Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#71

Post by Doxin » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:12 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #39

> These high-empathy students were also more likely to be amused by reports that students protesting the speech had injured a bystander sympathetic to the speaker. > one gauges people’s level of “empathic concern” by asking them how strongly they agree or disagree with a series of seven statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” It seems like a problematic way to m…

> “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”

Phrasing like that seems to be a common problem with these sorts of surveys. I'd like to think I'm an emphatic person, reading some of the messages from the people stuck in the siege at that hong kong university definitely gets me all of the feels, but I'd still probably answer no to that question. I certainly feel for them, I can barely imagine what it would be like to be in their position, but they aren't "tender" feelings I don't think. Sympathy makes me feel sorry for them, Empathy makes me angry at china. I'd hardly consider anger to be tender.

Another long rant without a good conclusion. I guess that I feel what's missing from these sorts of questions is a way to qualify your answers. I'd like a "yes, but" and a "no, but" option.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#72

Post by hos234 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #46

I think there's an interesting dynamic with empathy and freedom of speech: defending freedom of speech forces you to have a basic empathy for everyone. It might not be an empathy based on their lived experiences, but it is one based on respecting that we should collectively protect what they have to communicate. It's why I believe attacks on freedom of speech are so dangerous...they undermine this foundational respec…

What's you are not talking about in your equation is BROADCAST.

Everyone is a click away from broadcasting to the planet whatever is flitting through their head.

And everyone is encouraged to broadcast thanks to Zuckerberg & Co inventing the likes/clicks/views engagement feedback loop.

In the past, if one was ignorant (lacked knowledge or access to knowledge), stupid (lacked the capacity to understand knowledge even with access to it), misguided (had access to the knowledge with errors) the cost and energy required to broadcast was much higher. And there were only finite number of people and groups who could pull it off. That put an upper limit on how much energy society had to expend in dealing with issues thanks to broadcast of free speech.

Countering the issues takes energy. And that is finite.

It's not complicated to understand the change. Take the best, most compassionate, patient, empathetic teacher you have and put him in a classroom with 10 misbehaving kids (all incentivized to misbehave) You will still see good teachers having a positive effect on all of them. Make it 30 misbehaving kids and things get trickier. Make it 500 and you will have the building burning down. Some magic process will have to generate more teachers to counteract the increase.

Social media and the news media have given us scale to Broadcast and rigged the game to prop up whoever/whatever gets engagement, without giving us a proportionate increase to respond to all the issues that also scale up.

We haven't invented empathy at scale yet. And it doesn't make sense to try while social media/news media rewards all kinds of bullshit. Likes/clicks/views counts need to be hidden otherwise the misbehaving kid gets mixed signals even if you apply empathy.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#73

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #58

daenz wrote: post #46

I think there's an interesting dynamic with empathy and freedom of speech: defending freedom of speech forces you to have a basic empathy for everyone. It might not be an empathy based on their lived experiences, but it is one based on respecting that we should collectively protect what they have to communicate. It's why I believe attacks on freedom of speech are so dangerous...they undermine this foundational respec…

Naturally this empathy only self-reinforces itself, if it selectively ignores those who agitate against it. Eg if someone advocates against free-speech, maybe protecting them won't preserve this basic empathy. And it seems this instability is real, as we have a hard time defining the minimums of free speech.

Protecting their speech probably preserves it. Giving in to their demands probably not.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#74

Post by mnm1 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

sysbin wrote: post #33

kempbellt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empathizing with the master is difficult for many people. Not realizing that a person, born into the lucky privilege of being the master, doesn't see what they do as victimizing to a slave. It's just how life works for them. Tim Minchin did an interesting bit on empathy a while back. Discussing the nature of empathizing with the shooter, as well as the shooter's victims, in incidents of mass shootings. The podcast is…

Listened to the podcast and its good. I've always been empathetic to shooters because I understand determinism and realize the shooter didn't have any free will in how his/her life turned out. The universe just happened to make it be. Anyway more food for thought to the topic.

Based on what you're saying, it's immoral to send the shooter to prison or punish him in any way since he had no control over his actions and therefore was not guilty of assault or murder. Bet that theory goes right out the window when it's someone you know lying dead in a pool of blood. Does this apply to all actions? In that case mortality simply doesn't exist and there cannot be good or bad things. How far do you take this delusion is what I'm curious about?

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#75

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #5

tehjoker wrote: post #3

When you have empathy, do you take the viewpoint of the master or the slave?

#nondualism The master and slave are part of the same whole; one cannot exist without the other, and more generally, everyone is a flawed or incomplete person in one way or another. Having empathy for one without having empathy for the other is to misunderstand the universe.

Wouldn't #dualism be more appropriate with that explanation?

Because it would ascribe fundamental different properties to master and slave as beings that just might have been different opportunities at one point? I would think so, because the same "whole" seems arbitrary.

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#76

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

If I were to produce a survey for users here asking if they are empathetic I would expect everyone to answer in the positive.

It's like those surveys of university students asking how many times a week they have sex (hint, it's much more than reality as no insecure student wants to admit they are not getting any)

People want to be thought as good, kind and considerate. Whether they actually are or of it only applies to their in group are other questions.

I'd wager to say that it's a selective empathy, compassion or love at its core that drives partianship. That your opposite group are full of people thinking and feeling they are good and empathetic is itself a shaking thought for most people.

For example, here is something that most of the people who voted yes to in my survey would shudder at. The idea that Trump voters are acting how they do from the sense of love and positive feeling for their families and communities is very worrying for self identified empathetic people. Or how about that China is acting the way they do from a sense of love and empathy to their huge country and people and they seek to reduce suffering overall. It sounds insane doesn't it?

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#77

Post by mnm1 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #55

StuffedParrot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, I never claimed to be accurate (certainly not in a general sense), I am just conveying what I hear when I talk to people about what matters to them. Fear is certainly not a value, but americans rarely talk about values in any explicit way.

What I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations. Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might…

If they are against the government defining marriage, then why do they want to define marriage as being between a man and a woman? For example, the California proposition 8 ballot measure read: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." [1]

So please explain how this is not defining marriage and how it is supportive of gay marriage rather than in opposition to it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#78

Post by EdwardDiego » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:47 AM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #36

StuffedParrot wrote: post #19

Most people’s views don’t neatly align with any party; that’s simply the easiest narrative to follow. I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. When party loyalty is divorced from values I wouldn’t expect a change in the underlying dynamic that drives people to partisan polarization. To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans f…

> I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. I'm entirely unsurprised, they're more to the right than our NZ centre-right party National. The fact that the Democrats are even considered left-wing in the USA baffles me.

I'm interested in the downvotes - is it disagreement from people on the American left that the Democrats are, by my Kiwi political compass, centre-right? Or disagreement from people on the American right that the Democrats aren't lefties?

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#79

Post by PavlovsCat » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

larnmar wrote: post #34

dorkwood wrote: post #14

> Like many past studies, this one gauges people’s level of “empathic concern” by asking them how strongly they agree or disagree with a series of seven statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” Does this really signify empathy? I consider myself empathetic, but I wouldn't agree with the above statement. If anything, having concerned feelings for someone solely be…

I agree, empathy is about being able to see things from another’s point of view, not the feeling of “tender, concerned feelings”, and particularly not of restricting those feelings to those less fortunate than yourself.

"cognitive empathy" (as it's called in this article) isn't all there is to empathy:

http://www.danielgoleman.info/three-kinds-of-empathy-cogniti...

Re: Empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity: study

#80

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

baked_ziti wrote: post #65

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a poor prompt to generalize from. The premise isn't about some random speaker from the other side. It's about a controversial celebrity known for mocking, inflammatory statements, who practically calls their opponents subhuman. Sounds like an asshole. Maybe highly empathetic people don't like assholes. This headline certainly doesn't seem to be a warranted takeaway.

Highly empathetic people should be the ones most able to empathize with people who are deeply unpleasant. Else they wouldn't be highly empathetic. > Maybe highly empathetic people don't like assholes. Nobody likes assholes...

You can’t be highly empathic, yet not want people who mainly want to create strife to be given a podium?