I think empathy has its place.

I think empathy is a great source of pleasure, but I think empathy is a poor moral guide.

Hey there, podcast listeners. It's Ann here. And today we've got a special treat. Steve is joining us. And Steve, what are we doing?

Well, you may remember a few weeks ago we aired an interview with a psychologist Paul Bloom, who wrote a book called Against Empathy.

Turns out that that interview generated a lot of response from our listeners.

Paul, this is a really counterintuitive argument you are making.

It's hard to believe that anyone other than a psychopath would consider empathy to be a bad thing.

Are you really advising people not to feel empathy?

Empathy suffers from various design flaws.

So for one thing, it's very biased.

We naturally feel empathy for people who are from our group, people who look like us, people

who are cute.

And it's very hard to feel empathy for people who are from another group, who are our enemies,

who are strangers.

And because of that, decisions guided by empathy tend to be highly biased, often racist.

A second problem is empathy is like a spotlight.

It zooms you in on one person.

It often leads to just the wrong moral choices.

One way I put it is, it's because of empathy.

We often care more about a little girl stuck in a well than we do about crises that could affect thousands or millions of

people.

So that was part of a full hour.

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