[anm89]

Imagine just blasting out at a person that you've never met and know essentially nothing about, based on a few sentences they wrote regarding startup valuations that "they lack empathy". As in you are willing to assess this other person as being completely devoid of empathy.

That seems fairly insane.

[IAmGraydon]

His reply is a textbook example of psychological projection. He clearly lacks empathy and is attempting to attribute it to someone else as a defense mechanism.

[staticassertion]

Is this intended to be ironic? You're doing the exact same thing.

[sicromoft]

That's because he lacks empathy. (Only someone lacking empathy would accuse someone who accused someone else of lacking empathy of doing so due to lack of empathy.)

[narrator]

The word "empathy" has an enormous amount of baggage attached to it unfortunately and triggers a whole library of insinuations and assumptions. Admittedly, it was the wrong word to use. I should have said "Consumer empathy" which would have been appropriately in context. Also there are varying degrees of consumer empathy. I know some people who are absolute naturals at understanding people and it's amazing to see how vivid their intuitive understanding of people is. It's like watching people do sketch art who can draw beautiful things like it's nothing.

[staticassertion]

Honestly it was really obvious from context that you were referring to consumer empathy and not that you were implying that they were a psychopath.

[Permagate]

It could be phrased better, but I think they got the point across. The message is something that most people (not just programmers) could relate on various levels and learn to get better.