Musk is Wrong. Empathy is Not a Weakness.

The lack of empathy, however, has been linked to psychopathy by study after study after study.

Believing empathy is a weakness is a symptom of psychopathy.

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.

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.

Fuck Joe Rogan for letting him say shit like that unchecked.

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.

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.

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

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

— Hannah Arendt

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.

Empathy is a skill and he doesn't have it.

I guess it closes the debate about Musk being autistic. Autistics are more likely to be hyper empathetic.

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 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.

Musk: "The fundamental weakness is empathy" Also Musk: "Why are people so mean to me"

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.

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.

Greed is a weakness. Empathy is a strength.

"I'm a sociopath." - Elon Musk

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.

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.

What a sad, pathetic little weasel.

#shitsociopathssay

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

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.

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.

he has neither intelligence or empathy. he turned intoa space karen, because he mangled his penis in a botched surgery

But greed isn't weakness?

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?”

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.

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.

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

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.

What an asshole

Huh...an admitted psychopath

Not only him, Goliath...

From a fascists pov it is. But only from a fascists point of view.

Musk is a weakness

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.

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...

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

Disgusting pos

That… Makes absolutely no sense.

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

I really like the tarot card for strength:

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.

The line between stupidity and evil is rather slim

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!

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

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

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.

Well, that's the only thing I agree with him! Empathy IS a weakness!