“The fundamental weakness is empathy,” Musk recently told radio podcast host Joe Rogan. “There is a bug, which is the empathy response.”
As Musk has established himself as at least the second most powerful person in an administration seeking a wholesale remaking of institutions, rules and norms, what he said matters, because it encapsulates a political plan. What the Project 2025 report set out in over 900 turgid pages, Musk’s remark captures in a simple pithy mantra for the social media age.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
Highly unlikely that DMT and weed reduced his capacity for empathy.
More likely the mainlining of $$$ and value system that says cash supercedes all else.
Money… He knows this shit is evil, and he’s okay with that.
I surely haven’t felt any empathy for him as I’ve watched Tesla’s stock free fall…
What a sad, pathetic little weasel.
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.
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.
Empathy is one of the foundational blocks of the society he abuses.
Well, that’s the only thing I agree with him! Empathy IS a weakness!
atrophied empathy will doom our species as surely as any other existential crisis we currently face.
that is all.
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.
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.
“Weak” regularly survives, and thrives. Do you expect everyone on Earth to always be “strong” at all times in all situations? Are all moments of weakness to be shamed and scorned, even if they follow many days, weeks, or months of strength?
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.
That happened, until 10+ tribes got pissed off, got together, and wiped them out. Eventually those tribal groups grew into villages, towns and city states. Many tribes, united in a common purpose.
So, you agree that empathy doesn’t work.
Soldiers fight together out of empathy, as much as orders.
The super tribe effect allows for nations and fandoms. If you’ve ever seen a hyped up group of football fans, you’ve seen super tribe empathy in action.
It also allows for mutual support. We support the weak because we know what it feels like to be weak. I have been helped by the empathy of others. I have chosen to let my empathy help others in turn.
Empathy ties us together. It allows us to reach FAR beyond what we could alone. Empathy is both the glue that holds society together and the oil that stops the whole construction seizing up.
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 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!
That’s because he’s not the brightest guy tbh
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.
Are there empathy possessing psychopaths?
Cognitive empathy, yes, absolutely, affective empathy, no. Difference between flinching when someone gets hurt and understanding that someone gets hurt, including the theory of mind to understand that they don’t like that. Which is why the well-adjusted ones (mostly a function of nurture) make damn good surgeons. Maladapted ones will use that (very acute) cognitive empathy to do the usual dark triad stuff.
No, I think another way to say it is that lack of empathy is a necessary, but not sufficient, criterion for 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”
Musk: “The fundamental weakness is empathy” Also Musk: “Why are people so mean to me”
Oxy, meet moron.
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.
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.
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.
The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
— Hannah Arendt
