Item — HN Reader

>> The issue is instead that empathy has become the attitude and quality that needs to take precedence over any other, including any amount of skepticism, inquisitive attitude and reason.

This is the key point.

What I don't get is how it ended up this way? A person might empathize, but why should it take precedence? And if indeed it did, why doesn't that person's skepticism or criticism hold the same weight? Why should that get disregarded?

1 comments

From one side empathy is a very popular emotion; trash tv for example has always been peddling in cheap empathy. I suspect that for a vast majority of people empathy comes natural, while logical analysis requires an effort. We had established venues in which rational discourse was the only acceptable way of addressing issues, but social networks have lowered the bar of entry into the public debate and given everyone the means to participate- all the competence needed being that of clicking a like or retweet button.

Empathy also allows to hide your own personal issues behind the very handy screen of someone else's emotions. "Will someone think of the children", "what about the elderly" are a classic examples of a mechanism allowing you to disguise your personal attitudes (for example homophobia, prudishness, fear of change) as an altruistic attention to someone else's needs, again without the need to provide any kind of rational explanation. So whoever has personal issues with something doesn't need to argue for it any more, they can just point to someone else's distress and ask to empathize with it.

So, essentially, as discourse becomes more visible to a larger section of people, that discourse then has to pander to the more trivial, petty or rather those emotions which require lesser effort.

The social networks rely mostly on network effects. There is really no way to, for example, discern, prior to a person joining a network, whether they are actually qualified to be able to participate in it. Sometimes, the network is visible, for example, a forum whereas there is a very low barrier of entry in terms of membership.

That is interesting to think about!

Your second point, I think, ties up to the first. Those people, who out of inclination, capability or training, are unwilling, incapable or unable to exert the effort rational analysis, will end up resorting to, as you say, "hide personal issues behind a show of empathy".

There is one more point I'd like to add though. In circles where a high amount of training is required, not only is it not possible to contribute in a meaningful way, but also there was no inclination for anyone to opine about others' comments. Whereas now, any statement, any remark, any comment, anybody feels that they can comment, criticize, or debate about. That is, the earlier inhibition, or should I say humility, seems to be disappearing. This is, in my opinion, is another reason for deterioration of debate and discussion.

Probably along with this, I'd like to add this quote from another comment in a different HN thread [0]. >> Cynicism tends to look smart to outside observers

Thank you for the wonderful and thought provoking discussion.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23137990