Comment by didericis

I think there’s a hybrid approach.

You’re right; you can’t take in the experiences of the entire world and feel as they all feel. It’s impossible.

But I do think it’s roughly possible to scale up a desire to listen to your effects. When you see a stadium of people reacting, for example, you can find one guy that’s cheering and have him act as a sort of avatar for the section of the crowd that is happy. You can find a guy that’s booing and view him as an avatar for the section of the crowd that is not. You can find a guy that’s apathetic and view him as an avatar for the section of the crowd that is apathetic. So on and so forth.

People are combinations of many different characteristics, so you cannot separate them into those types of avatars with perfect fidelity. But you can get close.

Then you can attempt to empathize with those abstract representations of people, with the knowledge that it’s rough, and that you must pair your empathy with a very rational, calculating look at whether or not the avatars you are constructing are reasonable representatives of the people underlying them.

But I definitely agree that empathy shouldn’t get in the way of truth regardless of how you employ it, and find some of the talk around this sort of thing worrisome.