Honestly, I see this internet counterculture as a mirror of what is happening in the real world as a more mainstream reactionary shift to the right, due to a number of recent progressive movements heading the opposite direction.
Empathy is a slow process of analyzing someone's emotional state so you can affect it. E.g. The Nazis were excellent empathizers. Rockets and dive bombers (Stuka) had sirens to intimate. The battle of Britain was a psychological one-and it almost worked. Prisoners were told to "remember your locker number" as they were ushered into gas chambers.
Don't confuse empathy with responsiveness, sympathy or compassion. We already have words for those.
> Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
I don't really agree. What you are describing sounds like social engineering, which certainly requires a sensitivity to empathy. Either way, your argument is about a trivial difference, and they still had good things to say on the subject.
Did you watch the video? Did you read the link? Obviously not.
If you had, you would have listened to Heinz Kohut talk about how empathy is misused. Empathy is an informer for action-it has nothing to do with "connecting with people"
I also take it you don't know who Heinz Kohut is. Which means you're not educated in psychology. Anyone with any kind of decent education will study Kohut just as much as Freud or Skinner.
No, i'm not educated in psychology. I don't see how that is even remotely relevant in a conversation about how to connect with people across screens and digital displays...
I think you should stop confusing words and their denotations. If one person uses a word to mean one thing, and another uses a word to mean another, perhaps similar thing, that is not in of itself "wrong". Words don't care how they are used.
"You're all using this word wrong" can only come across as comical or annoying.
They might get it better than you do. "Empathy" is the liberal word for the kinds of compassion that make people tolerant (for progressive values of compassion and tolerance ofc).
For talking about "empathy" this article is oddly and conspicuously broadcasting their political leaning. Why would OP choose to name the anti-abuse organization and support group that they did? Neither of which are known for their track record nor social work experts on staff. They're known solely because of the internet personalities at their helms.
Saying someone is wrong is not personal. If I say 2+2=5, someone should tell me I'm wrong.
Your comment is also off topic, breaks the guidelines you just referenced, and doesn't belong in this thread (unfortunately neither does this comment- I apologize for that).
I'm a moderator here; sorry if that wasn't clear. You're most welcome to continue commenting in the thread, but it's important to follow the values of civility and substantiveness when doing so. Instead of telling people negative things about themselves, such as that they didn't watch a video or aren't educated in psychology, edit all that personal stuff out and use the freed-up space to teach the reader specific things. That's what we're here for.
For example, I'd love to learn more about what Heinz Kohut specifically says about empathy. That sounds deeply interesting, and if your comment had contained a neutral description of that, it would have been a fine contribution.
And yes it's true that moderation comments are off-topic. They're also tedious to read and (let me assure you) to write. Unfortunately they're a necessary evil. We do have some ideas for changing HN's software to make fewer of them necessary, but it's hard to say whether that would work.
Through prefrontal cortex phenomena, people can and do place themselves in others' shoes, replicating enough of their thought processes to feel similar emotions. If empathy, according to Kohut and you, no longer means that, what's the word for it?
Kohut seems to want to redefine empathy so that he can use that word to describe the proper process of psychoanalysis, which he thinks shouldn't include what's commonly called empathy.
Redefining words from their widely accepted definition and acting as if you've discovered the meaning of life does not help anything, it just leads to hostility and confusion as you see in this subthread.
Yep. Personally, I could not care less when violent criminals like Michael Brown get shot by the police. Fewer violent criminals is a good thing.
Articles like this presume I must lack empathy because of that view. Well, I have plenty of empathy for my friends, co-workers and inner circles. That empathy simply doesn't extend to violent criminals who constantly make society worse, those who would rob or harm my family in a minute if they could.
Empathy is a biological adaptation to help us get along with people who are the closest to us, within our own tribe. It doesn't need to be extended willy-nilly onto every thief and violent actor across the globe. That's simply being an enabler.
Bring on the disdain because I don't agree with the shallow indoctrination of, "WE NEED TO LOVE EVERYONE." ;)
Your conclusion is worrisome. Lots of people, and lots of groups of people, have been considered "violent criminals" despite being neither violent nor criminals.
I can understand why worldwide empathy is a good thing regardless of how it could, conceivably, benefit those who would use it for nefarious purposes.
The other things in your comment that are problematic are its casual tossing of flamewar material and its tedious posturing against ideological enemies. Please edit such stuff out of your comments when posting to HN. It breaks the site guidelines and obscures any substance in what you're saying.
For example, you would had a fine comment about the limits of empathy if you had simply eliminated this dross.
To me, "flamewar material" sounds like "stuff many people would disagree with" [1] and "tedious posturing" sounds like, "Unfortunate realities I don't like discussing," so if you could quote [2] the specific part that breaks the rules it would help.
Casual tossing of flamewar material: "I could not care less when violent criminals like Michael Brown get shot by the police".
Tedious ideological posturing: "Bring on the disdain because I don't agree with the shallow indoctrination of, "WE NEED TO LOVE EVERYONE.""
Please edit such drama-mongering out of your comments here. It's unsubstantive and lowers the signal-noise ratio of the threads, both by adding noise itself and by evoking it from others.
Well, I appreciate the response, but as you might have guessed I disagree with your approach and assumptions.
Flamewar material could basically be any contestable subject people get passionate about. Of course people online will disagree about contentious ideas, that doesn't automatically make it a "flamewar topic" as you seem to think, unless you plan to flag and remove all impassioned speech here.
Typically for forum moderation, flamewars involve a slew of personal attacks, which are simply not present in my quote. I said something ideologically controversial, but I didn't flame or personally attack anyone.
My statement also wasn't casual. Since the BLM movement was founded on the Michael Brown case, I've put a fair amount of time and consideration into an analysis of what happened in the case and how I should feel about it and the ongoing protests -- protests that shut down the freeway here in SF for hours yesterday, I might add.
My overall conclusion is as stated, and that directly relates to the initial post about empathy online -- it's an completely valid example where displaying a lack of empathy on a given subject is very controversial, which you have certainly reaffirmed here. To you, it's such a controversial (read: not politically correct) opinion (to refuse to show empathy towards a perceived victim) that you, as a moderator, felt the need to denigrate the perspective and flag the comment as off-topic (which it wasn't).
>Tedious ideological posturing
I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, and for what it's worth you've labeled this quote more accurately, but it's still extremely subjective (bordering on facile name-calling) to label what I said that way. What you find tedious others might find empowering, in that they don't have to put the world's problems on their shoulders and feel sad about every victim narrative bandied about on the news. Or people could have a slew of other emotions.
I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview. That's the definition of bias. You also tend to resort to tone policing to justify acting on your biases when any argument rubs you the wrong way. That's not good moderation, imo.
Removing personal attacks is fine, sure. Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it -- that's disappointing to see on HN. Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.
> I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview.
I'm glad you said "I feel", because the statement that follows is not true, nor could you know what my worldview is; you've simply imagined it. I have a feeling, too: that people say this when they don't want to admit they've been abusing HN. It's easier to believe that one is being "suppressed" and "censored"—grand political reasons instead of petty procedural ones.
> Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it
There are orders of magnitude more things that I don't like.
> Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.
It's ironic that you would invoke pg when he's the person who wrote the HN guidelines, taught us how to interpret them, and in seven years of commenting on HN never once (to my knowledge) did the things we're asking you not to do. If you really understood what he wrote, you'd follow suit instead of undermining it.
A moderator just a hair left of your current moderation approach on the authoritarianism scale would "flag and remove" PG's entire recent article about income inequality with a note calling it "tedious ideological posturing."
Censorship is generally the territory of petty proceduralism, not grand political gesture.
"It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is."
That's a direct quote from PG. Take it for what you will.
This is a particularly tedious form of trolling, and since it's about all you've been posting, we've banned your account. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
The emotional maturity of humans creeps at a sloths waddle, while technological maturity moves like quicksilver. The virtuality roll-out will be interesting.
The problem when you start throwing around empathy alongside such concepts as 'helping' abusers 'mend their ways' is that one rather feels that anyone whose views do not rather closely match your own political angle, especially with respect an issue you are deeply invested in, will be singled out for this 'help.' Being offended has become a weapon in popular debate - and I find myself remarkably disinclined to further structure things to its advantage.
My main problem with this article is the following:
>We’re all to blame at some level, and we’re all responsible for finding a solution.
This seems to blow away the entire premise of the article. This is either massive victim blaming or massively blaming everybody for the actions of a few. It's victim blaming if you're saying that people who are harassed online are responsible for their own harassment, and it's blaming everybody for the actions of a few if you're saying that unconnected parties are responsible.
This is not a new problem. Harassing phone calls, hate mail, and insults have existed long before the Internet, World Wide Web, and social media have existed. Could Empathy Scale to the Telegraph? I don't know, but I have a feeling that the answer to that is the same as the answer to this question.
Sure it can scale to the internet; it scales implicitly, some people just don't realize it.
Jesus Christ calls his word truth. And in one of his sermons he says, therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
And here is a prophet showing what that can look like; It looks to me like empathy for another side with which you even have justification in disagreeing with is fairly important:
And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbour in the word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man refused to smite him.
Then said he unto him, Because thou hast not obeyed the voice of the LORD, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him.
Then he found another man, and said, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him.
So the prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and disguised himself with ashes upon his face.
And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver.
And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it.
And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets.
And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.
And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria.
Article seems biased, but has a true point--it's easy to forget who you are, and easier to forget who you're talking to.
Sometimes this helps, such as with criticism. It's a bit harder to give criticism in person because of the social pressure of being nice; it's much easier to criticise someone who can't slap you, and that means finding more critiques.
More critiques, however, doesn't mean better ones. It's very easy to dehumanize your partner in argument, which leads to a "they're evil, I'm good" perspective, which leads to more extreme (and more wrong) viewpoints over time.
In short, the article suffers from the very problem it complains about; that anonymity, which is bemoaned for producing Gamergate, is in turn what makes it possible to villainize Gamergate.
34 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 97.2 ms ] threadBetteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/03/18/was-betteridge-righ...
Empathy is a slow process of analyzing someone's emotional state so you can affect it. E.g. The Nazis were excellent empathizers. Rockets and dive bombers (Stuka) had sirens to intimate. The battle of Britain was a psychological one-and it almost worked. Prisoners were told to "remember your locker number" as they were ushered into gas chambers.
Don't confuse empathy with responsiveness, sympathy or compassion. We already have words for those.
Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U http://www.selfpsychologypsychoanalysis.org/empathy-mis.shtm...
I don't really agree. What you are describing sounds like social engineering, which certainly requires a sensitivity to empathy. Either way, your argument is about a trivial difference, and they still had good things to say on the subject.
Did you watch the video? Did you read the link? Obviously not.
If you had, you would have listened to Heinz Kohut talk about how empathy is misused. Empathy is an informer for action-it has nothing to do with "connecting with people"
I also take it you don't know who Heinz Kohut is. Which means you're not educated in psychology. Anyone with any kind of decent education will study Kohut just as much as Freud or Skinner.
"You're all using this word wrong" can only come across as comical or annoying.
Probably a good thing since it's turning out that the whole field is filled with junk science.
They might get it better than you do. "Empathy" is the liberal word for the kinds of compassion that make people tolerant (for progressive values of compassion and tolerance ofc).
For talking about "empathy" this article is oddly and conspicuously broadcasting their political leaning. Why would OP choose to name the anti-abuse organization and support group that they did? Neither of which are known for their track record nor social work experts on staff. They're known solely because of the internet personalities at their helms.
I can tell you didn't watch the video or read the link either.
Watch the video. Read the link. Get smarter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Your comment is also off topic, breaks the guidelines you just referenced, and doesn't belong in this thread (unfortunately neither does this comment- I apologize for that).
I will no longer comment on this thread.
Saying you can tell what they did and didn't do, wrt source material, is more personal.
Telling someone to "get smarter" is entirely personal.
For example, I'd love to learn more about what Heinz Kohut specifically says about empathy. That sounds deeply interesting, and if your comment had contained a neutral description of that, it would have been a fine contribution.
And yes it's true that moderation comments are off-topic. They're also tedious to read and (let me assure you) to write. Unfortunately they're a necessary evil. We do have some ideas for changing HN's software to make fewer of them necessary, but it's hard to say whether that would work.
Empathy is understanding and feeling someone else's feelings. Putting yourself in their shoes.
Sympathy is having compassion for that person, even if you don't feel the same way. It's understanding, but more detached.
True, you need empathy to make art or to manipulate people or to frighten others - but that's not part of the definition of the word.
Kohut seems to want to redefine empathy so that he can use that word to describe the proper process of psychoanalysis, which he thinks shouldn't include what's commonly called empathy.
Redefining words from their widely accepted definition and acting as if you've discovered the meaning of life does not help anything, it just leads to hostility and confusion as you see in this subthread.
Articles like this presume I must lack empathy because of that view. Well, I have plenty of empathy for my friends, co-workers and inner circles. That empathy simply doesn't extend to violent criminals who constantly make society worse, those who would rob or harm my family in a minute if they could.
Empathy is a biological adaptation to help us get along with people who are the closest to us, within our own tribe. It doesn't need to be extended willy-nilly onto every thief and violent actor across the globe. That's simply being an enabler.
Bring on the disdain because I don't agree with the shallow indoctrination of, "WE NEED TO LOVE EVERYONE." ;)
I can understand why worldwide empathy is a good thing regardless of how it could, conceivably, benefit those who would use it for nefarious purposes.
Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For example, you would had a fine comment about the limits of empathy if you had simply eliminated this dross.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10926249 and marked it off-topic.
To me, "flamewar material" sounds like "stuff many people would disagree with" [1] and "tedious posturing" sounds like, "Unfortunate realities I don't like discussing," so if you could quote [2] the specific part that breaks the rules it would help.
[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
[2] http://paulgraham.com/okung.html
Tedious ideological posturing: "Bring on the disdain because I don't agree with the shallow indoctrination of, "WE NEED TO LOVE EVERYONE.""
Please edit such drama-mongering out of your comments here. It's unsubstantive and lowers the signal-noise ratio of the threads, both by adding noise itself and by evoking it from others.
Flamewar material could basically be any contestable subject people get passionate about. Of course people online will disagree about contentious ideas, that doesn't automatically make it a "flamewar topic" as you seem to think, unless you plan to flag and remove all impassioned speech here.
Typically for forum moderation, flamewars involve a slew of personal attacks, which are simply not present in my quote. I said something ideologically controversial, but I didn't flame or personally attack anyone.
My statement also wasn't casual. Since the BLM movement was founded on the Michael Brown case, I've put a fair amount of time and consideration into an analysis of what happened in the case and how I should feel about it and the ongoing protests -- protests that shut down the freeway here in SF for hours yesterday, I might add.
My overall conclusion is as stated, and that directly relates to the initial post about empathy online -- it's an completely valid example where displaying a lack of empathy on a given subject is very controversial, which you have certainly reaffirmed here. To you, it's such a controversial (read: not politically correct) opinion (to refuse to show empathy towards a perceived victim) that you, as a moderator, felt the need to denigrate the perspective and flag the comment as off-topic (which it wasn't).
>Tedious ideological posturing
I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, and for what it's worth you've labeled this quote more accurately, but it's still extremely subjective (bordering on facile name-calling) to label what I said that way. What you find tedious others might find empowering, in that they don't have to put the world's problems on their shoulders and feel sad about every victim narrative bandied about on the news. Or people could have a slew of other emotions.
I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview. That's the definition of bias. You also tend to resort to tone policing to justify acting on your biases when any argument rubs you the wrong way. That's not good moderation, imo.
Removing personal attacks is fine, sure. Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it -- that's disappointing to see on HN. Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.
I'm glad you said "I feel", because the statement that follows is not true, nor could you know what my worldview is; you've simply imagined it. I have a feeling, too: that people say this when they don't want to admit they've been abusing HN. It's easier to believe that one is being "suppressed" and "censored"—grand political reasons instead of petty procedural ones.
> Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it
There are orders of magnitude more things that I don't like.
> Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.
It's ironic that you would invoke pg when he's the person who wrote the HN guidelines, taught us how to interpret them, and in seven years of commenting on HN never once (to my knowledge) did the things we're asking you not to do. If you really understood what he wrote, you'd follow suit instead of undermining it.
Censorship is generally the territory of petty proceduralism, not grand political gesture.
"It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is."
That's a direct quote from PG. Take it for what you will.
>We’re all to blame at some level, and we’re all responsible for finding a solution.
This seems to blow away the entire premise of the article. This is either massive victim blaming or massively blaming everybody for the actions of a few. It's victim blaming if you're saying that people who are harassed online are responsible for their own harassment, and it's blaming everybody for the actions of a few if you're saying that unconnected parties are responsible.
This is not a new problem. Harassing phone calls, hate mail, and insults have existed long before the Internet, World Wide Web, and social media have existed. Could Empathy Scale to the Telegraph? I don't know, but I have a feeling that the answer to that is the same as the answer to this question.
Jesus Christ calls his word truth. And in one of his sermons he says, therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
And here is a prophet showing what that can look like; It looks to me like empathy for another side with which you even have justification in disagreeing with is fairly important:
And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbour in the word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man refused to smite him.
Then said he unto him, Because thou hast not obeyed the voice of the LORD, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him.
Then he found another man, and said, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him.
So the prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and disguised himself with ashes upon his face.
And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver.
And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it.
And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets.
And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.
And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria.
Sometimes this helps, such as with criticism. It's a bit harder to give criticism in person because of the social pressure of being nice; it's much easier to criticise someone who can't slap you, and that means finding more critiques.
More critiques, however, doesn't mean better ones. It's very easy to dehumanize your partner in argument, which leads to a "they're evil, I'm good" perspective, which leads to more extreme (and more wrong) viewpoints over time.
In short, the article suffers from the very problem it complains about; that anonymity, which is bemoaned for producing Gamergate, is in turn what makes it possible to villainize Gamergate.