Comment by dalek_cannes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalek_cannes | Hacker News Reader

This sentence stood out for me:

> The reason crowds of people exhaust me is that I am constantly trying to read and understand the feelings and motivations of those around me.

To me, this is a symptom of a poor Theory of Mind, or a conflict between the consciously held theory of mind and the internalized one. For the author, it looks like that latter -- he's exhausted because he has to consciously re-process his perceptions of others, perceptions which his internal ToM has already processed but has output conclusions that he might not consider acceptable (which implies a mismatch between the two ToMs).

What he's suggesting as a solution, in my opinion, is an attempt to suppress the symptoms, when the problem is the ToM. The correct way -- or at least the way that worked for me -- is to learn to see other human beings as different versions of myself, with different experiences and neurological makeup. In order to understand a person's behavior, especially negative behavior, I try to first imagine a situation where I would behave in a similar manner (e.g. the boss just yelled at me; I could conclude he is an asshole, or I could try to imagine a situation where I have yelled at someone in my team). Then I try to remember my state of mind from a similar past situation. Then I imagine the other person being under the influence of those same emotions. Suddenly it is easier to understand the person's behavior (but not justify it). Sometimes I ask myself "Had I been born with the same type of central nervous system, had I gone through the same experiences as this person and if I were in this person's situation right now, would I not be behaving in an identical manner?"

To oversimplify: empathy starts with a habit of stepping into other people's shoes. The other habits will follow.

I have a favorite saying:

Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner

(French, meaning "To understand all, is to forgive all")

Much of the time I can understand speech without trouble. Sometimes, often due to certain types of background noise, I have to explicitly concentrate on understanding. I can do it, but it's mentally tiring to maintain conscious focus on something usually taken care of by an "unconscious" mental process.

I mention this because:

> To me, [exhaustion when reading and understanding people] is a symptom of a poor Theory of Mind, or a conflict between the consciously held theory of mind and the internalized one.

It strikes me as likely that someone who isn't neurotypical may similarly be having to explicitly consciously process the reading of the other people around them. This may not be a poor theory of mind, but simply a side effect of a different neural architecture.

Your empathy habits and practices are admirable. I encourage you to cast your net even wider, though, when it comes to imagining versions of yourself with different neurological makeup.

Just because his empathy requires effort does NOT mean it is poor.

Your theory, by focusing on the situation rather than personality, at least avoids the fundamental attribution error. Your model however fails for outliers; not everyone can be modelled as "like-me". Sociopaths, borderline personality disorders, senility: there's a long list of ways in which people are different enough that simple unconscious models will not be accurate.

i think it's much worse than that. sociopaths etc are just extremes. people in general perceive the world in vastly different ways. it's because we all waddle around in the same reality and seem to speak a common language that these differences aren't obvious

> The reason crowds of people exhaust me is that I am constantly trying to read and understand the feelings and motivations of those around me.

Your theory is interesting, and I'm curious to hear how you'd interpret my situation. I get equally exhausted from being around people, but my problem is not so much that I am constantly trying to read and understand people, but rather that I seem to pick up and mirror the incessant (negative) emotions all around me when I'm in a group, with little filtering.

So if two colleagues get into a bit of an argument, I pick up on their negativity and feel my energy slowly drain away. Even if I don't really know them or care about them.

For much of my life I tried to address this by trying to understand the details of the situation and ideally by playing a role in solving it. That didn't really help much, and more recently I've allowed situations to just be. But while that gives me more peace of mind, it actually seems to increase my sensitivity to things around me.

It's reached a point where I try to manage it by avoidance: taking a bike instead of public transport to avoid seeing someone cry or get into a fight, focusing on my work as a contractor/freelancer to avoid a draining eight hours in an office, socializing less when my energy levels feel particularly low, etc.

While this solution works, it's not ideal, as I do have a strong desire to interact with others on a meaningful level.

I feel similarly to you, and distinctly remember feeling empathetic even when I was young. Now, I see life as being deterministic, which makes it easy to think "would I not be behaving in an identical manner?"

Do you think that people who struggle with empathy have that issue partially due to a non-deterministic view of life?

There is a theory of two kinds of empathy: cognitive empathy and affective/emotional empathy.

Aspies/autistics are deficient in cognitive empathy.

But when we find out others' feelings through explicit communication or other clues, we can feel for them.

We are not selfish, uncaring or unable to feel for others.

Suddenly it is easier to understand the person's behavior (but not justify it)

It kind-of sounds like the reverse to me. You're justifying the behaviour by imagining a situation where you would react the same way, thereby saying that you're no better than they are.

What you're not doing is explaining why they behave the way that they do. Whatever you imagining, odds are you're not correct in your guesses.

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