>> The second problem is the innumeracy. Empathy zooms me in on one but it doesn’t attend to the difference between one and 100 or one and 1,000. It’s because of empathy we often care more about a single person than 100 people or 1,000 people, or we care more about an attractive white girl who went missing than we do a 1,000 starving children who don’t look we do or live where we don’t live.
Having read the article and briefly interacted with Paul Bloom, I can't say that I share your perspective as to his political agenda.
It is not the main point here, but psychopats are sociable and can have a very high form of cognitive empathy. They can also be very charizmatic.
Also, I dont think the parent was saying Paul Bloom himself is psychopath. It was saying that he is pushing others to think that way, because that is congruent with his political ideology. That is different claim.
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As for the article, Empathy is what separates us from psychopaths, so it's not surprising that a Yale Psychologist would want to damage it to help his political slant. That said, I would say it's unfortunate that people can be fooled and conned easily due to their empathy, but I'm not sure there's fix besides destroying high-trust society altogether. The professor is not concerned with this downside of empathy, I don't think.