If everything boils down to emotional states, then being empathetic just becomes, "I made the other person feel this emotion," i.e. sychophancy and flattery.

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HarHarVeryFunny 5 days ago | parent [-]

I'd define empathy as more the ability "to put yourself in someone else's shoes" and imagine how they are feeling, and care about it if you think they are feeling bad.

It seems this ability requires a few different mental capabilities/functionalities to come together, starting with theory of mind, but these are all going to be genetically based.... You are not imagining how someone else is feeling because you are that rare gem of a person that cares - it is because you have a brain architecture honed through millions of years of evolution to have these (ultimately self-serving!) capabilities and feelings.

Edit: I suppose "group-serving" is more correct than "self-serving", but anyways it's not about the person you are feeling empathy for - it's about what happened when your ancestors, and non-ancestor predecessors, did or didn't feel empathy for each other.

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tboyd47 4 days ago | parent [-]

No. Empathy is feeling what the person is feeling exactly the same way as if it happened to you. You really have to have already gone through something like what the person is going through. That’s why it’s so rare. What you’re describing is more like sociopathy.

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HarHarVeryFunny 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's not the normal definition of empathy - you don't need to have experienced it yourself, just to have the ability to imagine what it would be like.

Here is Google's AI summary:

> Having empathy means the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It involves stepping into someone else's shoes and seeing the world from their perspective, even if you haven't personally experienced the same situation.

Sociopathy is essentially the opposite of empathy - someone who pathologically acts in ways detrimental to society.

Anyways, the point apropos this thread is that whatever innate behaviors and responses humans are genetically predisposed could could equally well be made innate to an AI.

	▲	tboyd47 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Anyways, the point apropos this thread is that whatever innate behaviors and responses humans are genetically predisposed could could equally well be made innate to an AI. Could be, but they won't be. Because the people making the AIs don't know much about empathy for other people. I hope I'm wrong.