
Empathy and Failures of Democracies - mebassett
https://mebassett.info/empathy-failures-democracy.html
======
int_19h
I would also note that empathy has shown to be weaponizable - i.e. you can use
empathy to some people to justify oppression of others and dehumanize them. My
observations in American politics today is that this is largely what the
political debate has devolved into - you find some cause that sufficiently
many people empathize with, you dress it up, and you use that to drive your
agenda. I think it's no surprise that the causes that tend to be among the
most partisan (and the most reliable when it comes to turning out supporters
and votes) are basically moral panics, like abortion on the right, or guns on
the left.

~~~
DSingularity
Good point. I guess the Palestinians fall under that category.

------
bobthechef
Empathy, no. Being charitable in your appraisal of your opponent, yes.
Meaning, don't assume off the bat that your opponent is malicious unless you
have good reason to believe that. Also, acquaint yourself with the views of
your opponent before dismissing them as stupid. Charity, not empathy, is the
proper attitude. Empathy prioritizes feelings over truth and reason. This is
dangerous, foolish, and wrong. Truths may be painful, and where appropriate,
we should be charitable toward those in error and find the truth painful, but
we should never sacrifice truth or prefer feelings over truth and reasoned
arguments. We are also foolish to expect everyone competent and capable of
reasoned argument. That is why we have authorities. Really, the authorities
are at fault here because they have given the masses license to behave
aggressively and boorishly when they should be discussing instead of peddling
their latest tendentious sophistry and bullshit.

~~~
mcguire
Keep in mind that, while there is one truth, there are many reactions to that
truth. Understanding that your reaction might not be the only reasonable one
is a function of empathy.

Couple that with the fact that the truth may not be apparent and the
possibility that things about which you are certain may not be true, and
humility and empathy begin to take a more central role.

------
tunesmith
I wonder if anyone else relates to this. I feel like up until the last few
years, my understanding of "empathy" was always very different than how it is
often used now. Empathy was literally putting yourself in another person's
shoes, understanding their emotional perspective. But the key there is that it
was one person. Like, a friend, or a therapist to a client, etc. A
relationship free of agenda.

Now I often see it as almost a corporate kind of buzzword, like with UI/UX
people having "empathy" for their users (in order to understand "their" needs
and make more money from them). Or people having "empathy" for populations for
political reasons as a way to build political support for something. It seems
more related to the language of branding and marketing now.

~~~
adityab
Yes, you're not alone. Oddly enough, it's been repurposed to mean something
akin to value alignment or strategic cooperation. It used to mean thoughtful
kindness, and this change seems to have suddenly happened in the last five
years.

It's usage now makes me vaguely uncomfortable because it feels borderline
sociopathic or manipulative.

~~~
tunesmith
Yeah, exactly. Which is particularly maddening because sociopathy is about the
_absence_ of empathy.

------
james_s_tayler
Art helps facilitate communication. You can communicate an entire, massive,
powerful idea by just saying "1984." That's where the power lies. The thought
experiment aspect is nice too but you can write any old book to push any old
narrative if you think enough people will buy it. I think that's neither here
nor there.

This analysis is uni-dimensional. There is nothing special about Democracy,
per se, or even about standard political issues. We are highly political
creates and you'll notice the very same patterns of calling the other side
stupid or assuming they have an agenda with regards to basically anything.
Though credit where credit is due, I think the subtext is saying "wait, are we
in trouble?". That's not an entirely silly notion IMHO. History has shown
things can progress and then go back the other way.

We might have left the tribes but tribalism never left us. We have upgraded
ourselves a little bit, but there is a long way to go. There are many
underlying problems with our cognition that paint a pretty bleak picture with
regards to "can't we all just get along?", but all is not lost. Just as The
Enlightenment moved people away from relying on Mysticism as a philosophy,
there is an ongoing dialectic around these issues that has the chance to birth
a new philosophy that can help elevate our thinking further.

In general just being aware of all our cognitive pitfalls, I think, will go a
long way and there is also language that goes along with new ideas to help us
communicate using new tools.

I'll list some books I've read/I'm reading on the journey to help me figure
this out. Most of this paints a picture that says "we need to actively adopt a
philosophy where we emphasize digging into the opponents side more, also, yes
they likely are coming to faulty conclusions, but still give them the benefit
of the doubt as it will strengthen your own thinking."

History (last 14,000 years):

    
    
      Why Nations Fail
      The Origins of Political Order
      Sapiens
      Guns, Germs & Steel
    

Psychology:

    
    
      Thinking Fast and Slow
      The Elephant In The Brain
      Predictably Irrational
    

Poltics:

    
    
      The Righteous Mind
      The Political Mind
      Chimpanzee Politics
      In Defense of Troublemakers
      A General Theory of Bureaucracy
    

Communications:

    
    
      Words That Work
      Shortcut
      Surfaces & Essences
      Metaphors We Live By
      On Controversy
      Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision Making

~~~
Fomite
I'd suggest 'Plagues and Peoples' over 'Guns, Germs and Steel'

~~~
james_s_tayler
Thanks for the recommendation! Plagues have definitely had an important impact
on the river of history.

Is there any particular reason to read Plagues and Peoples instead of Guns,
Germs and Steel rather than in addition to?

~~~
UncleMeat
GGS isn't super well respected by historians. Diamond ignores a bunch of
conflicting data when presenting his grand theory. It also presupposes a lot
about how cultures "win". It's not a bad book but if you aren't careful it is
easy to take it to mean more than it does.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Yeah, that's my impression of it too. I included it because it's very well
known and given a lot of people have read it, if it's the only book of that
nature that they have read I want to understand what their mental models or
their intuitions are regarding how this stuff works.

------
mensetmanusman
People forget that it is a feature of democracy that we disagree loudly. Life
would be boring otherwise :)

------
peisistratos
> pre-war German and Japanese

In the November 1932 elections in Germany, the socialist and communists got
221 Reichstag seats to the Nazis 196. 10 of the KPD's seats gained since the
July 1932 election were from the socialists - the Nazis helped radicalize
German left workers. On February 20, 1933 the CEOs and board members of
Germany's Fortune 500 equivalents pledged millions of Marks to the Nazi party,
five months later the Vatican signed the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany.

Nothing like that is happening now because there is zero threat from America's
working class against the system. It has been losing power with each year, and
even college educated professionals have been losing power for decades,
something chronicled thirty years ago in "Fear of Falling". There is also no
external threat of any historical significance. Fortune 500 boards have no
desire to bankroll the efforts of people like Andrew Torba (Y-combinator
funded Torba, who did gab.ai, and Paul Graham talks about the genetic
intelligence superiority of certain races, but this is not big capital). Trump
has been talking about pulling troops home, not about more Lebensraum.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_Falling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_Falling)
-> "Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, a book by Barbara
Ehrenreich" (sheesh, nowadays books come under the heading "Other", while
music and video get their own headers?)

Thanks for the ref, and nice handle btw - these days very few people are
allowed to understand that a monarch may be a better deal for them than a
senate ...

------
skookumchuck
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of
sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

\-- Winston Churchill

------
thucydidesofusa
If art is important to building empathy, our problems might stem from art's
recent pivot to shock over beauty and virtue signaling over the cultivation of
virtue.

~~~
ineedasername
I won't infer your own political views. I simply want to point out that the
phrase "virtue signaling" has been appropriated by conservative factions as
some sort of insult. It is used to imply that their liberal counterparts are
in some way fraudulent or faking their stated concern for other people or
groups of people. This sort of blanket painting of opposing viewpoints as
disingenuous lies is exactly the type of thinking the posted article was
speaking against.

~~~
closeparen
Virtue signaling is by no means a specifically left-wing phenomenon. Consider,
for example, copious displays of Christian faith, piety, and family values
from divorced cheaters living according to the gospel of fuck-you-I-got-mine.
It refers to any instance where the social status game around commitment to a
belief / purging of unbelievers dwarfs actual commitment to it.

~~~
mcguire
This is true.

And yet, many "copious displays of Christian faith, piety, and family values,"
even from some divorced cheaters, as well as the left-wing style, are actually
genuine.

Very often, the introduction of the phrase "virtue signaling" comes off as a
blanket dismissal of the other party.

------
skookumchuck
> Whether its American Conservatives or UK Remainers

American liberals do exactly the same thing.

~~~
commandlinefan
UK remainders are basically american liberals - I think the author put some
work into showing both sides of the political spectrum to avoid accusations of
bias.

------
fallingfrog
Hah! Well let’s do an experiment. I’m going to give what I think is the point
of view of your typical right winger and your typical centrist democrat, and
then hopefully someone can educate me as to where I’m wrong. To be clear I’m
going to go for the basic profile here. Nuance is for cowards.

Conservatives: I was born in 1948. When I was a young adult, everyone was ok
and everything made sense. There was an order to things, everyone had a place.
Our great enemy was communism; we had capitalism and were free, while our
enemies were communists and lived under dictatorship. I was afraid of
communism because communists almost blew up the world, plus we fought them in
Vietnam. Communists are bad people and therefore their ideas are bad ideas. I
suspect that all liberals are either explicitly communist or are being misled
by communist appeals to emotionalism. What we need is a strong rational person
who will take charge and root out the people who are getting out of place and
ruining things for everyone else.

Centrist liberal: I was born in 1972. When I was a young adult, politics were
civil and everyone was polite. I never really paid attention to politics
because I thought it was boring. I like my job and I think my boss is a great
guy. My favorite political figure was Martin Luther king, because he said that
everyone should be nice and get along. I’m not racist, because I like Martin
Luther king. I don’t understand why everyone seems so angry these days.
Technology is so amazing these days, it’s just going faster and faster. I love
buying new fancy things. I think that if we could just elect more democrats to
congress, then everyone will be nice again and stop being so nasty to each
other.

How’s my empathy? Am I close? I would love it if someone would give a similar
treatment to the anarchist/socialist point of view, just so I can see what
kinds of silly things people believe about me. Turnabout is fair play. Let me
have it.

~~~
jeffdavis
A bit off topic, but I am confused how anarchism and socialism can work
together. Can you explain?

~~~
fallingfrog
Socialism is a broad term that includes two main branches; state communism,
which emphasizes a planned economy, and anarchism, which emphasizes fighting
any kind of heirarchy including state power. In an anarchist world all
decisions would be made on the local level wherever possible and businesses
would be run democratically by their workers.

Anarchists see anarchism as the skill of organizing and working without having
people simply follow orders, which if you think about your private life you
probably do it all the time. But at work you do what you’re told, which is in
our view a gross assault on your personal integrity.

In the anarchist view if there is a large power differential between two
people there is simply no way for them to deal fairly with one another. A
legal system is just a band-aid. Hoping for nicer rulers is delusional. The
solution is that nobody should have that kind of power in the first place.
This extends to male power over women and white supremacy as well.

But it’s still considered a branch of socialism, associated with the writings
of Bakunin and Kropotkin.

~~~
james_s_tayler
How effective do you really think a democratically run business could be?

Such companies would be very limited in size and capacity to produce output.

If you had a hypothetical Anarchist country with an Anarchist economy where
all the companies were run this way, they would all be outcompeted by the
capatilist companies of other nations and the local economy would collapse.

~~~
fallingfrog
Well that’s just flat wrong. Here’s an example of an association of worker
collectives in Spain known as the Mondragon Corporation which employs 75000
people:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation)

I mean in the age of feudalism I’m sure people thought the idea of electing
their kings would have sounded equally bizarre.

~~~
mebassett
I think you are both touching on the question of "if capitalism is so great,
why do firms exist?". You might find the work of Ronald Coase interesting in
that regard (see [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/09/07/the-man-who-
sho...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/09/07/the-man-who-showed-why-
firms-exist)). The basic idea is that transaction costs for smaller decisions
become too high, so it makes sense to have a figure with authority to make
certain transaction decisions by fiat. I think Mondragon still has such
authority figures, but it has a more "humanist" corporate structure, composed
of co-ops, rather than the shareholder-directors-mgmt-and-workers structure in
an american c-corp.

corporate structures do matter.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Pretty much. Essentially if you run a thought experiment through several
permutations you can roughly compute that this is the case. I always find
blowing things up to extremes usually makes certain things come into focus
quite well. For example if the organisation has 100,000 people across a
multiple geographic regions and then it is discovered that one of the
bathrooms have run out of toilet paper, it's not really feasible to call a
company all hands meeting to decide who should buy some more toilet paper,
where they should buy it from, which brand it should be. If everyone is
involved in every decision that pushes productivity to absolute zero the
larger the firm grows, though it possibly works for extremely small cases.

By the same token flip the lever hard in the other direction. Imagine
management never trusts any expert or IC to ever take a decision on their own.
Things get produced but quality plunges abysmally.

There are many configurations things can be in, but from some basic thought
experiments you can work out that there is likely a certain operational
envelope with a handful of parameters that produce stable, workable results
inside the operational envelope and either unstable or unworkable results
outside of it.

Some other thought experiments you can try are imagine a world in which no one
is trustworthy. Well, it's close to impossible to do business because you have
to spend so long figuring out who to do business with that you can't do
business with anyone. Imagine a world where nobody ever cheats you and always
presents an accurate, trustworthy description of what transaction will take
place. Business flies along because you can do away with a lot of overhead
that goes in to accounting for that stuff. So it seems trust is an important
parameter. Firms make sense from the perspective of having people available
(you can trust you have resources to meet demand) and who you trust to be able
to complete the work. If you have to go to market every time you can't
necessarily guarantee the company you are doing business with will stay in
business or keep you as a client or any number of things. So there's a trade-
off being made there and there are certain inflection points where on choice
stops making sense and another one starts.

Just thinking about it now it seems that the parameters include, but at not
necessarily limited to:

    
    
      communication bandwidth/overhead
      trust
      alignment of incentives

------
colemannugent
> _Whether its American Conservatives or UK Remainers, much of the political
> spectrum has an inability to consider the other side 's opinion_

I would caution the author against merely dismissing this behavior as a defect
in their thinking. I suspect that some or most of the lack of empathy is
intentional.

Aside: In my view, most people who espouse political views merely parrot bits
and pieces of arguments that they have seen elsewhere, so I ignore these "non-
thinkers" as I don't believe that they contribute much to the empathy or lack
thereof in today's politics.

Back to my point: I think that apathy is often a strategic advantage,
especially in politics. The ideological leaders of the groups know this and
choose to employ narratives that paint their opponents as evil monsters rather
than misled humans, as it makes their jobs significantly easier.

For example, being the political party who sets aside the traditions of the
government to, for example, fast-track the nomination of a high-value judge by
changing the rules, confers a great advantage to whoever is willing to cross
the line first.

In today's democracies the winner of an election is mainly determined by who
can stir up the most support from their large preexisting base of supporters.
In this system the most attention grabbing rhetoric wins, and empathy just
doesn't seem to get the kind of attention that vitriol does.

As for dealing with apathy in politics, I am skeptical of the idea that there
is much to do other than remove the advantage that apathy provides, which
itself seems very difficult. Promoting empathetic arts seems noble, but I
doubt that it would even slow the current trend we see playing out on social
media.

