't think what I personally think matters. I think the reason parents care is due to very complex set of evolutionary and cultural systems, and they may be outdated and ready for us all to move past, or they may be achieving a purpose we aren't aware of. I don't think I can just invoke some philosophy and state "Based on my moral tenants of individual rights parents ought not to care about their children's sexuality." I think it's a question of measurement and the pros/cons of a counterfactual world where they care less or more, and how that turns out.

I agree that in the past it seemed to be common to be unhappy (to understate it) if your child was homosexual, and the world seems better the more accepting parents are of their gay children. But I don' think that's sufficient evidence to predict they shouldn't ever care.

In the "10,000 Year Explosion" Greg Cochran tracks how small selection pressures between genetics and culture resulted in crazy different outcomes for Ashkenaz Jews. It is possible small tweaks to complex systems can have outcomes nearly impossible to predict.

To go back to your point 2, as you note '[He] argues that there are women for whom doing this might be a good move, and aren't thinking enough about the possibility." That's what I was trying to disagree with. For some reason they aren't considering it, there is a taboo or a cultural more that blocks them from consideration. It could be true that this is based on an outdated view of sexual morality, and all would be better if it were removed. That, honestly, could be the case. It could also be true that there is a good reason, but it's embedded in this complex cultural system that doesn't reveal itself to us. The point I wanted to make was that we need to be very careful when decomposing tradition, because it's built on a complex system that makes understanding our impulses and societal moral institutions very hard.

Thanks for your comment though. I agree with you that I could have been clearer, and was not sufficiently charitable in arguing against and for his simpler and best points, and didn't expand on the scenarios where he could be right, and the points I agreed with. I didn't intend to make it seem as though he suggested all women should be considering this, but I do agree that's how it came across. I'm trying to improve as a writer, so I do sincerely appreciate your feedback.

Lack of birth control and danger of sickness are now trivial concerns, so there is less reason for traditional sexual mores.

For the people who don't want to have children, and who won't change their minds later, maybe this is indeed the whole story.

For the rest of us, it's a bit more complicated. It could be politically difficult to discuss, because male sexuality is nowadays usually shamed or dismissed as "patriarchy", but the short version is that many men have a preference for things that in the ancient evolutionary environment would be evidence that the child is biologically theirs... and let's just say that a history of sex with strangers for money feels like an evidence in the opposite direction.

RE: danger of sickness being a trivial concern, let me look at Wikipedia:

Genital HPV infections have an estimated prevalence in the US of 10–20% and clinical manifestations in 1% of the sexually active adult population. (...) About 80% of those infected are between the ages of 17–33. Although treatments can remove the warts, they do not remove the HPV, so warts can recur after treatment (about 50–73% of the time). Warts can also spontaneously regress (with or without treatment).

Certainly better than dying, but some people may feel like their lives (including their sexual lives) would be better without having itchy genitals.

There's also this theory, which suggests that prostitution and marriage tend to be incompatible alternatives - prostitution is relatively lucrative because the marriage "market" provides a competing option that puts a floor on the prices women are willing to accept.

(Sorry about the paywalled article.)

I agree that this is the common "rationalist" attitude to this question, but I think it is nonetheless extremely naive. Rather like saying, "The dangers of drunk driving are sufficiently well known that we can solve them with the simple expedient of driving slowly when you are drunk."

(... I'm taking your comment at face value, but I wonder whether perhaps this is some sort of false-flag thing.

Given the username it seems pretty clear that it's not a sincere comment.

Yeah I should have phrased that better. It goes hand-in-hand with your last sentence. Lots of our impulses and feelings are based on a cultural programming that encourages us to build outcomes that's best for society.

I have a close friend for example who just finished his MD/PhD. He makes less money than all his peers who he went to Stanford (much less money) and works way harder hours. While his friends get piles of money and free lunches at Google, he sleeps on a cot in an old hospital with a broken AC unit doing 20 hour shifts. Why?!

Well, it's indisputable that his job is more prestigious. An MD/PhD at a top hospital in the world doing cancer research? That's about as high as you can go in terms of societal respect and prestige. We all were raised to understand his sacrifice, and as a result by entering that field he gets this 'bonus payment.' That bonus payment encourages our best and brightest to do really shitty things. Here we are able to decompose and understand why that's happening. Still, when he made the choice to get his MD/PhD I suspect he felt it was an individual choice, and it was, but it was also guided by this greater way society rewards him.

So why do women (and families) not want to go into or encourage prostitution? Surely they will get some benefit from it, but they avoid it because society places a huge cost in terms of shame/disappointment/self-hate. Now, maybe this is an outdated societal cost we're building, and it's time to try to get rid of it. That could totally be the case. But it could also be the case that this cost is serving a purpose that isn't obvious to us. You give one example that it could lead to more objectification, which societally we decide is bad.