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I'm against empathy.
我反对同情心。
I'm not against empathy for everything, I think empathy is a lot of fun when you're watching a movie, empathy for a fictional character.
我并不是反对所有的同情心，看电影的时候，对一个虚拟角色产生同情，这是很正常的。
I think empathy is an important part of all sorts of exciting activities, but I'm against empathy as a moral guide.
同情心是所有令人激动的事情的重要部分，但我反对把同情心作为道德指南。
I think we could do better.
我想我们可以做得更好。
The sense of empathy I'm most interested in is when you, in a sense, put yourself in another person's shoes and feel what they feel.
我最感兴趣的那种同情心是指你在某种程度上，设身处地地为他人着想，感受他人的感受。
Psychologists call this 'Emotional empathy.'
心理学家把这叫做“情绪同情心”。
A lot of people think this is core to being a good person.
很多人认为这是做一个好人的核心。
A few years ago, I wrote a book called "Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion," and I argued this form of empathy, though it might seem wonderful, is actually a very poor moral guide.
几年前，我写了一本叫做《反对同情心：理性同理心的论据》的书，我主张，这种形式的同情心虽然很美好，但它其实是很不好的道德指南。
Who do you feel empathy for? Who do you most naturally put yourself in the shoes of?
你同情哪些人？你最容易设身处地地为哪些人着想？
Well, we know the answer to this from study after study, after study- we naturally feel empathy for people who look like us, who speak our language, who we feel are safe, and because of that, empathy is, of all of the human feelings, perhaps the most biased and parochial.
我们从一项又一项的研究中得出了这个问题的答案——我们自然而然地会同情那些看起来像我们的人、跟我们说相同语言的人、我们觉得安全的人，正是如此，在人类所有的感情中，同情可能是最有偏见、最狭隘的一种感情。
When you put a book out with a title "Against Empathy," you gotta expect a certain amount of blow back, and a lot of people responded to me with their own experiences and their own arguments, sometimes people agreed with me, sometimes they argued against me.
当你出一本名为《反对同情心》的书的时候，就该预料到会收到一些怒气，很多人用他们自己的经历和论点回应过我，有些人支持我，有些人反对我。
So one argument against the purpose of my book is: Although empathy could have negative effects, could be biased, could provoke us into violence, could cause all sorts of trouble, it also could have good effects, and I concede this in my book.
反驳我这本书的目的的论点之一就是，虽然同情心会有一些负面作用，可能带有偏见，可能让我们诉诸暴力，可能带来很多麻烦，但它也有很多积极作用，而我在书里也承认了这一点。
And so some people have said, "Look, if you add it all up, the positive benefits of empathy outweigh the negative."
所以有些人说，“综合来看，同情心的积极作用是超过了消极作用的。”
I'm not always convinced about that sort of math, but even if it were true, we have moral capacities that are better than empathy.
对于这种算法，我并不认同，不过即便这么说是对的，我们也还有一些比同情心更好的道德能力。
Another objection is that empathy, whatever you think of its role when it comes to war and charity and broad, moral decisions, is a necessary part of an intimate relationship.
另一种反对的观点是，无论你认为同情心在战争、慈善、道德决策方面扮演着什么角色，它都是亲密关系必不可少的组成部分。
One philosopher in a critique of me said, "If my wife comes in and she's mad at somebody at work- it's all well and good for me to say, 'I love you very much and I understand where you're coming from,' but isn't what she wants me to share her anger, get angry with her?"
一名批评我的哲学家说，“如果我的妻子回家后，工作上的某个同事让她很生气，我如果说‘我很爱你，我也理解你遭遇了什么’完全没问题，但她想要的不是跟我分享她的愤怒，跟她一起生气吗？”
And my response to that is, 'It's kind of right.' I don't deny that.
我的回复是，‘说的有道理’，这一点我不反驳。
There are cases where what we look for in a relationship with others is that sort of shared feeling.
有时候，我们在一段关系中，寻求的是与他人共享情感。
You're mad, you want me to be mad too.
你很生气，你想让我也跟着生气。
My critical response is there's all sorts of cases where that's not what we want.
我的驳论是，有很多时候，我们寻求的并不是情感共享。
My favorite example here is anxiety.
我最喜欢的例子是焦虑情绪。
I go to my partner and I'm very anxious, I'm stressed out.
我带着非常焦虑的心情去找伴侣，我压力很大。
Do I want her to start sharing my feeling of anxiety?
我是想让她跟我一起陷入焦虑的情绪中吗？
To look at me and say, "Oh my God, it's horrible. Yeah, it's horrible."
让她看着我说“哦天哪，太可怕了。没错，很可怕。”
No! I want her to be calm. I want her to say, "I love you. Calm down.
才不是呢！我希望她能沉着冷静，我想听她说“我爱你。冷静一下。
Let me tell you how to think about it differently."
我来跟你说说另一种思路。”
Sometimes what we want from people isn't a mirror of us, it's rather, another intelligent, caring, loving person responding to us as a distinct being, and working to make our life better.
有时候，我们想从别人那里得到的不是自己的倒影，而是作为另一个独立个体，给我们一种明智、温暖、有爱的回应，一起让生活更加美好。
And I think, sometimes, empathy is exactly what we do not want.
我觉得，有时候，同情心恰恰是我们不想要的。
Now, if I'm gonna say this, I have to come up with something that will replace empathy, I'm not saying we should give up on morality.
要说这个话题，我得想出一个能替代同情心的词，我不是说我们应该放弃道德。
So my book is called "Against Empathy," but the subtitle of my book is "The Case for Rational Compassion," and therein lies the substitute, I think.
我的书名是《反对同情心》，但它的副标题是《理性同理心的论据》，所以我觉得这里面是有替代品的。
And the substitute is two parts: One is rationality.
替代品分为两部分：一是理性。
If I'm going to help somebody, I have to know what's the best way to help them, sometimes what might seem to be the best way to help them simply makes things worse.
如果我想帮助别人，就得知道帮助他们的最佳方法，有时候，那些看似最佳的解决方案只会弄巧成拙。
Sometimes figuring out what to do to make the world a better place is an extraordinarily difficult task, too big for one brain, and we do our best when, as communities, we work together to think about that.
有时候，思考如何让世界更加美好真的难如登天，一个人的能力实在有限，所以我们会作为集体，共同合作，去完成这件事。
So that's rationality. Rationality itself is great at pursuing ends, but it doesn't provide ends, it doesn't provide goals.
那就是理性。理性很擅长追求结果，但它并不提供结果，也不提供目标。
What you need is compassion- you need to care.
你需要的是同理心——你要在乎。
So what I argue in the book is that our best decisions, our fairest, our most equitable ones, are done through a combination of a rational judgment of how does one make the world a better place plus compassion, love, caring.
所以我在书中主张，我们的最佳决定，最公平、最合理的决定都是通过理性的决定，即如何让世界更美好，外加同理心、爱和关心做出的。
But not the sort of love and caring that requires you to put yourself in another person's shoes.
但这里说的并不是要求你换位思考的那种爱和关心。
Even if empathy is, on balance, has a positive effect, compassion does better.
总的来说，虽然同情心有积极作用，但同理心的效果更好。
If we could reconfigure our moral attitudes to be less biased, less parochial, more with our head and less with our heart, we would do better.
如果我们能重新设定我们的道德态度，让它不那么有偏见、不那么狭隘，多靠脑少靠心，我们会做得更好。
