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Its just speculation of course. But 2 angles: 1. Communication capacity is the reason empathic capability is important. Human-human communication relies on
by jonmc12 15y ago
Its just speculation of course. But 2 angles:
1. Communication capacity is the reason empathic capability is important. Human-human communication relies on perspective-taking and evolves over time as our brains get more exposure to people. Emotional empathic capacity is just the bootstrap for perspective-taking. If human cultural norms evolve for communication capacity, then there is a case that empathic capacity will simply use too much cognitive capacity to fit within these cultural norms.
2. We communicate more and more with non-human devices than humans. I can't even imagine what this looks like 100 yrs from now or 1000, but there is a chance that natural selection will favor brains optimized for communicating with devices and machines where emotional empathy is not present.
- icebraining 15y agoNatural selection would only benefit those who are more able to communicate with devices if that trait led them to produce more offspring than the people without it; that's the selection part. Do you see people who have a more natural ability to work and understand computers as having more kids than the rest of the population? If anything, it's the opposite.
- jonmc12 15y agoI meant selection criteria in the same sense that ability to succeed in college may be selection criteria today. It does not require birthing more kids, rather a consistent use of this selection criteria from generation to generation in a subset of the population. If machines are performing all the work, and being able to send 10M messages per day to these machines is a requisite for economic success, some parents will filter heavily for this criteria in he best interest of their children.
- wtracy 15y agoI would say that we communicate with other humans at least as much today as in the past. We just are spending more and more time using "high-tech" communication mediums that filter a lot of the nuance and nearly all of the non-verbal cues from conversation. Arguably, the need to pick up on emotions through text- or audio-only communication might make empathy more important.