Perspective-taking as native skill versus trained compassion

okay so perspective-taking is a human native skill (perhaps we used perspective-taking for persistence hunting, to imagine being the prey we were tracking, to think "which way would I go, as a deer")

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Aug 18, 2023

key difference: animals simulate each other's behavior humans simulate other beings' *experience* in first person "what is it like to BE my prey?" trippy question. x.com/ChasingMyself/…

Dec 25, 2025

but what if we actually have to *train* the use of perspective-taking for stress-sharing / compassion: - literally saying to kids "imagine how you would feel if someone blasted water in *your* face" - the golden rule in its various formulations

I encountered the water-face situation yesterday with an absurdly energetic 4yo boy at a water park who was spraying water with apparent disregard for the reality that my 16mo daughter was standing 1 foot from the nozzle he was rotating

note that he didn't blast my toddler with water to bother her, as far as I could tell. he and I had been spraying water at each other for fun, and that involved a kind of attention towards me. he was just dashing around turning the nozzles as if she wasn't even there at all

theory of mind can be used for cruelty and coercion as well as for compassion or collaboration. what causes it to go one way or the other? maybe it has something to do with intertwingling identity with empathy

Judd Rosenblatt @juddrosenblatt · Mar 15, 2025

Turns out that Self-Other Overlap (SOO) fine-tuning drastically reduces deceptive behavior in language models—without sacrificing performance. SOO aligns an AI’s internal representations of itself and others. We think this could be crucial for AI alignment...🧵

this model feels somewhat at odds with some of my models (from preconquest consciousness, from snake cult of consciousness) of what humans were like before we developed identity though. I don't think that 50kya we were (a) more cruel or (b) incapable of compassion

kids from much much younger ages (<1yo) are sometimes distressed at other peoples' distress, but this doesn't tell us much, since others' distress signs can also be stress-sharing in a more imposed way: yells and cries can be unpleasant sounds! & even laughter can spook a 3mo

I'm sure there's a bunch of data I'm missing here, both from studies and from people who've raised multiple kids and watched them go through phases of moral development involving learning empathy, compassion, etc. would love to hear your takes on all of this!