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

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#51

Post by yesfitz »

nilirl wrote: post #15

Instead of asking people why they're asking you "to be more empathetic", maybe you should ask yourself why you're prompting such a request?

This is addressed in the post:

> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."

And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.

Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.

How would you start learning to be gropulent?

I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#52

Post by Rendello »

nilirl wrote: post #39
balamatom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tautology and already answered in TFA. You're prompting the request because you are not being sufficiently obedient.

That's setting up a straw man. By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs. Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is n…

I think that's a good point. I think the author says a lot of good things about empathy in the article, the nature of which goes deeper than "how may a linguist view the word?", but if they're being prompted with "be more empathetic" often, perhaps their behaviour really should be modified.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#53

Post by drakonka »

some-guy wrote: post #41
drakonka wrote: post #10

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 tr…

Your story is very similar to mine, but it was unlocked even further when I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult at 38 years old, and began stimulant medication. I feel goosebumps from music, I’m much more likely to cry (in a good way I think)

I've also been more likely to cry at movies. Not so much at people's sad experiences in real life, but I've found myself tearing up sometimes with someone I really care about sharing a dream or nostalgic childhood memory. Fortunately I've experienced goosebumps with music (frisson!) since I was a kid, and even tried to learn how to induce it on command (has not reliably worked).

Overall my ability to empathize still feels a little dulled sometimes. But it's hard to tell since you can't really compare it directly to another's experience, only observe how others seem to react... Maybe in its own way this is a bit of a "What is it like to be a bat?" situation.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#54

Post by b2ccb2 »

balamatom wrote: post #25
vintermann wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'd go so far as to say empathy has nothing to do with being nice, it's simply the ability to feel, often involuntarily, what other people feel. It's the part of you which makes you wince when you see someone stub their toe. It's a type of feelings which can inspire you to be nice to other people, but it can also actually make you not nice to them. When people make you feel things you don't want to feel. An exam…

>vicarious embarrassment Boy did I hate this one being taught to me back in the day, by my country's first privately owned TV channel.

In German we have a word more specific, I'd argue: "Fremdschämen". It means literally "foreign-shame". It is the feeling of exactly that, seeing someone doing something embarrassing, and feeling ashamed for them in their perspective. Which I would say is a form of empathy.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#55

Post by brudgers »

patcon wrote: post #3
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 themsel…

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

Lifelong direct and intimate familiarity with a person of the “neurotype” you describe is actually what drew forth my comment.

To be more clear, a real person with the “being told what to do” interpretation of the world you mention was forced to my thought by what the author said.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#56

Post by Gregaros »

yesfitz wrote: post #49
Gregaros wrote: post #4

* 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 req…

What is behind the request?

Impossible to say what was behind any specific request, but what is generally meant by “Have a little emapathy” and its kin is : “Stop criticizingjudging/etc. or communicating with the individual being discussed that sharply, because we feel the individual has good reasons/a good excuse/a good justification for sympathy and/or some leniency here.”

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#57

Post by ratelimitsteve »

Lerc wrote: post #11
Gregaros wrote: post #4

* 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 req…

Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be. My take on it is to remember that the people you are talking to are real people with reasons for doing things. Very few people do things that they think are wrong at the time of doing them. I would guess that the single most common cause of bad faith arg…

>Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be.

I think this might have to just be axiomatic. At the bottom of every system is an axiom, whether it's identity in mathematics or "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in USican politics or "empathy is good and to be pursued" in interpersonal relationships.

>If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people?

I dare say that if your mission is actually to hurt people as much as you can empathy will help you a lot in that goal because it lets you define strategies tailored to hurt the target based on their feelings. Without empathy you're limited to thinking about what would hurt you and then applying it to other people.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#58

Post by nilirl »

yesfitz wrote: post #51
nilirl wrote: post #15

Instead of asking people why they're asking you "to be more empathetic", maybe you should ask yourself why you're prompting such a request?

This is addressed in the post: > "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)." And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post. Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence…

'be more empathetic' is not a veiled request, it is openly declared. The author subverts the ask for behavior change by a) calling it veiled and b) not treating it as the main argument against which they're trying to make a point.

Like the author, you're constructing a similar straw man argument: selecting a specific use of the word and making that the main point to argue against.

'be more empathetic' is an argument to behave differently with the people around you. Not think differently; behave differently.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#59

Post by [deleted] »

cpfohl wrote: post #44
jfengel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Though "be more empathetic" is not the most helpful way to note that. He's right: it's not a very empathetic way to put it. You can unpack it: "You have made this person unhappy, and you didn't notice. Here are things that you may not have noticed about this person: X, Y, and Z. They see this encounter like thus-and-such. Now that you know that, you can interact with them in a way that makes both of you…

Yeah, there was definitely a communication gaffe on the part of the person trying to address OP's behavior. Some people (OP included it appears) need very direct communication that would be rude if directed at _other_ people. Unfortunately the indirection ("be more empathetic") is the safe/polite/un-hurtful bet for a huge percentage of the population. The majority of people hear that and pick up on the implied reques…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN