Excellent response, thank you for your thoughts.<p>I like the idea of empathy being a bridge between two sides-- closeness helps in building that bridge. If the sides are way too distant, the bridge will inevitably collapse into the abyss. But if the bridge itself is made of strong stuff, constructed in good faith, then absolute closeness isn&#x27;t so big deal. So long as trade of ideas can safely go back and forth across that bridge, in equal measure. I might be stretching a metaphor a bit there.<p>Feedforward is indeed quite powerful between two receptive parties; the last time I got a peer review the person I was doing with did it to me, which made me all the respectful of him.<p>&quot;empathy is the ability to bring someone close&quot; indeed!