Quote

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.

Paul Bloom

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Bloom
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 24
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Back
Program
Autistic
Even
Brother
Therapist
Thing
Went
Therapists
Good
Knew
Figured
Time
Sort
Camps
Mcgill
Working
Programs
Empathic
Kids
Teenager
Undergraduate
Truth
Spent
Severely

More quotes by Paul Bloom

Image
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.
Paul Bloom
Image
Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.
Paul Bloom
Image
It has been a period where people have been far nicer to one another in every possible way. I'm not saying it's because we're dropping our empathy that we're nicer to each other, just that the drop doesn't seem to be causing any harm.
Paul Bloom
Image
Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care.
Paul Bloom
Image
I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
Paul Bloom
Image
Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.
Paul Bloom
Image
We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good life: a life with sustained relationships, challenging work, and connections to community.
Paul Bloom
Image
I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called the point of view of the universe, and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation.
Paul Bloom
Image
You might argue on utilitarian grounds that the best way for the world to work is for everybody to take care of themselves first. And people have made that argument. But I just think we would be so much better off if we could care for distant others even a little bit more.
Paul Bloom
Image
Even the charities I give to are related to things that touch my life, like the Special Olympics. I'm not fully rational I'm swayed by my biases and my emotions.
Paul Bloom
Image
This enthusiasm [for empathy] may be misplaced. Empathy has some unfortunate features – it is parochial, narrow-minded and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it.
Paul Bloom
Image
Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
Paul Bloom
Image
Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel.
Paul Bloom
Image
My younger son told me nobody uses email anymore. I'm this old fogie with my email. I don't know what I'm supposed to communicate with now - SnapChat?
Paul Bloom
Image
Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.
Paul Bloom
Image
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.
Paul Bloom
Image
I am never going to write about dogs again. You can write about Islam, you can write about sexuality, but no, not dogs.
Paul Bloom
Image
A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.
Paul Bloom
Image
If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
Paul Bloom
Image
Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.
Paul Bloom