When I tell people I’ve been writing a book
against empathy often they look at me suspiciously
because most of my friends are liberal and
say wait, is this some sort of conservative
book?
Are you attacking liberals and progressives?
And it’s a natural question to ask because
a lot of people associate empathy with liberal
and progressive politics and they associate
other traits with conservatives.
The conservatives would say they associate
reason with conservatives.
The liberals would say we associate selfishness
and self-interest with conservatives.
But one thing people often agree about is
that on both sides is that the liberals are
more empathic for better or worse.
And, if so, then my attack on empathy is an
attack on liberal politics.
And that would certainly be interesting.
But that’s not the way I’m going to go.
I think there’s some experimental evidence
that actually liberals are a little bit more
impacted than conservatives.
There’s empathy tests that you could give
and it turns that liberal score a little bit
higher than conservatives.
With Libertarians below everybody kind of
on the floor here.
But it’s not a big difference.
And it turns out that when it comes to political
debates typically the debate isn’t all over
whether or not to empathize, it’s over who
to empathize with.
Do you empathize with black teenagers who
are shot by cops.
Or do you empathize with cops who have a difficult
and dangerous job.
Do you empathize with the parents of a toddler
who got shot by a gun due to lax gun laws.
Or do you empathize with somebody who is raped
because she is not permitted, has no right
to own a gun to defend herself.
Do you empathize with the woman or the fetus.
Do you empathize with the beneficiary of affirmative
action who otherwise wouldn’t get into a
college or with the white kid who is going
to get in because his grades are great but
isn’t going to get in because he’s white.
And so on and so forth.
Every sort of argument where liberals and
conservatives face off against, each side
points to somebody to empathize with and argues
that way.
And I think this is a horrible way to have
political discussions.
Any policy of any scope from affirmative action
to gun laws to abortion laws is going to have
some winners and losers.
And inevitably people who suffer upon any
application of law.
And so pointing out oh, let me tell you the
story of somebody who suffered.
Somebody who suffered because of Obamacare.
Somebody who suffered because we’re getting
rid of Obamacare.
It’s a stupid argument.
It’s an appeal to the passion while what
you really want to know is statistics.
You want to know well how many people are
suffering.
How many people are better off this way and
how many people are worse off that way.
Now I said for many political debates it’s
always a question of who you empathize with.
But not for all of them.
There’s some political positions, some moral
and social positions where empathy just favors
one side of the issue.
But I think it tends to favor the wrong side.
So one of these issues is climate change.
A lot of people are concerned about climate
change because they believe I think with a
lot of evidence that unchecked it will lead
to suffering of millions or perhaps billions
of people.
But there’s nobody to empathize with.
There’s no single person you could point
to and say see that crying child.
She’s crying because of climate change.
It doesn’t work that way.
The argument is statistical.
On the other hand if you were to try to respond
to climate change by raising gasoline taxes
or doing some sort of other social intervention
then there will be crying children.
There’ll be people who suffer.
So empathy set argues for inaction where I
think the right policy would involve some
sort of action.
A second example is free speech where empathy
I think is always on the side of a censor.
Because if I say something that offends somebody
on the right, on the left.
If I mock some beloved figure.
If I use some terms that some group doesn’t
like people will suffer.
And if you’re empathic with their suffering
that’ll be a good argument for shutting
me up.
On the other hand if you have rigorous laws
preventing people from speech, hate speech
laws, anti-free speech laws it’s hard to
see the empathic concern here.
The arguments in favor of free speech don’t
tend to be empathic arguments.
They tend to be arguments based on moral principles
like people should have a right to communicate
themselves.
Long-term utilitarian benefits like society
is better off if everybody has a voice.
Selfish benefits of the sort.
If I let you say your stuff that I don’t
like you’ll let me say my stuff that you
don’t like.
But they aren’t empathic arguments.
And here again empathy favors one side of
the story which is to shut people up, to censor
people.
And here again I think it favors the wrong
side of the story.
