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Comment by d_theorist | Hacker News Reader

I think everybody knows that you can’t solve emotional/spiritual problems with such things as “hundred dollar bills”, “blackjack”, or “hookers”. In fact those things just make matters worse. But it seems often forgotten.

This comment has nothing to do with Elon specifically.

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As I said to the other comment or, you can also pay for therapy. Which maybe Elon is already getting, I don't speculate about his private life.

I was responding to a comment which I agreed with except in their in my opinion overly sympathetic portrayal of a rich and powerful person who has all the capability to take personal responsibility for his mental health - making any humanising or "give him a break" rhetoric, no matter how earnest, also a part of a tradition of deflection and distraction from the debate on how to make sure no flawed human has that much power without just creating an authoritarian nanny state

I think our comments complemented each other and provided a nice rounded criticism and I appreciate that. I think you're reading me a bit uncharitably though. There has to be space to talk about how everyone would fail in that position without denouncing it as apologia.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you, personally are intending to engage in this tradition, but pointing to anyone reasoning out that in general we are very charitable to those in power while very strict to those without. While you individually might be an exception, in general I don't expect people to point out how anyone hit hard enough might fall into drug abuse/other types of socially low-ranked patterns. In germany, there is even a joke about the difference between "eccentric" and "crazy" - about 1 million euro in private wealth.

So yes, I agree there needs to be a space on how everyone in a position like Elon could or would fail - but I think it's worth keeping this explicitly not charitable but simply as an argument on why nobody should be in that position. Otherwise we, unwittingly, contribute to that apologia.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree there, I think the charitability is a feature not a bug. I think it makes the argument accessible to Musk supporters & keeps it focused on the target of the criticism. I tried to make it more vocally critical and I felt it was less effective rhetoric.

But cheers, I think the comment is better for having your comment under it.

Thanks, I think your perspective is very valid and it boils down to what we are more concerned with (and I think diversity helps here).

For me, I'm more concerned with high probability manipulators, bad faith players and power seekers (i.e. billionaires and their sycophants) exploiting the tendency to charity and pushing leeway to the limit than by failing to win over supporters (for various reasons).

But I do agree it will scare away the supporters and those who care more about the "principle of charity" (or the appearance of that principle, since it's so rarely extended to those without power when they commit desperate crimes or do stupid shit).

Well said. On social media, you can often witness the sentiment "They're rich, therefore their emotional problems must be fake". Well, money solves many problems, but it also creates some new problems, and it can't fix sadness, won't help you find meaning in life, and doesn't satisfy your desire to be loved.

(This is neither an excuse nor a justification for Musk's behavior)

They can also buy therapy or relinquish their wealt if they feel empty, but the inverse (relinquishing poverty) is much harder. At a certain point (and billionaires definitely cross that), I still have empathy for them, but I think personal responsibility makes it "their problem" while the damage they can do to others is more important.

Therapy is not like an Ibuprofen that you can pop in and your headache disappears after half an hour. And "relinquishing their wealth" wouldn't automatically make them feel less sad, less empty, or less unloved. Rich people don't have these problems because of their wealth, they have them despite their wealth, because their brain is still that of a human – you know, like for the rest of us.

Yes, some empathy for those going through difficult personal times is healthy.

But when people allow their problems to harm others, we must by necessity become harder on them, try to establish protective boundaries, and hold them to account.

When someone is extremely powerful, whether through wealth, company position, or political office, the harm they can inflict increases exponentially and therefore we need to hold them to a much higher standard. They have all the resources they need to handle their personal problems through professional help and also the freedom to step back from having power and influence over others if they can't.

Having empathy for even the powerful is fine and well, as long as we don't forget to first and foremost have empathy for those they're hurting.

I agree with what you're saying. My point wasn't that we should have more empathy with bullying billionaires (although I can see how someone might read my post this way), but that even rich people sometimes have real problems that can't be easily solved by spending money.

We should have empathy with bullying billionaires, not because of anything they may or may not deserve, but because empathy is a tool for understanding humans. Empathy is a superpower.

If we fall to empathize with Musk, we can convince ourselves the problem is simply that the wrong billionaire has all that money. That's a fatal miscalculation. It is vital to understand that this power will corrupt anyone.

This is completely separate to the question of whether Musk is a good person or whether he is legally or morally responsible for his actions & the fallout from them. This is about doing right by ourselves by obtaining an accurate understanding of the world, and using that information to make good decisions about your our society should function.

I think people often conflate empathy and sympathy. I agree it's worth to try and have empathy with billionaires - otherwise, like you said, we can't build useful models of the world. The problem is that we usually can't empathise, because their reality is so detached from ours. Except when they behave extremely petty and stupid in public in very predictable ways, then it's possible to build empathy with them via these very revealing actions.

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