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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

> our willingness to express empathy with those who suffer a loss is inverse to the loss they suffer. We empathize the most with those who suffer the least. Because that is cheapest.

While that makes sense to me on average I disagree that it is true in general. We most empathize with things we *can* empathize with - which in most cases are things that have happened to us before. As the loss increases so does the chance that an average modern person - especially those reading this blog - have encountered it. We can't rule out that explanation a priori.

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Witlimited's avatar

I wondered the same thing and did a little reading that seemed to imply that envy and bitterness are somehow related, but it was quite a while ago. Searching for "ressentiment" and "embitterment disorder" might give you an interesting starting point though.

Also, those schools of thought consider bitterness/envy/resentment to be almost... "complex compound" emotions? (E.g. bitter is 'angry + helpless') which could partly explain the relative scarcity of literature and lack of sympathy that's been mentioned here.

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