[skim_milk]

>Surely you realize some people are better in social situations than others

Absolutely, and the cause of poor social function is almost only childhood trauma.

Being sensitive to others emotions (pop-culture empathy) is not equal to actually knowing another person's emotions. There are many many such studies that prove this, here is a random one I found on page 1 of Google: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6c5968c1 Many more actually negatively correlate being sensitive to others emotions with accurately gauging others' emotions. I also mentioned there's a study that correlates age (accumulated social experience?) with the knowledge of how little they themselves can infer from other people (can't remember the exact topic, but it goes something like that). Side note, emotional sensitivity is linked with childhood trauma.

Therefore we can say being sensitive to, or thinking we know, other people's emotions has nothing to do with being good at social situations (at worst it actually impairs social function). At best being sensitive to others' perceived (not real: projected) emotions is poor boundaries.

This counter-intuitive reality needs to be clear when the topic of emotional intelligence is brought up. Emotional Intelligence is not a virtue, but yes, we can agree it exists and people that are healed (unfortunately, not all) can posses it. To tie it all in, would a truly emotionally intelligent person (in the academic and psychotherapeutic sense) know how Kim would respond, or would the emotionally intelligent Kim respond negatively or positively? It is not clear, and thinking one knows the objective answer to this scenario is suspect. We can obviously say "if I was Kim, I would feel..." but I argue nothing more can be said.

[tux3]

I think you have interesting points to make, but the conclusion is a cop-out. There's various useful ways you can answer beyond "if I were Kim".

In faithful observance of commenting praxis, I have not read TFA. But it seems TFA expects an answer instead of taking the opportunity to dig into the way different groups answer and their reasonning for doing so.

If the finding were that .75 of trauma-free people agree it's reasonable for Kim to feel like she wasn't included in the decision (the perception that the choice was made by her friends), would that change your mind?

I know I'd be interested to know why, if data showed the opposite interpretation is popular :)

[skim_milk]

I've plagarized Alice Miller here before, here are her thoughts on the subject of psychological surveys on the subject of childhood trauma in the book For Your Own Good:

Those who swear by statistical studies and gain their psychological knowledge from those sources will see my efforts to understand the children Christiane and Adolf [Hitler] as unnecessary and irrelevant. They would have to be given statistical proof that a given number of cases of child abuse later produced almost the same number of murderers. This proof cannot be provided, however, for the following reasons. Alice Miller lists off 1) child abuse takes place in secret 2) testimony of victims on their own suffered child abuse is often very flawed to protect their parents 3) experts in criminology have already noted this trend in their scientific research

Even if statistical data confirm my own conclusions, I do not consider them a reliable source because they are often based on uncritical assumptions and ideas that are either meaningless (such as "a sheltered childhood"), vague, ambiguous ("received a lot of love"), or deceptive ("the father was strict but fair"), or that even contain obvious contradictions ("he was loved and spoiled"). This is why I do not care to rely on conceptual systems whose gaps are so large that the truth escapes through them, but rather prefer to make the attempt ... to take a different route. I am not searching for statistical objectivity but for the subjectivity of the victim in question, to the degree that my empathy permits.

[tux3]

That's an interesting perspective, thank you.

Though even as someone acutely atuned to the various forms trauma can take, wouldn't you agree there's such a thing as a reasonably trauma-free population? Or at least trauma-free to a degree that it makes sense to consider the bias induced by traumatic experiences minor for that population?

I think you get the perspective you have, that there's no ovjectivity, by focusing solely on the victims.

I agree with your point on subjectivity when it comes to abuse victims. Statistics want to average out individual differences, the exactly wrong thing if you're interested in understanding the specifics of individual cases. I'm with you on that.

But I think you have to go back up at some point, if you ever want to help more people than have the privilege of seeing you at a time.

Statistics as a discipline is aware of biases. It is not always applied with the appropriate carefulness, but there is tremendous, systemic good to be had as a reward for success.

I'm not convinced your criticism of current ideas in your field is something objective science cannot learn to address.

The problem I'm faced with is that empathy wants me to care, also, for people that can't directly see or reach me. They're out of sight, but not out of mind.

[skim_milk]

Empathic emotional responses are absolutely required for society to function healthily, just look at our species' dark past! Living in a not-empathic, insensitive society would absolutely suck. But the pendulum has swung past healthy empathy to being overly sensitive - there's a happy empathy middle lost to some academic cultures. Both over and underreaction to empathic emotional responses are destructive and unhealthy. Here's a good lecture on the extremes of empathic responses: including insensitive and overly sensitive empathic responses, and what healthy empathy might look like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMw8Ua1953w

Being overstimulated by empathic responses renders one emotionally unavailable and unable to help just like the emotionally insensitive person. That's why people draw a line with some academic cultures: it resembles/promotes unhealthy relationship patterns.

Having empathy isn't a problem, it's just about getting the balance right. Too much or too little of a good thing is a bad thing

[tux3]

I think my point is only about whether any empathy you have should apply preferentially to people close to you, or whether you should endeavor to have it for everyone equally, all else equal.

I wouldn't agree there's anything particularly extreme about that. It's not a degree of empathy that I'm trying to make a point about, but how it's distributed.

If you're able to generalize things you learn with rigorous statistics, it starts to apply more broadly, and so you can help more people who don't necessarily have to see you personally to benefit.

The extra cost to you is small, and if providing help is your goal, making a rigorous science out of it will, in the happy case, increase efficiency tremendously.