The Double-Empathy Struggle

So a big part of this book is figuring out how people can do the stupid or terrible things they’ve done (and continue to do).

The answer to that question has really proven a challenge. Frustating.

It’s occurred to me that part of the challenge (maybe the biggest part) is that I’m trying to figure out where people diverge from reality in a way that I can understand. I keep looking for reasons I can relate to. Some sort of trap that, when I see it, I say, “I could see myself falling into that, too.” But I can’t find that trap.

Because if the divergence of reality I see in the people around me happens at a point I would never have chosen…it feels alien, false, deductive. I need it to be human. Comprehensible to me. I want to believe that had I been there, I’d at least have seen how the mistake happened.

It’s in this line of thought that I had a breakthrough.

Maybe the difference isn’t in the choice…but in the threshold.

I and others like me might just have a lower tolerance for unreality (a more sensitive detection system for contradiction). Because I think most people DO feel dissonance, but they just have more social circuitry telling them to ignore it. What is that social circuitry? And isn’t that the deviation from life’s baseline?

When faced with serious problems, statements like, “This isn’t my place to question,” “It’s probably fine,” Everyone else seems convinced,” “It’s safer not to say anything,” and “It is what it is,” do more than annoy me. They fucking enrage me.

So maybe the divergence is recognition. One group feels the glitch and names it…the other feels it and smooths it over. Because their nervous systems are somehow tuned to avoid rupture instead of detecting and responding to it.

Maybe I feel reality differently. That certainly tracks. That would mean a problem of empathy across feedback thresholds. That mystery choice I’ve been looking for? The one I can comprehend as how people mistook fiction for reality? Maybe I’m not missing it at all. Maybe I’m simply seeing that, for me, there was no choice. There’s something that I would have felt that didn’t register with them.

So let’s look at our fork again.

Is it a different mix of people in the groups? We’ve ruled out innate cognitive superiority. Could there simply be a different mix of dispositions, thresholds, or nervous system types?

Probably.

Let’s say Group A has more people whose nervous systems respond strongly to contradiction, unreality, or unresolved pattern. And Group B has more people whose nervous systems prioritize social cohesion, comfort, and continuity.

No talk of virtue…just configuration.

Same species, same environment, different sensory weighting. It seems plausible that a small difference in feedback sensitivity across a few individuals could tip a group’s response to contradiction.

Or is it really external conditions? Because I think these matter…but not in the way most people think. It’s not about environment determining outcome. It’s about environment shaping when and how feedback arrives. A harsh environment returns frequent, sharp signals (You’re wrong. FIX IT.) A forgiving environment allows more drift before consequences appear.

So external conditions shape the urgency of model correction, and internal sensitivity shapes the likelihood of correction. Low sensitivity + gentle conditions? Drift compounds. Fast. High sensitivity + harsh conditions? Feedback (reality) stays close.

Are “low tolerance for unreality” and “need for stable patterns” the same thing? I don’t think so…but they feel close.

A low tolerance for unreality is detecting and suffering from contradictions between reality and model…it’s affective and stress-inducing. A need for stable patterns is seeking and requiring patterns that hold over time to feel safe…it’s predictive and structural.

But they’re structurally linked, aren’t they? I need stable patterns because unreality feels intolerable. And I reject unreality because it violates the patterns I need to hold. They both express an orientation…a high-fidelity feedback requirement.

SO…some groups contain individuals for whom predictive error is viscerally intolerable. Others contain fewer. Whether the group listens to those individuals determines whether the model corrects or compounds. The environment determines how quickly error becomes obvious. The culture determines how early error is acknowledged. And they nervous system determines how strongly error is felt.