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envy4's review
5.0
Fascinating
I worried this book would be boring. I'm happy I was wrong. Bloom lays out his argument clearly and challenges you to think outside the box of empathy. I decided to read it because I am too empathetic and it's exhausting. Now I feel like I have the right tools to move on with a balance of empathy and reason. Oh and don't forget self control!
I worried this book would be boring. I'm happy I was wrong. Bloom lays out his argument clearly and challenges you to think outside the box of empathy. I decided to read it because I am too empathetic and it's exhausting. Now I feel like I have the right tools to move on with a balance of empathy and reason. Oh and don't forget self control!
gracetant's review against another edition
1.0
I really disliked this book, and I do not recommend it. I went into this with an open mind, because I'm a sucker for pop psych and have had discussions about the topic with people who have read this book. But I can't remember the last time I disliked a book this much, even though I agree with some of its points. Even the points I agree with (e.g. empathy is colored by our preexisting biases, and this can have a negative effect), I find to be very intuitive points that many if not most people are already aware of from their own experiences, so it was surprising when the author took a detour during a discussion of psychology research replication issues to note that "no one" publishes obvious, logical conclusions.
This book could have been argued just as effectively in a 20-page essay format. It seems like it more or less was originally, in the form of the author's articles. Though there's a lot of empirical evidence cited, most of it is repetitive or lacking in nuanced presentation, especially things like the discussion of Walter Mischel's delayed gratification experiments and the usefulness of IQ tests. Even though I think this perspective has a role in our cultural discussion of and reckoning with empathy (particularly as it could hypothetically benefit people who suffer from our unfair prioritization of empathy, including autistic people and people with cluster B disorders), I didn't find this book helpful or enjoyable.
This book could have been argued just as effectively in a 20-page essay format. It seems like it more or less was originally, in the form of the author's articles. Though there's a lot of empirical evidence cited, most of it is repetitive or lacking in nuanced presentation, especially things like the discussion of Walter Mischel's delayed gratification experiments and the usefulness of IQ tests. Even though I think this perspective has a role in our cultural discussion of and reckoning with empathy (particularly as it could hypothetically benefit people who suffer from our unfair prioritization of empathy, including autistic people and people with cluster B disorders), I didn't find this book helpful or enjoyable.
shirleytupperfreeman's review against another edition
While the title is provocative, I found most of the content to be perfectly reasonable. Paul Bloom is in favor of kindness and compassion but he argues passionately against empathy for most situations - particularly when making moral choices and public policy. His definition of empathy is when you feel what the other person feels. When someone's terrible distress causes us to feel terrible distress, we can easily make an immoral decision - i.e. if I have some control over who is next on the list to receive a new kidney and I react with empathy to someone I know, I may pull some strings to get a kidney to my friend causing someone higher on the list to die. That's an extreme example but still makes the point. Bloom argues that empathy is narrowly focused (spotlight effect) and favors the short-term solution. Rational compassion takes a broader view and favors the long-term solution. Bloom looks at empathy vs. compassion in areas as diverse as environmental decisions, war and violence, intimate relationships etc. I liked his 'equation' for thinking about everyday moral decisions: Self + Close People + Strangers = 100%. How do we decide how much to value each of those variables? Lots of interesting things to think about in this interesting book.
sara_shocks's review
3.0
3/5 stars
Boy, did that final/concluding chapter take a turn. Most of this book constructs a persuasive argument, that empathy, taking on the feelings of those around us, skews us to behave in irrational and harmful ways. We have biases around in-groups that make empathy a poor tool for maximizing the public good! I found some of his arguments to make some very subtle but key distinctions as he walks through various shortcomings of the idea we all need more empathy. I'd say the Prologue + Chapter One are worth reading, and he has structured this such that you can get the gist of the argument from there.
Where this went off the rails for me was the conclusion. Throughout the book, I felt that Thinking, Fast and Slow and the earlier work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky was underpinning the essential gist of the argument -- we are poor intuitive statisticians and are prone to following our gut feelings without assessing them more rationally, and this leads us to make poor judgments, which affect other people. He finally began to engage more directly with some of Kahneman + Tversky's work in the conclusion, and then manages to make a strange series of arguments. I was also under the impression, and it's possible that this has bubbled up since this book was published, that the "marshmallow test" results reflect socioeconomic status more than they reflect self-control, and his discussion of this self-control testing and IQ testing at the end was a bit troubling. Some of us are *not* particularly smart, nor do we all have self-control, and a moral philosophy should account for those folks too. There were a few other strange arguments in the ending chapter which soured me on the work as a whole. (Admittedly, this is a bias discussed in Thinking, Fast and Slow -- the final part of an experience skews our memory of the whole experience.)
If you have an interest in moral philosophy and how morality is underpinned by psychology and neuroscience, you may like this overall. It certainly introduced at least one idea to me that wasn't covered in The Good Place, or rather that challenges an idea I had about morality as discussed in The Good Place!
Boy, did that final/concluding chapter take a turn. Most of this book constructs a persuasive argument, that empathy, taking on the feelings of those around us, skews us to behave in irrational and harmful ways. We have biases around in-groups that make empathy a poor tool for maximizing the public good! I found some of his arguments to make some very subtle but key distinctions as he walks through various shortcomings of the idea we all need more empathy. I'd say the Prologue + Chapter One are worth reading, and he has structured this such that you can get the gist of the argument from there.
Where this went off the rails for me was the conclusion. Throughout the book, I felt that Thinking, Fast and Slow and the earlier work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky was underpinning the essential gist of the argument -- we are poor intuitive statisticians and are prone to following our gut feelings without assessing them more rationally, and this leads us to make poor judgments, which affect other people. He finally began to engage more directly with some of Kahneman + Tversky's work in the conclusion, and then manages to make a strange series of arguments. I was also under the impression, and it's possible that this has bubbled up since this book was published, that the "marshmallow test" results reflect socioeconomic status more than they reflect self-control, and his discussion of this self-control testing and IQ testing at the end was a bit troubling. Some of us are *not* particularly smart, nor do we all have self-control, and a moral philosophy should account for those folks too. There were a few other strange arguments in the ending chapter which soured me on the work as a whole. (Admittedly, this is a bias discussed in Thinking, Fast and Slow -- the final part of an experience skews our memory of the whole experience.)
If you have an interest in moral philosophy and how morality is underpinned by psychology and neuroscience, you may like this overall. It certainly introduced at least one idea to me that wasn't covered in The Good Place, or rather that challenges an idea I had about morality as discussed in The Good Place!
mahir007's review against another edition
5.0
في الوقت الحاضر ، لا ينظر الكثير من الناس بجدية إلا في الادعاءات المتعلقة بحياتنا العقلية إذا كان بإمكانك إظهار صور جميلة لهم من ماسح ضوئي للدماغ. حتى بين علماء النفس الذين يجب أن يعرفوا بشكل أفضل ، يُنظر إلى الصور المستمدة من فحوصات التصوير المقطعي أو التصوير بالرنين المغناطيسي الوظيفي على أنها تعكس شيئًا أكثر علمية - أكثر واقعية - من أي شيء آخر يمكن أن يكتشفه عالم نفس. هناك هوس خاص بتحديد المكان في الدماغ ، كما لو أن معرفة مكان وجود شيء ما في الدماغ هي مفتاح شرحه.
أرى هذا عندما ألقي محاضرات شعبية. أكثر سؤال أخافه هو "أين يحدث هذا في الدماغ؟" في كثير من الأحيان ، من يسأل هذا السؤال لا يعرف شيئًا عن علم الأعصاب. يمكنني تكوين جزء دماغي يبدو مضحكًا - "إنه في فلوربوس موربوس" - وسيكون السائل راضيًا. ما نريده حقًا هو بعض الطمأنينة بأن هناك علمًا حقيقيًا يحدث وأن الظاهرة التي أناقشها موجودة بالفعل. بالنسبة للبعض ، هذا يعني أنني يجب أن أقول شيئًا محددًا عن الدماغ.
.
Paul Bloom
Against Empathy
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
أرى هذا عندما ألقي محاضرات شعبية. أكثر سؤال أخافه هو "أين يحدث هذا في الدماغ؟" في كثير من الأحيان ، من يسأل هذا السؤال لا يعرف شيئًا عن علم الأعصاب. يمكنني تكوين جزء دماغي يبدو مضحكًا - "إنه في فلوربوس موربوس" - وسيكون السائل راضيًا. ما نريده حقًا هو بعض الطمأنينة بأن هناك علمًا حقيقيًا يحدث وأن الظاهرة التي أناقشها موجودة بالفعل. بالنسبة للبعض ، هذا يعني أنني يجب أن أقول شيئًا محددًا عن الدماغ.
.
Paul Bloom
Against Empathy
Translated By #Maher_Razouk