(no subject)

[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:

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*.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Huh. Just on a gut level, I thought that quote was talking about people-pleasing -- about how empathy can drive you to lean into the good vibes that come off bad people (people more capable of ignoring other people's suffering, for example) and avoid dealing with people whose negative feelings you're likely to catch.