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[Vikarion]

Yet, wanting people to like you is a weakness that they will jump on like sharks to bleeding prey.

As I continue to wander through various threads and wonder at the drama just a few months of downtime accrues...

I'm not sure if you're talking about real world or EVE, but experience in both is that being honest with wanting others to like you works wonderfully. I've never had someone exploit my friendliness nor have they acted as (insert dramatic image)sharks on bleeding prey.(/dramatic image)

Human interaction generally isn’t a warzone where showing weakness is punished.

Want to bet?

Try going a week seeing things as I do, viewing human interactions as essentially social and economic power-plays, group solidarity as an attempt to gain an advantage over other groups, and emotional reactions as attempts to gain leverage over another person via social pressure, and ask yourself if it doesn't make at least as much sense as your own paradigm of the world. Look around at the suffering in the world, and see if people really do care as much as they say they do. My theory is that the reason the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory exists is because people don't think that they have to pay the consequences on the internet.

But, I could be wrong. Absolutely. But if you all are such kind, loving creatures to each other, it sure doesn't look like it. People seem to take joy in excluding others, in shunning, and in being part of the "in" group. I make no judgments, I don't care. Watching this thread, seeing what some people have to say - and what some of them have said elsewhere - I think that it would be rather...treacherous to advise Seriphyn to trust someone here.

Not that I mind treachery. But, really, when someone wants me to faux-finish their cabinets, I want a contract, or I get paid billable time-and-material. If someone wants me to paint their condominium complex, my crew doesn't even drive to the job before I have a signed contract. When it comes to money, business, and, hell, even marriage, we make promises in writing and stipulate penalties. So much for trust, eh?

Everything you want to be true, you need to build yourself, ultimately. No one else has as vested an interest in your success as yourself - and many have an interest in your failure. It isn't that trust is for the weak - it's that trust makes you weak.

[Vikarion]

I have been playing Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines recently, and something seems somewhat relevant:
"The Jyhad:
The secret, self-destructive war waged between the generations. Elder vampires manipulate their lesser, using them as pawns in a terrible game whose rules defy comprehension. "

Substitute "Roleplayers" for "vampire", and contemplate the nature of this forum, chatsubo, OOC channel, The IGS, and various other paraphernalia of EVE roleplay.

"EVE RP Community:
The secret, self-destructive war waged between players. Elder roleplayers manipulate their lesser, using them as pawns in a terrible game whose rules defy comprehension. "

Vampires are noobs in comparison, lol.

Well, fuck.

You are awesome for coming up with this.

[Makkal]

Yet, wanting people to like you is a weakness that they will jump on like sharks to bleeding prey.

As I continue to wander through various threads and wonder at the drama just a few months of downtime accrues...

I'm not sure if you're talking about real world or EVE, but experience in both is that being honest with wanting others to like you works wonderfully. I've never had someone exploit my friendliness nor have they acted as (insert dramatic image)sharks on bleeding prey.(/dramatic image)

Human interaction generally isn’t a warzone where showing weakness is punished.

Want to bet?

How much do you want to wager and what exactly are the terms?

Try going a week seeing things as I do, viewing human interactions as essentially social and economic power-plays, group solidarity as an attempt to gain an advantage over other groups, and emotional reactions as attempts to gain leverage over another person via social pressure, and ask yourself if it doesn't make at least as much sense as your own paradigm of the world. Look around at the suffering in the world, and see if people really do care as much as they say they do.

I could do that, but that would do nothing to support the claim you made and I am refuting.

Like all humans, we can interpret data as we see fit. There are people who see God's plan wherever they look - the good things that happen to them is evidence they've led a good life while the bad things that happen to other people are evidence  God is angry at them.

I could spend a week looking at the world through their eyes. Or I could spend a week looking at the world through the eyes of someone who passionately believes Skinner was right and human behavior is largely predefined reactions to various stimuli.

I'm sure it would be fun, but it hardly constitutes evidence that any specific viewpoint is right or wrong. 

That leads us to my experience: I'm open about wanting others to like me, but have yet to have people fall on me like hungry sharks.

Have people been falling on me like hungry sharks all along and I just haven't noticed because I'm predisposed to enjoy human interaction? My own belief is that wanting others may be a weakness, but it's one that the vast majority has. Being honest about it is no more dangerous than admitting you'd like a piece of chocolate cake, a nicer car, or to have sex with an attractive actor.

But, I could be wrong. Absolutely. But if you all are such kind, loving creatures to each other, it sure doesn't look like it. People seem to take joy in excluding others, in shunning, and in being part of the "in" group. I make no judgments, I don't care. Watching this thread, seeing what some people have to say - and what some of them have said elsewhere - I think that it would be rather...treacherous to advise Seriphyn to trust someone here.

Not that I mind treachery. But, really, when someone wants me to faux-finish their cabinets, I want a contract, or I get paid billable time-and-material. If someone wants me to paint their condominium complex, my crew doesn't even drive to the job before I have a signed contract. When it comes to money, business, and, hell, even marriage, we make promises in writing and stipulate penalties. So much for trust, eh?

Everything you want to be true, you need to build yourself, ultimately. No one else has as vested an interest in your success as yourself - and many have an interest in your failure. It isn't that trust is for the weak - it's that trust makes you weak.

It’s like you’ve turned real life into your personal Game of Thrones fanfic.

[Aelisha Montenagre]

Poorly placed trust is a weakness, born of a character flaw that leads you to over-value the amount of responsibility you can give to an individual, putting them in the position of either having to forgo gratification to maintain a trust that is increasingly one-sided, or 'cash out' on that trust to obtain gratification as they believe the bond is about that value. 

This may appear cynical, but my opinion differs from Vikarions in that I believe that on some level all relationships are transaction oriented, and that these are in fact the very things that make trust a beneficial and potent social tool when used conscientiously and correctly.  Now this may seem as if I am about to go on some self-help style rant, but bear this in mind: conscience and correctness are culturally, socially and environmentally informed.  That is to say that they are unique to you, and so this leads to the first issue with trust - we all value it differently. 

Some are selfish - they want one-way or as close to one-way transactions as possible.  They will trust you to watch the dog so they can go to the cinema, but their reciprocation of that act is unlikely as they view their gratification, even in mundane or spurious terms, as superior to yours.  However, said selfish person might value your need to see your bed-ridden grandmother as a high priority due to a previous experience or a concept of empathy that integrates that as important, thus being seemingly out of character in accepting the burden of trust when that situation comes up and you need someone to watch Fido. 

On the other extreme, we have the 'go to' trusted individuals.  People for whom the cost of the transaction will likely never outweigh what they feel they get out of the social benefits of trust.  The act of being trusted rewards them as in itself a contribution to their valuation.

These are very two dimensional archetypes, highlighting only the most simple elements of the transaction based model for trust.  We all participate on both levels - that of gratification outside of the transaction and of recognising benefits tat may be had just from the transaction itself.  They are presented merely for context, so please do not believe I view people in such black and white terms. 

Trust can and will be abused.  It is a mechanism, in this case one modelled on the transaction of social benefits (innate or distributed) in return for the temporary suspension of instant gratification that breaking that trust may yield.  As with any transaction oriented system it is inherently vulnerable at two key points - the authenticity of the trusted party, and the judgement capabilities of the trustee (plus any support either side may have in socially validating the trusted's status or warning the trustee of poor choices).  Willfull abuse of trust WILL happen, and requires authentication of trust.  Again, specific methods of authentication will be broken, gamed, and manipulated over time.  It is impossible to 100% secure a system without denying all access to it, but keeping your value judgments to yourself is both polite and effective.  Telling billy you trust bob more, and worse, telling him on what grounds, is a quick way to make billy start thinking of ways to be as trusted as bob, then screw you to get his own back and make people as trusted as bob a bad prospect for you in the future.  Obfuscation of valuation is a key strategy in many security-led institutions, and it is no less important here.

An inability to correctly value an individual's capacity for trust, will in itself cause problems, as such a situation may be seen, in time, as willfully selfish burdening of the trusted with low-reward transactions that are vastly outweighed by the gratification that may be gained by breaking the trust (they get little social capitol, but the rewards of taking 'the loot' are huge by comparison).  This could be seen as an innocent form of disrespect - you have put the individual in an awkward position, but this would be victim blaming.  The good 'trusted' would notify you of their increasing unease at being used as a service and break the trust in a benign manner - by refusing it.  Temptation is unpleasant when it involves social consequences - and as gratifying as the breaching of trust may become, the lead up will be uncomfortable and may lead to resentment from not only the victim, but for the perpetrator towards the victim for 'doing his/her time' during the initial stages. 

i have whittered on for an excessive length, but I felt the need to express my opinion on this matter, as I find the cynical interpretation of 'trust? pah there can be no trust' to be damaging and generally untrue as a representation of social transactions in general.  When individuals respect the fact that we have individual needs and scales of valuation for gratification of oneself over the gratification that social transactions can bring, we can view what may seem like a cynical system of tit for tat in a more optimistic, informed light.  We all have things we want - when we respect one another and trust is used as a two-or-more-party enabler towards reaching our goals, it can be pretty damned good. 

Be vigilant, judge harshly, but speak softly.  A scammer identified before the fact is just an individual identified with a low valuation of trust over gratification.  An individual who genuinely values the gains of taking on the burden of your trust is not a resource or asset, they have tolerances too.  Respect thresholds by giving trust accordingly.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

While I broadly agree, Aelisha, I will raise the fact that there are two kinds of trust - responsibility-trust and intimacy-trust, and I feel you've only really addressed the first.

Responsibility-trust is something that we all, consciously or unconsciously, have to become good at in some way if we're going to get anywhere.  The zero-empathy personality may view the connections differently, and may not grasp the two-way nature of them in some variations, but anyone not at the extreme end of the empathy spectrum can at least see the principle at work*.  As you say, some people will verge more towards the 'giving' or the 'taking' side of things, but on some level, the exchange of responsibility-trust is part of what allows society to function.

Intimacy-trust is also about exchange, but on an emotional level - and that's a whole different ballgame, because both giving and taking can be hard.  Note that by 'intimacy' I don't mean love, sex or anything like that, merely the varying degrees of friendship and acquaintance that we apply to people.  Take me, for instance.  I was brought up to take responsibility very seriously, so I think I'm pretty good at responsibility-trust.  However, I'm dreadful at intimacy-trust.  I make friendships fairly easily, but they're very easy-come-easy-go; I lose contact with people and think nothing of it, partially because I don't feel comfortable offering more than a baseline of intimacy-trust.  I call it 'wearing masks'; in any given community or circle of people, I'll have a different mask.  If I become good friends with someone, I might take a mask off, but there'll still be one below.  Thus far I've only trusted two people enough to take all of them off, and I'm marrying one of them.

The reason this is important is that I think there's elements of both coming up here.  Intimacy-trust is by necessity going to be an element that needs to be traded when attempting to deal with other people, and a combination of your comfort and skill at doing that, and the basic temperaments of others, can make that a minefield.  People have talked about sharks, some have remarked that they've never faced that issue.  I think there's definitely an element of self-confidence and self-assuredness here.  Despite being the weird loner kid at school, I never had anyone seriously pick on me, simply because I was utterly unfazed by people.  (It was also kind of a nice school, but there was that one time I got asked to join a gang... but that's another story.)

To put it another way, and to summarise some of the other thoughts aired here, someone desperate to join a community and seek their approval is throwing a lot of intimacy-trust out there, perhaps more than they realise they're comfortable with.  Cue confidence issues, and the less pleasant individuals of said community descending like the aforementioned sharks - who may, in a mirror of responsibility-trust, be zero- or low-empathy individuals.

Just some food for thought.

_{*I talk about 'zero empathy personalities' in a scientific sense.  'Zero Degrees of Empathy', by Simon Baron-Cohen, provides a very interesting read on the subject, if you feel like poking at the topic.}

[Vincent Pryce]

I have been playing Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines recently, and something seems somewhat relevant:
"The Jyhad:
The secret, self-destructive war waged between the generations. Elder vampires manipulate their lesser, using them as pawns in a terrible game whose rules defy comprehension. "

Substitute "Roleplayers" for "vampire", and contemplate the nature of this forum, chatsubo, OOC channel, The IGS, and various other paraphernalia of EVE roleplay.

"EVE RP Community:
The secret, self-destructive war waged between players. Elder roleplayers manipulate their lesser, using them as pawns in a terrible game whose rules defy comprehension. "

Vampires are noobs in comparison, lol.

I lolled so hard while reading this. Lulu D <3

[Louella Dougans]

[spoiler]

I lolled so hard while reading this. Lulu D <3

Well, fuck.
You are awesome for coming up with this.

Sleeping antediluvian finds this an amusing post ...

[/spoiler]



Yeah, it was just one of those moment of clarity things, where you see something, and suddenly, a bunch of other things fall into place.

[Vikarion]

Makkal, Aelisha, and Repentance:

I am not entirely sure I can understand what you mean by zero-empathy and non-zero-empathy. I will try to explain my own experience.

I can understand pain. For example, I can hit my thumb with a hammer, or, upon seeing someone else's thumb hit with a hammer, I can imagine what that has felt like when it has happened to me. However, such impressions have zero emotional content for me. I could see a person bleeding, and I will experience no emotional reaction or "connection" to them. I have to speak somewhat theoretically here, as I can't exactly say that I'm sure that I know what a "connection" would be. When someone around me has been injured, my typical responses have ranged from annoyance, to excitement at being able to act in an "emergency situation", that is, to demonstrate my ability to act decisively. Is this zero-empathy? Perhaps, although I note that I often experience my own pain at somewhat of a distance, myself.

I don't really see other people as imaginary objects - at all. I think they are real, living, human beings. Whatever that means, and good luck defining those terms. I simply have great difficulty - no, I find it impossible - to know what it is like to be them, or to know, as in, experientially, what they are feeling. I'm very good at guessing, very, very good, but I still sometimes make mistakes. So, I try to connect intellectually, and I find some people very interesting intellectually. Other people, well, I figure them out fairly quickly and get bored. Is this "zero-empathy"?

After this description, I imagine that most people would not want to trust me. And yet, unless you betray me, I'm one of the most trustworthy people out there. I love keeping personal secrets, and, because I am very good at lying, other people never manage to ferret them out of me. If you met me, you would think that I am a kind, generous, and listening person who is perhaps a bit over-eager, and a bit unsophisticated...a bit rough around the social edges.

On the other hand, I know a person who comes off as an earnest, caring, morally upright, quietly suffering christian woman. She will listen to you, try to relate to your experiences with her own in ways that I simply cannot match, and can talk with you for hours. And yet, she is one of the most sadistic and cruel people I have known. She takes everything you say and uses it to construct the most hurtful and piercing attacks on your self-hood she can. Before I cut off all ties with her, she actually managed to get to me once or twice, by attacking my life goals - virtually the only area I was vulnerable to. She's the only one who ever managed that, and I've been through some seriously messed up shit (or so I'm told).

The thing is, this person has managed to fool not just me, for a while, but hundreds of people. Her churches, her family, hell, her own husband, for decades. I even admire her ruthlessness and perceptiveness in the pursuit of her goals - it resembles my own, save that I love to create things, and she loves to destroy people. But for an accident of birth, there go I, I think. And she has been, I suppose, far more successful at getting close to people to hurt them than I have been. This may be a simple function of interest - I don't particularly find hurting people to be all that interesting - but it does strike me that those who do find hurting people interesting have the most to gain from getting you to trust them. So much for the listening ear, eh?

I knew a couple who gave every impression of being one of the most secure, most loving couples I knew. They were high-school sweethearts, and they had been together for many, many years. They were just zany enough to be fun, just serious enough to be good parents, and just wise enough to be a good choice to talk to. And then, a little after their last child went to college, one of them told the other that they didn't love them anymore, that they wanted a divorce and everything went to shit. I remember this very well because they seemed to me to embody something I didn't have - love - and something that I really would have liked to experience, if only because it seemed to make others so happy. Well, so much for that, and so much for the jilted partner, eh?

Let me also speak to the concept of more business-like relationships. When I was an employee of a firm (I'm now a partner in a finishing company), I remember my boss telling me of an event which made a lasting impression on me: our client had offered some of our employees more money to quit working for us, and to do the job themselves. Technically, this was illegal, since one is supposed to have a license to do our sort of work (and quite reasonably so, since my particular variety of painting involves chemicals that can also function as rocket fuel). Nonetheless, they took the offer, and the client promptly told us and our contract (it often costs more for us to sue than to write off a contract) to fuck off. Then, when our former employees finished their work, the client told them to fuck off as well, because they were operating illegally. And yet, this client was and is considered to be an upstanding member of the community.

...This is why one asks for progress payments, eh?

I have tried to use stories here because I find that they work better. I don't understand how to connect with people myself. I simply can't. Please see why I'm telling these stories.

"But Vikarion," you say, "if you really don't care for others, why are you bothering?". Well, yes, it is true that I have no emotional attachment to any of you. But, see, I would like to be seen as caring, and while I don't particularly care for you, I have no particular hatred for you either. Indeed, I actually find people interesting and want to be around them, so, intellectually, trying to exercise care for others can be in my best interest. Also, I want to be right. And, of course, I'd like to make life harder for the fuckers who have, at times, caused me problems. In terms of game theory, I play straight - tit for tat - and so I am better off if I tip you off to cheaters. I made the choice to play by the (arbitrary) rules a long time ago, and it infuriates me when others think they can do better. Fuck all motherfucking fuckers, to go a bit Tim Minchin, if you will. 

Ok, that objection dealt with, let's return to the main point: should you trust people?

Well, you have to trust someone, with something, sure. Perhaps I came off a bit strong. I think the three posters I referenced at the top had some good things to say. But, on the other hand, my aggressive caution is not unwarranted.

It truly is the case that those who have the most to gain by getting you to trust them are the least trustworthy. Let us take my case, versus the case of the woman I referenced above. In her case, she has every reason to get you to trust her: she derives much of her enjoyment and self-validation from her ability to hurt others at their core. I've seen her do it repeatedly, and it's the only time she seems really happy. I, on the other hand, am less interested in getting you to trust me, because the only thing I get out of it is a tiny ego boost from managing to uphold some arbitrary rule about integrity - in short, my ability to measure up to a standard. This, to me, is far less rewarding than the sheer orgasmic mental pleasure of creating something interesting or valuable, an activity that I pursue with an obsession that borders on near addiction in my life. As in, I have worked about 38 hours as of this Wednesday night, and already want to go back to work. Therefore, I have no drive to get you to trust me, especially since doing so might involve a certain amount of time in activities I am bored by. But that woman, a person who I have seen ruin entire lives, has every reason on earth to work on you until you embrace her, body and soul. You should be afraid of that kind of person.

Similarly, in business and money affairs, the con artist has more of a reason to get your trust than the honest businessman. To the businessman, you are another account, and you are valuable to the extend that he makes a small margin of profit. Yes, valuable, but not overwhelmingly so. But, to the con artist, you are everything to him - he intends to take you for everything that you are, for all of your money, and you are the full measure to him of everything he can take you for. Right up until he does.

Of course, you have to trust some people. Hell, I trust some people. My best friend is a somewhat overweight, messy, unhealthy intellectually-minded guy who is working on a Ph.d in International Relations or Political Science or some such shit - I can't remember. I've told him more about myself than almost anyone else - not so much because I need to, as because, as introverted and taciturn as he is, he is far more "human" than I am. I get a lot from him, not least his explanations of what "morality" is, which is distinct from my simple adoption of an arbitrary set of ethics.

But please, please, be careful who you trust, and never trust one person with everything. Never give any one person the power to ruin you. Always hold something back, keep something special for yourself. People change, people pretend, and people make mistakes. Keep something back, so that you have something to be, so that, when you are betrayed, you will be able to look them in the eye and truthfully say "you didn't ever have all of me". Keep something back, so that you'll always be just a little mysterious and interesting. Don't ever let the cheaters win.

I hope this has made some sense. I've tried to make it do so.

-luvvies, Vikkie  <3

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

<Stuff>

I'll dig out Zero Degrees of Empathy and find a few good definitions for you from there, think you might find it interesting.

Imagine there is a circuit in your brain - the empathy circuit - that determines how much empathy you have.  Let's call it the Empathising Mechanism ... we can discern that it has seven likely settings.  These are broad bands and we may move around a little within a band from one day to another, due to the transient fluctuations in our empathy.  But which band we are in is broadly fixed.

At Level 0, an individual has no empathy at all.  In Chapter 3 we meet individuals who are at this level and who wind up in clinics voluntarily seeking a diagnosis, or who have been compulsorily detained (as we say in England, 'at Her Majesty's pleasure') because they have got into trouble with the law, or who have had a diagnosis imposed on them.  At level 0 some people become capable of committing crimes, including murder, assault, torture and rape.  Fortunately not all people at level 0 do cruel things to others, since others at this level just find relationships very difficult but have no wish to harm others.  For others at level 0, even when it is pointed out to them that they have hurt another person, this means nothing to them.  They cannot experience remorse or guilt because they just don't understand what another person is feeling.  This is the ultimate extreme: zero degrees of empathy.

At Level 1, the person may still be capable of hurting others, but they can reflect on what they have done to some extent and show regret.  It's just that, at the time, they can't stop themselves.  Clearly, empathy is not having a sufficient brake on their behaviour.  For individuals at this level, a part of the brain's empathy circuit 'goes down' that would normally enable them ot inhibit themselves from hurting others, physically.  Under certain conditions the person may be able to show a degree of empathy, but if their violent temper is triggered the person may report that their judgement becomes completely clouded, or that they 'see red'.  At that moment, other people's feelings are no longer on the radar.  What is frightening is how this breakdown in the empathy circuit can leave the individual capable of extreme violence.  At the moment of the assault, the urge to attack and destroy may be so overwhelming there are no limits to what the person could do and their victim is at that moment simply an object, to be vanquished or removed.

At Level 2 a person still has major difficulties with empathy, but they have enough to have a glimmering of how another person would feel for this to inhibit any physical aggression.  This may not stop them shouting at others, or saying hurtful things to others, but they have enough empathy to realise they have done something wrong when another person's feelings are hurt.  However, they typically need the feedback from the person, or from a bystander, to realise that they have overstepped the mark.  Anticipating another person's feelings in subtle ways just does not come naturally to them.  A person at level 2 therefore blunders through life, saying all the wrong things (eg. 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg. invading another person's 'personal space').  They are constantly getting into trouble for these faux pas, at work or at home, perhaps losing their job of their friends because of it, yet are mystified as to what they doing wrong.

At Level 3 a person knows they have difficulty with empathy and may try to mask or compensate for this, perhaps avoiding jobs or relationships where there are constant demands on their empathy; making the effort to 'pretend to be normal' can be exhausting and stressful.  They may avoid others at work because social interaction is so hard, and just keep their head down and do their work in the hope that this doesn't bring them into contact with too many other people.  They may realise they just don't understand jokes that everyone else does, that other people's facial expressions are hard to read, and that they are never quite sure what's expected of them.  Small talk, chatting and conversation may be a nightmare for someone at this level, because there are no rules for how to do it and it is all so unpredictable.  When they get home, the relief (that comes from no longer having to 'fake' being like everyone else) is huge; they just want to be alone, to be themselves.

At Level 4, a person has a 'low-average' amount of empathy.  Most of the time their slightly blunted empathy does not affect their everyday behaviour, though people with this level of empathy may feel more comfortable when the conversation shifts to topics other than the emotions.  More men than women are at level 4, preferring to solve problems by doing something practical, or offering to fix something technical, rather than prolonged discussions about their feelings.  Friendships may be more based on shared activities and interests than emotional intimacy, though are no less enjoyable or weaker because of it.

At Level 5, individuals are marginally above average in empathy, and more woman than men are at this level.  Here, friendships may be more based upon emotional intimacy, sharing confidences, mutual support and expressions of compassion.  While people at level 5 are not constantly thinking about others' feelings, other people are nevertheless on their radar a lot of the time, such that they are fare mor careful in how they interact at work or at home.  They hold back from asserting their opinion, so as not to dominate or intrude.  They do not rush to make unilateral decisions so that they can consult and take into account a range of perspectives.  They take their time with others even if they have lots of other things to do, because they want to find out (sensitively and indirectly) how the other person is and what's on their mind - information that is better gleaned by chatting around a range of topics, rather than being extracted by direct interrogation.

At Level 6 we meet individuals with remarkable empathy, who are continuously focused on other people's feelings, and go out of their way to check on these and to be supportive. It is as if their empathy circuit is in a state of hyper-arousal, such that other people are never off their radar.  Rather than try to describe this type, let me offer you a sketch of one such person:
Hannah is a psychotherapist who has a natural intuition in tuning into how others are feeling.  As soon as you walk into her living room, she is already reading your face, your gait, your posture.  The first thing she asks you is 'How are you?' but this is no perfunctory platitude.  Her intonation - even before you have taken off your coat - suggests an invitation to confide, to disclose, to share.  Even if you just answer with a short phrase, your tone of voice to her reveals your inner emotional state and she quickly follows up your answer with 'You sound a bit sad.  What's happened to upset you?'
Before you know it, you are opening up to this wonderful listener, who only interjects to offer sounds of comfort and concern, to mirror how you feel, occasionally offering soothing words to boost you and make you feel valued.  Hannah is not doing this because it is her job to do it.  She is like this with her clients, her friends, and even with people she has only just met.  Hannah's friends feel cared for by her, and her friendships are built around sharing confidences and mutual support.  She has an unstoppable drive to empathise.

These are very broad strokes - this is a 130 page book just on Level 0, so trying to boil down each set into a paragraph or two is obviously going to miss things.  Later on, going into more depth about Level 0, describes four basic archetypes - the Borderline (who has trouble both recognising and reacting to emotions in others), the Psychopath (who may recognise emotions in others, but either does not react or assumes hostility in return and have issues with the idea of consequences), the Narcissist (who simply disregard the feelings of others through some sense of entitlement, skipping the recognition part entirely), and the Autistic (who has difficulty recognising emotions, but will try to react to them).  My summaries, I'm probably missing a bunch of key points.  As I said, it's a very interesting book if you're into that kind of thing, worth tracking down.

From your remarks, you sound somewhere around Level 3, possibly 2/3.  I would probably place myself around the 3/4 divide.  The book does actually have the questionnaire that they used to develop the empathy scale - I might post it up, both as a bit of interest and a possible character tool.

[Lyn Farel]

Too rigid to me, I could place myself at a lot of levels depending on a lot of stuff.

I think that degrees are great as a general rule, but they fail to adress that people can be very full of empathy and yet keep it under a big shell and avoid emotional interaction at all costs. I sometimes feel kind of like that (like lvl 5 or 6) and yet appear to act like someone with a lvl of 3 or 4...

[Arista Shahni]

think the point was = 'zero empathy' is a mark of one of several very serious clinical condition, not a fancy turn of phrase.

[Vikarion]

I'd like it if someone could address what I said about trust, but in regards to empathy, I can say that I see certain similarities with myself in many of the categories, as Lyn said. However, the "this means nothing to them" phrase resonates pretty strongly with much of my own experience. Making people happy, sad, or whatever has no intrinsic bearing on my emotional state.

That said, I've done a lot of thinking on the subject over the past couple decades, and considering the fact that I think that I will do better in a happy and ordered society, that's the sort of society I want to create. Also, I want other people to treat me well, and the transactional idea (you treat me well, I'll treat you well), along with other economic behaviors, comes relatively natural to me, although there has been a rather extensive amount of trial and error in getting to that conclusion. Of course, this tends to make me loathe cheaters/scammers in the system.

[Ollie]

Actually Vik, I don't think you lack empathy at all. You might not have it developed to the same extent as people who make use of it in a professional setting but based on some of the answers/scenarios you described I think it's there.

What you seem to lack is sympathy, which is not necessarily a dysfunctional thing.

[Arista Shahni]

If you have been sad, then you know what it is like to feel sad.  Therefore, your ecognize ssandess in others.  That's empathy.

Sympathy is 'doing something abut it'.

So +1 Ollie.

[Safai]

Making people happy, sad, or whatever has no intrinsic bearing on my emotional state.

I can't help but pity you then. That actually sounds like it really, really sucks.

Seriously, working in a soup kitchen does nothing for your emotional well-being? What about volunteering some of your spaceship time in exchange for the Big Brother program, where you can give a troubled or hapless kid an afternoon of enjoyment and discussion that he might not otherwise get? What about simply holding a door open for an elderly woman as she smiles and thanks you?

Wouldn't these things make you feel good? Even just a bit?

If not, are you a zombie or just totally depressed?

edit;

Sympathy is 'doing something abut it'.

Eh, not exactly. I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Empathy_vs_Sympathy