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Comment by Huggernaut | Hacker News Reader

I imagine the downvotes are mainly because the comparison seems pretty off base, regardless of whether one agrees with the good or bad of the original post.

Comparing "you are now in a situation where you may have an opportunity to empathise with difficulties others have had" to "you are trying to build a society where more fortunate people are harmed in the name of sameness" doesn't resonate at all.

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You are exactly right. The funny thing is that the short story in question, Harrison Bergeron, was meant as a satire of right-wing fears of slippery slopes toward sameness. It's no coincidence that the comparison is made here; the comparison is exactly what Kurt Vonnegut was making fun of when he wrote the story.

Most critiques of the story entirely disagree with your interpretation. I couldn’t find anything specific about how the author meant it to be understood but it appears that most understand it as I interpreted it when I was 9 years old.

Ah, the comparison is coming from the fact that the GP is describing a bad situation he’s in and the response is essentially “you deserve it” and “think of the starving children in Africa”. My point is that sort of thinking creates a less humane society.

Right, I don't really agree with your interpretation, though I can understand how you might read it that way. As I wrote above, I read it as "take this as a learning opportunity to empathise with others", which I would think leads to a _more_ humane society.

Telling someone how to "empathize" is probably the most condescending thing that "progressives" tell others to do.

Somehow it only comes out when the person preaching it feels extreme pity for the person in need of "empathy" and most importantly the preacher is the only one who really understands how to give that empathy, no one else is able to reach their level of enlightenment. Of course this creates a problem when two such preachers are in the same room...

Additionally, most of the time the pitied person doesn't want your pity or empathy they just want to live their life and are usually pretty happy until you come along and start telling them they need empathy and how bad their life really is.

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