The case against empathy (2019)
vox.com
vox.com
You may see some person in your community in need and your empathy prompts you to contribute to a fundraiser or whatever. Singer points out that while that empathetic instinct is natural, an intellectual approach (or what Bloom is calling compassionate) results in a better overall outcome, often wildly so.
Say you read in the local paper there is a fundraiser for $50K to buy a custom vehicle for someone recently paralyzed from the waist down. Sounds great, I want to contribute! But that same $50K could literally save 20 lives in a developing country, or it could prevent thousands of cases of blindness in children. Most of us (me included) don't have nearly as strong an empathetic response to people suffering 10,000 miles away as we do for someone nearby, someone more like "us." The suffering of people living 10,000 miles way (and will likely never meet) is just as real as the suffering as someone living five miles away. Allocating limited resources based on our emotional instincts lead to more net suffering.
That is the core idea of Singer's book. Much of the rest of the book goes about step by step debunking the usual objections which get raised ("I already pay a lot in taxes for those 3rd world people", and "Why donate to a charity in Africa? It will just end up in the pocket of a corrupt politician", and "There have always been poor people and there always will be", etc)
And yes, it's a little selfish, and I think that's ok.
I don't think you're wrong, I just don't think your statement is any more (or less) valid than its inverse.
So even though you say "it helps a little bit, that is praiseworthy!", that is the problem! If they are to throw away money then we can at least try to incentivise better use of it. I agree that giving away money is a good thing, but praising those who give away money to mostly useless things that is a bad thing. The bad person here isn't the one who gave money to a guys car, it is the people who praise that person for giving away money for the car that are the problem, we should praise those who actually helps rather than those who just makes sacrifices.
Most of us have a sense of family, community, humanity or other identity. Your personal feeling on these matters ultimately drive charity. Personally, my family does alot of charity and volunteering, and we generally do so for local organizations in our city that help those less fortunate. In my mind, it’s important to build up the community that we live in.
A “human charity accountant” will point out that our labor and treasure would better benefit a child in Bolivia or a sick person in the Congo. Those are fine causes and we all find our path to what matters most to us.
Some of the reasons why we should be slow to give money:
We should encourage self-empowerment. If there are local laborers who can clean up after a natural disaster, we should empower them to help their community
We should avoid short term solutions. Instead of donating a super expensive tractor to a farming community that can't maintain it, donate a tractor that they can maintain
We should strengthen the community. Instead of sending a Dr to heal people across the world, send a Dr to train local Dr's who heal the locals
And, to be clear, the model of being thoughtful of where and how to give is much harder than giving money. This is not a cop out
Usually, though, this empowerment is just giving them money.
>Instead of sending a Dr to heal people across the world, send a Dr to train local Dr's who heal the locals
Similarly, subsidizing study-abroad programs could have a similar effect.
I agree that stupidly giving out money is exactly that, stupid. But let's not let the pendulum swing too far the other way - the solution, much of the time, is giving out money, wisely.
EDIT:
I say the solution is to give out money much of the time because money offers freedom in ways that a good tractor doesn't; moreover, we might not know the comparative need of tractors vs doctors at as high a resolution or in as nuanced a way as the locals do, considering that we haven't lived where they have for X amount of years. Money lets them allocate according to their needs in real time and as specifically as they want. Of course this assumes the people that the money is going to is in the best interests of the people in general, and that's where wisdom and discretion come into play.
But I want to point out that a large part of Singer's book is about "effective altruism", giving in a way that helps. He talks about how the shallow analysis of Charity Navigator focuses mainly on operational overhead, while a few charity evaluation sites have boots on the ground to study how the charity is using its spending and measuring results. See the "Best Charities" link on the site below:
I am heavily against this notion that giving to someone is bad because it isn’t the most efficient giving. Giving to someone, anyone, in need is good.
You can only spend so much money on charity before you can't buy groceries anymore. Giving to one necessarily takes from the other.
There is a choice to be made, and one of the options is to give all your money marked for charity to one goal, and another is to split it. I don't think it's wrong to split between multiple causes, even if we know some causes are much more bang for your buck than others, it's a personal choice that you have to make for yourself. But it is a choice.
Giving to one means you gave and it is good period.
Speculation on whether giving to another is artificial value and loss.
If giving were required, it would work like taxes do and one getting more or anything at all does take from another.
Not everyone will give, and or give multiple times.
Whether money is even marked for gifts is itself a question.
We care about our closer relations far more than some other far away ones.
Therefore we are far more empathetic towards family and friends, than neighbours, than neighbouring nation, than country on the other side of the world you didn't know was there.
Me giving $100 to neighbour is different to $100 to malaria fighting foundation.
Singer fully acknowledges the instinct you reference. But he points out there are other circumstances where we override our brute instincts based on social strictures and an intellectual understanding of the bigger picture.
For instance, most of us have a far stronger instinctive urge to violence than we actually practice. If someone steals my car I may be tempted to beat him grievously, but I don't even if it might feel powerfully right at the moment.
For most people, that is not the case, and understandably so. We care about our neighbors, but we don't care about alien lifeforms on other planets, because we have no contact with them and no way to help them. Same can be applied to poor people living on the other side of the world. Where exactly do we draw the line?
The simple answer is that helping is inherently selfish - we help people because we expect to be helped when we are in need (for those who disagree - imagine being in a community where everyone asks for help, but nobody gives it to you when you need it). So the obvious answer is we need to help people in our proximity.
Of course, like many other human affairs, there's no simple algorithm to decide what do to in a general situation. It all comes down to an individual's will.
For almost all human behaviour there are 2 reasons. The good reason (acceptable to others) and the real reason (selfish). And we have evolved for self-deception on this because we need to deceive ourselves in order to deceive others.
As an example the primary motivating force for Peter Singer might be status and academic prestige, not concern for others. Would he do the things he does if he got no attention for it on a personal scale?
Looks interesting. Apparently, written by a software engineer and an economist, and it's about a topic I'm very passionate about - human behavior. I will definitely check that out, thanks.
The part of your mind that does this kind of logic or math based reasoning is very useful, but there's a reason our minds aren't entirely rational. Rationality is a tool we use, it is not us and it is not the end-all be-all way of understanding and interacting with our reality.
Please tell me if you figure it out. As near as I can tell, there's a profound distrust in any mandatory collective action (aka government) especially the closer to the federal level you get. Voluntary collective action is praiseworthy.
Maybe this is due to unique characteristics of Americans, as documented by de Tocqueville? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville
The US is screwed until they fix their discourse.
We have an expression, “it’s a free country”. But if you go to Mexico, the pharmacy will just sell you anything short of controlled substances—antibiotics, heart medication, whatever. In the US you need a prescription from a doctor. We’re not a free country by a long shot.
> Believe me, a decent chunk of Americans don’t even understand the concept of freedom.
The government overreaching doesn't mean people don't understand the concept of freedom, just that the establishment has grown too influential.
What I can’t figure out is why one state out of the fifty can’t do healthcare. That’s how it stayed in Canada, in one province.
That's what a constitution is for, it's an agreement between the people and government on how they wish to be governed. Ours sets out our God given rights that no government should be able to take away.
The Australian government hasn't been too kind to its people recently during covid, carrying people off for facebook posts, not a great example.
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As for the article, Empathy is what separates us from psychopaths, so it's not surprising that a Yale Psychologist would want to damage it to help his political slant. That said, I would say it's unfortunate that people can be fooled and conned easily due to their empathy, but I'm not sure there's fix besides destroying high-trust society altogether. The professor is not concerned with this downside of empathy, I don't think.
>> The second problem is the innumeracy. Empathy zooms me in on one but it doesn’t attend to the difference between one and 100 or one and 1,000. It’s because of empathy we often care more about a single person than 100 people or 1,000 people, or we care more about an attractive white girl who went missing than we do a 1,000 starving children who don’t look we do or live where we don’t live.
Having read the article and briefly interacted with Paul Bloom, I can't say that I share your perspective as to his political agenda.
It is not the main point here, but psychopats are sociable and can have a very high form of cognitive empathy. They can also be very charizmatic.
Also, I dont think the parent was saying Paul Bloom himself is psychopath. It was saying that he is pushing others to think that way, because that is congruent with his political ideology. That is different claim.
I hear this a lot but I don't see people explaining what exactly their desired outcome looks like, and to me, I can see lots of ways it potentially changes things without actually improving them.
Are you picturing a world where before you call an ambulance after injuring yourself you have to get on something like yelp to look at prices for 10 different ambulance services, and ten different local urgent care or ERs? Are you picturing a world where it's obvious that some surgeons and doctors are 10 times better than others, so the rich pay $$$$$$ for 10x better care, and the poor are left with the scraps? Or a world where it's hard to tell, so people compete on price alone, and the doctors who care most about outcomes vs bottom line are at a disadvantage?
When I take myself to the doctor no one can tell me how much anything costs.
Regardless of insurance status the vet gets paid the same amount.
My pets get better healthcare then I do and I pay less for it and they don’t have insurance. I’m relatively healthy, my cat has FIV. I have insurance my pets don’t.
Not an American so asking out of curiosity - don't hospitals have price lists?
If you're well insured, you still get all the fun reading material, but they say "amount you owe: 0.00"
When my wife was first pregnant, we had health insurance amd we picked a hospital whose business was 50% baby delivery.
Not a single person could tell me how much it would cost to deliver the child. The OBG couldn't tell me. My health Insurance couldn't tell me. The hospital couldn't tell me. I know - for a fact - the hospital had delivered babies from other people with my insurance. They couldn't tell me the cost of a delivery.
Also, someone screwed something up and I was improperly charged for a hearing test. SMH.
Because the federal government insures the poor and old, the law requires that they get the best pricing. So every other insurer pays a little more, until you get to an uninsured person, who pays some unfathomable rate.
While it's a step in the right direction, most people don't know about it, the accuracy is questionable, what insurance will cover isn't clear, and what random additional fees will be added are unknown.
https://healthcareexecintelligence.healthitanalytics.com/new...
Isn't this the case already?
I mean, it could probably be worse, but I doubt Bill Gates will go to the same clinic that I do.
The stigma with government services is that "these people need help and they will always need help, they will never contribute to society"
I'm not saying the stigma is correct - but that is likely a common rational behind the emotions
its the cicle of life really
Because of the peculiar configuration of the US Senate, these interests hold an outsized sway on the public, and they’ve managed to maintain an extended campaign to create a strange coalition of people against abortion, for guns, against taxes (especially inheritance taxes), and pro subsidy of agriculture, petroleum and real estate and traditional values.
That combo attracts a bunch of unrelated cohorts of voters passionate about a wedge issue, many of whom join together in a cause that is often not in their personal interest or normal mode of thought.
EDIT: I want to add that the above is constantly aggravated by opportunistic politicians and toxic media (both traditional and social media)
The first camp claims our ethnicity/race/class/region/religion/gender/identity has historically been oppressed. The most effective means to redress this injustice is by Federal government action. We want the Federal government, Washington D.C., to resolve our issues. The more government is involved, the better.
The second camp is a reaction to the first. The second camp believes the past is the past. The USA is doing just fine if stop meddling with what the Founding Fathers created. "Government is not the answer to our problems but is the cause of our problems". The less government is involved, the better.
What is it that happens in a person's mind at that pivotal moment, when they decide to Voluntarily leave a point of safety... And risk their life to extraordinary degree to save the life of another human?
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/how-b...
Turns out the more empathetic you are the less likely you are to do acts of heroism like this. And it's interesting as to why this is the case. I recommend people listen the audio or read the transcript because this podcast changed forever the way I think of empathy and morality.
It's very much inline with the vox articles conclusion that empathy does not fully equate with morality. But that's not a big deal to me. What was the big deal to me was people who lack empathy and their place in the world and the moral hierarchy.
Empathy is real. Morals are not. Anyone who struggles defining Empathy does not have any. It's not rocket science. If you need to learn, go slap someone and have him slap you back. You'll learn soon enough.
Compassion without Empathy doesn't exist.
If the western degenerates weren't so hell bent on avoiding any and all pain, both physically and emotionally, we'd all be in a better place and articles like this one would have never come up.
The sole reason bullshit like this comes up is because our world is borderline totalitarian already. We're not supposed to trust our own feelings, at all, so instead we're being told what to trust.
Worse: All these degenerates out there actually believe it.
Excessively high drug prices in the US are what helps get drugs into developing nations. That $500 bottle of insulin really is doing good for the people in lesser parts of the world. The strong implication being many of them would die otherwise.
Same goes for our expensive and generally poor performing health care system, the argument being the most advanced high quality is best developed this way.
What do these ideas mean for people in the US using GoFundMe to stay alive?
A similar line involves markets and the "invisible hand", often framed as a hard fact of our reality we simply must endure, like age, gravity and the like.
This line of reasoning transforms what a majority of people in the, US at least, consider priority problems that can and should, need to be solved by changing our priorities, into harsh necessities we must all endure for some distant greater good the people struggling find hard to understand matters more than they do.
I find it very difficult myself, and I reject this line of thinking with prejudice!
Roughly half the nation works hard only to receive less than it costs them to continue to exist and show up for work, despite their employer banking billions every year, while also enjoying a labor subsidy from the general public who pay taxes to fund assistance for those people.
People struggling to afford health care, using GoFundMe to get through and continue living makes about as much sense.
More people are struggling unnecessarily than not in the US, amd it is these lines of reasoning that set people who are in a position to do something about it free from caring enough to act.
This line of reasoning implies a lot of harm here must be OK in order to reduce harm there, somewhere. That is damn tough to accept when profit is so very clearly a priority over people.
The net good, if there is any, lies on a distant time and scale, all of which puts the idea of this all being somehow necessary in to the big bullshit bucket we should have emptied decades ago.
He puts his statement shortly after into perspective, but it's dangerous to state that empathy is exhausting in general. It is only exhausting if somebody doesn't have the means to help.
>If you and I are the only people on earth and you’re in pain and I can help you and make your pain go away, and I feel empathy toward you and so I make your life better, empathy has done something good. But the real world is nowhere near as simple
There is a cognitive side to empathy. You need to be able to get into someone else's shoes and think through how you would feel if you were them. It is another side of the coin from the emotional empathy that the author assumes is the sum total of empathy.
I reject his implicit framing of empathy. I believe empathy is the strongest tool we have for connecting with other human beings, and without it we wouldn't do much of anything for each other. Yes, it can be used incorrectly and insufficiently, but the cure is using it correctly and sufficiently.
Seems like miseducation in the name of clicks to me. But, having some empathy, I'll presume that the author just lacks a full understanding of empathy and thinks he has stumbled upon a brilliant insight.