> Ruinous Empathy is seeing somebody with their fly down, but, not wanting to embarrass them, saying nothing, with the result that 15 more people see them with

> Ruinous Empathy is seeing somebody with their fly down, but, not wanting to embarrass them, saying nothing, with the result that 15 more people see them with their fly down — more embarrassing for them. So, not so “nice” after all. It's not the empathy here that's ruinous but the tactic that it motivated. By that standard any feeling can be ruinous and there's nothing special about empathy in that. So why single out empathy?