The empathy exploit

Don't let empathy be weaponized against you or your civilization

There’s an ongoing discussion around empathy, and it’s a topic you need to have lived enough or be honest about human nature to truly understand. Some places in America, like San Francisco, believe they are being empathetic by providing ongoing resources for drug addicts. On the surface this seems admirable. But combined with a homeless-industrial complex that allowed addiction to persist to maintain the flow of funds, it becomes enablement. No one has incentive to improve their life. They are allowed, even encouraged, to maintain their habit indefinitely. A great book exploring this topic, San Fransicko, is worth reading. It’s notable I hear they’re finally starting to rethink things.

Empathy applied thoughtfully is a virtuous quality and honestly very American. Americans are known for their empathy toward causes around the world, donating time, money, and supplies to help other nations. Yet this generosity coexisted with neglect of poverty and a declining quality of life in our own cities. You can want to help both situations, but at some point, the optics of domestic decline began to outweigh the goodwill of international efforts, which is just one item of many that led to political change. It turns out, having a society in order is similar to having one’s life in order: in both situations you need this before you can help anyone else in a sustainable fashion. Don’t shoot me, I’m just trying to be an honest messenger.

It’s naïve to think empathy isn't exploited. Bad actors, sociopaths, political regimes are more than willing to take advantage of this human trait, one the West has in abundance. You could say that, during good times, our strong financial and social conditions made us feel obligated to be empathic with no bounds. It’s understandable, and basic human nature.

The COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were, at their core, an act of empathy designed to help small and medium-sized businesses survive an unprecedented economic shutdown. But alongside that good intent, the PPP also became one of the largest government-enabled grifts in American history. According to a 2023 report from the Small Business Administration’s Inspector General, an estimated 17% of all PPP loans - roughly $135 billion - were fraudulent. Other independent analyses, including one from the Associated Press, found loans went to companies with no discernible operations before 2020, or to shell companies set up solely to siphon funds. In one telling case, a single address in California was linked to over 100 different loan applications.

The twin truths of the PPP, that it was both a massive, well-intentioned act of empathy and a historic invitation for fraud, illustrate the problem with acts of empathy at scale.

In the internet age, empathy is weaponized against us constantly, particularly to drum up support for one side or the other in overseas conflicts. It’s so effective people are persuaded to support groups that would harm them if they were ever in the same room, a form of ‘luxury beliefs’ empathy as Rob Henderson might say. Unfortunately, many either lack the capacity to think these things through or use a mental model disconnected from reality, leading them to side with people and groups that in reality despise them.

Homosexuality is illegal in Gaza, social persecution and violence against LGBTQ+ people are significant and well-documented. This sign actually does makes sense, if they would like a Hamas-free Palestine, run with Western values.

Empathy is essential, it’s how the tribe survives. But it must be practiced wisely. And while the intelligence tools around us are increasingly smart, we’ve become deeply unwise. The answer is to prioritize empathy for those in your immediate life and close social circles. From there, empathy can expand outward into the broader community, carefully and with prudence. Men should stop to help a woman change a tire on the side of the road, for example. But you must also recognize that we live in a world filled with opportunists who will exploit your empathy without a second thought. Simple acts aside, empathy, like trust, must be earned or chosen with extreme care.

At the national level, we should show empathy toward neighboring countries and developing nations, but not in the old way. Baby boomer politicians often sent low-nutrient, high-sugar consumer goods, which merely enabled dependency instead of building self-sufficiency. Real empathy would mean sharing technologies and teaching processes that allow others to grow their own food and thrive independently, just as true empathy for an addict means helping them get sober, not enabling their addiction. The problem is, many programs are incentivized not to solve problems, but manage them, and taxpayers are asked for empathy to keep these programs going indefinitely.

The formula is simple:
We should show high empathy at the local level, and increasingly careful empathy as we move outward, in such a way that solves issues in a durable fashion, not creates systems of dependence. In a real-time, internet connected world, this becomes increasingly true. It is also notable and related that people lose friends when those friends have inverted empathy in favor of a political tribe and far off conflict instead of the intimate relationships in their own life. If everyone focused mostly on improving things locally, in a way their work had immediate impact on solving problems and improving relationships, the world would instantly become better.

And even locally, the empathy exploit can be real. I’ve been personally taken advantage of before through this mechanism, and won’t let it happen in that way again. It’s something you learn with time, probably inevitable for us all. And that’s okay, because through experience, you learn how to handle situations better. You can still be empathic, just in more effective ways. A world where everyone leans slightly more empathetic than not is still a better place.

Or maybe you won’t learn, because you have no empathy for anyone but yourself.

But that would be a tragedy, too.