The downside of 'empathy': Blindly feeling others' feelings distorts reasoning, makes us biased, tribal, and even cruel

S.O.T.T: Everywhere you turn in American politics, leaders talk about the need for empathy. The best-known instance, of course, comes from Bill Clinton, who told an AIDS activist in 1992, "I feel your pain." But it's also been a recurrent theme in the career of Barack Obama, who declared in 2007 (while still a senator) that "the biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit."

And it isn't just a liberal reflex. A few months ago, George W. Bush spoke at a memorial service in Dallas for five slain police officers and said, "At our best, we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others." As a candidate, even Donald Trump asked Americans to identify with the suffering of others, from displaced Rust Belt factory workers to the victims of crime by undocumented immigrants...read more>>>...