Musk is Wrong. Empathy is Not a Weakness.

For those of you who haven't yet, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with Curtis Yarvin's "Dark Enlightenment Theory," because that's what's informing all of these chuds.
JD Vance has cited this guy. Peter Thiel is a huge fan. Based on his views, Musk is almost certainly reading this stuff.
The "theory" basically boils down to that tenet: empathy is weakness, might makes right, and it's only natural for the strong to dominate and brutalize the weak.
Remember that kid in elementary school who refused to play with anyone at recess and just spent the whole time frying ants with a magnifying glass? That kid grew up and has an "intellectual following" now.

Musk: "The fundamental weakness is empathy" Also Musk: "Why are people so mean to me"
- Oxy, meet moron.

Empathy is strength, love is strength, unity is strength, solidarity is strength, divided we may fall but as one united working class we can stand forever.
While we stand together they tear eachother apart and in their disunity we the workers shall have our revolution. For they are weak and we are strong, they produce nothing and we create all of the value.

The fact that this is even a real headline should trouble everybody. I know the answer, but the question still is:” what kind of a state is the USA in where someone even feels the need to write this, rather than it being an assumed norm?”

You know who lacks empathy? Psychopaths.
This paper says this about it:
Importantly, empathy is such an essential component of healthy human social interactions that absence of it may lead to severe social and cognitive dysfunctions. A personality structure often marked by a lack of empathy is psychopathic personality.
Musk is once again pretending to know about things he's clueless about.
- Lack of empathy is how I characterize Republicans or conservatives in general. It explains every single one of their policy position.
  
  there also very good at pretending to have empathy, which is another key trait. hence why we seen "so many people" become super right wing as time goes on.

he has neither intelligence or empathy. he turned intoa space karen, because he mangled his penis in a botched surgery
- I'm down with calling him Space Karen from now on, actually.
  All opposed?

he's right. we need to let go of our own empathy to make us more effective soldiers in the fight to defeat him and the people like him.
i look forward to the day when these guys beg for mercy as we ease them into their excruciating fate with cold, unblinking eyes.

Empathy is one of the foundational blocks of the society he abuses.

The fact he says this, he proves that he really never cared for the human good, all that talk was just to people buy his shit.

The lack of empathy, however, has been linked to psychopathy by study after study after study.
- Yep. They can't even comprehend the notion.
  
  yes, the problem with having an ignorant idiot of a host/presenter have all these hugely influential people with their half baked ideas as guests is that he can't/won't point out basic facts like how a lack of empathy is indicative of anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.
  so, you've got how many bros who think "empathy is a bug" is a statement that doesn't need to be challenged out there.. repeating it in their heads.
  Roegan just lets them talk, its a forum for everybody!
- Wasn't it the other way around? Psychopathy is the inability to empathy.
  
  No, as a lack of empathy isn't the only defining characteristic of psychopathy. There is also a lack of remorse, disinhibition, and egocentrism amongst other traits.
  A lack of empathy alone doesn't make someone a psychopath. For example some people on the autistic spectrum can exhibit a lack of empathy but are not psychopaths. (Should be noted a lack of empathy is not a defining feature of autism - its variable and a lot of people on the autistic spectrum do have empathy).
  So its true to say a lack of empathy is a feature of psychopathy but not true to say that psychopathy is the inability to be empathetic.

Empathy is a weakness for sociopaths, and only sociopaths can be billionaires. So it's not a universal weakness, but it is a weakness for him.

Billionaires live in a weird bubble. Money and power twist the mind and destroy the soul.
Never idolize a billionaire, they're the closest thing to evil incarnate that walks the Earth. Remember, the Devil will present itself as friendly, alluring, and attractive. So, at least we know they aren't the Devil, but as close as reality can get, maybe.

I guess it closes the debate about Musk being autistic. Autistics are more likely to be hyper empathetic.
- Narcissists can display similar traits similar to autistic people. You’re right, he’s not autistic, just a narcissist.
  
  Narcissistic Personality Disorder, perhaps?
- Speaking as someone who is autistic, autism is rarely a one-size fits all diagnosis.
  While Hyper Empathy can be a side-effect of Autism, another is the exact opposite where your sense of empathy is limited to "So what have you done for me lately?", in this case the person has absolutely no understanding of interaction outside of it being transactional.
  Musk is definitely this kind
  
  First, I didn't write all of them.
  Now on the subject of autism and empathy, empathy is widely misinterpreted and misunderstood in autistics. The lack of empathy stereotype is based on the deficit model of autism and therefore on the lack of theory of mind. This model has roots in eugenic and neocolonialism (also known as neurocolonialism) and is deeply ableist.
  We have great research with good methodology and ethics (the opposite is true for the deficit model) about autistics not lacking theory of mind and being empathetic (often hyper empathetic). They just show empathy differently than the neurotypical. This is in fact true for many stereotypes about autism. Autism is a different cognitive style to process information, communicate (including emotions) and learn.
  It's where the Double Empathy Problem of Dr. Damian Milton comes in. It's the difference and not the lack between two or more individuals/group of individuals that makes the understanding issue.
  We are plenty of autistics on Lemmy.
- Wasn't the opinion of my psychologist about me. She told me I'm mildly autistic and that I show little empathy.
  For example I saw a dead pigeon on the bike lane and my concern was: my wife behind me might ride over it and be distressed.
  And it's not that I care about her being distressed if I'm saying the truth. It's that her distress would be a pain to handle. That the bike would be dirty which would cause further distress to my wife.
  Her response to seeing the dead pigeon was that she thought it was sad.
  Empathy is tricky 🤷🏻‍♂️ the only thing I feel about this truly, is guilt. But that's all.
  
  I'm not doing diagnosis. But, a psychologist that use "mildly autistic" should not be taken seriously on the topic. There is no level. The DSM 5 TR has level of support. It's very different and these levels can vary from one moment to an other (even in the same day).
  More about this in this journal article by Steven Kapp which is an autistic researcher.
  Profound Concerns about “Profound Autism”: Dangers of Severity Scales and Functioning Labels for Support Needs
  You show "little empathy" in comparaison with what? The neuronormativity? This is already an issue. We don't have to compare to neurotypical. We have to validate how autistics shows empathy, emotions, etc. Often, it's by resolving problems. E.g.: This is making you sad so we resolve the problem and you will be better. Advocating for someone is another. Sounds similar to what you wrote about your wife. It's often called "cognitive empathy". This is entirely valid!
  
  I mean, that seems empathic to me - you are relating to her (potential) feelings.
- And adds another chapter to the debate about him being a psychopath.
  
  Yes.

Empathy is a skill and he doesn't have it.
- It's a useful skill if you're trying to cultivate a popular following. The funny thing is that he used to have it and was quite good at feeling people out for a popular vibe. Now he's too ketted out to feel anything. Just a rolling ball of Id, bouncing between hungry, cranky, and horny.
  
  I wonder if he was ever good at it, or if before he got a pass on being a weird guy because his goals seemed positive (save the planet, push tech forward). Now that he's fixated on manosphere/nazi shit, more people are less willing to overlook his idiosyncrasies.
  
  Empathy is an ability not a skill. It's not a mundane tool to get what you want.
  
  He's gone too far with special k and needs to come back. Many such cases observed in the scene during my youth.
- There are a lot of skills he doesn’t have.

Empathy as a weakness is exactly what I'd expect to hear from a sociopath. If everybody thought this way, we'd have no civilized society.

Musk found out that the people that like him now, after pissiing off the nerds and tech enthousiasts, base their world view on the works of Ayn Rand, who peached that empathy and governement help is bad.
Disregarding that Rand died penniless and on governement hand outs.
But musk will find out again that, no matter how much money he flings at it, nobody will like him for who he is and that void will eat him up though it may make him do more silly things. And That's a shame
- Ya know, the irony here, nobody is gonna feel bad for him either.
  
  Yup no pity

Musk is a weakness

Believing empathy is a weakness is a symptom of psychopathy.

Fuck Joe Rogan for letting him say shit like that unchecked.
- Fuck Joe Rogan, period.
- I mean, who's surprised ? Joe Rogan isn't even a yes man. Dude appears to be physically incapable of exercising critical thinking.
  
  It's likely due to all the DMT, weed, supplements, and head trauma he's had over his career. Rogan has been bashed around like an old soccer ball in a LatAm favela, and his pivot to 'PodcastBro Extraordinare' came with so much drug use, it makes your local pharmacy blush.
- Money.. He knows this shit is evil, and he's okay with that.

- Just linked this in the comment I left as well. Perfect timing on this comic!
- Wow such virtue signaling /s
  
  Aw, did me signaling a virtue hurt you? Are you so weak you can't even be confronted with common virtues? So sad.
  Edit: /s

Ohh now it all makes sense.
Dude got bullied, felt miserable and couldn't deal with that. So he convinced himself to try and not feel feelings. Spoiler: doesn't work and often ends in drug addiction.
- Basically he has mommy daddy issues and wants to take it out on millions of other people. It's like punching someone in the face but then washing their car and acting like he's a saint.
  
  It's like punching someone in the face but then washing their car and acting like he's a saint.
  So the Biff Tannen comparisons work on more than just Trump.

He's really leaning into the villain trope. So many sci-fi villains claim that empathy and/or compassion are weaknesses. Their lack of it is usually their undoing.

What an asshole

"I'm a sociopath." - Elon Musk
- "I'm a sociopath, empathy is a weakness, therefore you should be a sociopath also, or you're doing it wrong." --Elmo, paraphrased
  
  "I'm a sociopath, therefore being a sociopath is best, because the alternative would confuse me."

If empathy is the weakness to my species, I'm glad we're committing suicide by capitalist made climate change.
Without empathy, we have no redeeming characteristics and nothing of value will be lost.
- Psychopaths can still be valuable members of society as surgeons who aren't freaked out by cutting into people. Their lives are worth something.
  We've just got an economic system that puts them exclusively in charge.

shitsociopathssay

I would recommend reading the quote in context, and not just headlines. It is not quite as insane as it seems at first glance, although just slightly. Transcript from Yahoo Fact Check:
Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
Musk: Yes, like, it's weaponized empathy is the issue.
The point, as I understand it, is that empathy lets people manipulate you into making short-sighted decisions based purely on feelings, without properly investigating the facts. This is true. However, I strongly disagree that this is the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. I think that greed and selfishness are way bigger problems, and this is also what leads to people taking advantage of people's empathy.
- The part you linked was very interesting. It started to make more sense in his context, but then I went to go look at what he was actually referring to.
  I feel that made it just as bad as the original out of context bit though.
  He was referring to a phrase coined by one of his buddies, suicidal empathy, which sounds like it equates helping people to when someone tries to rescue a drowning person and is then drown themselves. It doesn't seem to narrow the focus very much, and is more of the same BS that being "woke" is ruining the world. Here's his friend in his own words:
  The following essay by Dr. Gad Saad, an outspoken public intellectual and trailblazer in applying evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior, appeared on the cover of the January 2025 edition of When Free to Choose.
  This is my 31st year as a professor. Being an academic is inscribed in my DNA. To be able to create and disseminate new knowledge is the most noble of all pursuits. To properly do so, though, requires that truth and freedom be defended as inviolable deontological ideals. Otherwise, if one is constrained in what they can study or communicate, then academia ceases to be about truth.
  In my 2020 book, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, I argued that in the same way that organisms (including humans) could be parasitized by physical brain worms that detrimentally alter the hosts’ behaviors to serve the neuro-parasites’ interests, human beings could be infected by another class of devastating ideological neuro-parasites. I called these idea pathogens, and they include but are not limited to postmodernism, social constructivism, radical feminism, and cultural relativism, all of which stem from the academic ecosystem. It takes haughty professors, fully decoupled from reality within the walls of their ivory tower, to come up with some of the most imbecilic ideas imaginable. I then explain how these ideas came to be, and I offer a global mind vaccine to inoculate us against such departures from reason and common sense. In the 21st century, it should not be a debatable issue whether men can bear children or have menstrual cycles, but once a mind is infected with a mélange of these idea pathogens, all epistemological bets are off!
  The Parasitic Mind addressed what happens to our cognitive system when it is hijacked by ideological rapture. My forthcoming book Suicidal Empathy further examines the descent to madness by highlighting the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets. This is how the rights of a minuscule minority of trans women (i.e., biological males) trample the rights of actual women in athletic competitions. It is how illegal migrants end up receiving greater U.S. aid than American veterans or American victims of natural disasters. Evolution has endowed our emotional and cognitive systems with the capacity to deploy our resources strategically. This is why parents are willing to jump in front of a bus to save their biological children but are less likely to sacrifice their lives to save a random child across the globe. It does not make them callous but Darwinian beings capable of cost-benefit tradeoffs rooted in universal features of our human nature.
  The victory of Donald Trump on November 5, 2024, is an unequivocal repudiation of the ideological parasites that have wreaked havoc on our societies. However, it is crucial that we refrain from becoming complacent. This is no time to rest on our laurels. It took many decades of assiduous indoctrination for these parasitic ideas to flourish in every nook and cranny of our institutions. For us to fully flourish within an ethos of freedom will require that each of us contribute to the battle of ideas. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has the potential to affect change. Trump’s victory showed us that the silent majority abhors all of the progressive woke nonsense. People wish to live dignified lives rooted in the principles that made America great, namely personal agency, individual dignity, and meritocracy. With that in mind, I cannot express the extent to which I feel fortunate to be serving as a Visiting Professor and Global Ambassador at Northwood University. If all universities exemplified the spirit of The Northwood Idea, academia would be in much better shape. Truth and freedom shall always prevail.
  I feel this is a dangerous way of spreading hateful ideology. It frames it as a common sense argument, but it is based on falsehood. Where are the "victims of wokeness" and are the examples really victims, or people that just didn't get away with what they wanted to get away with? It is the same anti-migrant, anti-trans BS in better wrapping.
  Relevant comic shared today
  
  'Ideological neo parasite' is just another way of saying thought crime which is pretty funny coming from Mr 'ethos of freedom'.
  
  evolutionary psychology
  There are many sketchy people hiding their right-wing ideology behind that discipline. This is an entertaining video:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31e0RcImReY
- No, that’s bullshit.
  As a pretense: You have boundaries and you understand that others have agency.
  If someone tries to guilt you into doing something, you enforce your boundaries. If you feel someone you know is being forced into doing something, you make your case and you back the fuck off. Their agency guides the choices they make, up to and including making choices that you, yourself, would not make.
  Claiming that civilization is being manipulated by ‘weaponized empathy’ is horse shit designed to dismiss the agency of the people who made choices to help others. It’s sociopathy wrapped up in reasonable enough sounding psychobabble.
  Musk is a sociopath so convinced of his own greatness and so desperate for a tax cut that he’s willing to let people starve and say it’s because he knows better.
- They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.
  Who is "They"?
  Rogan: Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.
  The empathetic ones literally just got removed you fucking moron.

Greed is a weakness. Empathy is a strength.

Personally, I don't take advice or inspiration from a figure named Elon Musk. For me, empathy is a fundamental human value, not Tesla or Starlink. With empathy, I believe highly wealthy people can already solve world poverty and be happy together. But no, they use us as a source of income.

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
— Hannah Arendt

They key issue is to treat oligarchs, their lackeys, their polemicists as individuals that lack empathy and thus lack humanity. Never forget what they are. Only certain types of incentives will work with such individuals.
- Thank you for pointing this out. We indeed need to remember that oligarchs lack empathy, and therefore, humanity. You stated it so excellently.

I get saying it's wrong what he said (you would be right) but imo it's kinda missing the point. The most important thing to see imo is it's extremely pathetic. This is the same mf faking Path of Exile and diablo accounts so he can seem cool (he kept saying he was a top player so he would get kudos from the gaming community).
This man is probably the most thin skinned idiot I've ever seen. So it must be extremely convenient for him to see himself as the bad guy with no empathy whose cold rational calculation leads to emotionless decisions or whatever huge cope he tells himself every day. The reality is he's got more money than God and is running the current US administration and yet is still so mentally weak he is posting on Twitter hundreds of times per day about how he's being persecuted and actually arguing in the comment sections

Greatest thing I did with my life was to increase my understanding of other people's lives. He is toxic, whether he's trolling or not

So when he crashes and burns, or dies of a drug overdose, I'm not supposed to care?
Cool. I think I can manage that.
- He’ll achieve more lasting fame than the puppet who got elected. There will be endless psychological and economic studies on his rise and fall, trying to explain it.
  As people shun his name there will be a legend of a mysterious unnamed figure who first brought compelling EVs to the masses, who revolutionized space access, and was willing to try futuristic ideas other companies are too afraid to invest in. We’ll never know who that was.
  The name of Musk will forever be cemented as the oligarch with some sort of psychotic break who destroyed democracy, reduced the us government to a pandering mess of waste, fraud and corruption serving the whims of a few to the detriment of everyone else. Who was instrumental to wrecking decades of international influence and superpower status, who presided over the us fall from the biggest economy, and created a sharp inflection against scientific and technical innovation, and indirectly caused millions of deaths and great harm and suffering
- Hell, I can manage to celebrate

From a fascists pov it is. But only from a fascists point of view.
- from a psychopath’s point of view, really….
  they like to tell themselves it’s a sort of superpower….
  a narcissist kind of thing….
  like when Ted Bundy was defending himself in trial for murdering a 12 year old girl, he kept asking the police to describe the crime scene, and thought that showing no emotion would prove he didn’t do it…

Billions of years of evolution leading to this. Tons of research with the same result. Nope, says narcissistic sociopath, you're all wrong and I'm right.
- "4 billion years between our ears, still hatred brings us many tears"

Yes, the one thing that has kept our species' societies (sometimes barely) working for millennia is the bug, just because you're incapable of it, you goddamn ghoul.

That… Makes absolutely no sense.

Huh...an admitted psychopath

What a sad, pathetic little weasel.

But greed isn't weakness?

Not only him, Goliath...

I think, even a psychopath understand the usefulness of empathy at the conceptual level, both to the individual and society as a whole. Elon is just fucking stupid, insanely out of touch, drugged out of his gourd.
- Calling empathy a "bug" in human psychology is just so, so strange.

You know who else thought empathy was a weakness? That German party from the 1930s that turned out to be really bad for the world...
- Those cool swirls on their uniforms though…
  /s

I really like the tarot card for strength:
- Strength was originally Fortitude
  FORTITUDE.—Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours.
  Reversed: Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace.
  I think it's accurate to say that Musk has tried to portray Strength in the past. But he has revealed his true power level as the embodiment of the reverse.

The line between stupidity and evil is rather slim

Sweet. So we shouldn’t feel empathetic towards him, and if we feel he needs to be out of politics, we should do what is necessary and without empathy or emotion. Just as he is non empathetic as he kills, rapes and steals just so he can fill that empty void his parents not loving him left.

Disgusting pos

Empathy is Weakness. In almost all movies they tell about that. Well not the good guys. Hell Emperor Palpatine.

Like… Durh he believes this. He lived this and won pretty handily by never giving a shit about anyone. Now he’s the richest and most powerful person alive, so obviously he’s onto something! All this money can’t be wrong!

Give me 5 minutes alone with that motherfucker and I'll teach him the virtues of empathy.

I surely haven't felt any empathy for him as I've watched Tesla’s stock free fall...

I thought we were finally over the fact that it is no longer a "bad thing"-to show publicly. I still remember high school days days, where showing any kind of a fear or other emotion, was seen as a weakness.
My hope is is that the youth does not copy-cat this psychotic behavior too much.
- Musk is a little childish. Probably some developmental deficiencies going on there.

His Mom didn't show any empathy when she raised him. This is why he is a weirdo.

Well, that's the only thing I agree with him! Empathy IS a weakness!
- I would argue that empathy is one of the most critical advantages we have, as humans. It is fundamental to the super tribe effect. That allowed us to bypass the Dunbar limit and form societies larger than a tribe.
  It's also not soft. Endurance hunting relies on it. When your prey flees into cover, you need to follow. You need to put yourself into its head, to figure out where it went. That is empathic.
  Your life must be cold and distant without empathy.
  
  What allowed us to grow larger than a tribe was our will to kill those who are weak and empathetic.
- it says a lot about the alt right wing of society... they demand empathy when they feel slighted, but don't feel an ounce of empathy towards others.
  This is also the reason why the alt right wing only balks at problems when it directly affects them personally. If it doesn't affect them, it's not a problem, because other people's experiences don't matter/count/exist. And there's no need to learn from other people's mistakes.
- atrophied empathy will doom our species as surely as any other existential crisis we currently face.
  that is all.
- Not all weaknesses make us weak; and not all weakness is to be feared, mocked, ridiculed, or scorned. Admitting weakness can provide you with help from others; admitting weakness can free you from unrealistic expectations you've placed upon yourself; and being weak is a natural state of affairs in reality, in comparison to the titanic forces of nature under which we all strive to thrive.
  
  Weak cannot survive.