Against Empathy – The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

April 6, 2022 – Thornbury

I'm a typical leftie nerd so I listen to Sam Harris and Very Bad Wizards and have always found Bloom quite engaging. This is my first of his books and it's close to my heart as a designer in tech.

Let's clear up the obvious spiciness: Bloom is talking about the difference between "I feel things that I think other people feel" and proper cognitive empathy. As in the former bad, the latter ok. But more than this, he argues that empathy, as heartwarming as it is, is shipped with some serious bugs: it's biased, with much more if it given to those similar to us, and it's irrational, and in particular, innumerate, tricking us into privileging the plight of one over the more utilitarian many.

Design is always a mix of empathy and pragmatism, with a healthy serve of fuck around and find out. But there's a kind of toxic strain in at least my community of this kind of empathy above all else approach, which kind of paints designers as bleeding hearts, if not hostile adversaries to the reality of getting shit done. It's not healthy.

I get it. Capitalism sucks. But this baby with the bathwater all or nothing approach only leads us to dogmatic zealotry. Sometimes you gotta trolley problem that shit. That's reality. And that's essentially Bloom's argument.

This is a series of essays and my criticism of it is that it's a bit repetitive, with not much revealed as it goes along. Bloom explores the psychology, the politics, the devil's advocate, etc and I like the premise, but I think a tighter edit could have cut this book in half.

Lastly, it's interesting that Bloom doesn't identify as an effective altruist, which as it turns out is an adjacent line of reasoning. He accepts his flaws and weaknesses and in the end, argues for us all to do the same.

You don't have superpowers. You're not an "empath". You're a biased and easily misled squishy human. Take a breath, put your thinking cap on and then decide.