Yale psychologist who argues that empathy is a human emotion that must be controlled for good, like anger is. Says that empathy is not the source of all that is good due to its nature as a “spotlight” on a certain thing, and our own inherent biases in how we apply it (a suburban girl stuck in a well (“identifiable victim effect”) vs. genocide in Darfur, shining mostly on those we love and being dim for frightening people or strangers). While the biases are separate from empathy, empathy is deeply vulnerable to said biases. We also are less empathetic to people whom we perceive as being “deserving” of a particular fate, ex. AIDS from drug use vs. something that wasn’t directly their fault. Argues that the better way to make decisions is with cost-benefits analysis, employing reason and self-control – that is, thinking about the costs and benefits, and having a focus on the long-term vs the short term. Empathy can lead to feeling too much pain at the present, and wanting to just make it go away, by either doing something that actually does more harm than good for someone (ex. letting a child not eat broccoli), or even by just walking away from it (not wanting to hear the screams of terror in a concentration camp and so moving away from it). Empathy can lead to people just wanting to escape, like crossing the road from a homeless encampment. Does not entirely agree with someone like Haidt, who says that the mind creates after-the-fact justifications for thinking – he thinks humans have the capacity for reasoning more on-the-fly. We can override “gut feelings” including on moral issues – reason can influence our gut reactions. Empathy can help us to care, and to understand, understanding the hungry child, the laid off steel worker, the storm-torn family (Obama). Logic and reasoning (math) can actually do more good than empathy, if applied as such (I.e. giving a kidney means you will likely still live). The limit of empathy is that you can’t empathize with all the woes in the World; empathy is overwhelming. Furthermore, empathy can lead us to wanting to do good for someone who we empathize with, when that is really not fair or just (letting someone you like cut the line for a lung transplant). To know it is better for one specific child to die rather than an imprecise number of other children you don’t know to die, you are not using reason. It is bad to spend $27,000 to save an oil drenched penguin or a dog that has ebola, for example, but people empathize with those cute fuzzy creatures. It is important to have the capacity for understanding moreso than just plain empathy; “effective altruism” is good as it combines the heart and the head. Autism leads to “extreme male brains” with an unusual focus on systemizing, I.e. obsessively focusing on train schedules, jigsaw puzzles, etc, and have a difficult time with empathizing (both “cognitive” and “emotional”), so cannot relate well to others. Cognitive being objectively understanding how people work, emotional being the feeling part of empathy. Studies show a very weak (1%) relationship between lack of empathy and aggression – in fact, in a lot of instances, empathy can lead to violence; empathy for someone who has been wronged can lead to violence against the perpetrator. Moral beliefs motivate action, which is frequently violent, and empathy tilts the scale to violence too much. The costs of war are abstract numbers, while avenging those who have suffered is very appealing. Also, empathic people want very harsh punishments for wrongs done. Sensitive political areas: 1. reproduction 2. out-group relations 3. in-group punishments 4. tradition vs innovative lifestyles – free-trade or bank deregulation can be less sensitive. Empathy can be fickle because of who we chose to empathize with -- I.e. black people or police officers in the debate over black lives matter. Empathy can shine the light on an American citizen that lost life in 9/11, and cause us to wreak havoc over the middle east in a quest for justice. Feeling empathy vs feeling compassion – the latter is much more sustainable, less draining on the individual, and can be applied more easily with reason, thus making people able to alleviate problems more effectively; also, people won’t walk away from the problem if they are not emotionally drained. We are likely to dehumanize those we perceive as “doing evil”, and while there are many perceived to be truly evil, evil is subjective and depends on the interpretation on each side; the “moralization gap” -- we don’t see things the way the other side does. Furthermore, a great amount of problems are perpetrated in the name of morality; religious wars, genocide, people executed for victimless crimes, etc. – the amount of these victims likely outnumber fatalities from predatory behavior and conquest. Evil done by those who think they are doing good. Empathy is sparked by stories like Willie Horton, and other stereotypes applied I.e. Jewish pedophiles in Germany, etc. Government can apply the use of force to ensure social contracts are upheld, lest we descend into chaos. With regards to groups, mentions anthropologists who have studied tribes who see humankind ending at the border, or of the linguistic group; thus this group-propensity is very strong, and we can easily dehumanize those out of it. Rage and reason can be a good pair, but we must be careful to apply reason, due to our propensity to apply feeling more to those we care about; we are creatures of intuition. It is easy for us to get things wrong, I.e. ¼ vs 1/3 pound burger example; but if we apply reason, we can see where we went wrong. We can recognize that our intuitions can be ugly and that we can make better moral decisions through reason and critical thinking. Many people can be flummoxed when trying to justify their political positions; when it boils down to practicality, what we personally think about politics generally has little effect on the World; political beliefs don’t really need to be grounded in truth, and for people, it’s not even about the truth. People are better applying critical thinking if the stakes are higher, I.e. town hall meetings, how to feed the family, etc. People can make arguments, express ideas, and be receptive to others’ ideas if stakes are higher. We should be able to reason that regardless of our feelings, the lives of those we disagree with have the same value as the lives of those we love.
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