I find myself confused about empathy. I wrote this to try and deconfuse myself.
Let's take the example case of "posting bad political takes on the internet." When I see someone doing this, it bothers me. But then I remind myself of times that I've posted stuff that I later thought was bad. This establishes a certain baseline of empathy. But then I hit a problem: when I think back on those times, I feel shame. So though I get it, it basically justifies me feeling negative things towards them. If I feel negative towards myself for those things, it seems fair for me to send that their way.
But this isn't really fair, right? I'm judging them by my own values, not theirs. There are things I've said online that I do stand behind. Presumably they feel that way about this thing, even if I think it's stupid. And in fact if I follow this logic, I can build out a richer predictive model of their behavior.
Is this the more empathetic approach? Kind of, but sometimes it leaves my actual feelings more negative than before. When I see the world through their eyes in a predictively sophisticated way, I might not like what I see. Sometimes I do find this sort of approach gives me a newfound respect for a person, but it's not guaranteed. I guess on some level it depends on… how objectively admirable the person is? Surely not, it has to be some sort of higher level intuitive moral function I find harder to shake off. But just as a practical matter, it isn't always the case that improving my predictive model for a person's behavior makes me more interpersonally sympathetic.
And I guess if I'm being real, the thing that most bothers me is when I realize that someone is just not taking their own values seriously. Like I can see their value system, I understand their motivations, I understand their justifications, and it all just… doesn't add up. Like it makes sense on the level that I can reliably predict their behavior, but it reveals character flaws.
On some level, true empathy would have to mean being able to "get inside" these character flaws such that they don't even feel like flaws. But that feels hazardous to my own mental well-being. I think it would be hard for me to routinely bring myself to that sort of mindset without picking up cognitive habits I don't want.
It seems to me like a better way is to just let it go. Accept I don't really understand the other person's innermost perspective and that's fine. I can just feel positive about the good parts of a person without probing too deeply. I dig into the machinery if I need to make a prediction, and I admit to myself it's there (I try not to lie to myself), but I don't focus on that. I just focus on extending a sort of generalized good vibe to everyone regardless of what crazy stuff is going on inside their heads.
But that's not empathy. It's more a radical post-christian universal love sort of thing. I find I can extend this to basically anything in the world, but it doesn't yield any predictive insights. It just makes me interpersonally chill with the person/thing in question.
I think you can combine this with predictive empathy in a "hate the sin, love the sinner" sort of way. But I don't think empathy naturally takes you there. Empathy has to be combined with a certain sort of moral framework and then further cultivated a certain way to achieve this particular cognitive state.
Inspired by https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPrL2xF9iYWpPmu6B/my-empathy-is-rarely-kind
I find myself confused about empathy. I wrote this to try and deconfuse myself.
Let's take the example case of "posting bad political takes on the internet." When I see someone doing this, it bothers me. But then I remind myself of times that I've posted stuff that I later thought was bad. This establishes a certain baseline of empathy. But then I hit a problem: when I think back on those times, I feel shame. So though I get it, it basically justifies me feeling negative things towards them. If I feel negative towards myself for those things, it seems fair for me to send that their way.
But this isn't really fair, right? I'm judging them by my own values, not theirs. There are things I've said online that I do stand behind. Presumably they feel that way about this thing, even if I think it's stupid. And in fact if I follow this logic, I can build out a richer predictive model of their behavior.
Is this the more empathetic approach? Kind of, but sometimes it leaves my actual feelings more negative than before. When I see the world through their eyes in a predictively sophisticated way, I might not like what I see. Sometimes I do find this sort of approach gives me a newfound respect for a person, but it's not guaranteed. I guess on some level it depends on… how objectively admirable the person is? Surely not, it has to be some sort of higher level intuitive moral function I find harder to shake off. But just as a practical matter, it isn't always the case that improving my predictive model for a person's behavior makes me more interpersonally sympathetic.
And I guess if I'm being real, the thing that most bothers me is when I realize that someone is just not taking their own values seriously. Like I can see their value system, I understand their motivations, I understand their justifications, and it all just… doesn't add up. Like it makes sense on the level that I can reliably predict their behavior, but it reveals character flaws.
On some level, true empathy would have to mean being able to "get inside" these character flaws such that they don't even feel like flaws. But that feels hazardous to my own mental well-being. I think it would be hard for me to routinely bring myself to that sort of mindset without picking up cognitive habits I don't want.
It seems to me like a better way is to just let it go. Accept I don't really understand the other person's innermost perspective and that's fine. I can just feel positive about the good parts of a person without probing too deeply. I dig into the machinery if I need to make a prediction, and I admit to myself it's there (I try not to lie to myself), but I don't focus on that. I just focus on extending a sort of generalized good vibe to everyone regardless of what crazy stuff is going on inside their heads.
But that's not empathy. It's more a radical post-christian universal love sort of thing. I find I can extend this to basically anything in the world, but it doesn't yield any predictive insights. It just makes me interpersonally chill with the person/thing in question.
I think you can combine this with predictive empathy in a "hate the sin, love the sinner" sort of way. But I don't think empathy naturally takes you there. Empathy has to be combined with a certain sort of moral framework and then further cultivated a certain way to achieve this particular cognitive state.