For some, it's libertarian kind of liberalism where people should be left to make their won economic decisions. For others its the social liberalism kind where people should be allowed to decide for themselves what is a valid marriage, or what drugs they will or won't put in their bodies.

Most flavors of liberalism have at their heart the idea that "The State" is neither competent nor qualified to intervene in everything or make all decisions on behalf of its citizens. The State is usually the belligerent, but you could equally say "society" or a body like a twitter mob or a hacker group.

We don't need to collectively decide whether or not this site should exist. People should make their own choices.

There are a lot of things I think people shouldn't do and other people that help them do that. I don't think people should join churches. But, the only way I want to see churches close down is when people no longer choose to be members.

This is a freedom issue, like speech. You don't look inside to make your judgement. There is a right and a wrong here. The wrong is not the site.

Most liberals are not anti state, but pro freedom as long as it doesn't affect anyone else's life.

The distinction here is kot

For starters, cars are obviously harmful: People get killed in car accidents.

So clearly, it is insufficient that something causes harm for us to consider them as harmful enough to argue against them on principle - at least for the vast majority of us.

Are you going to argue that violating agreements is always harmful? Almost always?

How do quantify that harm? Why? Do you have any basis for assuming there aren't people out there that e.g. just don't care? (because there certainly are)

At the same time you claim drug use in the other category, despite the large number of deaths tied to drug use. Religion has been the catalyst for massive amounts of deaths too. To some of us religion are "obviously" harmful to others _per se_. So clearly your "obvious" statements are not objectively obvious.

It becomes very hard to take your argument seriously when your "obviousness" criteria are so obviously subjective and used to avoid having to justify your claims.

This comment is a truly impressive strawman. Strawman abound in fora like HN, and everyone (unwittingly or otherwise) is probably guilty of them here or there, but this one is really worthy of note. You took a word ("obviously") that _I didn't even use in my definition_ and claimed that I'm using it as a "criteria [sic]" (as opposed to just using it with some simple illustrative examples). I usually assume that perhaps I was unclear or that someone misunderstood my comment, but you're not even attempting to pretend that you're not wholly misrepresenting my comment so that you can attack a claim no one made.

My actual definition (which you completely ignored) is that the definition of harm is applied to things that are harmful _per se_. Note that I wasn't making any statement about what I believe in, I was describing a distinction which is fundamental to modern ethics and policy, all over the world. I'll ignore the half of your comment that's impotently flailing at a claim _that no one made_ (as described above); The half that actually approaches coherency is an attempt to devise a litmus test for what would fall under this definition and what wouldn't (i.e. how do you discern things that are "inherently" harmful from those that aren't, given that you can construct a scenario of harm around literally every action anyone takes ("breathing is harmful if you take the last gulp of air from someone's oxygen tank!!")).

TW: Use of the word "obvious"[1]

The obvious[1] litmus test here is: is it possible to conceive of an example of someone performing the action without causing harm? To put it another way, is the action separable from harm? This is quite obviously[1] true for the examples given above: drug use, religion, etc. You can dream of (and many here have probably experienced) a thousand instances of drug use and acts of religion that harmed no-one else. This is in stark contrast to theft, violating agreements, etc.

> Are you going to argue that violating agreements is always harmful? Almost always?.... Do you have any basis for assuming there aren't people out there that e.g. just don't care? (because there certainly are)

Are you kidding me? This is true by definition. Inasmuch as utility is expressed by people making an agreement and wanting to hold you to it, the violated party in the agreement is being harmed. Note that this makes no statement as to whether _net_ harm is being done, and of course that this entire comment is all under the assumption that the person being harmed in each case is considered to have full agency as an adult (e.g., most people wouldn't consider it harmful to remove something dangerous from your child's possession, even though in the context of an adult possessor that would be considered theft).

If I'm interpreting your latter statement correctly in the quote above, you're talking about violating an agreement with the other party's consent? That's not violating an agreement by any common usage of the phrase, that's just mutually agreeing to call off an agreement.....The word violation makes it clear that it's done without the consent of all parties involved.

> At the same time you claim drug use in the other category, despite the large number of deaths tied to drug use. Religion has been the catalyst for massive amounts of deaths too. To some of us religion are "obviously" harmful to others _per se_.

Sigh. You can't just put the words "per se" at the end of a sentence when you don't know what they mean. Words have meaning. Use them with care. Christ.

You're preaching to the choir when you talk about finding religion to be harmful overall. But again, it's not harmful _per se_. Using the litmus test described above, an act of religion that harms no-one else is me praying briefly before going to sleep. This act is easily separable from someone killing someone else in the name of religion. I honestly never thought I would have to explain this to anyone who wasn't a very small child (and even then, I probably wouldn't have cause to talk about why people murder each other).

> It becomes very hard to take your argument seriously when your "obviousness" criteria [sic] are so obviously subjective and used to avoid having to justify your claims.

An interesting question here is whether a grade-school level of reading comprehension unleashed in a forum full of (ostensible) adults is inherently harmful. /s

[1] You apparently have an allergy to the word "obvious", so I'll clarify for your benefit here. I'm saying this is obvious because the fundamentally basic thought process described here is part of the underpinning of almost literally every single moral system in the history of mankind (even the most theocratic ones). Most of the differences between more dated moral/legal systems and today is the level of bluntness we're willing to tolerate when deciding whether an act is likely to be separable from harm.

So then the question becomes, how much wrong/harm can a site promote before it is shut down?

What about an anti-vaxxer site that is leading parents to make choices that will kill some number of children?

What about a website hosting all the leaked data from this hack?

What about a site promoting self harm directed towards children who are most vulnerable to such promotions?

What about recent Tor sites that were taken down?

Most flavors of liberalism have at their heart the idea that "The State" is neither competent nor qualified to intervene in everything or make all decisions on behalf of its citizens.

For Republicans, that means the State should stay out of the economy. For Democrats (and some flavors of Libertarians), that means the State should stay out of people's personal lives, but it can very much get its fingers in the economy, and provide a safety net when citizens make poor choices.

The State is usually the belligerent

I agree, but I would perhaps say it a different way: the State is always looking to shore up its power. To do this, citizens must be coerced, sometimes through violence.

Put I would not mind a law that forces AM to search and notify the spouses of their users (and that would certainly bring the site down)

To be perfectly, bluntly clear- There isn't actually any suffering (and in some cases, still almost none) until the secret gets out.

By that definition (which to me is entirely obvious, but clearly not to others), OUTING all of these people is what will cause tremendous suffering.

I don't agree with these blanket "everyone who does this is bad" statements. (I think there's a lot of people who have been cheated on out there and their latent scorn always comes out in these things. Rationality goes out the window when personal feelings are involved.) It's awfully judgmental and sandblasts out all the fine details. What of the man who wants to stay married to his invalid wife but still needs to "get off" at times, and neither wants to break her heart nor can he longer function rationally without? What of the good husband and father who is hiding his bi-ness and therefore takes a man now and then on the side? (What of the woman in the same position?) What of the member of the church demanding absolute celibacy who has invested his life into it but realizes he simply can't function without sexual human contact now and then?

Do you seriously expect the amount of upheaval that would result from "outing everyone" to be LESS pain overall than the current situation?

> I didn't make any blanket "everyone who does this is bad" statements

Yet you said that site's existence was a "net negative" for happiness in the world, which (unless I'm not being logical) implies that, on average, the actions of the people on that site are negative, i.e., "bad."

I said "on net, the site adds misery," while saying that any given user who uses the site may be completely innocent. You somehow interpreted that as saying that every single user who uses the site is guilty. So. No.

If I say that every human is 50kg, that's obviously wrong. If I say that the average human weight is 50kg, that's... at least within shouting distance of being right.

This was a site that was clearly, intentionally, gleefully even trying to bring in users who were interested in having secret, illicit extramarital affairs. While some of its users may well have been in open marriages or whatever and been doing nothing wrong, clearly vast numbers of them were using the site without the knowledge of and implicitly against the wishes of their spouses. On net, it is clear to me that the site was adding unhappiness to the world.

Seriously, where did I say this? I just reread my last comment and I said "on average" aka "on net."

I did not claim you said ALL the people who visit it are bad. I even said "on average" in the comment you replied to. Are we reading the same things? BUT... for it to be a net negative, on average, most of the people would, by necessity, need to be bad. I'm taking issue with your average, NOT claiming you are trying to say "all visitors to AM are bad."

You cannot state as fact, nor prove, that most visitors to AM are bad. Your "gut feeling" is as good as a hole in the wall, and I'll explain why... Neither can you state, nor prove, that it is a net negative. Pure and simple. All's fair in love and war. Adultery and all its negatives are going to continue to exist regardless of whether or not AM exists. To paraphrase a famous lyric, "don't hate the [startup appealing to] players, hate the game." Don't conflate the two. Getting rid of AM will not only NOT get rid of adultery, it will spawn imitators which may be even better at this niche market.

Anyway, if people die with their secrets most of the time (which I STRONGLY suspect is the case), how is unhappiness actually added to the world, using your very hypothetical "world negativity measuring device"? To take it a step further, if AM (at least before this breach!) actually made it more likely to be able to hide things until the day you die, it would arguably result in a net positive. (Where the measurement is "happiness of people, even if it requires some ignorance")

The age-old aphorisms "what you don't know, won't hurt you" and "ignorance is bliss" come to mind.

What if the sad fact is that nobody can completely satisfy everyone for all time, and we instead choose to believe a fairy tale, at great peril to our own sanity?

What if there's a significant number of ambiguously-sexual people who are not serviced well enough by the marriage model that we're all pressured to conform to?

What if adultery and AM are just symptoms of society trying too hard to define strict sexual roles?

What if things like AM are simply a stepping-stone to realizing we're simply not a very good mating-to-one-other-being-for-life species and that marriages should be "open by default"? I mean, we're literally just a few genes away from bonobo monkeys who arguably engage in the freakiest most non-committal sex life imaginable: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/evolution-creati...

Deciding a service people chose to use is causing increased suffering is a great example of something that isn't our problem to solve. They chose that path for themselves and their partners chose the path to be with someone who made those choices. It's not on you, or me, or anyone else to reduce their suffering.

That said, people choosing to use a centralized shared store of information for their sensitive data can quickly put them in cognitive dissonance when combining the expectations that the provider will keep their data safe and secure with the desire to achieve the results promised by said site.

The real reason we should be satisfied that AM got hacked was not because affairs are immoral. It's that AM was entrusted with sensitive data about it's users that it failed to protect. If a company stores someone's sensitive data in a centralized way with their software, and fails to protect it, they are just as bad as AM.

Edit: Added some thoughts and removed a blaming statement.

I'm pretty libertarian. I'll basically stand by the right of anyone to do something that makes themselves desperately unhappy because they're adults and can make their own choices. I don't think it should be illegal to cheat on your spouse, and if people want to marry people who are clearly making them unhappy -- even hurting them -- then the most I'll do is strongly suggest they reconsider their choices.

But it's a whole different matter to set up a service dedicated to profiting from enabling behavior that's making other people miserable. That's shitty. It shouldn't be illegal, its users should still have privacy, but I'll shed no tears if the proprietors of said service get forced to shut it down.

Adults are free to fuck: they are happier for doing it.

Despite what you said, Ashley Madison doesn't facilitate relations between "consenting" adults, because in an affair, 1 or 2 people didn't consent: the spouses being cheated on.

The jilted spouses weren't involved in the sex. Betrayal only occurred within a personal relationship, and the resolution of betrayal can only be handled within that relationship. For an Internet vigilante mob to throw what is entirely a private matter into a public light is irresponsible in the extreme, and tangentially is probably harmful to the spouses being cheated on as well.

Unless all parties involved (spouses included) consented, this is partially false. Full stop.

> The jilted spouses had nothing to do with it.

The jilted spouses were betrayed, even if unaware and not "involved" in the sex. Full stop.

Even in cases where cheating is remotely justified, an honest conversation beats sneaking around.

I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't test my luck with expecting a previously unfaithful partner to suddenly be faithful with me if they have a track record of unfaithfulness.

I have more personal value in knowing if someone is unfaithful than if they are an RSO - and yet being an RSO is made public knowledge.

And, in fact, married people are (typically) not "free to fuck," and when they do fuck extramaritally, they are (typically) not happier for doing it, and their spouses are (even more typically) not happier for them doing it.

This is a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one.

And that is a very poor benchmark for establishing one's own morals. Let's not forget that until very recently, "the rest of society" didn't agree that homosexuals should be allowed to marry.

In the not too distant past, the "rest of society" didn't agree that women should be allowed to vote, that interracial couples should be allowed to marry, and that blacks weren't considered whole people.

In determining the validity of one's vitriol towards another people, there are far better metrics for determining the extent than whether or not the "rest of society" agrees with me. I, personally, am not comfortable with our society's complete ban on polygamy. Even though "the rest of society" seems perfectly fine to impose their morality upon the polygamists, I am uncomfortable joining in.

I have also made descriptive statements about what cheating actually does in the real world versus the people who say, "This site is cool because everyone should be in an open marriage." Which, you know, I doubt the site even agrees with. It looks like it competes based on the illicit nature of its services. It charges you money to delete your profile, guys! And then, the hackers assert, doesn't actually delete your profile.

I think that polygamy should be legal. But this is not a polygamist's website. It's a cheater's website. The logo is of someone making the "shhh" gesture! And all the "but I think everyone should be polygamists" in the world is:

1. Not actually going to happen.

2. Ignoring the actual pain of people who very much did not sign up for or want their spouses to cheat, in service of some silly untenable goal.

You do whatever you like, but it's worth noting that not everybody's definition of net misery is the same as yours, and to many, discreet encounters run the gamut anywhere from morally fine to morally evil, no matter how far adrift your own moral compass is from the median.

There are people using the site in ways for which I'm sure you'd approve, just as there are undoubtedly people using the site in ways for which I'm sure you wouldn't. That said, that's all irrelevant, as my only point is that getting people to agree with you isn't the high water mark for correctness. Otherwise smart people routinely agree on really dumb things, and referencing my earlier post, I'm sure that there are plenty of people who disapprove of gay marriage who would be able to put their views into similarly noble phrasings.

Also, I did not assert that everyone should be in an open marriage, or involved in polygamy. I don't care what kind of marriage you're in, or anybody else. I just don't think that "society says so" is a valid reason for allowing or disallowing other people from getting married. That same logic was being used to discriminate against interracial and gay marriages, and is currently being used to discriminate against polygamy and polyamorous marriages. None of those marriages take anything away from mine, so whatever I might personally think of people I cannot identify with, their right to marriage is no business of mine.

I don't doubt the claim, but evidence would be appreciated.