I agree entirely with the suspiciousness towards empathy, while acknowledging its value as a tool (AND, let's not forget, a likely evolutionary basis for morality overall -- but we should be beyond relying on that now!). And yet. And yet.
I wonder if the whole effect isn't exacerbated nowadays with the individual feeling of helplessness though, in the face of mass suffering, death and even genocide. Focusing on one (perhaps plucked FROM the relevant number) might allow us to do something, instead of feeling it's all pointless altogether because we not only cannot save them all, we cannnot even save a significant proportion: and yet the saved ones ARE saved, like in the story of the child on the beach throwing starfish back into the sea. It matters to them.
So, perhaps the best way to use individual empathy for good is to tell (or learn) a story of one, to hook the reader (or yourself) but to follow on with decisions based on numbers?
This reminds me of a Nietzsche quote in a section against pity. “One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
I agree with you that we need to be wary of the storytellers who can leverage our System 1s. But, that doesn't mean that System 2 alone is better. For one, the decision outcomes is likely best (in terms of ease and actual magnitude of behavior) if both are aligned rather than in opposition. For two, System 2 isn't always rational. Case in point: intergenerational empathy. Philosophers like Parfit and MacAskil argue that people will invest more in the future if they realize pain is pain, no matter when it happens. But in new work (led by Matt Coleman), we find that people are quite comfortable predicting that the same amount of pain will occur, say from and injury or disease, now as in the future, but also reporting that they care less about that future suffering. In other words, even absent any type of affective forecasting error for pain, people just say: I care less about suffering 100 years in the future than now, even from the same cause. Rational? No. Normative? Yes. However, if we have them increase the vividness of the simulation of the future event with probes like: Imagine the face of the future person. What does their breathing sound like? How are they holding their body? The gap in intertemporal empathy goes away. This intervention (which is similar to that used in Buddhist and Christian contemplative techniques meant to foster empathy) doesn't rely on reasoning. Rather, it leverage System 1. So, long-winded response meant to emphasize a simple point: we can curate/nudge our own System 1 responses. Then, we're not subject to the whims of storytellers' manipulations, but to our own principled ones.
I agree with the article but I think you were right specifically at saying numbers don't affect us. They do surprise us but numbers actually mean nothing unless you already have the moral intuition. The numbers serve the moral intuition in other words. It's hard to grasp such a vast number as well that we tend to reduce large numbers into some abstraction (e.g. 8452 is thought of as 4 separate numbers because 8,452 is just a ridiculously large number). So on top of numbers adding no moral dimension to the tragedy, we have our mind's capabilities working against us. If you say 6 million people died in a genocide that sounds horrible but if you show things that happened in the holocaust and then say 6 million people died by it then they are associating those shown things onto 6 million people even if worse things happened to some of them. Numbers are ambiguous and have no part, by themselves, in how we interpret anything but definitely not in how we interpret complex feelings like moral despair.
If I may be so bold: spend a few thousand words on the novel as a means of development. I believe I’ve heard you hit that note before and would like to hear more of it. Side-pod with Tamler? Balance the ledger.
Given we experience a fiction of our own, are the readers of fiction equipped with more devices of plot and character? Do non readers have the full arsenal of romantic/humanistic confabulation? Is one normative?
You seem to be saying it’s better to be without. We are more rational when we are less human. Or we are less humane when we encounter the elements of humanity’s invention.
Reminded of a line from Bertrand Russell: “the mark of a civilized human being is the ability to read a column of numbers and weep.”
I agree entirely with the suspiciousness towards empathy, while acknowledging its value as a tool (AND, let's not forget, a likely evolutionary basis for morality overall -- but we should be beyond relying on that now!). And yet. And yet.
I wonder if the whole effect isn't exacerbated nowadays with the individual feeling of helplessness though, in the face of mass suffering, death and even genocide. Focusing on one (perhaps plucked FROM the relevant number) might allow us to do something, instead of feeling it's all pointless altogether because we not only cannot save them all, we cannnot even save a significant proportion: and yet the saved ones ARE saved, like in the story of the child on the beach throwing starfish back into the sea. It matters to them.
So, perhaps the best way to use individual empathy for good is to tell (or learn) a story of one, to hook the reader (or yourself) but to follow on with decisions based on numbers?
This reminds me of a Nietzsche quote in a section against pity. “One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
I agree with you that we need to be wary of the storytellers who can leverage our System 1s. But, that doesn't mean that System 2 alone is better. For one, the decision outcomes is likely best (in terms of ease and actual magnitude of behavior) if both are aligned rather than in opposition. For two, System 2 isn't always rational. Case in point: intergenerational empathy. Philosophers like Parfit and MacAskil argue that people will invest more in the future if they realize pain is pain, no matter when it happens. But in new work (led by Matt Coleman), we find that people are quite comfortable predicting that the same amount of pain will occur, say from and injury or disease, now as in the future, but also reporting that they care less about that future suffering. In other words, even absent any type of affective forecasting error for pain, people just say: I care less about suffering 100 years in the future than now, even from the same cause. Rational? No. Normative? Yes. However, if we have them increase the vividness of the simulation of the future event with probes like: Imagine the face of the future person. What does their breathing sound like? How are they holding their body? The gap in intertemporal empathy goes away. This intervention (which is similar to that used in Buddhist and Christian contemplative techniques meant to foster empathy) doesn't rely on reasoning. Rather, it leverage System 1. So, long-winded response meant to emphasize a simple point: we can curate/nudge our own System 1 responses. Then, we're not subject to the whims of storytellers' manipulations, but to our own principled ones.
I agree with the article but I think you were right specifically at saying numbers don't affect us. They do surprise us but numbers actually mean nothing unless you already have the moral intuition. The numbers serve the moral intuition in other words. It's hard to grasp such a vast number as well that we tend to reduce large numbers into some abstraction (e.g. 8452 is thought of as 4 separate numbers because 8,452 is just a ridiculously large number). So on top of numbers adding no moral dimension to the tragedy, we have our mind's capabilities working against us. If you say 6 million people died in a genocide that sounds horrible but if you show things that happened in the holocaust and then say 6 million people died by it then they are associating those shown things onto 6 million people even if worse things happened to some of them. Numbers are ambiguous and have no part, by themselves, in how we interpret anything but definitely not in how we interpret complex feelings like moral despair.
If I may be so bold: spend a few thousand words on the novel as a means of development. I believe I’ve heard you hit that note before and would like to hear more of it. Side-pod with Tamler? Balance the ledger.
What capacity or capacities are present in readers that are absent in non readers?
Given we experience a fiction of our own, are the readers of fiction equipped with more devices of plot and character? Do non readers have the full arsenal of romantic/humanistic confabulation? Is one normative?
You seem to be saying it’s better to be without. We are more rational when we are less human. Or we are less humane when we encounter the elements of humanity’s invention.
Paulie B—let’s suppose we could fail to prevent the killing of 10 readers vs 20 non readers…
But 2 of the readers are Branden Sanderson fans.
One of the non readers really likes the TV adaptation of Jeeves and Wooster but has not picked up Wodehouse.