Reddit mentions of Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

"Empathy" and "caring" are not exactly the same thing. It's possible to care tremendously about people or other animals without empathy. Some even go so far as to argue for rational compassion rather than empathy.

Yeah, exactly! I'm a big supporter of neurodiversity and valuing the way atypical brains work. Most of the people who have changed history for the better have, IMO, not been neurotypical.

>What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.

• Temple Grandin, autistic animal science/welfare worker and public speaker
  
  Although that's a little exaggerated - some of us autistic people like to talk a lot! - I think that autism and other neurodivergent traits do tend to let people to think outside the box more. A lot of us feel like aliens in our own culture, and this feeling can suck, but when you're looking at an alien culture it's easier to see its shortcomings and what could be changed.
  
  I agree that psychological "disorders" shouldn't automatically disqualify someone from being president. I don't believe in diagnosing Trump with NPD anyway. Being narcissistic and having narcissistic personality disorder are different things. The doctor who wrote the criteria for NPD says that Trump doesn't have it. He says that having NPD means that it causes you distress and impairment (like you don't want to act like that but you do anyway), which isn't the case for Trump.
  
  >Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy. It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).
  
  As for empathy, there's an argument that not having empathy (or being able to shut it off) might be able to help people make better decisions. I've actually seen a book about it, although not read it yet: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.
  
  A lot of people use "empathy" to mean "sympathy" or "compassion", but it's different from those things. Empathy is "I feel your pain.". So it can be limited if you run into situations where you can't relate to what someone is feeling. I think that a lot of Republicans have empathy, but they only have it for people like them who they are able to relate to. (Would McCain be against torture if he hadn't been tortured himself? Somehow I doubt it.)
  
  "Sympathy" is "I care about your pain, and I'm sorry." "Compassion" is "I want to help relieve you of your pain." Compassion is arguably the most important "caring"-related trait for a leader to have, not empathy.
  
  In fact, I'm an autistic person who tends to feel too much empathy, and it can be very exhausting to be pulled into what other people are feeling like that. I think as a leader it might cloud my judgement and drain my energy. Someone with less natural empathy, but with a cultivated sense of sympathy and compassion, would probably be able to do a better job.
  
  We have had neurodivergent leaders before, and some of them have gone down in history as our best presidents. Lincoln was depressed. I count depression as neurodivergent, because it is still not the "typical" brain. Jefferson had some autistic traits. He had difficulty with eye contact and social situations, was sensitive to loud noises, meticulously recorded the temperature every morning, and wore slippers even to important meetings. Hamilton may not have been president, but obviously he had a lot of influence on our nation, and he doesn't strike me as neurotypical at all (maybe he had ADHD or was mildly bipolar).

Defining? LOL. You can try to define that that's what makes a human, but then when the universe decides creativity and empathy isn't so unique and let's us create AIs that do it better, then what? I mean, creativity is actually really easy. And empathy appears to not be such a win.