Before going too far down a moralizing path, I think it’s also worth pointing out that empathy is an individually developed skill, but one whose value is ultimately based on higher order reasoning and rooted in amoral pragmatism/evolutionary biology. It is not actually an ability to distinguish good from bad.

Empathy and selfishness could be considered contrasting drives, and the former is more valuable than the latter only in so far as it involves broader understanding and perspective. Both are ultimately emotional biases. Just like selfish people are liable to justify exploiting others, empathetic people are liable to justify unfair or even destructive levels of self-sacrifice.

So there’s no moral distinction between being “tricked” into accidentally doing the right social thing and having empathy that helps find the same answer independently. Empathy can as easily be tricked into causing great harm through short-sightedness or failure to recognize the true cost of alleviating whatever pain is currently perceived.

For example: is adopting a large volume of war refugees the good action if it leads to public backlash that ultimately brings fascism to power and then starts a bigger war? It looks like that’s a consequence we’re only going to avert narrowly and by a considerable amount of luck. So far I’m still glad we did – but boy are we cutting it close. (And to be clear I realize that for the sake of my point I’m simplifying away other factors that could have reduced the political cost and had more to do with selfishness than empathy.)