• lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 days ago

    Smart doesn’t mean logical/rational. Logic doesn’t require much intelligence.

    Empathy doesn’t reliably prevent people from doing wrong: injustices are often defended with irrational appeals to emotion, partiality, & selective reasoning.

    • tamman2000@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I don’t think you understand what empathy is. Why are you bringing up irrational appeals to emotion?

      • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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        5 days ago

        I don’t think you understand what empathy is.

        Maybe your empathy is failing.

        People can feel how others feel. That doesn’t mean they’ll morally reason well, have the integrity to defend it, or not use those feelings to justify irrational injustices even if they mean well. People are susceptible to biases that empathy alone won’t defend against.

        • tamman2000@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          The comment you link to does do a better job of explaining what you’re getting at, but I would still argue that those behaviors also require a partitioning of empathy, and that is a behavior most humans are susceptible to… Those who have empathy can often be made to shut it down or partition it so that it only applies to certain people.

          I stand by my original comment modulo the part that asserts that it is empathy. It is not a lack of intelligence being the point.