3 ms·

> unable to continue the gradual march of empathy to larger and larger groups that humanity has thus far been able to maintain and is critical for our long-ter

> unable to continue the gradual march of empathy to larger and larger groups that humanity has thus far been able to maintain and is critical for our long-term survival I'm having a hard time parsing this, but I think you're arguing that the world is getting less empathetic, and therefore less cooperative? I disagree, and think the reverse is true. The more we can disregard emotions and work as cogs in a machine, the more productive we ultimately are. It's exactly this capability that allows us to cooperate in groups of many hundreds of thousands: the ability to interface with each other not as emotionally complex primates, but as executors of a function.

idiotsecant 5y ago
No, i'm not saying the world is getting less empathetic. I am saying that in order for humanity to survive as more people interact with more people it is necessary for empathy to increase at a similar rate and scale. Natural human empathy has very, very low limits. You can only really care about 7 or 8 people at any given time. The rest is social constructs that allow a sort of abstract empathy where in-groups are gradually expanded. Human civilization simply doesn't work without this kind of social construct. We degrade to feces-slinging apes pretty quickly.