“We also have different modes of altruistic concern. One is a quick emotional response – recoiling in disgust, crying with sadness, or yelling with anger when we see someone harmed. Usually it has decent precision, though sometimes it can misfire: e.g., when we see an already-dead animal being cut open, or when someone stabs a life-like doll. It also doesn’t fire enough in many cases, such as when the organisms being injured are out of sight, when the harm is reported in numerical form (“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”), when the person suffering is unattractive or evil-looking, or when the animal that’s in pain is gross or scary (spiders, snakes, leeches).

We try to go beyond our visceral responses to suffering by thinking more deeply about what’s going on. Even though it looks disgusting to cut open a human body, if that body is dead, then there’s no one actually feeling the incision. Even though cockroaches look disgusting, we have to remember that they have some of the most sophisticated brains in the insect subphylum. A recording of a baby’s cry sounds awful, but it doesn’t actually represent anyone in the immediate vicinity who needs help. These kinds of realizations constitute a reflective mode of concern, and most of us agree that these opinions should trump our immediate reactions. Over time, neural rewiring may indeed make these reflective sentiments become our more immediate responses.”

— Brian Tomasik, Which Computations Do I Care About?: Types of caring (Essays on Reducing Suffering)