I've become convinced that (most?) people only possess "visual empathy" - that is, they can only empathize with what they can see. I think it explains why arguments on the internet often seem to have manipulative strawmanning sociopaths on both sides.
I remember seeing somewhere that societal empathy didn't strongly exist as a cultural trait until people started reading stories where they put themselves in other people's shoes. I guess communal storytelling wasn't enough to change a persons mindset. It was in the context of historical greeks were all sociopaths and narcissists and quite different from the average person today.
It sounds stupid, but I believe it. The flow of a lot of arguments make sense if you assume neither side understands practical empathy (not a comment on objectives, just they can't hold 2x perspectives in mind at once so a lot of the conversation is invisible to them).