Trying to be Logically Hyper-Empathetic

Being logically hyper-empathetic (able to consider any point of view as a puzzle to how a reasonable person could hold that view) has ups and downs. 

Being able to imagine my hardest opponents as NOT Nazis, NOT Spoiled, NOT Privileged, NOT labels of the worst possible assumption, has helped me sharpen my own views. But surprisingly, it does not appear to make me more persuasive. 



Many people prefer automatic agreement, bias confirmation, dittos. So the next challenge is to hyper-empathize with these "hard right"/"hard left" meme-seekers and figure out why their negative reaction to disagreement might be, in fact, very reasonable. Most promising is the theory that they perceive greater proximate risk than I perceive. If you feel a strong threat from the adverse opinion, you likely sense greater discomfort or alarm around someone willing to logically consider it. 

I could go on about this, but it's the type of thing that belongs in my private journal, not on Facebook.

As for posting it on a blog, my theory is that the blog is meant to attract open thinkers, people of higher intelligence, people more likely to want a derivative multi-functional consideration rather than a "meme" with a "photo" and a over-simplified statement to "like".

My guess is that I got this way by having to go back and forth between an ultra-educated professor's home and workplaces and school environments and family gatherings. I was a janitor, and one of the only white employees, in Arkansas ... while on the high school debate team. I applaud and see the best in Africans, while at the same time I'm exposed to absolutely cringe-worthy views on women and LGBQ rights on their continent. Maybe I just have too low a skill in caring what other people think of my point of view.  But it's my sense that an increasing number of our heros these days were people who had the guts to speak out against majority held views.

So if you are going to build up the social tolerance for ostracism by well meaning group-thinkers, you have to be really careful about the views you adapt. Last thing you want to do is get all self-righteous about something that turns into collateral damage or friendly fire.  The more courage you develop, the more careful you have to be about pointing it in the right direction.  That winds up resembling the same polite agreement, deference and correctness that I'm critical of.  So I have to now assume, as a logical hyper-empath, that people who appear to accept things I'm emotionally intolerant of (like racially profiling Africa's Tech Sector) might possibly be smarter than I am.  But those people will, in private, be able to engage in the logic.  And that is how Project Eden ended.