I’d give up natural empathy to gain extra natural intelligence. Of course I assume with the intelligence I could be empathetic at will. And I could turn off empathy when it was inconvenient.

For autistic people this really isn’t much of a paradox, I’ve had to learn empathetic skills as an adult because they don’t come naturally anyway. So give me more intelligence all of it!

Reduce my empathy for extra intelligence. Kill two birds with one stone.

I mean, my empathy causes me a lot of stress. I’ll take the intelligence.

Personally, I feel like low empathy is a sign of low intelligence ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ Emotions control so much of human behaviour so if you can’t understand yours or others you won’t be able to solve any problems with a human element.

As someone pretty high in both, I’d lose some empathy. Gets me me in trouble sometimes