# Thought on why there's such a lack of empathy on social media
> Der Charakter eines Menschen zeigt sich im Handeln.
> -- Common quote taken from [blog](https://kattascha.de/das-daten-imperium-der-beatrix-von-storch/) of @kattascha
Right. Indeed. There are two levels to the world: https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105652797745648749
And the problem with interactions in the digital sphere is exactly the lack of physical reality, body language clues, etc. _If I cannot sense what your acts are, the only heuristic to guess your character are (my interpretations of) your words._ But since words are a one dimensional linear serialisation of the rich and colourful universe in your head, by necessity the character estimate I construct will be largely wrong (as would be any 1D projection of an xD object).
Perhaps the robustness principle would be a good guidance here:
> Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others
> -- Robustness Principle/Wikipedia/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
It's not exactly tolerance. Benevolence? What's the right human word for this?
If we on the other hand "filter" a bit, being a bit liberal (as you last quote in message) in what to make of what we just heard, and to at least consider "maybe this person thinks it is alright to talk to that person like that?" or the other way around, if you see something that is "innocent" but clearly misinterpreted, should we perhaps help out in pointing out the cultural differences we might be coming from? I don't know. I'm just speculating as well.