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This was a good read. I enjoyed the different take on the children of WWII. I also noted the parallels with the stolen generation of Aboriginals in Australia th

This was a good read. I enjoyed the different take on the children of WWII. I also noted the parallels with the stolen generation of Aboriginals in Australia that was mentioned in the article. The stolen generation had good and bad points. While it's not a short article, it doesn't do the topic the justice it deserves. There are many overlapping concepts with competing priorities: ethics, morality, benevolence, empathy, political correctness. Some of these (to my mind) are less desirable. For example, political correctness rejects one set of prejudices and replaced them with another set of prejudices. Alternatively, benevolence talks about the welfare of all and is far more logical and meaningful to me. I've never agreed that people deserve different treatment based on gender or skin colour (which is the heart of political correctness to do so, eg. 50% of women MUST be in IT). The article takes several swipes at Peter Singer without explaining his views adequately. I feel that Singer believes in prioritising where best to help. You do that by applying a level of logic to empathy. While this doesn't work for some, it provides a basis for collectively prioritising effort and attention for the broader community. There is a lot of confusion around empathy. I suspect the hateful and intolerant campaign against Matt Taylor for his shirt was driven by people with good intentions who believe themselves to be empathetic. Yet, their behaviour lacked empathy and is more aptly described as intolerance and bullying. I lead this back to Singer's point of view about applying logic and reason with empathy. The author of the article talks about the need for both and appears to discount Singer as having no empathy, just reason. Ultimately, any empathy that is applied equally (eg. Across genders, skin colours, sexual orientations, etc ) is a good thing. The reasoning is also helpful as it avoids morality judgements and allows us to prioritise our efforts.

Natanael_L 11y ago
My view in short is that attempting to act with empathy without first ensuring you understand the subject and those affected is exactly what you not should do. Too many people want to treat the symptom instead of finding and solving the cause. Logic and empathy has to be applied together - you need to figure out why people act like they do (which requires both), and then find a solution that is as beneficial as possible to as many as possible (which again requires both). Applying logic like a robot will lead to optimizing the wrong numbers and will hurt people, and empathy without logic will lead to knee-jerk reactions that again will have unintended sideeffects which will hurt people. And both logic and empathy requires the forgotten old principle of proportionality. You don't break down and cry over somebody's bruises (you'd be considered insane) and you don't fix a failing break by instead taking out the engine to ensure you won't crash.

Natanael_L 11y ago

My view in short is that attempting to act with empathy without first ensuring you understand the subject and those affected is exactly what you not should do. Too many people want to treat the symptom instead of finding and solving the cause. Logic and empathy has to be applied together - you need to figure out why people act like they do (which requires both), and then find a solution that is as beneficial as possible to as many as possible (which again requires both). Applying logic like a robot will lead to optimizing the wrong numbers and will hurt people, and empathy without logic will lead to knee-jerk reactions that again will have unintended sideeffects which will hurt people. And both logic and empathy requires the forgotten old principle of proportionality. You don't break down and cry over somebody's bruises (you'd be considered insane) and you don't fix a failing break by instead taking out the engine to ensure you won't crash.