The Semantic Satiation of Ethics and Empathy

We need to get more specific about the capacities the future requires

One of Ogilvy’s key digital trends for 2017 is “The Abdication of Ethical Decision Making.” Citing surging automation, early but obvious examples of embedded bias (i.e. Facebook algorithms merrily serving up “fake news”), and a lack of progress and even conversation around the implications of driverless cars, Ogilvy warns that once ceded, “control never comes back.” Certain professions, including airline pilots, are cited as already being over-reliant on automation. And with the persistent sci-fi fantasy of impending-AI-takeover still alive and well in places like Davos during the World Economic Forum, “ethics” has become rallying cry, buzzword, and panacea to a crowd that consistently fails to realize the planet is in danger from humans, not machines.

Meanwhile, empathy is everywhere. VR is an “empathy machine.” Silicon Valley has an “empathy vacuum.” President Obama bemoans an “empathy deficit.” The Washington Post describes how “empathy has become a weapon we use against others.” And, natural for an industry already satiated by a design-thinking-esque marketing principle called “patient-centricity,” pharmaceutical companies are rushing to cash in on empathy-driven simulations.

Semantic Satiation: “It’s a kind of a fatigue,” says the professor who coined the term, Leon James. “It’s called reactive inhibition: When a brain cell fires, it takes more energy to fire the second time, and still more the third time, and finally the fourth time it won’t even respond unless you wait a few seconds. So that kind of reactive inhibition that was known as an effect on brain cells is what attracted me to an idea that if you repeat a word, the meaning in the word keeps being repeated, and then it becomes refractory, or more resistant to being elicited again and again.”

Typically, semantic satiation describes why a simple word can start to look like jibberish if we see it too many times in a row. But more broadly, perhaps it can explain why hype terms, buzzwords, marketing jargon, and surface-level conversations can start to degrade our collective ability to act intelligently.

Daniel Kahneman, William of Ockham and others have aptly described why the human brain is wired to take shortcuts. It is human nature to look for easy explanations, intellectually lazy decisions, and silver bullets. And while this can lead to progress and important change, zooming in on the example of Germ Theory, and the associated legacy of antibiotics, shows how reliance on theories-of-everything, tempting and natural as they are, can lead to crisis and imbalance. As physicists grapple with string theory and quantum dynamics and microbiologists grok the importance of the microbiome, medicine is left in some sort of paradigmatic vacuum. The swirling semantic satiation of terms like “holistic medicine” and “prevention” serve only to heighten confusion: still gravitating toward and fixating on the “cure all,” we’re still using more antibiotics than ever.

Zooming out again, away from medicine and toward the general business of long term species survival, around five years ago we witnessed semantic satiation in real-time. As we uncomfortably began to collectively grapple with the impending consequences of climate change, rapid technological progress, and globalization, countless think pieces were published on the need for “resilience,” “adaptation,” and “innovation.” And not for nothing: though we’ve had to carefully dissect and reimagine what these terms actually mean, theit ubiquity educated many business leaders and policymakers on the broad strokes of shifting systems.

Now, facing not just intractable inaction to real crises, but the ubiquitous distractors of manufactured crises, fake news, and presidential tweeting, we who have taken up the task of strategy and planning for Resilience, Innovation, and Adaptation are beginning to get pragmatic about the capacity building we need to invest in. So where do we go from here?

Let’s be specific about what we mean when we say “we need more empathy,” or “that’s an ethical consideration.” Let’s not discount the realities of empathic distress — even collapse, of feeling too much. Let’s move past theory and toward praxis (i.e., for empathy: compassion with intention; for ethics: communities of practice like UCSD’s CORE).

Let’s pay attention to the people speaking responsibly, not romantically, about ethics and empathy. Danah Boyd’s search for ethics. Clearer Thinking’s Spencer Greenberg in Fast Co. talking pragmatic strategies for keeping the peace. A recent panel at the Montreal International Documentary Festival, the VR (Anti)Manifesto, challenging the panacea potential of new media.

Let’s stop waiting for machines to save us.

The views and approaches I’ve expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.