You’re right that both empathy and compassion are typically used to describe what determines people’s motivation to relieve someone’s suffering. Neither perfectly captures preventive thinking or consideration of interests (beyond welfare and suffering) that characterize longtermist thinking. I think you are right that compassion doesn’t lead you to want future people to exist. But I do think that it leads you to want future people to have positive lives. This point is harder to make for empathy. Compassion often means caring for others because we value their welfare, so it can be easily applied to animals or future people. Empathy means caring for others because we (in some way) feel what it’s like to be them or in their position. It seems like this is more difficult when we talk about animals and future people.
I would argue that empathy, how it is typically described, is even more local and immediate, whereas compassion, again, how it is typically described, gets somewhat closer to the idea of putting weight on others’ welfare (in a potentially fully calculated, unemotional way), which I think is closer to EA thinking. This is also in line with how Paul Bloom frames it: empathy is the more emotional route to caring about others, whereas compassion is the more reflective/rational route. So I agree that neither label captures the breadth of EA thinking and motivations, especially not when considering longtermism. I am not even arguing very strongly for compassion as the label we should go with. My argument more is that empathy seems to be a particualrly bad choice.
You’re right that both empathy and compassion are typically used to describe what determines people’s motivation to relieve someone’s suffering. Neither perfectly captures preventive thinking or consideration of interests (beyond welfare and suffering) that characterize longtermist thinking. I think you are right that compassion doesn’t lead you to want future people to exist. But I do think that it leads you to want future people to have positive lives. This point is harder to make for empathy. Compassion often means caring for others because we value their welfare, so it can be easily applied to animals or future people. Empathy means caring for others because we (in some way) feel what it’s like to be them or in their position. It seems like this is more difficult when we talk about animals and future people.
I would argue that empathy, how it is typically described, is even more local and immediate, whereas compassion, again, how it is typically described, gets somewhat closer to the idea of putting weight on others’ welfare (in a potentially fully calculated, unemotional way), which I think is closer to EA thinking. This is also in line with how Paul Bloom frames it: empathy is the more emotional route to caring about others, whereas compassion is the more reflective/rational route. So I agree that neither label captures the breadth of EA thinking and motivations, especially not when considering longtermism. I am not even arguing very strongly for compassion as the label we should go with. My argument more is that empathy seems to be a particualrly bad choice.