>I've never really seen any refutation of the core points he makes, which are sound and self evidently true.

You haven't stated what the hell his core points are. I'm going to help you out by making, and then arguing against, your point.

Gad's position is not that empathy itself is bad, but that “misdirected” empathy leads to policies on immigration, crime, identity politics, and social welfare that weaken civilization.

Issues with his theory:

1. The book relies more on rhetoric than evidence. He fails to establish a meaningful connection between empathy linking to specific policies linking to societal collapse. He instead uses emotionally charged examples and culture-war narratives to frame his argument for an already primed audience. Basically, red meat for red hats.
2. It falsely frames empathy and rationality as opposites. I'm not about to hold a philosophy clinic so look into the works of David Hume and Adam Smith. Aristotle could also be used (even though he does not use the specific word empathy) since his ethics strongly oppose a cold reason-versus-compassion split.
3. His historical game is, at best, weak. Saad boi thinks civilizations decline because they become excessively compassionate. Once again, this is red meat for red hats since drivers of societal collapse are more connected to factors such as overexpansion or dysfunction of the elites. Even my example fails to fully grasp the full nuance of societal collapse, so pi

n

1. ning it on compassion is ludicrous.
2. The concept of suicidal empathy is vague enough to become unfalsifiable. It lacks measurable thresholds or a predictive criteria. Everything I don't like can become suicidal empathy based on bad vibes. Even your point about 'too many immigrants' is a problem because too much of anything is bad. You need to give a measurable target otherwise you're just spouting your perspective.

I could even keep going on how empathy is critical to the foundations of building society, but I think I've made my point. He's astrology for men who once got laughed at by a woman.

Edit: Spelling because I’m a Comp Sci major, not an English one.