I would recommend reading the quote in context, and not just headlines. It is not quite as insane as it seems at first glance, although just slightly. Transcript from Yahoo Fact Check:

Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.

Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.

Musk: Yes, like, it’s weaponized empathy is the issue.

The point, as I understand it, is that empathy lets people manipulate you into making short-sighted decisions based purely on feelings, without properly investigating the facts. This is true. However, I strongly disagree that this is the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. I think that greed and selfishness are way bigger problems, and this is also what leads to people taking advantage of people’s empathy.

How people can watch this and see anything other than a rambling old man is beyond me

It is fascinating how little this correlates to the Tesla stock price. It has dropped a bit, down 8.4% in the last month, but it still up 80.8% over the last 6 months. I´m curious what kind of business model the shareholders is expecting from Tesla that does not involve selling cars.

The way he can’t even say who’s responsible for Gaza looking like a “demolition site”.