i've found this to be wrong a lot actually

high empathy means you feel what you think the other person is feeling,

Highly empathetic people have horrible theory of mind issues a lot of the time.

Totally a hunch, but I always felt the (self proclaimed) "high EQ" people were people who generally hung out with other "high EQ", who generally were people that wear their emotions on their sleeve. Never mind mostly were interested in consuming content geared towards "people problems" rather than "thing problems".

People with high empathy tend to feel other's feelings more (sometimes to their own detriment). Emotional intelligence helps with reading other people.

The thing about IQ and EQ being on different ends of a spectrum is kind of wrong. Turns out, those people whose minds work more efficiently, do so across the board.

In other words, smarter people are better able to gauge people's emotions as well.

How did you reach that conclusion? From the article: "Those who demonstrated a stronger ability to perceive emotions in others also judged intelligence more accurately."

I guess you're surprised that empathy is not more important than intelligence? My thought there is that perceptiveness is a large part of intelligence, and if you lack that, you won't recognize the signs of intelligence no matter how empathetic you are.