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Making Sense with Sam Harris
Making Sense with Sam Harris

#501 — The Performance of Empathy

November 03, 2026 • 23m

Summary

⏱️ 10 min read

Overview

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and technology researcher, discusses 40 years of studying human relationships with technology. She argues that our digital devices and AI are fundamentally degrading our capacity for empathy, solitude, and genuine human connection. While early internet pioneers hoped technology would enhance real-world community, today's landscape—dominated by social media algorithms and AI chatbots—is pushing people away from authentic relationships toward easier, artificial substitutes. Turkle warns against accepting "performed empathy" from machines as sufficient, arguing this retreat from reality threatens individual development, communities, and democracy itself.

The Deterioration of Human Connection Since 1975

Turkle reflects on how dramatically human relationships have changed since the pre-digital era. She observes a marked deterioration in people's confidence and willingness to engage in face-to-face interaction, with many now preferring to text rather than talk, or even to interact with avatars rather than real people. This represents a troubling retreat from the vulnerability and "rough and tumble" of authentic human connection, driven by people finding real relationships increasingly difficult and scary.

  • There has been a remarkable deterioration in how we relate to each other and our confidence in relating to each other since the 1970s
  • People have developed feelings of vulnerability that make them want to escape into phones rather than engage in conversation
  • The progression has gone from talking to each other, to talking through machines, to now just talking to the machines themselves
  • This represents a downgrading in our capacity and interest to deal with the vulnerability of other people
" Don't text, don't talk, just text me. Don't text me. I'll talk to an avatar. I mean, first we talked to each other. In 1976, we talked to each other and then we talked to each other through machines. And now we're kind of dropping the middleman, which is the story of my new book, and we just are willing to just talk to the machines themselves. "

From Optimism to Dystopia: The Lost Promise of Digital Community

Turkle describes the dramatic shift from the early idealism of personal computer pioneers to today's corporate-driven isolation. Early developers envisioned technology as neighborhood hubs with the mantra "use the virtual to improve the quality of life in the real." In stark contrast, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta now assumes people are too busy for real friends and offers AI avatars as substitutes. This represents a fundamental abandonment of technology's original community-building purpose in favor of profit-driven models that keep people isolated and staring at screens.

  • Early personal computer pioneers used the slogan 'use the virtual to improve the quality of life in the real'
  • Mark Zuckerberg suggests people can only maintain 2-3 real friends and Meta will provide the other 12-13 as AI avatars
  • There has been a corporate-driven retreat from real community toward virtual substitutes
  • Community Memory founder Lee Felsenstein and early pioneers focused on improving offline community through online tools
" Mark Zuckerberg now talking about meta basically says people would like to have 15 friends, but that's unrealistic. They're too busy. The demands of their jobs are two jobs are too great. So they can maybe have two or three friends and he'll give them the extra 12 or 13 friends as avatars, as programs, as chatbots that will be tuned to them. "

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