23 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening.
Which is why it is so popular among neurodivergent people. It took me years to get out of the headspace of “I am an island” and away from Libertarian thought. But I know a ton of really smart people who have done really well in Tech despite being Autistic and/or having severe ADHD— a lot of them have been treated like shit and “other-ized” for so long that they have no real empathy for people who disagree with them or get in their way.
Comment by dweezil22 at 19/01/2025 at 17:34 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
But I know a ton of really smart people who have done really well in Tech despite being Autistic... a lot of them have been treated like shit and “other-ized” for so long that they have no real empathy for people who disagree with them or get in their way
Bah. There is no need to make this so victim minded (I say this as a big tech engineer with an autistic kid). Some ppl are inherently more empathetic than others. Being on the spectrum often impairs innate empathy. Empathy can also be cultivated and even taught to someone completely lacking in it, if they're smart enough. If you have little innate empathy you need two things to cultivate it:
1. Incentives
2. Tools
30 years ago tools were hard to come by, but no longer. Incentives vary. If you're a rich engineer that's being told you're doing great, you have no incentive to change. If you go over to X you can get positive feedback for actively rejecting empathy. Without incentives to make un-empathetic people learn empathy, they will not do so. I think 2021 was probably the peak time in US history to be an unempathetic engineer. Since then, with tech layoffs, empathy has become more valuable (if you have to pick who to layoff, the unempathetic asshole is going to go before the kind person, all else equal) but the "intellectual Dark web" stuff has also taken off so those folks can find echo chambers to tell them their lack of empathy is a feature and it's the world's fault for not appreciating it.
Comment by omgFWTbear at 19/01/2025 at 16:02 UTC
15 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I think you’ve got the tail and the dog backwards. Empathy is something one learns. If their neurodivergence taxed the adults who raised them, they may not have gotten as clear and as differentiated lessons in empathizing as others. To say nothing of the quite horrifying trend in parenting I’ve seen for decades now, where “politeness” *the ritual* is taught - you grab a kid and tell them to say they’re sorry, rather than ask them to think about how *they* would feel if someone punched them, and when they say bad, you follow up with, so how do you think you punching them mad them feel? Bad. So do you want to be someone who makes other people feel bad? … M
Comment by bastianbb at 23/01/2025 at 10:04 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reddit loves to believe that empathy is some kind of moral cure-all, but this is not supported by the evidence. Everyone should read "Against Empathy" by the (former Yale) psychologist Paul Bloom.