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I'm wondering why empathy is such a hot topic... , I don't think our goal is to empathize more with other people. Really liked the point Paul Bloom made with his book about Rational Compasion: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...

We should be able to understand how smb feels, not feel the same.

Personally, I'm quite interested in why/when people are synchronizing their movements. Shameless self plug: http://kaikunze.de/papers/pdf/gupta2019blink.pdf Don't know why it happens yet our eye blinks and head nods are synchronizing when we talk face-to-face (versus back to back).

⬐ BurningFrog

From https://www.grammarly.com/blog/empathy-sympathy/

- Empathy is a term we use for the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we were having them ourselves.

- Sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune.

I think you may have confused the terms.

⬐ kgarten

The article underlines my understanding of empathy.

I think Empathy can be counterproductive ... because if you feel like the person (I mean feel like the person ...) you might be less likely to be able to help them.

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. "

⬐ throw999666

I agree. Empathy is painful. It should not be the goal. I think the outcome for civilization would not be optimal if many more people were empathic right now, we still need a mix. But there are degrees of empathic ability. Only a very few people like me ( < 0.01% ) get the emotions of everyone around them without trying.

I think the general population is comprised only less than 20% of people who are "empathic" to the extent whare if they try, or, are relationally close to someone they do feel their feels. Then, more than 85% of people are "rationally compassionate" in that they understand how others feel if they make an effort, yet around a 1/3 of people do that automatically with no effort.

I think only around 10% of people are incapable of understanding how others feel at all. But if those people make some effort that number goes down to 1-2%. But while psychopaths are in that 10% they're not really in that 1-2%. And those people who "don't have subjective emotions nor do feel anything themselves" spread across all groups. The stronger statement, "don't have emotions nor feel anything themselves" are not present in the extreme empaths like me who can pick up emotions from around them.

Finally, people are not "set" in a particular group. It is plastic, to an extent, but not in entirety.

⬐ loceng

If empathy is painful to you then you have unhealed/unprocessed trauma that's been suppressed-repressed, and then being triggered.

⬐ throw999666

You don't know empathy (deep into others), what you say is deep into yourself. Not same. Painful is from their negative emotions, plus (for superempaths like me) emotions from all people round you, not you solo.

⬐ kgarten

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. " from the grammarly post.

Pain/Painful is in the definition of empathy ... "he action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

So you don't have to have any drama. I have a very empathetic friend: it happens to him in any situation (meeting smb happy, sad, angry...). trauma is usually limited to a specific situation from the passed. Does not fit that case.

⬐ BlueTemplar

But understanding has an emotional part, and memory relies a lot on emotions.

Trying to get rid of emotions might be harmful.

⬐ kgarten

again ... I'm not trying to get rid of emotions. That's not what I'm proposing. I just think the idea/concept of feeling the same as somebody else is strange and has its own dangers.

Understand the others feelings, try to understand their point of view (also emotionally) that's great.

Having exactly the same feelings probably not. "Empathy :: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" from meridian webster.

Example: you meet a person who has a panic attack ... how is going to experience the feelings vicariously helping you?

⬐ BlueTemplar

Ah, yes, compassion vs empathy.

But both are needed, depending on the situation.

⬐ GavinMcG

The idea that our mechanism for understanding how others feel recruits or works through our mechanism for feeling things seems a likelier and simpler explanation than one where those two mechanisms are entirely separate.

⬐ darkerside

Let's say a friend tells you their mother has died. You respond, "You must be very sad. What are you doing this weekend?"

Your friend gets upset. Why? You understood what they were saying and acknowledged how they were feeling. What more is there to do?

Does that hit home? If not, switch roles, so that your friend is the insensitive person who does understand how you feel, but doesn't feel the same way, because it's not their mother. Being able to be sad for a friend, for their loss, not yours, is a basic human capability, and refusing to exercise it when it is called for is indeed callous and insensitive.

⬐ kgarten

What I feel and how I act are two different thinks. You don't have to be emphatic to act in a reasonable way in your example. I would not ask about going out, not because I feel the same pain, but I know that my friend is hurt and I will hurt him more when I ask that. I don't have to feel the same way or similar to him to understand that. That's what rational compassion is about ...

Rational compassion: You understand the situation the other person is in and you make socially and emotionally the right decision (based on rational assessment).

Empathy: "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" emphasis on vicariously experiencing !

Empathy is often used to express that you are feeling the same of similar feeling as somebody else. From the Grammarly post below (from another poster that didn't understand my point):

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. "

Now imagine two doctors, one is empathic to your pain and one understands your pain with rational compassion.

The doctor who "feels" your pain might not be able to operate on you ... as he emphasizes too much. His feelings towards you hinder him.

Not to say empathy cannot be useful and is interesting. Yet, I feel it's overhyped and there are dangers focusing solemnly on it.

⬐ darkerside

I think I agree with all of that. I will say empathy is a lot "easier" for people, as rational compassion requires life experience that people don't usually pick up until later. But they're different skills and are appropriate and effective at different times.

As for overrated/overhyped, I think those are dangerous words. Totally dependent on how you rate things, how you perceive others to rate them, and how they actually are. It's almost impossible to have constructive communication about something like that because everybody is operating from different sets of facts.

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...

⬐ bb88

That seems similar to the concept of "ruinous empathy". In other words, don't waste your feelings on others, especially if you may have to fire them.

Having been on both sides of that coin, being fired and having to fire others, it's clear to me that reducing the amount of pain is important, even if such an act must be done.

Exercising my freedom of choice is sociopathic?

Empathy is not the be all and end all. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...

> I think it is fair to say that the author's idea of what empathy feels like is completely different to what the rest of the world thinks

I think you misunderstand what he is getting at. Yale researcher Paul Bloom wrote a whole book about this concept of empathy as a bad thing, and I think that is what the manifesto is getting at (I'd almost argue quoting): https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass... TL;DR is this:

> We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it.

> Nothing could be further from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion.

This is how that manifesto is being so miscategorised. It says - DIRECT QUOTE - "relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases". Not empathy is not required. Not empathy is useless, but a specific, nuanced usage of empathy. It is understandable this miscategorisation given how most people see empathy, but it is still borderline strawmanning to impose a definition here that was not intended.

⬐ nl

This is around the multiple definitions of empathy. To quote:

I am staunchly with Bloom here: it is undoubtedly a valuable gift, but only provided it is fortified by a prior rational moral position and appropriately judged action. And there are many arguably moral actions that have nothing to do with empathy or even sympathy – paying one’s taxes, or picking up litter are not glamorous activities but they stem from a rational perception of what is for the general good.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/06/against-empath...

The personality trait section appears to at least be consistent with current findings[1]. I see a lot of comments on the article berating the "De-emphasize empathy" section as well, but it's starting to become clear empathy has a lot of bugs in it. Paul Bloom advocates for compassion instead of empathy[2].

There's definitely assumptions in the article e.g. Men (may) prefer coding due to the average innate preference of things vs people (and then vice versa for women)and the belief programs exclusive to minorities due more harm than good, but outside of those this seems like a fairly well researched document that, for better or worse, has a dissenting opinion from the group.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...