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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Can you empathize with genius beyond your comrehension, or is this just a downward relationship, and does doing so make you a peer? Can you empathize with objective evils like sadism or cruelty without becoming a party to it? It raises the question of what it is, really.

The popular emphasis on empathy seems to reduce to a secular political idea, where the more traditional value of compassion is more of a theological concept. When I read appeals to empathy, I see appeals to a secular morality that originates in the material idea of progress, which while not necessarily negative, it's not above criticism either.

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> Can you empathize with genius beyond your comrehension

Yes. A 'genius beyond your comprehension' is still a human and will have some experiences that other humans can relate to. Being smart doesn't make you a space alien.

>'genius beyond your comprehension' is still a human

For now. Aliens and AGI might complicate that.

We can cross that road when we come to it.

The first part of this is kinda funny. The problem is that you’re squinting too hard to try to make out the problem and now everything is fuzzy. The real value of empathy — why we’ve been using this social tool for thousands of years — is that you don’t have to become the actor to gain understanding. This tool also has a learning aspect, usually you try to empathize with people who you’re gonna be around a bit, so while you may not be able to check an empathy box right away, you could use empathy to further understand genius than you could without it.

> Can you empathize with genius beyond your comrehension

Dogs have empathy for humans even though basically every human is an incomprehensible genius to a dog.

Honestly, I'll take either empathy or compassion. We need more of both.

I agree, empathy is a bit fake, you have to guess and I for one will do my very best to guess what others are thinking and feeling, but at the end of the day, being in someone else's shoes is a guess. Compassion is entirely solid though. Both are needed.

My concern with "compassion" is that you can have perfect "compassion" for an adversary you regard as "objectively evil": they may be evil but they're pitiful. Whereas "empathy", to my mind, calls upon you to strive for understanding, however imperfect — making it harder to dehumanize the adversary. But dehumanization tempered by compassion is still better than its pure, distilled form.

"however iperfect" encapsulates exactly my point - we can't know - but jeez, we try as best as we can

Instead of guessing how someone feels and what they are thinking, you can ask people what they're feeling and thinking directly. Sometimes people will tell you what they're feeling and thinking without you having to ask - then you can empathize with them just by listening. I think of "empathy" as a synonym for "understanding".

I'm pretty lousy at asking people what they feel, my job role, thankfully, has an optional people management component, I've opted out. However a mandatory (welcome) part of my role is mentoring, coaching, call it what you will. I need to listen to junior members of staff sharing their woes and it's a two way flow of ideas, they often share, or overshare their difficult life moments, and at that point, I hang up my "mentor" role and just listen, I'm not their manager, I'm just their colleage, in fact, their friend. Empathy, as I said is guessing, but I do everything I can to do my best guess

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