
Autism and the Two Kinds of Empathy (Robert Wright & Simon Baron-Cohen)
Robert Wright's Nonzero
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The Importance of Rational Compassion
I'm sure you're familiar with Paul Bloom's book, Against Empathy. The subtitle is the case for rational compassion to Paul's not against feeling bad about people feeling bad. He does think that the way affective empathy is deployed, it can have downsides. I would argue that what was going on in the Holocaust, when the Nazis were building these incredible machines for killing people, was the consequence of using pure rationality without any compassion.
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