This is obvious cope for being a bad person and avoiding the social shame that comes with being a cheater. It's so profoundly narcissistic and dresses itself up as empathy.
Hi, in what way would telling someone you cheated on them be empathetic? Wouldn't the ethical thing be to save them the pain and just end the relationship?
It seems like the social shame is part and parcel for you, would you say you believe in the genuine ability of humans to be repentant and make amends? Do we need to prescribe the way in which those amends are made via public shaming?
"in what way would telling someone you cheated on them be empathetic? "
By informing them of your mistakes, you inform them of your flaws. By informing them of your flaws, you enable them to make informed choices on what to do about those flaws. Informed choices lead to better outcomes than uninformed choices. Thus, confessing your misdeed tends to lead your partner to better long-term outcomes. Confession is based on empathy because empathy means caring about the other person's life, which obviously includes their future.
"Wouldn't the ethical thing be to save them the pain and just end the relationship?"
You don't know if they would WANT to end the relationship. They might prefer to forgive. It's their choice to make.
"would you say you believe in the genuine ability of humans to be repentant and make amends?"
Yes, and both of those things involve confession.
"Do we need to prescribe the way in which those amends are made via public shaming?"
I know that public shaming can go wrong. But then, allowing everyone to privately reach his own self-judgment without external input can also go wrong! Sometimes the community has a point.
The idea that it's being told you were cheated on is painful, and not the act of infidelity itself, is the narcissism here; something isn't only bad because it results in opprobation being directed at you. You violated someone else and they are entitled to know so that they can treat you like what you are: a cheater. You have already hurt them the moment you cheated.
Avoiding that isn't for their sake, it's for the cheater's -- letting them betray a loved one and get their rocks off without dealing with the consequences they deserve.
As for making amends, no. It is not possible to make amends; it is possible to be forgiven, but that is something gifted to us by those we hurt, not the result of our own efforts.
Also cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape because it revokes the partners consent for the rest of their lives. The reason we consider rape horrible isn't because of a physical act, it's because of lack of consent. But we consider hiding a serious piece of information and totally removing a partners consent for the rest of their lives as ok? Come on.
This article is completely insane in my perspective. If children are involved and a male partner was cheated on, he can no longer trust the offspring are his (in an evolutionary sense) so of course he comes first, and the wife should be severely punished (stoning is one that many societies do) and the decision for what is done to the children left to him. Of course we have dna testing now, but these psychological mechanisms that I and many other men have were not developed in the present. And what else is morality based on?
The lack of empathy for men in this article is staggering.
Oh my GOD, are you honestly suggesting a DEATH PENALTY for cheaters??? Furthermore, why do you mention penalties only for the woman and not for the man she cheated with?
If anger at being cheated on is a "psychological mechanism", then the human capacity for restraint, forgiveness and/or proportionality are also "psychological mechanisms". Why cite the former in defense of your perspective while ignoring all these others?
I would also punish the man who takes the woman who isn't his. The penalty for women should more severe in most cases because of the paternity issue obviously, the situations aren't even nearly comparable just because you use the same word (cheater), they are far different because men and women are different.
> If anger at being cheated on is a "psychological mechanism", then the human capacity for restraint, forgiveness and/or proportionality are also "psychological mechanisms". Why cite the former in defense of your perspective while ignoring all these others?
This applies to literally any crime, why should I forgive what my brain processes as the most horrible crime imaginable (adultery) when we punish many other things that are not as harmful so harshly, like so-called consent based "rape", which is a recent invention not even found across societies that we pseudoscientifically pretend is universally harmful.
Most of history agrees with me, not you. I find your perspective outright psychopathic.
Also most other male animals have similar instincts to me and men who hate cuckoldry for a reason. Since morality is subjective, consider that your are the one biased against certain natural interests that are completely reasonable. You overestimate the value of lives when animals are evolved to sacrifice their lives in ways the benefit their genes overall. There is a reason people are willing to die for their children in particular, and it's the same reason men can have instincts that can consider a woman committing adultery to be worse than murder (potentially using a male's resources to invest in a competing male's bloodline).
Not all men have instincts very strong here against female infidelity but I notice that the ones that do are usually more healthy while the ones that don't are ugly, homosexual etc., any man without these instincts, like a lot of the people in the autistic "rationalist" community or commenting on reddit relationship forums, are not functioning like healthy males. Looking at the author's picture, it is less surprising that he could write such a horrifying article.
Incredible. You say that adulterers should be killed and in another comment you wrote "cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape".
I've known rape victims and I've know victims of cheating, and I observe that the former group suffers far more than the latter group.
What would convince you that rape is worse than cheating? Perhaps scientific studies, in which we make an attempt to objectively measure the suffering of rape victims compared to cheating victims? Or would you continue to insist that your brain regards adultery as the worst crime imaginable, holding up your own brain as an objective standard?
>Most of history agrees with me, not you.
"Most of history" says that the Earth is flat.
>There is a reason people are willing to die for their children in particular, and it's the same reason men can have instincts that can consider a woman committing adultery to be worse than murder (potentially using a male's resources to invest in a competing male's bloodline).
You can conjure up genetic reasons for anything. You could say, for instance, that it's "completely reasonable" for a man to mass-murder other men in order to reduce the competition for mates and ensure the propagation of his own bloodline. Are you advocating mass murder?
Besides, your conception of genetic prehistory stands on shaky ground. Some researchers believe that prehistoric humans were actually polyamorous, more like bonobos (known to be sexually promiscuous) than like gibbons (known to be monogamous). It may well be that polyamory and forgiveness for cheaters was the norm for most of humanity's existence, and that monogamy is the "recent invention" (comparatively speaking). https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/may/19/equality-and-polyamory-why-early-humans-werent-the-flintstones
>Not all men have instincts very strong here against female infidelity but I notice that the ones that do are usually more healthy while the ones that don't are ugly, homosexual etc., any man without these instincts, like a lot of the people in the autistic "rationalist" community or commenting on reddit relationship forums, are not functioning like healthy males. Looking at the author's picture, it is less surprising that he could write such a horrifying article.
This strikes me as a collective ad hominem attack.
I don't know how you got like this. Maybe someone cheated on you, and it hurt like hell, and nobody sympathized or gave you the help you needed. Maybe you've suffered in some other way, and this is just how you deal with that. Maybe every comment along the lines of "Rape is worse than adultery" sounds like "The pain you went through doesn't count." If you have suffered, I want you to know that your suffering is real, and it sucks that you didn't get the help you needed when you needed it. But dismissing the very real pain of rape victims isn't going to help anyone, not even you.
A relationship is a commitment: you are agreeing to a contract that typically involved monogamy. If you break that contract, you are both lying to your partner and also putting their life in jeopardy through the risk of contracting STIs. That makes the cheater a worthless human being who is knowingly endangering their partner. If somebody played Russian Roulette by pointing a gun at me, I would consider them my enemy. Why shouldn't I also consider them my enemy if they play "STI Russian Roulette" with my life?
Additionally, you are very quick to excuse multiple instances of cheating as "an error of forecasting." But the truth is that it is not an "error," it is self-delusion. The cheater KNOWS on some level what human garbage they are, and they can't face that truth without emotional pain, so they rationalize it to themselves by saying "It will never happen again." But of course it does because narcissists don't care about how their actions impact other people, only themselves. If you let them get away without punishment because they come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to rationalize their own behavior, then the only thing you are teaching them is how to become very good at self-delusion. But if you punish people for bad behavior REGARDLESS of their excuses and self-delusional justifications, then you are teaching them to STOP rationalizing their own behavior because there is no longer a good evolutionary reason to do so. After all, if you know that you're going to get hurt for cheating regardless of whether it was a one-time mistake, a deliberate deception, or a drunken moment, your mind will reroute itself to optimize for doing the right thing instead of coming up with clever ways to justify doing the wrong thing.
Hi! Perhaps you misread the section on serial cheating- I very specifically state " Everybody gets one. If you do it a second time you’ve voided your period of self reflection and plunged head on into the selfish-piece-of-shit zone."
OK, I admit that this is slightly better, but only in the sense that somebody who plays Russian Roulette with the gun pointed at you ONCE is better than the person who does it MULTIPLE times. It's still selfish, evil, and has the potential to kill you. I think that legally, cheating ought to equate to a reckless endangerment felony (if there are no consequences beyond the act of cheating. If the cheater has somebody else's child and hides that information from you, then it should be considered fraud (because they are defrauding you out of child support that you should not be obligated to pay for somebody else's worthless spawn). And if the cheater gets an STD from their cheating, then failing to disclose it to their partner ought to be considered assault or even a murder attempt, depending on the severity of the STD.
Sadly, our laws have not yet caught up to popular morality. That's why our societal elites need to be overthrown - but that's a whole other story.
This article just implicitly assumes consequentialism without giving any kind of argument for it. Most people have strong intuitive deontological leadings, something like "That person has A RIGHT to know about it" - if you reject those intuitions, then you had better given a damn good argument against them. Simply saying "There will be more happiness" is not an argument, because the idea that happiness is all that matters is the very thing that the deontologist rejects - so the article simply begs the question in that sense.
Mistakes happen? Sure they do. But the proper response to a mistake is to confess and make up for it. If I mistakenly dent somebody's car, it's only right for me to tell them about it. This is an important piece of information for them to have, because if I mistakenly dented their car once I might mistakenly do again! They have every right to evaluate the odds of future car accidents in light of my prior history! This may lead them to decide NOT to lend me their car again, which is well within their rights to do so! Concealing this information puts them at risk and denies them the right to make a fully informed decision on how much they want to trust me.
It doesn't matter if I sincerely believe this was a one-time mistake; the other person has a right to make their own independent judgment on the matter. Even if I fix the car up perfectly in secret so that they'll never know what I did wrong, there's still the chance that next time I'll crash it in a way that can't be fixed. The lack of information is a problem in and of itself.
We've never tried anyone for serial manslaughter? Yes we freaking HAVE! A guy gets drunk, hits someone with his car accidentally, then panics and drives off and isn't caught for awhile. Eventually he drives drunk again, hits another person accidentally, and this time he gets caught and the cops connect the dots and he's charged with two counts of manslaughter. Do you honestly think this has never happened?
More to the point, it's not considered ok for someone to commit manslaughter "just once" and then he keeps it a secret and faces no penalties because he "honestly believes that he'll never it do it again", which is the standard you're proposing for cheaters.
Now look, you can make a SEPARATE argument that society should be more tolerant of these things and that most relationships should negotiate a rule that says "rare one-time flings are ok". You can argue that the social penalties for cheating are too harsh in some cases. You can argue that people ought to have open relationships in the first place. But that's not the argument you're making here.
"This dilemma is the cheater’s own. No one else can throw the switch except the trolley driver."
Nonsense. There are multiple switches here. The cheater has "Confess to what I did" switch, and the partner has a series of "React to the confession" switches, ranging from strong forgiveness to strong condemnation. If the cheater refuses to confess, the partner doesn't get to decide how to react.
"you cannot know your future, only your intentions."
This is a ridiculous oversimplification. Suppose there are two people, one who has always been steadfastly sober and another who has a long history of binge drinking but has stayed sober for the last 2 months. Now suppose they both make a pledge not to drink. They might both be honest about their intentions, but the recovered-alcoholic obviously has a stronger chance of breaking his pledge. And he ought to be aware of that chance and he ought to communicate that to his loved ones. For instance "I'm a recovering alcoholic, so it's best for us not to keep any liquor in the house, in case I get tempted."
Likewise, the cheater has to reckon with the fact that they screwed up once and this bears *some* relation to their odds of screwing up again in the future. His partner has a right to know this, so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.
"If you tell your partner, you are not helping them. You are forcing them to deal with your problem."
Would you make the same case for a breadwinner who loses his job and then fails to inform his partner that he got fired? Doesn't she have a right to know their financial situation, so she can make choices in that regard?
Likewise, if the cheater has some personal flaw that lead them to cheat, and which might hypothetically lead them to cheat again, that flaw poses risks for the relationship. Perhaps the cheater isn't as emotionally self-aware as he thinks, or maybe he has poor impulse control or a lack of empathy for his partner. These are all things that the partner needs to know sooner than later, before they potentially blow up into much larger problems.
"What utility springs from the corpse of innocence? "
Wisdom, obviously. Would you make this argument in any other context? Suppose a deadly meteor is headed toward Earth, and you're the only one who knows about it. Would you keep quiet, to preserve everyone's innocence? Or would you speak out, in hopes that humanity might find some way to deflect the meteor or survive its impact? I for one would choose the latter!
This is just that on a smaller scale. If you tell your partner about your mistakes and flaws, you give them a chance to avoid greater pain in the future. Perhaps they can help you improve, better ensuring that this will never happen again. Or perhaps they choose to leave you for someone better, and perhaps that's actually the right choice, as you're not the sort of person they need right now. Perhaps they confess their own temptations in turn, and it turns out that you're both poly at heart and you happily renegotiate your relationship on poly lines so there's no more secrecy. But all theses options are rendered moot if you never confess.
"Almost as if breaking someone’s innocence is a selfish immoral thing to do. "
I doubt you would feel the same if someone kept a painful secret from YOU that you'd have rather known about. Suppose you are in business with a friend who handles the bookkeeping. Suppose there's a problem and the company has to pay a lot of money to cover some unexpected fees or taxes or whatnot. Suppose this leaves the company close to insolvency, but you friend keeps it a secret from you because he wants to preserve your "innocence". You buy a house on the assumption that you'll keep earning your current salary, only for the company to suddenly go bankrupt 6 months later. If you had known about the true state of the books, you wouldn't have bought the house. Are you glad that your friend kept secrets from you? Or are you upset?
"Taking the risk of exploding the relationship at this point is tantamount to selfish emotional neglect of the children."
A bad relationship will still hurt the children, no matter how much you try to hide it. They'll still be affected indirectly. Better to take the risk in the name of honesty. Even if it leads to a divorce, an honest divorce is better than a dishonest relationship. Arrange it so the kids won't hear the actual shouting, sure, and let the kids know that you love them regardless, but even so, tell your partner the truth.
The "decisions in my stead" bit is ok. It's essentially just a low-key version of poly.
But overall, honestly, this sounds like an essay written by a cheater who's desperately trying to find some rationality-flavored way to avoid the emotional pain of confession.
Relationships are a social contract, with an agreed-upon set of values. If one party is violated by the other, the violated party has a right to know that the contract has been breached. Doing otherwise, even if it comes from a place of compassion, is deception by omission and changes the dynamic of the relationship.
I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
My main objection to your premise is not letting the partner know deprives them of their autonomy. It's admirable for the cheater to feel remorse, but they cannot act unilaterally. If they end the relationship and don't explain why to the partner, the partner has been presumably hurt, since (from their perspective) the relationship ended abruptly for no reason. If they continue the relationship without admitting their fault, the partner is operating on a false premise. The ethical response is for the cheater to inform the partner, express their regret, and state their desired outcome to the aggrieved partner (either "I'd like us to stay together" or "I think we should break up"). It is then up to the cheated partner to decide whether they agree to renew the contract (in the event that the cheater would like the relationship to continue).
> I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
Even worse is when the non-cheating company goes out of business and the people from the non-cheating company commit suicide, etc. etc..
One of the main reasons cheating is considered horrible is because of anti-cuckoldry instincts that evolved primarily due to the effects cheating have on men, because the men may end up raising children not their own (what could be more horrifying!?!) and become genetic dead ends. It's basically murder, or worse. It only takes one act of infidelity to destroy trust and potentially cause this situation to happen or become far more likely. Anti-cheating instincts in women are partly due to side effects of this selection.
This is obvious cope for being a bad person and avoiding the social shame that comes with being a cheater. It's so profoundly narcissistic and dresses itself up as empathy.
Hi, in what way would telling someone you cheated on them be empathetic? Wouldn't the ethical thing be to save them the pain and just end the relationship?
It seems like the social shame is part and parcel for you, would you say you believe in the genuine ability of humans to be repentant and make amends? Do we need to prescribe the way in which those amends are made via public shaming?
"in what way would telling someone you cheated on them be empathetic? "
By informing them of your mistakes, you inform them of your flaws. By informing them of your flaws, you enable them to make informed choices on what to do about those flaws. Informed choices lead to better outcomes than uninformed choices. Thus, confessing your misdeed tends to lead your partner to better long-term outcomes. Confession is based on empathy because empathy means caring about the other person's life, which obviously includes their future.
"Wouldn't the ethical thing be to save them the pain and just end the relationship?"
You don't know if they would WANT to end the relationship. They might prefer to forgive. It's their choice to make.
"would you say you believe in the genuine ability of humans to be repentant and make amends?"
Yes, and both of those things involve confession.
"Do we need to prescribe the way in which those amends are made via public shaming?"
I know that public shaming can go wrong. But then, allowing everyone to privately reach his own self-judgment without external input can also go wrong! Sometimes the community has a point.
The idea that it's being told you were cheated on is painful, and not the act of infidelity itself, is the narcissism here; something isn't only bad because it results in opprobation being directed at you. You violated someone else and they are entitled to know so that they can treat you like what you are: a cheater. You have already hurt them the moment you cheated.
Avoiding that isn't for their sake, it's for the cheater's -- letting them betray a loved one and get their rocks off without dealing with the consequences they deserve.
As for making amends, no. It is not possible to make amends; it is possible to be forgiven, but that is something gifted to us by those we hurt, not the result of our own efforts.
Also cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape because it revokes the partners consent for the rest of their lives. The reason we consider rape horrible isn't because of a physical act, it's because of lack of consent. But we consider hiding a serious piece of information and totally removing a partners consent for the rest of their lives as ok? Come on.
This article is completely insane in my perspective. If children are involved and a male partner was cheated on, he can no longer trust the offspring are his (in an evolutionary sense) so of course he comes first, and the wife should be severely punished (stoning is one that many societies do) and the decision for what is done to the children left to him. Of course we have dna testing now, but these psychological mechanisms that I and many other men have were not developed in the present. And what else is morality based on?
The lack of empathy for men in this article is staggering.
Oh my GOD, are you honestly suggesting a DEATH PENALTY for cheaters??? Furthermore, why do you mention penalties only for the woman and not for the man she cheated with?
If anger at being cheated on is a "psychological mechanism", then the human capacity for restraint, forgiveness and/or proportionality are also "psychological mechanisms". Why cite the former in defense of your perspective while ignoring all these others?
I find this comment extremely troubling.
I would also punish the man who takes the woman who isn't his. The penalty for women should more severe in most cases because of the paternity issue obviously, the situations aren't even nearly comparable just because you use the same word (cheater), they are far different because men and women are different.
> If anger at being cheated on is a "psychological mechanism", then the human capacity for restraint, forgiveness and/or proportionality are also "psychological mechanisms". Why cite the former in defense of your perspective while ignoring all these others?
This applies to literally any crime, why should I forgive what my brain processes as the most horrible crime imaginable (adultery) when we punish many other things that are not as harmful so harshly, like so-called consent based "rape", which is a recent invention not even found across societies that we pseudoscientifically pretend is universally harmful.
Most of history agrees with me, not you. I find your perspective outright psychopathic.
Also most other male animals have similar instincts to me and men who hate cuckoldry for a reason. Since morality is subjective, consider that your are the one biased against certain natural interests that are completely reasonable. You overestimate the value of lives when animals are evolved to sacrifice their lives in ways the benefit their genes overall. There is a reason people are willing to die for their children in particular, and it's the same reason men can have instincts that can consider a woman committing adultery to be worse than murder (potentially using a male's resources to invest in a competing male's bloodline).
Not all men have instincts very strong here against female infidelity but I notice that the ones that do are usually more healthy while the ones that don't are ugly, homosexual etc., any man without these instincts, like a lot of the people in the autistic "rationalist" community or commenting on reddit relationship forums, are not functioning like healthy males. Looking at the author's picture, it is less surprising that he could write such a horrifying article.
Incredible. You say that adulterers should be killed and in another comment you wrote "cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape".
I've known rape victims and I've know victims of cheating, and I observe that the former group suffers far more than the latter group.
What would convince you that rape is worse than cheating? Perhaps scientific studies, in which we make an attempt to objectively measure the suffering of rape victims compared to cheating victims? Or would you continue to insist that your brain regards adultery as the worst crime imaginable, holding up your own brain as an objective standard?
>Most of history agrees with me, not you.
"Most of history" says that the Earth is flat.
>There is a reason people are willing to die for their children in particular, and it's the same reason men can have instincts that can consider a woman committing adultery to be worse than murder (potentially using a male's resources to invest in a competing male's bloodline).
You can conjure up genetic reasons for anything. You could say, for instance, that it's "completely reasonable" for a man to mass-murder other men in order to reduce the competition for mates and ensure the propagation of his own bloodline. Are you advocating mass murder?
Besides, your conception of genetic prehistory stands on shaky ground. Some researchers believe that prehistoric humans were actually polyamorous, more like bonobos (known to be sexually promiscuous) than like gibbons (known to be monogamous). It may well be that polyamory and forgiveness for cheaters was the norm for most of humanity's existence, and that monogamy is the "recent invention" (comparatively speaking). https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/may/19/equality-and-polyamory-why-early-humans-werent-the-flintstones
>Not all men have instincts very strong here against female infidelity but I notice that the ones that do are usually more healthy while the ones that don't are ugly, homosexual etc., any man without these instincts, like a lot of the people in the autistic "rationalist" community or commenting on reddit relationship forums, are not functioning like healthy males. Looking at the author's picture, it is less surprising that he could write such a horrifying article.
This strikes me as a collective ad hominem attack.
I don't know how you got like this. Maybe someone cheated on you, and it hurt like hell, and nobody sympathized or gave you the help you needed. Maybe you've suffered in some other way, and this is just how you deal with that. Maybe every comment along the lines of "Rape is worse than adultery" sounds like "The pain you went through doesn't count." If you have suffered, I want you to know that your suffering is real, and it sucks that you didn't get the help you needed when you needed it. But dismissing the very real pain of rape victims isn't going to help anyone, not even you.
A relationship is a commitment: you are agreeing to a contract that typically involved monogamy. If you break that contract, you are both lying to your partner and also putting their life in jeopardy through the risk of contracting STIs. That makes the cheater a worthless human being who is knowingly endangering their partner. If somebody played Russian Roulette by pointing a gun at me, I would consider them my enemy. Why shouldn't I also consider them my enemy if they play "STI Russian Roulette" with my life?
Additionally, you are very quick to excuse multiple instances of cheating as "an error of forecasting." But the truth is that it is not an "error," it is self-delusion. The cheater KNOWS on some level what human garbage they are, and they can't face that truth without emotional pain, so they rationalize it to themselves by saying "It will never happen again." But of course it does because narcissists don't care about how their actions impact other people, only themselves. If you let them get away without punishment because they come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to rationalize their own behavior, then the only thing you are teaching them is how to become very good at self-delusion. But if you punish people for bad behavior REGARDLESS of their excuses and self-delusional justifications, then you are teaching them to STOP rationalizing their own behavior because there is no longer a good evolutionary reason to do so. After all, if you know that you're going to get hurt for cheating regardless of whether it was a one-time mistake, a deliberate deception, or a drunken moment, your mind will reroute itself to optimize for doing the right thing instead of coming up with clever ways to justify doing the wrong thing.
Hi! Perhaps you misread the section on serial cheating- I very specifically state " Everybody gets one. If you do it a second time you’ve voided your period of self reflection and plunged head on into the selfish-piece-of-shit zone."
OK, I admit that this is slightly better, but only in the sense that somebody who plays Russian Roulette with the gun pointed at you ONCE is better than the person who does it MULTIPLE times. It's still selfish, evil, and has the potential to kill you. I think that legally, cheating ought to equate to a reckless endangerment felony (if there are no consequences beyond the act of cheating. If the cheater has somebody else's child and hides that information from you, then it should be considered fraud (because they are defrauding you out of child support that you should not be obligated to pay for somebody else's worthless spawn). And if the cheater gets an STD from their cheating, then failing to disclose it to their partner ought to be considered assault or even a murder attempt, depending on the severity of the STD.
Sadly, our laws have not yet caught up to popular morality. That's why our societal elites need to be overthrown - but that's a whole other story.
This article just implicitly assumes consequentialism without giving any kind of argument for it. Most people have strong intuitive deontological leadings, something like "That person has A RIGHT to know about it" - if you reject those intuitions, then you had better given a damn good argument against them. Simply saying "There will be more happiness" is not an argument, because the idea that happiness is all that matters is the very thing that the deontologist rejects - so the article simply begs the question in that sense.
For some reason I can't find any consequentialists who would be willing to swap their kids with starving ones from Africa.
Noone is a consequentialist until it comes to temporarily justifying their own psychopathic behavior.
This makes NO SENSE.
Mistakes happen? Sure they do. But the proper response to a mistake is to confess and make up for it. If I mistakenly dent somebody's car, it's only right for me to tell them about it. This is an important piece of information for them to have, because if I mistakenly dented their car once I might mistakenly do again! They have every right to evaluate the odds of future car accidents in light of my prior history! This may lead them to decide NOT to lend me their car again, which is well within their rights to do so! Concealing this information puts them at risk and denies them the right to make a fully informed decision on how much they want to trust me.
It doesn't matter if I sincerely believe this was a one-time mistake; the other person has a right to make their own independent judgment on the matter. Even if I fix the car up perfectly in secret so that they'll never know what I did wrong, there's still the chance that next time I'll crash it in a way that can't be fixed. The lack of information is a problem in and of itself.
We've never tried anyone for serial manslaughter? Yes we freaking HAVE! A guy gets drunk, hits someone with his car accidentally, then panics and drives off and isn't caught for awhile. Eventually he drives drunk again, hits another person accidentally, and this time he gets caught and the cops connect the dots and he's charged with two counts of manslaughter. Do you honestly think this has never happened?
More to the point, it's not considered ok for someone to commit manslaughter "just once" and then he keeps it a secret and faces no penalties because he "honestly believes that he'll never it do it again", which is the standard you're proposing for cheaters.
Now look, you can make a SEPARATE argument that society should be more tolerant of these things and that most relationships should negotiate a rule that says "rare one-time flings are ok". You can argue that the social penalties for cheating are too harsh in some cases. You can argue that people ought to have open relationships in the first place. But that's not the argument you're making here.
"This dilemma is the cheater’s own. No one else can throw the switch except the trolley driver."
Nonsense. There are multiple switches here. The cheater has "Confess to what I did" switch, and the partner has a series of "React to the confession" switches, ranging from strong forgiveness to strong condemnation. If the cheater refuses to confess, the partner doesn't get to decide how to react.
"you cannot know your future, only your intentions."
This is a ridiculous oversimplification. Suppose there are two people, one who has always been steadfastly sober and another who has a long history of binge drinking but has stayed sober for the last 2 months. Now suppose they both make a pledge not to drink. They might both be honest about their intentions, but the recovered-alcoholic obviously has a stronger chance of breaking his pledge. And he ought to be aware of that chance and he ought to communicate that to his loved ones. For instance "I'm a recovering alcoholic, so it's best for us not to keep any liquor in the house, in case I get tempted."
Likewise, the cheater has to reckon with the fact that they screwed up once and this bears *some* relation to their odds of screwing up again in the future. His partner has a right to know this, so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.
"If you tell your partner, you are not helping them. You are forcing them to deal with your problem."
Would you make the same case for a breadwinner who loses his job and then fails to inform his partner that he got fired? Doesn't she have a right to know their financial situation, so she can make choices in that regard?
Likewise, if the cheater has some personal flaw that lead them to cheat, and which might hypothetically lead them to cheat again, that flaw poses risks for the relationship. Perhaps the cheater isn't as emotionally self-aware as he thinks, or maybe he has poor impulse control or a lack of empathy for his partner. These are all things that the partner needs to know sooner than later, before they potentially blow up into much larger problems.
"What utility springs from the corpse of innocence? "
Wisdom, obviously. Would you make this argument in any other context? Suppose a deadly meteor is headed toward Earth, and you're the only one who knows about it. Would you keep quiet, to preserve everyone's innocence? Or would you speak out, in hopes that humanity might find some way to deflect the meteor or survive its impact? I for one would choose the latter!
This is just that on a smaller scale. If you tell your partner about your mistakes and flaws, you give them a chance to avoid greater pain in the future. Perhaps they can help you improve, better ensuring that this will never happen again. Or perhaps they choose to leave you for someone better, and perhaps that's actually the right choice, as you're not the sort of person they need right now. Perhaps they confess their own temptations in turn, and it turns out that you're both poly at heart and you happily renegotiate your relationship on poly lines so there's no more secrecy. But all theses options are rendered moot if you never confess.
"Almost as if breaking someone’s innocence is a selfish immoral thing to do. "
I doubt you would feel the same if someone kept a painful secret from YOU that you'd have rather known about. Suppose you are in business with a friend who handles the bookkeeping. Suppose there's a problem and the company has to pay a lot of money to cover some unexpected fees or taxes or whatnot. Suppose this leaves the company close to insolvency, but you friend keeps it a secret from you because he wants to preserve your "innocence". You buy a house on the assumption that you'll keep earning your current salary, only for the company to suddenly go bankrupt 6 months later. If you had known about the true state of the books, you wouldn't have bought the house. Are you glad that your friend kept secrets from you? Or are you upset?
"Taking the risk of exploding the relationship at this point is tantamount to selfish emotional neglect of the children."
A bad relationship will still hurt the children, no matter how much you try to hide it. They'll still be affected indirectly. Better to take the risk in the name of honesty. Even if it leads to a divorce, an honest divorce is better than a dishonest relationship. Arrange it so the kids won't hear the actual shouting, sure, and let the kids know that you love them regardless, but even so, tell your partner the truth.
The "decisions in my stead" bit is ok. It's essentially just a low-key version of poly.
But overall, honestly, this sounds like an essay written by a cheater who's desperately trying to find some rationality-flavored way to avoid the emotional pain of confession.
Relationships are a social contract, with an agreed-upon set of values. If one party is violated by the other, the violated party has a right to know that the contract has been breached. Doing otherwise, even if it comes from a place of compassion, is deception by omission and changes the dynamic of the relationship.
I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
My main objection to your premise is not letting the partner know deprives them of their autonomy. It's admirable for the cheater to feel remorse, but they cannot act unilaterally. If they end the relationship and don't explain why to the partner, the partner has been presumably hurt, since (from their perspective) the relationship ended abruptly for no reason. If they continue the relationship without admitting their fault, the partner is operating on a false premise. The ethical response is for the cheater to inform the partner, express their regret, and state their desired outcome to the aggrieved partner (either "I'd like us to stay together" or "I think we should break up"). It is then up to the cheated partner to decide whether they agree to renew the contract (in the event that the cheater would like the relationship to continue).
> I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
Even worse is when the non-cheating company goes out of business and the people from the non-cheating company commit suicide, etc. etc..
One of the main reasons cheating is considered horrible is because of anti-cuckoldry instincts that evolved primarily due to the effects cheating have on men, because the men may end up raising children not their own (what could be more horrifying!?!) and become genetic dead ends. It's basically murder, or worse. It only takes one act of infidelity to destroy trust and potentially cause this situation to happen or become far more likely. Anti-cheating instincts in women are partly due to side effects of this selection.