Against Empathy

Psychologist Paul Bloom, a Yale researcher, argues that empathy, which he defines as experiencing the world as one imagines someone else does, is a poor guide to moral decisions. Like a spotlight, it narrows attention to single people and events, is prone to bias and can even feed anger and cruelty. Bloom separates empathy from compassion, which he describes as care for others and a wish for them to thrive, and draws on C. Daniel Batson's empathy-altruism research, effective altruism and the neuroscience of feeling versus understanding. Without rejecting empathy entirely, he makes the case for rational compassion grounded in deliberate reasoning about costs and benefits. Published in 2016, the book drew mixed reviews.

Vinod Khosla included it in his 2017 book recommendations, calling it a surprising yet solid argument against too much empathy that rationalists will find obvious.