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Comment by joshmarlow | Hacker News Reader

Here's a negative path that I hope doesn't occur - we build toys that are more lifelike, communicative and designed to invoke empathy, and some children will just become desensitized to empathy triggers.

I wonder if there's any research to prove/disprove something like that? Is empathy desensitization a thing?

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Military forces around the world have figured it out - they have a common dehumanizing language to avoid empathy triggers.

Everyone uses the more mild version of dehumanizing language, reduction to abstraction [1], because it's more efficient to consider groups of people and it removes emotions from decisions.

For example, when considering latency you might say:

The service is experiencing 3 seconds of latency at the 99th percentile with periodic timeouts.

You wouldn't say

Alice wasn't able to buy medicine because the transaction failed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization

Since the 11th century Norman conquest we've had pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/lamb

Minor nitpick, at least in North America sheep meat is mutton. Lamb is the word for a young sheep and also the meat from the animal.

I thought this too for the longest time - turns out it's actually not true (assuming Wikipedia is to be believed). There aren't any age restrictions on what can be sold as 'lamb', so most American 'lamb' is what the British would call mutton.

interesting, thanks for informing me! I checked wikipedia before commenting but I didn't read far enough, didn't know there was no legislation on lamb age. I wonder how old the "lamb" in the grocery store is? Might explain why there is so much variation in flavor. I can't remember if the lamb was "younger" tasting when I lived in Canada.

Thanks for this! I've been wondering for many years why "lamb" in the US is so tough. Wikipedia citation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States

Nevertheless, s0rce is correct on the original linguistic point: that the Norman food-word is "mutton", whereas "lamb" is the Germanic word for the young animal.

This has more to do with classist beliefs than it does with dehumanization. The origin of those words relate to the aristocracy using the french/latin forms, while those poor farmers used the orginal english/germanic forms. Notice what the french words are for a pig or oxen/steer.

At this point you might be right, but the origin is about wanting to fit in with the new french overlords.

For some reason, in the French language itself the same distinction eventually appeared.

In regular language, you would call porc the meat that comes from a cochon, and bœuf the meat of a vache.

It's not as clear cut as in English, as a bœuf is also an ox, and you can also call a pig a porc, but I think it indicates that the linguistic distinction between an animal and its meat is indeed at its core a dehumanizing process, it might just have been helped by the French-speaking rulers of England, but it still happened in France eventually, more recently and without exterior intervention.

You're right. For example, there's a similar distinction in Russian.

"but I think it indicates that the linguistic distinction between an animal and its meat is indeed at its core a dehumanizing process"

Why? I feel absolutely no emotional difference between "cow meat" and "beef", and would be surprised to hear that it really made a difference to pretty much any non-vegetarian... Further, it seems nobody has felt the need to introduce a different word for 'lamb' - it's still an extremely popular meat despite the word literally meaning 'baby sheep'...

I think it's drawing a really long bow to think it's desensitising language (dehumanisation isn't really the right word, since cows, sheep etc. aren't human). At the end of the day, I think it's just a quirk of language development...

"Dehumanizing" isn't the proper word here, since we're literally talking about non-human entities. If you want to talk about inter-species empathy, it should be pointed out that most predatory species aren't relating to their prey animals (they typically go after the weakest prey; young, elderly or sick animals which humans would likely empathize with). The odd behavior is that we ascribe human traits to things we plan on killing and eating which aren't objectively demonstrating them.

As I understand it, this has to do with who was asking for a thing and what they wanted.

The upper class spoke French and when they asked for beouf, they wanted meat, not a cow. Likewise when they asked for poulet, they wanted a cooked chicken, not a live one.

The lower classes spoke German and gave us cū (kuh in modern German) for a cow and cīceb (Küchlein in modern German) for chicken.

As English grew from both of these roots, the different words remained.

Don't let Shia fool you, it's bœuf.

Almost: Küken means chick. Küchlein would be the diminutive of Kuchen (cake) so a small cake or sweet pastry.

sheep/lamb

Captain Pedantic, checking in: it should be "sheep/mutton" and "lamb/lamb". Lambs are baby sheeps.

You might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States

I, indeed, did find it interesting and to which I respond, "'dafuq?" I grew up in the U. S., and growing up actually raised sheep. And when you are served adult sheep, you are served "mutton". IOW, the term "mutton" was not "uncommon in the United States" in my part of the country at the time I was growing up.

But that's another time and another place; I'm kind of curious about when the change came about. Partly because, were that article written thirty years ago I would have argued that it is wrong. But I've since become a vegetarian, and might not have gotten the memo when the change came about. Or maybe I've always been wrong, along with all the other hicks I grew up with. :-)

Interesting. I don't think I've ever heard an American use "mutton" or seen it on an American restaurant menu.

Not specific to robots, but i found your question very interesting to compare with this video which is specifically about managing empathy, and it's dangers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlwDdzlpuk

"Can you run out of empathy" by Kati Morton (professional therapist).

Actually, studies have been done and shown that isn't the case.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-b...

Is empathy desensitization a thing?

Yes. It is a well known process and is successfully used to intentionally create new torturers.

so basically Westworld?

Being able to say "Freeze all motor functions" to a furby-class toy as an industry standardized voice instruction could be handy in the future.

> Is empathy desensitization a thing?

Factory farming wouldn't exist if that wasn't a thing.

Yes the uncanny valley can cause that already.

For example, in the past, when someone asked you for directions you gave it to them. Now some people are like “don’t you have google?” Same goes for asking for any type of informational help.

Before, many people would cook or help people do things like move or pick them up from the airport. Now they can just do it via a gig economy app so why bother.

So yeah, parents don’t really pay attention to their kids, friends don’t pay attention to their friends, dating has become shallow, people’s attention spans are lower etc.

Why? Because we have new modes of communication with swiping and LOL and we don’t actually want to hear long heartfelt explanations when the shorthand takes far less time so we can fit in more interactions in a single day.

Example: https://www.lifehack.org/299404/

https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/smartphones-can-prevent-pare...

http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/

I don't know how to say this without seeming offensive, but you seem to have really shitty people around you if this is your experience.

The worst I received when asking for directions was a brusque "I don't know" (like, just a couple of times in my whole life). If I ask friends for help, they help. We do dinners together at home and last time I moved, a little army materialized.

If you were looking for reasons to shit on the gig economy (and I would have nothing against it) you could find really better reasons.

Literally as I was about to reply to you, the doorbell rang and the Uber Eats person dropped off the stuff. They said “thank you” and that was the extent of our interaction.

Most of the people in my building under 60 don’t know ther upstairs neighbors, or even on the same floor. The streets, once filled with people, are mostly empty. People rarely write letters or postcards and visit less often than before. Dating communication has texting instead of voice (takes too long when you’re multitasking). Heck even with birthday wishes - once thoughtful calls have been replaced with facebook posts where you don’t even look at the person’s wall.

If you really think it’s just me, compare photos of the 50s to now. Also here are studies and statistics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...

https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deterior...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/6065885...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be...

I have heard people complain that everyone is glued to their phone these days while riding public transit. But humans are easily bored and want something to do. Here's a photo of a train full of people reading newspapers, what's the difference?

https://www.raconteur.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Digital...

> compare photos of the 50s to now

Genuinely curious, what am I supposed to take away from that comparison? I mean, I see a lot of oversized gas-guzzling cars and people with ugly sunglasses. In both sets of photos.

Because google can help them better than I can. I don't know the street names a lot of the time. I know that turn at the white house by the big oak tree makes for horrible directions but I don't recall what the street name is.

Give GPS an address and it knows what all the street names are.

> For example, in the past, when someone asked you for directions you gave it to them. Now some people are like “don’t you have google?” Same goes for asking for any type of informational help.

There's a difference between asking for help because you are having problems and asking for help because you are lazy. There's a spectrum along this, but if you ask too much of a random person, just for your own benefit, they will feel rightly taken advantage of. You probably wouldn't solicit a random passerby to help you move all your furniture in or out of a building, but you might quickly call for help from anyone around if the specific item you are moving is about to be dropped. This is all a roundabout way of saying people are generally happy to help if it costs little compared to how much it helps.

As for directions, in the past knowing how to get somewhere was hard without prior knowledge, and providing help cost relatively little to the person helping compared to the help gained by the other. Stopping to give someone directions that are less accurate that can be found on any number of services that most people have access to can easily be seen as inconveniencing someone for little or no reason. That said, I've had good experiences by also explaining why I need directions from someone while asking. Suffixing your request with something like "I have directions but they aren't making any sense to me" or "My phone died" seems to make all the difference.

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