"Do kids here already understand that when they're seven years old?  Five years old?  By the time somebody understands and has integrated subtle incentives for their future self spanning decades, they're no longer a child; they don't need adults to guardrail their decisions anymore."

"I suspect there's some weird sticking point here that - look, sufficiently young kids do get slaps on the wrist.  Civilization doesn't like it, I don't like it, but even dath ilan never figured out how to produce healthy adults while never doing that at any point.  There are elements of morality and personhood that humans just weren't designed to learn without experiencing small amounts of pain in childhood.  But every time you set up a situation where a kid gets told that they need to do something or else get slapped on the wrist, you also add some value to an investment account the kid gets access to when they're older, such that even if the kid was secretly an adult in a kid's body, they would still be calculating a net benefit on being present for the whole transaction.  To make sure the total interaction is still mutually beneficial, which means, beneficial to them too, so that ideal kids wouldn't have an ideal incentive to escape their parents or destroy the whole system.  Civilization goes on optimizing its heritage and the kids keep getting smarter and more Law-comprehending, which means that you always check all the interactions with children to make sure that the system wouldn't fall apart if the kids started being more ideal than expected one year.  And having to pay that amount to set up a potential wrist-slap situation reminds adults to check, every time, whether they really needed a wrist-slap there."

"Do kids here already understand that when they're seven years old?  Five years old?  By the time somebody understands and has integrated subtle incentives for their future self spanning decades, they're no longer a child; they don't need adults to guardrail their decisions anymore."

"I suspect there's some weird sticking point here that - look, sufficiently young kids do get slaps on the wrist.  Civilization doesn't like it, I don't like it, but even dath ilan never figured out how to produce healthy adults while never doing that at any point.  There are elements of morality and personhood that humans just weren't designed to learn without experiencing small amounts of pain in childhood.  But every time you set up a situation where a kid gets told that they need to do something or else get slapped on the wrist, you also add some value to an investment account the kid gets access to when they're older, such that even if the kid was secretly an adult in a kid's body, they would still be calculating a net benefit on being present for the whole transaction.  To make sure the total interaction is still mutually beneficial, which means, beneficial to them too, so that ideal kids wouldn't have an ideal incentive to escape their parents or destroy the whole system.  Civilization goes on optimizing its heritage and the kids keep getting smarter and more Law-comprehending, which means that you always check all the interactions with children to make sure that the system wouldn't fall apart if the kids started being more ideal than expected one year.  And having to pay that amount to set up a potential wrist-slap situation reminds adults to check, every time, whether they really needed a wrist-slap there."

"I realize you can't afford any of that, but it is how Civilization thinks.  We don't want to build into the system a load-bearing assumption that our kids are stupid and weak, even if they are."

"Do kids here already understand that when they're seven years old?  Five years old?  By the time somebody understands and has integrated subtle incentives for their future self spanning decades, they're no longer a child; they don't need adults to guardrail their decisions anymore."

"I suspect there's some weird sticking point here that - look, sufficiently young kids do get slaps on the wrist.  Civilization doesn't like it, I don't like it, but even dath ilan never figured out how to produce healthy adults while never doing that at any point.  There are elements of morality and personhood that humans just weren't designed to learn without experiencing small amounts of pain in childhood.  But every time you set up a situation where a kid gets told that they need to do something or else get slapped on the wrist, you also add some value to an investment account the kid gets access to when they're older, such that even if the kid was secretly an adult in a kid's body, they would still be calculating a net benefit on being present for the whole transaction.  To make sure the total interaction is still mutually beneficial, which means, beneficial to them too, so that ideal kids wouldn't have an ideal incentive to escape their parents or destroy the whole system.  Civilization goes on optimizing its heritage and the kids keep getting smarter and more Law-comprehending, which means that you always check all the interactions with children to make sure that the system wouldn't fall apart if the kids started being more ideal intelligences than expected one year.  And having to pay that amount to set up a potential wrist-slap situation reminds adults to check, every time, whether they really needed a wrist-slap there."

"I realize you can't afford any of that, but it is how Civilization thinks.  We don't want to build into the system a load-bearing assumption that our kids are stupid and weak, even if they are."