“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.
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The lack of empathy, however, has been linked to psychopathy by study after study after study.
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
Just linked this in the comment I left as well. Perfect timing on this comic!
Greed is a weakness. Empathy is a strength.
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.
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.
“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 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.
There are a lot of skills he doesn’t have.
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.
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.
But greed isn’t weakness?
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.
Huh…an admitted psychopath
