[ac794]

What is the evidence that empathy exists to short-circuit reasoning? Empathy is about understanding someone else's perspective.

[PaulHoule]

Some would say you lack empathy if you want to force mentally ill people on the street to get treatment. Other people will say you lack empathy if you discount how they feel about the “illegal” bit in “illegal immigration” —- that is, we all obey laws we don’t agree with or take the risk we’ll get in trouble and people don’t like seeing other people do otherwise any more than I like seeing people jump the turnstile on the subway when I am paying the fare.

[etherwaste]

The problem, and the trick, of this word-game regarding empathy, is frequently the removal of context. For example, when you talk about "forcing mentally ill people on the street to get treatment," we divorce the practical realities and current context of what that entails. To illuminate further, if we had an ideal system of treatment and system of judging when it was OK to override people's autonomy and dignity, it would be far less problematic to force homeless, mentally ill people to get treatment. The facts are, this is simply far from the case, where in practical reality lies a brutal system whereby we make their autonomy illegal, even their bodily autonomy to resist having mind-altering drugs with severe side-effects pumped into their bodies, for the sake of comfort of those passing by. Likewise, we can delve into your dismissal of the semiotic game you play with legalism as a contingency for compassion, actually weighing the harm of particular categories of cases, and voiding context of the realities of immigrant families attempting to make a better life.

[naasking]

Understanding another person's perspective is not necessary to determine whether they are correct. Empathy can be important for fostering social harmony, but it's also true that it can obstruct clear thinking and slow progress.

[terminalshort]

It's not there to short circuit reasoning. It's there to short circuit self interested reasoning, which is both necessary for social cohesion and a vector of attack. The farther you are from a person the more likely it is to be the latter. You must have seen it a thousand times where someone plays the victim to take advantage of another person's empathy, right?

[frumplestlatz]

Empathy biases reasoning toward in-group cohesion, overriding dispassionate reasoning that could threaten group unity.

Empathy is not required for logical coherence. It exists to override what one might otherwise rationally conclude. Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.

[edit]

Modeling someone’s cognition or experience is not empathy. Empathy is the emotional process of identifying with someone, not the cognitive act of modeling them.

[ac794]

You are using words like 'rational', 'dispassionate' and 'coherence' when what we are talking about with empathy is adding information with which to make the decision. Not breaking fundamental logic. In essence are you arguing that a person should never consider anyone else at all?

[kergonath]

> Empathy is not required for logical coherence.

It is. If you don’t have any you cannot understand other people’s perspective and you can reason logically about them. You have a broken model of the world.

> Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.

Empathy is not bias. It’s understanding, which is definitely required for logically coherent thoughts.

[webstrand]

> Modeling someone’s cognition or experience is not empathy.

then what is it? I'd argue that is a common definition of empathy, it's how I would define empathy. I'd argue what you're talking about is a narrow aspect of empathy I'd call "emotional mirroring".

Emotional mirroring is more like instinctual training-wheels. It's automatic, provided by biology, and it promotes some simple pro-social behaviors that improve unit cohesion. It provides intuition for developing actual empathy, but if left undeveloped is not useful for very much beyond immediate relationships.

[shawnz]

> Empathy biases reasoning toward in-group cohesion, overriding dispassionate reasoning that could threaten group unity.

Because that provides better outcomes for everyone in a prisoner's dilemma style scenario

[Forgeties79]

This reads like something Ayn Rand would say. Take that how you will.