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On the contrary. I can't imagine experiencing the emotions of all the people in 10000AD; at our current population growth rate, 10000AD will witness an unfathom
by mmirate 9y ago
On the contrary. I can't imagine experiencing the emotions of all the people in 10000AD; at our current population growth rate, 10000AD will witness an unfathomable number of human beings! Being concerned about all those people is far too much emotional stress for any one mind.
(Of course, experiencing others' emotions can in general be debilitating. Obviously, then, experiencing trillions of others' emotions would be trillionsfold worse.)
- hwillis 9y agoI mean for people you havent and never will meet; I can somewhat understand for people that dont actually exist yet. I'm not thinking of personally being aware of them and i can even rationalize not finding strangers to be tangible. I understand the bystander effect and all that. There are any number of ways I can accept not doing anything, but the idea that someone could legitimately just not care is deeply unsettling. Like, for the bystander effect to apply a person has to care and then think "someone should do something". Its the idea that someone can instead just not care even superficially that is disturbing.
- notyourday 9y ago> Like, for the bystander effect to apply a person has to care and then think "someone should do something". Its the idea that someone can instead just not care even superficially that is disturbing. To me, the idea that someone think "someone should do something" about that "something" is disturbing. But this is HN, the place where those that make $100k/year a more wax poetically about the plight of poor people in third world countries while munching on the cheese and drinking the wine thinking that it is the waxing that counts.