Elon Musk on "civilizational suicidal empathy"

Snopes.com fact check:

Elon Musk said these words during a Feb. 28, 2025, episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, from around the 1:16:00 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOxPJD-VNo 

Musk: There's a guy who posts on X who's great, Gad Saad?*

Rogan: Yeah, he's a friend of mine. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times. 

Musk: Yeah, he's 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. 

Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.

Musk: Yes, like, its weaponized empathy is the issue.

Source:  Snopes.com "Yes, Musk said 'The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here's context"

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elon-musk-empathy-quote/  

* Saad is an atheist who describes himself as culturally Jewish.  (Zeitlin, Alan (26 May 2021). "Jewish author Gad Saad stares down the growing tide of antisemitism". The Jerusalem Post.)

Copilot definition of empathy vs. sympathy

Empathy and sympathy are related but distinct concepts:

Sympathy: Involves feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for someone else's hardships. It is an external expression of concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult. 

Empathy: Involves understanding and sharing another person's feelings by imagining yourself in their situation. It is an internal emotional response that allows you to connect with someone else's emotional experience. 

In summary, sympathy is about feeling for someone, while empathy is about feeling with someone.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another

also : the capacity for this