Showing posts with label Intellectuals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intellectuals. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Intellectuals At Work

Blatant racial hatred is a hoax - and proven such over and over again.   The latest hoax is the claim that the US is among the ten worst nations for women, even though it is the US that fights hardest for actual rights for women. And Intellectual bigotry - the heart of Intellectualism is bigotry because Intellectuals are personal and social failures who lash out in denial - shows again in yet another NY Times piece, this one attacking admissions standards at specialized high schools in the city - all because Asians outperform others in such schools.

Monday, March 20, 2017

Empathy's Failure As Policy

Empathy's Unintended Consequences



When you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, then-senator Barack Obama told a standing-room-only crowd in 2006 at Xavier University's commencement, whether they are close friends or distant strangers—it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help. Empathy has become, in many precincts of 21st-century America, both the preferred tool for moral reasoning and a paramount value in its own right. But in this well-reasoned tract, Paul Bloom punctures empathy's seeming invulnerability by outlining its serious flaws, arguing instead for the use of compassionate but rational judgment in reaching ethical decisions.


Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, begins by defining empathy, with most contemporary psychologists and philosophers, as the act of feeling what you believe other people feel—experiencing what they experience. He also explores the nature of empathy, including its roots in the human brain—specifically, the cingulate cortex and anterior insula. Because empathic reactions to the experiences of others trigger the same gray matter as if you yourself underwent that experience, claiming  'I feel your pain' isn't just a gooey metaphor: it can be made neurologically literal.