Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Empathy for Dummies

quarter--mile.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 101 posts

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#3

Post by patcon »

brudgers wrote: post #2

But having empathy does not necessarily mean you need to change the way you behave or feel. Growth does and that's what "being more empathetic" requires.

I read this as a framing that allows the author and people like them to warm to the idea, as part of a longer iterative process -- Understanding first, then decide what's warranted, assess how you feel about the thing you did, repeat.

I can't say if this affects the author, but I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often I share this as someone who is [un]fortunate to have easy access to empathy, but also has some tendencies of "pathological demand avoidance". For me, empathy is an innate skill, and I am who I am because my identity is shaped by how I use it to anticipate needs in advance, so that I can react more generously (and won't be caught by surprise when someone "demands" something of me that I didn't expect)

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#4

Post by Gregaros »

*

  On many occasions, I have been told to “be more empathetic.”

  When I ask why, I typically get this reaction:  

  This is a ridiculous question. I am not going to answer it because it is so ridiculous.

  Empathy is the right thing to do! You should feel bad for that person. We’re humans, after all.

  These explanations never really helped.
*

Even after reading this, I am not sure the author really gets what is behind the request.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#7

Post by Fricken »

Empathy is not sympathy. If my sports team beats your sports team, I can empathize with your feelings of loss but I don't sympathize. We win and you lose, lol.

Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's like. I can imagine what it might be like, but I'm just imagining things. Nonetheless, I can still sympathize.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#9

Post by user2722 »

Fricken wrote: post #7

Empathy is not sympathy. If my sports team beats your sports team, I can empathize with your feelings of loss but I don't sympathize. We win and you lose, lol. Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's…

Agree in general. But if I'm really sad my team, which played very well recently but had a disastrous game, lost, you can not be so aggravating like you could be if I had taunted you before yours team sucked (and not in a jest manner, of course). Samething happens on both cases, one deserves less sympathy for my feelings.

Is this being an empath? Idk. But if we can dial the knob of fun (for us and others) up and the dial of sadness for others (who don't deserve the sadness) a bit down, you're not lying nor faking, just trying to redirect a bit of your happiness for others too feel less bad. Which doesn't mean you can't be a playful ass and say "yah, they had been playing very well, it's kinda a pity. But my team still won. Come on, the winner pays you a beer and the loser pays me another! Wink, wink!"

My take at least. USA is either regressing or too far along in the future. I'm not sure which.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#10

Post by drakonka »

I always thought of empathy as being able to really relate, emotionally, to what another person is feeling/going through. As a kid I'd sometimes see people crying together on TV when something bad happens to one of them and wonder if that really happens in real life. Even though it wasn't something that came naturally to me in the past, I still tried to be a decent person and adjust my behavior where relevant, and tried to learn to comfort people even when I didn't really "feel" much. I just had to reason/logic about how a person might feel sometimes rather than intuitively "get" it.

Over the last couple of years, that kind of empathy has stated coming more easily/naturally to me. On one hand it seems to have unlocked a richer range of relatability, but on the other it also seemed to open the door more to anxiety, self-doubt, and other not so easy emotions that I didn't really feel much of before.

Post reply on HN