In this episode we start with a dive into evolutionary psychology and how biases have been programmed into you by millions of years of evolution, look at why our guest condemns the concept of Empathy, how the science demonstrates that empathy has no correlation with doing good in the world, how empathy creates disastrous outcomes, and more with our guest Dr. Paul Bloom

 

 Dr. Paul Bloom is a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University and received his PhD from MIT. Paul is the coeditor of the journal Behavior and Brain Sciences and author of several books including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, and most recently Against Empathy: The Case For Rational Compassion.We dig into Paul’s research on babies and their innate sense of right and wrongA surprising and extremely powerful source of bias that babies innately haveThe in-group vs out-group and how babies slice up and divide the worldHow dividing a group by coin flips can create serious behavioral biases towards your own groupEvolutionary psychology and how biases have been programmed into you by millions of years of evolutionThe morality of evolution and how kindness evolved How people, from an evolutionary point of view, think about strangersThe definition of empathy and how Paul defines itWhy Paul criticizes the concept of empathyWhy feeling the feelings of others is a really lousy moral guideWhy the science shows that empathy has no correlation with how much good people do in the worldWhat happens when soccer fans see someone shocked and how they're brains respond completely differently if its a fan of their team vs their opponents teamHow our natural empathy response is riddled with extreme biasHow empathy creates disastrous political outcomesThe "Willy Horton incident" and how the empathic response resulted in more rapes and murdersWhy Paul says controversially that mass shootings are objectively less than a rounding errorWhy being against empathy doesn't mean we should turn into cold blooded monstersThe distinction between empathy and compassion and why its so criticalHow Buddhist philosophy lead Paul to move away from empathy and towards compassionWhy its so critical to be aware of your biases before you can shift them and overcome themWhy we are more than just our biases and limitations

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