Loosely related to Which explorer called the Gulf of Mexico/America the Golfo de Florida? …
David Levitt, a Marvin Minsky PhD student at MIT 40 years ago, posted the following meme on his Facebook feed:
It struck me as odd that Einstein, who died in 1955, would have written or said anything on the subject of “empathy”, a term that has only recently come into vogue as a personal bragging point (“I’m empathetic and you support genocide; #FreePalestine”). Being a horrible person without an AI assist, of course I couldn’t resist commenting with Einstein’s well-documented writing “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.” (from 1922-23 diaries), presenting this in a positive light as an inspiration to Harvard University’s admissions office. And I noted that even our AI overlords couldn’t find any source for Einstein having said “Empathy is patiently and sincerely seeing the world through the other person’s eyes”. David responded with a clickbait quote web page, which itself did not cite any source, as proof that Einstein had opined on empathy. (Of course, since those who advocate for diversity can’t tolerate viewpoint diversity, he subsequently defriended me.)
Now I’m curious… did Einstein ever write or say anything on the subject of a working definition of empathy, as in the meme? Most of Einstein’s writings are online, e.g., at https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/, so one would think that ChatGPT would have consumed them. In fact, however, ChatGPT can’t find any instance of Einstein using the term “sincerely” except in closing a letter with “Yours sincerely”. This makes sense to me because bragging about one’s superior fund of sincerity is also a relatively recent phenomenon.
David Levitt has a Ph.D. from MIT. This member of the credentialed elite accepted a combination of meme and clickbait quote web page as proof that a historical event (Einstein writing or saying something) actually occurred. In the bad old days, by contrast, middle school kids were taught that they couldn’t use an encyclopedia as a source. Teachers demanded that they find a primary reference so as to avoid accepting a misattribution. What is a reasonable definition of historical truth in an age where we have an arms race between people with computer assistance putting out falsehoods (possibly just for clicks/ad revenue) and people training LLMs? If Grok says that something didn’t happen can we be more confident in that than in Wikipedia, for example? Are LLMs sufficiently skeptical to cut through what’s produced by all of the cleverest Internet content developers? Or are we doomed to lose access to historical facts? In fifty years will the remnant humans left alive by Skynet believe memes in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. praises rule by AI?
Separately, never forgot that Albert Einstein is justly famous as a science writer for popularizing the work of physicist Mileva Marić (photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity, for example). Even if Einstein never wrote or talked about empathy, that doesn’t take away the credit he deserves for his work in assisting Ms. Marić with publishing her research.
The “Capt. Gilbert” quote might be genuine. How about the Hannah Arendt quote? She died in 1975, decades before the Empathy Boom among Democrats. ChatGPT:
No, Hannah Arendt did not say, “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”
This quote is often misattributed to her, but there’s no verified source—none of her writings, interviews, or lectures—where she says or writes this exact line.
Finally, let’s look at the Elon Musk quote, taken from a conversation with Joe Rogan (bold highlights are my own potential excerpts to capture the spirit of the Musk-Rogan conversation):
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, it’s weaponized empathy is the issue.
I, of course, will never see eye-to-eye with Elon Musk on the issue of whether every vehicle should have sliding doors… #LongLiveHondaOdyssey
More quotes from Elon: “Mass immigration is insane and will lead to the destruction of any country that allows unfettered mass immigration … A country is not its geography. A country is its people. This is a fundamental concept.”
https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1908557691372384332
Special relativity was actually created by Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski.
Many quotes are falsely attributed to Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Einstein. Somehow a statement seems much more profound if you can attribute it to one of them.
Sorry David defriended you, but I’m confident he defriended you empathetically.
RS, tell that to Nobel committee. Einstein was awarded Nobel price for 1. Photoelectric effect 2. Quantitave theory of Brownian motion. 3. Special relativity, all done in a single year while working full time as a patent clerk. Lorenz and Puancare came close, perhaps Puancare could have finished it in few more years. Minkowski picked it up and developed it. There were rumors that well-established genius Puancare, part of French elite, wanted new guy to score it big, but these were just rumors. Einstein always gave credit for all who influenced him, particularly Maxwel, Lorenz, Mikelson-Morly experiment, I believe to Minkowski too.
For those who had not have the pleasure to read Einstein’s credo:
https://library.yu.edu/c.php?g=1073982&p=7880252
And a short article on Einstein’s social ideas:
https://cooperative-individualism.org/einstein-albert_why-socialism-1949.htm
“But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. ”
And yet Einstein choose to immigrate to USA, which still had predatory capitalism, despite all FDR efforts, or like Soviet communists claimed, due to FDR efforts saving capitalism. USSR did not have predatory capitalism in 1930th, it had socialism. In this sense Einstein is a forerunner of modern American socialists: you can not make them to go to socialist countries. Also Einstein sold his inventions, I believe to Electrolux and US Government if I recall correctly, which he cooperatively invented with Leo Szilard but did not socialize with other entities.
I think David is a brilliant computer scientist even if he did get a PhD in DEI along with Claudine Gay.
Typo: Albert Einstein died in 1955, not 1995.
He was a great physicist, not a great economist. He wondered about magic of compounding of interest. Ironically, his most famous work came out when he was fending for himself in capitalist Switzerland. There is something with sinecures which make most people less productive, even if they bring greater rich and resources.
The kind of socialism he was advocating for was utopical and was based on his immediate circle which mostly consisted of lite scientists and engineers. Has nothing to do with modern left.
Fixed the typo. Thanks!
Having a guaranteed paycheck for life and a beautiful house at Princeton would definitely change a person’s perspective.
I’m not exactly sure what they mean by ‘suicidal empathy’. Perhaps an example would help, though I doubt it. Every time I read something about Elon Musk (which I try not to), I cannot help but get the sense that his entire public persona was contrived by some think-tank as a Tony-Stark-inspired media stunt intended to distract and stultify the public.
“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.”
The brilliant musings of a rocket scientist. Yeah, right.
AJ, suicidal empathy is a pretty simple concept for most of us (even non-rocket scientists). Maybe Kackling Kamala can explain it to you with one of her trademark word salads.
What is the problem, no four letter exclamations and mentioning of the the same in conjuction with word mother?
ChatGPT 4.5 to the rescue: The term “suicidal empathy” was coined by Dr. Gad Saad, an evolutionary psychologist and professor of marketing at Concordia University. He introduced this concept to describe a form of excessive compassion that, when misapplied, can undermine societal cohesion, values, and security. According to Dr. Saad, while empathy is generally a positive trait that fosters understanding and cooperation, it can become detrimental when it leads individuals or societies to make decisions that are ultimately self-destructive. This occurs when empathy is extended without limits or critical evaluation, potentially enabling harmful behaviors or policies that compromise the well-being of the empathetic party.
For a more in-depth discussion on this topic, you might find Dr. Saad’s talk titled “Suicidal Empathy and the Decline of the West” insightful. [link provided: https://youtu.be/NknDCkgdENQ?si=LwhunwNmkNfAXrZ7 ]
Isn’t it a bit too convenient to blame society at large for mass immigration and the problems it causes? That’s the tacit implication, no?
AJ, democratic society which hold elections every 2 years, after over half a century, yes, it makes sens to blame it for its own internal misfortunes. I do not, it is neither productive, nor compassionate, nor emphatic. And it could cause a lot of pain. It does it make it wrong.
Dear A. Jackson,
My Joey and I just consulted Hunter (the smartest man around as per Joey and also the leader of the free world for the past four years). He differs with you a bit on your thesis of blaming “society at large” for the invasion of the U.S. by illegals during Hunter’s “term” in office. He claims it was the Nazis and Fascists. Go figure.
AJ: I agree with perplexed. If a European or American government chooses to open the border and let in an unlimited quantity of humans from the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies that decision is properly attributed to the voters. In a democracy, the government does what the majority of voters want (I guess there are some exceptions in parliamentary systems because of the strange coalition patterns and also in the U.S, perhaps, because our nation is divided 50/50). Elon Musk got in some trouble for a similar statement, actually, when he pointed out that Adolf Hitler had some assistance from employees of the German government. That went against the narrative that all Germans were good, but they were forced into doing some bad things by a single bad man (Hitler).
@perplexed
> “you voted for it”
Case in point. One need not accept such a facile excuse.
AJ, I used to live in large urban areas. What happened under Biden kept happening all over US in somewhat smaller scale for decades. Perhaps boiling point could be delayed by 10 years but not longer. It is not “you just voted for it”, it is “you kept voting for it for most of the century, every 2 years”. And of this time it was not a 50/50 split on the issue, which is now may be close to 50/50 due to induced demographic changes. As a believer. I am thinking about greater designs and not blaming any societal group in particular.
I made typos of my own: “gr eater rich” = “greater reach”, “lite” = “elite”
@(((philg)))
How dare you question (((David Levitt)))’s scholarship. Even if (((Einstein))) and (((Arendt))) did not say what they are quoted as saying, they should have to fight racism.
History is a tool to promote (((anti-racism))). The truth is a dangerous thing. Wikipedia says Hannah Arendt is a Holocaust survivor. There is this mad notion on the internet that kristalnacht was a response to (((terrorism))). Another notion is that der nacht der longen messer was to purge the party of pedophiles, so that the nation could be purged of (((pedophiles))).
I wonder how (((Randi Weingarten))) could suppress this post like her (((constituents))) suppress dangerous antisemitic literature like the Bible and Luther’s seminal tract, Von der Juden and ihr Lugen.
Cant’t get either in the school libraries and its a good thing too.
M: I’m not sure that David Levitt is a Jew. Based on the last name, his father would likely be Jewish, but that doesn’t make him Jewish unless we have some additional information about his mother. Even a last name might be misleading. Consider Whoopi Goldberg, soon to be deported (see https://www.newsweek.com/whoopi-goldberg-fears-donald-trump-deportation-2046221 ). Born “Caryn Elaine Johnson”, she has no relationship to any Jew or, indeed, anyone named “Goldberg”.
He was a fan of entropy, before writing essays in prompt boxes was the way to solve physics & humanities majors ruled the world.
I wonder what Albert Einstein would have thought about high tariffs on Chinese-made products!