Re:Your Most Important Skill: Empathy
by seanmcdirmid on Thursday March 12, 2015 @10:47PM
(#9195447)
> I think empathy needs several things. But above all, it needs one's brain power, or smartness.
I thought empathy had more to do with the part of your brain that is able to pick up on facial expressions, body language, and spoken tone ("social queues") to make inferences that are not otherwise explicit. Mild autism suppresses this part of the brain, meaning you could have someone who is very "smart" but lacks empathy and social skills.
And of course it can be learned, which is part of the treatment for mild autism, but many (most?) normal people are able to tap into something much more instinctive.
Empathy as a virtual machine, that's interesting.
Re:Your Most Important Skill: Empathy
by marcosdumay on Thursday March 12, 2015 @10:34PM
(#9195411)
And data.
You must talk to people before you can understand them.
In my understanding, empathy is pretty much a skill to emulate the other person's thinking. There's a discussion about Kolmogorov Complexity, which says to emulate an already complex system you need an even more complex system, which means a bigger brain. Of course human minds are not that simple, but I think this is onto something.
In addition to smartness, you'd probably need a patience and some serenity to react (or not react) to the situation accordingly.