Does empathy make you so kind that you do suicidally foolish things? From the perspective of empathy, one has to advance from standard empathy to radical empathy to deal with the thought experiment of lifeboat ethics and suicidal empathy.

The short version of suicidal empathy is as follows. We are in a lifeboat which is filled to the maximum after our ship sank. In the water, treading water, surrounding the lifeboat are additional survivors and other leaky lifeboats about to sink, leaving the survivors treading water. If the survivors in the lifeboat are empathic and take in the other survivors, then the lifeboat still afloat will be swamped and we will all drown. The conclusion is that in such extreme situations, which are more common than one might imagine, then empathy needs to be turned off – or at least dialed down significantly – lest we all perish. 

This podcast engages with a strong version of the lifeboat dilemma - not a straw man.

It debates and shows the weakness of the argument for lifeboat ethics - even while being fair to what it is trying to say. This is relevant as someone named Elon Musk has asserted (Q2 2025) that "empathy is a weakness of western civilization." Find out who is talking out of their hat in this engaging podcast!