Comment by ChrisMarshallNY
1 day ago
Didn't someone recently mention that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy"?
Sounds familiar...
1 day ago
Didn't someone recently mention that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy"?
Sounds familiar...
There I had my money on infinite navel gazing while being completely unaware of the rest of the world
I didn’t know who that was, so googled. Apparently, Musk said that.
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Even autistic people can be jerks. Elon Musk doesn't have empathy because he's an asshole not because he's autistic.
No one I've heard is saying Musk is an asshole because he's autistic. It's Musk himself that's making that claim by attempting to use it as a cover for his asshole moves.
That quote was massively taken out of context. His argument was that the west has too much empathy, not that empathy is bad, period. He even specifically prefaced that with saying that empathy is a good thing.
Context:
Musk: Yeah, [Gad Saad is] awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
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.
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.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/yes-musk-said-the-...
To me, “suicidal empathy“ (if that exists) is a lack of empathy (for self) — not “too much of it“. It’s not zero sum.
You could go as far as to say that empathy only occurs in moments where there is no me or other, just an “us“. Which includes me.
His statements and behavior make me question whether he really experiences empathy or whether he lost that too early in his life to consciously remember.
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How does this context somehow exonerate him?
It reads like absolute paranoia to me.
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> They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization,
Who are? Did he say?
Sorry for not listening through the whole thing. There's a lot of pointless rambling going, which I guess is something inherent to the format more than it is to him.
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It's a dog whistle for hyper-individualism, radical selfishness, violating Kantian ethics, and stepping over homeless people.
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The problem with being on the public stage, is that Every. Single. Word. They. Utter. has the ability to be reframed. With Deepfakes, they can now have words put in their mouths, in a realistic manner.
That's why so many politicians and C-suite execs are "weasely." They learn to choose their words carefully. The Fed Chair can crash the markets, by wincing at the wrong time.
I empathize with him (see what I did, there?), but he's in a position where his utterances can either do great good, or great harm.
Many of these mega-rich folks keep their mouths shut, and that's for a reason.
That is not what happened here. The quote is completely consistent with who Musk is. And is exactly the same in the context. This is not Musk misspoking and experiencing unfair consequences.
It is Musk saying something that is perfectly consistent with everything he does.
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