What startles me is how often this word salad of an interview gets analysed when it's probably not a summary of his mindset. Pure rambling chat. There is a worrying lack of argument in Musk's speech, it lacks reasoning and simply pronounces rather than discusses and persuades. This means to me that he's here simply to do something - he sees himself not as someone who leads the movement but more like Ayn Rand's messianic oligarchs of Atlas Shrugged - to quote from the book: he says: Get Out Of My Way. The problem is that Rand got it wrong and her worship of oligarchs as Supermen (and now Batmen) might have represented a top late 20th Century businessman (as she imagined Alan Greenspan to have been) but her work simply fails to describe the sons and daughters of such giants who now find themselves behind the levers of machines no human ever controlled before and no human understands how best to use.
Empathy cannot be destroyed. It is inherent to the human condition. Just like compassion and love. No matter how much they try to destroy and subdue it, it will always pop up. It will prevail.
Like climate change might derail us, diminish our numbers, make life very difficult for us, we will still prevail, because if nothing else, humans as a race are survivors.
“Elon and the other oligarchs know that empathy is their enemy.” Why? Because if there was a wave of empathy we would help each other more than compete… and in a world where there is not enough to go around (40% of humanity lives on less than $5.50 per day) you have to hold on to your luxury.
What if the lack of empathy has its roots in fear of loss?
Ignoring Musk for a moment (because one should on sheer principle), the case against Empathy is one of those points ripe for misunderstanding. Paul Bloom’s book “Against Empathy” is worth reading for that, especially the last third.
I made the point in the opening of my sarcastically titled “USA leads the way”.
Please do not misunderstand the point about empathy’s downsides to at all suggest that anyone is saying that empathy isn’t one of the greatest traits of mankind. We indeed need a lot more of it.
What startles me is how often this word salad of an interview gets analysed when it's probably not a summary of his mindset. Pure rambling chat. There is a worrying lack of argument in Musk's speech, it lacks reasoning and simply pronounces rather than discusses and persuades. This means to me that he's here simply to do something - he sees himself not as someone who leads the movement but more like Ayn Rand's messianic oligarchs of Atlas Shrugged - to quote from the book: he says: Get Out Of My Way. The problem is that Rand got it wrong and her worship of oligarchs as Supermen (and now Batmen) might have represented a top late 20th Century businessman (as she imagined Alan Greenspan to have been) but her work simply fails to describe the sons and daughters of such giants who now find themselves behind the levers of machines no human ever controlled before and no human understands how best to use.
Empathy cannot be destroyed. It is inherent to the human condition. Just like compassion and love. No matter how much they try to destroy and subdue it, it will always pop up. It will prevail.
Like climate change might derail us, diminish our numbers, make life very difficult for us, we will still prevail, because if nothing else, humans as a race are survivors.
“Elon and the other oligarchs know that empathy is their enemy.” Why? Because if there was a wave of empathy we would help each other more than compete… and in a world where there is not enough to go around (40% of humanity lives on less than $5.50 per day) you have to hold on to your luxury.
What if the lack of empathy has its roots in fear of loss?
Ignoring Musk for a moment (because one should on sheer principle), the case against Empathy is one of those points ripe for misunderstanding. Paul Bloom’s book “Against Empathy” is worth reading for that, especially the last third.
I made the point in the opening of my sarcastically titled “USA leads the way”.
Please do not misunderstand the point about empathy’s downsides to at all suggest that anyone is saying that empathy isn’t one of the greatest traits of mankind. We indeed need a lot more of it.