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Smartphones Destroy Empathy
When I’m at a social event, I never tell anyone I’m a doctor, because I don’t want to talk about medicine when I’m trying to relax. But we went to a party last night in our neighborhood here in Hilton Head, and all our friends of course know what I do for a living. So Mrs. Jones comes up to me and says she hurt her shoulder, and it’s not getting better, and what should she do about it? I couldn’t just glare at her and leave, because I was in her house drinking her Scotch. So I politely listened to her complaints.
But I didn’t answer. I just pointed across the room: “Why don’t you go ask Bob? He’s an orthopedic surgeon. Surely he’d know more about this than me. I’m just a humble primary care doc.” Her face lit up, she thanked me, and she hustled right over to Bob, who had been enjoying her Scotch until that moment. She started talking to him, he smiled at her, and then he looked across the room at me and gave me the stink eye. I smiled and raised my glass to him. I’m a giver.
There are a few reasons I deferred. First of all, I really try to avoid giving medical advice to people who aren’t my patients. I don’t know the case, I don’t know the background – that’s an easy way to say something stupid. Second, it’s true, Bob would know more about this than me. As it happens, her condition is one with which I have a lot of experience, and I probably could have answered her question. But Bob is obviously more qualified. And the third reason is that I try to avoid looking like a fool. What if I answer, then she asks Bob, he gives a different answer, and I look like a fool? No. I try to avoid looking like a fool. But then Tom came over, struck up a conversation with me, and proved that not everyone tries to avoid looking like a fool.
Tom is an airline pilot who has developed an interest in nutritional supplements, essential oils, acupuncture, and God knows what else. At a party last year, he said that curing MS was easy by altering your diet and taking high dose vitamins or something, and that doctors knew this, and that they refused to use this cure because they couldn’t profit from it.
So, I inferred, apparently my job is to earn money by intentionally killing people.
I blew up in his face. Great entertainment for everyone. My wife guided me out the door. Forcefully. Holy crap I was angry.
I apologized to him the next time I saw him. I don’t think he recognized what a profound insult that was to someone like me, who believes that he serves God by devoting his life to healing the sick. Or at least doing the very best I can. Tom was just chatting about his hobby. To me, this is no hobby.
So I made nice, and we moved on.
On the other hand, the only way that Tom would not recognize what a profound insult that would be to me is that he lacks empathy. He can’t see things from anyone’s perspective other than his own, so he didn’t realize that what seemed like a casual statement to him would come across as a vicious attack to me. I’m sure he was surprised when I jumped down his throat.
If you lack empathy, other people become mysterious creatures. ‘What’s wrong with these people? Can’t they see the truth?’
Anyway, so Tom sits down next to me last night. I immediately start saying to myself, over and over, “…don’tsayanythingdon’tsayanythingdon’tsayanything…” as Tom starts to talk.
He talked about COVID. Now, if someone is a big enough conspiracy theorist to honestly believe that doctors are intentionally killing MS patients for profit, you can imagine what he thinks of the COVID mess. He’s an anti-vaxxer, and he spent 30 minutes telling me the dangers of the COVID vaccines.
Now, these vaccines are new, and perhaps we’ll discover problems as we go forward. I think they’re probably a good idea, but honestly I’m not really sure yet. Just like on most other topics, the more I read the less I know for sure. And I’ve read a lot on this topic. It’s just too soon to say. I think it will be years before we really know if the vaccines were a good idea. I think they are. Probably. But we’ll see…
Which brings me back to my conversation with the lady with the bad shoulder. I was reluctant to answer her question, because I knew there was someone in the room that knew more about it than me, and if he somehow became involved in our conversation, I might look stupid. So I shut my trap and deferred to the guy who has spent his life studying the question at hand.
That was not Tom’s approach last night. He sat right down next to someone who he knows does this for a living, and gives a 30-minute dissertation on something that he knows very little about. An amateur telling an expert how to do his job. And he seemed perfectly comfortable doing so. Tom did not ask me a single question. He lectured me. About my field. He wasn’t concerned about me publicly pointing out that he was wrong. Because he knew he wasn’t wrong. He believes.
Or, perhaps, he lacks sufficient empathy to understand that there may be perspectives other than his own which may have some validity.
It would be like me telling him how to fly a plane. Ok, maybe I’ve flown a Cessna before. Maybe I read about aviation as a hobby. But he flies passenger jets for a living. Why would I try to tell him how to fly a plane? Why would that thought even cross my mind? “You know what I’m going to do at this party? I’m going to go over there and tell that pilot how to fly a plane. This should be fun!”
Why would I do that?
As I sat there trying to be nice, it occurred to me that Tom wasn’t exactly lecturing to me. He was preaching. He was preaching with the confidence of someone preaching to the choir. Because in his world, everyone is in the choir. They all believe. Which got me to thinking about smartphones and social media.
Tom may have been the only one in the room last year that actually believed that doctors intentionally kill people for profit. And he was probably surprised that I reacted to his casual comment with such hostility.
He was surprised because he hangs out on websites that confirm his biases. He’s the only one in the room who thinks that, but he can pull out his iPhone and instantly connect with a virtual room full of like-minded individuals. And that’s where he lives. So his occasional excursions out into the real world probably feel sort of odd. ‘What’s wrong with these people? Can’t they see the truth?’
Politics is getting more and more tribal and hostile because we’re no longer fellow Americans discussing tax policy or immigration laws or something. We identify more and more with smaller and smaller subgroups online to such an extent that we’re losing the ability to communicate, and more importantly to empathize, with nearly anyone else.
So every debate just turns into a shouting match. Even if it’s about something as boring as scientific research.
I’m convinced that Tom is a nice person, and he means well. He’s just so far down some rabbit hole that he can’t even see out anymore. That describes a lot of Americans, these days.
We’re losing the ability to see things from the perspective of others. We’re losing empathy.
Is it possible that smartphones are destroying our society by destroying our empathy? What if that’s true? What should we do?
I love my smartphone. I really do. But I’m starting to think they’re dangerous.
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I’d love to ask you questions about it some time.
It is never a good day when you run short.
I doubt it will ever happen but I’d love a poured concrete house.
PS: They do it out here, but rarely, they mix kevlar chop to the concrete.
We buy enough concrete that the concrete companies treat us well. If we need to order four more yards, they’re usually glad to oblige.
I thought seriously about ICF (insulated concrete forms) when we built recently. But it’s roughly 15% more than conventional construction, and I was unsure about the money.
Actually, I’ve wanted to use sipcrete, https://www.siptec-scipcrete.com
It looks like ICF, just with a different name.
I think it is a certain profession thing. I was just at a funeral with a friend on mine that owns a car repair shop. People we constantly coming up and asking him car questions. With me they kept coming up and asking technology questions.
As for empathy. The problem is there are people (doctors) that make decisions based on their self interest or maybe ignorance. While it is not a bulk of people there is enough of it that causes issues. You can see it in the abortion issue. I suspect we are seeing it with gender doctors. You saw it in the opioid issue. I see it at my dentist that is constantly upselling procedures. You see in in the car industry. People selling cars and services not needed or not functional. I have seen it in computers with the sale of product and services the client does not need and can not use. People experience this and incorporate it into their understanding of the world. They are not completely wrong.
Hoe empathetic are we really Doc? You have written multiple essays trying to explain things from a leftist perspective and by your own admission you can’t quite get their thinking. I have never understood my Uncle who believes in Astrology and no one else does either. We just act like we understand him.
Clearly Mr. Essential Oil pilot doesn’t know how to act like he has empathy for your position. I doubt that your or Mr. Oil could really understand each other even if you were married.
Smartphones are destroying civility and community, no doubt about it. That’s why I leave it in the car whenever I’m visiting someone.
Here’s a question regarding the topic Tom was preaching about, hopefully asked in a more respectful manner:
In your experience, is there a propensity for doctors, be they in hospitals or in private practice, to lean more heavily on pharmaceutical treatment as opposed to more traditional or homeopathic options, such as diet, and lifestyle changes, or digging into patient history? And if so, what role does Big Pharma play in that?
As a patient, and as a father, that seems to be my experience. Most doctors I’ve encountered look to the drugs as the first and easiest answer, and don’t spend a lot of time interviewing patients to deal with the thing that’s causing the thing.
It depends on the property. In the old west, it was common to hang horse thieves. To steal someone’s horse during that era meant that you were stealing his livelihood, and in certain circumstances stranding him and therefore killing him.
I’m going to be more sympathetic to an individual who owns a single inner city convenience store, who’s been robbed for the 10th time, and shoots the perpetrator than I am an upper middle class individual who is defending the contents of his car.
Strictly speaking, both are in the right by my standards, but really that upper middle class individual is risking too much for so little.
Aviation pilots have a reputation for being arrogant. It’s been a few decades, but I read a Wall Street Journal article on how difficult they can be as employees.
But then, medical doctors have a similar reputation, depending on their specialty. Surgeons have that reputation, and lately epidemiologists have also garnered that reputation.
Elon Musk tweeted this image within the past 24 hours…
Several years ago I was reading a blog post on another site and the writer asked everyone to comment on what it is, about our lives in the 21st century, that would be the hardest to explain to someone from 100 years ago. Many people offered typical comments but one commenter said something very perceptive:
“In our pockets”, he said, “we carry a device with which we can access the accumulated knowledge of all human history. But we use it to watch videos of cats, and to get into arguments with random strangers.”
I have believed for a while now that smartphones have a great deal in common with Tokien’s idea of a “palantir”. In case you don’t remember, a palantir was a crystal ball, of sorts, into which someone could look in order to gain knowledge about events near or far.
But few could gaze into it without being overcome or misled by what they saw there.
Human inventions are by no means always beneficent. (c.f. Covid-19) We are able to invent things, intended for good, but which end up doing harm instead. I myself am an inventor on, more or less, 40 patents. And in hindsight, I regret having worked on more than a few of them. But I remind myself that no invention in the hands of human beings ever constitutes an unalloyed good. The hammer, for all of its constructive merits, is sometimes used to take a life.
Anyway, I suspect there are palantir-like side-effects associated with smartphones. To say nothing of the time-sucking occupation they represent. I find myself hoping that if enough people discover that smartphones are primarily used by businesses and government as surreptitious surveillance devices, the bloom will finally be off the rose.
But the glowing allure may prove too strong even then. It remains to be seen.
Doctors can be jerks. A long time ago I asked my sister’s doctor to give me at least partial information about her diagnoses, but he wouldn’t release it. She signed a HIPAA release and everything. It really messed up her continuity of care.
Surgeons are much more likely to be psychopaths, so I’ve read. I guess it takes a certain degree of emotional distance to cut people open all day and not go crazy.
The insulting thing about smart phones is essentially friends are inferring their phone is more interesting to them than you. Which leads to the conclusion “why don’t you just take your effin smart phone with you and leave!?”
As a therapist I am very used to both my profession being disparaged and my professional opinion being ignored.
My sister’s house on the Isle of Skye, which is about eight years old, is built that way.
When Mr. She and I built our house in 1986 we used what were then called stress-skin panels (an early version of the SIP). Half of it is SSP’s attached with barn spikes to the outside of a post-and-beam frame; the other half is SSP only, fastened with the integrated splines.
It’s been a blast, and although we made many mistakes which I have been slowly rectifying for years, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Next up–cutting a 6’wide hole in the wall for a sliding door between the bedroom and the sunroom. One of the beauties of the system, especially on the timber frame side, is that none of the external SIP walls qualifies as load-bearing, so you can get out a chain saw and hack away at will. (It’s not quite that simple, really, but almost.)
Yes. Mr. She was fond of remarking that we are the first generation in human history to have all the human experiences of the last 100 years or so readily available in both sound and video in front of our eyes, and that it’s remarkable that we keep on repeating the same mistakes that the evidence of our own eyes should, one would think, cause a reasonable person to understand and avoid.
“But that wasn’t real communism. Here, let me show you the website that says so.”
Nah, they are both providing a public service. The law may not treat them as if they did so, but it is a public service nonetheless. Both get a pass from me.
They dramatically underestimated the financial fallout of having known about the problem and choosing not to fix it.
As one whose primary clientele for over 40 years was airline pilots, truer words were never spoken.
Several different threads and comments coupled with my own recent experiences have raised an issue in my thinking.
How do we know facts regarding the cost or the price of objects or services?
I think we are losing a grip on this and there are several things happening that cause this, big central government control being at the top of the list. What does this mean for our lives?
The recent run up in the cost of housing construction and repairs is what really caught my attention and made me think of this. And modern monetary theory and the attacks on small business and a few other things.
I’d probably say something wise*ssed like, “Let’s go to your bedroom, you disrobe, and I’ll have a look.”
But I agree about the smartphone. Like all technology, there are benefits and drawbacks. To me, the benefits of smartphones far outweigh the drawbacks. However, I’m not addicted to it. We got cell phones for our girls once they started driving ( we also put them on our AAA). These were the old style flipphones with calling and texting capability and nothing else. Eventually, we moved them up to better phones, and now they buy their own.
But man, have I seen plenty on phone addicts. Nothing worried me more than in the men’s room, when the guy at the unrinal next to me got a call and answered it. I’m thinking, “Both hands on the wheel, pal!”
But back to empathy. Social media in general is impersonal, no matter how many pictures or videos you post. Face-to-face communication is how we develop our true social skills, whereas social media can be anonymous at times. While anonymity is helpful for the shy, it provides cover for trolls. I bet 90% of all trolls out there would suddenly become as nice as can be if their true identity and location (address) became known.
Welcome to the club…
Who cares what you old white guys think?
I don’t think that’s the problem.
I think the problem is the internet in general. Never before has so much information and misinformation been so readily available to everyone. There are no filters, other than Facebook and Twitter at the behest of Biden, and those that exist tend to exacerbate the situation. It is incredibly easy to find references like those that your buddy, Tom, eluded to. No one goes in and marks them as bogus. It is a simple case of Caveat Emptor.
Years ago my then adolescent son came into possession of enough money to buy a new bicycle due to injuries suffered when car hit him. I wanted to be sure that he got the best bike he could in order to make his suffering worth it. I traveled all over Seattle talking to bike shops about frames and components. It rapidly became obvious to me that everyone had an opinion and that facts were of secondary importance to that person’s perceptions of reality. Nowadays we have the internet upon which opinions and deliberately false information is published continuously. It is a great place for getting your biases confirmed or even created. Everyone is an expert. Read a few webpages and write your own or just simply play the expert at the next cocktail party. The more we learn the dumber we get.