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And for all kids and adults and elderly, empathy needs to be encouraged, practiced and nurtured.
by mnsc 1y ago
And for all kids and adults and elderly, empathy needs to be encouraged, practiced and nurtured.
- spookie 1y agoYou have put into words way better what I was attempting to say at first. So yeah, this.
- frumplestlatz 1y agoSociety is hardly suffering from a lack of empathy these days. If anything, its institutionalization has become pathological. I’m not surprised that it makes LLMs less logically coherent. Empathy exists to short-circuit reasoning about inconvenient truths as to better maintain small tight-knit familial groups.
- lawlessone 1y ago>its institutionalization has become pathological. any examples? because i am hard pressed to find it.
- allan_s 1y agoA lot of companies I know have "kindness/empathy" in their value or even promote it as part of the company philosophy to the point it has already become a cliché (and so new companies explicitly avoid to put it explicitly) I can say also a lot of DEI trainings were about being empathic to the minorities.
- bmicraft 1y agoBut the problem there isn't empathy as a value, the problem is that is comes across as very clearly fake in most cases
- ACow_Adonis 1y agoWell yes, but that's not actually empathy. Empathy has to be felt by an actual person. Indeed its literally the contrary/opposite case. They have to emphasise it specifically because they are reacting to the observation that they, as a giant congregate artificial profit-seeking legally-defined entity as opposed to a real one, are incapable of feeling such. Do you also think that family values are ever present at startups that say we're like a family? It's specifically a psychological and social conditioning response to try to compensate for the things they're recognised as lacking...
- allan_s 1y agoYes hence why it's an example of >its institutionalization has become pathological.
- kergonath 1y ago> A lot of companies I know have "kindness/empathy" in their value or even promote it as part of the company philosophy to the point it has already become a cliché (and so new companies explicitly avoid to put it explicitly) That’s purely performative, though. As sincere as the net zero goals from last year that were dropped as soon as Trump provided some cover. It is not empathy, it is a façade.
- terminalshort 1y agoI think that's what he means when he says > its institutionalization has become pathological. Empathy isn't strong for people you don't know personally and near nonexistent for people you don't even know exist. That's why we are just fine with buying products made my near slave labor to save a bit of money. It's also why those cringe DEI trainings can never rise above the level of performative empathy. Empathy just isn't capable of generating enough cohesion in large organizations and you need to use the more rational and transactional tool of incentive alignment of self interest to corporate goals. But most people have trouble accepting that sort of lever of control on an emotional level because purely transactional relationships feel cold and unnatural. That's why you get cringe attempts to inject empathy into the corporate world where it clearly doesn't belong.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoOh lord, not you too. Do you have any knowledge of history and why there would be mandatory DEI trainings teaching people how to show empathy towards minorities? Please, come on. Tell me this isn’t the level of quality in humanity we have today.
- frumplestlatz 1y agoI know the historical rationale that’s cited, but DEI trainings aren’t neutral history lessons or empathy-building exercises. They’re rooted in an unfalsifiable, quasi-religious ideology that assigns moral worth by group identity, rewrites history to fit its narrative, and enforces compliance rather than fostering genuine understanding. Since they also function as a jobs program for those willing to find and punish ideological deviance, they incentivize division — a prime example of pathological institutionalized empathy.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoWait, hold on. 1) the word is “empathetic,” not “empathic.” 2) are you saying that people should not be empathetic to minorities? Do you know why that is what’s taught in DEI trainings? I’m serious: do you have even the first clue or historical context for why people are painstakingly taught to show empathy to minorities in DEI trainings?
- allan_s 1y agoYou know I can explain why a murderer has killed someone in her twisted system of value without myself adhering to said system Also don't be so harsh on interpreting what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's not the job of a company to "train" about moral value, while bring itself amoral by definition. Why are you interpreting that as me saying "nobody should teach moral value" Also I don't see why as a French working in France, a French company should "train" me with a DEI focused on US history (US minorities are not French one) just because the main investors are US-based
- frumplestlatz 1y agoThere is no end of examples. The first that comes to mind is the “Dear Colleague” letter around Title IX that drove colleges to replace evidence-based adjudication with deference to subjective claims and gutted due process on college campuses for over a decade. Another is the push to eliminate standardized testing from admissions. Or the “de-incarceration” efforts that reduce or remove jail time for extremely serious crimes.
- spankalee 1y agoWhat do any of those things have to do with empathy?
- frumplestlatz 1y agoAll three replaced impartial rules with empathy-driven bias.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoWAIT. Do you know why de-incarceration is a program? Do you have any idea? It’s because the evidence says overwhelmingly that incarceration is a substandard way to induce behavior change, and that removing people from incarceration and providing them with supportive skills training has a much, much higher rate of reducing recidivism and decreasing violence.
- frumplestlatz 1y agoThe evidence does not overwhelmingly say that. Empathy-biased thinking says that.
- ac794 1y agoWhat is the evidence that empathy exists to short-circuit reasoning? Empathy is about understanding someone else's perspective.
- frumplestlatz 1y agoEmpathy biases reasoning toward in-group cohesion, overriding dispassionate reasoning that could threaten group unity. Empathy is not required for logical coherence. It exists to override what one might otherwise rationally conclude. Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought. [edit] Modeling someone’s cognition or experience is not empathy. Empathy is the emotional process of identifying with someone, not the cognitive act of modeling them.
- Forgeties79 1y agoThis reads like something Ayn Rand would say. Take that how you will.
- mnsc 1y agoI have a friend who reads ayn and agrees with her drug riddled thinking. But I still try to connect with him through empathic understanding (understanding with a person, not about him) and that lets me keep up the relation and not destroying it by pointing out and gloating about every instance where he is a good selfless person. :)
- Forgeties79 1y agoYou’re right, there are nicer ways I could have made my point. Though I can’t help but point out there’s a little bit of irony in throwing a “:)” at the end of your comment when commenting on my tone haha
- mnsc 1y agoOh I don't meant to do that I think. I just thought of that friend due to how hard it is to emphathize with him during discussions about rand/objectivism. It's so non-human to take egoism to that extreme. But I still try and I don't consider him stupid/inhuman for holding those beliefs.
- PaulHoule 1y agoSome would argue empathy can be a bad thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Empathy As it frequently is coded relative to a tribe. Pooh Pooh people’s fear of crime and disorder for instance and those people will think you don’t have empathy for them and vote for somebody else.
- webstrand 1y agoIt feels like he just defines empathy in a way that makes it easy to attack. Most people when they talk about empathy in a positive way, they're talking about the ability to place oneself in another's shoes and understand why they are doing what they are doing or not doing, not necessarily the emotional mirroring aspect he's defined empathy to be.
- davorak 1y ago> not necessarily the emotional mirroring aspect he's defined empathy to be. The way the wikipedia article describes Bloom's definition is less generous than what you have here > For Bloom, "[e]mpathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does"[1]: 16 So for bloom it is not necessarily even accurately mirroring another's emotions, but only what you think there emotions are. > Bloom also explores the neurological differences between feeling and understanding, which are central to demonstrating the limitations of empathy. This seems to artificial separate empathy and understanding in a way that does not align with common usage and I would argue also makes for a less useful definition in that I would then need new words to describe what I currently use 'empathy' for.
- username332211 1y agoSurely you can empathize with an act? In fact it's probably a requirement in order to be able to enjoy cinema and theater. And actors aren't the only ones that pretend to be something they are not. If you don't want to distinguish between empathy and understanding, a new term has to be introduced about mirroring the emotions of a mirage. I'm not sure the word for that exists?