This isn't a bad piece, but it somewhat oversimplifies these concepts. For example, "compathy" is more directly "viscerally feeling what another feels" while "empathy" is more accurately defined as the intellectual or emotional capacity for engaging in compathy. That capacity can be grounded in actually feeling what the observed other feels -- which, arguably, is impossible if the observed is experiencing something the observer has no shared personal experience with -- or by feeling what an observer imagines the observer would feel if sharing the personal experience of an observed. Actual empathy _requires_ that one is "able to understand what the person is feeling" -- which is what this piece uses as the (somewhat imprecise) definition of "sympathy".
Similarly, "sympathy" is more accurately defined as "(the expression of) understanding of what the person is feeling" ... one need not actually understand the feelings of another to engage in sympathy (ie, most sympathy does not require actual empathy, but actual sympathy does require actual empathy), and often actual compassion (which derives from actual empathy) requires one to not engage in actual sympathy.
Nevertheless, good to see an attempt to unpack these terms.
> “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
... and try to recognize that what is desired, but not attained (happiness) is not as important or impactful as what is practiced, but not mastered (compassion).
I think that's empathy - which may also result in antipathy and revulsion, e.g. one may empathetically understand why some person would want to own slaves or sit atop a strict hierarchical-religious power structure, as they like the feeling of having absolute power over others, while strongly disliking such motivations and having no sympathy for people who engage in that behavior.
There are a frustrating number of conflicting definitions of all three (compassion, sympathy, empathy) terms but I share your definitions.
and often actual compassion (which derives from
actual empathy) requires one to not engage in actual
sympathy.
I think this is a great insight. For example, in order to care for somebody compassionately in a medical setting, a doctor or caregiver might at times need to actually shut off their sympathy and/or empathy so that they can perform compassionate acts.
Example: a doctor or nurse performing the excruciating treatments needed by a burn victim. Especially one who is too young or incapacitated to know what's happening. One imagines you'd need to temporarily shut off one's sympathy and empathy in order to perform the care which is ultimately going to be the most compassionate thing in the long run.
Yep, that's probably why PP said 12 year old. Teen years are full of opportunities to learn this difference. There's no shortage of intelligent morons at 15 ;-)
My fighter is somewhat wise but not so smart. At least he knows he isn't the smartest, thus he writes everything down in a journal he deems important. He doesn't come up with the most interesting or cunning solutions. But he knows that good preparation, a solid formation and sharp weapons can solve many problems and avoid pitfalls.
The opposite (smart but not wise) would be someone who is book smart or even a smart-ass. Probably coming up with all sorts of crazy and interesting ideas, but doesn't necessarily judge situation too well and might quickly discard simple but effective solutions. They might be quick minded and suddenly do high risk/reward kind of moves that either save the day or fail spectacularly.
I'm not particularly religious these days, but I was raised a Christian. When I was around 10 learning about the ideas behind empathy, sympathy and compassion this song always came to mind[1].
I think compassion is doing something with your empathy and sympathy. I think compassion is really important, more people should "cross over the road".
Empathy deals with the emotional systems (I feel you).
Sympathy deals with intellectual (I understand what you feel or imagine it must feel like x).
Compassion is a transcendent experience in which you try to imagine yourself in the shoes of another.
Sympathy for me is liking someone or something e.g. an idea whereas I understand empathy as to be able to understand and share someone’s emotion/emotional situation.
But don't you feel that sometimes Sympathy has alot of negative connotations associated to it when compared to Empathy? (Which in turn puts you in a position of dis-alignment)
Empathy
|--Sympathy (positive view of the result of empathizing)
|--Antipathy (negative view of the result of empathizing)
For example, one could empathize with someone who is consumed with hatred of other people, and possibly understand how they came to adopt that view, while strongly disliking that kind of mentality, and that would be antipathy. One could even have compassion for such a person, while also accepting that they need to be locked up in a prison because of their history of serial murder of other people.
Alternatively, one could empathize with a parent fleeing a war zone with children in tow, and most people would be sympathetic towards that person and their motivations, because one could understand why a parent would want to protect their children from harm, at a personal emotional level. A compassionate response would be to say, "Perhaps our government / community can provide some basic resources for these people, and why not also try to stop that war from continuing so we don't have to take in all these refugees, as well?"
Empathy doesn't really have an opposite, but it is a capability which may be missing in some people, comparable to vision vs. blindness. A person lacking any sense of empathy is somewhat rare, but they do exist and are generally categorized as sociopathic narcissists... they do tend to be a bit on the power-mad side of things, and hence are more frequently found running governments, corporations, and (other?) organized crime cartels, as well as starting wars, etc.
Perhaps the lack of empathy is genetic in nature? Someone could come up with a DNA test, perhaps.
Fun fact: empathy comes from the Greek word «εμπάθεια» which nowadays means disliking someone. The word change meaning throughout the years, so in English retained the original meaning while in modern Greek the meaning is the exact opposite.
The result is ofc confusion when someone is using the word in Greek, because often times one can’t be sure what is the authors intent :-)
The inability to naturally and spontaneously think or feel empathy, sympathy, and compassion is one of the hallmarks of the psychopath. Faking these three for approval is also the hallmarks possibly making one a psychopath.
I just finished teaching a class this morning and this came up during a design thinking segment. It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. When I ask if anyone feels comfortable explaining the difference, it always ends in a beautiful disaster because that one person feeling brave enough to go for it, usually completely derails, only to be taken over by another student taking it into a similar dead-end. It almost always ends with them agreeing that this is a complex topic and therefore impossible to pin down.
I then bring up the scenario of someone who lost their dog (in a tragic freak accident) a while back...
A sympathic friend asks them how they cope, or feel, they acknowledge the fact that there is a process of grief happening. They show sympathy by observing your state from the outside.
The empathic friend stops by to check how they can help and then leaves with the rest of the dog food. They're able to walk a moment in your shoes and see the problems you're facing.
Which, I think, should be a fundamental quality of a good product manager, planner or user researcher.
Anyways, dumb teaching stuff, but I kinda like the example.
I think the key thing missing here is the notion of “well-being”. When designing with well-being in mind (of end-user, community, society, ecology), then sympathy, empathy, and compassion all makes more sense. (Though I disagree with how Chopra distinguishes among those terms).
I don’t think males are incapable of it. We’re socialized to reject it, but we all need it in some way or another.
As I look at the other examples given here and reflect on my own Christian beliefs, I see a common understanding that compassion or active empathy involves action. Sympathy is nice, but it seems most folks here agree it is at the level of understanding and doesn't involve the creativity of action.
I think this is what Jesus was teaching with the "Good Samaritan" parable:
And, I think a masculine response to sympathy/empathy has never been expressed more (worst) than in the classic movie Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire... the scene probably doesn't play as well as it did back in 1957.
I agree this is a skill to develop if you really want to excel at product management, planning, user research, education, medicine... anywhere you need to account for the human condition.
>It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest.
It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary.
You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They don't, all words are made up.
It's like I make up this word "mokadan" and I define it as the difference in emotion between what a dog feels for its human owner and what a human owner feels for his dog.
You see what I did there? you can talk about that mokadan for days trying to pin down whats going on with the word but it's just something that's arbitrarily made up by me. I can make up other vague concepts as well and assign it random vocab like "somofin": the shape that is exactly in between a hexagon and semicircle. And now a group of people can spend days trying draw what that shape exactly is. Sort of a pointless endeavor down what I call linguistic trap doors that disguise themselves as deep concepts.
The thing with human language is that all of it is made up. All language consists of made up words and symbols attached to arbitrary definitions. The languages are so entrenched in our brains that we often can't see the difference between actual concepts and vague vocabulary. So often We get stuck in discussing what is simply linguistic phenomena like what is the difference between "sympathy" and "empathy." Other trap doors include what is "life" or what is "sentience".
The vagueness of the word is arbitrary because humans picked to define the word vaguely. The vagueness is manufactured, it's artificial. There's no real point in trying to unroll all of it.
You commented on how you were in a male dominated class implying that there's something inherit with males being too simplistic and laughing off the discussion.
I think the opposite is true. The "males" who laughed it off are in a higher plane of meta understanding and they comprehend the pointlessness of trying to demarcate vague vocabulary. They were right to laugh it off in my opinion.
I was in a class that were mostly females and when they tried to veer off the discussion into one of these linguistic traps. I attempted to explain to them the concept of the linguistic trap they were falling for but my efforts were in vain. They were perplexed by my explanation and still didn't understand. They continued down that trap door and ended up wasting everyone's time.
Well, I don’t agree. Specifically on your point that this is a discussion about the meaning of words. It’s a discussion about the concepts and scenarios described by those words. We can call it anything we want, but those “concepts” we describe are not the same things. I do not care what word anyone wants to use to describe something — as long as it still ensures we’re talking about the same thing. I don’t run a philosophy or Latin class, it’s not about letters and words, at all. That’s entirely beside the point.
The concept is arbitrary. It's a made up concept. It's an arbitrary collection of empathic and and sympathetic traits bundled up together to be a definition of another arbitrary word.
Similar to "what is sentience?" People are arbitrarily ascribing different traits like intelligence, free will and aspects of "understanding" to the word "sentience". When people debate over whether a thing is "sentient" or not they are simply debating about the definition of a vocabulary word. What traits does the word "sentience" encompass? That's it. The vagueness of the definition of the word is what's illusory here.
The collection of traits that make up a definition are arbitrarily chosen to be vague. The word actualizes the arbitrary concept and the vagueness follows it making you think that you are discussing a concept when you are only discussing a definition.
There is nothing profound to talk about here. You're just trying to differentiate subtle differences between two vocabulary words here. The concepts behind the words themselves are by themselves ultimately simplistic.
Something profound and related to empathy is the discussion of the chemicals behind the emotions. The exact neural and biological pathway to actualization of these emotions. Additionally the evolutionary origin of these emotions. Why has natural caused some of us to feel this way and others to feel less this way. This is profound. What is not profound is the difference between the vocabulary words: empathy and sympathy.
Well, I don't follow, at all. The fact that you seem to love getting lost in words (just as much as I do) is sort of demonstrated and at the same time diminished by your explanation on how (certain?) words/concepts are arbitrary — making it sound like it being 'arbitrary' has negative value. Why does that matter?
If I like a song, and say so, it's arbitrary. Why bother saying it? A mix of frequencies hitting my ear drums and matching some form of pattern in my brain is what I am technically excited about, but it's easier to say that... I just like the song.
I personally find it hard to follow the intention behind your argument, but I also feel it may be a waste of time for both of us to dive deeper, here.
I'd argue that the basic idea of a word is to describe "things", in a recallable form. If people want to discuss their interpretations of a word, I see no harm and wonder what the issue is.
You also seem to (unintentionally?) shift the original discussion over to a different context, from discussing the interpretations of certain words to "what is a worthy, or profound discussion to have", which you can freely do, but makes me wonder, again, what the intention is.
I recently watched a talk by a Registered Nurse on a topic she calls "assertive empathy". It's a bit long at 41 minutes[0], but the real world examples were particularly interesting to me.
An example that runs throughout the talk involves a young man who is verbally abusive and physically threatening to the nursing staff. His behavior is causing them real difficulty in just doing their jobs of assisting with his recovery. The solution? Demonstrate empathy ("I understand that what you're going through is hard and we're here to help.") but be assertive and set boundaries ("But you must show us the same level of respect we show you. We won't tolerate abuse."). By holding that line while continuing to show care, she eventually catalyzed a change in his behavior toward them. This assertive empathy is seen as the height of respect by this patient who might not feel respected anywhere else in his life.
Having been hospitalized myself, I know just how amazing a good nurse can be. I think the world would be a better place if we all learned more about human interaction from experienced nurses.
Huh. On the face of it, the way Chopra defines these are fairly simple, yet powerful way to make sense of this.
… but, I am not sure it is complete.
For example, the way Chopra defined sympathy and empathy is the way psychologists define cognitive empathy and affective empathy. It implies that sympathy is something else all together. (The way I learned sympathy in the colloquial sense is more along the lines of virtue signaling, or at least a show of solidarity)
As for Chopra’s definition of compassion, I don’t think it adequately distinguishes it from pity. Furthermore, I have experienced compassion in a form that was not about relieving suffering (not exactly) … admittedly though, this is gettin to into the Buddhist view of things.
There's a quote in the book "Radical Candor" which talks about Empathy vs Compassion which I rather like:
"picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and to do everything within your power to remove the boulder and alleviate their suffering. Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action."
You can be compassionate without being empathetic. You can recognize, intellectually that someone is in distress and still help. I cannot even imagine the pain someone is in, actually, I think its healthier to be compassionate without being empathetic. else you would be emotionally exhausted if you felt as others in distress do. Reading the news would be an act of torture.
I've come across several articles and discussions that suggests empathy is a bit of a trap. You may feel what someone else is feeling, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're helping them. I'm currently reading Rutget Bregman's Humankind: A Hopeful History (Dutch: De Meeste Mensen Deugen) about how people in emergency situations or when society breaks down, tend to be far more altruistic than we usually tell ourselves. The exact opposite of Lord of the Flies turns out to be true. But then where does xenophobia come from? One of the culprits, he suggests, might be empathy. As we feel and identify more strongly with one person who have something in common with, we tend to see other people as more different. So xenophobia might be the other side of the same coin as empathy.
Not sure if it's true, and I haven't finished the book yet, but Bregman tends to be pretty thorough in his research, and he does base this idea on experiments.
I am not sure I buy that (empathy leads to xenophobia), so I’d have to think about that some more.
I learned this from a particular Buddhist teaching — what someone want is not necessarily the same as what someone needs. It takes wisdom to know what the deeper needs are.
So the way I learned that empathy is a trap the same way sympathy and compassion is a trap. Someone unable able distinguish surface wants for deeper needs, or why and how the suffering happens will seek out things that will not really help.
The issue is of course a lot more complex than I can summarise in a brief comment. It's a 500 page book (though well worth reading). But he describes a couple of experiments, including some with babies: show a baby two puppets, one who is mean and one who is nice, and they'll prefer the nice one. But show them two puppets, one who share the same taste in food but is mean, and another who is nice but doesn't share the same taste, and they'll prefer the mean one.
He includes observations that groups of terrorists of various kinds are often very close to each other, soldiers fight harder and more effectively against an enemy if they have a strong sense of camaraderie. Empathy makes us closer to some, but more distant from the rest.
The book quotes a professor Bloom who is against empathy for that reason. A colleague of his showed that when people are encouraged to empathise with one mortally ill patient, they're more likely to support preferential treatment for that one patient even if it comes at the cost of other patients who are just as ill and in need of treatment.
I wonder if the same is true with Trump supporters: they oppose his indictment because they empathise with him, but they want Hillary Clinton locked up because they don't empathise with her. They believe Trump understands them and cares about them, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. It's not that they're heartless people who have chosen evil, it's that they've been blinded by the limited focus of their empathy. But this is my own speculation, not Bregman's. And I certainly don't pretend to understand it.
Empathy is knowing the mental feelings of someone because you’ve known them. Sympathy is knowing the physical symptoms of someone because you’ve felt them. Compassion is a way of acting when knowing empathy and sympathy.
This might be a great article, but it is important to note that this comes from a company founded by Deepak Chopra, who is a famous figure and undoubtedly has done some good work but is a deeply flawed person, perhaps a charlatan really.
> Chopra has metaphorically described the AIDS virus as emitting "a sound that lures the DNA to its destruction". The condition can be treated, according to Chopra, with "Ayurveda's primordial sound".[18] Taking issue with this view, medical professor Lawrence Schneiderman has said that ethical issues are raised when alternative medicine is not based on empirical evidence and that, "to put it mildly, Dr. Chopra proposes a treatment and prevention program for AIDS that has no supporting empirical data".
> Chopra has been criticized for his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, a connection that has drawn skepticism from physicists who say it can be considered as contributing to the general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[136] In 1998, Chopra was awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness"
> In May 1991, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by Chopra and two others on Ayurvedic medicine and TM.[144] JAMA subsequently published an erratum stating that the lead author, Hari M. Sharma, had undisclosed financial interests, followed by an article by JAMA associate editor Andrew A. Skolnick which was highly critical of Chopra and the other authors for failing to disclose their financial connections to the article subject.[145] Several experts on meditation and traditional Indian medicine criticized JAMA for accepting the "shoddy science" of the original article.[146] Chopra and two TM groups sued Skolnick and JAMA for defamation, asking for $194 million in damages, but the case was dismissed in March 1993.
Deepak Chopra is a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist.
Here he is getting his "beliefs" exposed to some pretty basic questions.
I've never heard of the person, but the video you linked doesn't seem to do a good job of exposing charlatism at all, it's a rather strange meme of a moment taken out of context.
Edit: this random post on reddit seems to question this person's techings (?) And imo do a better job at 'exposing'
Chopra says 'all beliefs are a cover up for insecurity'
An academic asks him "Do you believe that"?
This shows the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid. That's Deepak's career in a nutshell. Nothing he says stands up to the most basic scrutiny.
> This shows the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid.
Can you explain how this short excerpt "shows"[1] that it is a fact that "the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid"?
> That's Deepak's career in a nutshell. Nothing he says stands up to the most basic scrutiny.
I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work. I think you are quite literally making things up, or hallucinating.
[1] What forces/processes are involved in this "showing"? Do you play any role?
This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it. There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says.
Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?
>This is exactly the reason he uses big words and conflates scientific terms with his own ideas -- to sow confusion and hopefully be passed off on the benefit of the doubt. It's all just "chicken feed" and you've fallen hook line and sinker for it.
Adding some mind reading in (Chopra's, and mine) for some bonus points now? Will you be demonstrating more of your supernatural abilities?
> There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says.
I continue to stand on: I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work. I think you are quite literally making things up, or hallucinating.
> Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?
I don't really know much about him, and I suspect you do not either, though you may not have a sound understanding of your level of understanding due to the misleading nature of human consciousness combined with the norms of the culture you were raised in...which somewhat ironically, is the domain that Chopra's alleged expertise is in.
>I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work.
>I don't really know much about him,
That you can write those two completely contradictory statements in the same post shows that you're just as full of it as Deepak. And that's really saying something, although you admittedly don't know enough about Deepak yourself to fully grasp what that means. But I do know something about him.
I could say that “everything is relative”, but that’s an absolute statement so it’s contradictory. However, whole philosophies—coherent ones—have been built on this premise. Or at least I am aware of one.
You basically have to bootstrap it with a segmentation of “truth” into “absolute” and “relative”. But as you develop it you need the “absolute” part less and less, like scaffolding for a finished building.
I understand the joke, and am only saying that context wasn't there.
Maybe Chopra proceeded to clarify his argument after the question asker had left, but the clip doesn't show that. It also doesn't show that Chopra ignored the point afterwards too. It's unknown to me.
He pushes the pseudoscience of Ayurvedic "medicine" and gets rich off of it.
More to the point, though, it's a matter of keeping the place clean: Pick up the small pieces of trash before the trash-spreaders think they're in good company and this place really becomes a dump.
Is there some rule on HN that if a member of HN holds the subjective belief (which is what it is technically, though beliefs often appear as facts/knowledge to the one who holds them, complicating matters substantially) that someone "is" "a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist", any content from that person doesn't belong on the site?
The HN rule that is being broken here is that this article doesn't and couldn't possibly appeal to the curiosity of nerds. It's just fraudulent nonsense.
I think it's important to keep in mind that you're not necessarily being "nice" with this sort of sense. If you want to hurt someone emotionally, empathy can help tell you where to stick the figurative knife for maximum damage
I am a clinical psychologist and did research related to empathy and compassion.
Often in clinical work I have seen almost the exact opposite distinction between empathy and sympathy with empathy being understanding and sympathy being shared feeling.
In the research, definitions are muddy and one of the main problems with empathy research (IMO) is that each research group seems to use their own definition and these definitions are often incompatible. My own preferred definition defines cognitive and affective empathy, with cognitive being the understanding and affective being sharing in the emotion.
I personally don’t care for the way the article defines these things. It seems to contrast sharply with more or less all scientific and clinical uses of the terms AND the everyday use of sympathy which does NOT commonly mean understanding but usually something like pity or just “feeling for”.
It almost seems like the author accidentally switched empathy and sympathy throughout the article.
In the world of nonviolent communication where empathy is one of the central concept, empathy occurs when a person feels felt.
When empathy occurs, the person who is experiencing the feelings, and now feels felt and understood on the level of the feeling, has the resources to digest / process, understand, and move forward / shift.
Learning how to give empathy to others and self is one of the most important outcomes of the training.
What makes it difficult to teach is that it is less of an intellectual process, it is closer to a felt presence experience, and very simple.
I have an roleplay exercise called “not empathy” going through the standard cultural approaches like telling a similar story, or telling the feeling person that whoever wronged them is the bad guy/gal, or reminding them how valuable their experience is as learning or that soon they’ll be laughing from the distance of time. None of these is empathy and none provides the space needed for the shift.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadSimilarly, "sympathy" is more accurately defined as "(the expression of) understanding of what the person is feeling" ... one need not actually understand the feelings of another to engage in sympathy (ie, most sympathy does not require actual empathy, but actual sympathy does require actual empathy), and often actual compassion (which derives from actual empathy) requires one to not engage in actual sympathy.
Nevertheless, good to see an attempt to unpack these terms.
> “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
... and try to recognize that what is desired, but not attained (happiness) is not as important or impactful as what is practiced, but not mastered (compassion).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony#Etymology_and_origins
Example: a doctor or nurse performing the excruciating treatments needed by a burn victim. Especially one who is too young or incapacitated to know what's happening. One imagines you'd need to temporarily shut off one's sympathy and empathy in order to perform the care which is ultimately going to be the most compassionate thing in the long run.
Older me: "Oh."
Wisdom: Should we really be removing this fence?
Wisdom: It does not belong in a fruit salad
The opposite (smart but not wise) would be someone who is book smart or even a smart-ass. Probably coming up with all sorts of crazy and interesting ideas, but doesn't necessarily judge situation too well and might quickly discard simple but effective solutions. They might be quick minded and suddenly do high risk/reward kind of moves that either save the day or fail spectacularly.
I think compassion is doing something with your empathy and sympathy. I think compassion is really important, more people should "cross over the road".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCP5gHlasf8
Sympathy: I like you/I feel for you/It hurts me when you're hurt
Compassion: I feel bad/want to help when you feel bad
There's some overlap, and each is often needed to get the others
I feel with you. I have feelings for you.
Sympathy for me is liking someone or something e.g. an idea whereas I understand empathy as to be able to understand and share someone’s emotion/emotional situation.
Sympathy: you align with that they feel, not merely understand it.
Compassion: you're doing something about it, not merely aligning with it.
Empathy |--Sympathy (positive view of the result of empathizing) |--Antipathy (negative view of the result of empathizing)
For example, one could empathize with someone who is consumed with hatred of other people, and possibly understand how they came to adopt that view, while strongly disliking that kind of mentality, and that would be antipathy. One could even have compassion for such a person, while also accepting that they need to be locked up in a prison because of their history of serial murder of other people.
Alternatively, one could empathize with a parent fleeing a war zone with children in tow, and most people would be sympathetic towards that person and their motivations, because one could understand why a parent would want to protect their children from harm, at a personal emotional level. A compassionate response would be to say, "Perhaps our government / community can provide some basic resources for these people, and why not also try to stop that war from continuing so we don't have to take in all these refugees, as well?"
Empathy doesn't really have an opposite, but it is a capability which may be missing in some people, comparable to vision vs. blindness. A person lacking any sense of empathy is somewhat rare, but they do exist and are generally categorized as sociopathic narcissists... they do tend to be a bit on the power-mad side of things, and hence are more frequently found running governments, corporations, and (other?) organized crime cartels, as well as starting wars, etc.
Perhaps the lack of empathy is genetic in nature? Someone could come up with a DNA test, perhaps.
The result is ofc confusion when someone is using the word in Greek, because often times one can’t be sure what is the authors intent :-)
I then bring up the scenario of someone who lost their dog (in a tragic freak accident) a while back...
A sympathic friend asks them how they cope, or feel, they acknowledge the fact that there is a process of grief happening. They show sympathy by observing your state from the outside.
The empathic friend stops by to check how they can help and then leaves with the rest of the dog food. They're able to walk a moment in your shoes and see the problems you're facing.
Which, I think, should be a fundamental quality of a good product manager, planner or user researcher.
Anyways, dumb teaching stuff, but I kinda like the example.
I think the key thing missing here is the notion of “well-being”. When designing with well-being in mind (of end-user, community, society, ecology), then sympathy, empathy, and compassion all makes more sense. (Though I disagree with how Chopra distinguishes among those terms).
I don’t think males are incapable of it. We’re socialized to reject it, but we all need it in some way or another.
I think this is what Jesus was teaching with the "Good Samaritan" parable:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/luke...
And, I think a masculine response to sympathy/empathy has never been expressed more (worst) than in the classic movie Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire... the scene probably doesn't play as well as it did back in 1957.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXW2S_KU4o
I agree this is a skill to develop if you really want to excel at product management, planning, user research, education, medicine... anywhere you need to account for the human condition.
It is a sort of side quest. You think the discussion is about something profound but really you're just discussing English vocabulary.
You're taking arbitrary symbols/words with arbitrarily vague meanings and trying to demarcate an exact meaning as if the words exist intrinsically in reality. They don't, all words are made up.
It's like I make up this word "mokadan" and I define it as the difference in emotion between what a dog feels for its human owner and what a human owner feels for his dog.
You see what I did there? you can talk about that mokadan for days trying to pin down whats going on with the word but it's just something that's arbitrarily made up by me. I can make up other vague concepts as well and assign it random vocab like "somofin": the shape that is exactly in between a hexagon and semicircle. And now a group of people can spend days trying draw what that shape exactly is. Sort of a pointless endeavor down what I call linguistic trap doors that disguise themselves as deep concepts.
The thing with human language is that all of it is made up. All language consists of made up words and symbols attached to arbitrary definitions. The languages are so entrenched in our brains that we often can't see the difference between actual concepts and vague vocabulary. So often We get stuck in discussing what is simply linguistic phenomena like what is the difference between "sympathy" and "empathy." Other trap doors include what is "life" or what is "sentience".
The vagueness of the word is arbitrary because humans picked to define the word vaguely. The vagueness is manufactured, it's artificial. There's no real point in trying to unroll all of it.
You commented on how you were in a male dominated class implying that there's something inherit with males being too simplistic and laughing off the discussion.
I think the opposite is true. The "males" who laughed it off are in a higher plane of meta understanding and they comprehend the pointlessness of trying to demarcate vague vocabulary. They were right to laugh it off in my opinion.
I was in a class that were mostly females and when they tried to veer off the discussion into one of these linguistic traps. I attempted to explain to them the concept of the linguistic trap they were falling for but my efforts were in vain. They were perplexed by my explanation and still didn't understand. They continued down that trap door and ended up wasting everyone's time.
Similar to "what is sentience?" People are arbitrarily ascribing different traits like intelligence, free will and aspects of "understanding" to the word "sentience". When people debate over whether a thing is "sentient" or not they are simply debating about the definition of a vocabulary word. What traits does the word "sentience" encompass? That's it. The vagueness of the definition of the word is what's illusory here.
The collection of traits that make up a definition are arbitrarily chosen to be vague. The word actualizes the arbitrary concept and the vagueness follows it making you think that you are discussing a concept when you are only discussing a definition.
There is nothing profound to talk about here. You're just trying to differentiate subtle differences between two vocabulary words here. The concepts behind the words themselves are by themselves ultimately simplistic.
Something profound and related to empathy is the discussion of the chemicals behind the emotions. The exact neural and biological pathway to actualization of these emotions. Additionally the evolutionary origin of these emotions. Why has natural caused some of us to feel this way and others to feel less this way. This is profound. What is not profound is the difference between the vocabulary words: empathy and sympathy.
If I like a song, and say so, it's arbitrary. Why bother saying it? A mix of frequencies hitting my ear drums and matching some form of pattern in my brain is what I am technically excited about, but it's easier to say that... I just like the song.
I personally find it hard to follow the intention behind your argument, but I also feel it may be a waste of time for both of us to dive deeper, here.
I'd argue that the basic idea of a word is to describe "things", in a recallable form. If people want to discuss their interpretations of a word, I see no harm and wonder what the issue is.
You also seem to (unintentionally?) shift the original discussion over to a different context, from discussing the interpretations of certain words to "what is a worthy, or profound discussion to have", which you can freely do, but makes me wonder, again, what the intention is.
An example that runs throughout the talk involves a young man who is verbally abusive and physically threatening to the nursing staff. His behavior is causing them real difficulty in just doing their jobs of assisting with his recovery. The solution? Demonstrate empathy ("I understand that what you're going through is hard and we're here to help.") but be assertive and set boundaries ("But you must show us the same level of respect we show you. We won't tolerate abuse."). By holding that line while continuing to show care, she eventually catalyzed a change in his behavior toward them. This assertive empathy is seen as the height of respect by this patient who might not feel respected anywhere else in his life.
Having been hospitalized myself, I know just how amazing a good nurse can be. I think the world would be a better place if we all learned more about human interaction from experienced nurses.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYU9yTp0lD4
… but, I am not sure it is complete.
For example, the way Chopra defined sympathy and empathy is the way psychologists define cognitive empathy and affective empathy. It implies that sympathy is something else all together. (The way I learned sympathy in the colloquial sense is more along the lines of virtue signaling, or at least a show of solidarity)
As for Chopra’s definition of compassion, I don’t think it adequately distinguishes it from pity. Furthermore, I have experienced compassion in a form that was not about relieving suffering (not exactly) … admittedly though, this is gettin to into the Buddhist view of things.
"picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and to do everything within your power to remove the boulder and alleviate their suffering. Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action."
It was the first time I "got it".
Not sure if it's true, and I haven't finished the book yet, but Bregman tends to be pretty thorough in his research, and he does base this idea on experiments.
I learned this from a particular Buddhist teaching — what someone want is not necessarily the same as what someone needs. It takes wisdom to know what the deeper needs are.
So the way I learned that empathy is a trap the same way sympathy and compassion is a trap. Someone unable able distinguish surface wants for deeper needs, or why and how the suffering happens will seek out things that will not really help.
He includes observations that groups of terrorists of various kinds are often very close to each other, soldiers fight harder and more effectively against an enemy if they have a strong sense of camaraderie. Empathy makes us closer to some, but more distant from the rest.
The book quotes a professor Bloom who is against empathy for that reason. A colleague of his showed that when people are encouraged to empathise with one mortally ill patient, they're more likely to support preferential treatment for that one patient even if it comes at the cost of other patients who are just as ill and in need of treatment.
I wonder if the same is true with Trump supporters: they oppose his indictment because they empathise with him, but they want Hillary Clinton locked up because they don't empathise with her. They believe Trump understands them and cares about them, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. It's not that they're heartless people who have chosen evil, it's that they've been blinded by the limited focus of their empathy. But this is my own speculation, not Bregman's. And I certainly don't pretend to understand it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
> Chopra has metaphorically described the AIDS virus as emitting "a sound that lures the DNA to its destruction". The condition can be treated, according to Chopra, with "Ayurveda's primordial sound".[18] Taking issue with this view, medical professor Lawrence Schneiderman has said that ethical issues are raised when alternative medicine is not based on empirical evidence and that, "to put it mildly, Dr. Chopra proposes a treatment and prevention program for AIDS that has no supporting empirical data".
> Chopra has been criticized for his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, a connection that has drawn skepticism from physicists who say it can be considered as contributing to the general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[136] In 1998, Chopra was awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness"
> In May 1991, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by Chopra and two others on Ayurvedic medicine and TM.[144] JAMA subsequently published an erratum stating that the lead author, Hari M. Sharma, had undisclosed financial interests, followed by an article by JAMA associate editor Andrew A. Skolnick which was highly critical of Chopra and the other authors for failing to disclose their financial connections to the article subject.[145] Several experts on meditation and traditional Indian medicine criticized JAMA for accepting the "shoddy science" of the original article.[146] Chopra and two TM groups sued Skolnick and JAMA for defamation, asking for $194 million in damages, but the case was dismissed in March 1993.
Not someone with a great track record.
Deepak Chopra is a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist.
Here he is getting his "beliefs" exposed to some pretty basic questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka--VV-_t_U
I'm going to flag this so dang can investigate further.
Edit: it already is, as you can see. Baby/bathwater etc.
But hey, congratulations on the 'win'
Edit: this random post on reddit seems to question this person's techings (?) And imo do a better job at 'exposing'
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/d1ewq/why_deepak_c...
Chopra says 'all beliefs are a cover up for insecurity'
An academic asks him "Do you believe that"?
This shows the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid. That's Deepak's career in a nutshell. Nothing he says stands up to the most basic scrutiny.
Can you explain how this short excerpt "shows"[1] that it is a fact that "the entire premise of whatever argument he's trying to make is completely unfounded, deeply flawed and kinda stupid"?
> That's Deepak's career in a nutshell. Nothing he says stands up to the most basic scrutiny.
I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work. I think you are quite literally making things up, or hallucinating.
[1] What forces/processes are involved in this "showing"? Do you play any role?
Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?
Adding some mind reading in (Chopra's, and mine) for some bonus points now? Will you be demonstrating more of your supernatural abilities?
> There is zero academic or scientific value to what he says.
I continue to stand on: I do not believe that you have actually reviewed all of Chopra's work. I think you are quite literally making things up, or hallucinating.
> Can you name one decent contribution this guy has made to any field?
I don't really know much about him, and I suspect you do not either, though you may not have a sound understanding of your level of understanding due to the misleading nature of human consciousness combined with the norms of the culture you were raised in...which somewhat ironically, is the domain that Chopra's alleged expertise is in.
>I don't really know much about him,
That you can write those two completely contradictory statements in the same post shows that you're just as full of it as Deepak. And that's really saying something, although you admittedly don't know enough about Deepak yourself to fully grasp what that means. But I do know something about him.
a) Can you explain how it is a fact that these two statements are completely contradictory?
b) For the sake of argument, if we assume that you are correct, can you explain how it follows that I am just as full of it as Deepak?
> And that's really saying something, although you admittedly don't know enough about Deepak yourself to fully grasp what that means.
Do you believe yourself to be fully informed on Deepak? It seems quite unlikely, so how would you be able to fully grasp what your claim means?
One interesting trick I recommend in these sorts of situations: consider whether you have ever gotten an answer wrong on a test in the past.
I could say that “everything is relative”, but that’s an absolute statement so it’s contradictory. However, whole philosophies—coherent ones—have been built on this premise. Or at least I am aware of one.
You basically have to bootstrap it with a segmentation of “truth” into “absolute” and “relative”. But as you develop it you need the “absolute” part less and less, like scaffolding for a finished building.
Maybe Chopra proceeded to clarify his argument after the question asker had left, but the clip doesn't show that. It also doesn't show that Chopra ignored the point afterwards too. It's unknown to me.
More to the point, though, it's a matter of keeping the place clean: Pick up the small pieces of trash before the trash-spreaders think they're in good company and this place really becomes a dump.
You should not flag a post based off of character you should flag a post based off of the content.
Deepaks reputation should not preclude his article from getting posted here if the post is genuinely good.
Let's focus on the statement he is making himself rather then judging the person behind the statement.
Either way, like I said I think the whole discussion on arbitrary definitions of random words is bs, but that is besides the point I am making here.
I think it's important to keep in mind that you're not necessarily being "nice" with this sort of sense. If you want to hurt someone emotionally, empathy can help tell you where to stick the figurative knife for maximum damage
https://www.empathy-driven-development.com/defining-empathy-...
Often in clinical work I have seen almost the exact opposite distinction between empathy and sympathy with empathy being understanding and sympathy being shared feeling.
In the research, definitions are muddy and one of the main problems with empathy research (IMO) is that each research group seems to use their own definition and these definitions are often incompatible. My own preferred definition defines cognitive and affective empathy, with cognitive being the understanding and affective being sharing in the emotion.
I personally don’t care for the way the article defines these things. It seems to contrast sharply with more or less all scientific and clinical uses of the terms AND the everyday use of sympathy which does NOT commonly mean understanding but usually something like pity or just “feeling for”.
It almost seems like the author accidentally switched empathy and sympathy throughout the article.
When empathy occurs, the person who is experiencing the feelings, and now feels felt and understood on the level of the feeling, has the resources to digest / process, understand, and move forward / shift.
Learning how to give empathy to others and self is one of the most important outcomes of the training.
What makes it difficult to teach is that it is less of an intellectual process, it is closer to a felt presence experience, and very simple.
I have an roleplay exercise called “not empathy” going through the standard cultural approaches like telling a similar story, or telling the feeling person that whoever wronged them is the bad guy/gal, or reminding them how valuable their experience is as learning or that soon they’ll be laughing from the distance of time. None of these is empathy and none provides the space needed for the shift.
They might be sympathetic to your situation, but they do not have compassion, meaning they employ their understanding to F you over.
Sympathy is good for the good, but for bad actors, it is a tool to use against others.