This is an expected development. People will always distort and weaponize things to justify whatever they wanted in the first place. Kahneman taught us the concept of cognitive bias and then people started accusing their opponents of bias while ignoring their own biases. Popper taught us that tolerating those who use literal violence to advance their ideas can lead society to a dark path (the paradox of tolerance _ the original version is wildly different from the modern conception), and now people use that as an excuse to censor and cancel people they don't like, while calling violence when the same happen to them. And then Bloom taught us to be skeptical of empathy and now people use it to dismiss things they opponents want while still abusing empathetic discourse themselves.
The final paragraph reminds me of a “disturbing” comment my nurse sister made many decades ago about the death of a very popular young college basketball player who drove into the path of a massive snow removing machine during a blizzard. She said “Why is his death mourned so much louder than others”? It was disturbing to me at the time because of the acute loss of the unique contributions this young person made to the sporting program. Now I see that the collective empathy carried a life of its own, which strangely devalued the death of others. My own empathy meter may be biased.
This reminds me of Holly Elmore's "We are in triage every second of every day". If we use anecdotes to scare ourselves away from making trade-offs, we are just going to make worse trade-offs.
I listened to that podcast and couldn't believe how seriously Stuckey distorted the argument of Against Empathy. Literally turned on its head. She invoked the book in order to make precisely the opposite argument: not that empathy is bad because it tends toward in-group bias, but that empathy is bad because it gets in the way of our in-group bias.
I had a lot of takeaways from this article, especially when I remembered reading your book “Against Empathy” a few months ago, from which I learned to prioritize rational thought over emotional impulses for decision-making. A story of one person could be more touching, but a number of 1,000 people, although it looks like a mere number and seems less rhetoric at first sight, actually consists of a thousand of these touching stories and should be given more value.
Based on my interpretation of “Against Empathy”, this argument for rational thought is ultimately directed towards more compassion and kindness. It should help people determine which charity organizations to donate to (a charity that shows a picture of one child, or a charity that shows better statistics). However, it is apparent from this article that some people misuse this concept, choosing to not donate to charities at all, if not finding delight in the charity recipients’ suffering.
This makes me think that just like empathy, anti-empathy is a double-edged sword. Its concept is designed to make the world a more caring space, and yet a misunderstanding – accidental or on purpose – easily makes it counterproductive. It seems like the issue here is not the mode of thoughts people have, but their ultimate thoughts in the first place.
I enjoyed your book, esp. the last third. Your reasoning is spot on. People’s knee-jerk negative reactions to it are simpleminded.
I used it as inspiration for my amateur rant of Trump’s reelection when I wrote “If you’re an American who didn’t vote for Harris because she, like Biden, facilitated the genocide, I’m afraid you have failed to acknowledge that Trump is worse in that regard alone.”
Great piece. Heard the NYT pod and hoped you’d offer a considered response, so thank you.
Recently recorded a pod episode where I, alongside another couples therapist, have a look at empathy in relationships and couples therapy. As you can imagine, empathy is often seen as the magic bullet in couples work, when in reality, it can easily get in the way of progress.
We obviously draw a lot on Against Empathy in our chat.
Elon’s quote about empathy and his doge rampage kind of inspired me to double down on empathy. But I remember wondering how Paul thought about Elon’s take on empathy. I’m delighted I now have a canonical answer
The point that application of policy /law can result in very unfortunate “sad” cases is of course true. What’s critical ( and is it missing from the analysis of these writers?) is HOW did the unfortunate “one off” senario originate — eg rape victim NO fault of their own. —Illegal alien %100 percent their fault by not waiting in line….
You chose a seemingly arbitrary Musk post to appraise with "It’s hard to see in Musk’s reaction a real concern that empathy will lead people astray, leading to greater overall harm."
I'm not sure how that post gets submitted into evidence as a candidate reaction expressing real concern about toxic empathy. For one thing, it had no words. He didn't bring up the topic, and he might have simply thought the ASMR reference was humorous in context.
This part I think is key:
"But of course, concern for the suffering of people is foundational to morality; such suffering is something we should always try to minimize."
I vigorously beg to differ. You're stacking the deck here with a specific moral framework – one seemingly modal on the left.
I think and I'm sure lots and lots of philosophers think a focus on suffering is a mistake. For one thing, suffering is not inherently unjust, nor is it non-functional.
We should not try to minimize the suffering that comes from bad or irrational behavior, for example, at least not a priori. In any case "suffering" is hopelessly broad and acontextual a construct to do much with.
Moreover, a good virtue ethics isn't going to spend much time on suffering. If the virtues are things like honesty, integrity, productiveness, cognitive independence, rationality, benevolence, curiosity, etc. where does suffering come up? Benevolence, probably, but it's not foundational.
Suffering wasn't foundational to Aristotle, Rand, not sure about Nussbaum. (Most of the virtues listed above are from Rand.)
Suffering wasn't remotely foundational in Seligman and Peterson's inventory of consensual character strengths and virtues.
Something you might have missed: The toxic empathy contention is mostly about empathy for bad people and distant strangers overriding empathy for good people and one's own family, community, and country.
So for example, leftist politicians flying to El Salvador to hob-nob with an MS-13 thug, but not ever mentioning Laken Riley's name or talking to her family. (And there are many, many Laken Rileys – it's not too rare a phenomenon.)
Another example is leftist jurisdictions releasing dangerous criminals *because* they're illegals, by intentional policy, in defiance of ICE detainers. Massachusetts and Maryland come up a lot. Those illegals then go on to victimize more Americans in some cases. That's toxic empathy, or perhaps anti-civilizational malice.
As far as I know, it's unprecedented for large numbers of humans to care more about **foreign men** – even criminals – than they care about their own people, including innocent women and children. (Key is "their own people".) That is, leftists née "liberals" are unprecedented, psychologically.
I think suffering is obviously relevant to morality, and so do you. You begin by insisting that it isn't--we should care only about virtues like honesty and integrity. Then, a few paragraphs later, you talk with genuine concern and real outrage about the suffering of Riley and her family and the victimization of Americans. This is where you get things right (though we disagree about a lot of other things.)
Morality for me isn't metaphysical or elemental. It's not earth, wind, fire, suffering, intention, etc.
So suffering isn't fundamental. Unjust suffering is very important, not suffering qua suffering. Suffering is fine, and often helpful.
The injustice of illegals coming here, being in custody on one or more occasions, and then being released only to murder someone like Riley is outrageous. (Her killer was in custody in NY I believe.) My judgment there is more about justice, political philosophy, and how unnecessary and preventable her murder was. We should protect our country, our people – that's just basic, what it means to be a country.
Morality isn't about moving around abstractions like "suffering" and it's not about tending to others, but rather how you live your life, character, decisions, etc.
Fundamentally, it's not political. While I don't fully agree with Objectivism, I like how Rand separated ethics and politics (and epistemology, metaphysics, and esthetics). Leftists don't have an ethics underneath their politics, so it gets confusing – for them being a leftist and being a good person are the same thing, and if they say "harm reduction" everyone is supposed to just support it. I don't want government focused on suffering qua suffering, and I think any kind of ideology or philosophy that says it's focused on "reducing suffering" is going to mete out massive suffering.
1. We disagree about suffering. For me, causing needless suffering--rape and murder, to take the case you're discussing--is wrong even if you do it to someone in a distant country. But I'm not sure how to convince you if you don't share this intuition.
2. You seem to bounce around between defending virtue ethics--it's all character--and arguing that there exist moral principles we should adhere to, such as protecting your country. They're both tenable positions, but they're not the same. (I think you should give up the former; it doesn't solve moral problems; it just ducks them.)
Yeah, there is some bounce. I'll have to think some more. I don't have any geographical conditions for murder, rape, theft, etc. being wrong.
For now, I want to offer a poignant example of toxic empathy, consistent with the definition I offered, and might clarify this idea you had in point 1.
In 2020, leftists rioted nationwide over George Floyd, a random black criminal who was seemingly wrongfully killed by a cop on a random day in a random city in a nation of 330 million people and ≈800,000 cops.
In the midst of those riots and protests, a black man walked up to 19-year-old Berkeley undergrad Seth Smith, shot him in the head, and walked away. It was obviously racially motivated – he murdered Smith because he was white. He gave clues to that effect in conversations with police, but was not charged with any hate crime enhancements. They were complete strangers and there was no robbery.
In response, the Berkeley administration released this statement:
Many of you may have had a close relationship with Seth and are feeling a sense of loss and disbelief.
Others, like many of us, are experiencing stress, grief and anxiety related to the coronavirus pandemic and the recent murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, and other Black Americans.
Sincerely,
Carol Christ
Chancellor
Stephen C. Sutton
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
Sunny Lee
Assistant Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students"
----
That's one of the most ghastly things I've ever read. Seth was **their student**, and practically a child at 19. Again, he was a Berkeley student, one of their charge...
They clearly separate themselves from those who cared about Seth, with "others, like many of us" care more about COVID, George Floyd, Riah Milton, and black people in general.
It was stunning on every level, from anthropology to ethics to university administration. They hardly cared about this boy. They cared more about a random black criminal over a thousand miles away – a man who once robbed an old woman by impersonating a utility worker, uniform and all – and Milton, who was just a random black trans-asserting man killed by other black men. It was just a random murder in Ohio, but because he was trans-asserting and black, Berkeley administrators were lamenting it in a public statement in response to one of their own students being shot in the head.
That's toxic empathy. They care -- or pretend to care -- more about distant strangers, even criminals, based on their race and new ideologically-sprouted identities, than they do about their own people, innocent, **young** people. It was ghastly.
And I forgot to say that murder isn't a great example for suffering, since it doesn't inherently require suffering and it ends all suffering. It's more about the right to life. That's one reason why a concern for "suffering" is limited in its application, and misses a lot of injustice.
I had thought of Seth Smith again yesterday, and how he was murdered instantly – no suffering. Murder is its own category of predation. It's really **predation** that I key in on with cases like Laken Riley, Smith, etc. I hate predation.
I agree with Ross: we all need to have a lot of sympathy and compassion for the persecuted Christians in the US. They've only ever had every president (until this one), 95+% of senators and representatives, etc. Their victimhood is incredibly sad.
This is an expected development. People will always distort and weaponize things to justify whatever they wanted in the first place. Kahneman taught us the concept of cognitive bias and then people started accusing their opponents of bias while ignoring their own biases. Popper taught us that tolerating those who use literal violence to advance their ideas can lead society to a dark path (the paradox of tolerance _ the original version is wildly different from the modern conception), and now people use that as an excuse to censor and cancel people they don't like, while calling violence when the same happen to them. And then Bloom taught us to be skeptical of empathy and now people use it to dismiss things they opponents want while still abusing empathetic discourse themselves.
Excellent nuanced view.
Appreciate the calm elucidation and the fair hearing you give to the “other” side.
The final paragraph reminds me of a “disturbing” comment my nurse sister made many decades ago about the death of a very popular young college basketball player who drove into the path of a massive snow removing machine during a blizzard. She said “Why is his death mourned so much louder than others”? It was disturbing to me at the time because of the acute loss of the unique contributions this young person made to the sporting program. Now I see that the collective empathy carried a life of its own, which strangely devalued the death of others. My own empathy meter may be biased.
I hope Douthat will invite you on his podcast to provide the counterpoint
Well done Paul.
Not sure why, but this whole thread reminded me of Stalin’s comment that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
This reminds me of Holly Elmore's "We are in triage every second of every day". If we use anecdotes to scare ourselves away from making trade-offs, we are just going to make worse trade-offs.
https://mhollyelmoreblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/we-are-in-triage-every-second-of-every-day/
I listened to that podcast and couldn't believe how seriously Stuckey distorted the argument of Against Empathy. Literally turned on its head. She invoked the book in order to make precisely the opposite argument: not that empathy is bad because it tends toward in-group bias, but that empathy is bad because it gets in the way of our in-group bias.
I had a lot of takeaways from this article, especially when I remembered reading your book “Against Empathy” a few months ago, from which I learned to prioritize rational thought over emotional impulses for decision-making. A story of one person could be more touching, but a number of 1,000 people, although it looks like a mere number and seems less rhetoric at first sight, actually consists of a thousand of these touching stories and should be given more value.
Based on my interpretation of “Against Empathy”, this argument for rational thought is ultimately directed towards more compassion and kindness. It should help people determine which charity organizations to donate to (a charity that shows a picture of one child, or a charity that shows better statistics). However, it is apparent from this article that some people misuse this concept, choosing to not donate to charities at all, if not finding delight in the charity recipients’ suffering.
This makes me think that just like empathy, anti-empathy is a double-edged sword. Its concept is designed to make the world a more caring space, and yet a misunderstanding – accidental or on purpose – easily makes it counterproductive. It seems like the issue here is not the mode of thoughts people have, but their ultimate thoughts in the first place.
I enjoyed your book, esp. the last third. Your reasoning is spot on. People’s knee-jerk negative reactions to it are simpleminded.
I used it as inspiration for my amateur rant of Trump’s reelection when I wrote “If you’re an American who didn’t vote for Harris because she, like Biden, facilitated the genocide, I’m afraid you have failed to acknowledge that Trump is worse in that regard alone.”
Great piece. Heard the NYT pod and hoped you’d offer a considered response, so thank you.
Recently recorded a pod episode where I, alongside another couples therapist, have a look at empathy in relationships and couples therapy. As you can imagine, empathy is often seen as the magic bullet in couples work, when in reality, it can easily get in the way of progress.
We obviously draw a lot on Against Empathy in our chat.
https://rss.com/podcasts/crazyinlove/2144550/
Elon’s quote about empathy and his doge rampage kind of inspired me to double down on empathy. But I remember wondering how Paul thought about Elon’s take on empathy. I’m delighted I now have a canonical answer
The point that application of policy /law can result in very unfortunate “sad” cases is of course true. What’s critical ( and is it missing from the analysis of these writers?) is HOW did the unfortunate “one off” senario originate — eg rape victim NO fault of their own. —Illegal alien %100 percent their fault by not waiting in line….
You chose a seemingly arbitrary Musk post to appraise with "It’s hard to see in Musk’s reaction a real concern that empathy will lead people astray, leading to greater overall harm."
I'm not sure how that post gets submitted into evidence as a candidate reaction expressing real concern about toxic empathy. For one thing, it had no words. He didn't bring up the topic, and he might have simply thought the ASMR reference was humorous in context.
This part I think is key:
"But of course, concern for the suffering of people is foundational to morality; such suffering is something we should always try to minimize."
I vigorously beg to differ. You're stacking the deck here with a specific moral framework – one seemingly modal on the left.
I think and I'm sure lots and lots of philosophers think a focus on suffering is a mistake. For one thing, suffering is not inherently unjust, nor is it non-functional.
We should not try to minimize the suffering that comes from bad or irrational behavior, for example, at least not a priori. In any case "suffering" is hopelessly broad and acontextual a construct to do much with.
Moreover, a good virtue ethics isn't going to spend much time on suffering. If the virtues are things like honesty, integrity, productiveness, cognitive independence, rationality, benevolence, curiosity, etc. where does suffering come up? Benevolence, probably, but it's not foundational.
Suffering wasn't foundational to Aristotle, Rand, not sure about Nussbaum. (Most of the virtues listed above are from Rand.)
Suffering wasn't remotely foundational in Seligman and Peterson's inventory of consensual character strengths and virtues.
Something you might have missed: The toxic empathy contention is mostly about empathy for bad people and distant strangers overriding empathy for good people and one's own family, community, and country.
So for example, leftist politicians flying to El Salvador to hob-nob with an MS-13 thug, but not ever mentioning Laken Riley's name or talking to her family. (And there are many, many Laken Rileys – it's not too rare a phenomenon.)
Another example is leftist jurisdictions releasing dangerous criminals *because* they're illegals, by intentional policy, in defiance of ICE detainers. Massachusetts and Maryland come up a lot. Those illegals then go on to victimize more Americans in some cases. That's toxic empathy, or perhaps anti-civilizational malice.
As far as I know, it's unprecedented for large numbers of humans to care more about **foreign men** – even criminals – than they care about their own people, including innocent women and children. (Key is "their own people".) That is, leftists née "liberals" are unprecedented, psychologically.
I think suffering is obviously relevant to morality, and so do you. You begin by insisting that it isn't--we should care only about virtues like honesty and integrity. Then, a few paragraphs later, you talk with genuine concern and real outrage about the suffering of Riley and her family and the victimization of Americans. This is where you get things right (though we disagree about a lot of other things.)
Morality for me isn't metaphysical or elemental. It's not earth, wind, fire, suffering, intention, etc.
So suffering isn't fundamental. Unjust suffering is very important, not suffering qua suffering. Suffering is fine, and often helpful.
The injustice of illegals coming here, being in custody on one or more occasions, and then being released only to murder someone like Riley is outrageous. (Her killer was in custody in NY I believe.) My judgment there is more about justice, political philosophy, and how unnecessary and preventable her murder was. We should protect our country, our people – that's just basic, what it means to be a country.
Morality isn't about moving around abstractions like "suffering" and it's not about tending to others, but rather how you live your life, character, decisions, etc.
Fundamentally, it's not political. While I don't fully agree with Objectivism, I like how Rand separated ethics and politics (and epistemology, metaphysics, and esthetics). Leftists don't have an ethics underneath their politics, so it gets confusing – for them being a leftist and being a good person are the same thing, and if they say "harm reduction" everyone is supposed to just support it. I don't want government focused on suffering qua suffering, and I think any kind of ideology or philosophy that says it's focused on "reducing suffering" is going to mete out massive suffering.
1. We disagree about suffering. For me, causing needless suffering--rape and murder, to take the case you're discussing--is wrong even if you do it to someone in a distant country. But I'm not sure how to convince you if you don't share this intuition.
2. You seem to bounce around between defending virtue ethics--it's all character--and arguing that there exist moral principles we should adhere to, such as protecting your country. They're both tenable positions, but they're not the same. (I think you should give up the former; it doesn't solve moral problems; it just ducks them.)
Would be interested in a post on virtue ethics if you have more to say!
Yeah, there is some bounce. I'll have to think some more. I don't have any geographical conditions for murder, rape, theft, etc. being wrong.
For now, I want to offer a poignant example of toxic empathy, consistent with the definition I offered, and might clarify this idea you had in point 1.
In 2020, leftists rioted nationwide over George Floyd, a random black criminal who was seemingly wrongfully killed by a cop on a random day in a random city in a nation of 330 million people and ≈800,000 cops.
In the midst of those riots and protests, a black man walked up to 19-year-old Berkeley undergrad Seth Smith, shot him in the head, and walked away. It was obviously racially motivated – he murdered Smith because he was white. He gave clues to that effect in conversations with police, but was not charged with any hate crime enhancements. They were complete strangers and there was no robbery.
In response, the Berkeley administration released this statement:
Many of you may have had a close relationship with Seth and are feeling a sense of loss and disbelief.
Others, like many of us, are experiencing stress, grief and anxiety related to the coronavirus pandemic and the recent murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, and other Black Americans.
Sincerely,
Carol Christ
Chancellor
Stephen C. Sutton
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
Sunny Lee
Assistant Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students"
----
That's one of the most ghastly things I've ever read. Seth was **their student**, and practically a child at 19. Again, he was a Berkeley student, one of their charge...
They clearly separate themselves from those who cared about Seth, with "others, like many of us" care more about COVID, George Floyd, Riah Milton, and black people in general.
It was stunning on every level, from anthropology to ethics to university administration. They hardly cared about this boy. They cared more about a random black criminal over a thousand miles away – a man who once robbed an old woman by impersonating a utility worker, uniform and all – and Milton, who was just a random black trans-asserting man killed by other black men. It was just a random murder in Ohio, but because he was trans-asserting and black, Berkeley administrators were lamenting it in a public statement in response to one of their own students being shot in the head.
That's toxic empathy. They care -- or pretend to care -- more about distant strangers, even criminals, based on their race and new ideologically-sprouted identities, than they do about their own people, innocent, **young** people. It was ghastly.
And I forgot to say that murder isn't a great example for suffering, since it doesn't inherently require suffering and it ends all suffering. It's more about the right to life. That's one reason why a concern for "suffering" is limited in its application, and misses a lot of injustice.
I had thought of Seth Smith again yesterday, and how he was murdered instantly – no suffering. Murder is its own category of predation. It's really **predation** that I key in on with cases like Laken Riley, Smith, etc. I hate predation.
I agree with Ross: we all need to have a lot of sympathy and compassion for the persecuted Christians in the US. They've only ever had every president (until this one), 95+% of senators and representatives, etc. Their victimhood is incredibly sad.
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