I don't think your comment even addresses what they argue. In the case of the drug addicted homeless person with mental health issues, context doesn't change that different people have different perspectives. For example, I believe that the system is imperfect, and yet it is still cruel and unjust for both the homeless person and innocent members of society who are the victims of violent crime for said homeless person to be allowed to roam free. You might believe that the risk to themselves and others is acceptable to uphold your notion of civil liberties. Neither of us are objectively right or wrong, and that is the issue with the definition of empathy above. It works for both of us. We're both empathetic, even though we want opposite outcomes.

Maybe we don't even need to change the definition of empathy. We just have to accept that it means different things to different people.

Boy, he got quiet

It's no game.

I have empathy for the person who wants to improve their family's life and I have empathy for the farmer who needs talented workers from the global south [1] but we will lose our republic if we don't listen to the concerns of citizens who champ at the bit because they can't legally take LSD or have 8 bullets in a clip or need a catalytic converter in their car that has $100-$1000 of precious metal in it -- facing climate change and other challenges will require the state to ask more of people, not less, and conspicuous displays of illegality either at the top or bottom of society undermine legitimacy and the state's capacity to make those asks.

I've personally helped more than one person with schizo-* conditions get off the street and it's definitely hard to do on an emotional level, whether or not it is a "complex" or "complicated" problem. It's a real ray of hope that better drugs are in the pharmacy in in the pipeline

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/3-things-to-know-about-cob...

For now the embrace of Scientologist [2] Thomas Szasz's anti-psychiatry has real consequences [3]: it drives people out of downtowns, it means people buy from Amazon instead of local businesses, order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant, erodes urban tax bases. State capacity is lost, the economy becomes more monopolized and oligarchical, and people who say they want state capacity and hate oligarchy are really smug about it and dehumanize anyone who disagrees with them [4]

[1] https://www.ithaca.com/news/regional_news/breaking-ice-arres...

[2] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/dr-thomas-szas...

[3] https://ithacavoice.org/2025/08/inside-asteri/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Feminist_per...

I’d argue that having the delusion that you understand another person’s point of view while not actually understanding it is far more dangerous than simply admitting that you can’t empathize with them.

For example, I can’t empathize with a homeless drug addict. The privileged folks who claim they can, well, I think they’re being dishonest with themselves, and therefore unable to make difficult but ultimately the most rational decisions.

Which is why it’s valuable in small, generally familial groups, but pathological when scaled to society at large.

I have a friend who reads ayn and agrees with her drug riddled thinking. But I still try to connect with him through empathic understanding (understanding with a person, not about him) and that lets me keep up the relation and not destroying it by pointing out and gloating about every instance where he is a good selfless person. :)

Yes hence why it's an example of

>its institutionalization has become pathological.

You know I can explain why a murderer has killed someone in her twisted system of value without myself adhering to said system

Also don't be so harsh on interpreting what I'm saying.

I'm saying that it's not the job of a company to "train" about moral value, while bring itself amoral by definition. Why are you interpreting that as me saying "nobody should teach moral value"

Also I don't see why as a French working in France, a French company should "train" me with a DEI focused on US history (US minorities are not French one) just because the main investors are US-based

I think that's what he means when he says

> its institutionalization has become pathological.

Empathy isn't strong for people you don't know personally and near nonexistent for people you don't even know exist. That's why we are just fine with buying products made my near slave labor to save a bit of money. It's also why those cringe DEI trainings can never rise above the level of performative empathy. Empathy just isn't capable of generating enough cohesion in large organizations and you need to use the more rational and transactional tool of incentive alignment of self interest to corporate goals. But most people have trouble accepting that sort of lever of control on an emotional level because purely transactional relationships feel cold and unnatural. That's why you get cringe attempts to inject empathy into the corporate world where it clearly doesn't belong.

The evidence does not overwhelmingly say that. Empathy-biased thinking says that.

All three replaced impartial rules with empathy-driven bias.