Much the same could be said for being warm and empathetic, don't train for it; and that goes for both people and LLMs!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Empathy
As it frequently is coded relative to a tribe. Pooh Pooh people’s fear of crime and disorder for instance and those people will think you don’t have empathy for them and vote for somebody else.
Most people when they talk about empathy in a positive way, they're talking about the ability to place oneself in another's shoes and understand why they are doing what they are doing or not doing, not necessarily the emotional mirroring aspect he's defined empathy to be.
The way the wikipedia article describes Bloom's definition is less generous than what you have here
> For Bloom, "[e]mpathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does"[1]: 16
So for bloom it is not necessarily even accurately mirroring another's emotions, but only what you think there emotions are.
> Bloom also explores the neurological differences between feeling and understanding, which are central to demonstrating the limitations of empathy.
This seems to artificial separate empathy and understanding in a way that does not align with common usage and I would argue also makes for a less useful definition in that I would then need new words to describe what I currently use 'empathy' for.
And actors aren't the only ones that pretend to be something they are not.
If you don't want to distinguish between empathy and understanding, a new term has to be introduced about mirroring the emotions of a mirage. I'm not sure the word for that exists?
I said "This seems to artificial separate empathy and understanding" not that they had the same meaning, or that empathy is used only for one meaning
The artificial separation in Bloom's definition I quoted above because it removes or ignores aspects that are common to definition of empathy. After those parts are removed ignored and argument is constructed against the commonly recognized worth of empathy. Of course the commonly recognized value of empathy is based on the common definition not the modified version presented by Bloom. Also artificial because it does not obviously form a better basis for understanding reality or dividing up human cognition. There is only so much you can get from a wikipedia article, but what is in this one does not layout any good arguments that make me go "I need to pick up that book and learn more to better my understanding of the world."
With that caveat, I do recommend it. In particular your comment indicates you would like it, if you're willing to accept the terminologies the author spends right away defining. He's very explicit that he's not trying to map to the colloquial definition of empathy. Which is the correct approach, because people's definitions vary wildly and it's important to separate from the value-loaded components to come to a fresh perspective.
The author makes a strong case that empathy, of the kind he defines, is often harmful to the person having empathy, as well as the persons receiving empathy.
I read the prologue/introduction and Bloom says the inflammatory/proactive claims first then clarifies with his modified definition. That is going to hooks some people and throw some people off. So not above saying something misleading to hook some people more strongly, not an uncommon writing tactic but so often used and misused that it is off-putting to me.
> With that caveat, I do recommend it. In particular your comment indicates you would like it, if you're willing to accept the terminologies the author spends right away defining.
The wikipedia article seems to well match the intro of the book. Bloom in the intro does the same artificial separation I talked about above at least in implication.
> The notion of empathy that I’m most interested in is the act of feeling what you believe other people feel—experiencing what they experience. This is how most psychologists and philosophers use the term. But I should stress that nothing rests on the word itself. If you’d like to use it in a broader way, to refer to our capacity for caring and love and goodness, or in a narrower way, to refer to the capacity to understand others, well, that’s fine. For you, I’m not against empathy.
This statement only makes sense when "the act of feeling what you believe other people feel..." is separate/independent from "the capacity to understand others". There is no explicit claim that "the act of feeling what you believe other people feel..." does not enable or a part of "the capacity to understand others" only implicit.
That claim is a large one though and without evidence. I would not except these are independent cognitive functions and Blooms arguments seem to depend on them being mostly independent.
If we assume they are not mostly independent cognitive functions, against Bloom's implicit claim, then discouraging "the act of feeling what you believe other people feel..." will also discourage "the capacity to understand others". It is easy to come up with arm chair reasons for why these would be linked and enhancing each other to some reasonable extent.
From the writing in the intro I would assume Bloom does not dig on this issue to his premise and worry I would mostly collect more premises with unaddressed flaws if I continued to read the book. If you think there something in particular that is interesting to dig down on let me know.
After the intro, and skimming chapter 1, I have the same impression that I have to similar speculative works, that getting to the bottom of questions like these likely requires original and rigorous neurological or physiological research.
One of the powerful points the author makes is at the heart of what you are resisting. Feeling and understanding are substantiatively different things. We can feel when misled. Or driven from intuition. Understanding can come through reason or just an acceptance. One of the powerful takeaways I had was how empathy can be a tool to retain tribal strength, regardless of efficacy.
I agree with your conclusion and won't push further that you should read the book. But I do find it it is important to dwell on this separation between feeling and understanding.
I quoted you twice, but then I quoted the book:
> The notion of empathy that I’m most interested in is the act of feeling what you believe other people feel—experiencing what they experience. This is how most psychologists and philosophers use the term. But I should stress that nothing rests on the word itself. If you’d like to use it in a broader way, to refer to our capacity for caring and love and goodness, or in a narrower way, to refer to the capacity to understand others, well, that’s fine. For you, I’m not against empathy.
Sorry for not making that more clear, if that is the source of confusion at least.
> But I do find it it is important to dwell on this separation between feeling and understanding.
This is not radical, at least the circles I travel, and in general understood as true, but by itself is not a comment on empathy or strengthen an argument against empathy, even Bloom's definition of empathy.
I’m not surprised that it makes LLMs less logically coherent. Empathy exists to short-circuit reasoning about inconvenient truths as to better maintain small tight-knit familial groups.
Maybe we don't even need to change the definition of empathy. We just have to accept that it means different things to different people.
I have empathy for the person who wants to improve their family's life and I have empathy for the farmer who needs talented workers from the global south [1] but we will lose our republic if we don't listen to the concerns of citizens who champ at the bit because they can't legally take LSD or have 8 bullets in a clip or need a catalytic converter in their car that has $100-$1000 of precious metal in it -- facing climate change and other challenges will require the state to ask more of people, not less, and conspicuous displays of illegality either at the top or bottom of society undermine legitimacy and the state's capacity to make those asks.
I've personally helped more than one person with schizo-* conditions get off the street and it's definitely hard to do on an emotional level, whether or not it is a "complex" or "complicated" problem. It's a real ray of hope that better drugs are in the pharmacy in in the pipeline
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/3-things-to-know-about-cob...
For now the embrace of Scientologist [2] Thomas Szasz's anti-psychiatry has real consequences [3]: it drives people out of downtowns, it means people buy from Amazon instead of local businesses, order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant, erodes urban tax bases. State capacity is lost, the economy becomes more monopolized and oligarchical, and people who say they want state capacity and hate oligarchy are really smug about it and dehumanize anyone who disagrees with them [4]
[1] https://www.ithaca.com/news/regional_news/breaking-ice-arres...
[2] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/dr-thomas-szas...
[3] https://ithacavoice.org/2025/08/inside-asteri/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Feminist_per...
Empathy is not required for logical coherence. It exists to override what one might otherwise rationally conclude. Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.
[edit]
Modeling someone’s cognition or experience is not empathy. Empathy is the emotional process of identifying with someone, not the cognitive act of modeling them.
It is. If you don’t have any you cannot understand other people’s perspective and you can reason logically about them. You have a broken model of the world.
> Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.
Empathy is not bias. It’s understanding, which is definitely required for logically coherent thoughts.
For example, I can’t empathize with a homeless drug addict. The privileged folks who claim they can, well, I think they’re being dishonest with themselves, and therefore unable to make difficult but ultimately the most rational decisions.
If you can’t do that, it’s less about you being rational and far more about you having a malformed imagination, which might just be you being autistic.
— signed, an autistic
The weight of evidence over the past 25 years would suggest absolutely not.
If you want to maximize outcomes I have a solution that guarantees 100% that the person stops being a drug addict. The u.s. are currently on their way there and there's absolutely no empathy involved.
Being down and unmotivated is not that hard to empathize with. Maybe you've had experiences with different kinds of people, homeless are not a monolith. The science is pretty clear on addiction though, improving people's conditions leads directly to sobriety. There are other issues with chronically homeless people, but I tend to see that as a symptom of a sick society. A total inability to care for vulnerable messed up sick people just looks like malicious incompetence to me.
then what is it? I'd argue that is a common definition of empathy, it's how I would define empathy. I'd argue what you're talking about is a narrow aspect of empathy I'd call "emotional mirroring".
Emotional mirroring is more like instinctual training-wheels. It's automatic, provided by biology, and it promotes some simple pro-social behaviors that improve unit cohesion. It provides intuition for developing actual empathy, but if left undeveloped is not useful for very much beyond immediate relationships.
Because that provides better outcomes for everyone in a prisoner's dilemma style scenario
The more help you contribute to the world, the more likely others' altruism will be able to flourish as well. Sub-society-scale groups can spontaneously form when people witness acts of altruism. Fighting corruption is a good thing, and one of the ways you can do that is to show there can be a better way, so that some of the people who would otherwise learn cycles of cynicism make better choices.
And yeah it’s good of you to do that. A little empathy/softer language can go a long way
any examples? because i am hard pressed to find it.
I can say also a lot of DEI trainings were about being empathic to the minorities.
Do you also think that family values are ever present at startups that say we're like a family? It's specifically a psychological and social conditioning response to try to compensate for the things they're recognised as lacking...
>its institutionalization has become pathological.
1) the word is “empathetic,” not “empathic.” 2) are you saying that people should not be empathetic to minorities?
Do you know why that is what’s taught in DEI trainings? I’m serious: do you have even the first clue or historical context for why people are painstakingly taught to show empathy to minorities in DEI trainings?
Also don't be so harsh on interpreting what I'm saying.
I'm saying that it's not the job of a company to "train" about moral value, while bring itself amoral by definition. Why are you interpreting that as me saying "nobody should teach moral value"
Also I don't see why as a French working in France, a French company should "train" me with a DEI focused on US history (US minorities are not French one) just because the main investors are US-based
That’s purely performative, though. As sincere as the net zero goals from last year that were dropped as soon as Trump provided some cover. It is not empathy, it is a façade.
> its institutionalization has become pathological.
Empathy isn't strong for people you don't know personally and near nonexistent for people you don't even know exist. That's why we are just fine with buying products made my near slave labor to save a bit of money. It's also why those cringe DEI trainings can never rise above the level of performative empathy. Empathy just isn't capable of generating enough cohesion in large organizations and you need to use the more rational and transactional tool of incentive alignment of self interest to corporate goals. But most people have trouble accepting that sort of lever of control on an emotional level because purely transactional relationships feel cold and unnatural. That's why you get cringe attempts to inject empathy into the corporate world where it clearly doesn't belong.
Do you have any knowledge of history and why there would be mandatory DEI trainings teaching people how to show empathy towards minorities?
Please, come on. Tell me this isn’t the level of quality in humanity we have today.
Another is the push to eliminate standardized testing from admissions.
Or the “de-incarceration” efforts that reduce or remove jail time for extremely serious crimes.
It’s because the evidence says overwhelmingly that incarceration is a substandard way to induce behavior change, and that removing people from incarceration and providing them with supportive skills training has a much, much higher rate of reducing recidivism and decreasing violence.
Real wisdom is to know when to show empathy and when not to by exploiting (?) existing relationships.
Current generation of LLM can't do that's because every they don't have real memory
It's definitely not an effective way to inculcate empathy in children.
It's like if a calculator proved me wrong. I'm not offended by the calculator. I don't think anybody cares about empathy for an LLM.
Think about it thoroughly. If someone you knew called you an ass hole and it was the bloody truth, you'd be pissed. But I won't be pissed if an LLM told me the same thing. Wonder why.
I do get your point. I feel like the answer for LLMs is for them to be more socratic.
You’re a goddamn liar. And that’s the brutal truth.
What, all of them? That's a difficult problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature
> every logical fallacy
They killed Socrates for that, you know.
Contempt of state process is implicitly a crime just about everywhere no matter where or when in history you look so it's unsurprising they killed him for it. He knew what he was doing when he doubled down, probably.