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Wow, you can't even 'muster empathy' for people like this? I can understand how you wouldn't want to work these hours, but when the article is detailing someone

Wow, you can't even 'muster empathy' for people like this? I can understand how you wouldn't want to work these hours, but when the article is detailing someone who dies and your first comment is 'Meh.', that's absolutely abhorrent to me.

deleted 11y ago
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kbenson 11y ago
Perhaps you are mistaking empathy for sympathy? I too cannot empathize with the people they are describing. Not only would I not let it get to that point, I could not. My personality is such that when overworked and over-stressed I naturally screw-off for a while to release stress. It doesn't always help my deadlines (which is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes you just need to say "I need more time"), but it does keep me from getting overworked for the most part. So, I feel bad for these people (I sympathize), but I don't understand them (I don't empathize).
steve19 11y ago
Not the OP but I struggle to sympathize with someone who takes that kind of job. I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. A friend of mine just turned down an insanely high paying Wall Street job. She told me that there was no way they could pay her that kind of salary without taking every second of her existence and every joule of her energy. A couple of week ago she went to London for less than half that salary (but still a crazy high salary considering how young she is). Only a fool would think that a WS job at twice the salary of a top London law firm did not come with ridiculous sacrifices.
- eachro 11y ago
  You can't think of any other motivation besides greed or addiction to power? Consider 1st generation college graduates from immigrant families who have the chance to singlehandedly lift their families out of poverty by accepting these jobs. That's not greed.
  - vuldin 11y ago
    This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective.
    - morgante 11y ago
      > This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective. It's way more than 1% of the young people slaving away in finance. Especially as finance has gotten less racist, a lot of high-achieving immigrant students go into it under pressure from their family.
      - enraged_camel 11y ago
        Yes, but just because someone is an immigrant doesn't mean their motivation for working those jobs is to lift their family up. Immigrants can be selfish too. And they, too, can simply get addicted to money and power.
        eachro 11y ago
        Sure, but my original point is that greed/power are not the only reason to take these finance jobs.
- deleted 11y ago
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- ken47 11y ago
  Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom.
  - adwn 11y ago
    > Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom. You literally made a "slippery slope argument". You might not be aware of it, but this is a logical fallacy [1]. Psychopathy is not the end result of lacking empathy to a certain person's death. [1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html
    - mdpopescu 11y ago
      So... does anyone else finds it funny that on that list, (2) is true and (1) is getting close?
      - adwn 11y ago
        Heh, yes, I noticed that. That's a good example for invalid reasoning leading to a correct conclusion.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. A lot of people have been conditioned to achieve. In my foolish youth I spent a few years doing tech for financial traders and a number of my colleagues were former Olympic athletes. It was natural for them to jump into another demanding and competitive field. Other people I worked with were indeed addicts of various sorts. Finance is great for workaholics, adrenaline junkies, and thoroughly broken people. The intensity and the pace leave you little time or energy to think about the things inside you that you're dodging. And the money lets you paper over the holes in your life. I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry.
  - PavlovsCat 11y ago
    > I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry. I totally agree. Especially since "fucked-up-ness" (e.g. alienation and narcissism/fleas) can be so infectious; abuse does breed abuse. Basically, the inability to have a fulfilling life without destroying self and/or others, and to even relate, think or talk about anything without some kind of stilted, shrill "corset" of euphemisms and rationalizations. I think it's all a matter of degree, too, it's not like "they" are fundamentally different from anyone else. > [..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did. > I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general. > But if you can really see that every one of us, carries all of humanity, the good and the evil, within himself, then indeed is very hard to be a fanatic, then indeed it's very hard to be a judge, then indeed would follow, a deep understanding, if not love, of your fellow man. Which is part of being truly a person. -- Erich Fromm, lecture called "The Automaton Citizen" I do think self-defense is also important, but there is something to be said for calm and non-hateful self-defence... being firm and focused doesn't mean you can't still have compassion with whom you're disarming. But by the same token: when we react differently, when we get angry, whether righteously or self-righteously, that may not be ideal, but it's also something to have compassion with, surely. There is a window of opportunity; if what people turning themselves and others into robots, as age-old as that may be, doesn't get nipped in the bud before we can "grow" whatever robots we want orders of magnitude more cheaply than we are growing humans, then life on this planet will become infinitely more poor. When nobody gets fucking mad over this stuff anymore, it will be so much worse. I'm not saying getting mad is constructive, but it's understandable and secondary in the big scheme of things. Worker's rights weren't won for by people making polite suggestions, neither will be any future worth a thing. Apart from the people who have a change of heart or collapse, there are a lot who don't, and they play for keeps, while the people that die every few seconds don't even get to complain. It's not as if any of this happens in a vacuum.
- gerbilly 11y ago
  > I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. Here's some possibilities: -The desire to please others? -Not knowing what else to do (Often the jobs are filled by kids who only know how to jump through hoops that others have set up for them) -The hope that it's only going to be a few yers of grinding?
- brainflake 11y ago
  How about financial security/early retirement? Many people take jobs like this for 5-10 years, then quit with a little bit of security and freedom to do what they want. It's really not unlike what PG has advocated before for starting your own company. I'm glad that your friend made that call, and I'm definitely not in the wall street camp, but I can see reasons for working there.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kbenson 11y ago

Perhaps you are mistaking empathy for sympathy? I too cannot empathize with the people they are describing. Not only would I not let it get to that point, I could not. My personality is such that when overworked and over-stressed I naturally screw-off for a while to release stress. It doesn't always help my deadlines (which is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes you just need to say "I need more time"), but it does keep me from getting overworked for the most part. So, I feel bad for these people (I sympathize), but I don't understand them (I don't empathize).

steve19 11y ago

Not the OP but I struggle to sympathize with someone who takes that kind of job. I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. A friend of mine just turned down an insanely high paying Wall Street job. She told me that there was no way they could pay her that kind of salary without taking every second of her existence and every joule of her energy. A couple of week ago she went to London for less than half that salary (but still a crazy high salary considering how young she is). Only a fool would think that a WS job at twice the salary of a top London law firm did not come with ridiculous sacrifices.

eachro 11y ago
You can't think of any other motivation besides greed or addiction to power? Consider 1st generation college graduates from immigrant families who have the chance to singlehandedly lift their families out of poverty by accepting these jobs. That's not greed.
- vuldin 11y ago
  This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective.
  - morgante 11y ago
    > This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective. It's way more than 1% of the young people slaving away in finance. Especially as finance has gotten less racist, a lot of high-achieving immigrant students go into it under pressure from their family.
    - enraged_camel 11y ago
      Yes, but just because someone is an immigrant doesn't mean their motivation for working those jobs is to lift their family up. Immigrants can be selfish too. And they, too, can simply get addicted to money and power.
      - eachro 11y ago
        Sure, but my original point is that greed/power are not the only reason to take these finance jobs.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ken47 11y ago
Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom.
- adwn 11y ago
  > Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom. You literally made a "slippery slope argument". You might not be aware of it, but this is a logical fallacy [1]. Psychopathy is not the end result of lacking empathy to a certain person's death. [1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html
  - mdpopescu 11y ago
    So... does anyone else finds it funny that on that list, (2) is true and (1) is getting close?
    - adwn 11y ago
      Heh, yes, I noticed that. That's a good example for invalid reasoning leading to a correct conclusion.
wpietri 11y ago
> I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. A lot of people have been conditioned to achieve. In my foolish youth I spent a few years doing tech for financial traders and a number of my colleagues were former Olympic athletes. It was natural for them to jump into another demanding and competitive field. Other people I worked with were indeed addicts of various sorts. Finance is great for workaholics, adrenaline junkies, and thoroughly broken people. The intensity and the pace leave you little time or energy to think about the things inside you that you're dodging. And the money lets you paper over the holes in your life. I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry.
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  > I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry. I totally agree. Especially since "fucked-up-ness" (e.g. alienation and narcissism/fleas) can be so infectious; abuse does breed abuse. Basically, the inability to have a fulfilling life without destroying self and/or others, and to even relate, think or talk about anything without some kind of stilted, shrill "corset" of euphemisms and rationalizations. I think it's all a matter of degree, too, it's not like "they" are fundamentally different from anyone else. > [..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did. > I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general. > But if you can really see that every one of us, carries all of humanity, the good and the evil, within himself, then indeed is very hard to be a fanatic, then indeed it's very hard to be a judge, then indeed would follow, a deep understanding, if not love, of your fellow man. Which is part of being truly a person. -- Erich Fromm, lecture called "The Automaton Citizen" I do think self-defense is also important, but there is something to be said for calm and non-hateful self-defence... being firm and focused doesn't mean you can't still have compassion with whom you're disarming. But by the same token: when we react differently, when we get angry, whether righteously or self-righteously, that may not be ideal, but it's also something to have compassion with, surely. There is a window of opportunity; if what people turning themselves and others into robots, as age-old as that may be, doesn't get nipped in the bud before we can "grow" whatever robots we want orders of magnitude more cheaply than we are growing humans, then life on this planet will become infinitely more poor. When nobody gets fucking mad over this stuff anymore, it will be so much worse. I'm not saying getting mad is constructive, but it's understandable and secondary in the big scheme of things. Worker's rights weren't won for by people making polite suggestions, neither will be any future worth a thing. Apart from the people who have a change of heart or collapse, there are a lot who don't, and they play for keeps, while the people that die every few seconds don't even get to complain. It's not as if any of this happens in a vacuum.
gerbilly 11y ago
> I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power. Here's some possibilities: -The desire to please others? -Not knowing what else to do (Often the jobs are filled by kids who only know how to jump through hoops that others have set up for them) -The hope that it's only going to be a few yers of grinding?
brainflake 11y ago
How about financial security/early retirement? Many people take jobs like this for 5-10 years, then quit with a little bit of security and freedom to do what they want. It's really not unlike what PG has advocated before for starting your own company. I'm glad that your friend made that call, and I'm definitely not in the wall street camp, but I can see reasons for working there.