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Affecfive empathy is not necessarily the best thing for therapy or coaching, yet it is often what a person craves for. Both anti-social personality disorder an

by hosh 9y ago

Affecfive empathy is not necessarily the best thing for therapy or coaching, yet it is often what a person craves for. Both anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder has reduced or no affective empathy and often high cognitive empathy. However, I would be more inclined to work with the "pro-social" ASD than someone with NPD. Someone with NPD is incapable of thinking beyond themselves while someone with ASD is willing to entertain mutually beneficial arrangements. You could swing the opposite way too. Someone on the autism spectrum would have reduced cognitive empathy yet high affective empathy. They tend to care more, but only after understanding, and then the emotion tends to be more intense. Likewise, there are people who feel deeply what everyone else is feeling to the point where they lost their center and and is unable to function as an individual. The main point I was making is that people tend to confuse one type of empathy for another. And the other is that, what is a good test is if you trust the other person or AI to have yout best interest at heart.

joe_the_user 9y ago
But we're talking about robots, right? Mechanical devices that are constructed, not human beings of any sort. It seems like the appropriate analogy would be something like a drug or a video game. I would claim it is unwise in the extreme to allow a robot with emotional-influencing abilities/programming to first calculate one's "best interests" and then go about imposing those best interests without getting overt, conscious go-ahead from the user. Of course, even with human beings, you want to interact with people who have an intention to be good to you and whose idea of "good" is somewhat in accordance with your own ideas of good, otherwise you get nuts and cults and so-forth. With robots, devices which function imperfectly and which we don't want just imposing their "values" on society, jeesh, obviously, one wants tight control what concept they have of "best interests" along with tight control on what sort of influencing they do. The inability of people to see human-robot interactions as rather distinct from human-human interactions, just makes the situation more urgent.
- hosh 9y ago
  I didn't say the robot had to calculate best interest. I said whether _you_ yourself feels that the robot has your best interest at heart. I am talking about being in relationship with something that interacts with your emotional responses.

by hosh 9y ago

joe_the_user 9y ago

But we're talking about robots, right? Mechanical devices that are constructed, not human beings of any sort. It seems like the appropriate analogy would be something like a drug or a video game. I would claim it is unwise in the extreme to allow a robot with emotional-influencing abilities/programming to first calculate one's "best interests" and then go about imposing those best interests without getting overt, conscious go-ahead from the user. Of course, even with human beings, you want to interact with people who have an intention to be good to you and whose idea of "good" is somewhat in accordance with your own ideas of good, otherwise you get nuts and cults and so-forth. With robots, devices which function imperfectly and which we don't want just imposing their "values" on society, jeesh, obviously, one wants tight control what concept they have of "best interests" along with tight control on what sort of influencing they do. The inability of people to see human-robot interactions as rather distinct from human-human interactions, just makes the situation more urgent.

hosh 9y ago
I didn't say the robot had to calculate best interest. I said whether _you_ yourself feels that the robot has your best interest at heart. I am talking about being in relationship with something that interacts with your emotional responses.