4 ms·

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here (I actually do think that the upper class is full of pricks, but I'm going to try to set that aside for now). First, I d

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here (I actually do think that the upper class is full of pricks, but I'm going to try to set that aside for now). First, I don't think that it's class warfare because neurological empathy is not the same thing as being ethical or being a good person. If you feel pain when you see images of people suffering, but you embezzle, you're still a criminal. Second, I think that the casual arrow is that lower empathy (at least, neurological empathy) makes it easier to rise in modern organizations, and not because organizations are evil, but because it's more efficient to promote people with less empathy. Why? At the bottom, people with "overactive" empathy responses fight others' battles and cause friction. They raise a stink when an intern is unjustly fired while the rest of the company reacts with, "So what? He was just an intern." At the top, they tend to bring along people who are not always the most competent or congruent with the organization's aims. The organization would rather promote a highly talented but less empathetic person and get just him than promote an equally talented but "sticky" person and have him invite less talented, but loyal, people into its upper ranks. The "empathy deficit" means that a person can be invited into an exclusive club and that he won't invite a bunch of his people just because he likes them. And that's why, all else being equal, the organization would rather promote him.

donatj 12y ago
Came here to say basically this. Well stated, far better than I could have said it myself.
nostrademons 12y ago
Sort of. There's a concept orthogonal to empathy known as "boundaries", loosely defined as "the degree to which people are expected to take responsibility for their own personal problems", sometimes also defined as "ability to resist emotional contagion" or "sense of self". Someone with very well-defined boundaries might be high empathy (in which case they'd see all the evils of the world but realize that it is neither within their responsibility or capability to right them) or they might be low empathy (in which case they're only out for themselves and seek personal success at all cost). Similarly, someone with undefined boundaries might be high-empathy (in which case they're always jumping in and fighting other peoples' battles for them) or low-empathy (in which case they expect the world to adopt itself to their wishes regardless of what other people want). Very often both sides are in evidence at once - one of the problems with having ill-defined boundaries is that you often accidentally trample upon other peoples' rights in your haste to right wrongs against whatever group holds your attention. Typically, the people who do the best in the corporate world are high-empathy people with well-defined boundaries, the folks who can see & predict how others will react and who respect the wishes of people who assert them, but don't believe it is their duty to respect wishes that are not explicitly asserted. Next are low-empathy people with strong boundaries (sociopaths), who often rise very quickly but fall just as quickly when they make a fatal mistake and piss off the wrong person. Folks without well-defined boundaries often find themselves trapped at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy; to use familiar terms, the high-empathy thin-boundaries segment corresponds loosely to the "Losers" segment and the low-empathy thin-boundaries to the "Clueless" segment of the Gervais triangle, although this is only a very rough approximation. The concept of boundaries is itself culturally dependent. The U.S. probably expects the strongest definition of boundaries of any major modern nation, and the mental-health field here usually explicitly coaches the development of firmer, more well-defined boundaries. Western Europe is close behind. Countries like those in East Asia and particularly Japan often have much more collectivist institutions, where people are expected to harmonize with the whole, and one major coaching point for American businessmen in the far east is how to avoid giving offense accidentally by assuming that someone will speak up when you do something they don't like. Native American culture had very weak conceptions of boundaries, and one very unfortunate result is that when you have a society that has a very strong conception of individual rights and an expectation that people will assert the rights that matter to them, and it meets a society without that expectation, the former society will tend to run roughshod over the other. (Astute readers will notice that I've written this comment in very objective, general terms. This itself is a mark of a weak conception of boundaries; as your own sense of self gets stronger and you begin to recognize other peoples' unique selves, you realize that the objective perspective is itself a myth, and the only thing we can really speak confidently about is our own unique, personal experience, and language changes accordingly to "In my experience..." or "That's not how I see it..." But many HN readers expect this language and view it as stronger.)

donatj 12y ago

Came here to say basically this. Well stated, far better than I could have said it myself.

nostrademons 12y ago

Sort of. There's a concept orthogonal to empathy known as "boundaries", loosely defined as "the degree to which people are expected to take responsibility for their own personal problems", sometimes also defined as "ability to resist emotional contagion" or "sense of self". Someone with very well-defined boundaries might be high empathy (in which case they'd see all the evils of the world but realize that it is neither within their responsibility or capability to right them) or they might be low empathy (in which case they're only out for themselves and seek personal success at all cost). Similarly, someone with undefined boundaries might be high-empathy (in which case they're always jumping in and fighting other peoples' battles for them) or low-empathy (in which case they expect the world to adopt itself to their wishes regardless of what other people want). Very often both sides are in evidence at once - one of the problems with having ill-defined boundaries is that you often accidentally trample upon other peoples' rights in your haste to right wrongs against whatever group holds your attention. Typically, the people who do the best in the corporate world are high-empathy people with well-defined boundaries, the folks who can see & predict how others will react and who respect the wishes of people who assert them, but don't believe it is their duty to respect wishes that are not explicitly asserted. Next are low-empathy people with strong boundaries (sociopaths), who often rise very quickly but fall just as quickly when they make a fatal mistake and piss off the wrong person. Folks without well-defined boundaries often find themselves trapped at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy; to use familiar terms, the high-empathy thin-boundaries segment corresponds loosely to the "Losers" segment and the low-empathy thin-boundaries to the "Clueless" segment of the Gervais triangle, although this is only a very rough approximation. The concept of boundaries is itself culturally dependent. The U.S. probably expects the strongest definition of boundaries of any major modern nation, and the mental-health field here usually explicitly coaches the development of firmer, more well-defined boundaries. Western Europe is close behind. Countries like those in East Asia and particularly Japan often have much more collectivist institutions, where people are expected to harmonize with the whole, and one major coaching point for American businessmen in the far east is how to avoid giving offense accidentally by assuming that someone will speak up when you do something they don't like. Native American culture had very weak conceptions of boundaries, and one very unfortunate result is that when you have a society that has a very strong conception of individual rights and an expectation that people will assert the rights that matter to them, and it meets a society without that expectation, the former society will tend to run roughshod over the other. (Astute readers will notice that I've written this comment in very objective, general terms. This itself is a mark of a weak conception of boundaries; as your own sense of self gets stronger and you begin to recognize other peoples' unique selves, you realize that the objective perspective is itself a myth, and the only thing we can really speak confidently about is our own unique, personal experience, and language changes accordingly to "In my experience..." or "That's not how I see it..." But many HN readers expect this language and view it as stronger.)