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Comment by yapyap | Hacker News Reader

If people (multiple)are straight up telling you to be more empathetic it probably means you are being a dick.

That's true. Though "be more empathetic" is not the most helpful way to note that. He's right: it's not a very empathetic way to put it.

You can unpack it: "You have made this person unhappy, and you didn't notice. Here are things that you may not have noticed about this person: X, Y, and Z. They see this encounter like thus-and-such. Now that you know that, you can interact with them in a way that makes both of you happier."

Some people observe that more easily than others. It seems to be the case that some are neurologically lacking the ability to do it at an intuitive level, though you can do just as well with conscious observation and rational conclusions. That is more effort, but "whoops, it's just too hard" has never been a good excuse for anything. It gets easier with practice, and when you're too tired to make the effort, you can learn tactics to cope. (Such as, "Hey, I don't think I can have this conversation right now. I'm sorry about that. Can we please resume this later?")

Too many people, including some very prominent ones, have decided that any effort is too much, and that they are better off being dicks. I can't necessarily refute that. But I can say that if you're a dick, people are going to treat you like a dick, and that is likely to end badly for you.

Yeah, there was definitely a communication gaffe on the part of the person trying to address OP's behavior. Some people (OP included it appears) need very direct communication that would be rude if directed at _other_ people.

Unfortunately the indirection ("be more empathetic") is the safe/polite/un-hurtful bet for a huge percentage of the population. The majority of people hear that and pick up on the implied request to be more sensitive.

Yeah, "being a dick" is kind of the opposite of "being empathetic".

Case in point: the current US administration (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sin-empath...)

This isn't reddit, you don't need to inject politics where it does not belong.

...or neurodivergent. Please try to be more empathetic!

>neurodivergent

Don't teach HR any more new words, please.

Er, no. Respectfully, "neurodivergent" describes a characteristic, but "being a dick" (or "more empathetic") describes behavior.

Let's not split hairs now, but oftentimes disorders that are grouped together under the pop nomenclature of "neuro-divergence" are characterized by very direct speech which makes no affordances for the way the words would be interpreted by the dialogue partner. This is many times perceived by less empathetic people as "being a dick".

No. Direct speech and "being a dick" is a fairly obvious distinction to neurotypicals.

Not in my experience. And that's not necessarily saying much, but at least I had the courtesy of adding some qualifiers to my previous comment in order to avoid sweeping generalizations.

I understand, and I agree with "oftentimes X is characterized as Y... often perceived as Z".

But I'm not splitting hairs; it's a fundamental error to conflate the behavior w/ the characteristic. Someone who is neurodivergent -- just like someone who's neurotypical -- can behave in any number of ways. If they are "being a dick", the fact that they're neurodivergent _might_ help explain why (eg because they might struggle to understand others' points of view). But IMHO it's unhelpful and maybe harmful to lump them together.

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