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Empathy for Dummies

63 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

brudgers 1y ago
But having empathy does not necessarily mean you need to change the way you behave or feel. Growth does and that's what "being more empathetic" requires.
- patcon 1y ago
  I read this as a framing that allows the author and people like them to warm to the idea, as part of a longer iterative process -- Understanding first, then decide what's warranted, assess how you feel about the thing you did, repeat. I can't say if this affects the author, but I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often <3 I share this as someone who is [un]fortunate to have easy access to empathy, but also has some tendencies of "pathological demand avoidance". For me, empathy is an innate skill, and I am who I am because my identity is shaped by how I use it to anticipate needs in advance, so that I can react more generously (and won't be caught by surprise when someone "demands" something of me that I didn't expect)
  - balamatom 1y ago
    >decide what's warranted Bingo. Having the right to decide what's warranted in a situation a.k.a. essential human autonomy: a thing which isn't meant to somehow cancel out with being considerate of others or having a role in society. That's the question which IMO the post and most comments here are either vaguely getting at, or studiously avoiding. It's essential to empathize. Few things are more worthwhile than understanding others. It's by empathy that I've learned how when someone actually says something about "eMpAtHy" at you, they're usually trying to scam you out of genuine emotional labor. Beware this - chances are your own sorry ass would be your only recompense. Tbh I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say this particular one to me (or anywhere around me, maybe I'm too unapproachable hehe) but do I tend to hear "you should be more empathetic" as "someone other than you has already decided what's warranted, which you're supposed to telepathically infer, except there's no such person and we don't actually understand in what ways we need you to modify your behavior or why; so you're gonna have to come up with that by yourself, too - on your own time ofc" This happens because they don't have sufficient empathy to have a mature conversation with you about what's what, but have heard the word on the influence grapevine and are quick as ever to brand themselves with it. It's always fun to pretend to take these dog whistles in good faith, the Pavlovians don't know what hit 'em. Your own dam treadmill, that's wha
  - brudgers 1y ago
    I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often Lifelong direct and intimate familiarity with a person of the “neurotype” you describe is actually what drew forth my comment. To be more clear, a real person with the “being told what to do” interpretation of the world you mention was forced to my thought by what the author said.
Gregaros 1y ago
* On many occasions, I have been told to “be more empathetic.” When I ask why, I typically get this reaction: This is a ridiculous question. I am not going to answer it because it is so ridiculous. Empathy is the right thing to do! You should feel bad for that person. We’re humans, after all. These explanations never really helped. * Even after reading this, I am not sure the author really gets what is behind the request.
- Lerc 1y ago
  Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be. My take on it is to remember that the people you are talking to are real people with reasons for doing things. Very few people do things that they think are wrong at the time of doing them. I would guess that the single most common cause of bad faith arguments comes from people jumping to the conclusion that the person they are dealing with is acting in bad faith. Reflecting on it some more perhaps you can boil it down to the implications of dealing with real people. If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people? If it turns out your motivation is, in fact, to hurt people then the issue isn't empathy but your own motivations. Reflecting on your motivations and what you feel like you should be doing as a person is the path to take here.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    >Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be. I think this might have to just be axiomatic. At the bottom of every system is an axiom, whether it's identity in mathematics or "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in USican politics or "empathy is good and to be pursued" in interpersonal relationships. >If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people? I dare say that if your mission is actually to hurt people as much as you can empathy will help you a lot in that goal because it lets you define strategies tailored to hurt the target based on their feelings. Without empathy you're limited to thinking about what would hurt you and then applying it to other people.
yapyap 1y ago
If people (multiple)are straight up telling you to be more empathetic it probably means you are being a dick.
- mariusor 1y ago
  ...or neurodivergent. Please try to be more empathetic!
  - balamatom 1y ago
    >neurodivergent Don't teach HR any more new words, please.
  - chrisweekly 1y ago
    Er, no. Respectfully, "neurodivergent" describes a characteristic, but "being a dick" (or "more empathetic") describes behavior.
    - mariusor 1y ago
      Let's not split hairs now, but oftentimes disorders that are grouped together under the pop nomenclature of "neuro-divergence" are characterized by very direct speech which makes no affordances for the way the words would be interpreted by the dialogue partner. This is many times perceived by less empathetic people as "being a dick".
      - hackable_sand 1y ago
        No. Direct speech and "being a dick" is a fairly obvious distinction to neurotypicals.
        mariusor 1y ago
        Not in my experience. And that's not necessarily saying much, but at least I had the courtesy of adding some qualifiers to my previous comment in order to avoid sweeping generalizations.
wishgreen 1y ago
TLDR: Empathy and sympathy are different things. When most people ask form empathy, they are usually asking for sympathy. Glad we needed an essay on that.
Fricken 1y ago
Empathy is not sympathy. If my sports team beats your sports team, I can empathize with your feelings of loss but I don't sympathize. We win and you lose, lol. Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's like. I can imagine what it might be like, but I'm just imagining things. Nonetheless, I can still sympathize.
- user2722 1y ago
  Agree in general. But if I'm really sad my team, which played very well recently but had a disastrous game, lost, you can not be so aggravating like you could be if I had taunted you before yours team sucked (and not in a jest manner, of course). Samething happens on both cases, one deserves less sympathy for my feelings. Is this being an empath? Idk. But if we can dial the knob of fun (for us and others) up and the dial of sadness for others (who don't deserve the sadness) a bit down, you're not lying nor faking, just trying to redirect a bit of your happiness for others too feel less bad. Which doesn't mean you can't be a playful ass and say "yah, they had been playing very well, it's kinda a pity. But my team still won. Come on, the winner pays you a beer and the loser pays me another! Wink, wink!" My take at least. USA is either regressing or too far along in the future. I'm not sure which.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
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- ericyd 1y ago
  Wouldn't it still be possible to empathize with a terminal patient by recalling experiences of powerlessness, fear, grief, anger, etc? I thought empathy was not limited to experiences you've literally had, but could be extended to understanding the underlying emotions another person is feeling?
- uberman 1y ago
  You have it backwards at least as how the terms are defined. I admit though that they are often used as synonyms. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sympathy-empathy-difference https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sympathy-empathy-dif...
deleted 1y ago
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drakonka 1y ago
I always thought of empathy as being able to really relate, emotionally, to what another person is feeling/going through. As a kid I'd sometimes see people crying together on TV when something bad happens to one of them and wonder if that really happens in real life. Even though it wasn't something that came naturally to me in the past, I still tried to be a decent person and adjust my behavior where relevant, and tried to learn to comfort people even when I didn't really "feel" much. I just had to reason/logic about how a person might feel sometimes rather than intuitively "get" it. Over the last couple of years, that kind of empathy has stated coming more easily/naturally to me. On one hand it seems to have unlocked a richer range of relatability, but on the other it also seemed to open the door more to anxiety, self-doubt, and other not so easy emotions that I didn't really feel much of before.
- vintermann 1y ago
  Yes. I'd go so far as to say empathy has nothing to do with being nice, it's simply the ability to feel, often involuntarily, what other people feel. It's the part of you which makes you wince when you see someone stub their toe. It's a type of feelings which can inspire you to be nice to other people, but it can also actually make you not nice to them. When people make you feel things you don't want to feel. An example of that is "cringe" - you see someone do something embarrassing, which would at least have embarrassed you if you were in their situation, even if it doesn't embarrass them. And so you feel vicarious embarrassment, embarrassment on their behalf - and you can easily get angry at them for this. At an extreme, we may even dehumanize people, try to stop thinking of them as the same thing as us, because involuntary empathy with them would otherwise mess us up emotionally.
  - balamatom 1y ago
    >vicarious embarrassment Boy did I hate this one being taught to me back in the day, by my country's first privately owned TV channel.
    - b2ccb2 1y ago
      In German we have a word more specific, I'd argue: "Fremdschämen". It means literally "foreign-shame". It is the feeling of exactly that, seeing someone doing something embarrassing, and feeling ashamed for them in their perspective. Which I would say is a form of empathy.
mallowdram 1y ago
The collapse of Theory of Mind entails the development of a new form of words and explanations that current language is unable to deliver.
- balamatom 1y ago
  Theory of mind: it's just a theory!
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    Worse than that, it doesn't exist, yet it's a scientific theory based in empirical evidence. Which is how only a new language and level of explanation solves that paradox.
    - balamatom 1y ago
      Hey, you're fun! :-)
      - mallowdram 1y ago
        we gotta slay some dragon, otherwise we're just a pack of lazy apes
nilirl 1y ago
Instead of asking people why they're asking you "to be more empathetic", maybe you should ask yourself why you're prompting such a request?
- balamatom 1y ago
  That's a tautology and already answered in TFA. You're prompting the request because you are not being sufficiently obedient.
  - nilirl 1y ago
    That's setting up a straw man. By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs. Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
    - Rendello 1y ago
      I think that's a good point. I think the author says a lot of good things about empathy in the article, the nature of which goes deeper than "how may a linguist view the word?", but if they're being prompted with "be more empathetic" often, perhaps their behaviour really should be modified.
    - balamatom 1y ago
      >Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" Because that's the first step to getting your needs ignored. And in conversations where "empathy" is brought up you're usually exactly one step from getting your needs ignored. If you're doing something wrong, and I decide to do something about it, minimum decency dictates I make sure you understand what it is. Bringing into it some vague abstract notion that everyone with half a critical mind turns out to have a whole personal exegesis about, but I only know about it from everyone else? Now there's a clear signal that nobody in the room actually cares how people are treated.
dogleash 1y ago
"Empathy" is one of those words that's used as a proxy for a lot of related ideas, but splitting those hairs can be interpreted by some as disagreement with those ideas themselves. I've witnessed people extol the virtues of empathy to me, while on other occasions they talk about people they dislike with venom and disdain. A level of disdain that I have never held in my heart against anyone, but they throw it around casually. And they're gonna tell me about empathy? Sometimes you just gotta agree with people out loud and figure out what you believe in offline.
- Froztnova 1y ago
  I've observed this as well. It feels like we need an equivalent to "humble bragging" for empathy. Empathy bragging? It's like they've tricked themselves into thinking that they're very empathetic when what they really feel is particularly strong in-group/outgroup affinity/antipathy.
- weeb 1y ago
  There are commonly used terms for different types of empathy[1] which makes these conversations a lot easier. People often generalise, or misinterpret a lower level of one type of empathy for another - for example, some autistic individuals have lower cognitive empathy but heightened levels of affective empathy. The definition in this blogpost focuses entirely on cognitive empathy, but I bet the people telling them to be "more empathetic" were talking more about compassionate empathy. [1] https://embrace-autism.com/the-different-types-of-empathy/ https://embrace-autism.com/the-different-types-of-empathy/
- rented_mule 1y ago
  Isn't it possible for someone to spot a growth opportunity for someone else without they themselves being perfect, or maybe even good, at that thing? I've certainly benefited from useful ideas in my core area of expertise from people who were nowhere close to being experts in that same topic.
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graboy 1y ago
To the extent empathy is "do onto others as others would do onto you", empathy has a moral justification derived from Kant's categorical imperative.
ajuc 1y ago
> Empathy is when you try your best to build an accurate model of someone else’s world in order to better understand them. That's cognitive empathy. What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others. It's not even that important to experience actual emotions of others. Even empathetic people are often mistaken about what emotions other people feel. Somebody might be sad for different reason than you think. Or they might actually be happy just pretending to be sad. An empathetic observer would still feel sad for that person, and it's still empathy even if the information it's based on is wrong. What's important is the intent and the consequences of experiencing the possible emotions of other people. If you feel bad when somebody else is suffering, you're more likely to treat them well and less likely to abuse them. That's what people are asking you for - to treat others better and not to abuse them. BTW some people don't have emotional empathy, and it's not their fault. You can still be a decent human being. It's just harder.
- deleted 1y ago
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- balamatom 1y ago
  >What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others. And that, kids, is called structural violence. Nothing in the invisible magical social contract you sign at birth gives anyone the right to require you to experience an inner state of their choice.
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mbfg 1y ago
TLDR: I can manipulate you more for my benefit by being empathetic.
erokar 1y ago
The premise of this piece and the way it's written gives me the feeling this applies to neurodivergent people on the autism spectrum, not dummies in general.
- wildpeaks 1y ago
  The title is just a reference to the popular collection of books "XYZ for Dummies", it became a meme in the 1990s-2000s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies You probably even saw some of them around, they have a very distinctive yellow cover.
apwell23 1y ago
> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.
- palmotea 1y ago
  >> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. > well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes. You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.
    - hackable_sand 1y ago
      No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake.
      - palmotea 1y ago
        >>> You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary. >> its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead. > No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake. Yeah. Also "and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary," does not mean that behavior has to have been directed towards you. If you're charitable by default to people, you can make friends and hear about things that happened to others. Also your friends can help you avoid working at places that are just dens of snakes. To put it in gamer software engineer terms: having friends can be like having a wallhack (among many other better and more important things).
cindyllm 1y ago
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bitlax 1y ago
So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?
- balamatom 1y ago
  To demonstrate that you are in fact unable to deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer, who is probably a much more fascinating human being than the role you have attributed him in your thought experiment (or in your society) would ever permit you to comprehend.
  - bitlax 1y ago
    So the point WAS to just make stuff up to excuse bad behavior!
    - bitlax 1y ago
      "I'm sorry ma'am. Your son is dead, but the drug dealer is FASCINATING. No you won't be able to tell."
      - balamatom 1y ago
        Well, considering her son ended up on fentanyl, probably not very able to tell some things, yeah. "I'm sorry kid, I know you probably have aspirations and all that shit, but due to a host of technical reasons we don't care about any of that. Here's this fentanyl instead, either shoot it or go sell it to the next loser. And say hi to your mom from me - she's an absolutely remarkable woman."
        bitlax 1y ago
        There goes that empathy. Glad you do in fact realize that dealing fentanyl is wrong. Not something fantastic people do. Edit: After your edit you seem to have found a rationale for rounding up and executing drug dealers "because reasons" so I think we're all done here.
coldtea 1y ago
The treatment of the subject smells like ASD
LennyHenrysNuts 1y ago
Having empathy for people outside of the closest dozen or so people to you is mental illness. Humans were designed to operate in a tribe.

63 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

But having empathy does not necessarily mean you need to change the way you behave or feel. Growth does and that's what "being more empathetic" requires.

patcon 1y ago
I read this as a framing that allows the author and people like them to warm to the idea, as part of a longer iterative process -- Understanding first, then decide what's warranted, assess how you feel about the thing you did, repeat. I can't say if this affects the author, but I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often <3 I share this as someone who is [un]fortunate to have easy access to empathy, but also has some tendencies of "pathological demand avoidance". For me, empathy is an innate skill, and I am who I am because my identity is shaped by how I use it to anticipate needs in advance, so that I can react more generously (and won't be caught by surprise when someone "demands" something of me that I didn't expect)
- balamatom 1y ago
  >decide what's warranted Bingo. Having the right to decide what's warranted in a situation a.k.a. essential human autonomy: a thing which isn't meant to somehow cancel out with being considerate of others or having a role in society. That's the question which IMO the post and most comments here are either vaguely getting at, or studiously avoiding. It's essential to empathize. Few things are more worthwhile than understanding others. It's by empathy that I've learned how when someone actually says something about "eMpAtHy" at you, they're usually trying to scam you out of genuine emotional labor. Beware this - chances are your own sorry ass would be your only recompense. Tbh I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say this particular one to me (or anywhere around me, maybe I'm too unapproachable hehe) but do I tend to hear "you should be more empathetic" as "someone other than you has already decided what's warranted, which you're supposed to telepathically infer, except there's no such person and we don't actually understand in what ways we need you to modify your behavior or why; so you're gonna have to come up with that by yourself, too - on your own time ofc" This happens because they don't have sufficient empathy to have a mature conversation with you about what's what, but have heard the word on the influence grapevine and are quick as ever to brand themselves with it. It's always fun to pretend to take these dog whistles in good faith, the Pavlovians don't know what hit 'em. Your own dam treadmill, that's wha
- brudgers 1y ago
  I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often Lifelong direct and intimate familiarity with a person of the “neurotype” you describe is actually what drew forth my comment. To be more clear, a real person with the “being told what to do” interpretation of the world you mention was forced to my thought by what the author said.

Gregaros 1y ago

* On many occasions, I have been told to “be more empathetic.” When I ask why, I typically get this reaction: This is a ridiculous question. I am not going to answer it because it is so ridiculous. Empathy is the right thing to do! You should feel bad for that person. We’re humans, after all. These explanations never really helped. * Even after reading this, I am not sure the author really gets what is behind the request.

Lerc 1y ago
Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be. My take on it is to remember that the people you are talking to are real people with reasons for doing things. Very few people do things that they think are wrong at the time of doing them. I would guess that the single most common cause of bad faith arguments comes from people jumping to the conclusion that the person they are dealing with is acting in bad faith. Reflecting on it some more perhaps you can boil it down to the implications of dealing with real people. If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people? If it turns out your motivation is, in fact, to hurt people then the issue isn't empathy but your own motivations. Reflecting on your motivations and what you feel like you should be doing as a person is the path to take here.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  >Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be. I think this might have to just be axiomatic. At the bottom of every system is an axiom, whether it's identity in mathematics or "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in USican politics or "empathy is good and to be pursued" in interpersonal relationships. >If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people? I dare say that if your mission is actually to hurt people as much as you can empathy will help you a lot in that goal because it lets you define strategies tailored to hurt the target based on their feelings. Without empathy you're limited to thinking about what would hurt you and then applying it to other people.

yapyap 1y ago

If people (multiple)are straight up telling you to be more empathetic it probably means you are being a dick.

mariusor 1y ago
...or neurodivergent. Please try to be more empathetic!
- balamatom 1y ago
  >neurodivergent Don't teach HR any more new words, please.
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  Er, no. Respectfully, "neurodivergent" describes a characteristic, but "being a dick" (or "more empathetic") describes behavior.
  - mariusor 1y ago
    Let's not split hairs now, but oftentimes disorders that are grouped together under the pop nomenclature of "neuro-divergence" are characterized by very direct speech which makes no affordances for the way the words would be interpreted by the dialogue partner. This is many times perceived by less empathetic people as "being a dick".
    - hackable_sand 1y ago
      No. Direct speech and "being a dick" is a fairly obvious distinction to neurotypicals.
      - mariusor 1y ago
        Not in my experience. And that's not necessarily saying much, but at least I had the courtesy of adding some qualifiers to my previous comment in order to avoid sweeping generalizations.

wishgreen 1y ago

TLDR: Empathy and sympathy are different things. When most people ask form empathy, they are usually asking for sympathy. Glad we needed an essay on that.

Fricken 1y ago

Empathy is not sympathy. If my sports team beats your sports team, I can empathize with your feelings of loss but I don't sympathize. We win and you lose, lol. Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's like. I can imagine what it might be like, but I'm just imagining things. Nonetheless, I can still sympathize.

user2722 1y ago
Agree in general. But if I'm really sad my team, which played very well recently but had a disastrous game, lost, you can not be so aggravating like you could be if I had taunted you before yours team sucked (and not in a jest manner, of course). Samething happens on both cases, one deserves less sympathy for my feelings. Is this being an empath? Idk. But if we can dial the knob of fun (for us and others) up and the dial of sadness for others (who don't deserve the sadness) a bit down, you're not lying nor faking, just trying to redirect a bit of your happiness for others too feel less bad. Which doesn't mean you can't be a playful ass and say "yah, they had been playing very well, it's kinda a pity. But my team still won. Come on, the winner pays you a beer and the loser pays me another! Wink, wink!" My take at least. USA is either regressing or too far along in the future. I'm not sure which.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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ericyd 1y ago
Wouldn't it still be possible to empathize with a terminal patient by recalling experiences of powerlessness, fear, grief, anger, etc? I thought empathy was not limited to experiences you've literally had, but could be extended to understanding the underlying emotions another person is feeling?
uberman 1y ago
You have it backwards at least as how the terms are defined. I admit though that they are often used as synonyms. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sympathy-empathy-difference https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sympathy-empathy-dif...

deleted 1y ago

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drakonka 1y ago

I always thought of empathy as being able to really relate, emotionally, to what another person is feeling/going through. As a kid I'd sometimes see people crying together on TV when something bad happens to one of them and wonder if that really happens in real life. Even though it wasn't something that came naturally to me in the past, I still tried to be a decent person and adjust my behavior where relevant, and tried to learn to comfort people even when I didn't really "feel" much. I just had to reason/logic about how a person might feel sometimes rather than intuitively "get" it. Over the last couple of years, that kind of empathy has stated coming more easily/naturally to me. On one hand it seems to have unlocked a richer range of relatability, but on the other it also seemed to open the door more to anxiety, self-doubt, and other not so easy emotions that I didn't really feel much of before.

vintermann 1y ago
Yes. I'd go so far as to say empathy has nothing to do with being nice, it's simply the ability to feel, often involuntarily, what other people feel. It's the part of you which makes you wince when you see someone stub their toe. It's a type of feelings which can inspire you to be nice to other people, but it can also actually make you not nice to them. When people make you feel things you don't want to feel. An example of that is "cringe" - you see someone do something embarrassing, which would at least have embarrassed you if you were in their situation, even if it doesn't embarrass them. And so you feel vicarious embarrassment, embarrassment on their behalf - and you can easily get angry at them for this. At an extreme, we may even dehumanize people, try to stop thinking of them as the same thing as us, because involuntary empathy with them would otherwise mess us up emotionally.
- balamatom 1y ago
  >vicarious embarrassment Boy did I hate this one being taught to me back in the day, by my country's first privately owned TV channel.
  - b2ccb2 1y ago
    In German we have a word more specific, I'd argue: "Fremdschämen". It means literally "foreign-shame". It is the feeling of exactly that, seeing someone doing something embarrassing, and feeling ashamed for them in their perspective. Which I would say is a form of empathy.

mallowdram 1y ago

The collapse of Theory of Mind entails the development of a new form of words and explanations that current language is unable to deliver.

balamatom 1y ago
Theory of mind: it's just a theory!
- mallowdram 1y ago
  Worse than that, it doesn't exist, yet it's a scientific theory based in empirical evidence. Which is how only a new language and level of explanation solves that paradox.
  - balamatom 1y ago
    Hey, you're fun! :-)
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      we gotta slay some dragon, otherwise we're just a pack of lazy apes

nilirl 1y ago

Instead of asking people why they're asking you "to be more empathetic", maybe you should ask yourself why you're prompting such a request?

balamatom 1y ago
That's a tautology and already answered in TFA. You're prompting the request because you are not being sufficiently obedient.
- nilirl 1y ago
  That's setting up a straw man. By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs. Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
  - Rendello 1y ago
    I think that's a good point. I think the author says a lot of good things about empathy in the article, the nature of which goes deeper than "how may a linguist view the word?", but if they're being prompted with "be more empathetic" often, perhaps their behaviour really should be modified.
  - balamatom 1y ago
    >Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" Because that's the first step to getting your needs ignored. And in conversations where "empathy" is brought up you're usually exactly one step from getting your needs ignored. If you're doing something wrong, and I decide to do something about it, minimum decency dictates I make sure you understand what it is. Bringing into it some vague abstract notion that everyone with half a critical mind turns out to have a whole personal exegesis about, but I only know about it from everyone else? Now there's a clear signal that nobody in the room actually cares how people are treated.

dogleash 1y ago

"Empathy" is one of those words that's used as a proxy for a lot of related ideas, but splitting those hairs can be interpreted by some as disagreement with those ideas themselves. I've witnessed people extol the virtues of empathy to me, while on other occasions they talk about people they dislike with venom and disdain. A level of disdain that I have never held in my heart against anyone, but they throw it around casually. And they're gonna tell me about empathy? Sometimes you just gotta agree with people out loud and figure out what you believe in offline.

Froztnova 1y ago
I've observed this as well. It feels like we need an equivalent to "humble bragging" for empathy. Empathy bragging? It's like they've tricked themselves into thinking that they're very empathetic when what they really feel is particularly strong in-group/outgroup affinity/antipathy.
weeb 1y ago
There are commonly used terms for different types of empathy[1] which makes these conversations a lot easier. People often generalise, or misinterpret a lower level of one type of empathy for another - for example, some autistic individuals have lower cognitive empathy but heightened levels of affective empathy. The definition in this blogpost focuses entirely on cognitive empathy, but I bet the people telling them to be "more empathetic" were talking more about compassionate empathy. [1] https://embrace-autism.com/the-different-types-of-empathy/ https://embrace-autism.com/the-different-types-of-empathy/
rented_mule 1y ago
Isn't it possible for someone to spot a growth opportunity for someone else without they themselves being perfect, or maybe even good, at that thing? I've certainly benefited from useful ideas in my core area of expertise from people who were nowhere close to being experts in that same topic.
- deleted 1y ago
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graboy 1y ago

To the extent empathy is "do onto others as others would do onto you", empathy has a moral justification derived from Kant's categorical imperative.

ajuc 1y ago

> Empathy is when you try your best to build an accurate model of someone else’s world in order to better understand them. That's cognitive empathy. What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others. It's not even that important to experience actual emotions of others. Even empathetic people are often mistaken about what emotions other people feel. Somebody might be sad for different reason than you think. Or they might actually be happy just pretending to be sad. An empathetic observer would still feel sad for that person, and it's still empathy even if the information it's based on is wrong. What's important is the intent and the consequences of experiencing the possible emotions of other people. If you feel bad when somebody else is suffering, you're more likely to treat them well and less likely to abuse them. That's what people are asking you for - to treat others better and not to abuse them. BTW some people don't have emotional empathy, and it's not their fault. You can still be a decent human being. It's just harder.

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balamatom 1y ago
>What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others. And that, kids, is called structural violence. Nothing in the invisible magical social contract you sign at birth gives anyone the right to require you to experience an inner state of their choice.
- deleted 1y ago
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mbfg 1y ago

TLDR: I can manipulate you more for my benefit by being empathetic.

erokar 1y ago

The premise of this piece and the way it's written gives me the feeling this applies to neurodivergent people on the autism spectrum, not dummies in general.

wildpeaks 1y ago
The title is just a reference to the popular collection of books "XYZ for Dummies", it became a meme in the 1990s-2000s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies You probably even saw some of them around, they have a very distinctive yellow cover.

apwell23 1y ago

> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.

palmotea 1y ago
>> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. > well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes. You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary.
- apwell23 1y ago
  its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.
  - hackable_sand 1y ago
    No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake.
    - palmotea 1y ago
      >>> You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary. >> its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead. > No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake. Yeah. Also "and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary," does not mean that behavior has to have been directed towards you. If you're charitable by default to people, you can make friends and hear about things that happened to others. Also your friends can help you avoid working at places that are just dens of snakes. To put it in gamer software engineer terms: having friends can be like having a wallhack (among many other better and more important things).

cindyllm 1y ago

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bitlax 1y ago

So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?

balamatom 1y ago
To demonstrate that you are in fact unable to deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer, who is probably a much more fascinating human being than the role you have attributed him in your thought experiment (or in your society) would ever permit you to comprehend.
- bitlax 1y ago
  So the point WAS to just make stuff up to excuse bad behavior!
  - bitlax 1y ago
    "I'm sorry ma'am. Your son is dead, but the drug dealer is FASCINATING. No you won't be able to tell."
    - balamatom 1y ago
      Well, considering her son ended up on fentanyl, probably not very able to tell some things, yeah. "I'm sorry kid, I know you probably have aspirations and all that shit, but due to a host of technical reasons we don't care about any of that. Here's this fentanyl instead, either shoot it or go sell it to the next loser. And say hi to your mom from me - she's an absolutely remarkable woman."
      - bitlax 1y ago
        There goes that empathy. Glad you do in fact realize that dealing fentanyl is wrong. Not something fantastic people do. Edit: After your edit you seem to have found a rationale for rounding up and executing drug dealers "because reasons" so I think we're all done here.

coldtea 1y ago

The treatment of the subject smells like ASD

LennyHenrysNuts 1y ago

Having empathy for people outside of the closest dozen or so people to you is mental illness. Humans were designed to operate in a tribe.