Yup. Prostitutes, and for that matter doctors, need the ability to turn off empathy, as well as a skill in faking it. I have few medical professionals (and a one in training) in my family, so I get to hear some stories from "behind the scenes". Like, you're tired and angry, because your patient is a total moron that did something absurdly stupid and is only wasting hospital's resources, but you have to put on a compassionate face and calm down the patient's family that's freaking out. Or conversely, you're pretty much crying, knowing that the 20-year-old girl that just came in has like, few months to live, and yet you have to put on a smile and tell her that everything's ok.

I don't see myself being able to handle that kind of emotional roller coaster day in, day out, and so I'm grateful to those who can.

You can't fake empathy unless you have the skill of empathy in the first place. Otherwise your fake empathy will be seen through and won't be useful.

I agree. Judging by my personal experiences, I think "faking empathy" is really mostly about compartmentalization - and so it actually is real empathy, but only applied when you chose to. Real skill of empathy is a prerequisite here.

I am not too sure about this. I have met quite a few people in my life with zero real empathy, but boy can they fake it.

It might be useful to distinguish two concepts, which I think are being conflated here:

Cognitive empathy: I can accurately predict the feelings/experiences of another person. This can't be "faked" - if your predictions are accurate, you have it.

Affective empathy: I experience similar feelings to another party (perhaps weakened) as a result of observing them experiencing it. This can be faked, and it can also cause problems for the person who has it.

Affective empathy seems like the thing which you describe as causing problems, while cognitive empathy seems like the thing which is useful for building better products.

This is quite a good split between the rather ambitious concepts of empathy, but I rather feel that "real" empathy is more than just cognitive empathy. If the other person's hurt does not hurt you then it is being faked.

One thing that can always make me feel real empathy with a complete stranger is sunburn. I am not sure why this is (I don't feel the same way about broken bones for example despite having had them myself), but everytime I see someone badly sunburnt I really feel it as though it was me that was burnt.

Good point with child protection - it is like but not the same as looting children on behalf of the government, and so is a separate category to looting. ;)

Prostitutes can use empathy to build a good long term client relationships. I've read of one who was visited regularly by a client over a couple of years, they went on dates, he bought her flowers and she bought him birthday presents and there was a lot of give-and-take. If that's not empathy enhancing her ability to perform at her profession I don't know what that is.

I think it's empathy compartmentalization, actually.