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

(www.washingtonpost.com)
254 points perihelions | 5 comments | 27 Apr 25 09:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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47282847 ◴[27 Apr 25 10:51 UTC] No.43810954[source]▶
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.
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timoth3y ◴[27 Apr 25 11:29 UTC] No.43811131[source]▶
“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
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ChrisMarshallNY ◴[27 Apr 25 11:51 UTC] No.43811267[source]▶
Didn't someone recently mention that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy"?

Sounds familiar...

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gruez ◴[27 Apr 25 12:09 UTC] No.43811354[source]▶
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.
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sethammons ◴[27 Apr 25 12:26 UTC] No.43811444[source]▶
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-...

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1. cantrecallmypwd ◴[27 Apr 25 16:03 UTC] No.43812863{3}[source]▶
It's a dog whistle for hyper-individualism, radical selfishness, violating Kantian ethics, and stepping over homeless people.
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2. gruez ◴[27 Apr 25 16:45 UTC] No.43813213[source]▶
>violating Kantian ethics

???

How does "there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself" violate "Kantian ethics"?

Also, if we accept that "dogwhistle" framing, what should we make of the average leftist commenter saying that greed/inequality is a weakness of US's economic system? Maybe that's actually a "dogwhistle" for hyper-collectivism, radical Bolshevism, and stepping over rich people? Or is the "dogwhistle" characterization only a thing you apply to the Other Side?

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3. wahern ◴[28 Apr 25 02:07 UTC] No.43816860[source]▶
In Kantian ethics stealing a loaf of bread is wrong even if done by or for a starving person. In utilitarian ethics stealing bread in that context would be justified. The "civilizational suicide by empathy" narrative is rooted in a utilitarian ethics--empathy is good until the negative consequences outweigh the positive; whereas in Kantian ethics if empathy is good, it's always good, and if that possibly leads to civilizational suicide, so be it.

I think that's the point the poster was trying to make. I make no claim about what the practiced ethics are of Musk, of the cultural circles he travels in, or of the cultural circles he opposes (e.g. identity politics, social justice movements, etc); or even that Musk or any of these circles practice a consistent or coherent set ethics.

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4. coldtea ◴[28 Apr 25 07:18 UTC] No.43818529{3}[source]▶
>The "civilizational suicide by empathy" narrative is rooted in a utilitarian ethics

So in actually working ethics, and not some inflexible abstract principles posed by some German philosopher?

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5. wahern ◴[28 Apr 25 07:43 UTC] No.43818661{4}[source]▶
That's one take. A counter argument is that utilitarian calculus is highly subjective, individually and socio-culturally, resulting in movements like Social Darwinism, Eugenics movement, etc. And someone like Musk might even argue the ethics of identity politics and contemporary social justice movements are fundamentally similar to those earlier examples, relying on a present day calculus (whether nominally utilitarian or otherwise) that in time, if not already, will prove no less backward, unempathetic, and harmful. Kantian ethics is one attempt to restrain that kind of unconscious, self-serving discretion.

You can go back and forth, poste, riposte, ad nauseum. Abstract ethical philosophy and discourse are their own kind of tarpit, in some ways worse than the rhetoric behind the modern culture wars. To avoid getting drawn into them--the tarpits, if not the philosophies themselves--it pays to know how to identify them and how they interact.