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Everything he says is true, but boy no one wants to hear it. So much of modern identity is tied up in envy together with empathy. Nowadays the way to demonstra

Everything he says is true, but boy no one wants to hear it. So much of modern identity is tied up in envy together with empathy. Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups. You can even express some hostility towards your own group to show how noble and virtuous you are. Unfortunately, in the west, this narrative is deeply flawed - the most of the approved groups only suffer relative to others. They don't suffer absolutely at all. If you give up envy, you take away people's ability to show what noble souls they are.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  [edit: the deleted comment I responded to was asking why I seem to have "contempt" (possibly the wrong word) for empathy.] I am opposed to empathy as a moral tool. Empathy has all sorts of known biases - we feel more empathy for people like us, attractive people, etc. In the west, for example, we have less empathy for black people: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0048546 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone... Furthermore, even in the absence of easily predicted biases, emotional reactions are simply nondeterministic. There is no reason to believe they will converge to anything useful. In contrast, principle-based morality doesn't have this flaw. If you take a principled position that poking people with a needle is bad (to borrow the example of the first paper), then it doesn't matter if you are poking a black or white person - the abstract principle of "don't poke people with a needle" is sufficient. I realize this idea certainly bothers people who take personal pride in feeling empathy, who make it part of their identity. That doesn't mean I believe it to be wrong.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >In contrast, principle-based morality doesn't have this flaw. If you take a principled position that poking people with a needle is bad (to borrow the example of the first paper), then it doesn't matter if you are poking a black or white person - the abstract principle of "don't poke people with a needle" is sufficient. I'd rather live in a world where I risk being poked by someone who hates me than in one one were I'm spared not because of empathy or kindness but only because of some abstract "principle" of not poking people.
  - captain_crabs 12y ago
    Empathy being flawed is a startling insight. But why then throw it out and go straight to abstractions? What are the problems preventing empathy from being as good as the abstractions? Seems to me the whole shame vs guilt debate
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      I go to abstractions because I'm a product of the enlightenment - I believe that the universe is governed by mathematics and reason, and the best way to understand it is to use those tools. I realize this does make me a bit of a weirdo in our post-enlightenment world. Using emotions instead of reason suffers all sorts of problems. The most easily characterized, and shocking to the mainstream, are things like empathy being racist and sexist. But there are deeper problems - emotions are often just plain inconsistent. We will feel different things depending on the framing of a situation, our own mood, relative status of other people involved in the situation, etc. This also makes "cheating" easier. The core problem with empathy is simply that it's an appeal to emotional decisions over reason.
      - dkarapetyan 12y ago
        It doesn't make you a weirdo but you are throwing away the baby with the bathwater. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a proof or a solution to a problem and thought to myself that it just feels wrong and ugly and that there should be a more elegant approach. And sure enough after a bit of digging and thinking there is a better and more elegant approach. That feeling of ugliness is not formal or logical in any way. It is a visceral and emotional reaction and there is no specific set of formal reasons I can point to that gives rise to it. The history of science and mathematics is full of examples of such emotional insights so seems to me your theory of "enlightenment" is incomplete.
        yummyfajitas 12y ago
        One shouldn't ignore intuition, empathy, or a gut feeling. It's a useful signal. But that's all it is. There are true results that go against emotion, intuition, and just feel wrong. In math, Banach Tarski is a perfect example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox If you want to use empathy as a hint to keep digging for a better solution, be my guest. I just object to using empathy as a basis for morality. Similarly, mathematical intuition isn't a substitute for a proof.
dropit_sphere 12y ago
While I agree that telescopic empathy is often more self-serving and less helpful than it appears, I would make the same claim of calls to "step out of the game," finite or no. There are rewards to being first. On some axes, it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Further, in some cases humans actively create finite games for others to play. You used to be able to hunt buffalo and live off the land. Not anymore. I'll make some not-so-brave statements, and then I'll make some brave (and, in my opinion, useful) ones. Not so brave: 1. Life is a finite game. Over the long term, and on varying resources, Malthus was right. 2. We've gotten a lot of great stuff from having humans play finite games. This "market" one is pretty neat. Idealists imagined the rectangle I'm using to type this, but pragmstists financed its development. 3. Finite games can do horrible damage to people, causing them to starve, isolate themselves, and harm others. That's the short list. 4. "People" should "find" a "balance" that's "right for them." Brave(r): 1. A finite game can sometimes be transformed to an infinite game by projecting it over time. Startups perform this alchemy all the time by considering lifetime customer value rather than just initial revenue. Horatio Alger, as long as he spends less than he makes, is a source of infinite money. 2. In a unpredictable and uncaring universe, one should carefully guard one's main source of sustenance---even if that's a finite game, save value, and then make small risky forays into more desireable territory. This is the operating principle of the financial world. 3. Sometimes big investments are necessary (so, maybe not so brave).
joe_the_user 12y ago
Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups. Uh, modern people prove they are good in a variety of ways with PC-politics being just one, feel-good charity another, tough-love realism another and so-forth. And modern people also prove they are strong and successful and sexy and what-all else, it's a Vanity Fair out there. But a clever jump from the problem of envy to the problem of "sympathy and empathy for various approved groups."
waterlesscloud 12y ago
I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and both sides seem intent on showing how much more Moral they are. That's always been around, but it feels like it's become much more intense online over the past year or two. I think it may have been an inevitable phase of moving the world online, when I step back and try to look at it objectively. Suddenly billions of people are talking to each other and getting a sense of their place in the world. Naturally, they're trying to establish an identity in that mass of humanity. Staking out their territory. Part of that is aligning themselves with a tribe. Some of the old tribal leaders (politicians) are extremely adept at that game and have been successfully pulling people into the highly (and quite intentionally) polarized divisions that serve the leaders' goals. You can see this at work when you see the masses parrot whatever the approved outrage of the week is (and this applies to all extremes on the political spectrum). The key point is that these outrages are specifically selected for their ability to divide the populace into neat little tribes. A lot of political issues are chosen for focus because they serve as a Sorting Hat, if that makes sense. That benefits the people who are already in charge of those Houses. I'd like to think this is just a phase, though. We're very early on in the game. People are just getting used to an idea that they can establish their identity in the big global world, and so far they're leaning on the old structures. Maybe in years to come they won't have to, maybe they'll find other ways to establish identity. At least I hope that's the case. Anyway, this is kind of rambling. I should try to organize these thoughts a little better.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Yes, the only reason envy is related to this is that it's playing a substitute role for actual harm. Here in India, you can actually say "look, starving children." "Look, these people need water." "These people need power." If I hadn't been stuck in a hospital for the past week or so, I'd have seen several people each day for whom empathy is a natural reaction. But it's pretty hard to inspire empathy for Indians or Africans. In the US, it's far harder to find such people. No one would consider me a deprived person or particularly deserving of empathy (ignoring a temporary medical condition), yet I have far fewer goods and services than even most of the poorest Americans. This poses a conundrum for those who want to appeal to empathy. That's where envy comes in. Don't feel bad for people because they have too little, feel bad because others have more.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

yummyfajitas 12y ago
[edit: the deleted comment I responded to was asking why I seem to have "contempt" (possibly the wrong word) for empathy.] I am opposed to empathy as a moral tool. Empathy has all sorts of known biases - we feel more empathy for people like us, attractive people, etc. In the west, for example, we have less empathy for black people: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0048546 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone... Furthermore, even in the absence of easily predicted biases, emotional reactions are simply nondeterministic. There is no reason to believe they will converge to anything useful. In contrast, principle-based morality doesn't have this flaw. If you take a principled position that poking people with a needle is bad (to borrow the example of the first paper), then it doesn't matter if you are poking a black or white person - the abstract principle of "don't poke people with a needle" is sufficient. I realize this idea certainly bothers people who take personal pride in feeling empathy, who make it part of their identity. That doesn't mean I believe it to be wrong.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >In contrast, principle-based morality doesn't have this flaw. If you take a principled position that poking people with a needle is bad (to borrow the example of the first paper), then it doesn't matter if you are poking a black or white person - the abstract principle of "don't poke people with a needle" is sufficient. I'd rather live in a world where I risk being poked by someone who hates me than in one one were I'm spared not because of empathy or kindness but only because of some abstract "principle" of not poking people.
- captain_crabs 12y ago
  Empathy being flawed is a startling insight. But why then throw it out and go straight to abstractions? What are the problems preventing empathy from being as good as the abstractions? Seems to me the whole shame vs guilt debate
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I go to abstractions because I'm a product of the enlightenment - I believe that the universe is governed by mathematics and reason, and the best way to understand it is to use those tools. I realize this does make me a bit of a weirdo in our post-enlightenment world. Using emotions instead of reason suffers all sorts of problems. The most easily characterized, and shocking to the mainstream, are things like empathy being racist and sexist. But there are deeper problems - emotions are often just plain inconsistent. We will feel different things depending on the framing of a situation, our own mood, relative status of other people involved in the situation, etc. This also makes "cheating" easier. The core problem with empathy is simply that it's an appeal to emotional decisions over reason.
    - dkarapetyan 12y ago
      It doesn't make you a weirdo but you are throwing away the baby with the bathwater. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a proof or a solution to a problem and thought to myself that it just feels wrong and ugly and that there should be a more elegant approach. And sure enough after a bit of digging and thinking there is a better and more elegant approach. That feeling of ugliness is not formal or logical in any way. It is a visceral and emotional reaction and there is no specific set of formal reasons I can point to that gives rise to it. The history of science and mathematics is full of examples of such emotional insights so seems to me your theory of "enlightenment" is incomplete.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        One shouldn't ignore intuition, empathy, or a gut feeling. It's a useful signal. But that's all it is. There are true results that go against emotion, intuition, and just feel wrong. In math, Banach Tarski is a perfect example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox If you want to use empathy as a hint to keep digging for a better solution, be my guest. I just object to using empathy as a basis for morality. Similarly, mathematical intuition isn't a substitute for a proof.

dropit_sphere 12y ago

While I agree that telescopic empathy is often more self-serving and less helpful than it appears, I would make the same claim of calls to "step out of the game," finite or no. There are rewards to being first. On some axes, it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Further, in some cases humans actively create finite games for others to play. You used to be able to hunt buffalo and live off the land. Not anymore. I'll make some not-so-brave statements, and then I'll make some brave (and, in my opinion, useful) ones. Not so brave: 1. Life is a finite game. Over the long term, and on varying resources, Malthus was right. 2. We've gotten a lot of great stuff from having humans play finite games. This "market" one is pretty neat. Idealists imagined the rectangle I'm using to type this, but pragmstists financed its development. 3. Finite games can do horrible damage to people, causing them to starve, isolate themselves, and harm others. That's the short list. 4. "People" should "find" a "balance" that's "right for them." Brave(r): 1. A finite game can sometimes be transformed to an infinite game by projecting it over time. Startups perform this alchemy all the time by considering lifetime customer value rather than just initial revenue. Horatio Alger, as long as he spends less than he makes, is a source of infinite money. 2. In a unpredictable and uncaring universe, one should carefully guard one's main source of sustenance---even if that's a finite game, save value, and then make small risky forays into more desireable territory. This is the operating principle of the financial world. 3. Sometimes big investments are necessary (so, maybe not so brave).

joe_the_user 12y ago

Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups. Uh, modern people prove they are good in a variety of ways with PC-politics being just one, feel-good charity another, tough-love realism another and so-forth. And modern people also prove they are strong and successful and sexy and what-all else, it's a Vanity Fair out there. But a clever jump from the problem of envy to the problem of "sympathy and empathy for various approved groups."

waterlesscloud 12y ago

I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and both sides seem intent on showing how much more Moral they are. That's always been around, but it feels like it's become much more intense online over the past year or two. I think it may have been an inevitable phase of moving the world online, when I step back and try to look at it objectively. Suddenly billions of people are talking to each other and getting a sense of their place in the world. Naturally, they're trying to establish an identity in that mass of humanity. Staking out their territory. Part of that is aligning themselves with a tribe. Some of the old tribal leaders (politicians) are extremely adept at that game and have been successfully pulling people into the highly (and quite intentionally) polarized divisions that serve the leaders' goals. You can see this at work when you see the masses parrot whatever the approved outrage of the week is (and this applies to all extremes on the political spectrum). The key point is that these outrages are specifically selected for their ability to divide the populace into neat little tribes. A lot of political issues are chosen for focus because they serve as a Sorting Hat, if that makes sense. That benefits the people who are already in charge of those Houses. I'd like to think this is just a phase, though. We're very early on in the game. People are just getting used to an idea that they can establish their identity in the big global world, and so far they're leaning on the old structures. Maybe in years to come they won't have to, maybe they'll find other ways to establish identity. At least I hope that's the case. Anyway, this is kind of rambling. I should try to organize these thoughts a little better.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Yes, the only reason envy is related to this is that it's playing a substitute role for actual harm. Here in India, you can actually say "look, starving children." "Look, these people need water." "These people need power." If I hadn't been stuck in a hospital for the past week or so, I'd have seen several people each day for whom empathy is a natural reaction. But it's pretty hard to inspire empathy for Indians or Africans. In the US, it's far harder to find such people. No one would consider me a deprived person or particularly deserving of empathy (ignoring a temporary medical condition), yet I have far fewer goods and services than even most of the poorest Americans. This poses a conundrum for those who want to appeal to empathy. That's where envy comes in. Don't feel bad for people because they have too little, feel bad because others have more.