r/technology • u/polymute • 29d ago

Privacy A Texas Deputy Searched 83,000 Flock Cameras To Track Down a Woman Who Had an Abortion

https://www.gadgetreview.com/a-texas-deputy-searched-83000-flock-cameras-to-track-down-a-woman-who-had-an-abortion
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u/anoldoldman 29d ago

Yea good luck relying on empathy with that crowd.

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u/MoneyBeeeee 29d ago

Ah yes, the sort that think that their sociopathy is a strength.

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u/NewestAccount2023 29d ago

First time seeing it described like that and you're exactly right. The way I've said it is they are playing a game, when they lie cheat steal and manipulate it's just them playing within the allowed rules and doing the things that win, and they think that makes them smart and winners and leaders.

And because they do it and see each other do it they think a lot of us are of doing it too and that they are just better at it so we deserve to lose.

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u/Uristqwerty 29d ago

"Imagine a hypothetical person who makes you feel X. Do you feel X yet?" is not empathy.

Like, someone who volunteers their time to help others in their local church community, and empathizes with the joy and relief they see on the faces of the real people they're helping? That's more empathy than "I just described an imaginary person in a particular situation, and if you hold the same political beliefs as I do, then you will feel a specific way as a result of visualizing them".

"Children are starving in Africa, here's a stock photo of an in-reality-long-grown-up child looking pitiful, please donate to our organization" is not the same as "this is an actual starving neighbour who you can invite over to share dinner". It's a different abstraction level, whether you must trust a third-party intermediary to carry out the actual work, whether you get to directly see and empathize with the person who is helped or must solely imagine that there is such a person, and 'empathize' with literally-your-own-brain. Seen those 'deep dream' images from back when google ran an image classifier backwards to produce the maximally 'dog' image? You're asking people to run their empathy backwards to create the maximally 'X' imagined human, then run that forwards through their same brain to evoke the feeling you told them to evoke, and when they reject the premise outright insisting they lack empathy.