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Thanks, that was a very interesting read! I know paracetamol also works to some extent for emotional pain, and perhaps anxiety and physical pain share some neu

by raducu 6y ago

Thanks, that was a very interesting read! I know paracetamol also works to some extent for emotional pain, and perhaps anxiety and physical pain share some neural and developmental pathways. Do you feel any physical pain? How about empathy? I've always had a profound disliking for people without empathy, and for good measure -- those people usually are psychopaths or narcissists, but if they are compassionate but just don't feel empathy, it's ok, I guess... though the nauseating feeling in my stomach that I first got when I was maybe 5 and I saw the reaction of a child I struck and robbed of his sunflower, just as instructed by my older cousin -- that is so fundamental to me, that it seems inconceivable that you can become a decent human being without it. I caught myself hoping that at some point in the article some professional would point out how the lady is in fact flawed in some major ways. As in you can't have your cookie and eat it too, while the rest of us are struggling? I also wish the article elaborated more about why the daughter thought the lady was in fact horrible -- was that feeling ongoing, or just something in her adolescence, or just the same nagging feeling I have -- that there MUST be something terribly bad about someone without empathy. Take for instance the story of her bipolar husband that died(killed himself?). Most likely she indeed could not have prevented it. BUT maybe.... someone feeling empathy and not feeling reciprocated, would over time feel they are interracting with a robot, not with a human being. I know I feel that way when I talk with my father and I know he's very low on the empathy scale -- the whole interaction feels so very fake and scripted after a while -- I can read his emotional states, I know what he wants, what he wants me to say, what his fears are, what his intentions are, but it is absolutely not the other way around. Overall my father is a good person -- a very good and hard working doctor, contributes to charities and so on. I wouldn't get my bad feelings about him if I only knew and spent a couple of days in my life with him as a writer writing an article about him, but I sure do as someone who wants a genuine and deep connection with him, just like the lady's daughter probaby did with her mother.

owenversteeg 6y ago
You're welcome! It is fascinating, isn't it? I should have clarified, I'm no Jo Cameron. I'm no different from your average person in how I feel physical pain and empathy. It's extremely rare to have what she has, I think there are only a handful of people in the world that have that. What's far more common, and what I believe I have (and what a few other people in this thread have) is a double FAAH mutation. (That makes up the relentless positivity and lack of fear parts of her personality.) I can't find any estimates on the frequency of that, but around 20% of people have the single FAAH mutation that is basically a less strong version. The discussion about empathy is an interesting one. But I think treating it like it's some genetic binary thing is completely the wrong way to see it. Empathy, in some ways, is a cultivated skill. The Nazis were elected. Does this mean that Germans were born with less empathy, unable to empathize with the Jewish, disabled, Roma, queer, etc? No, it just means that society succeeded in turning them into an Other who nobody could empathize with. That is to say, I think that if you gave two identical twins entirely different upbringings they would end up with different kinds of empathy. So I think sure, perhaps Jo Cameron doesn't have some of the genetic material for things we may associate with empathy, but she seems to have taken on many empathy-adjacent values like selflessness and really caring about others. I think the thing with the daughter is just teenagers being teenagers. Having been a teenager once myself, I wouldn't read too far into it :)
- raducu 6y ago
  If I had to speculate, I'd say the lady has 90% of the hardware that enables empathy, just that she doesn't feel pain, she cannot empathize with pain and things deriving from pain, just like I can't empathize with bats using ecolocation. Perhaps she empathizes with other, more positive emotions. However, psychopats surely do feel pain, but they lack the hardware to feel the pain of others and much more. And sure, there's the fact that you can learn to voluntarily turn off your empathy.
- rpiguy 6y ago
  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation-causes-some-people-to-feel-naturally-high https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation... Some area of Africa is estimated at over 40% I am also almost sure I have the same double mutation. Positive all the time, pot never got me high, very even mood, always optimistic. But I am also very empathetic.

by raducu 6y ago

owenversteeg 6y ago

You're welcome! It is fascinating, isn't it? I should have clarified, I'm no Jo Cameron. I'm no different from your average person in how I feel physical pain and empathy. It's extremely rare to have what she has, I think there are only a handful of people in the world that have that. What's far more common, and what I believe I have (and what a few other people in this thread have) is a double FAAH mutation. (That makes up the relentless positivity and lack of fear parts of her personality.) I can't find any estimates on the frequency of that, but around 20% of people have the single FAAH mutation that is basically a less strong version. The discussion about empathy is an interesting one. But I think treating it like it's some genetic binary thing is completely the wrong way to see it. Empathy, in some ways, is a cultivated skill. The Nazis were elected. Does this mean that Germans were born with less empathy, unable to empathize with the Jewish, disabled, Roma, queer, etc? No, it just means that society succeeded in turning them into an Other who nobody could empathize with. That is to say, I think that if you gave two identical twins entirely different upbringings they would end up with different kinds of empathy. So I think sure, perhaps Jo Cameron doesn't have some of the genetic material for things we may associate with empathy, but she seems to have taken on many empathy-adjacent values like selflessness and really caring about others. I think the thing with the daughter is just teenagers being teenagers. Having been a teenager once myself, I wouldn't read too far into it :)

raducu 6y ago
If I had to speculate, I'd say the lady has 90% of the hardware that enables empathy, just that she doesn't feel pain, she cannot empathize with pain and things deriving from pain, just like I can't empathize with bats using ecolocation. Perhaps she empathizes with other, more positive emotions. However, psychopats surely do feel pain, but they lack the hardware to feel the pain of others and much more. And sure, there's the fact that you can learn to voluntarily turn off your empathy.
rpiguy 6y ago
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation-causes-some-people-to-feel-naturally-high https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation... Some area of Africa is estimated at over 40% I am also almost sure I have the same double mutation. Positive all the time, pot never got me high, very even mood, always optimistic. But I am also very empathetic.