90. Is excess empathy a big problem? Mentioning Jon Haight, Nassim Taleb, Sam Altman & more

Jon Haidt three great untruths: (1) “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker”; (2) “Always trust your feelings”; and (3) “Life is a battle between good people and evil people.” Possible opposites for the three untruths: (1) “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker” => What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Or post traumatic growth. (2) “Always trust your feelings” => Your feelings are signals that you should always listen to, but not your boss that you must obey. (3) “Life is a battle between good people and evil people.” => This is zero sum fallacy. The world is mainly positive sum, where people work together to get a better outcome. Stephen Fry: - They'd rather be right then effective. Sam Altman: - I believe in techno-capitalism. We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism. One doesn’t work without the other; you cannot raise the floor and not also raise the ceiling for very long. The world should get richer every year through science and technology, but everyone has to be in the “up elevator”. I think the government usually does a worse job than markets, and so we need to encourage our culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. I also believe that education is critically important to keeping the American edge. I believed this when I was 20, when I was 30, and now I am 40 and still believe it. The Democratic party seemed reasonably aligned with it when I was 20, losing the plot when I was 30, and completely to have moved somewhere else at this point. So now I am politically homeless. But that’s fine; I care much, much more about being American than any political party. I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.