I'm actually having difficulty forming a response that's not just restating what I think because the terms we both used are exactly the ones that are technically necessary to distinguish the concepts.
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.
> You somehow interpreted that as saying that every single user who uses the site is guilty. So. No.
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...
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.