nopatternhere

> I think it is fair to say that the author's idea of what empathy feels like is completely different to what the rest of the world thinks

I think you misunderstand what he is getting at. Yale researcher Paul Bloom wrote a whole book about this concept of empathy as a bad thing, and I think that is what the manifesto is getting at (I'd almost argue quoting): https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass... TL;DR is this:

> We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it.

> Nothing could be further from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion.

This is how that manifesto is being so miscategorised. It says - DIRECT QUOTE - "relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases". Not empathy is not required. Not empathy is useless, but a specific, nuanced usage of empathy. It is understandable this miscategorisation given how most people see empathy, but it is still borderline strawmanning to impose a definition here that was not intended.

I hate the high end examples, because people want to argue them. The case is also true the other way - there are more men at the bottom of the IQ scale. Can someone come up with a reason why an IQ test would make men appear more often in the bottom of IQ distributions?

> The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is.

Can you help me understand how you reached that conclusion? Here is the relevant section of the original:

> De-emphasise empathy.

> I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

I am constantly amazed that "society" means America. Also, that all the examples are always how white majority countries have white majority X. What about China? What about Indonesia? What about Malaysia, where there is a lot of racial diversity?

Americans think their country is the world. Trust me, you are definitely less than 5% of the world population-wise, even if you are ~25% of nominal world GDP.

It is really sad how insular Western culture has become, and weird in an industry and era where the biggest tech IPO was Chinese.

You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad as everyone else seems, unpersuasive?

You seem to think there are two sides: for or against. I have the ability to be against EVERYONE, don't I? Neither side can be convincing, or one side can. As it stands, you are just as unconvincing as the other side, which is hardly a great position!

So, seeing as you have a strong opinion, as evidenced by about 400,000,000,000 posts in this thread, do you have any evidence to support your ideas and refute what you seem to think is a bad piece? Or should I continue to be unpersuaded by both sides?

What's great is the next sentence: "But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else." So, you know it is false, completely, and that we should ignore it because it is false, but you are unqualified to provide any examples? Sigh.

So you have a study which refutes this? He's made a claim, you are just making an appeal to emotion! Show that there are no differences between men and women on these scales, or that the whole science behind the idea is sketchy (which I've seen arguments of) but please, pretty please, some evidence.

> If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must

The two don't follow, at all. Lets replace this statement, and make it about the NBA.

"If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must see a game where black men hold the vast majority of positions as a failure of the game".

If the NBA example should be laughed at, why shouldn't the opposite? Neanderthals don't exist anymore, but homo sapiens do, despite very little relative advantage to us. Small differences in averages between groups will lead to dramatically different results. For the best example of all, see casinos (advantage: 2-4%) versus gamblers.

Is the current user-base an asset or a liability? I guess I am asking is it a kind of technical debt?

I'm not sure, and Digg is obviously the cautionary tail here on the "don't tick off the user-base" side, but I'd wager that to continue to grow, they need a little more mass appeal.

Reddit as an anonymous FaceBook Feed might have some real value, as both a value prop for people, and as retargeting for Marketers. Reddit knows that you browse, say, /r/atheism as a Mormon, or /r/gonewildasian as a single guy, and those are not things FaceBook may know. There is a lot of value in anonymous, on both sides.

> because they themselves are committing a wrong

I think you mean crime, not wrong.

> Occasionally a guilty person will be acquitted, and it would really be best not to also punish an innocent as a result of that.

That's not how it works, is it? it is not a battle where someone has to be guilty - either the accused or the accuser. Someone can be acquitted without anyone lying, or making false statements, or anything else. Just a few examples: insufficient evidence to prosecute, contradictory timelines.

It is bizarre that anyone thinks that this could be the system - get a conviction or suffer a conviction yourself.

There is a spectrum between provable accusations and demonstrably false claims that includes uncertainty, doubt and poor evidence. It isn't like going all-in in poker!