
Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa - ecliptic
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.htm
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otakucode
I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to
answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to
take will reduce or increase suffering?

I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good
actions."

Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions.
Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make people safer, make them
healthier, etc. The bottom line is that good intentions have no influence on
the consequences of actions. To determine what the consequences will be and
whether a course of action is likely to help or hurt, we might have to abandon
empathy during the discussion. Of course, we shouldn't ignore empathy when
considering whether we want the consequences or not.

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lukasb
We use emotions to help us pick the ends to which logical effort should be
directed. Try as you might, you will not be able to logically select the
axioms by which you reason.

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CamperBob2
I really like your first point, but I don't see how the second follows.

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_feda_
I misread the title as empathy encourages analytical thought, which would make
sense, because in order to empathize one has to have enough analytic ability
to see how another person is thinking, if that makes sense.

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otakucode
You are correct, that analytical thought is necessary to have a shot at seeing
how another person is thinking... but to believe that you have seen how
another person is thinking requires only intuition.

It's wrong, of course, wrong in drastic, often tragic, degrees as often as it
is right (performs no better than random chance). This has been known for a
long time in behavioral neuroscience. How we respond to another persons face
when they are feeling different emotions is extremely inaccurate and quite
useless, but we are all weak to believing that our conclusions are valid. This
is why polygraphs do not work. They rely on the intuition of the examiner
rather than science. So, they perform the same as random guessing. In addition
to just being wrong half the time, such intuitions are easily manipulated by
some people (either trained or an ability they just develop naturally).

The human mind has a great many very reliable flaws. They were probably useful
for survival at some point as they seem endemic to the structure of the brain
itself (and we learn more all the time about their neurophysiological origin)
but almost certainly useless at best and dangerous at worst today. We
certainly don't live in anything that resembles the environment our brains
evolved to survive in for thousands of years. (In small extremely intimate
groups on the savannah with rare intense bursts of life-or-death stress but
life mostly consisting of eating, having sex, and sleeping.)

Long experienced cops believe they can tell when people are lying. When
tested, they perform the same as random chance. Average people believe they
can tell what someone is feeling by looking at their face. When tested, they
perform the same as random chance. It's hard for many to accept that their
ability to read other people is only as accurate as flipping a coin, but
that's what we've got evidence for. In some ways, this is odd, since we have
mirror neurons that specifically make us unconsciously mimic other people when
physically close to them, and I would think this would lead to being able to
understand them better, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

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v0cab
> It's hard for many to accept that their ability to read other people is only
> as accurate as flipping a coin, but that's what we've got evidence for.

Does anyone have any links that support this? Thanks if so.

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Evbn
It is easy and plenty fun to set up an experiment among your friends.

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grantph
I have major issues with the entire article. 45 "healthy" students in an MRI
is hardly solid evidence of anything. It's too small a sample to be
meaningful. Presumably they were all students of "higher education" which may
not represent society as a whole. Perhaps what they discovered simply
represents the way the students have been educated/conditioned? What about
other cultures and socio-economic groups?

I'm also skeptical of this kind of academic theory because it can be biased.
If the theory doesn't pan out, then funding might stop. So better find data to
support the theory.

Speaking from personal experience, I've always treated empathy as an analytic
process. It simply involves additional perspectives. That's not intuition!
Empathy is an extension of analysis. To claim they are mutually exclusive
seems (feels?:) outrageous. It's also not consistent with other evidence that
suggest that neural pathways can and will change. So why not both pathways or
a hybrid pathway?

That leads to the duck-rabbit illusion where they say it's impossible to see
both. I see both and it looks like a mutation. A quick search yields other
interpretations too such as seeing neither. Seeing only the lines for what
they are. (I can also see either duck or rabbit but the mutation is much
cooler!)

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tobyjsullivan
I suppose this explains why successful marketing often involves telling a good
story.

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mlchild
Very interesting. Perhaps the empathetic and analytic systems are parallel to
Kahneman's systems 1 and 2? (1 for thinking "fast" and 2 for "slow," to
oversimplify an Nobel laureate's life's work.)

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gph1
I think sub-cortical (limbic) and cortical are probably better analogues for
system 1 and 2 than empathetic/analytic (intutive system 1 thought isn't
necesarily empathetic, and can certainly be 'analytic'. The difference vs.
system 2 is the presence of reflective consciousness.)

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mlchild
Good to know, thanks much.

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mseebach2
This rings very true to me: I like you, so I want you to be right, to the
extent that I might suspend thorough analysis of what you're saying.
Conversely, if I don't like you, I might ramp up efforts to find out that
you're actually wrong.

Look no further than politics for day-to-day demonstrations of this: Does
anyone ever apply the same amount of critical rigour to "their guy" as they do
to his opponent?

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pella
" _Eureka! Engineers aren't empathetic because they can't be Research suggests
that analytic thought is impaired by empathy, just as empathy is impaired by
analytical thought. Who'd have thought?"_

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57542754-71/eureka-
enginee...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57542754-71/eureka-engineers-
arent-empathetic-because-they-cant-be/)

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001sky
One corrolary of this, if true, would be the uneven distribution of empathy
will correlate with uneven distribution of analytic skill (viz: learning by
doing).

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gph1
Interesting but don't really see how this addresses the explanatory gap
problem.

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ChristianMarks
Corollary: social networks ungracefully degrade analytic ability.

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saurabh
So does this mean the more friends you have on Facebook, the dumber you are?

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saraid216
Do a study. Find a reasonable test for analytical skills (and maybe a couple
other tests to keep the study's purpose unclear), then get a few thousand
people to take it. One of the questions should be the order of magnitude
number of Facebook friends you have.

If you're correct, you should see a correlation.

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donniezazen
House was right.

