# 198 - The case against empathy
And link to my latest longform essay
Hello!
There’s a recent episode on Tyler Cowen’s podcast where he’s talking to Paul Bloom, an academic and writer specializing in moral psychology and the psychology of children. I have known Bloom from his book The Sweet Spot.
Cowen, being Cowen, floats this:
If we think of large language models, should we let them feel disgust so that they avoid left-wing bias?
And goes on to expand thus:
…there are various claims in the literature that for people on the right, disgust is a more fundamental emotion, and that a greater capacity to feel disgust encourages people in some ways to be more socially conservative. Debatable, but I don’t think it’s a crazy view. So, if you build LLMs, and you give them, say, a lot of empathy and not much or any disgust, you’re going to get left-leaning LLMs…
Bloom responds by remarking that he thinks Gemini is left-leaning. He calls it a “woke” LLM. He says he wouldn’t mind left-leaning LLMs because he says he wouldn’t taking away from humanity the power to feel moral disgust. He suggests a limit for empathy beyond which some amount of disgust / intolerance could set in.
To which Cowen cites the example of Canada’s pro-migration policies. While they are well-meaning, some limit is advisable by way of “thinking about immigration on a rational cost-benefit analysis.”
All of this, in my head, builds up a curious case against empathy.
Empathy benefits individuals more than groups.
Empathy makes us feel more for one suffering child than for thousands of suffering children. Take any human interest story in the media. Of the three thousand who had perished in a devastating earthquake, why does our attention go to the story of one who was trapped in the rubble and rescued after two days? This is what Paul Slovic gives the name psychic numbing. He says, pointing to our lack of proportional compassion for big tragedies, “statistics are human beings with the tears dried off.”
As a coach, empathy helps me step into the shoes of my client and walk a mile in them. I can understand their worldview better.
As a supervisor or business leader (until recently, I was one), empathy may hinder me from taking decisions in the best interests of the entire group I lead even if they are disadvantageous to certain individuals.
At a session for young managers, one of the questions posed was about communicating difficult decisions. The challenge outlined was that in a majority decision those who voted otherwise might feel unheard.
This is, I believe, a good case against empathy. Don’t optimize for individuals at the cost of the group. The interests of the minority triggers empathy, almost as a more visceral reaction and at the cost of broader reason.
Through my friend Pritesh, sometime ago, I came to learn about the trend of bigger elevators in the US and the resulting complications it imposes on the construction of newer high-rises because, at first, the elevator had to be wide enough to fit a wheelchair, then a wheelchair plus a gurney, then two wheelchairs plus a gurney, and so on.
It is empathy that is driving this change, is it not? Yet, it is not helpful in the larger scheme of things. It is ballooning the cost of erecting buildings and putting reins on the construction industry.
It doesn’t sound woke but there’s a case to be made against empathy. It is not a blanket good thing.
PS: Not all may know this. I started writing longform creative non-fiction a few months back. Since, I’ve produced a few essays, including character studies of people I admire. The latest though is a piece of self-exploration. It’s called Where Have the Amateurs Gone? and it is an account of my story of fighting the urge to become a first-copy replica of others around me who I looked up to as ahead of the game, and accepting something about myself along the way.
👋Hi! I’m Satyajit and thank you for reading my work. Writing is the main medium of creation for me. I also use my skills as a decision-making trainer to help create leverage in my clients’ careers and as a coach to create shifts in perspective in my clients’ lives.