#22 Gad Saad- The Parasitic Mind

0 (4s): Hello, 1 (5s): Buddy. You're listening to Chatting with Candice. I'm your host canvas score back before we get started on this week's episode, if you want to support the podcast, you can go to Chatting with candice.com. And from there you can sign up for our patriotic account or click that link that says, buy me coffee, both things help to improve the quality of the podcast and eventually start getting some guests on. So this week I'm really excited. I actually didn't think that this was going to happen. We have GAD sad joining the podcast, we exchanged a couple of tweets and I thought it was all going to be a practical joke and that he never was going to actually make it on the podcast. But nonetheless, he is a man of his word. And here he is, he is a professor, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, and author. 1 (48s): He just came out with his newest book called The Parasitic. Mind how infectious ideas are killing common sense. It is a 10 out of 10. I highly recommend it. You and all your friends should read it. I'll have a little link in the show notes where you can just redirect Amazon and get yourself a copy. So without further ado, I really hope you enjoy the episode. GAD sad. 0 (1m 9s): <inaudible> 1 (1m 15s): Today we have GAD Saad joining the podcast. I'm so excited. And like I said earlier, I didn't think this was going to happen. We met on Twitter briefly and we exchanged some tweets and I was like, Oh my gosh, he responded. And then I got like a little nudge on Rogan and I was like, say my name. And then you were like, I'm not going to say our name. And I was like, damn it Saad 2 (1m 39s): I didn't know if it would happen or not. And so on. So I didn't want to say your name and then somehow it will be embarrassing if I didn't come on your show. So I was trying to see the screen. 1 (1m 47s): Totally. Yeah. But I have like everyone listening and they're like, Oh my gosh, is this you? And I was like, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I am super excited to talk about your new book. The Parasitic Mind full disclosure about page like 113 and it is so good. I have been like suggesting it to everyone, especially on social media. So I guess what inspired you to write what is considered a pretty controversial book, 2 (2m 14s): But the, at the start of the book, I talk about two great Wars that I have faced in my life. Growing up in Lebanon during the start of the civil war in Lebanon in the mid seventies, we are Lebanese Jews. And so it wasn't, it was no longer feasible to be Jewish in Lebanon. So that was the first exposure I had to what happens to the society that is organized based on identity politics. In this case, the identity of that matters is your religious affiliation and Lebanon. So that was the first great war that I faced. The second great war is the one that I face on university campuses. The war on reason on common sense on logic on science. And that's really has been a war that has been raging for my whole time in academia. 2 (2m 56s): I've been a professor. Now this is, I think like 26 or 27th year at first. It seems as though, Oh, you know, maybe there's just some quack ideas out there and the humanities and in some of the social sciences, but then you quickly realize that these, what I call idea pathogens, these Parasitic ideas are actually making their way across all of the hallways of academia. And then eventually they make their way downstream. So everything to the popular culture, to media, to politics. And so it's really, it was my indignation at seeing this attack on enlightenment values on the commitment, the reason that caused me to write the book. 1 (3m 34s): Yeah. So how has that affected your career as a professor? Because you've, that's been a career path where for 25 years you said, so how have you not been canceled? 2 (3m 44s): Right. So I think it's a couple of factors. One is, look at me, cancel this. So you don't. And I think that there is a part of me that's, you know, I, I used the right persuasion strategies. I use a mix of, of course, very serious science, but also side to either partner that makes it a bit more difficult to come after me. I also think I'm protected by my identity, which is regrettable to say, because you'd like to think that you're not cancelable because you have great ideas, but in reality, while that might be true, it's also the fact that the, the war refugee, who is the, you know, Jew of color and so on because I'm from the middle East. 2 (4m 26s): And so it makes it a lot harder for the people who use those kinds of victimology poker topics that come after me. If I were Roscoe from Arkansas criticizing Islam, then it will be the end of me. But if I'm GAD, Saad criticizing Islam, well, it's kind of harder to Arabic is my mother tongue and so on. So I think it's the combination of factors. It's also the fact that frankly, I've not yet met someone who is able to go into that arena of debating me, who's come out victorious. And that's one of the things that I talk about through the book, which is how do you construct arguments rooted in evidence rather than being hysterical? So I think for a combination of reasons, it's not been easy to cancel me also. 2 (5m 8s): I think that maybe I'm not protected from the too big to cancel again, maybe I'm being presumptuous, but I think anyone who wishes to cancel me will likely know that it's going to come at a cost. I am not someone who, you know, kind of wilts away, you know, in a fetal position. So if you're going to come after me, you know, you better be ready for a fight then. So for all those kinds of reasons, I'm still here, 1 (5m 31s): Right? You call that a honey Badger, right? So you have a really interesting story in the beginning of the book, when you were talking about the men that came to your house for the paper towel roll change, which is such an interesting job, because I didn't know that was a job, but you told the story about how it, the house was filled with women. And you were obviously a child at the time and there was one man in the house and he just was kind of acting like a coward. So would you say that kind of created one of those main, like pillars of your belief systems? I guess, of like being brave and not being cowardly was like that man's cowardice in the situation. 2 (6m 9s): Yeah. So certainly that was a formative experience that showed me that the same that I would eventually have for cowardly people in general and certainly coward you, man. But I also think it's just the unique combination of my genes, right? I mean, you are the product of your unique jeans, whatever that applies. And so anything that we are is really a combination of our genes and our environment. I just think that I am invalid with the right set of traits, maybe right. Maybe wrong, because it actually brings me a lot of emotional pain. So I always have to fight these fights, but the test cowardice it's one of the, I mean, when women fantasize about guys, they usually don't fantasize about the cowardly guy who sucks system and cries in the corner, right? 2 (6m 55s): Watching Bridget Jones diary while eating ice cream, they fantasize about the firemen or the Navy seal because those archetypes reflect attributes that we desire, which has bravery courage. And so one of the things that I talk about and the book is that regrettably academia doesn't select for the attributes. I always argue that academics should be intellectual Navy seals, right? We choose Navy seals based on in part their bravery and their courage, their willingness to go, where others would be running away from while we shouldn't be doing the same thing in academia, right? You should go and criticize Islam. If you think it's not a good belief system, you should criticize radical feminism, but that's not what happens. 2 (7m 40s): And I had to be in academia with people that are selected based on herd mentality. Just do your research, put your head down, only speak about the, the very narrow areas of expertise that you have scientifically, and then keep your mouth shut. And I find that that's a terrible way to live as an intellectual. And so yes, powered is, is something that I had the spice. 1 (8m 2s): How do you move forward? I guess when there's no diversity of thought or philosophies on campus, when you have these like forbidden truths or forbidden topics, like you're not allowed to talk about Islam, for example, would you do a lot on your Twitter and you do throughout the book, and I never really thought about it, but I, it is curious that you can't really criticize it or critique it, or even just kind of examine it critically, whereas you can mock Christianity all the time and that's totally fine. And even like, you know, you can mock Jews and that's still kind of fine, but Islam has one of those untouchables. So I guess where, when did that start happening? And then how do we create diversity of thought when we have these forbidden topics? 2 (8m 42s): Right? So the several fixed on pot first to give you a sense of the lack of diversity of thought. One of the things that I talk about in the book is the distribution of political affiliation of the professors. So for example, you could say, okay, across sociology departments, how many have the professors are affiliated with the democratic party versus the Republican party? And you could do a similar thing in St. Canada and the numbers are astoundingly horrifying. The more prone to being parasitized by ideological beliefs as the discipline is the more it tends to be exclusively leftist. 2 (9m 22s): So engineering or the business school where I'm housed while it still might be more leftist, it's much less so because building a bridge requires certain commitment to a reality, that idea pathogens can't destroy. You can't build a bridge based on postmodernist thought, you can't build a bridge based on feminist physics. A and you can't build mathematical models of consumer choice or the economy if you're in the business school based on the feminist economics. And so, because those fields are rooted in downstream consequences linked to reality, it becomes a bit more difficult to, to be parasitized on the other hand and feels like sociology, that kind of stuff that you, you know, in some cases you've got ratios of 44 to one. 2 (10m 10s): So we are 44 times more leftist professors than there are say, Republicans. Now, some people will then retort, but that makes perfect sense professors, our academics, our smarts. And so of course, they're going to be left to I address that kind of imbecilic position on the book on some issues. It's a fact that the evolution is the scientific fact. So they're, there is no biology department where some biologists believe in evolution and some don't that's resolved, but on a, it comes to mind is the death penalty, something that we should have, what should be our optimal fiscal policy? What should be our foreign policy? They are valuable positions on both sides of the aisle. 2 (10m 51s): So it's not as though there's only one set of positions that are vertical and everybody else is wrong. And so if you are a student in political science or sociology or economics, it would seem that we should have the diversity of thought because many of these discussions are not established scientific facts where we can listen to both sides of the story that actually be enriched on it. But unfortunately that's not what academia has to become. And so the only way to reverse that is to, for people to speak out against these sterile echo chambers. And again, regrettably, I'm one of the few in academia who does, so certainly the one who does it with the least amount of fear and across as many topics. 2 (11m 32s): And so for example, Jordan Peterson became famous for his gender pronouns stuff that he doesn't talk against Islam, right? Whereas there is no sacred cow. And in my book, everything is open to scrutiny. Everything is open to mockery. Everything is open, right? No ideology that is true should be protected from scrutiny. If it is true, then it should, it should be able to withstand any stressors and still come out victorious. The reason why you put these echo chambers that that protects an ideology is because it's actually fragile. It's because if you do scrutinize it, it might become brittle and fall apart. So I thought of your question about forbidden knowledge. 2 (12m 14s): So let me give you an example of, for me, the knowledge as an evolutionary psychologist, one of the topics that I study are evolved sex differences. There are many things that make men and women similar to one another, but there are many things that make men and women different from each other for a very clear biological and evolutionary reasons. Well, that itself has now become a form of forbidden knowledge because if the sex difference that your study, if the findings come out in support of the politically correct orthodoxy, then it's thank you, Dr. Saad what a great scientist you are. If the findings come out, not in support of your orthodoxy, booboo, Nazi, Nazi. And so again, this shows you what happens when you have scientific pursuits being parasitized by ideology, it's for your idea. 1 (12m 59s): So his science always been politicized. I recently had Dr. Debra so on, and she's doing a lot of work when it comes to sex and gender identity. And she just has the mob after her constantly, also Canadian. It just seems like we abandoned reason a long time ago, when we say trans women are women, because we wouldn't have to transition. Right. If you already were the thing that you said that you are, and it's at the detriment of like children and adults, that may be aren't in these categories. So it seems like the people that are like trying to protect everyone are actually doing more harm than good. And then science is kind of cowering because they don't want to have to deal with the, as you call it like the tire, any of the minority. 1 (13m 45s): So can't you be a w is everyone aware that this is the minority? And can't, they just like stand up and kind of puff up their chest metaphorically and just say enough is enough. 2 (13m 54s): So that kind of goes back to your earlier question about cowardice. I always argue that. I mean, there is an established list of seven deadly sins, and I think we should add an eighth one, which is human cowardice, because you are exactly right. That this is the silent majority is well aware that many of these ideas are dreadful, but they're, they're cowed into silence, right? So I receive more emails than you have hair on your head where someone says, Oh, I'm a professor of internal medicine. I'm a professor of physics. I'm a professor of consumer psychology. You're my hero. Thank you so much. But please don't mention my name. If you read my emails while there in lies the problem, right? I mean, if you can't even publicly support the, the things that I'm saying, that's why these idea pathogens proliferate, because they go unchallenged. 2 (14m 45s): Now, oftentimes people ask me well, but Dr. Saad aren't you exaggerating how many social justice for years that are on campus. And I tell them, actually, no, here's my rebuttal. How many people that have to take to bring down on the twin towers? It didn't take 190,000 terrorists. It didn't take 19 million terrorists. It took 19 committed terrorists who were very much driven by their zealotry. So bring it to alter the landscape of New York forever. Well, it doesn't take 19 million blue hair, feminist glaciology majors to keep the rest of us quiet. It just takes a bunch of ultra fierce activists to then keep everybody else and check. 2 (15m 26s): And so if people were to find their spine somewhere within their gelatinous bodies, then I think we could solve this problem by next Wednesday. But if they don't, then it will be a slow ride too. The abyss of infinite lunacy. 1 (15m 44s): I totally agree. You can use the analogy was the death by a thousand cuts for the Western civilization. And I couldn't agree more. I don't think you lose your freedoms overnight. I think it's always very slow takes that everyone just says, Oh, well, that's fine. It's not a big deal. And then eventually you get something that's, you know, like the Holocaust, for example, right. It didn't happen overnight. It was all these small ways to dehumanize a group of people. And you'll see that now, especially when it comes to men and like, especially if you're a white hetero Western man, like that is like the most evil creature to ever exist. And I don't understand why we're all accepting this narrative, especially when there's so many of that, you know, person and existence. 1 (16m 24s): Do you don't really share a lot with your family, but do you have like a daughter or son or do not like disclose that 2 (16m 30s): Both I won't share how many are, but yes, oftentimes my, my wife has asked me, you know, you, you lead a very busy life. If you could only stick to your academic pursuits, your scientific research and so on, you'd be already very busy. Why, why do you have to feel like you have to weigh in on all these things and be the savior? And my answer is, well, it's two answers. Really one is because I do it more for my children and yours. You know, I might be able to outrun the problem, but my children and yours. And so that's number one. And number two, it goes back to when I talked about earlier that, you know, we are shackled by our unique genetic makeup. And in my case, I'm driven by a very exacting code of personal conduct. 2 (17m 16s): So that at the end of the day, when I put my head on my pillow to sleep for me to be able to not suffer from insomnia, I need to feel that I didn't exhibit any cowardice that I did whatever I could. So, so in the same way that if you hear a woman being costed violently in a dark alley, you can either be the person who pretends that you didn't hear her crying and keep walking, or you could say, well, I have to intervene. Here is somebody is in trouble. Well, in my case for better or worse, I'm the guy who intervenes. And therefore I weigh in. And I think that if more people were to have that sense of personal, as I said, I think the problem would be solved very quickly. The problem also comes, and I talk about this is the last chapter of the book. 2 (17m 56s): The problem comes from people, diffusing responsibility onto others, right? So, you know, I'm too busy preparing for my daughter's graduation and I have to go pick up the groceries. They let somebody else worry about these problems. You don't GAD Saad has it that's okay. No, because every person has a stake. Every person has a voice. Okay. Some of us have bigger platforms than others. Some of us have fancier credentials, but the reality is it's ideological trench warfare. So if you're sitting and having a chat with someone on Facebook and they say something that you disagree with, challenged them politely, if your professor says something that you think is insane, challenged them politely don't subcontract. 2 (18m 36s): That important role to a few people who are putting everything on the line. I think if we do that, we will win the battle of ideas. 1 (18m 45s): What I see a lot with people, especially on social media, it's, they're reacting in like a very emotional state rate. So when you I'm reading, like all the parenting books right now, and there's one in particular is called the whole brain child. And it explains that, especially for toddlers, when they're acting in a way of emotion, that is the logical side of the brain is just shut off like that it is detached. Can't get there. So you have to do all of these tricks, if you will, to get them to diffuse before you can even begin a logical conversation. So I see a lot of parallels with that and social media. So it's like, how do you have a logical conversation with someone who's currently wrapped up in an emotional state? 2 (19m 28s): Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So chapter two of my book is about thinking versus feeling. And I actually argue that that dichotomy is these two systems are wrongly being pitted against each other. It's not that we are thinking animals or we are feeling animals. We are, we use both systems. The problem with the challenge is to know when to activate which system, right? So if, if, if I want to take a shortcut so I can get home 10 minutes quicker on my walk, and I decided to take a shortcut through a dark alley, and I see three young men loitering around, well, I might get an evolved fear response because I'm endowed with the emotional system that says this might be dangerous. 2 (20m 10s): And so maybe my heart might start raising. Maybe my blood pressure will go up, which our records are the mechanisms for a fight or flight mechanism. And so in that case, the fact that my effect that the system, my emotional system is triggered. It makes perfect sense. On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, triggering my emotional system from now till pigs fly is not going to help me solve the problem. And so I apply that exact explanation. So for example, choosing a presidential candidate. So if we look at the response that people have had regarding Donald Trump, it's all what you were talking about, sort of the emotional hysteria. He is disgusting. He repulses me his growth tests. 2 (20m 51s): Every one of those positions is perfectly rooted in an aspect of based evaluation at no time that people say here are his policies regarding foreign policy that I don't like on the other hand, when it comes to the Obama, why do I love him? Because he is lanky and he's got a radiant smile and he has a molest flu as the voice. Again, it's all emotional based things, right? Some of my very good friends, some of whom you might know, you know, also public intellectuals have completely succumbed to their emotional systems that they've made a career out of supposedly being rational, reasonable people. But when it came to Donald Trump that all went out there, that they became the toddlers that you are speaking about, that book that you're reading because only their emotional system is activated. 2 (21m 39s): You know, I don't think there's a magic way to say no one to activate which system, but at least be aware that you are engaging in this. So one of the things that I do to try to bring people back from their emotional hysteria is to use satire and sarcasm as one of the persuasion strategies, because that is an incredibly effective way of demonstrating the lunacy, the absurdity of your position. And oftentimes I joke, although it's true that my satire post to the prophetic and the reason I'm able to prophesize all these things is because I sort of think about our current position that we're at. And then I extrapolate to how far can this lunacy go? 2 (22m 23s): And I then satirize that position. And then I wait with my arms folded for reality to catch up. Right? So for example, so the goal back to the transition of which we talked about briefly earlier, I had the put out a clip if few years ago, where I apologized to the world for my transphobic marriage, because I argued that, you know, when I was looking for a mate, I had gone under the impression that, you know, women, you know, I should be only looking for a woman that has female genitalia, but now I know given that I took courses in progressive biology at Wellesley, that, you know, some women have vaginas. Other women have nine-inch penises. 2 (23m 3s): And by me having only focused on women with female genitalia, I was excluding a whole range of other women. Well guess what? That's the theoretical piece subsequently became reality. There's then an insult that people now use that when they call you SIS sexists, have you, have we heard that term? Do you know, 1 (23m 20s): I read it in your book? And I was like, this isn't real, but I guess it is. And then it actually made me think of this one situation. So not surprisingly, the adult industry is completely liberal. Like it says left, as you can get, like, there's oftentimes like, just like no logic to some of the things that they think. So when it comes to adult content, like anything is being shot now, like if you can think about it, like there is a film for it. So when I was like still shooting the big thing that was like, you know, you were woke or you were super extreme, like you were an extreme performer if you performed with a trans performer. So when it comes to the industry, like usually anything that's like trans or gay, they all work together. 1 (24m 5s): And anyone who's straight, they all work together because the testing protocols are different. Like you can be HIV positive and shoot in the gay side, but you can't be HIV positive and shoot in the streets side. So for a long time there was this divide. So that's why some people started shooting with the trans performers to like, make this statement. There was this one girl who was like, no, I just, I don't want to shoot with a trans performer. She wasn't into it. She vocalized it on Twitter. The mob came after her. She was transphobic, or I guess, what is it? What's the new term, SIS, SIS sexist. So she had a swarm of people come at her and she was already kind of battling some like depression and other mental disorders. 1 (24m 46s): So she ended up committing suicide because she ended up that it was the entire industry when after her, and they're like, this isn't wrong. Like you need to have sex with whoever they sh you know, put on set that day. And I think that's crazy. Like there's girls that are like, I don't want to work with this type of person or this race, or, and it's for whatever reason, it can be like the way that the scene is projected. Right. And all of a sudden you're racist, or you're a transphobia, all of these things since when did complete strangers have the right to tell you who you have sex with and who you fall in love with. That's crazy to me, 2 (25m 17s): The things that I'd talk about the book is on the section on the title, all roads lead to bigotry, and the beauty of that sort of woke logic is that you can't falsify, or you can't escape the ultimate outcome, which is that you're a Nate's Nazi bigot. So for example, if I say, just because of the random genetic combination that makes who I am, I'm very attracted to black women. If I say that, then I am a bigot because I am objectifying the black body. I am fetishizing the exoticism of black women. If I say, you know, I'm actually not attracted to black equivalent. 2 (25m 59s): I am actually attracted to women that look like you. Well, then I'm a racist. I am a sexual racist because what? So if I uniquely on the track that the black women on the Nazi bigot, and if I'm uniquely not attracted to black women on the Nazi bigot, so I can't escape being a bigot. I'll give you that manifestation manifestations of this kind of unfalsifiable position in a few other contexts, not necessarily in the, the main thing, context to other examples that I discuss in the book when I'm in that section on all roads lead to bigotry is on the following. So one, there was a doctoral student at Hebrew university who was conducting a study to demonstrate that the IDF soldiers, the Israeli, the force, the defense forces were monsters who were just engaging in gang rapes of Palestinian women. 2 (26m 48s): The and she was herself Jewish so much. She is so worried that she, there is nothing more progressive than to self-flagellate about how disgusting you are, right? So she wanted to show that the IDF or these gang rapists. And so her dismay, when she ran the study, she didn't find a single instance of a documented case of an IDF soldier raping a Palestinian woman. So you would think that that's great. That was that something that's nice to report. 1 (27m 14s): Then it ended up being that it was because they weren't raping the women that they were so like, just disgusted with them, that they could integrate. 2 (27m 23s): There is so othering The these women that they're not even worthy of being raped. So to rape women is bad. And to not rate them as bad. Let me give you one other example. That's not quite as shocking, but along the same lines of lunacy, a student at Queen's university in Canada, wanting to demonstrate that Canadians are a bunch of rabid Islamophobes. And so she dawned a hijab for, I think it was 18 days and she wanted to document that, you know, she's, she's just going to be brutalized everywhere. And she found out that Canadians were incredibly sweet and respectful and kind, and charming and warm and smiley to her. 2 (28m 4s): What did she conclude your remember that part of the book 1 (28m 6s): That was because they were unaware of their bigotry or they were making up for it. Like they knew that they were so they had to like, you know, prove that they weren't by over 2 (28m 16s): Exactly. And so, because their hatred is latent, they are overcompensating by being nice to the hijab woman. So had they been overtly negative towards her they're bigots and when they're incredibly kind and sweet towards her, they're bigots, you can't escape it. Now in science, we have something called the falsification principle. This was developed by a philosopher of science named Karl popper who argued that for something to be within the realm of science. It has to be at least falsifiable, meaning that if the data that comes out this way, this is in support of the theory. But here's the way by which if the data came out this other way, it's, what's falsified the theory of something. 2 (28m 59s): It can be potentially falsifiable, then it can be within the realm of science. Well, this is this demonstrates to you how walk progressive logic is within the realm of the religious, because it cannot be falsifiable, all roads lead to bigotry. 1 (29m 14s): You're like a certain personality type. Has anyone done a study on This for the people that tend to be extreme? Progressive? 2 (29m 21s): Yeah, that is so with one of my students, I'm actually looking at doing exactly that. I'm more interested in focusing in, in this particular study on some of the morphological features. So in your case, I think you're talking about the personality traits and I can search on the offer. Some hypotheses as to which types of, I think would be susceptible to this kind of Parasitic thinking, but in the study that I'm hoping to do with this particular graduate student, it really stems from my section in the book where I talk about male, social justice warriors as sneaky fuckers. This is a theory that I've developed. So sneaky fuckers is an actual scientific term, 1 (30m 0s): Which I didn't know. And I think is hilarious. 2 (30m 3s): Yeah. So sneaky fuckers is a term that came out into zoological literature about, you know, maybe 40 years ago in the seventies and it refers to it. So the fact, the fancy scientific term is <inaudible>, which is the feeling of making opportunities, right? Usually typically what you have is what's called that sexual female mimicry. So what you're doing is let's say you have two types of males in a particular species, some males. So there are two phenotypes to physical manifestations of males in that species. Some are the dominant males that get all the girls, but then some other males for just due to genetic variation, don't have some of those masculine traits. 2 (30m 46s): So therefore what they do is they pretend to be females so that if the male is guarding, say a bunch of females, that sneaky fucker will come up. And then if the dominant male thinks that he, he is a female, he lets him through. And then he sort of dish asleep, engaged in some population opportunities. And so you are feeling that, you know, on their false pretense, these may be opportunities. And so being aware of that literature, I then proposed a theory, which most famously people know it from when I first chatted with Jordan Peterson on my show. And I propose that theory to him. It's one of the rare times where Jordan Peterson's kind of let out a big smile. When I shared that theory. 2 (31m 28s): Basically they argued that I think what male social justice warriors are doing is a manifestation of that sneaky fucker strategy, which is look at me. I am so empathetic. I am so nurturing. I am so progressive. I'm not threatening. Now. You also see that by the way, and popular culture is say in movies. And I talked about this briefly in the book, the 1980, I think it was not the 85 movie pretty in pink. There is the classic manifestation of the sneaky fucker is the best friend of the main female protagonist who kind of has this long lasting crush on her. And he's always there. He's always sweet. And he's always listening to her, hoping that eventually her defenses will break down and he will get his making opportunity. 2 (32m 8s): And so one of the things that I'm hoping to do with this particular student is to actually test This and periodically Bai, for example, demonstrating that there are certain morphological features of the male sneaky fucker that are different from say the morphological features of a Navy seal. I suspect that most male social justice warriors don't look like Navy seals. 1 (32m 30s): I can't wait to see that that's going to be fascinating. I think you're going to hit the nail on the head. I really love that part of the book where you're comparing biology of like animals and, and then relate it to people. And what you see now in culture, you were talking about like the really bright frogs in the Amazon. And then you see that now with the hair and the piercings and everything. And I don't know if anyone's like made that comparison yet, but it, it does make a lot of sense when you think about it. 2 (32m 56s): That's why I'm the pioneer. It actually comes from, again, my evolutionary studies. So one of the tools that evolutionary psychologists use is a field called comparative psychology. Comparative psychology is where you look at the behaviors of other animals to be able to then to make statements about say human cognition. Okay. So for example, the fact that I linked the sneaky Focker strategy to me, that came from my understanding of that behavior and other animals. The fact that I called the book The Parasitic Mind and the fact that I talk about idea pathogens that came from my, having read the literature on new neural parasites and other species, right? 2 (33m 41s): The idea being that parasites are an endemic problem in nature, but parasites can, can parasitize different organs, right? You could have a tapeworm that parenthesizes your confess Stein, right? But neuro parasites are the ones that look for the host brain to then alter its neurocircuitry. And so on learning that literature, this is how I had my aha moments to link it then to idea pathogens that humans can be pressed advised by Parasitic ideas. And so to come to the example of the blue hair, social justice warriors, and my first book and the evolutionary basis of consumption, I talk about how there's a huge market for duplicitous signaling in the consumer market, right? 2 (34m 23s): You go to canal street to purchase a $50 product I instead of spending $5,000, hopefully nobody will know that it's not a $5,000 bag and therefore father engaged in deceptive consumer signaling while and developing that section of their book. I then said, well, let me go and look at other animal species that engage in this type of signaling. And that's how I came across. So This this book was in 2007. This is how I came across the The area. What's called Apple Cinematheque coloring apples. And I, the coloring is the evolution of warning colors, typically evolution. It does the opposite evolution creates camouflaging, right? I want to be combo flogged so that I don't become somebody is dinner, right? 2 (35m 6s): So why would the Amazonian frog that lives in a very dangerous neighborhood with all sorts of very hungry predators? Why would it evolve such bright colors that you could see from three miles away? Well, it's basically saying if you can see me, you'll probably want to avoid me. Now, the reason why it's related to deceptive signaling is because one Amazonian frog will evolve those signals because it truly is poisonous. And other species will piggyback on that signal. It too will evolve that bright. And even though it is completely harmless, so to speak to you, backing on the evolution of that warning signal. And so being familiar with that literature, I then said, aha, I keep seeing all these mugshots of social justice warriors with blue, the blue hair and red hair. 2 (35m 53s): I said, that's the explanation. So that's where that came from. 1 (35m 56s): Okay. I just saw your video with you and the blue wig under the desk. When Jordan Peterson's book came out is amazing, 2 (36m 3s): By the way. And this is, this is one of the things that some people don't don't get, which is they think that, and it actually speaks to a lack of confidence when, when you are truly confident, you present yourself to the world and all of your multi faceted view, right? So I could be a joker. I could be funny. I could be self-deprecating I could be egotistical. I could be professorial. I could be austere, but sometimes people think, Oh, you know, should a professor really be doing the blue thing under the desk? Yeah, it's called. I will use any strategy to persuade you of some position on taking. And some cases I will act like the court jester and other cases I'm about as professorial and highfalutin as you want to be. 2 (36m 51s): If I'm speaking at Stanford university business school, I'm not wearing the blue way, but I think most professors again, because they, in a sense don't have a fully formed, complete personality. They think that they always need to be smoking a pipe while looking into the sky and pontificating as a professor, I need to always be serious. No, I could be a joker. I could be warm. I could be serious. I'm made up of many parts. 1 (37m 18s): That's something that I've been struggling with personally, just because of obviously like my given career path, like people put you in this box and that's all that you're allowed to be. So then when you start voicing opinions on anything other like, they're like, well, who are you? You're supposed to only live, breathe and drink that one thing. Then if you have an opinion on it, it's something that is going to affect your child or your other businesses. Like how dare you. You need to just remain where we're comfortable with you, which is right there. And being like this object back to like being a professor and like the whole academia is, so I feel like culture kind of moves in a pendulum. So we're always going and going from one extreme to the next and just like pivoting and I've yet to see like a happy middle. 1 (37m 60s): So do you think that because we're so far left and it's so rare to be critically thinking or con like, dare you say conservative right now, do you think that there is going to be a swing in the other direction or you think were so far left too? That we can't go back. 2 (38m 17s): I'd like to put on my optimists hat because otherwise there'd be no point in getting out of bed, talking to you. And if I thought it was all for not, if it was over. So I do think that there will be a correction. I think that depends on the wheel switch. The question is, how quickly will it swing? People are not going to go away. The abyss of infinite lunacy quietly, forever more at some point, keep wrongly accusing people of being white supremacists and white nationalists and all the rest of the stuff. At one point, people are going to say, you know what? I've had enough. And when they'll say I've had enough, their response may not be gentle over Twitter. It might be violent. 2 (38m 57s): And again, I come from a culture that is the end result of all this kind of nonsense of superstitious thinking and magical thinking and tribalism and identity politics. So the question is, do we want the correction to happen peacefully through the, just the battle of ideas or do we want it to be violent? Now, if you keep this nonsense going for another 20, 30, 50, a hundred years, then you will have violence. And the reality is we saw some of that violence and The recently in the United States that wasn't full blown, civil war of Lebanon, but eventually these Parasitic ideas blow up. Literally. I mean, not figure that, I mean, literally right people. 2 (39m 38s): And so I'd like to think that there's going to be a correction, but it's going to end up being determined by whether the silent majority grows affair. And if they do, then, as I said, the problem can be very quickly resolved. Look, if administrators and universities felt sufficient consequences to promulgating some of the stupidity that they do on campuses, they would correct things by tomorrow. But if everybody is quiet, yup. I'll give you an example. So Canada is so last year, my university instituted a new policy where you couldn't even continue being employed on the university. Or if you were a student, you couldn't be registered. 2 (40m 19s): If you didn't officially take a, you know, sex dynamics seminar. So imagine from my perspective, someone now in my fifties and my university has to teach me how to interact with women, because until then, I didn't know how to interact. I needed the big brother. That's very offensive to me at that point. I thought, you know, I am not going to fight this particular fight. I already fight the million phase, but now I've come back to me and say, self-flagellate because you are guilty against the native indigenous people of Canada. Well, then you're going to have a problem. So the reality is administrators overwhelmingly, and politicians are overwhelmingly cowardly. 2 (41m 6s): They basically acquiesced to the loudest voices. If the loudest voices are the blue hair, activists, then that's who we'll shape the agenda. But if people speak up, that will be corrected. So to answer your question, along with it, the way there will be an auto correction, I don't know how long it will take before it happens. 1 (41m 24s): You had mentioned something about one of the teachers for one of your children was pushing like the BLM propaganda in. I think it was, was it just the picture they were talking about it or 2 (41m 37s): It's our avatar sort of science E room, whatever it's called. 1 (41m 41s): So how, when you went to the administration about that being inappropriate, like, what was your approach? Because I know there are a lot of parents that have issues with people bringing in social justice issues, especially for small children, but they don't really know how to articulate it to the powers that be. So how did you approach it and how would you tell parents to protect? 2 (42m 2s): Okay. So in that particular story, along with my exact email that I had written him to the principal is on my YouTube channel. So you can go in and sort of cover every single detail, but to answer it generally, what I did basically is I wrote a very polite email saying, you know, that has come to my attention, but this is the teacher is doing this. And I said that there are two levels at which this is problematic. So it was very no hysteria, no emotional, no, very now I've got my professor Ariel Hi and I said, look, number one is not within the realm of a teacher's responsibility to signal what her political positions are in the service or her pedagogic duties. 2 (42m 45s): If she decides that she's got a private Facebook page or whatever social media, where she wants to say, I love BLM and BLM is the end. All we live in the free country to go for it. But in the pursuit of your pedagogical responsibility is to children. Shouldn't be allowed to do that. That's a violation of your pedagogic responsibilities. And then I give the example. I said, I don't teach our young children. And I am someone who is circled. It does weigh in on all of these things in a very public way, but I make sure to never encroach on those topics and the service on my professor, Oriel duties, if I'm teaching a course on evolutionary consumer psychology, I don't talk about the blue hair feminist. 2 (43m 26s): That's not relevant to that course. And if I have homework to do that, then I would be encroaching on the contract between me and the students. And so that was my first line of arguments, which is that you are violating the pedagogic responsibility that you are contracted to, to hear to. And then I said, but foregoing that for a moment. Not that, not what standing do you know what the LM supports, because I know that most people are cognitive misers, all that they see as aren't you for supporting black people, but that's not what the BLM does. Right? So I said, look, here are some positions that BLM takes. And as far as I know, some of the students and hurt, and the teacher's class are white. 2 (44m 8s): People are white kids. Is it appropriate to engage in such anti white or black supremacy? So it was, I lead her to the decision calmly with force, but politely, I don't know if she did it because of me or not the next day that avatar was no longer there. Right? So I think that, that the bigger story that I got engaged, right. I could have said, you know, I already weigh in on all these issues in ways that more people will ever do in 10 lifetimes and let someone else worry about this, but no, no. I was a parent and I had something to say. So again, I think most people would say, I don't think I've got the ability to take this on. 2 (44m 51s): Someone is going to accuse me of racism. And so I'm going to be quiet. And that's where I think you mentioned earlier my Honeybadger story. So in chapter eight, I talk about activate your inner Honeybadger. The reason why I use that comparison again, using an animal comparison is because Honeybadger is our extra extraordinarily fierce Honeybadger is the size of a small dog. And yet it would stand the approach of, you know, six adult lions for how, how could that be? Well, because the lions are actually intimidated by his philosophy. They look at how it's behaving and we say, I don't want any part of this. I'm going to go to a meal elsewhere. Well, I ask people to exhibit that kind of ferocity in defending their principles, right? 2 (45m 33s): I'm not asking them to be hysterical and ferocious and mean for no reason, but if you have a set of beliefs that you can, well, you know, articulate well defend, well, then be a Honeybadger. And in that case I was a Honeywell. 1 (45m 46s): So when it comes to instilling critical thinking in your kids, or even in yourself, what are some basic principles to get into a critical Mind versus an emotional Mind? 2 (45m 58s): One of the things that I talk about. So this is chapter seven. I thought about how to seek truth. And there I talk about the building normal logical networks of cumulative evidence. So what does that mean? Exactly? This is the ultimate, if you like critical thinking tool. So if you think back of Charles Darwin, when he was developing his theory of natural selection, he didn't collect data from 30 undergrads at the university of Miami, and then call it a day. Instead for several decades, he collected assiduously data from paleontology and geology and comparative morphology and animal husbandry and bio diversity. 2 (46m 42s): So from many, many different lines of evidence, we collect the data which when put together, it made it unassailable that his position was the correct one. And so I argue that whenever you are taking a position on consequential matters, you have to have that kind of discipline. So I'll give you a specific example. And so I call this normal logical networks of humans of evidence, because what you're basically doing is you're getting data from across time periods, across cultures, across the disciplines, across methodologies, all of which point to the same final conclusion. So it becomes very difficult to argue against your position because there's a tsunami of evidence that's drowning you. 2 (47m 23s): And so let's suppose Kansas, I want to use, have you have a young child? So you're going to buy him or her some toys. Well, if I want to prove to you that toy preferences have sex specificity, meaning little boys prefer sports and toys and little girls, but for other toys and that that's not due to social construction. That typical social scientists argument is that's do to be our parents are just arbitrarily sexist. They promulgate gender roles. And that's why little Johnny gets to the blue truck. That's my little, then that gets to the pink though. Right? And that starts the cascade of arbitrary gender role socialization. So if I want it to prove to you that actually, no, that's not true. 2 (48m 5s): There are very compelling biological and evolutionary reasons why we see that particular sex specificity and toy preferences. How would I go about doing that? So now I'm going to start thinking, well, what would be all the data that I could imagine to make it absolutely unequivocal that I'm right. Okay. So I could get data from other animals. So this is compared to the psychology again. So I can bring you data studies from, with vervet monkeys, with recess monkeys, with chimpanzees, showing you that the infants and those species exhibit the same sex specificity as human infants. Well, that's looking like pretty strong evidence. So even if I have, if I stopped right there, I'm already winning the argument, but I'm not going to stop that. 2 (48m 49s): That's why I'm going to build This cumulative. And that's what we have evidence. Okay. So then I could get you data from developmental psychology. So I could get your children who are in the pre socialization stage of their cognitive development, meaning that they're not yet old enough to be socialized. And I could do studies with them demonstrating that they already exhibit those sex specific toy preferences. So that takes out the possibility that is due to the socialization because I'm getting new children that are in the pre socialization state. Now, again, if I took the comparative psychology data, would the other animals and the developmental psychology data, I already have enough. The nail is already there in the coffin, but I'm not going to stop there. So I won't do the whole network, but I'll give you a few more so I could get your data from pediatric endocrinology. 2 (49m 36s): So there is a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is a endocrinological disorder that if a little girl suffers from she has masculinized behaviors, masculinize, morphology, okay, well, the studies have been done looking at the toy preferences of little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and guess what happens to their toy preferences? They become akin to those of boys suggesting that there's definitely a hormonal signature. It's a toy preferences. So, okay. By bids, I get you data from other cultures, other time periods, other animals, which is so overwhelming in the convergence. Yeah. We have the same finding that it becomes overwhelming. 2 (50m 18s): So now the challenge with this approach is that, look, it takes a lot of effort to amass this, right? You might say, who's gotten the time a professor Saad the, and built something on a logical as well. If it is truly consequential issues, then you, you have to do that because it's, so for example, I ha I always tell people that you have to have the epistemic humility, which means what, you know, what you know, and know what you don't know. So if I am asked to appear on some show to speak about things that I know, I walk with someone with all the swagger of someone who knows, but if you were to ask me now, Candace, so what do you think about the legalization of marijuana? My answer is going to be a very humble on which is, you know, I just don't know enough. 2 (51m 1s): I haven't built the right network to be able to definitively pronounce a position. So I'll pass. I just don't know enough about it. So I think on truly consequential issues, don't let hysteria and emotions run your decisions in the effort. You know, and especially today, I mean, with Google and the democratization of knowledge, you know, it used to be in the past that if you want it to access scientific journals, for example, it was reserved for people who were in academia today. Anyone could access anything. So on consequential issues, you can't be a cognitive miser. You have to put on the effort and pronounce in the position. 1 (51m 40s): So when you're doing the research on a topic that you find important, especially if you are just like a regular person without like a scientific background, how do you distinguish between real scientific articles and fake ones? Like ones that are just like pseudoscience 2 (51m 55s): And the most basic level. There are certain ways by which we can establish whether a journal is highly respect that. So for example, there are journals that have what's called impact factors, which basically captures how often are the papers in those journals cited by other academics, right? So the journal lets say, so if we go in the behavioral sciences, a journal like BBS behavioral on and brain sciences is extraordinarily prestigious because the papers that are published in that journal and that being cited tremendously well, that's a measure of the fact that other scientists highly value the papers in that journal. 2 (52m 36s): That's why they cite them and their own work. If on the other hand, you, you have a journal that, you know, on average, the typical paper gets sited zero one times ever. And this is probably a journal that is not one that you can rely on. Now, the reality is that the peer review process as supposed to, in a sense, take care of that, right? Because the peer review process for your viewers and listeners who may not know what, whatever we send the paper to the academic journal, it gets vetted and in an incredibly brutal way, which again speaks to the importance of no idea who should be unchallenged, right? So why is it that when I send the paper to a journal, it gets butchered down to every last syllable, but Islam can't be criticized, right? 2 (53m 22s): So scientific work only gets published. If it's vetted very, very rigorously through the peer review process. Now different journals will have different standards. So for example, now you'll have the proliferation of many what I call predatory journals that have a very, very poor peer review process because all they care about is for the authors to pay, to publish in those journals. Well, you should probably avoid those outlets when you're building your neurological network, but the classic journals that we rely on, you know, there are very easy ways to know whether a journal is reputable or not. 1 (53m 59s): Right? Cause you, in the book, you mentioned a bunch of articles that were getting submitted just to like see if journals would take them. And some of them were like through like, there's no way, like I have no scientific background whatsoever. And you're like, this is so obvious. So one of them was like the dog park rape culture. And then the other one was somehow penises are causing climate change. And like these got approved and you're like, in what world do those things even make sense 2 (54m 25s): When I need to discuss those papers, papers and quotes. And in my book, it really is to demonstrate the lunacy of postmodernism, right? And I call postmodernism the granddaddy of all idea pathogens because postmodernism basically purports that there are no universal truth. Everything is shackled by subjectivity. Everything is shackled by personal biases. So to argue that there is such a thing as an objective, truth is nonsense. That's according to the postmodernism. Now you can imagine how that is a terrible idea. Pathogen, because scientists do wake up every morning under the working premise that there are choose to be discovered. 2 (55m 7s): Now scientific truths are provisional. And that's what we thought was true in science 300 years ago, it gets revised. Like there are no revealed truth. If tomorrow someone falsifies Darwin's theory of natural selection they want, but if they did well, then we're back to the drawing board. So we pursue truths and then it gets updated auto corrected. But postmodernism throws that out the window that says that there's nothing. That's true. So in 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his dissertation. And we said, was that okay? That's all I for celebratory dinner. So it was myself. We didn't have any kids yet. It was myself, my wife, my doctoral student, and his date for the evening. 2 (55m 49s): And so before the, we got together, he warned me that this particular date was a graduate student and radical feminism and other idea of pathogen, postmodernism and cultural anthropology. So kind of the Holy Trinity of bullshit. And so he was telling me this let's not get into fights. That's have a good and like, Oh no, no, I got you. No problem. I'm going to be on my best behavior. Mom is the word. Don't worry. Which of course was not going to, I wasn't going to adhere to that. And so about halfway through the evening, I turned to the person in question and I said, Oh, I hear you're a post-modernist because yes, that there are no universal truths. 2 (56m 30s): Yes. I said, do you mind? Because I'm an evolutionary psychologist. So I do operate under the premise that there are certain truths. Do you mind if I propose some truths and then you can tell me how I'm wrong, go for it. Is it not a universal truth? That for homosapians humans are only women, their children, this isn't 2002, by the way, way before the whole trans grace, is it not true that only women, but the children, she scoffs, she, she looks at me with disgust and horror rolls her eyes. Is it? No. How is that the case? She said, well, there's some tribe off some Japanese Island where within their mythological folkloric realm, it is the men who bear children. 2 (57m 13s): So by you restricting the conversation to the biological realm, you know, that's how you keep us barefoot and pregnant. And so after I recovered from my mini stroke, I then asked her, okay, well maybe it's too controversial for me to state that only women bear children. So let me take a less controversial case. Is it true that since time and Memorial sailors have relied on the fact that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and then there, she used a subset of postmodernism. It's called deconstructionism language creates reality where she said, well, what do you mean by East and West? Those are just arbitrary labels. And what do you mean by the sun? 2 (57m 54s): That what you call it? The sun I called dancing hyena. And these are the exact words I said, okay, well, the dancing hyena arises from the East and sets in the West. So which she answered, I don't play those label games. And so if you have something that she wasn't, some patients who had just escaped from a psychiatric Institute, she was a graduate student in postmodernism. So, so our brain was fully pressed, advised by bullshit, right? So that I couldn't find a common intersection of meaning where her and I could have a conversation about what we mean by the sun East and West, and that women can bear children. She was aping exactly what his thoughts on those horses. So imagine if that's what you are taught then of course the penis causes climate change. 2 (58m 39s): Why not? That's that's my interpretation. That's my reveal truth. That's my truth. There is no capital T truth, right? So what those papers were trying to demonstrate is how shoddy, how fraudulent all those fields are because they generated all these insane top papers and they were getting in. Now this, by the way, for your listeners who don't know this, this has been called so-called 2.0, because originally in 1996, a physicist, a professor of physics by the name of Alan SoCo as okay. A L had generated a bullshit article to demonstrate how the author, all the stuff is where he was arguing that, you know, a gravity is a social construct and the hegemony of whatever, all the buzzwords, and he got it into that journal. 2 (59m 27s): And then he said, oops, I have an admission to make it right. And of course you would think that the people might be embarrassed, but guess what they did, they doubled down, Oh, this proves nothing. We still extracted meaning from your paper. You see Saad unfalsifiable. And so what these guys did with the grievance studies project, that those other papers that you were referring to is they, instead of generating one of those papers, they generate a 20 of those papers and then sent them. And I think seven of them had already been accepted in prestigious journals, within postmodernism and gender studies and all that. Now, if you're able to generate random jibberish and it gets into the top journals in the field, that's not a very good position for a few have to have. 1 (1h 0m 11s): No, definitely not. It seems like there's almost like a lack of humility when it comes to postmodernism, because it's with the scientific method, you have to be open that you're wrong, right? Like that's the whole part of the hypothesis is that you might be incorrect in the end. I have to retest. And then with postmodernism is there is no in no way, can you be wrong because there is no wrong, wrong is the construct. 2 (1h 0m 29s): Okay. And that, that speaks to our earlier point about falsification, right? That is part of the scientific method to be able to falsify something. So this is why postmodernism is a kin to a secular quasi religion. Right. Because I can't falsify it because even when a physicist sends a paper that he then admits was randomly generated, bullshit, that doesn't make you cower away in to shame. It simply says, but we took meaning from it. So it's exactly what you're saying. 1 (1h 1m 0s): Yeah. And then you also mentioned that the rise of that was it's because it gets so confusing and unintentionally, so that a regular person is like, well, maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to understand. And is that just like our nature is to assume that we're at fault for not being intelligent enough because we are not academics. 2 (1h 1m 19s): What you just said is part of a more general phenomenon in psychology called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is a common cognitive error that people commit whereby they misattribute something. For example, I did well on the exam because I'm smart. I'm attributing the success internally, versus I could say I did well on the exam because the exam was easy. The professor is nice, right? So do you attribute a phenomenon to internal dispositions or to external situational things? And it turns out that oftentimes people misattribute that causality. And so that example is the manifestation of this, because what happens basically, a postmodernist gets up in front of a bunch of impressionable young minds. 2 (1h 2m 7s): And he it's I say here, because the Holy Trinity of French, his bullshitters are Jack Black, all the data and Michele for cohort three French postmodernism. So I get up and I start pontificating all sorts of random gibberish. Now the audience faces the fundamental attribution error, which is, I'm not understanding a word that this guy is saying because he's full of BS. Or I don't understand what this guy is saying because I'm too dumb to understand his profundity. And I think because most people end up being humble and charitable about this 'cause he is a fancy professor who is lecturing at Princeton. 2 (1h 2m 48s): It must be because I'm too dumb. And you can't imagine the number of people that was written to me, who said, you know, until I read your explanation for this phenomenon, I actually was always under the assumption that I was too dumb. That's why I didn't do well. And my post-modernist philosophy class, as a matter of fact, my wife told me that she said, Oh, in college, I did all that obscure French bulls monitor stuff. I never understood a word. I always thought it was too deep for me. And now I know that it's a bunch of garbage. Now I think that, so I have a theory, which I think there's an anecdote in the book that somewhat points to the fact that it might be correct, where I argued that the way that these guys started is that they're actually true Charlotte, that they were well aware that they were scamming the world, but that's how they would get the hot, pretty girls on campus, metaphorically speaking, right? 2 (1h 3m 39s): It's not fair that only the physicist and the mathematicians, our, and maybe the neuroscientists are reviewed. We also have important things to say, well, one of the ways that I can convince you that I have important things to say is to create a language that's impenetrable, but I have a background in mathematics. And I can tell you, if you don't speak the language of mathematics and you try to read an academic paper by the first line you're out, you can't understand the word. Well, if I am now a post-modernist humanities guy, can I create a language that is as impenetrable as those Hottie mathematicians? Well, that's, I'm going to create postmodernist verbiage. And they were able to fool people. And the reason why I know that my theory is correct is because I quote a discussion between Michel Foucault, one of the primary French fries, monitors, and if the American philosopher by the name of John Sierra, where they're their friends and John seals tells me sharp for coal, how come Michelle, when you and I chat with each other, I seem to understand what you're saying, but when I read your stuff, its so much more confusing. 2 (1h 4m 42s): And then in a incredible bout of honesty, candor, Michelle for the court says, Oh, well, you know, in France, if you don't confuse people, then they don't take you seriously. So he was actually admitting to doing exactly what I just said, 1 (1h 4m 55s): Knowledge with that being out there that do they just say, Oh, that was one person that doesn't speak for the rest of us. 2 (1h 5m 0s): I think so. Yes. But I do feel that we we're on the downswing with all the postmodern stuff. It's not dead. It's still come through my university and have a million of these courses. But the inflection point, the highest point, the Zenith of the movement we've already passed to us. So I'd to think that its on its way out, but again, it will take many more years now. The reason, by the way, I am so forceful against these kinds of ideas pathogens while one is just because of my purity of spirit, I hate the tax on truth. I hate jibberish. Right? But, but even more pragmatically think about the number of students who have lost all sorts of opportunities to get a true education or all the parents who took out more, whatever, a second mortgage on their homes and went into debt to send their kids to Oberlin college, to study feminist glaciology. 2 (1h 5m 54s): And then they ended up being baristas and Starbucks. And this is not me being facetious. It's literally true. Like th there is no market for specialists and postmodern is bullshit, right? So it's really a pragmatic thing. Life is about trade-offs life is about opportunity costs. I'm not suggesting that everybody should study, you know, evolutionary psychology and physics and math. You could study the humanities, but you're still committed to reason, right? You could study Chaucer or Shakespeare, for example, Shakespeare as wonderful to study because those narratives are compelling because they say something really universal about human nature. So you could study philosophy or aesthetics or the humanities in a very serious way. So I'm not suggesting that sociology is bullshit or humanities as bullshit. 2 (1h 6m 36s): But if you are studying them in a way that's pure activism fully the couple from reason, then you're wasting everybody's 1 (1h 6m 44s): Okay. That's really interesting. So with the attribution error, you said people tend to go inward, right? So that made me think of the internal locus of control versus external locus of control. And then that makes me think of the victimology. So with the victimology, it's constantly external, right? Cause it's the oppressor, someone else is to blame, but then when it comes to the postmodernism, it's all internal because you're like, well, I am stupid. So that's like a really interesting parallel 2 (1h 7m 13s): In the first example with the victimology, by the way, that's what I think one of the reasons why people hate Jordan Peterson's message, right? Which to me the most banal of statements was his personal responsibility. I mean, how dare he, what kind of Nazi is here? Right? I mean, I give an example, by the way, speaking of that internal, external locus of control and so on. And the book when I am contrasting se the victimology poker of say Jesse Smith left, right? And it wasn't enough that he was a highly overpaid in my view actor who is making more per episode than I make per year. I think I have, I contributed more than he does, but he wasn't satisfied with having won that lottery is for him to truly be validated. 2 (1h 7m 54s): He had to also send the victimology hierarchy and if he couldn't that he would manufacture one. And I contrast that to the environment that I grew up in. And I tell the story of, I did an undergrad in mathematics and computer science. Then I did an MBA and with always with the goal of continuing to complete a PhD and become a professor. But one of the that I had been accepted at from my PhD was that the university of California Irvine and it so happened that I had one brother who lived in Southern California, who was a very successful businessman, who is trying to convince me to maybe Don the proverbial suit before I returned to do my PhD. You know, he was trying to say, why don't you come to work with me for a few years after your MBA, before you go back to academia. 2 (1h 8m 37s): And he's an older brother. So I was being respectful. I went and spent the day with him and his dad, his work, but I wasn't really moved by it. I knew that I want to continue and do my PhD, which I ended up not going to UC Irvine. I went to Cornell, but my mother had heard that my brother was trying to convince me to leave my study's for a while. And so when I returned to Montreal, so to see my parents, she takes me to another room and she says, well, you know, I heard the story, you know, what is happening? Do you want people to think of you as somebody who dropped out of school? So her position was that someone who had a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science and an MBA from McGill university, which is one of the top universities in the world is often referred to as the Harvard of the North in Canada. 2 (1h 9m 22s): If I stopped after my MBA, it would bring shame as somebody who dropped out of school right now, of course I didn't go on to get a PhD to please my parents or anything. But that gives you a sense of the standard of excellence. And we are not victims. Now we were real victims. We escaped some horrifying. We didn't, we weren't just the smell. Ed. We are the real victims who ran really quickly, do not have our heads detach from the rest of our bodies in Lebanon. And yet we don't wallow in that victim, but we recognize it. We tell the story. I, I, I say where I come from, but I don't wallow in it. I want to serve, Mind overcome my victim hood and do something with my life. 2 (1h 10m 4s): And so that speaks to internal external locus of control because victimology requires that all of your failures be attributed to external causes. So you're exactly right. 1 (1h 10m 13s): Yeah. And then there was also a part of your book that was talking about the homeostasis of victimology and you have to maintain like a certain status quo. So do you think that's because we do live in such a great society where we don't have these very real issues, like a lot of the middle Eastern countries have, for example, that we're just creating them. Like you, you gave a couple of, of examples that I've seen them from some of the idiots that I used to follow on Twitter, which was Lena Dunham, getting outraged by sushi being sold. So I'm Japanese. My dad is from Japan. Like I am by no means offended if I see sushi in the cafeteria. Right? So we are starting to create problems with where there are no problems because we don't have problems. 1 (1h 10m 55s): So I feel like that comes from just not being traveled well enough and not knowing like what true violence and true oppression actually are. Because if you did, like, as a feminist, you wouldn't be complaining about like a supposedly wage gap when there is women that are, you know, getting stoned for being raped. There are real problems finding that could 2 (1h 11m 14s): Assist got off at the age of five. 1 (1h 11m 15s): Right. So why is that? And like the, not the Hill that you're dying on, but you're dying on this other Hill that doesn't even exist. So I never understood like that disconnect. 2 (1h 11m 24s): Yeah. So cognitive consistency is not one of the hallmarks of progressive ideology. So let me just explain, since you brought it up, what my theory on homeostasis of victimology is. So a homeostatic system is both explaining some of our psychological phenomenon, but also many of our physical phenomenon. So homeostasis is basically is you have some set marker, which then the system will adjust to always maintain that, that set point. So for example, the thermostat in your hotel room is a homeostatic system. I started at 69. If it gets too warm or too cold, the system will adjust accordingly. 2 (1h 12m 4s): If my blood sugar goes to low, because I'm hungry, then it will tell my brain, go get food. So there are many systems, whether they be physiological systems or psychological systems that are homeostatic nature. And so I took that principle and I argued that what we, what explains this manufacturer, this orgiastic desire to always see victimology everywhere is something that can do a homeostatic system. I need to know who to believe that the U S is a terrible racist, evil society. So I need to set the set the point of bigotry somewhere. And if I can't find those instances, I will then remind you factor, you know, what constitutes victimology so that I always reached that set point. 2 (1h 12m 49s): And it's very much related to another concept. This is not mine called concept creep, which comes from a Australian psychologist where he basically argued that there are many phenomenon, whether it be trauma or bullying, that the concept of that term keeps being changed to allow a greater inclusion of phenomenon within that. Right? So, so now if you silence is violence, right? So the emission of anything as an act of violence, that's concept creep that fits within my homeostatic argument, right? If you can't call a woman, we can argue whether it's objectionable to do so. You should be respectful. 2 (1h 13m 29s): But if you can't call a woman as she's walking by, that is a form of sexual assault, right? As a matter of fact, in the training that I had to do last year, that I mentioned that the university they would give you yes. And then ask you what that was. And I knew what is the answer that they wanted. So if you witness a woman being a complimented in an objectionable way on campus, as that is sexual violence, it, so I answered no. And then it kind of flies, you know, you're incorrect. And then it explains to you that no, that is a form of, you know, it's linguistic rape, or look how much offensive that is to an actual victim of rape. 2 (1h 14m 17s): A little girl who's had her clitoral removed or has had to have gone through it in fibrillation of her genitalia. What does she feel when she then sees that someone who was at mis-gendered is a victim compared to the victimology now that she has a front, so human dignity, because you are trivializing what true victimology. 1 (1h 14m 37s): Yeah. 100%. And I just don't know how you change that kind of mindset when you live in such a privileged and civilized society, other than like exposing them to that, 2 (1h 14m 48s): That has to be exposure. That's exactly it. And I think that's why that goes back to your earlier point. When you said, how come you don't get canceled? I think it's because my victimology story keeps people at Bay because it always contextualizes the nonsense that you're going to come at me with with whatever I'm going to throw at you. And so that for better or worse, my, my background in Lebanon has served me well later in life. 1 (1h 15m 12s): No, that is true. I guess like, you must just be Bulletproof though, because like I'm pretty opinionated and it took me a while to get comfortable with that, just because I thought, you know, maybe I'm going to lose all of my followers and that directly affects like my sales and yada yada. So again, like I'm Japanese, my grandmother moved to the United States back when they were rounding up Japanese and putting them in camps. My mom is Jewish from her dad's side and he had to deal with that over and hungry. There's like a lot of what you, you could put me in those like little intersectionality groups if you want it. Right. And then I voiced an opinion and someone called me a Nazi and I was like, I literally have Jewish blood in me. 1 (1h 15m 55s): And you're calling me a Nazi. Like, do you know how offensive that is? And they're like, well, there was still Jews that betrayed their own. And I was like, what logic is this coming from? It was like a white man that had like some German soccer player on his avatar, of course. And it was like, this is just it's comical. It's comical, all the connections everyone makes. 2 (1h 16m 14s): Okay. So you have parts to Jewish identity. I am juvenile. I am Nazi Jordan Peterson and I were canceled. So you were mentioning about being canceled. This was one case where we were canceled, who are both set the speed at an event in 2017 at Ryerson university in Ontario, Canada. And the title of the event was the stifling of free speech on university campuses. And that event was canceled. So the irony is the loss of them and the people who, who were the movers of canceling us have put out a Facebook page where they had said, no, we don't want neo-Nazis white supremacists. 2 (1h 16m 57s): I think. And then, you know, people were saying, but GAD Saad is, is that the need is an Arabic Jew, but he is still a Nazi, right? So there's no way to appeal to their reason. They're just the rest of the thighs by nonsense. 1 (1h 17m 11s): I don't know where you go from there. And I mean, so when I did want to ask you about Twitter, so I was going through some of your tweets and then some of them throughout your book, and they're super controversial. And I see a lot of people that are speaking out and getting deep platform. So I guess there's two parts, I guess. So one is you strive on the importance of speaking out and not being like this cowardly person, but I guess, how do you do it when you're getting censored from all of these platforms that are basically monopolized? 2 (1h 17m 43s): Life is about trade-offs. It's about weight, the pros and cons. So I, I never tell people to be, you know, reckless martyrs. I understand that people have jobs and they have responsibilities, but then I always draw the following analogy, which turns out to be quite poignant. I say, I understand that you fear losing your job on this and that, but the young men, because they were all men who landed on Normandy in world war II, that they sign up for that hoping to have secure assurance that they would not be killed or were most of them mowed down like the little mosquitoes by German gunners. So the reality is that no war, nothing worth, truly fighting for comes at zero risk. 2 (1h 18m 26s): You could engage in a calculus to the side, how much risk you can tolerate, but you simply cannot continue to argue that. But I have a family. Some sometimes people say, Oh, but of course for you to professor, it's easy because you're tenured. You could speak your mind. Well, first of all, and I explained this to the book, the tenure doesn't protect me from the million death threats that I've received. Tenure didn't protect me. When I had to go in 2017 on campus, accompanied by security to go to my classes where they would then lock the door so that if you left the classroom, you'll have to be let back in to come back into the classroom. Tenure. Didn't protect me. When I would finish my lecture, my wife would pick me up and I would have something again, have a, to an anxiety at that. 2 (1h 19m 11s): And this is a Mister macho Navy seal guy who he says, Oh my God, thank God I survive another week. I got to be with my family until I have to lecture next week, because I don't know who is going to come at me. Right? Because they didn't say who they are, but know we're going to boil you this way, Jew. And we're going to kill you this way. We're coming for you Jew. Okay. So everybody bears the cost. The fact that I'm tenured doesn't mean that I didn't bear a cost. You think some people at my university were happy with all my outspokenness, my chaired professorship. Hasn't been renewed for three years. It wasn't by magic. My CV is a very long CV objectively. I should get the chair professorship. I haven't other universities that were very interested in hiring me, have backed away because of what I do. 2 (1h 19m 55s): So we all have a cross to bear. The question is, some of us are more courageous than others, but don't use the argument that, but I have a job. I have a family, we all have families. We all have costs. So I'll give you another little snippet of how difficult it can be. You know, I get recognized all the time on the street. It's always been incredibly positive. It's never been someone who is coming up to me, who, you know, was aggressive or anything. But you know, it happens many, many times a day. Sometimes I'm with my family. So I get stressed because they want to take a selfie or a picture. But now here's an example to show you how much anxiety is going to. Cause one time I was walking out of my house, into my driveway and I man passes by and he goes, excuse me. 2 (1h 20m 39s): And usually when someone says that, I sort of know what's coming next. And I turn and say, yes, he goes, are you GAD Saad? So then I kind of hesitate. I say, yes, we're the ones you mind if I come in and shake your hand. So he comes sort of on my property and shakes my hand. And I was very nice for the rest of the day. I wasn't an utter panic because now there was someone who knew where I lived. If that guy tomorrow, the sides, he is no longer a fan. If he is a vegan and I post a picture of a steak and that offends him, he just has to go on Twitter and say, here is where God's Saad live. So we all bear a cost. I have felt certain stress symptoms because of what I do that I never felt on the past. 2 (1h 21m 20s): So the idea that that you're protected, professor you're tenured, I'm not as nonsense. We all have a cross, the bear, and we should all speak out 1 (1h 21m 30s): That you were a very busy man. So I want to take too much of your time, but do you want to tell the listeners where they can follow you, where they can buy your book and like any party 2 (1h 21m 39s): I'm all on social media. So add GAD Saad, GAD S a D if they want to follow me on Twitter, I have a public Facebook page. I have a YouTube channel called the Saad truth. S a D also a podcast in my book. The Parasitic Mind it can be purchased on Amazon through my publisher. Regnery. It's not hard to find me if you want to find me, sorry that we didn't get a chance to talk about the sum of your professional expertise. Maybe another time I know I'm going to have to have you back on, but that sounds great. It was real, real pleasure talking to you so much. 0 (1h 22m 11s): Cheers. 1 (1h 22m 12s): That's it for this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have the time, please rate and review and you can always hit subscribe to stay up to date with our latest episodes. I hope to have you back 0 (1h 22m 24s): <inaudible>.