4 ms·

I just finished teaching a class this morning and this came up during a design thinking segment. It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend

I just finished teaching a class this morning and this came up during a design thinking segment. It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. When I ask if anyone feels comfortable explaining the difference, it always ends in a beautiful disaster because that one person feeling brave enough to go for it, usually completely derails, only to be taken over by another student taking it into a similar dead-end. It almost always ends with them agreeing that this is a complex topic and therefore impossible to pin down. I then bring up the scenario of someone who lost their dog (in a tragic freak accident) a while back... A sympathic friend asks them how they cope, or feel, they acknowledge the fact that there is a process of grief happening. They show sympathy by observing your state from the outside. The empathic friend stops by to check how they can help and then leaves with the rest of the dog food. They're able to walk a moment in your shoes and see the problems you're facing. Which, I think, should be a fundamental quality of a good product manager, planner or user researcher. Anyways, dumb teaching stuff, but I kinda like the example.

hosh 4y ago
That’s an interesting story. I think the key thing missing here is the notion of “well-being”. When designing with well-being in mind (of end-user, community, society, ecology), then sympathy, empathy, and compassion all makes more sense. (Though I disagree with how Chopra distinguishes among those terms). I don’t think males are incapable of it. We’re socialized to reject it, but we all need it in some way or another.
cjmcqueen 4y ago
As I look at the other examples given here and reflect on my own Christian beliefs, I see a common understanding that compassion or active empathy involves action. Sympathy is nice, but it seems most folks here agree it is at the level of understanding and doesn't involve the creativity of action. I think this is what Jesus was teaching with the "Good Samaritan" parable: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/luke/10 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/luke... And, I think a masculine response to sympathy/empathy has never been expressed more (worst) than in the classic movie Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire... the scene probably doesn't play as well as it did back in 1957. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXW2S_KU4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXW2S_KU4o I agree this is a skill to develop if you really want to excel at product management, planning, user research, education, medicine... anywhere you need to account for the human condition.
fkcgnad 4y ago
>It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary. You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They don't, all words are made up. It's like I make up this word "mokadan" and I define it as the difference in emotion between what a dog feels for its human owner and what a human owner feels for his dog. You see what I did there? you can talk about that mokadan for days trying to pin down whats going on with the word but it's just something that's arbitrarily made up by me. I can make up other vague concepts as well and assign it random vocab like "somofin": the shape that is exactly in between a hexagon and semicircle. And now a group of people can spend days trying draw what that shape exactly is. Sort of a pointless endeavor down what I call linguistic trap doors that disguise themselves as deep concepts. The thing with human language is that all of it is made up. All language consists of made up words and symbols attached to arbitrary definitions. The languages are so entrenched in our brains that we often can't see the difference between actual concepts and vague vocabulary. So often We get stuck in discussing what is simply linguistic phenomena like what is the difference between "sympathy" and "empathy." Other trap doors include what is "life" or what is "sentience". The vagueness of the word is arbitrary because humans picked to define the word vaguely. The vagueness is manufactured, it's artificial. There's no real point in trying to unroll all of it. You commented on how you were in a male dominated class implying that there's something inherit with males being too simplistic and laughing off the discussion. I think the opposite is true. The "males" who laughed it off are in a higher plane of meta understanding and they comprehend the pointlessness of trying to demarcate vague vocabulary. They were right to laugh it off in my opinion. I was in a class that were mostly females and when they tried to veer off the discussion into one of these linguistic traps. I attempted to explain to them the concept of the linguistic trap they were falling for but my efforts were in vain. They were perplexed by my explanation and still didn't understand. They continued down that trap door and ended up wasting everyone's time.
- mittermayr 4y ago
  Well, I don’t agree. Specifically on your point that this is a discussion about the meaning of words. It’s a discussion about the concepts and scenarios described by those words. We can call it anything we want, but those “concepts” we describe are not the same things. I do not care what word anyone wants to use to describe something — as long as it still ensures we’re talking about the same thing. I don’t run a philosophy or Latin class, it’s not about letters and words, at all. That’s entirely beside the point.

hosh 4y ago

That’s an interesting story. I think the key thing missing here is the notion of “well-being”. When designing with well-being in mind (of end-user, community, society, ecology), then sympathy, empathy, and compassion all makes more sense. (Though I disagree with how Chopra distinguishes among those terms). I don’t think males are incapable of it. We’re socialized to reject it, but we all need it in some way or another.

cjmcqueen 4y ago

As I look at the other examples given here and reflect on my own Christian beliefs, I see a common understanding that compassion or active empathy involves action. Sympathy is nice, but it seems most folks here agree it is at the level of understanding and doesn't involve the creativity of action. I think this is what Jesus was teaching with the "Good Samaritan" parable: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/luke/10 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/luke... And, I think a masculine response to sympathy/empathy has never been expressed more (worst) than in the classic movie Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire... the scene probably doesn't play as well as it did back in 1957. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXW2S_KU4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXW2S_KU4o I agree this is a skill to develop if you really want to excel at product management, planning, user research, education, medicine... anywhere you need to account for the human condition.

fkcgnad 4y ago

>It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary. You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They don't, all words are made up. It's like I make up this word "mokadan" and I define it as the difference in emotion between what a dog feels for its human owner and what a human owner feels for his dog. You see what I did there? you can talk about that mokadan for days trying to pin down whats going on with the word but it's just something that's arbitrarily made up by me. I can make up other vague concepts as well and assign it random vocab like "somofin": the shape that is exactly in between a hexagon and semicircle. And now a group of people can spend days trying draw what that shape exactly is. Sort of a pointless endeavor down what I call linguistic trap doors that disguise themselves as deep concepts. The thing with human language is that all of it is made up. All language consists of made up words and symbols attached to arbitrary definitions. The languages are so entrenched in our brains that we often can't see the difference between actual concepts and vague vocabulary. So often We get stuck in discussing what is simply linguistic phenomena like what is the difference between "sympathy" and "empathy." Other trap doors include what is "life" or what is "sentience". The vagueness of the word is arbitrary because humans picked to define the word vaguely. The vagueness is manufactured, it's artificial. There's no real point in trying to unroll all of it. You commented on how you were in a male dominated class implying that there's something inherit with males being too simplistic and laughing off the discussion. I think the opposite is true. The "males" who laughed it off are in a higher plane of meta understanding and they comprehend the pointlessness of trying to demarcate vague vocabulary. They were right to laugh it off in my opinion. I was in a class that were mostly females and when they tried to veer off the discussion into one of these linguistic traps. I attempted to explain to them the concept of the linguistic trap they were falling for but my efforts were in vain. They were perplexed by my explanation and still didn't understand. They continued down that trap door and ended up wasting everyone's time.

mittermayr 4y ago
Well, I don’t agree. Specifically on your point that this is a discussion about the meaning of words. It’s a discussion about the concepts and scenarios described by those words. We can call it anything we want, but those “concepts” we describe are not the same things. I do not care what word anyone wants to use to describe something — as long as it still ensures we’re talking about the same thing. I don’t run a philosophy or Latin class, it’s not about letters and words, at all. That’s entirely beside the point.