There is a lot of bad stuff going on all over all the time. Focus is what's important. There are billions of people on this earth. You could cry at hundreds of stories every day if they were told in great enough detail. Those stories could be embellished or made up, paid for by someone with an agenda to promote and you wouldn't know the difference.

Save your outrage for things you have first hand knowledge of or knowledge of through trusted contacts.

The world did ok before 24/7 news, so it's not like you, king of the world, need to be up to the minute informed on whatever thing you're supposed to take your outrage vengence upon today.

>God, give me grace to accept with serenity, the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

I think this is a case of these people realizing that they cannot change the world in such a way to solve each and every problem that is presented to them in the news. As such, they choose to focus on their own personal lives and they people they come across in their day to day lives.

I hope this helps. It's not that they just don't care, it's that caring is damaging their psyche and performance. They've learned it's healthier to tune most of that noise out.

>God, give me grace to accept with serenity, the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

I'm not sure what whimsical platitudes that essentially absolve you of your civic duty have to do with this conversation, or how it could possibly negate anything that was said.

>I hope this helps.

No it just solidifies what I think about the type of people that harbor such opinions.

I don't think that reading or not reading the news is engaging with the plight of "my fellow countrymen". We all ignore the plight of millions/billions of people every day. That is the way life has always been.

I remember someone coined a concept recently that when you read about a problem in the world that you can help alleviate then you become morally responsible. It’s liks quantum entanglement but with ethics. Found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949572

What about that? Coming upon news where you can make a difference right now, by sending money to NGOs with workers on the ground.

That is an impractical argument.

Say there is a situation that Alfred have the power to effect. To reliably cause change for the good Alfred must:

(1) Identify a problem and its root cause

(2) Change the root cause

(3) Confirm that the problem is solved.

There are people who claim you can leap straight to (2) and skip (3). These are people who (if they ever honestly checked) would discover that they are not responsible for very much positive, meaningful change. They are flailing, looking busy and have the best of intentions.

For anything reported in the news step (1) represents a huge investment of time because the news has probably got the situation at least somewhat wrong. To say Alfred has a moral responsibility to do something is equivalent to saying Alfred has a moral responsibility not to read the news; because Alfred doesn't have enough time or resources to confirm what the problem is for all the sad stories he can read about.

In your specific example - 'sending money to NGOs with workers on the ground' - Alfred would probably divert a lot of money to organisations who are good at emotive advertising campaigns with administrative costs verging on embezzlement. We have good historical evidence that Alfred's best bet is to go all-in on capitalism, make a fortune, and then do some philanthropy to maximise his impact.

Giving to a worthy cause creates incentives that are terrible. I can't be convinced that it is a good idea. I have a lot more respect for people who volunteer time, but even then I'm suspect of their ability to correctly diagnose the problem they are trying to fix.

You can frequently skip (1) because the actionable options are clear, or you can trust the news/charities have identified the cause that requires the least resources to fix/mitigate the problem.

The term 'root cause' is problematic because it assumes a simplistic cause-effect model. However, a problem may be the consequence of a complex 'chain reaction' of events. Most charities identify a single event leading up to a problem and focus on eliminating/mitigating that.

E.g. a problem is: people in country X dying unnaturally every year. The immediate cause is starvation, which is indirectly caused by famine as a result of multiple factors like poor farming technology and government policy. There is no 'root cause', and attempting to solve the farming problem might be much less resource efficient harder than just providing emergency rations every year.

Another problem with your wording is 'change for the good'. If famine death is reduced by 100 deaths for each 1000USD donated, is this a 'change'? Or would Alfred only take action if it would possibly result in entirely stopping the deaths 100%?

Someone else may have already been working to help the people. You just need to provide the money. The question is -- will you? Like Doctors without Borders or whatever.

Or Alfred's best bet is to go all-in on politics, and affect positive change on a large scale via writing government policy. Capitalism and philanthropy are small potatoes compared to the sort of impact you can have by being a vocal positive force for change.

I agree with your point about incentives in philanthropy though, there are some organizations that do a better job than others about that.

Um, how does watching news help anyone’s plight, precisely?

You can't do anything if you're not even informed about it. There are numerous examples of the public giving enormous amounts of money and relief to victims of, for example, natural disasters.

Surely one can do much more good through their daily conduct, rather than only chipping in in exceptional circumstances?

And if a person is improving their community by their conduct, they recieve their information through direct interaction, rendering news irrelevant.

I think having empathy for those directly around you is a good start. The saying "all politics are local" goes the other way around as well, that most change is local change. It is unlikely that I can help people gain asylum from oppressive regimes, but it is very likely that my donations to local charities and volunteer work is directly helping those around me. In a categorical imperative sense, if more people acted this way fewer things would be so bad about the world.

Who said anything about ignoring the plight of others? The news does nothing at all to aid me in helping other people. Indeed, most of the time it distracts me and keeps me from being aware of all the myriad ways I can give back to the community.

I volunteer lots of my time with various organizations and I didn't need anyone in the news media to tell me that what I'ma doing is important and valuable.

I don't experience this kind of empathy very often.

For example, I don't get upset when a plane crashes or there's a mass shooting. I can imagine myself in the position of the victims. I can imagine if someone I loved died in a situation like that and I can simulate some of the grief and anger I think I'd feel. But that exercise seems sort of selfish to me. In general, these kind of tragic events don't affect my mood.

I do sometimes experience this kind of empathy when I'm reading history or a human-interest story about some tragic or unfair situation.

It seems to me that many people assume that all good behavior flows from empathy. I don't think this is true. I use various philosophical viewpoints to justify (or rationalize) my behavior: sometimes utilitarianism, sometimes the categorical imperative, and often a vague sort of humanism.

I wanted to start an honest discussion but my thread seems to have quickly devolved into the haves vs have nots of a capacity for empathy. Which is not my intention. This is probably my fault, for not considering enough viewpoints before writing my question.

Let’s consider starting from this standpoint instead: Everyone has differing levels of empathy and it’s not going to be the same for every person. Despite this, we all need to get along and work towards whatever our individual goals are peacefully.

Given this vast spectrum of empathy, advice from the extreme edges of that spectrum (“just tune out all news 100%” on one end, “cry for every single suffering being everywhere” on the other end) is particularly useless, because the only reason this situation even exists in the first place is because of extremism / polarization.

Where do we go from here?