I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data.

By “empathy,” some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.

My brother is severely autistic, so when I was a kid I spent a lot of time as a teenager in camps and programs for autistic kids. When I went to McGill as an undergraduate, I figured I'd be a therapist working with these kids. The truth is, and I knew this even back then, I'm just not good at this. I'm too empathic to do this sort of thing.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask.

Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.