Yes, this is wrong. Has anyone read Enders Game? Hellooooo, I talk to the computer, we have "rapport".
Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#22I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering? I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions." Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make peo…
> Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions.
Isn't that pretty much a meaningless statement, because people almost always have good intentions in mind (at least from their own viewpoint) when they do almost any action?
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#23One corrolary of this, if true, would be the uneven distribution of empathy will correlate with uneven distribution of analytic skill (viz: learning by doing).
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#24I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering? I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions." Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make peo…
We use emotions to help us pick the ends to which logical effort should be directed. Try as you might, you will not be able to logically select the axioms by which you reason.
I really like your first point, but I don't see how the second follows.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#25Corollary: social networks ungracefully degrade analytic ability.
So does this mean the more friends you have on Facebook, the dumber you are?
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#26Corollary: social networks ungracefully degrade analytic ability.
So does this mean the more friends you have on Facebook, the dumber you are?
Do a study. Find a reasonable test for analytical skills (and maybe a couple other tests to keep the study's purpose unclear), then get a few thousand people to take it. One of the questions should be the order of magnitude number of Facebook friends you have.
If you're correct, you should see a correlation.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#27I have major issues with the entire article. 45 "healthy" students in an MRI is hardly solid evidence of anything. It's too small a sample to be meaningful. Presumably they were all students of "higher education" which may not represent society as a whole. Perhaps what they discovered simply represents the way the students have been educated/conditioned? What about other cultures and socio-economic groups?
I'm also skeptical of this kind of academic theory because it can be biased. If the theory doesn't pan out, then funding might stop. So better find data to support the theory.
Speaking from personal experience, I've always treated empathy as an analytic process. It simply involves additional perspectives. That's not intuition! Empathy is an extension of analysis. To claim they are mutually exclusive seems (feels?:) outrageous. It's also not consistent with other evidence that suggest that neural pathways can and will change. So why not both pathways or a hybrid pathway?
That leads to the duck-rabbit illusion where they say it's impossible to see both. I see both and it looks like a mutation. A quick search yields other interpretations too such as seeing neither. Seeing only the lines for what they are. (I can also see either duck or rabbit but the mutation is much cooler!)
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#28This rings very true to me: I like you, so I want you to be right, to the extent that I might suspend thorough analysis of what you're saying. Conversely, if I don't like you, I might ramp up efforts to find out that you're actually wrong.
Look no further than politics for day-to-day demonstrations of this: Does anyone ever apply the same amount of critical rigour to "their guy" as they do to his opponent?
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#29I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering? I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions." Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make peo…
"I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions.""
Except that good actions don't spring from malintent, so your folksy saying is of limited worth.
"Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions"
Also every amazing pinnacle of human history and society. You also conveniently leave out the tragedies born from lack of good intention.
Have you never met a sociopath? Someone without empathy?
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#30I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering? I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions." Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make peo…
"Good intentions are the opposite of good actions."
Maybe it loses something in the translation. If I had to guess, I would have said that bad intentions are the opposite of good intentions.
Anyway, given that an awful lot of good actions start with good intentions, this doesn't seem a very useful saying at all.