
Humans Show Empathy for Human-Shaped Robot Hands - dpflan
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/researchers-threatened-a-robot-with-a-knife-to-see-if-humans-cared
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ThomPete
People se faces in clouds. So it would be likely that we show empathy for
something that reminds us of a living thing.

I am always reminded that children put a lot of emotion into their teddy bears
and power rangers. When we grow older we kind of loos that naivety because we
know rationally that a teddy bear is not a living thing. But it's only skin
deep and you put us in unfamiliar territory and we start attaching intent and
emotion to seemingly alive things.

It's not that robot hands need to be specifically real it's just that we are
naturally wired to have empathy for "life".

This is a vice article so I can forgive it's superficial interpretation of
empathy. However it's important to realize that empathy is not just about
feeling others pain but about feeling their anger, joy and jealousy.

Somehow along the way empathy became synonymous with people who care about
other people and can feel their pain. But its so much more.

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comrh
The show Community has a good bit about this when a character names a pencil
then breaks it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z906aLyP5fg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z906aLyP5fg)

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nitwit005
Humans show empathy for all kinds of things: animate, inanimate, and even
purely imaginary.

