I talk a lot about how "empathy" in commercial UX is mostly a posture because in reality capitalism doesn't care, but it's important to consider the additional problem of people in charge who are too shallow to be capable of understanding "why" some people prefer, or need, to do things differently than they do.
This one time I was telling the ceo/founder of a startup I worked for that our react app was making my new macbook pro crawl and we need to fix that because it was a b2b product that would be used by people in finance offices decked out with dell opticrap machines. He responded with surprise "wow, steve. you really care about people don't you?"
I was kinda floored. Anyway, here we are...
https://web.archive.org/web/20230727121010/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684491212219359232
@fasterandworse
I've successfully convinced front-end designers to have empathy in the past, especially younger ones who really hadn't spent time thinking about other people's tech needs. Hell, back when I was A Youth™️, I had my own boneheaded takes about people who use tech in a way I don't (vi/emacs wars, lol, I'm old).
But yeah, exactly, Musk isn't in "assume good intent" or "teachable moment". He has for years been 100% in "when people tell you who they are, believe them."
I like how you put it. When you spend enough time around these people you can hear them drop a lie about their lunch and have enough information to know they will screw anyone over in a heartbeat.