How empathy gets in the way of a better world with Paul Bloom

The TED Interview

TED

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It may feel like the world is running low on a seemingly crucial human trait: empathy. But Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, thinks that empathy is not the best measure of goodness. Paul’s work focuses on exploring some of the most puzzling aspects of human nature, including pleasure, religion and morality. He argues that empathy can actually lead to inequality because it muddles our judgment and narrows our prejudices. Chris and Paul talk about the biological evolution that led to our modern human psyche, discuss the perils of acting emotionally and break down the relationship between empathy, generosity and what Paul calls "rational compassion." go.ted.com/TTIscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	Hello,
0:09.0	Hello everyone.
0:10.0	This is Chris Anderson. So in this season of the 10 interview as I think
0:18.9	you know we're focusing on generosity and especially the many wild and wonderful ways of making it
0:26.1	infectious. To make sense of any of this, ultimately it has to start with human psychology. Human minds are so weird. I mean they really are with these
0:37.2	weird evolved apes that have strange feelings inside us that allow us to do so many things including it turns out being
0:46.4	kind to other people. But how did that get there and how does it connect to everything else
0:51.6	that's in our minds and what gets in the way of it?
0:56.6	How do we do it better?
1:00.0	There's no one better to answer these questions than our guest today who is psychologist Paul Bloom.
1:07.0	He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.
1:11.0	He's written seven powerful books, including most recently, Psych, the story of the human mind.
1:18.0	But I think the book that probably applies most to what we'll be talking with him about today is the provocatively titled
1:24.6	against empathy. Is Paul Bloom really against empathy? Well I think we should find out. Here I am with Paul Bloom and what's striking about Paul, as you will know if you've listened to any of his TED Talks is that he's an amazing
1:54.4	storyteller so I feel very honored to have you here on this part.
1:58.0	Thanks Chris I'm delighted to get a chance to talk with you.
2:01.0	What you said about me as a storyteller puts a tremendous amount of pressure on me and I feel like I'm going to disappoint everybody.
2:07.3	Your latest book is incredibly ambitious. I mean psych, the story of the human mind. I mean, I'm interested in generosity obviously but it all
2:14.4	starts with understanding the human mind more broadly so I I wonder whether you could
2:20.0	Describe the story of the human mind.
	...

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