andrewducker | Empathic Failure

One of the strange attitudes on the spoilers post is that of people who seem insistent on telling me how I should enjoy movies. That I pay too much attention to plot, or that I just shouldn't enjoy a movie less if I know how it's going to turn out.

This seems to be a common thread in discussion on the internet - one person says "I don't like X." and a bunch of people say that not enjoying X is immature, or that it's not that bad, or that they like X a lot, or that they can't see X at all.

And they don't seem to be providing this information for general cultural reasons, but in denial that the original person is "correct" to feel the way they do in the first place.

It's something I've seen repeatedly, that if unhappy people would just stop being unhappy then everything would be fine. That they shouldn't complain about people doing things they don't like - because if they'd just learn to like people doing things they didn't like then nothing would have to change, and everyone would be happy.

You don't have to agree with people who complain - if you feel differently then you feel differently. You don't have to stop doing the thing they feel unhappy about - that's your judgement to make. But to hear people expressing their feelings on something and then express anger, disbelief or scorn because they have those feelings strikes me as a basic lack of empathy.

It's an attitude that completely baffles me.

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I totally agree with this, (especially the challenging your self image part), but think that it does show a lack of empathy if the person is unwilling to see or acknowledge that they did cause harm to another, (albeit minor harm etc).

They have the choice of examining their self image or not... and choose to totally dismiss the feelings of the other person as stupid. They may be able to empathise, but they deliberately choose not to, showing at the very least a lack of empathy applied in this situation.

Well I would contend the situation only ever arises because the person can empathise. That's were the internal conflict, that is resolved by deciding the other persons feelings are trivial (in the case of spoilers I'll add that although it pisses me off when such things are revealed it is more then reasonable to assume such things to be trivial...).

The conflict of self image doesn't occur if there isn't any empathy. The event is just shrugged off and forgotten about by the transgressor.

As an example I suspect folks with Autism, lacking as they do a theory of mind - kinda essential for empathy, upon revealing a spoiler will either appear not to care when the spoilee complains or apologise in a rote fashion (IE. In a kind of learned response type way). I'd suspect they wouldn't feel the need to diminish the spoilees views precisely because they don't feel the empathy that causes the conflict... yadda yadda etc etc

Hmm, I can see what you mean definitely. I'm just arguing about trivialities really - it's just that the person doesn't apply their empathy to the situation you see, which to me is a lack. They do have it *somewhere* but they choose not to use it, and instead belittle the other person to avoid looking at their self image even slightly.

As an example I suspect folks with Autism, lacking as they do a theory of mind - kinda essential for empathy, upon revealing a spoiler will either appear not to care when the spoilee complains or apologise in a rote fashion (IE. In a kind of learned response type way). I'd suspect they wouldn't feel the need to diminish the spoilees views precisely because they don't feel the empathy that causes the conflict... yadda yadda etc etc

Except that the assumption that autistics lack theory of mind and thus empathy is really, really not true and is harmful to autistics. Most of us feel things more than might be considered normal, not less, but we don't show it in the expected ways and/or at the expected things, so we're assumed to lack empathy. In my experience and that of most of my autistic friends, it's neurotypicals who are more likely to lack empathy, they're just really good at saying/doing the stuff that makes it look like they care.

As far as I am aware the research supports my original statement. I'd be willing to be proved wrong however.

The research was done by neurotypicals who were arrogant enough not to think they needed to ask actual autistics,and as long as attitudes like "I'm not going to listen to what actual autistics say, the research supports it!" continue to inform people's decisions regarding how they think about and behave towards autistics, we're not going to get anywhere and more of us are going to be mistreated. You're unlikely to be proved wrong by anything official because oh look, the people who do the studies and write the official guides are NT and often just work from what other NTs have said in the past. Or they talk to NT parents of autistic kids. When autistics do try and speak up, we're silenced or ignored.

So is your position that the research is invalid because of the people who conducted it?

Is that not just an appeal to special authority?

It's a poor argument.

My position is that the research is invalid because autistics themselves, about whom it's all been written without their input, say it's not true. It's not an appeal to special authority, it's making the point that if you're going to write/read something about a group of people and then ignore them when they say what you've written/read is inaccurate, you're going to be getting a lot of stuff wrong.

if you're going to write/read something about a group of people and then ignore them when they say what you've written/read is inaccurate, you're going to be getting a lot of stuff wrong.

Which is not always true. I many cases I'd see it's probably rarely true.
It is also a special appeal to the authority of people on the ASD spectrum. As it claims that the research is invalid because the privilidged information that only one with Autism has is being ignored by "NT's".

Furthermore without alternative explanations for the results of "NT" research it's not a particularly satisfying line of argument - all it does is ask me to ignore the scientific consensus on the basis of a politically motivated position.

There are many ways this debate could continue in a fruitful and interesting fashion:-

There is a strong case to be made that the interpretation may be wrong, but to show that you'd have to reinterpret the research results and show why they were wrong.

(Just saying they are because someone or a group of people say it is doesn't make it so.)

Alternatively you could pick apart the operationalisation of terms or methods used. The operationalisation of terms would be particularly fertile ground I imagine because you could probably construct quite a convincing and intelligent argument against how "theory of mind" is defined. The construct likely has a fair few chinks in the armour that potentially could be exposed.

It is also a special appeal to the authority of people on the ASD spectrum.

Why on earth should we not be given authority when it comes to speaking about and describing how our own minds work?

all it does is ask me to ignore the scientific consensus on the basis of a politically motivated position.

Firstly, the scientific consensus is given a lot more credit than it deserves in many areas, and patients (not that I consider autism an illness, but I am for the moment not only talking about autism) of all types are suffering because they're not being listened to.

Secondly, I'm not asking you to ignore it; I'm asking you to accept that it is not necessarily true, and that a lot of autistics reject many of the medically-approved stereotypes which abound. Thirdly, I know the personal is political and all that, but saying that it's a politically-motivated position and seemingly dismissing it on those grounds is ignoring the fact that very real damage is being done to people's lives because those in authority won't listen to us about how things really are.

I'm not a scientist by any means, so reinterpreting the research results is beyond me, and in any case, that'd be a pretty major project; a lot of the time, that's part of what people do when minority groups speak up and say "the accepted wisdom about us is inaccurate" - the privileged groups say "well, do a shedload of work that you're not in any position to do, and prove it is" which they know is an unrealistic request, so they get to carry on ignoring the truth.

(Just saying they are because someone or a group of people say it is doesn't make it so.)

But it's not just any old random group of people. It's the people about whom the inaccurate stuff has been written. Our realities are being denied every day. And yet non-autistics get to say how things are all the time, and that seemingly makes it so, because they're the ones in the privileged majority.

Look, I have fibromyalgia, a hell of a long-term migraine and a really rubbish rural internet connection, but I'd be happy to try and find links to stuff that might better illustrate what I'm trying to say. It might take a week or so because of the previously-mentioned difficulties but I'm clearly not doing a very good job of making my point and I'd like to get it across more effectively.

I'd be happy to read them, but there's no rush I have comment notifications on and the like.

Empathic Failure

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