I see the Awesomeness.
It's not ethical to force people to undergo a medical treatment if they don't want to.
Fight smart, not fair.
PARTY HARD!!!!
The way I see it, "empathy" it too vague a term to use it as a measuring stick, just as Simon accuse the term "evil" of. That said, accusations of evil are mostly counterproductive, so renaming it to something like "empathy challenged" has at least some advantages.
All that said, I don't think it is an adequate explanation. I suspect it would be perfectly possible for a person to have a great deal of empathy and be wildly evil. He admits to this, stating that a lack of empathy might just tend to result in cruelty, or vice-versa, but I don't feel that such is enough.
For example, I would argue that a person who tortures someone has a great deal of empathy - after all, torture's goal is to make someone suffer. What's more, it is all very, very complex. Putting humans in such a tiny box isn't going to work. At all.
Let's say we have someone who violates personal space. Why do they do this, and what would stop them?
Possible Reasons:
- The person is used to standing closer to others (because of where they grew up, for example), and thus has different standards.
- They don't care about space, and the other person hasn't told him they disapprove.
- They feel more comfortable standing close (because they might have lacking eyesight, for example).
- They want you to feel pressured - perhaps they are a salesman.
In most of these cases, it's not even that the violator lacks empathy, it's that they haven't been informed at all. The only case that is not so, is with the one where they are trying to cause discomfort, but that person is arguably the most empathic of all of them.
If we focus on someone else, such as a Nazi, we see something else. In their case, I believe that they were perfectly aware of what they were doing. What was wrong was that they viewed the Jews as worthless, even as their wicked foes. By viewing the Jews that way, they justified to themselves, assuring their hearts that it was OK. That's not a lack of empathy, it's something else.
Hell no. Bad idea, full stop. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER.
Besides, I'm pretty much "zero empathy", myself, but I'm certainly not overly brash or a monster.
edited 5th Apr '11 11:59:45 AM by TheMightyAnonym
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! ~ GOD
I can see empathy being a big part of why people can do "evil" things but I highly doubt it is the root cause.
I found an empathy quiz claiming to be his, don't know if it truly is though
http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx
I scored 24, apparently lumping me in with Asperger syndrome sufferers and high function autistics, how'd you all do?
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?
The Wanderer
The same as you, and I do happen to be autistic.
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
Oh My
I got a 40 so I'm average.
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
NOT THE BEES
I couldn't help but read it as Sacha Baron Cohen, and then I wondered why Borat is a professor of psychology...
I wouldn't say a lack of empathy is the root of things — certainly it can be overridden by things like greed or abuse warping one's priorities — but it is a strong symptom.
40 as well.
edited 5th Apr '11 12:55:46 PM by Pykrete
Permanently Banned
I agree with most of your points, TMA. But then, we can attribute incidents in which people with "normal" levels of empathy commit inhumane acts to a process of dehumanisation. If you don't view a person as human (e.g., they are declared impure heretics or untermensch), it becomes easier to marginalise them. How it overrides natural "empathy circuits", I wonder.
I got a 22 for some reason. I'm sure I have more empathy than that >_>
edited 5th Apr '11 12:58:46 PM by Shichibukai
Requiem ~ September 2010 - October 2011 [Banned 4 Life]
OMG NO NOSECONES
Got a 32. Not entirely surprised, as I'm kind of an introvert. If i liked social events more, I'd be pretty much average.
So, are introverted people less empathic? I do tend to notice a great deal about people, even if I don't make small talk and stuff.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
NOT THE BEES
Yeah I kind of resent the whole "comfortable in social situations = empathy" thing. The people I know who are the most comfortable in social situations are the ones who regularly use them to manipulate people or who don't care if they're assholes to people.
edited 5th Apr '11 1:22:52 PM by Pykrete
If we can all understand each other, the overall asshole level of the world would probably go down. It still wouldn't stop this vague term of 'evil' that people like to throw around (people can easily override their empathy), so I don't think it's the end-all be-all of removing the 'root of all evil'.
And I scored 18, apparently.
edited 5th Apr '11 2:29:45 PM by Ekuran
OMG NO NOSECONES
Yeah, I'm not convinced that a lack of empathy is a root of all evil. I'd blame that on pride.
Empathy and pride are not diametrically opposed, either.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Lover of masks.
I scored a 20.
I am a hard determinist so yeah. Empathy goes a long way in explaining the actions of others in my book
Please.
Is that cake frosting?
Not sure if I am comfortable associating lack of empathy with evil.
Empathy, after all, is a rather instinctive emotional reaction: I would like to think that most people's behaviour comes from informed decisions about the validity of certain moral principles, and not from something as basic as that.
If I were to make a stab at which could be the root of all evil, I would be tempted to pull a Socrates and say that it is ignorance of the good. Outside of comic books, no sane being seeks evil for evil's sake - not nazi doctors, not Pol Pot, not the basest of the murderers. But people can be wholly ignorant about whether some action is good or evil, or even about whether there are such things as good or evil, and so...
Not that this excuses evil actions, of course - people have a conscience, and free will, and a duty to use the intellect that they have in order to analyze the morality of their actions; but in any case, I am pretty sure that not many people, in all history, have committed evil actions while fully convinced that they were evil. None did, perhaps.
EDIT:
Oh wow. I scored 11.
I am a monster.
edited 5th Apr '11 1:42:44 PM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
I scored 14 myself.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.
Lover of masks.
Hey you ![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
twolets form a club of people who do not care what other people think.
I look at 'evil' and 'good' as also being relative to the surrounding community and the reasons behind the actions. I never real heard anything that was truly evil in my book.
edited 5th Apr '11 2:00:13 PM by TheDeadMansLife
Please.
The woman in the article strikes me as being very manipulative, not just needlessly cruel. It's a problematic combination, but lack of empathy doesn't promote evil actions so much as it handily removes some barriers to committing them.
I scored a 19 on the test.
edited 5th Apr '11 2:07:28 PM by Penguin4Senate
Rbx5
I don't think that evil is an inappropriate term necessarily, though I see where Baron-Cohen is coming from. I'd say a person can be described as evil due to their actions, but it's just that: a description. It doesn't explain why they did what they did, and certainly lack of empathy can be a contributing factor.
I'll turn your neocortex into a flowerpot!
Is that cake frosting?
twolets form a club of people who do not care what other people think.
.
But they seem to
know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
OMG NO NOSECONES
^ Ah, hahahahaha.
...and don't give that club a name, either. Giving it a name infers that you all cared enough to name it in the first place, and/or cared enough to reach agreement with yoru fellow not-caring members.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Umm... hmm. I've never been diagnosed as autistic o___O
Anyway, I thought about this sort of thing in high school a lot, and came to a similar conclusion (it was a lot less rigorous, though). And then I decided that that would mean a Hive Mind wouldn't be a bad thing.
Er, are you seriously saying that all those people are ignorant of their actions? Surely there exist people who fully acknowledge that what they do is harmful, but want to do harm anyway for shits and giggles.
edited 5th Apr '11 2:30:34 PM by melloncollie
I scored a 16.
I'm not sure how accurate that test is, but I don't think having loads of empathy makes anyone incapable of barbarity anyway.
I scored a thirteen on the test, which I imagine is fairly average.
It wasn't a very good test, though. While I am not too bad at discerning the emotions of other people, more often than not how they feel is no skin off my nose.
Oh My
Related to what mellon said: I can safely say that I have done things with full knowledge that what I was doing was wrong and was hurtful. In fact I did it precisely because it was wrong and hurtful. My brother hadn't done anything wrong. He just happened to be around and I was a huge fucking bitch to him.
I felt bad afterwords and even apologized, but that doesn't change the fact that I did it just because I wanted to be a dick.
edited 5th Apr '11 3:01:29 PM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
The Ant King
Imp of the perverse, Aondeug. Imp of the perverse.
Kill all math nerds
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-a-lack-of-empathy-is-the-root-of-all-evil-2262371.html
Sentencing her to 11-and-a-half years in prison last month, Judge Simon Oliver said: "You are an evil woman. I have no doubt you have ruined these two girls' lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour you meted out to them for the rest of their lives."
Most people would probably agree with Judge Oliver's description of Adeniji as evil, but Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, would not be one of them. In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific and unhelpful. "Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop an inquiry," Baron-Cohen tells me. "'This person did it because they're evil' – as if that were an explanation."
Human cruelty has fascinated and puzzled Baron-Cohen since childhood. When he was seven years old, his father told him the Nazis had turned Jews into lampshades and soap. He also recounted the story of a woman he met who had her hands severed by Nazi doctors and sewn on opposite arms so the thumbs faced outwards. These images stuck in Simon's mind. He couldn't understand how one human could treat another with such cruelty. The explanation that the Nazis were simply evil didn't satisfy him. For Baron-Cohen, science provides a more satisfactory explanation for evil and that explanation is empathy – or rather, lack of empathy.
"Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion," writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mere objects.
Empathy, like height, is a continuous variable, but for convenience, Baron-Cohen splits the continuum into six degrees – seven if you count zero empathy. Answering the empathy quotient (EQ) questionnaire, developed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues, will put you somewhere on the empathy bell curve. People with zero degrees of empathy will be at one end of the bell curve and those with six degrees of empathy at the other end.
Baron-Cohen provides vignettes of what a typical person with x-degrees of empathy would be like. We're told, for example, that a person with level two empathy (quite low) "blunders through life, saying all the wrong things (eg, 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg, invading another person's 'personal space')."
Being at the far ends of the bell curve (extremely high or extremely low empathy scores) is not necessarily pathological. It is possible to have zero degrees of empathy and not be a murderer, torturer or rapist, although you're unlikely to be any of these things if you are at the other end of the empathy spectrum – level six empathy.
It's an interesting theory.
Is this scientific explanation all we need to understand acts of cruelty?
"I'd be very concerned about those sorts of directions," Baron-Cohen says. "I mean, they are at least plausible from a science point of view, but whether they're desirable from a societal point of view is another matter. I would probably put more emphasis on early interventions – environmental interventions. I think empathy could be taught in schools for example."
Is it fair to force people with unusually low empathy (particularly the zero-negatives) to undergo treatment?
edited 5th Apr '11 11:44:29 AM by Shichibukai
Requiem ~ September 2010 - October 2011 [Banned 4 Life]