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Empathy for Dummies

quarter--mile.com

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Re: Empathy for Dummies

#61

Post by apwell23 »

palmotea wrote: post #43
apwell23 wrote: post #42

> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.

>> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. > well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes. You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necess…

its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#62

Post by yesfitz »

nilirl wrote: post #58
yesfitz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you tell me which specific use of the word "empathy" I am arguing against? Because I don't think I'm arguing against any definition at all.

I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent". ** Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.

When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.

In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.

In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.

I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#63

Post by bitlax »

So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#64

Post by balamatom »

mallowdram wrote: post #27
balamatom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theory of mind: it's just a theory!

Worse than that, it doesn't exist, yet it's a scientific theory based in empirical evidence. Which is how only a new language and level of explanation solves that paradox.

Hey, you're fun! :-)

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#65

Post by balamatom »

bitlax wrote: post #63

So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?

To demonstrate that you are in fact unable to deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer, who is probably a much more fascinating human being than the role you have attributed him in your thought experiment (or in your society) would ever permit you to comprehend.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#66

Post by hackable_sand »

apwell23 wrote: post #61
palmotea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help. > well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes. You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necess…

its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.

No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#67

Post by rented_mule »

dogleash wrote: post #18

"Empathy" is one of those words that's used as a proxy for a lot of related ideas, but splitting those hairs can be interpreted by some as disagreement with those ideas themselves. I've witnessed people extol the virtues of empathy to me, while on other occasions they talk about people they dislike with venom and disdain. A level of disdain that I have never held in my heart against anyone, but they throw it around c…

Isn't it possible for someone to spot a growth opportunity for someone else without they themselves being perfect, or maybe even good, at that thing?

I've certainly benefited from useful ideas in my core area of expertise from people who were nowhere close to being experts in that same topic.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#68

Post by bitlax »

balamatom wrote: post #65
bitlax wrote: post #63

So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?

To demonstrate that you are in fact unable to deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer, who is probably a much more fascinating human being than the role you have attributed him in your thought experiment (or in your society) would ever permit you to comprehend.

So the point WAS to just make stuff up to excuse bad behavior!

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#69

Post by balamatom »

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…

>Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?"

Because that's the first step to getting your needs ignored. And in conversations where "empathy" is brought up you're usually exactly one step from getting your needs ignored.

If you're doing something wrong, and I decide to do something about it, minimum decency dictates I make sure you understand what it is. Bringing into it some vague abstract notion that everyone with half a critical mind turns out to have a whole personal exegesis about, but I only know about it from everyone else? Now there's a clear signal that nobody in the room actually cares how people are treated.

Re: Empathy for Dummies

#70

Post by palmotea »

hackable_sand wrote: post #66
apwell23 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.

No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake.

>>> You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary.

>> its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.

> No. That's just paranoia. That makes you the snake.

Yeah.

Also "and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary," does not mean that behavior has to have been directed towards you. If you're charitable by default to people, you can make friends and hear about things that happened to others. Also your friends can help you avoid working at places that are just dens of snakes. To put it in gamer software engineer terms: having friends can be like having a wallhack (among many other better and more important things).

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