U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent

It’s interesting to muse about the larger picture here. What is it that makes autism so dangerous? To me it looks like part of an almost spiritual war against empathy/compassion by traumatized individuals trying to fight their own Jungian Shadow.

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

      ― G. M. Gilbert, American psychologist who worked on the Nuremberg trials

Didn't someone recently mention that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy"?

Sounds familiar...

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.

>To me, “suicidal empathy“ (if that exists) is a lack of empathy (for self) — not “too much of it“. It’s not zero sum.

"Empathy" in the form of thoughts and prayers might not be zero sum, but that's probably not the "empathy" that Musk is talking about. He's probably about government spending on refugees or foreign aid, which is zero sum.

Like l said, I doubt he experientially knows what he’s talking about. Or he means what he says and expresses the desire to paint empathy in a bad light and by that continue to dehumanize the other to justify violence.

Interesting that you talk about “thoughts and prayers“. I am talking about feelings, the foundation of empathy.