waiting for a divorce when the marriage is already over is stupid in some cases.

let's say taylor swift married dkgojackets because she was trashed in vegas one night. of course dkgojackets started to beat her up regularly. i came along and rescued her and we were deeply in love. why should we wait for a divorce to go through?

you think you shouldn't weigh the costs to others of your decisions at all?

I sort of agree, because the basis for the smart decision isn't moral but instead is practical: hooking up with this married person is going to give rise to a host of problems I don't need.

I don't know how I can perform the calculus based on morality, I don't even know if, for example, the husband has been cheating and isn't in a position to assert severe emotional anguish anyway.

EDIT: And how do I factor in the fact that one spouse is ready to at least temporarily de-commit? Is that an indication of reduced moral weight? How can I tell?

No. I'm saying in what scenarios can I ever make a hard decision if that's how it works?

Or really any decision that isn't totally benign, like which cereal I would prefer to eat or my favorite color or something.

When I pick a spouse that may occur when there is another person who feels severely emotionally upset that my pick is off the market. Why do I care?

Church ladies itt.

i think maybe life is like an infinite series of prisoners dilemmas. In a single run, screwing the other person is a dominant strategy, but when you run a long sequence of repeats, a policy of trust which sacrifices immediate profit leads to massively greater EV in the long run.

The closest parallel I can think of cuts against me, and that is intentional interference with contractual relations. In California a third party need not do anything wrongful to be liable for intentional interference with contractual relations. This is because the Courts hold contractual agreements in high regard, and want to encourage their reliability. Therefore, interfering with contractual relations is per se wrong.

That seems like the sort of other-directed decree I'm hearing from you guys.

I disagree with the legal doctrine as well (even though I use it for client advantage). If by doing something not otherwise wrong I encourage you to realize your contract "sucks" and you therefore breach, aren't I still participating in the marketplace and aren't you just making a revised cost-benefit analysis?

EDIT: i.e., the cost of attorneys and suit is worth it to you to get the benefit of breaching?

I'll have the apple buckle

It is impossible to fall "deeply in love" with someone while you're in a marriage getting regularly beat up by your husband. Women that marry abusive men tend to have self-esteem issues to begin with, it would more likely be worship of a savior on her part than 'love'

Also, I love how you used poor dkgojackets as the example. lol

totally agree. But it's being a hard thing to do doesn't mean that not doing it at all is the right option. And like I said to Nothing, there are degrees of causality, scale, and also of reasonableness in weighing up a decision.

In the case of Apple, I think you have some grounds to trust Apple and the Chinese to look after the workers, with some degree of skepticism and ongoing reassessment on your part. To what extent you trust this hypothetical woman's take on her adultery is much less clear.

And I think it's totally ok to risk foregoing some potential pleasure that might be unnecessary. Notches on the bedpost aren't really that big of a deal.

iow, they don't do marriage

Sometimes I worry that the only difference between a psychopath and a 'regular person' is the knowledge of what kokiri just said. And us 'regular people' create constructs in our brains such as 'guilt' as a short-term way of justifying not screwing people over because very deep down we know its longterm EV. Probably not the case, just throwing it out there.

having sex with someone else's wife might not even be sparring him any misery. it might be just a matter of delaying it. or it might be that ending his marriage would be doing him a favor.

i do agree about your policy of trust being a billion times better. and one should avoid causing suffering. it's just that in the case of sleeping with a married person, it's not clear to me. bad marriages are incredibly painful and should probably be ended.

I hate Tess of the d'Urbervilles more than I hate any other book

Filthy, in that case im gonna steal taylor swift from you

I sometimes think that the label "sociopath" has been co-opted to mean any non-procreation and non-familial-fidelity oriented view of the world.

the need to finish bad books and movies is a leak

learn to walk away

Have we talked about this before? I kinda think we have.

what?! trust apple and the chinese?! lol

and fwiw i always feel kinda scummy when i buy anything produced by exploited labor. i have friends who go through great lengths to avoid such products. i only half ass avoid them myself.

it's partly autobiographical

Right, well I never even use the word sociopath because I'm still confused on what a sociopath even is, no matter how many times I read what it is.

just think of dean. he is a sociopath jk bud

-- so much slobbering on my part here.

morality, ethics, guilt, etc. are definitely tools that society uses to force people to obey the rules of society. And they're doubly effective because people internalise them and thus society doesn't even need to do anything.

but equally, we're social animals, we thrive in communities, and some degree of common ground is necessary for that to work at all. A lot of social rules are idiotic, a lot of things we're supposed to feel bad about are idiotic, but at the end of the day i do feel that weighing other people's outcomes within our own decisions, as difficult as it is, leads to a better outcome for all.

Sir, let me present you with 'Jude the Obscure'.