Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

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I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity:

> Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of others — without hesitation or remorse, because they are “bad.”

my covid-denying, chain-smoking, cancer-surviving 85 year old aunt in Florida would totally consider know-it-all, liberal (and probably "antifa"!) me to be "righteous" but I sure am worried that she's going to get covid, I worry for her health, what's happened to her mind being fully indoctrinated by FOX news. She's not written off. My other cousin who pushes ivermectin propaganda on FB, OK maybe I'm a little less empathetic there :)

Thats sympathy. Empathy is different from sympathy.

I can be sympathetic without really empathising with someone, and I can have empathy with someone without being sympathetic. Empathy uses more energy.

Ingroups tend to avoid empathy with outgroups because that weakens the separateness between people, and ingroups try to strengthen ingroup sympathy. Pity is a form of sympathy.

Sympathy: "I feel bad for you"

Empathy: "I understand you"

Often an ingroup member will not understand an outgroup member but can sympathize with their troubles or feel pity for them. Sympathy doesn't cost as much as empathy. Empathy challenges one's ingroup cohesion.

As someone who grew up in poverty, had my first heart surgery at 3 and was constantly confronted with dying and then had both parents die while I was young.

I think people greatly overestimate their ability to have/experience empathy.

I think the more divergent someones experience is, the more empathy is not available and the conceit that you can understand a complex issue you haven't experienced is a form of good hearted but self centered foolishness.

Give me sympathy, give me tangible help, give me money perhaps, you should feel bad for me and bad about what's happening and then stop putting sugar in your tea as a tangible effort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce) and then treat me with normalcy and respect and consider me as an equal.

There are parallels in the movie industry as well, one film directors quote (who said it and the exact quote I've long forgotten) I like to paraphrase went something like this: "Making creative movies to your vision was easier when the studio execs were old and would just go 'I dont get it but let the young people give it a shot' than when non-creatives started to meddle in movies because they think they have a knack for it".

This video was popular for while and set a lot of discourse around empathy/sympathy and imo it is harmful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZBTYViDPlQ

should have been more specific. I am not a stranger to cult indoctrination. Plus I grew up with these people in the same house. So I actually know where she is coming from and to some extent what it's like to be indoctrinated (I had a bried stint with scientology 30 years ago). It's fully possible to be empathetic for someone's worldview and still know that they are completely wrong. I'm not sure how that's not feasible.

I've lost several people to cults over the years and I sympathize.

People (not yourself obviously) confuse empathy and sympathy with agreement and that's simply not the case of course.

It's tough when you see yourself so strongly in someone else and share experience with them and they are destroying their lives by putting their trust in liars.

This is painful to see even in severe cases when someone is sucked in due to their own self serving biases.

It's frustrating though. Wrong people are still wrong. It's not that hard to "ground propositions" on the issues most people deal with in their practical lives (once you've conceded that physical reality exists.)

Good luck and hang in there.

What does ”I understand you.” mean? That I am able to correctly predict your future behavior?

It’s funny how even in response to this article, people feel like they need to list their righteous bona fides.

I don't see where the author said that thinking one has more wisdom necessarily means one loses empathy.

I think the author's definition of righteousness is the loss of empathy. The author wouldn't seem to have a problem with an empathetic wise person being both empathetic and wise.

It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe.

So, I would say it is very unwise to claim to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. When you're worrying about them like that, you're assuming you know what's best for them. It's not just about empathy, it's about letting people live their own lives. There's nothing inherently wrong with worrying about them but you can't change them and you shouldn't even want to IMO.

> It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe.

I think this point is better stated without claims about value, ie “I know what is best”.

The predictions I make about the consequences of me doing something are more accurate than the predictions I make about the consequences of someone else doing something. Furthermore, my accuracy quickly degrades as the social distance increases.

> where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group.

I certainly see a lot of this on Twitter.

It's very common to have fellow-feeling with a family member while demonizing an outgroup they align with. So it's just not much evidence for your own sanity on its own. If one egregore is infecting millions of minds, why not two? Or more?

> her mind being fully indoctrinated by FOX news

As opposed to her mind being liberated and enlightened if she would watch CNN instead.

The news world doesn't exist merely between these two choices.

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