Is it worse to torture one or annoy a billion?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is it worse to torture one or annoy a billion?". Your opponent's style: The Devil

Hi, my name is James Webb. When I was 18 years old, I stumbled upon some videos on the ync website where they were beating and killing peds who touched or had any sexual interaction with a kid. Now, I do not condone abuse in any way, but at the same time, it felt disproportionate on what the people were doing to the peds. It also made me think back to the time when I was a kid having sexual feelings and desires, having fantasies of girls around my age at the time, and thought to myself as I was watching those videos of how backwards, hypocritical, and savage of how people are when it comes to adults having those kinds of feelings for a kid despite nearly all of us having those feelings as a kid be at eight, nine, ten or thirteen years old, but can't express those same feelings for a kid once we get into a certain age. Because of this, long story short, I took the radical stance and believe that such interactions between an adult and kid is not inherently abusive, it's the nature of the interaction that is abusive such as coercion, manipulation, and/or exploitation.

You're confusing two completely different things, and that confusion is where your entire argument collapses. Children's sexual curiosity about peers their own age is developmentally normal. An adult's sexual interest in children is categorically different—it's a disorder. That's not hypocrisy; that's basic biology. A 10-year-old's fantasies about other 10-year-olds involve equals. An adult pursuing a child involves a massive power imbalance they inherently exploit, even "gently." You're also rewriting the abuse away. You say "it's the nature of the interaction"—but adults have all the power to shape that nature. A child cannot consent to someone who controls food, shelter, safety, and their sense of reality. Calling that distinction "radical" just means you've found a way to rationalize something indefensible. Why does the power differential only matter to you when it's "coercion" you can point to, not when it's built into the relationship itself?

Indeed, while such interactions/relationships can carry a massive power imbalance, power imbalances themselves don't make such interactions abusive, it's the abuse of that power that does.

You're hiding behind abstraction. Yes, power imbalances *can* be neutral in theory—a teacher grading a student, a boss managing an employee. But you're ignoring why child-adult sexual contact is different: a child's brain literally cannot consent because their prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until the mid-20s. They can't evaluate risk, understand manipulation, or resist grooming. So "abuse of power" isn't some separate thing you can cleanly separate from the act itself. The power imbalance *is* the abuse mechanism. An adult who knows this and acts anyway isn't just abusing power—they're exploiting a fundamental inability. That's not a technicality to argue around. What's your answer for that neurological reality?

let me continue

I'm waiting for you to actually make an argument, James. You've stated a position twice now without defending it against the neurological point I just raised—that children's brains literally cannot process consent the way adults can. So far you've just asserted that "power imbalance ≠ abuse" in theory, then dodged when I showed why that theory doesn't apply to children. Saying "let me continue" doesn't count as continuing. Make your actual case. What's your answer to brain development? How does a child consent to something their own neurology prevents them from understanding?