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> If you can learn ${lang}, you can learn to identify your own feelings. Once you know your own feelings, you can learn empathy. Once you learn empathy, social

by wolfgke 10y ago

> If you can learn ${lang}, you can learn to identify your own feelings. Once you know your own feelings, you can learn empathy. Once you learn empathy, social skills is a breeze. Believe me: I think I know my feelings pretty well. But I also claim that they are often so much different from the feelings other people have that this does not help me to empathize. Just to give one example: How is the feeling called that you feel when you read and understand beautiful mathematical proofs? I have not found a name for this feeling in any psychology book that I have read. On the other hand grief (in the sense of the feeling that people feel when someone near dies; I hope this is the intended translation of the German word "Trauer" - I'm no English native speaker) is a feeling that I only know from literature and watching people - I can confidently say that I never felt such a feeling myself. Back to topic: I believe the step from "knowing your own feelings" to "empathy" assumes that your feelings are somehow related to the feelings other people feel. I think this bold assumption does not hold very strongly for me. Believe me: If I act on this assumption, chaos will happen. On the other hand if I apply, say, some maximum-likelihood estimation (to use a word from statistics, don't interpret the word "maximum-likelihood" too literally) on how another person might feel (which is often quite the opposite to how I feel and completely against my instincts and I would never like to be treated this way), at least less chaos will happen.

efaref 10y ago
> How is the feeling called that you feel when you read and understand beautiful mathematical proofs? I would call that "awe".
mykelyk 10y ago
Epiphany, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling)
hawski 10y ago
I think that the feelings are probably almost the same, but they are caused by different stimuli. I would describe a feeling when you read and understand beautiful mathematical proofs as bliss or relief (when it was hard before everything unfolds). Dopamine kick? It is just that most people don't get satisfaction from such things.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  It might be nitpicking (and I'm not a native English speaker so in English the words might have some connotations that I'm not aware of), but here is my view why the suggested words in my opinion don't fit the feeling. > bliss It's not about happiness - the world is still bad - but about deep understanding. >awe It's not that I'm intimidated by it - it's just the feeling of having understood something really deep > epiphany it comes near, but epiphany is (as far as I understand it) the feeling of the sudden realization (which is different), but I talk the feeling that you have afterwards. While in panel 2 of > https://xkcd.com/230/ https://xkcd.com/230/ the feeling is clearly "epiphany" the later panels transport a different feeling (a much less "striking" one) - the latter is the feeling I mean. > It is just that most people don't get satisfaction from such things. But they might get the same feeling from other stimuli. The "elegant math proof" feeling was just the description of a feeling that at leas some HN readers seem to be able to empathize with - I also had much stranger feelings under meditation (that I never had in "ordinary" life) that are even much harder to describe (and I only had them one or two times - so my descriptions might even not be very accurate).
  - wccrawford 10y ago
    I had never considered it, but it's true. I don't have a word for that. I agree that those words aren't adequate, either. Instead, I'd just say that I love it, and wouldn't even attempt to express my actual feeling. I would only have used "epiphany" to express the feeling of figuring something out on my own, suddenly, but never the feeling of figuring out something that was clearly designed to explain something to me. Still, it's the closest word in this list, in my opinion. But not adequate.
noobiemcfoob 10y ago
Your English is phenomenal before even considering you're not a native speaker!
arpa 10y ago
feelings are different from what triggers them. I can understand the feeling of inherent elegance and aesthetics of a math proof. Maybe the same feeling happens when a structural engineer looks at a marvelous bridge or a coder looks at regex. The emotion is the same, the triggers differ. Reflecting emotion internally is empathy, understanding the trigger is a social skill.
dredmorbius 10y ago
TheOatmeal / Matthew Inman just addressed this, far better than I'd expected, in a comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy That might resonate with you. It's based on an essay by Augusten Burroughs at the Wall Street Journal, and shares much with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow", from the book of the same name. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304746604577379891905861390 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023047466045773798... http://www.worldcat.org/title/flow-the-psychology-of-optimal-experience/oclc/20392741&referer=space_alien_cat http://www.worldcat.org/title/flow-the-psychology-of-optimal...

by wolfgke 10y ago

efaref 10y ago

> How is the feeling called that you feel when you read and understand beautiful mathematical proofs? I would call that "awe".

mykelyk 10y ago

Epiphany, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling)

hawski 10y ago

I think that the feelings are probably almost the same, but they are caused by different stimuli. I would describe a feeling when you read and understand beautiful mathematical proofs as bliss or relief (when it was hard before everything unfolds). Dopamine kick? It is just that most people don't get satisfaction from such things.

wolfgke 10y ago
It might be nitpicking (and I'm not a native English speaker so in English the words might have some connotations that I'm not aware of), but here is my view why the suggested words in my opinion don't fit the feeling. > bliss It's not about happiness - the world is still bad - but about deep understanding. >awe It's not that I'm intimidated by it - it's just the feeling of having understood something really deep > epiphany it comes near, but epiphany is (as far as I understand it) the feeling of the sudden realization (which is different), but I talk the feeling that you have afterwards. While in panel 2 of > https://xkcd.com/230/ https://xkcd.com/230/ the feeling is clearly "epiphany" the later panels transport a different feeling (a much less "striking" one) - the latter is the feeling I mean. > It is just that most people don't get satisfaction from such things. But they might get the same feeling from other stimuli. The "elegant math proof" feeling was just the description of a feeling that at leas some HN readers seem to be able to empathize with - I also had much stranger feelings under meditation (that I never had in "ordinary" life) that are even much harder to describe (and I only had them one or two times - so my descriptions might even not be very accurate).
- wccrawford 10y ago
  I had never considered it, but it's true. I don't have a word for that. I agree that those words aren't adequate, either. Instead, I'd just say that I love it, and wouldn't even attempt to express my actual feeling. I would only have used "epiphany" to express the feeling of figuring something out on my own, suddenly, but never the feeling of figuring out something that was clearly designed to explain something to me. Still, it's the closest word in this list, in my opinion. But not adequate.

noobiemcfoob 10y ago

Your English is phenomenal before even considering you're not a native speaker!

arpa 10y ago

feelings are different from what triggers them. I can understand the feeling of inherent elegance and aesthetics of a math proof. Maybe the same feeling happens when a structural engineer looks at a marvelous bridge or a coder looks at regex. The emotion is the same, the triggers differ. Reflecting emotion internally is empathy, understanding the trigger is a social skill.

dredmorbius 10y ago

TheOatmeal / Matthew Inman just addressed this, far better than I'd expected, in a comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy That might resonate with you. It's based on an essay by Augusten Burroughs at the Wall Street Journal, and shares much with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow", from the book of the same name. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304746604577379891905861390 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023047466045773798... http://www.worldcat.org/title/flow-the-psychology-of-optimal-experience/oclc/20392741&referer=space_alien_cat http://www.worldcat.org/title/flow-the-psychology-of-optimal...