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What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

chopra.com

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Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#61

Post by s_dev »

mistermann wrote: post #50
s_dev wrote: post #36

This has no place on HN. Deepak Chopra is a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist. Here he is getting his "beliefs" exposed to some pretty basic questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka--VV-_t_U I'm going to flag this so dang can investigate further.

Is there some rule on HN that if a member of HN holds the subjective belief (which is what it is technically, though beliefs often appear as facts/knowledge to the one who holds them, complicating matters substantially) that someone "is" "a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist", any content from that person doesn't belong…

The HN rule that is being broken here is that this article doesn't and couldn't possibly appeal to the curiosity of nerds. It's just fraudulent nonsense.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#62

Post by mistermann »

s_dev wrote: post #59
mistermann wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This shows the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid. Can you explain how this short excerpt "shows"[1] that it is a fact that "the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid"? > That's Deepak's career in a nutshell. Nothing he says stands up to the most basic scrutiny. I do…

This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it. There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says. Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?

>This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it.

Adding some mind reading in (Chopra's, and mine) for some bonus points now? Will you be demonstrating more of your supernatural abilities?

> There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says.

I continue to stand on: I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work. I think you are quite literally making things up, or hallucinating.

> Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?

I don't really know much about him, and I suspect you do not either, though you may not have a sound understanding of your level of understanding due to the misleading nature of human consciousness combined with the norms of the culture you were raised in...which somewhat ironically, is the domain that Chopra's alleged expertise is in.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#63

Post by mistermann »

s_dev wrote: post #61
mistermann wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some rule on HN that if a member of HN holds the subjective belief (which is what it is technically, though beliefs often appear as facts/knowledge to the one who holds them, complicating matters substantially) that someone "is" "a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist", any content from that person doesn't belong…

The HN rule that is being broken here is that this article doesn't and couldn't possibly appeal to the curiosity of nerds. It's just fraudulent nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#64

Post by 23B1 »

s_dev wrote: post #60
23B1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversation on HN will be interesting and valuable though. I vote 'keep' Edit: it already is, as you can see. Baby/bathwater etc.

Nope -- successfully flagged. It's all nonsense -- the HN mod made the right call.

If you read the comments, it's quite a bit of good advice, especially in tech where employees are treated like chattel instead of people.

But hey, congratulations on the 'win'

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#65

Post by nmz »

Insanity wrote: post #30

There's a quote in the book "Radical Candor" which talks about Empathy vs Compassion which I rather like: "picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and to…

You can be compassionate without being empathetic. You can recognize, intellectually that someone is in distress and still help. I cannot even imagine the pain someone is in, actually, I think its healthier to be compassionate without being empathetic. else you would be emotionally exhausted if you felt as others in distress do. Reading the news would be an act of torture.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#66

Post by BulgarianIdiot »

mmvora wrote: post #18
BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #14

Empathy: the ability to feel what others feel. Sympathy: you align with that they feel, not merely understand it. Compassion: you're doing something about it, not merely aligning with it.

But don't you feel that sometimes Sympathy has alot of negative connotations associated to it when compared to Empathy? (Which in turn puts you in a position of dis-alignment)

Well, popular words are highly overloaded. So yes, maybe.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#67

Post by DonHopkins »

mistermann wrote: post #62
s_dev wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it. There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says. Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?

>This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it. Adding some mind reading in (Chopra's, and mine) for some bonus points now? Will you be demonstrating more of your supernatural abilities? > There is zero academic or scie…

>I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work.

>I don't really know much about him,

That you can write those two completely contradictory statements in the same post shows that you're just as full of it as Deepak. And that's really saying something, although you admittedly don't know enough about Deepak yourself to fully grasp what that means. But I do know something about him.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#69

Post by mittermayr »

fkcgnad wrote: post #48
mittermayr wrote: post #25

I just finished teaching a class this morning and this came up during a design thinking segment. It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. When I ask if anyone feels comfortable explaining the difference, it always ends in a beautiful disaster because that one person feeling brave enough to go for it, usually completely derails, only to be…

>It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary. You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They…

Well, I don’t agree. Specifically on your point that this is a discussion about the meaning of words. It’s a discussion about the concepts and scenarios described by those words. We can call it anything we want, but those “concepts” we describe are not the same things. I do not care what word anyone wants to use to describe something — as long as it still ensures we’re talking about the same thing. I don’t run a philosophy or Latin class, it’s not about letters and words, at all. That’s entirely beside the point.

Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

#70

Post by fkcgnad »

mittermayr wrote: post #69
fkcgnad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary. You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They…

Well, I don’t agree. Specifically on your point that this is a discussion about the meaning of words. It’s a discussion about the concepts and scenarios described by those words. We can call it anything we want, but those “concepts” we describe are not the same things. I do not care what word anyone wants to use to describe something — as long as it still ensures we’re talking about the same thing. I don’t run a phil…

The concept is arbitrary. It's a made up concept. It's an arbitrary collection of empathic and and sympathetic traits bundled up together to be a definition of another arbitrary word.

Similar to "what is sentience?" People are arbitrarily ascribing different traits like intelligence, free will and aspects of "understanding" to the word "sentience". When people debate over whether a thing is "sentient" or not they are simply debating about the definition of a vocabulary word. What traits does the word "sentience" encompass? That's it. The vagueness of the definition of the word is what's illusory here.

The collection of traits that make up a definition are arbitrarily chosen to be vague. The word actualizes the arbitrary concept and the vagueness follows it making you think that you are discussing a concept when you are only discussing a definition.

There is nothing profound to talk about here. You're just trying to differentiate subtle differences between two vocabulary words here. The concepts behind the words themselves are by themselves ultimately simplistic.

Something profound and related to empathy is the discussion of the chemicals behind the emotions. The exact neural and biological pathway to actualization of these emotions. Additionally the evolutionary origin of these emotions. Why has natural caused some of us to feel this way and others to feel less this way. This is profound. What is not profound is the difference between the vocabulary words: empathy and sympathy.

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