7 ms·
don't practice any empathy Seriously? At the very least I hope you're only narrowly applying this to the jury system, but even then...
by rhizome 10y ago
don't practice any empathy
Seriously? At the very least I hope you're only narrowly applying this to the jury system, but even then...
- John23832 10y agoI know on the surface it sounds bad, but yea. And yes, this applies solely to the situation I gave.
- rhizome 10y agoI know on the surface it sounds bad, but yea. What is the depth that makes it sound good?
- John23832 10y agoBecause people often think that acting rationally and empathetically are two distinct actions, and that's not the case. For example, someone gets caught with some crumbs of weed. You could make the empathetic argument for fining that person rather than jail time because, "They're not hurting anyone. It's just a little weed.", so on and so forth. Or you could make the logical/rational argument that the punishment and what stems from it (housing a person in jail, the economic aspects of ruining this person's life for what really is a victimless crime) does not fit the crime.
- rhizome 10y agoShorter: "logic is not the same as truth." Mundane corollary: "You can make a case for anything."
- goo 10y agoI know how excited we all are to board the moral outrage train, but there's an actual answer to that: http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/empathy-morality-ethics-psychology-science-compassion-paul-bloom http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/empathy-...
- gnicholas 10y agoI don't particularly agree with him, but Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom wrote a book called Against Empathy [1]. I think his definition of empathy is narrower than what many people think of when they think of empathy, so in some ways his argument struck me as a battle against a straw man. But TBH I haven't read the whole book (just coverage of it, and some of his related work). There's a counterpoint here [2]. 1: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/paul-bloom-makes-a-weirdly-convincing-anti-empathy-argument.html http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/paul-bloom-makes-a-weir... 2: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201310/why-paul-bloom-is-wrong-about-empathy-and-morality https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201310/wh...