9 ms·

The idea of empathy for all ignores the limits of human psychology

69 points by JackPoach 11y ago

p4wnc6 11y ago
This article makes the mistake of assuming that things like the national debate of encryption and privacy sparked by e.g. the San Bernadino iPhone ordeal are actually about the moral themes they are characterized by. They are not about those moral themes. They are just status and in-group vs. out-group games like everything else. We don't use data-driven approaches to them for the same reason why people continue to hire underperforming assest managers or why they hire over-priced management consultants. With encryption, immigration, climate change, finance reform, etc. etc., you pick a side of the debate and that identifies Who You Are and What Team You Are On for purposes of letting other people know that you're either their implicit ally or implicit enemy, that you would submit to them or resist them, that you intrinsically respect their credential or that you treat their credential with skepticism. I was hoping this article might be about scope insensitivity and would speak about how we have to intelligently use legislation and law enforcement to protect human rights because, even for the best of us, it's not cognitively feasible to feel the morality you would wish upon others. Instead it seems like a meandering groan that we aren't more data driven -- but of course we aren't! And even when we are "data driven" it's generally just an excuse to use politically manipulated notions of data-based reasoning to only enhance the degree of coalition politics, not to defeat it. Take software for example. We claim that systematic hiring via commoditized task examinations (like IKM or HackerRank), or the use of dumb shit process management like Agile/Scrum, are supposed to represent a shift into "objective" and "data-driven" evaluation. But it's unequivocally not. These are just ways of letting middle management and political gatekeepers engineer whatever subjective metrics they prefer, while being shielded from complaints that they are not being objective. If we can't even get this right for something as small as project management or software hiring, it's beyond realistic hope that we could actually develop a moral calculus at a national level and use data-driven principles to actually inform the national debate over privacy vs. safety.
- mibrah 11y ago
  Thank you for this refreshing take. Overstretching the limits of statistics simply gives you a shit in - shit out model
- MarkPNeyer 11y ago
  > e don't use data-driven approaches to them for the same reason why people continue to hire underperforming assest managers or why they hire over-priced management consultants. i've got a data-driven solution for evaluating potential business partners, contractors, anything: https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect it's basically page rank, with a small twist. > it's beyond realistic hope that we could actually develop a moral calculus at a national level and use data-driven principles to actually inform the national debate over privacy vs. safety. i think the key here is record taking, with really simple metrics.
  - qb45 11y ago
    Get sufficiently many people to base meaningful decisions on that and it will be gamed just as Google is.
paulsutter 11y ago
"Absolute universalism, in which we feel compassion for every individual on Earth, is psychologically impossible." The author has obviously never read science fiction. A non-human out-group instantly allows all humans to be in one in-group.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Good call. Stan Lee has said he created the X-Men (and others) in part to tell a story about racism without talking about race. Instead of it being skin color, it was the (often invisible) genetic aspects that people used to define the in/out-groups. The Watchmen, Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers all work for this one too. Ender's Game also showed what happens - blame and recriminations - after the external threat is removed.. people go back to their old struggles, fights, etc.
  - awinter-py 11y ago
    ender's game is a photocopy of the haldemann book 'forever war'. EG is maybe better-liked by kids but it gets war wrong. Haldemann wrote forever war after coming back from vietnam.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      > ender's game is a photocopy of the haldemann book 'forever war'. No, it really isn't. Certainly they deal with many of the same themes, and if you want to say that Haldemann does a much better job then I can probably agree with that, but accusing Ender's Game of being a mere rip-off just because they address similar topics is silly.
      - awinter-py 11y ago
        similar topics, at similar settings, in similar order. especially if you remember that speaker for the dead was written first; OSC created EG as a prequel, liked it better, and published first. Speaker for the dead probably comes from card's life experience being a mormon missionary (hint: the piggies are the brown people he went to convert). Ender's Game comes from his life experience reading haldemann. (OSC is also a weird and outspoken homophobe; easy to see him (a) misunderstanding forever war and (b) liking it for the wrong reasons). Look, card is clearly the better writer between the two of them. He added a lot. But if you want to put forward war fiction as a case for empathy, it's irresponsible to look at EG before FW.
awinter-py 11y ago
Empathy isn't a psychological proposition, it's an economic one (evolutionary psychology when it works at all attempts to unify those topics).
brashrat 11y ago
ok, sure, the idea of empathy ignores the limits of human psychology... because it's an "idea". human psychology is not an idea, nor is are its constituent parts ideas. so what? if there is scarcity and competition, no doubt human psychology will kick in. but the idea of empathy would live on anyway.
mibrah 11y ago
Given that the author hasn't really taken the time to step through their proposed alternative in detail, I think they proposed the universal moral algorithm thing as a decoy to justify the article to hyperliberal readers who claim there's no alternative to just trying really hard to be empathetic, which is just code for "support our particular in-group, soldier"
contingencies 11y ago
Adam Waytz is a social psychologist and professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Sorry Mr. white male authority, but on the limits of human psychology I'd far prefer to trust a skilled long term meditation practitioner, who come from ancient traditions that have survived (because they are not codswallop) and are scientifically demonstrated to be successful at achieving real biophysical change with metta (empathy + loving kindness) and other related meditation objects.
- winfred 11y ago
  I totally agree. Although I must add, that I've recently shifted more towards the much more ancient and even much more prominent Astrology. Astrology is both far older and has a solidly proven track record, particularly in the field of finding compatible couples (as still used frequently in India).
  - qb45 11y ago
    I'm honestly unable to figure out whether this is serious or not.
    - contingencies 11y ago
      I believe the poster was making the fair point that something being ancient doesn't provide evidence of its efficacy. The point was being made in very much the same brashly satirical spirit as my initial aside.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Plus empathy feels good and doesn't force us to confront unpleasant moral tradeoffs. In this emotional calculus, black pain doesn't matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048546 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... Nor does the pain of low status or unattractive people, or out-group members. And for that matter, the pain of 100 = pain of 100,000 - human emotions just don't scale. I'll take principled moral philosophy any day. The main purpose of empathy is to (often hypocritically) signal to our in-group that we will face a high psychological cost if we behave disloyally and are therefore more trustworthy.
thomaspryor 11y ago
This says that 'Absolute universalism, in which we feel compassion for every individual on Earth, is psychologically impossible' because we need to be able to hate on out-groups to love on in-groups. If we discover aliens might this not hold?
- kr4 11y ago
  It's not impossible but it requires a long sincere practice to peel off the layers of false identities that we associate ourselves with. These are gradually created starting right from our birth. However one way it's true because once compassion for all beings (not just humans) becomes our nature, we no longer remain human – we become divine. That's the goal of all paths of Yoga (Karma/devotion/meditation/wisdom) The above isn't something theoretical jargon – I know at least one individual living at this moment who has reached to that state by following the meditation path of yoga [0]. 0: http://omswami.com http://omswami.com
  - mbrock 11y ago
    I don't think this is an appropriate forum for religious proselytizing.
    - kr4 11y ago
      Yoga comes under psychology and spirituality, not religion. it's not related to rituals but introspection within – examining and experiments with your mind (habit patterns, emotions and thoughts). Just like a scientist does with nature externally. Only tools of the trade are different. You may wish to read yoga sutras on swamij.com to see for yourself the profound insights of mind and its working expounded by the author Patanjali. For instance, Yoga sutras starts with:The goal of Yoga is to regulate the modifications (tendencies) of mind,So the seer rests in its true nature. The true nature of our consciousness (the seer) is existence-knowledge-bliss. Hating someone or a group/race of beings is just a negative tendancy which has been adopted, often unconsciously, due to certain experiences in life. With stillness of meditation you can invite such thoughts witness them and remove clinging of mind toward them [0]. All methodologically. 0: http://www.swamij.com/witnessing.htm http://www.swamij.com/witnessing.htm
bpchaps 11y ago
I have a seriously hard time reading this comment while knowing what Orson Scott Card is actually like. In the frame of who he really is, everything about Ender's game seems like a reflection of an idea of parody or hyperbole of the personality types in the book. That said, it's one of my favorite books.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Indeed. Perfect, noble, misunderstood and misused little boys are recurring protagonists in Card's work, and given the way that his public homophobia comes off more like a self-loathing closet case than anything else, that fascination takes on a rather different and decidedly creepy cast.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Wow, OSC is a gay child molester, nobly suppressing his individual desires for the benefit of society, other humans and his moral code? We need more men like him in this world.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      It might be noble, if he wasn't also calling for gay people to be put in prison while incorporating his fetish into his stories. Either one alone would be problematic; both at once is pretty damn creepy. I got a lot of downvotes on the last post--do people think I'm making up or exaggerating Card's homophobia? Here's a few quotes. These are his own words, publicly published; look it up if you don't believe me: "Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society." "If we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves." "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down." (You'll note I'm not calling for him to be censored. Disagreeing with someone's opinions is the same as saying that they should be outlawed.)
BurritoAlPastor 11y ago
Confucius said, "Is there anyone who can even for a day give their full strength to being humane? I haven’t met anyone who lacked the strength. But if anyone has done this, I haven’t seen it." (http://dailyanalect.tumblr.com/post/113164355376/46 http://dailyanalect.tumblr.com/post/113164355376/46)
- studentrob 11y ago
  Sweet quote. Your site?
aoiao 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price
studentrob 11y ago
I don't see the point of this article. In group and out group is just a conceptualization of competition. That's how we improve ourselves and how we evolved. It's the basis of capitalism and so many other things. I have no trouble "extending equal compassion to foreign earthquake victims and hurricane victims in our own country". I might not donate equally but that's not a proper measure of empathy. There is no accurate measure for that. The scientists of Nautilus will never understand that because they've been trained to only publish things based on collected data. "world’s leading thinkers" [1] my butt! [1] http://m.nautil.us/about http://m.nautil.us/about
tim333 11y ago
>That means that, in principle, if we eliminate out-group hate completely, we may also undermine in-group love. Empathy is a zero-sum game. Oh rubbish. Look at Buddhist monk types and angry political extremist types. They do a pretty good job of loving everything and hating most things respectively. I mean the article has a point that universal human empathy is not widespread and we should design systems accordingly but that's been common knowledge for centuries.
carapat_virulat 11y ago
I guess once we have thrown away universal empathy we may as well throw away the natural numbers, the concept of a line or using categories to designate things we have never seen. I mean what's the point of calling a table a table if I will never be able to hold all existing tables in my head? More seriously, infinite concepts are usually really simple to conceive for most human minds, it's much more complicated to look at real life objects clashing with mental objects and extract new meaningful concepts that may help solve those inconsistencies. >And then the pendulum swung back. People do care, newspaper editorialists and social-media commenters granted. But they care inconsistently: grieving for victims of Brussels’ recent attacks and ignoring Yemen’s recent bombing victims; expressing outrage over ISIS rather than the much deadlier Boko Haram; mourning the death of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe while overlooking countless human murder victims. There are far worthier tragedies, they wrote, than the ones that attract the most public empathy. >[...] If we recognized that we have a limited quantity of empathy to begin with, it would help to cure some of the acrimony and self-flagellation of these discussions. [...] We must begin with a realistic assessment of what those limits are, and then construct a scientific way of choosing which values matter most to us. For example in the above paragraph the author seems to extract that the meaning of those criticism is that we should feel bad about ourselves. I don't think that's the point, I agree that self-flagellation is improductive, but we can rationally examine those kinds of inconsistent beliefs and emotions. Is the way we look at those other people influencing how we act towards them? Do those actions affect how they act towards us? Is there any chance of reconciliation? The author also seems to blindly accept the belief that personal intervention is the only way to reduce misery, with no place for cold restructuring of society in a way that avoid generating that misery in the first place, done in a cold calculated way, with no need to deplete our precious, finite, empathy.
noobie 11y ago
Empathy =! Compassion.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

69 points by JackPoach 11y ago

This article makes the mistake of assuming that things like the national debate of encryption and privacy sparked by e.g. the San Bernadino iPhone ordeal are actually about the moral themes they are characterized by. They are not about those moral themes. They are just status and in-group vs. out-group games like everything else. We don't use data-driven approaches to them for the same reason why people continue to hire underperforming assest managers or why they hire over-priced management consultants. With encryption, immigration, climate change, finance reform, etc. etc., you pick a side of the debate and that identifies Who You Are and What Team You Are On for purposes of letting other people know that you're either their implicit ally or implicit enemy, that you would submit to them or resist them, that you intrinsically respect their credential or that you treat their credential with skepticism. I was hoping this article might be about scope insensitivity and would speak about how we have to intelligently use legislation and law enforcement to protect human rights because, even for the best of us, it's not cognitively feasible to feel the morality you would wish upon others. Instead it seems like a meandering groan that we aren't more data driven -- but of course we aren't! And even when we are "data driven" it's generally just an excuse to use politically manipulated notions of data-based reasoning to only enhance the degree of coalition politics, not to defeat it. Take software for example. We claim that systematic hiring via commoditized task examinations (like IKM or HackerRank), or the use of dumb shit process management like Agile/Scrum, are supposed to represent a shift into "objective" and "data-driven" evaluation. But it's unequivocally not. These are just ways of letting middle management and political gatekeepers engineer whatever subjective metrics they prefer, while being shielded from complaints that they are not being objective. If we can't even get this right for something as small as project management or software hiring, it's beyond realistic hope that we could actually develop a moral calculus at a national level and use data-driven principles to actually inform the national debate over privacy vs. safety.

mibrah 11y ago
Thank you for this refreshing take. Overstretching the limits of statistics simply gives you a shit in - shit out model
MarkPNeyer 11y ago
> e don't use data-driven approaches to them for the same reason why people continue to hire underperforming assest managers or why they hire over-priced management consultants. i've got a data-driven solution for evaluating potential business partners, contractors, anything: https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect it's basically page rank, with a small twist. > it's beyond realistic hope that we could actually develop a moral calculus at a national level and use data-driven principles to actually inform the national debate over privacy vs. safety. i think the key here is record taking, with really simple metrics.
- qb45 11y ago
  Get sufficiently many people to base meaningful decisions on that and it will be gamed just as Google is.

paulsutter 11y ago

"Absolute universalism, in which we feel compassion for every individual on Earth, is psychologically impossible." The author has obviously never read science fiction. A non-human out-group instantly allows all humans to be in one in-group.

caseysoftware 11y ago
Good call. Stan Lee has said he created the X-Men (and others) in part to tell a story about racism without talking about race. Instead of it being skin color, it was the (often invisible) genetic aspects that people used to define the in/out-groups. The Watchmen, Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers all work for this one too. Ender's Game also showed what happens - blame and recriminations - after the external threat is removed.. people go back to their old struggles, fights, etc.
- awinter-py 11y ago
  ender's game is a photocopy of the haldemann book 'forever war'. EG is maybe better-liked by kids but it gets war wrong. Haldemann wrote forever war after coming back from vietnam.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    > ender's game is a photocopy of the haldemann book 'forever war'. No, it really isn't. Certainly they deal with many of the same themes, and if you want to say that Haldemann does a much better job then I can probably agree with that, but accusing Ender's Game of being a mere rip-off just because they address similar topics is silly.
    - awinter-py 11y ago
      similar topics, at similar settings, in similar order. especially if you remember that speaker for the dead was written first; OSC created EG as a prequel, liked it better, and published first. Speaker for the dead probably comes from card's life experience being a mormon missionary (hint: the piggies are the brown people he went to convert). Ender's Game comes from his life experience reading haldemann. (OSC is also a weird and outspoken homophobe; easy to see him (a) misunderstanding forever war and (b) liking it for the wrong reasons). Look, card is clearly the better writer between the two of them. He added a lot. But if you want to put forward war fiction as a case for empathy, it's irresponsible to look at EG before FW.

awinter-py 11y ago

Empathy isn't a psychological proposition, it's an economic one (evolutionary psychology when it works at all attempts to unify those topics).

brashrat 11y ago

ok, sure, the idea of empathy ignores the limits of human psychology... because it's an "idea". human psychology is not an idea, nor is are its constituent parts ideas. so what? if there is scarcity and competition, no doubt human psychology will kick in. but the idea of empathy would live on anyway.

mibrah 11y ago

Given that the author hasn't really taken the time to step through their proposed alternative in detail, I think they proposed the universal moral algorithm thing as a decoy to justify the article to hyperliberal readers who claim there's no alternative to just trying really hard to be empathetic, which is just code for "support our particular in-group, soldier"

contingencies 11y ago

Adam Waytz is a social psychologist and professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Sorry Mr. white male authority, but on the limits of human psychology I'd far prefer to trust a skilled long term meditation practitioner, who come from ancient traditions that have survived (because they are not codswallop) and are scientifically demonstrated to be successful at achieving real biophysical change with metta (empathy + loving kindness) and other related meditation objects.

winfred 11y ago
I totally agree. Although I must add, that I've recently shifted more towards the much more ancient and even much more prominent Astrology. Astrology is both far older and has a solidly proven track record, particularly in the field of finding compatible couples (as still used frequently in India).
- qb45 11y ago
  I'm honestly unable to figure out whether this is serious or not.
  - contingencies 11y ago
    I believe the poster was making the fair point that something being ancient doesn't provide evidence of its efficacy. The point was being made in very much the same brashly satirical spirit as my initial aside.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Plus empathy feels good and doesn't force us to confront unpleasant moral tradeoffs. In this emotional calculus, black pain doesn't matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048546 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... Nor does the pain of low status or unattractive people, or out-group members. And for that matter, the pain of 100 = pain of 100,000 - human emotions just don't scale. I'll take principled moral philosophy any day. The main purpose of empathy is to (often hypocritically) signal to our in-group that we will face a high psychological cost if we behave disloyally and are therefore more trustworthy.

thomaspryor 11y ago

This says that 'Absolute universalism, in which we feel compassion for every individual on Earth, is psychologically impossible' because we need to be able to hate on out-groups to love on in-groups. If we discover aliens might this not hold?

kr4 11y ago
It's not impossible but it requires a long sincere practice to peel off the layers of false identities that we associate ourselves with. These are gradually created starting right from our birth. However one way it's true because once compassion for all beings (not just humans) becomes our nature, we no longer remain human – we become divine. That's the goal of all paths of Yoga (Karma/devotion/meditation/wisdom) The above isn't something theoretical jargon – I know at least one individual living at this moment who has reached to that state by following the meditation path of yoga [0]. 0: http://omswami.com http://omswami.com
- mbrock 11y ago
  I don't think this is an appropriate forum for religious proselytizing.
  - kr4 11y ago
    Yoga comes under psychology and spirituality, not religion. it's not related to rituals but introspection within – examining and experiments with your mind (habit patterns, emotions and thoughts). Just like a scientist does with nature externally. Only tools of the trade are different. You may wish to read yoga sutras on swamij.com to see for yourself the profound insights of mind and its working expounded by the author Patanjali. For instance, Yoga sutras starts with:The goal of Yoga is to regulate the modifications (tendencies) of mind,So the seer rests in its true nature. The true nature of our consciousness (the seer) is existence-knowledge-bliss. Hating someone or a group/race of beings is just a negative tendancy which has been adopted, often unconsciously, due to certain experiences in life. With stillness of meditation you can invite such thoughts witness them and remove clinging of mind toward them [0]. All methodologically. 0: http://www.swamij.com/witnessing.htm http://www.swamij.com/witnessing.htm

bpchaps 11y ago

I have a seriously hard time reading this comment while knowing what Orson Scott Card is actually like. In the frame of who he really is, everything about Ender's game seems like a reflection of an idea of parody or hyperbole of the personality types in the book. That said, it's one of my favorite books.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Indeed. Perfect, noble, misunderstood and misused little boys are recurring protagonists in Card's work, and given the way that his public homophobia comes off more like a self-loathing closet case than anything else, that fascination takes on a rather different and decidedly creepy cast.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Wow, OSC is a gay child molester, nobly suppressing his individual desires for the benefit of society, other humans and his moral code? We need more men like him in this world.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    It might be noble, if he wasn't also calling for gay people to be put in prison while incorporating his fetish into his stories. Either one alone would be problematic; both at once is pretty damn creepy. I got a lot of downvotes on the last post--do people think I'm making up or exaggerating Card's homophobia? Here's a few quotes. These are his own words, publicly published; look it up if you don't believe me: "Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society." "If we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves." "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down." (You'll note I'm not calling for him to be censored. Disagreeing with someone's opinions is the same as saying that they should be outlawed.)

BurritoAlPastor 11y ago

Confucius said, "Is there anyone who can even for a day give their full strength to being humane? I haven’t met anyone who lacked the strength. But if anyone has done this, I haven’t seen it." (http://dailyanalect.tumblr.com/post/113164355376/46 http://dailyanalect.tumblr.com/post/113164355376/46)

studentrob 11y ago
Sweet quote. Your site?

aoiao 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price

studentrob 11y ago

I don't see the point of this article. In group and out group is just a conceptualization of competition. That's how we improve ourselves and how we evolved. It's the basis of capitalism and so many other things. I have no trouble "extending equal compassion to foreign earthquake victims and hurricane victims in our own country". I might not donate equally but that's not a proper measure of empathy. There is no accurate measure for that. The scientists of Nautilus will never understand that because they've been trained to only publish things based on collected data. "world’s leading thinkers" [1] my butt! [1] http://m.nautil.us/about http://m.nautil.us/about

tim333 11y ago

>That means that, in principle, if we eliminate out-group hate completely, we may also undermine in-group love. Empathy is a zero-sum game. Oh rubbish. Look at Buddhist monk types and angry political extremist types. They do a pretty good job of loving everything and hating most things respectively. I mean the article has a point that universal human empathy is not widespread and we should design systems accordingly but that's been common knowledge for centuries.

carapat_virulat 11y ago

I guess once we have thrown away universal empathy we may as well throw away the natural numbers, the concept of a line or using categories to designate things we have never seen. I mean what's the point of calling a table a table if I will never be able to hold all existing tables in my head? More seriously, infinite concepts are usually really simple to conceive for most human minds, it's much more complicated to look at real life objects clashing with mental objects and extract new meaningful concepts that may help solve those inconsistencies. >And then the pendulum swung back. People do care, newspaper editorialists and social-media commenters granted. But they care inconsistently: grieving for victims of Brussels’ recent attacks and ignoring Yemen’s recent bombing victims; expressing outrage over ISIS rather than the much deadlier Boko Haram; mourning the death of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe while overlooking countless human murder victims. There are far worthier tragedies, they wrote, than the ones that attract the most public empathy. >[...] If we recognized that we have a limited quantity of empathy to begin with, it would help to cure some of the acrimony and self-flagellation of these discussions. [...] We must begin with a realistic assessment of what those limits are, and then construct a scientific way of choosing which values matter most to us. For example in the above paragraph the author seems to extract that the meaning of those criticism is that we should feel bad about ourselves. I don't think that's the point, I agree that self-flagellation is improductive, but we can rationally examine those kinds of inconsistent beliefs and emotions. Is the way we look at those other people influencing how we act towards them? Do those actions affect how they act towards us? Is there any chance of reconciliation? The author also seems to blindly accept the belief that personal intervention is the only way to reduce misery, with no place for cold restructuring of society in a way that avoid generating that misery in the first place, done in a cold calculated way, with no need to deplete our precious, finite, empathy.

noobie 11y ago

Empathy =! Compassion.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]