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Comment by exporectomy | Hacker News Reader

So all political protest, especially if it's annoying to others or dangerous to the protestor? No. You clearly are just judging political protests that you personally don't happen to support the aims of. You're entirely missing the point of understanding people's needs and what empathy is.

Everyone automatically has empathy for people they feel aligned or connected with. You don't even have to try.

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I'm talking about style, not substance. I find myself these days having empathy with people and agreeing with what they're protesting for, but hating the fact that they are historically ignorant and are only trying to score twitter points. So that doesn't mean they don't have a right to protest, it just means they're an embarrassment.

> only trying to score twitter points

"only"? What if that's their main goal? You're still judging them for having values that are different from yours, which is something that comes naturally to anyone. The whole point of learning to have empathy is so you can empathize with people whose values are incompatible with your own. You probably don't even understand their values and take their superficial statements literally because you're too keen to judge them as bad instead of understand their underlying feelings that they may not even be able to articulate themselves.

How the hell is anyone supposed to not judge someone who acts stupidly because they can't articulate their own underlying feelings?

With empathy of course!

The person you are criticizing said "sometimes". Why are you arguing that they said "all"?

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