Look how far we’ve come in health care. There are hot 95 year olds in my area. People live to 70/80/90/100. We’ve eradicated diseases and almost cured cancer until America abandoned science. Sorry about your family, thoughts and prayers and ribbons and crowdfunding.
A huge portion of the population is part of this. It’s not just nurses (who are hospitals) and doctors, but everyone from porters to trauma leads (if they aren’t fired by DOGE). From bystanders calling 911 to pharmacological researchers. Study participants to search and rescuers with wives in labour.
It’s our crowning achievement. Especially since we blew the information revolution by giving it to our bully lords.
Are there people involved in care with primarily selfish motivation? Of course. But we built this on empathy. It runs on empathy (and caffeine). Billions care for you because they have empathy.
It’s not our flaw. It’s our feature. It’s a deficiency to lack empathy. A deficiency of humanity.
From the APA’s “Journal of Experimental Psychology”:
“Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs” (2019)
(Abstract) or (Full Text PDF)
Further reading on this subject:
“How resource sharing resists scarcity: the role of cognitive empathy and its neurobiological mechanisms” (2022)
“Empathy moderates the relationship between cognitive load and prosocial behaviour” (2023)
“Cognitive load and moral decision-making in moral dilemmas under virtual reality: the role of empathy for pain” (2025)
(Abstract)
“The Influence of Cognitive Load on Empathy and Intention in Response to Infant Crying” (2016)
There’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that wealth, power, and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
- Have reduced empathy and compassion.
- Have a diminished ability to see from someone else’s perspective.
- Have low impulse control.
- Have an extreme sense of entitlement.
- Have a hoarding disorder.
- Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.
When you don’t need to cooperate with other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.
Humans have a strong need for egalitarianism; without it our brains malfunction and turn us into the worst versions of ourselves.
Some sources:
Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
Hoarding Disorder: It’s More Than Just an Obsession - Implications for Financial Therapists and Planners
On the evolution of hoarding, risk-taking, and wealth distribution in nonhuman and human populations
That literally sounds like the local rich kid that was a bully but then got a DUI and killed someone but because his parents are rich didn’t even serve a day.
Aren’t those signs of sociopathy?
I think we need to forbid people who qualify as sociopaths from holding any office with any degree of power. They can’t be trusted with power.
Wealth accumulation as a mental disorder makes so much goddamn sense.
Don’t treat Musk’s words as if they were coming from an intelligent source.
I think empathy is misunderstood. Especially this notion that having empathy is a proxy for being a good person.
Consider the sadist. You cannot enjoy someone’s suffering if you can’t recognize it. Being manipulative would also be difficult without a grasp of someone’s inner life. A confidence artist must be an empath. A “cold read” psychic must be uniquely empathetic.
In 1921 Hitler gave a speech where he promised to put Jewish people into camps to see “how they like it”. (he was upset about WWI German POWs and blamed Jewish people for their long internment). So Hitler did recognize Jewish people as human and capable of suffering; that was the point.
Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings and emotions of another person.
This is what makes the sadist argument so interesting, if still a red herring. They do share the feelings, and it gets them off! The issue with this line of reasoning is that level of sadism is a mental health problem and not something people should strive for or encourage; so in the end it’s not much of an argument against empathy.
Also, I don’t know that I agree that Hitler “did recognize Jewish people as human and capable of suffering.” I don’t think he cared either way. Their suffering & extermination was politically useful for him. I think that’s a pretty good argument against any empathic feelings he may or may not have held.
I feel like someone told Elon that he’s autistic and lacks empathy, and his reaction was to get all defensive about it and start claiming people who lack empathy are actually superior.
