alt Hacker NewsHe may be a victim, but note that he had to choose to participate.
To play devil's advocate here.. If she's a spy trained in psychological manipulation and seduction we'd be right to call him a victim instead of a participant since he'd be a target of those techniques applied to him. Maybe?
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That can help explain what led to him deciding to cheat, but no it doesn't make him a victim. People have to be responsible for their actions rather than being labeled a victim of their own choices.
He's married... he made an oath, signed a social contract to another person, his wife, that he made the conscious choice to break.
Its clear his wealth generated a level of narcissism here that rose to a level that permitted him to invalidate the feelings of his wife, who, again, he made a vow to.
It does not matter if some hot chinese spy tried to get into his pants. He still let it happen. He his actions spoke for him: "I know i have a wife, but this chinese spy is so hot. I dont care about my wife anymore, but im going to keep this a secret from her because I know its wrong". For a loooooong time.
I'm personally so tired of excusing infidelity. He is a big boy. He can make big boy decisions.
Unless they're a poly couple, who knows.
What if she wasn't a trained spy but someone naturally gifted in psychological manipulation and seduction? No longer victim but participant? Even though the effect he faced was the same?
And if he was a gambler and she offered him money to pay his debts, would you say he is a victim? Come on man.
There are other ways to compromise a target that do not involve infidelity. These “techniques” just facilitate the process for an at least somewhat willing and/or interested target.
So, no, he’s not a victim, his existing personal potential for infidelity was exploited. It worked because he would have done the same thing if the right non-spy were to arrive on the scene. The spy takes advantage of that.
I would personally agree that it is possible he is a victim of advanced psy-op technology. I don't personally believe we have nearly as much 'choice' or 'free will' as NA culture of the past 40+ years has led most people to believe.
At a deeper level we do get to choose our overall environment and what kinds of things we are exposed to frequently, the recurring patterns of life can be consciously managed and shaped. But in the moment, we are more like an LLM doing a forward pass on next token. If a specific weight relating to refusal has been abliterated, it's not realistic to expect the next token to somehow still come out to refusal.
We can control our training better than we can control our inference. We have ego-ideals and specific mental makeup that can be exploited if identified.