The author of the manifesto is not using the word empathy in its more broad non-scientific meaning, but he specifies that he is referring to warm/affective empathy, to reduce the emphasis on that kind of empathy, and put emphasis on cognitive/cold empathy (theory of mind, the ability to put yourself in other person’s shoes from a rational standpoint, without you judgement getting clouded by emotion contagion.).
He seems to have knowledge about the psychology around it, because he wrote that affective empathy “favor individuals similar to us”, that is, is tribal, is related to oxytocin that makes us more hostile to the out-group and adds “and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.”
I don’t fully agree with his -total- dismissal of warm empathy, but he was not saying empathy is irrelevant, he was asking to reduce the relevance given to the distinctive type of warm empathy.
