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After observing all of the animals I’ve ever lived with, I’ve come to the opinion (unsupported, I suppose, by any real evidence) that empathy is an important part of being alive. I think every living being has empathy, and humans just got quite good at beating it out of other humans to the point where displaying psychopathic traits became something culturally celebrated.
We’ve been trained to be this way, and we need to reverse that trend.
But don’t you see all the wealth we are creating by doing things this way?!
Altrusim is a good trait to ensure the survival of a species, while being a selfish bastard is a good trait to ensure the survival of the individual. It all depends on the situation.
I’d say this is the case for mammals and birds, but I think other branches of the tree of life are more hit or miss since they’re less social animals.
I’d be curious to see a study of empathy on octopi, the smartest non-social animal.
… which isn’t news to me.
For a time it seemed that everybody wanted to shit on animals as being way inferior to humans in every way, including lacking empathy emotion feelings and stuff.
But that was always wrong. Who has ever worked with animals be it horses dogs or farm animals knows they have a soul. Well, but also a lot of them are just evil bastards.
I think we shouldn’t underestimate human empathy. The problem is just that we build structures to avoid it. Rich people choose to not see poor people too much or they would feel empathy and be inclined to help them. If the poor are far away, merely an abstraction that is said to exist, then their existence is not felt strongly enough to trigger an empathy response. Surely there are exceptions to some degree, but I think humans are very empathetic and that’s one of our great powers.
We have places like San Fransisco and New York, with some of the richest people in the whole world regularly walking past homeless encampments. I don’t think the structure is the problem. I think it has much more to do with the culture and family they are raised in.
We live in a society that rewards narcissism. Our society tells these rich people that homeless people are only homeless because of bad personal choices.
There is no reward for empathy, besides the positive feeling a healthy person would get from being kind. In fact, being empathetic can be a detriment to being successful, so many upper class families skip that lesson plan on purpose.
Yes I think you’re right. Culture and upbringing are very important factors. What remains is that the potential of human empathy is incredible. I don’t think empathy needs a reward per se, I think the positive feeling you describe is enough reward, again it’s not to be underestimated. I am personally volunteering one day per week at my local homeless shelter, while I work a paid job 4 days per week at a mental hospital as a nurse. I don’t want to be paid for the homeless shelter, I am fine with doing it voluntarily, I specifically wanted to do something voluntarily just to proof to myself that I don’t maximize my income, to be sure I don’t play the money game. But your point about how it is not only unrewarding financially but the reverse: it can even be a detriment to success, that’s very true. Before my nursing school I got a degree in marketing & management (which made me incredibly unhappy). I’m very glad I chose to go do something else, because I feel like my contribution to society is far bigger now than it ever could have been as a marketeer. Despite that I would’ve made a lot more money as a marketeer. Free market capitalism is amoral when it comes what to contributing to
societythe market, if your job is to sell addicting products to people, that destroy their lives, but it makes you a decent profit, then you’ll be rewarded for it. Far more so than most essential workers would ever earn. That combined with money not being just money (power), but also status: we celebrate wealth. Wealthy equals good. We don’t look at how one earned his wealth, we just look at the wealth and are in awe. Obviously we are giving people the wrong incentives.
That sounds eerily similar to a situation in Secret of NIMH (the book, not the movie), when the rats
Tap for spoiler
being taught how to read discover how to open their cages at night and decide to free the caged mice next to them out of empathy, who then aid in their escape.
You don’t see them fuckng each other over for a goddamn percentage!
I’m curious if the rat would bother to let the other rat out if it’s not confined to an enclosure with the caged rat. If the rat can just run off and ignore the cries for help, will it still help? That would be much more impressive.
the phrase “the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive - which is alot to expect of a rat”…
it clearly isn’t “alot to expect” if it’s automatic normal behavior for their species. It actually implies it’s the normal for a rat. It just isn’t normal for those humans.
I think it means “chocolate chips are precious to rats” by that - ie that it is a big sacrifice.
Meanwhile humans, when put thru the same experiment, realize they can make the human in the unpleasant box pay $ if it wants out. They then learn to create more boxes for more profit.
Meanwhile, humans are stuffing other animals into cages to see what happens.
and then murdering them. good point.
ironic that experiment on empathy done by scientists doing mouse experiments.
This comes to my mind:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFCgz959ARYI dont believe this is inherent. It’s not human nature. Its social conditioning as a result of living in a capitalist society.
In a capitalist society, yes. Absolutely a lot of people would do this. But even then, its not everyone.
I live in capitalism but i would certainly not force someone to pay me to let them out of a trap. Especially if they were suffering. And i would never befriend someone that would.
I would think they were a cunt.
And i would never befriend someone that would.
My problem here: many of us are friends with one of the other person that thinks investing money in the stock market is a good idea and taxes for the rich is bad. Those people are already forcing others to pay to get out of a trap, they just have a few middle men.
I mean, we still live in this mess, so investing your money in the stock market is in fact a good idea. We should obviously tax the rich.
No, investing in stocks is a mix of lottery (fair but zero sum) and theft by exploitation of workers, resources & environment.
No, the entire system is built on exploitation of workers. As a worker in the system, I’m talking about how to scrape a life out the best you can.
It’s objectively better to put your money that you want you save and possibly grow in an index fund, if you live in the us.
It is impossible for money to create added value. Inflation adjusted gains in investments are entirely made up by losses of other people and/or wage theft. The oligarchies around the world have lobbied their way into politically mandated investment funds for private pension insurance, thereby ensuring us workers as accomplices in this scam, while they hope we don’t notice that for the breadcrumbs we may earn, we protect their interests - e.g. opposing capital gains taxes.
Investments are theft. And stock traders / investment bankers are thieves who steal from the poor and give to the rich, taking a good margin for themselves. Parasites to mankind.
That’s just not logical man, because first of all it’s the entire basis of the banking system. Money creates money, and your investment in the stock market is essentially similar to a loan offered by a bank. The money you spent buying the stock allows the company to invest more in the business, and you get increased stock value for your trouble.
Maybe you want to be more specific about what you mean by “value”, but it was valuable for me to be able to buy a house without having to pay for it all up front, for example.
You even acknowledge that we workers are forced to be accomplices in this scam, chasing our breadcrumbs. Why would you denigrate those who participate in the system because we have literally no other choice? What is your point? Should I boycott the stock market in the hopes that some oligarch notices?
you must suck at capitalism then and would literally never be able to chair a publicly traded company maximizing profits, no matter the cost, for shareholders then. (i say lovingly)
I really dont mind sucking at capitalism.
That’s like saying “you suck at giving people cancer” or saying “you are terrible at being a complete dildo”
Yeah. I am fine with that.
If I’m ever told that I belong on a board of directors at a company, I’m going to Luigi myself. I would have deserved it
The rats don’t live in a system that exacerbates and encourages the worst excesses of the worst people. The rats that don’t help are our billionaires.
You might be curious to find that in many animal species studied, from pack animals down to ants, there is always a large percentage that contribute nothing and are a net-drain on the larger life-structure or colony. Humans and all other forms of life seem to share this commonality.
And yet the groups survive anyway. So does it really matter?
You don’t gotta out yourself like that bud
Yeah, pick any two humans and put them in a similar situation, and I truly believe that you’ll see similar empathy 99.9% of time time. But that fucking 0.1%, they’re ruthless and they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior.
they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior
It’s more just that they aren’t punished for it. They don’t have the empathy to give a shit, and thus will do things regular people won’t. If society doesn’t punish them for being a piece of shit, then there’s no downside to being a piece of shit for them, only upsides from taking advantage of situations others won’t.
A lot harder to punish when you can start making the laws as well. Society won’t just reward them sometimes they will let them write what everyone else should do as well.
This is why you have to introduce the concepts of mimics or demons that have access to change shape. Otherwise the party always frees the chained up maiden in the dungeon without asking any questions. Alternatively, if there is a rogue, you don’t have to worry. They’ll try their best to convince the others that they’ll get xp for stabbing the prisoner.
If a rat has a better developed sense of empathy than you do, then you’ve probably made some seriously awful life choices somewhere along the line.
Why do you say the rats are better than us? Humans can be observed doing the same in similar circumstances.
That’s clearly not the point of the post.
The post title says exactly:
The rat bastards are better than us
It’s a sarcastic humor that even a rat is compassionate about others. We all know that humans do it too ( some people, at least ).
SomeMost humans. The notable (but not exclusive) exceptions being people who manage to become ultra-wealthy.Some
I disagree, from what I have seen, the vast majority of people are empathic, we just focus on those who are not
I agree. That should have said most, though some is still accurate but it sounds smaller.
I’m sure if you lock somebody in what used to be a filing cabinet or toolbox in a rich man’s office and they start wimpering for help then the rich guy will get up and go let them out (unless he put them there).
Might even share his chocolate chips with them.
I do agree, but the thing that really defines your worldview is what you think the ratio of “good” to “bad” people are, along with how much you think people can change.
Personally, I think a lot of humans are largely interested in maintaining the status quo and avoiding large amounts of change. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad or evil or unredeemable, it just means that they’re influenced by the systems that we’ve built and take comfort in what is known.
Be careful of diving too far into cynicism. Why would you try to change anything if you think it’s impossible? Understand that the world is frustrating sometimes and give grace whenever you can when people make mistakes (as long as you make it clear when boundaries are crossed).
I think is also shows the potential that empathy can be instinctual aswell as trained and reenforced
A rat may save another rat purely on instinct. Aswell as being able to be rewarded for either action and be influenced in the future to embrace a particular ethos
Empathy is the new intelligence.
What does this mean
Rats live like 2 years.
In two years, they learn how to be better to each other than a large part of the human race.
I think of it in another way: What these rats display is the natural behavior.
These rats live two years, so they don’t have time to learn otherwise. Human greed is a learned behavior, and it takes a lot of time to learn that.
Sounds like greed needs to have some cognitive feedback.
Greed is a pattern which is adopted to our current competitive environment, where everything is directed at progress and hard work. Really, humans often work 40 hours a week or more, which is significantly more time than wild animals spend to gather food. (I don’t have a source for this unfortunately, but if i remember correctly it’s maybe 2-3 hours a day.)
now make the rats comprehend fascism.
Would be an interesting study if that was possible.
Another run of this experiment found rats free those with the same fur color faster or more readily
huh, that’s definitely an interesting paper to write.
Rats. Can’t use the term as an insult anymore considering they’re more human than we are.
Seems that’s an insult to the rat.
