Comment by balabaster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by balabaster | Hacker News Reader

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It exposes what is already human nature. Okay, it was a potential enabler... you have a fair point. But it having a large male populous turns out to be a popular gay hub. The people on this site were going to cheat anyway.

I don't disagree with it being run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices. From everything I've read, I'd concur with this statement.

An epidemic of cheating over the internet is no more a concern than the "epidemic" of cheating. The internet was just a means to an end... just like party lines, dating services, the bar, the office and everywhere else people of our species comingle without their partners. Cheating is no more an epidemic now than it ever was. People just changed media. Perhaps if it's truly the epidemic you suggest, then instead of that being a concern to people who intend to get married, we as a species need to re-evaluate if monogamy is actually human nature or if it's just wishful thinking impressed upon us by the dogma of our upbringing.

I find the prospect of people making promises to people that we can assume that they love and being unable to keep those promises to be terrifying. If I believed that we weren't able to control our behavior and we were overrun with animalistic desire, I would kill myself. The same ideology is used to justify violence, rape, etc., and if I did not believe that these problems could be addressed or improved upon, I personally do not think life would be worth living.

That's your call. People break promises all the time. I find the prospect that you choose to believe peoples promises will uphold over time naive - that's my perspective and equally as valid to me as yours is to you.

People do things for many reasons you are not privvy to all the time and while they may seek comfort in the arms of someone outside their relationship, doesn't automatically justify violence and rape. I find this argument to be as laughable as those making arguments that same sex marriage is comparable to marrying animals.

If understanding and accepting human nature for what it is makes your life not worth living, then only you can evaluate that.

I choose to believe that people are inherently good. I choose to believe that while their interests align with my own, they're likely to make good on that promise. But I equally believe that accepting someone else's promise without question or qualification is naive at best. I cannot expect them to honour that promise when their interests are no longer aligned with mine.

Does that make my life not worth living? Of course not. I love people, I enjoy being around them. People are amazing, wonderful and fascinating creatures.

...but to expect that one person uphold a promise they had no hope of truly understanding when they made it, for the entire duration of the remainder of their life... and then holding them accountable for failing to keep it. That's beyond ridiculous, I don't care what religion you are.

Do you feel like your hyperbolic response to something that isn't actually even your concern to be a convincing argument of some sort? Without trying to be too callous, your suicide-in-potentia is dust in the wind compared to the sort of misery that would be produced by trying to live according to the standard you thankfully have no right to set.

You're equating an injury to the an imaginary-symbolic construct (the exclusively monogamous relationship) with an injury to an actual person's body that occurs in the case of violence or rape. Contracts are valuable, but they're not people.

Life will last much longer for you if you accept that people will most likely act in what they perceive to be their self-interest.

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