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Yeah, it sounds like a term of art for some particular area of thought that is being missapplied to folks on the spectrum.

Most autistic people I know are deeply empathetic. They just deal with/show it in a specific way. Of course, there are autistic people who are assholes too. I believe empathy/lack of it is not an autistic trait: the concept you describe more shows the limitations of empathy in the dominant neurotype

Yuuuuuup bsky.app/profile/lawn...

I would say a total lack of knowledge generally—like a toddler really.

📌

It's also why they suck at graphic design and acting

💯 the lack of imagination is a mortal short coming. What is empathy if not a profound imaginative capacity?

Minnesota in a nutshell. Why are people helping instead of abandoning their neighbours? That's what THEY'D do.

I've often been astounded by people who can both say "we will never surrender! They can never take away our spirit!" but also believe "we will beat them into submission and they will beg to surrender to us!". Like, can't you see your both exactly the same?

There are obvious sociopaths like Trump, and the latest theories suggest that 1-2% of humans are non-violent sociopaths, but also there's some kind of spectrum. A whole lot more people are fully capable of empathy regarding their circle of friends and family, but anyone else? Not so much.

never thought I’d miss, like, a Rumsfeld who at least knew their opponents could REACT

They keep being shocked when people they attack don’t just roll over and accept it: Venezuela, Greenland, Minneapolis, Iran. The fact that people have their own desires and beliefs is somehow completely foreign to them

Conventional media and social media companies created an illusion of competence and popularity and it tricked enough low information voters to get Trump back in power. But for the reasons you stated, MAGA can't maintain that illusion long enough to keep power.

I call it “tactical empathy” but same principle. Know what they’re likely to do and odds are you won’t be surprised.

Ah, so you're playing the "Orson Scott" card.

When you repress your natural compassion in service of the patriarchy, you lose a LOT of your brain's ability to function - a brain taught to hate itself only survives suicide by externalizing the hate.. it's a big waste of resources but it IS treatable AND preventable with education

...this will be the default for history books. WINNING??

The IRI has been anticipating the possibility of a potential American led Coalition attack and/or invasion since the revolution kicked out or puppet the Shah 47 years ago. They've been thinking about how to counter us for almost half a century.

AI is running the show, which is both hilarious and terrifying.

bsky.app/profile/rike...

Tbf, the Iraq war didn't really have one either. Colin Powell was right to point that out, but got his arm twisted to sign off, iirc.

The Koch brothers bough a monkeys paw by investing small in state legislatures in the 70s in an attempt to gerrymander districts into business-friendly right-wing majorities. The resulting tiny turnout required to win party primaries led to the elevation/empowerment of a chaotic fringe.

GOP has spent over two decades "creating our own reality", as Rove put it. It's largely worked for them due to their media dominance (radio/cable), the national media's fecklessness, and the sclerotic and inept Dem leadership. But every so often actual reality intrudes...but for how long...

The "good times create soft men" meme but they don't realize they're the soft men

"These NPCs must have advanced ai or something!"

The problem is that "immunity from consequence" doesn't apply to other countries or physical reality. If you're immune to consequences, you don't need to model others - you can do what you want and be what you want and it doesn't harm you. Sooner or later, that fails - sooner would have been better.

The scary thing is that it's still working insofar as the real consequences haven't yet hit. But it's very much the moment of Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff and continuing to make running movements, not realizing he's not on the ground anymore. The drop is going to be very sudden.

MAGA. Mad American Gulf Adventure.

Excellent theory. How we got here. MAGA types walking through life inside a reality distortion field.

I vividly remember an interview in the Times or Post in Jan 2021 about Trump’s efforts to dispute the election results. An R was quoted (anonymously): ‘what’s the harm? He will lose in court and then go away.’ That attitude has been the major problem, and here we are.

Tired: America must cope with a rising China by grinding down its workers even further. Wired: America must cope with a rising China by applying the ancient tradition of miezu to its more dysfunctional elites.

It’s hard not to see this through a racial lens.

Great description!

where did they all come from how did they get this way

“Watching the days go by…”

If people could be processed food.

Rich bullies... That's it..

this genuinely explains their entire administration tbh

I concur.

sociopaths gonna sociopath

Screaming SNOWFLAKE!! At the generations that followed was *always* a projection.

Rich people and their top minions expecting everyone to behave like a sales guy trying to win their contract, or someone angling for a job, and thinking they’re old world aristocracy

Yet somehow they’re still “oppressed for their views.”

Don't sell them short, Faine. Given the reports of munitions shortages, it's also apparently devoid of logistics as well.

Remember when they were yelling about OBAMA forcing TROOPS to read CHAIRMAN MAO and CHE GUEVARA and a general had to be like “of course they’re on the reading lists, we need to understand guerilla warfare and other political systems to be effective military strategists”

Even Wellington had a good line about "working out what you don't know from what you do - seeing the far side of the hill" and this crowd seem to lack object permanence, unclear if they know what a hill is.

MAGA's much better at unsophisticated theories of mind. Not just the pre-MAGA "Iraq will hail us as liberators", but also their constant total bullshit about what liberals believe. They're usually better at theories of mind about what they can sell to their followers.

It was one of those situations that explained everything for me. The narcissism, the need to frame their pov as being universal, the debate bro bullshit, the need to see humans in rigid categories, even how they write about their intellectual tradition.

Top it off with wanting to be ‘operators’, not realizing that that entire modality is merely one facet of how modern wars are fought. Iran is going to make Iraq look like a exercise in professionalism in contrast.

Trumps failure to assume Iran would respond to being bombed is a massive strategic error. He has no plan to deal with any of the foreseeable consequences. Oil. Stranded Americans. Our allies being attacked. Maybe sleeper cells.

And when testing out your new "strategy", it's good to start with a hated public figure... Yay! 🥳 Step 2: move on to an independent & determined nation with a couple of thousand years of turbulent history and a bunch of really smart people.

It’s equally wild seeing people upset about Iran disrupting international oil and gas “why are they hurting Europeans we aren’t bombing them?” A) Nvm how many European countries are actively doing missile intercepts B) Iran’s only way to avoid a 20 year US occupation is to create maximum pressure

One of my perennial favorites. Pullquotes from it keep being longer than bluesky allows, but "empathy...is epistemic...a way of knowing" is the core riff to the guitar solo. www.patheos.com/blogs/slackt...

At the very least they really don't seem to understand that other countries also have their own self-interest and national pride.

They *do* have a theory of mind for others; the thing is that that theory is limited to the idea that others’ motivations are exactly the same as their own.

"The enemy gets a vote"

glad people are talking about this

A bunch of dudes who grew up playing Civ 3 thinking they know how war works.

This is the story of Trump’s entire life. He’s incapable of even acknowledging that other people have interests. I mean, he can’t even tolerate to have people around him who might express an independent thought.

So, lack of empathy?

At this scale it cones from lack of education, and particularly exposure to other cultures and lack of language learning. These are not people who have ever been taught to see the world from another's perspective.

Extremely accurate. I have been saying this since Covid - thinking about the people who were anti-mask until they themselves or a close relative got a bad case of Covid. It’s like… some people are not able to learn through reading/listening/imagining.

A political movement based on sheer disgust that their every thought might possibly not be 100% objective reality.

Bob & Jim are in Bob's room. Bob is playing with his favorite toy truck. Bob leaves to go pee, placing his truck in his toy chest. While he's gone, Jim moves the toy truck under the bed. When Bob comes back, where will he look for his truck? A third of adults who read this would say under the bed.

Other people? They don’t have it for themselves! https://bsky.app/profile/parsingphase.dev/post/3mgddavnid22u

Trump & his cronies have the mindset of bullies- they think that if they're strong, lud, and scary enough everyone will do what they want. Probably be ause that's how they would respond to strong, loud, scary people. They are all Henry Hill- they always wanted to be gangsters, Trump in particular.

…and completely melt down when screaming at underlings doesn’t make the problem go away when it’s a math/logistics/materials failure/mechanical incompatibility situation. And then the underling quits in frustration after too much bullying, and leaves them to figure the mess out on their own…

The strategy assumes traditional military might. Iran is retaliating by shooting directly at the money.

NPDs/BPDs tend to think of others as NPCs... more proof. 🤷‍♂️

Their core belief is, "Why should I treat you with human decency if I can kick your ass and you can't kick mine?"

That's interesting. I like most had always critiqued their "real Americans" as implying that the rest of us weren't really Americans, but you're onto something in suggesting that they think the rest of us aren't real in a meaningful sense, to them anyway.

And it could have been so different if institutions that caved over EOs or baseless threats just told him to fuck off. You can easily place the hubris of this war on the lay down of Big Law, Colombia, Bezos, all of these feckless assholes.

Tapping the sign: bsky.app/profile/nwga...

Dear MAGA, you enabled, backed, defended Trump's LIES when it was convenient to you. You were happy to assume, Trump would hurt 'others.' He doesn't give a sh1t about you or your family. Once he sees grift, like you, he will go for it. War enables him to rob our tax paid money even more!

I learned that lesson by losing a lot of money.

Well, it got the writer to describe him in flattering terms, so in that sense it worked

*his

Alternatively, the cards were “woke.”

It’s why they claim to believe in a meritocracy - nobody but them have brains therefore they will when a meritocracy. Reality differs.

Maybe the first tell was that they like to refer to everyone else as NPCs.

This is probably also why every time Donald Trump gets asked why someone did something that he disapproved of, he just throws his hands in the air and goes "they're crazy"

MAGA isn’t “un-American” quite the contrary. It’s just that Trump does not understand right from wrong and has no shame - he's not smart enough to try to hide his depravity. And his cult love that, bc they also don’t know right from wrong - none of them ever taught about respect.

🤜🤛

When you think empathy is a dangerous mind virus, then theory of mind is somewhat impossible.

💯💯💯💯💯 Also key to understanding their disdain and even vilification for empathy

It is almost like psychopaths who lack the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes are better at corruption, sex predation, destruction and chaos than governance, diplomacy, and working toward the common good.