What you have said is unobjectionable, though I am not entirely sure if you are making an argument or stating a tautology. I understood it as - empathy is a skill that can be developed - local maxima are not Truth
The mental processes that underpin empathy are the ones I use to manipulate or otherwise "convince" someone of something. I see it as a mechanism that can used to various ends my myself or by others on me. Something like hunger or lust. So in this sense, I do not see it as a skill that can be improved by practice. Lastly, local maxima are all we have. I see this as a consquence of Arrow's impossibility theorem. One can move from one to the other and I can't tell if this is in anyway different than if I never change.
