Skyring wrote:
Someone was talking about EQ, which I've since forgotten whether it
stands for Emotion or Empathy.
Empathisation. Its complement is systematisation.
I've looked around on Wikipedia and it seems that the concept isn't as
well-known or widespread as I thought it was: Wikipedia doesn't cover it.
I used EQ as an abbreviation for "empathisation quotient", and SQ as an
abbreviation for "systematisation quotient". These terms are used by
researchers in developmental psychology, particularly autism-related
research. People usually tend to have an average value of both, but
people who have a high value for one tend to have a low one for the
other. People with noticeably low EQs and high SQs are said to have
[[Asperger's syndrome]]. People with *extremely* low EQs (and typically
correspondingly higher SQs) are autists. Women tend to have a higher
average EQ than men, making them more suitable for tasks involving
contact with other people, while men tend to have a higher average SQ,
making them more suitable for technical subjects (IT, mathematics and
natural sciences, that sort of thing). Of course, there are also high-SQ
women and high-EQ men. They aren't even particularly rare (although
autism is pretty rare in females).
People with high SQs tend to favour logical, consistent and predictable
sytems, such as computers and the Internet. Hence why their incidence on
Wikipedia is higher than in the general population, and hence why
Wikipedians are on average less empathisational than the general population.
Concepts whose understanding requires a broad understanding of human
emotional response, such as the concept of "personal attacks",
"civility" and stuff like that, which isn't measurable in numbers or
cannot be objectively defined, is difficult for these people. Purely
logical thinking, on the other hand, is difficult for people on the
other side of the spectrum -- most [[logical fallacy|logical
fallacies]], for example, are an emptional response as opposed to a
systematic conclusion, especially things like [[appeal to authority]]
(if a highly-regarded expert favours something, it feels more plausible)
and [[appeal to popularity]] (if everyone thinks it's right, it feels
more plausible).
Incidentally, it also tends to be the systematisers who challenge
pointless social conventions and question their validity. It's probably
thanks to them that, for example, agnosticism is no longer a crime
punishable by death, although the people at the time found the idea of
tolerating it quite abhorrent (an emotional response). In general,
systematisers seem to have less prejudice and other societally-imposed
preconceptions, which is why I personally think they deserve much more
attention to have their opinions heard than they currently get, even (or
perhaps especially) when they are unable to shape it into a
socially-accepted form that is palatable to the empathisers.
Timwi