
How to use empathy in design (without killing millions of women) - ruperttebb
https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes/how-to-use-empathy-in-design-without-killing-millions-of-women-5a9e84b2e424#.rmljxuukc
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unimpressive
>People who can understand the world view of another with no emotional
connection are psychopaths. If the cheetah were human we’d be considering
custodial sentences.

 _groan_

Can we please stop repeating this myth?

Psychopathy is the lack of empathy or remorse paired with impulsiveness.
Psychopaths are self destructive as much as they are other-destructive.[0] The
ability to feel empathy (and whether people do in practice) probably varies
significantly between people and not having significant amounts of affective
empathy doesn't generally lead to psychopathy.

Moreover, cognitive empathy can absolutely be used for good ends. Affective
empathy can lead to pathological cases when it's misdirected or overly
sensitive. It's important to remember that when somebody feels affective
empathy, they're not magically feeling what the other person is feeling.
They're feeling what their brain is telling them about the other persons
condition. This can justify all sorts of abuses and horrors in the name of
'somebodies own good'.

It's a fairly common story for narcissists to make a point of how much their
sense of affective empathy means they're being hurt by the people around them
having emotions.

[0]: Look at the DSM criteria.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder)

