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Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

Human's "real" empathy and other emotions just comes from our genetics - evolution has evidentially found it to be adaptive for group survival and thriving.

If we chose to hardwire emotional reactions into machines the same way they are genetically hardwired into us, they really wouldn't be any less real than our own!

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How would you explain the disconnect between German WW2 sympathizers who sold out their fellow humans, and those in that society who found the practice so deplorable they hid Jews in their own homes?

There’s a large disconnect between these two paths of thinking.

Survival and thriving were the goals of both groups.

Just because something is genetically based, and we're therefore predisposed to it, doesn't mean that we'll necessarily behave that way. Much simpler animals, such as insects, are more hard-coded in that regard, but in humans we can override our genetically coded innate instincts with learned behaviors - generally a useful and powerful capability, but one that can also lead to all sorts of disfunctional behavior based on personal history including things like brainwashing.

Your reply indicates that you don't know the difference between empathy and sycophancy either.

How do you figure that ? If your own empathy comes from the way your brain is wired, and your brain chemistry, based on genetics, than in what sense is it any more real or sincere than if the same was replicated in a machine ?

If everything boils down to emotional states, then being empathetic just becomes, "I made the other person feel this emotion," i.e. sychophancy and flattery.

I'd define empathy as more the ability "to put yourself in someone else's shoes" and imagine how they are feeling, and care about it if you think they are feeling bad.

It seems this ability requires a few different mental capabilities/functionalities to come together, starting with theory of mind, but these are all going to be genetically based.... You are not imagining how someone else is feeling because you are that rare gem of a person that cares - it is because you have a brain architecture honed through millions of years of evolution to have these (ultimately self-serving!) capabilities and feelings.

Edit: I suppose "group-serving" is more correct than "self-serving", but anyways it's not about the person you are feeling empathy for - it's about what happened when your ancestors, and non-ancestor predecessors, did or didn't feel empathy for each other.

No. Empathy is feeling what the person is feeling exactly the same way as if it happened to you. You really have to have already gone through something like what the person is going through. That’s why it’s so rare. What you’re describing is more like sociopathy.

That's not the normal definition of empathy - you don't need to have experienced it yourself, just to have the ability to imagine what it would be like.

Here is Google's AI summary:

> Having empathy means the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It involves stepping into someone else's shoes and seeing the world from their perspective, even if you haven't personally experienced the same situation.

Sociopathy is essentially the opposite of empathy - someone who pathologically acts in ways detrimental to society.

Anyways, the point apropos this thread is that whatever innate behaviors and responses humans are genetically predisposed could could equally well be made innate to an AI.

> Anyways, the point apropos this thread is that whatever innate behaviors and responses humans are genetically predisposed could could equally well be made innate to an AI.

Could be, but they won't be. Because the people making the AIs don't know much about empathy for other people. I hope I'm wrong.

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