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Sep. 18th, 2019 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[arguably venting?]
[WordPress; Wayback] (by Jacob Falkovich)
When I saw him say that he thought empathy was bad, I thought the post might be about a kindred spirit. But actually, he seems to be coming at it from the opposite direction:
Whereas I think the problem with emotional empathy is that it feels *bad* and makes me *hate* caring for others.
*Cognitive* empathy is great! Very useful for helping you determine the right grounded-in-self-interest-via-acausal-decision-theory actions! But the part of me screaming that the person causing me to feel pain (by feeling their own pain in my presence) is *attacking* me and I need to *retaliate* is *not helping anything*.
[WordPress; Wayback] (by Jacob Falkovich)
When I saw him say that he thought empathy was bad, I thought the post might be about a kindred spirit. But actually, he seems to be coming at it from the opposite direction:
In conclusion let me say this: emotional empathy is a wonderful human capacity. It expands our emotional universe and makes us enjoy caring for others. So why do I argue against it? Because of a fundamental asymmetry: emotional empathy feels too good, we are ever likelier to overdo it rather than neglect it.
Whereas I think the problem with emotional empathy is that it feels *bad* and makes me *hate* caring for others.
*Cognitive* empathy is great! Very useful for helping you determine the right grounded-in-self-interest-via-acausal-decision-theory actions! But the part of me screaming that the person causing me to feel pain (by feeling their own pain in my presence) is *attacking* me and I need to *retaliate* is *not helping anything*.
