this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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me_irl
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the most unempathic people i have met love to go on about how important empathy is
same for critical thinking.
they are basically words with no meaning other than whatever is most convenient for the speaker at the moment to use to shame others for not sharing their opinion or feelings on the matter.
emotional intelligence is another one of these BS terms people spout that also has no meaning other than 'agrees with me'.
Counterpoint: Critical thinking and empathy are important, and a lot of people don't have much / aren't very good at it
yeah and how do you measure how much they have exactly?
do you ask them what they do if they find a tortoise lying on its back in the hot dessert?
You want me to give you some objective "measure" like "inches" about most people's critical thinking skills? If you really want a thorough analysis I'm sure you could delve into the social sciences, philosophy, humanities ... history, sociology, psychology, anthropology etc., but that may not please you if you want it purely quantified.
Proudly broadcasting your ignorance there, aren't you? Your kids probably don't talk to you much, do they?
Emotional intelligence to me, means that someone understands their feelings, why they have them and where they come from. They know how to 'treat' themselves.
Some people are better than others at this. Some might get really frustrated but not understand why, while others can perfectly describe why they are frustrated, what they need to resolve it and then act on it. This to me is a very real thing.
EDIT: Oh and it also goes the other way. Someone who is emotionally intelligent might also be good at infering others emotions. Doesn't just apply to one self. I suppose this is called empathy.
thanks for proving my point. it's a totally subjective thing. the term was popularized in business literature as a way to evaluate management candidates. then it was popularized by pop psychologists. it's bullshit through and through. as is almost all of business/pop psychology.
what it is useful for, is a way to manipulate people by making up a bullshit metric by which you can judge them and they can judge each other. hence you have dummies who think 'i do therapy and read self-help books therefore i am very vemotionally intelligent'
before that phrase it was EQ emotional quotient, trying to ape IQ as a way of being a legitimate measure. IQ is also largely bullshit for morons to convince themselves they are geniuses because they scored well on an arbitrary test.
the more homework you do on this stuff the more you realize it's all manipulative BS made up by corporate bozos who want to use it rank their employees against each other by some arbitrary metric because ranking them by their actual work productivity is too hard and scary for management. or sorting school children.