Juno News - Ep 13 ｜ Dr. Gad Saad ｜ Activate Your Inner Honey Badger

00:00:00.000 So the fact that social justice warriors and other intellectual terrorists are in the minority

00:00:04.920 doesn't negate the fact that they wield much of the power, right? So it keeps everybody in check

00:00:10.480 because nobody wants to fall prey to their e-mob and their cancel culture and so on.

00:00:15.760 So the reality is if everybody were to somehow trigger their ire, their own ire, their indignation,

00:00:22.440 or what I call activate your inner honey badger, then the problem can be resolved very quickly.

00:00:27.500 If you don't do that, then it's drip, drip, drip. It's death of the West by a thousand cuts.

00:00:32.800 We will one day wake up without any of our freedoms. We won't recognize the society that we used to love.

00:00:38.640 Political correctness has a chilling impact on our culture and our society.

00:00:42.940 A silent majority of people disagree with what they see and hear on the news,

00:00:46.840 but they decide to keep quiet, keep their opinions to themselves, and engage in a form of self-censorship.

00:00:52.480 And who can blame them? They don't want to risk losing their job, losing their livelihood,

00:00:57.400 losing friends or family members, all just overholding what a rabid mob considers to be the wrong opinion.

00:01:04.360 My guest on today's episode of the True North Speaker series has been living on the front lines of the culture war

00:01:10.360 against the radical left for years. And he says that if we don't stand up for our core values,

00:01:16.620 values like truth and freedom, that these values will soon be lost forever.

00:01:20.980 Dr. Gad Saad is an author, public speaker, and professor at Concordia University in Montreal.

00:01:27.980 He runs a popular YouTube channel called The Sad Truth, and has been speaking about free speech

00:01:32.920 and political correctness for years. His latest book, The Parasitic Mind,

00:01:37.940 How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, is coming out on October 6th.

00:01:42.740 And in our conversation today, we talk about these infectious ideas,

00:01:46.420 how they've been fomenting on university campuses for decades, and the best way to combat them.

00:01:52.920 Dr. Saad, known lovingly online by his followers as The Gadfather, says it's time to treat this war

00:01:59.640 as the serious threat that it is. Unleash your inner honey badger and start fighting back.

00:02:06.180 I hope you enjoy our conversation.

00:02:08.120 Let me know what you think in the comment section,

00:02:09.940 and please share this video with friends and like-minded compatriots.

00:02:14.160 Don't forget to subscribe to True North.

00:02:16.200 And if you'd like to support this podcast, please visit tnc.news slash donate.

00:02:31.700 Dr. Gad Saad, thank you so much. Welcome to the True North Speaker Series. It's such a pleasure to have you today.

00:02:36.540 Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be here.

00:02:39.820 Well, we were just saying, I met you once before in Montreal.

00:02:42.720 We invited you to speak at a Civitas conference.

00:02:45.560 And I remember that presentation that you gave.

00:02:48.220 You talked about the concept of idea pathogens and the ostrich syndrome,

00:02:53.960 which I see you've also incorporated into your latest book.

00:02:57.240 So hopefully we can go through some of those concepts at more length,

00:03:01.260 because I really want to talk about your new book that's coming out on October 6th.

00:03:05.540 But before we get there, Dr. Saad, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background

00:03:09.560 and how you ended up being this sort of prominent public intellectual?

00:03:16.000 So I've been a professor for 26 years.

00:03:18.820 My area of scientific research is marrying evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology

00:03:24.780 to study human behavior in general, but consumer behavior in particular.

00:03:29.140 And so I've been within the ecosystem of the university, as I said, for almost three decades.

00:03:35.660 And as I always recount, and as I do in chapter one of my forthcoming book,

00:03:40.620 I faced two great wars in my life.

00:03:42.800 The first war that I faced was in Lebanon as a child.

00:03:46.860 I was in the Lebanese Civil War, and my family had to escape Lebanon because we are Lebanese Jews.

00:03:52.960 And so that afforded me an understanding of how ugly tribalism could be,

00:03:58.580 how ugly identity politics is when pushed to the extreme.

00:04:02.120 But I faced a second war in my life, and that war has been the war on reason,

00:04:07.920 the war on science, the war on logic and common sense that I've been seeing

00:04:12.820 with increasing frequency on the university campus.

00:04:16.420 And so what compelled me to, as you said, become a public intellectual is, number one,

00:04:22.140 I'm sitting there in that war, seeing how people are no longer committed to logic, reason,

00:04:27.920 common sense, and science.

00:04:28.980 But also I'm someone who, just because of my genetic makeup, I am very indignant of nonsense.

00:04:37.020 And so when I see nonsense, I feel personally affronted.

00:04:41.860 And so put all those together, and voila, I'm in the public eye.

00:04:46.420 Well, it's interesting that you compare those sort of two different, I guess, battles or wars,

00:04:51.420 because, you know, in Lebanon, that is a real war where people are actually being killed and murdered.

00:04:57.280 When we think about identity politics and the sort of culture wars that happen in North America and the West,

00:05:03.940 you know, they're almost like kind of silly, like identity politics, you just sort of roll your eyes on it.

00:05:08.940 But you've seen how those dangerous ideas can really manifest into something that's truly dangerous.

00:05:16.460 So maybe you can expand a little bit on how you compare those two different kinds of battles or wars that you've lived through.

00:05:23.640 So at the most fundamental level, I like to use the language of war or violence.

00:05:31.320 So, for example, I talk about postmodernists being intellectual terrorists, right?

00:05:36.480 So on 9-11, 19 committed zealots decided to fly planes onto buildings.

00:05:43.440 Well, intellectual terrorists, postmodernists, they fly their planes of BS onto our edifices of reason.

00:05:51.520 So at the most fundamental level, there is a murder of truth.

00:05:54.860 Truth matters.

00:05:55.860 So that's at the grandest level.

00:05:58.560 They are literally, or rather figuratively, raping truth, right?

00:06:03.940 There is such a thing as male-female. 0.65

00:06:06.200 There is such a thing as biology.

00:06:07.840 There are universal truths that scientists wake up every day trying to uncover.

00:06:13.560 Postmodernists say no.

00:06:15.620 There are no objective truths.

00:06:17.120 There's only, you know, you're shackled by your subjective reality and subjective biases.

00:06:21.900 So at the most fundamental level, there is literally an attack on, you know, all of the things that makes our societies enlightened, which is the pursuit of truth.

00:06:31.440 We have the scientific method that allows us to educate what is true from what is false, right?

00:06:37.040 This is why we don't rub crystals to resolve diabetes, right?

00:06:41.980 Because we have a mechanism to judge whether rubbing crystals works or not.

00:06:46.680 So that's one issue.

00:06:47.820 But then there are downstream effects of all of these, as you kindly pointed in the start of the intro, about what I call idea pathogens.

00:06:56.260 So identity politics is not just a silly thing that we're just, you know, indignant about.

00:07:01.980 Identity politics has now entered every single hallway of academia.

00:07:07.840 So we give professorships not as a function of whether you have merit, but as a function of whether you belong to certain classes of people who possess certain immutable traits.

00:07:20.660 I mean, a few years ago, you would have thought that this is a grotesque, racist idea.

00:07:25.140 Today, it is cloaked in the robe of social justice.

00:07:29.000 So it doesn't matter if my CV is 50 pages long.

00:07:32.360 If I am not a person that has this and this marker, I'm simply put to the back of the queue.

00:07:38.520 When you now apply for grants, you have to state what is your commitment to what I call the di-religion, diversity, inclusion, and equity.

00:07:47.100 If you don't write the correct things, you don't get a grant.

00:07:52.520 I know of a natural sciences professor at a prominent university in Montreal who was denied a grant.

00:07:59.960 He does important science.

00:08:01.640 He was denied a grant because they didn't get past the fact that his di-statement was sufficiently progressive.

00:08:09.180 So the science didn't matter.

00:08:11.620 The di-religion superseded the science. 0.99

00:08:13.960 So if I may just correct your earlier point, it's hardly silly, these squabbles, because the downstream effect is truly disastrous to an enlightened, scientific-oriented society.

00:08:26.240 Oh, and I didn't mean to downplay it at all.

00:08:28.660 I just think that we have so much of this in our society.

00:08:33.280 It's like politics has seeped into every aspect of our life.

00:08:36.220 Like you just said, even in hard sciences, you now have to repeat the correct mantras.

00:08:41.500 And I think a lot of Canadians out there just sort of really roll their eyes at it.

00:08:45.820 Like they don't see the problem as serious as what some of the alarmists on the left are proclaiming.

00:08:52.480 And so when they're constantly being lectured about systemic racism or about, you know, rape culture in our society or all of these sort of buzzwords that the left has created, they just don't, they've had enough of it.

00:09:04.340 They kind of roll their eyes at it.

00:09:05.660 So it's not that it's silly.

00:09:07.520 It's just that we're so tired of it.

00:09:09.560 And I wonder if you get that feeling as well, because you've been on the front lines fighting this fight for, I don't know, years and years.

00:09:17.880 And it seems like, you know, it's not going away.

00:09:20.280 It's just getting worse and worse.

00:09:22.360 I think it's getting worse and worse because it's exactly what you're saying.

00:09:26.480 People are tired of it.

00:09:28.380 They roll their eyes at it.

00:09:29.920 But then they don't become, as I say, soldiers of reason.

00:09:33.520 There's no, you could roll your eyes from today until pigs fly.

00:09:37.960 If you don't get engaged in fighting back against these idea pathogens, then the problem won't be resolved.

00:09:43.440 The reality is, I think the great majority of people are anti all this nonsense, but they don't speak.

00:09:50.120 And again, to come back to the analogy of the 9-11 hijackers, it didn't take 19 million people to bring down the Twin Towers.

00:09:59.600 It didn't take 190,000 people.

00:10:01.860 It required only 19 committed people.

00:10:05.300 So the fact that social justice warriors and other intellectual terrorists are in the minority doesn't negate the fact that they wield much of the power.

00:10:13.640 So it keeps everybody in check because nobody wants to fall prey to their e-mob and their cancel culture and so on. 0.99

00:10:21.040 So the reality is, if everybody were to somehow trigger their ire, their own ire, their indignation, or what I call activate your inner honey badger, then the problem can be resolved very quickly.

00:10:32.940 If you don't do that, then it's drip, drip, drip.

00:10:35.800 It's death of the West by a thousand cuts.

00:10:38.020 We will one day wake up without any of our freedoms.

00:10:40.500 We won't recognize the society that we used to love.

00:10:44.360 And you can see that happening.

00:10:45.740 I feel like Canadian society right now is just crippled with political correctness where we've had some very high profile people sort of get canceled or the cancel culture mob has gone after them and they've been removed from their positions.

00:10:59.800 And it creates a chilling effect across society.

00:11:02.560 What would your advice be for some of those Canadians that really don't agree with what's going on, but they also don't find themselves in a position where they can really speak out against it?

00:11:11.980 So there are several ways that I can answer this.

00:11:15.440 And by the way, forgive the shameless plug, but in chapter eight, the last chapter of the book, I exactly address your question, which is the chapter titled Call to Action.

00:11:24.260 Because it's insufficient to explain the problem.

00:11:27.880 You also have to offer a vaccine, a set of solutions and inoculation, right?

00:11:32.180 So I mentioned earlier, you know, activate your inner honey badger.

00:11:36.140 But let's talk about the one you mentioned, you know, I might lose friends.

00:11:39.320 So I actually address this one in the book.

00:11:42.700 So I argue that friendships are anti-fragile, to use the term of Nassim Talib, my good friend.

00:11:50.480 So anti-fragility is something that you want in a system.

00:11:54.040 In other words, you need to shock the system and it not break for it to be a strong system, right?

00:12:00.040 If it is very brittle and if I just go boo and it breaks, then that's not a good system.

00:12:04.680 Well, I argue that friendships, true friendships should be anti-fragile, which means what?

00:12:09.580 Candace and I, if we're good friends, we could sit down around the table, disagree on Justin Trudeau or Donald Trump or whatever else we're debating and walk away from that conversation without any threat to our friendship.

00:12:22.100 If we can't do that, then Candace is not a friend that I wish to have around in my inner circle.

00:12:28.320 She's not worthy of the title of my friend. 0.86

00:12:30.180 So one of the ways that you get around that sort of cowardice of I'm going to lose friend is to recognize that it's better to be accompanied by a few strong friends, loyal friends with whom I could have these heated exchanges than to be surrounded by a bunch of castrated cowards. 0.96

00:12:46.800 Another one that I often hear is, you know, who am I to judge?

00:12:50.780 You know, I don't want to judge another culture.

00:12:53.380 I don't want to judge another thing.

00:12:54.760 If they want to believe in BLM, no, judge.

00:12:57.340 OK, now, as long as you're judging is rooted in a set of coherent principles, we judge all the time.

00:13:04.960 When I'm deciding who to marry, I judge different candidates.

00:13:09.020 I belong to the society of judgment and decision making as a behavioral scientist.

00:13:13.760 So judging is an inherent part of human nature.

00:13:17.120 I think oftentimes what happens is people think back of the sort of the religious edict, you know, don't judge others lest you be judged.

00:13:24.480 Right. In that case, what the religious edict is talking about is moral hypocrisy.

00:13:29.660 Right. Don't judge others for doing something and then you turn around, do it yourself.

00:13:34.560 It's in that sense we mean don't judge others.

00:13:37.140 Right. Don't throw stones in a glass house and so on.

00:13:39.920 But the idea that I shouldn't judge others because they are imbeciles, cretins, intellectual terrorists. 1.00

00:13:46.100 No, I spend all day judging people and I expect others to judge me. 1.00

00:13:50.020 It's called being human. Well, absolutely. But, Dr. Saad, what about if you're in a position where you worry about your job?

00:13:57.620 I mean, we've seen a lot of people, high profile people lose, you know, I'll give you an example.

00:14:01.940 Stockwell Day, he went on CBC Power and Politics, said that he didn't think that Canada was a systemically racist country,

00:14:07.900 compared racist bullying that some kids might get to the bullying that he received because of the way he looked or the fact they wore glasses.

00:14:16.000 And that was enough. He got fired from the CBC or he forced to resign from his prestigious legal law firm that he was affiliated with.

00:14:24.620 And I think that those kind of things have a really chilling effect that you worry, OK, if I write something on Facebook that gets interpreted the wrong way,

00:14:32.860 I could lose my job, which has a really deep impact on your ability to provide for your family and your entire life.

00:14:40.960 So what about, you know, positions that it's not just friendship, but it's actually your livelihood?

00:14:46.060 Yeah. So I also talk about this in the book.

00:14:47.780 Look, people often say, oh, but, you know, Professor Saad, you have tenure.

00:14:52.260 Well, first of all, tenure is not this great cloak that protects you from all ill consequences.

00:14:58.560 I've had to suffer quite serious consequences in academia despite being tenured.

00:15:04.540 And I don't need to get into all the details, but I can assure you it's not an easy ride to be who I am from within the venomous pit of academia.

00:15:13.000 I've received probably more death threats than anyone who is watching the show has hairs on their heads.

00:15:21.600 I used to walk in to campus having to check in with security who would accompany to my classroom and lock the door so that if a student leaves

00:15:30.080 and they want to come back in, it is they can't come back in without me opening the door.

00:15:34.520 My university accompanied me to the Montreal police for us to file a police report because of the death threats that I was receiving.

00:15:45.380 Tenure did not protect me from that.

00:15:47.440 When I would walk into the campus, this was several years ago.

00:15:50.460 Luckily, this has stopped.

00:15:51.820 But in 2017, when I would walk into campus, my wife would drop me.

00:15:56.140 I would literally have and I've never experienced anxiety before in the true sense of the term.

00:16:00.640 I would go to my class and then I would rush back for my wife to pick me up and I would literally let go a deep breath of a sigh of relief that I've survived another week

00:16:12.500 because I didn't know whether whomever is sending me the death threats is just a quack who's trying to intimidate or whether they're really going to do it or not. 0.93

00:16:19.520 So we all have a cross to bear.

00:16:23.480 Some of us more, some of us less.

00:16:25.440 The reality, though, is that if you look at the 18-year-olds who landed on the beaches of Normandy so that you and I can have this conversation today,

00:16:35.360 they didn't receive a guarantee that they would be protected.

00:16:39.020 They were likely to lose a lot more than their jobs.

00:16:43.200 And yet they said, yeah, yeah, sign me up.

00:16:44.860 I'll go land on the beaches of Normandy.

00:16:47.080 And they were going to be mowed down like little mosquitoes by the Germans. 0.97

00:16:50.780 So I'm not minimizing the real threats that people face, and I'm not suggesting that we be reckless martyrs, but everybody has a potential cost to bear.

00:17:01.720 The problem is that each person has exactly the same logic as what you're saying.

00:17:06.680 You know, let Ghat Saad and other courageous guys carry the burden for me.

00:17:11.940 You know, I have a job and I've got little kids.

00:17:14.000 Guess what?

00:17:14.720 I have little kids, too, and I have a heart and I have a brain, and I get panicky when I see six suspicious-looking guys coming towards me

00:17:22.800 because I don't know if they were the ones who sent me the 18,000th death threat, but I do it because not doing it would make me feel as though I'm a cowardly fraud.

00:17:31.860 So each person has to calculate their own calculus of the trade-offs of costs and benefits, but it is simply cowardly to say, I stand to lose.

00:17:43.880 In a war, everybody stands to lose, but we expect courageous people to stand up.

00:17:48.720 That's it.

00:17:49.980 I wondered, though, like, at what point do you feel like that call to action is there?

00:17:54.520 Because, you know, when the Second World War was going on, we saw the threat.

00:18:00.300 We knew what Hitler was. 0.94

00:18:02.400 We knew that Nazis were expanding all across Europe.

00:18:05.220 But I think that it was a much more obvious idea that the society was at war.

00:18:10.400 Whereas, Ghat, you know, today you look around and, you know, life is pretty good.

00:18:14.740 People are pretty comfortable.

00:18:16.000 A lot of the sort of culture wars play out online, and so it doesn't really feel real.

00:18:20.360 Now, obviously, over the summer, we've seen very violent riots.

00:18:25.000 We've seen gun battles.

00:18:26.480 We've seen a lot of this sort of pent-up anger that we experience online boil over and happen in real life.

00:18:33.300 So, you know, how do we know when it's time, you know, for us to, you know, metaphorically go to the beaches of Normandy?

00:18:40.800 I mean, do you think that's happening now?

00:18:42.320 Do you think that's been happening for the past two years?

00:18:44.300 Do you think that may happen in the next five years?

00:18:46.040 Where are we here?

00:18:46.720 Right.

00:18:47.000 So, for many, many years, I've been warning, not hyperbolically, literally, that in 10, 20, 50, 100 years, if we don't change course, we will have exactly the same reality as I escaped in Lebanon.

00:19:02.200 And people said, oh, but aren't you exaggerating, Professor?

00:19:04.160 And now we see the violence, right?

00:19:05.640 What protects the West is a set of values that is truly unique in our sort of collective history, right?

00:19:13.320 There is something unique about the system.

00:19:15.740 It's an anomaly what the West has given us for the number of years that it's given us.

00:19:20.680 Much of our history is not laden with peace and love and freedom, right?

00:19:26.280 Much of our history is paved in rivers of blood.

00:19:29.840 So, some of us are either cursed or endowed with the capacity to look at patterns and predict what's going to come in the future, not because we are prophets, not because we are Cassandras, modern-day Cassandras, but because, first of all, we've seen what happens in societies where you lose those protective values, but also because some of us are able to detect patterns and take them to their logical conclusion.

00:19:55.600 So, the problem, as you correctly said, is the old famous parable of the boiling frog, right?

00:20:01.260 If you put the frog and you only increase the heat by a bit, by below a just noticeable difference, it doesn't realize that it's being boiled, right?

00:20:10.360 So, that parable is really apt here because it exactly speaks to what you're saying.

00:20:13.960 Well, yeah, maybe there is a bit of problem, but, you know, I'm busy this week, you know, with my daughter's graduation, and, yeah, I don't have time for this culture war. 0.94

00:20:22.340 The reality, though, it's drip, drip, drip, right?

00:20:24.920 You don't see it in one year.

00:20:26.260 You don't see it in five years.

00:20:27.520 But as someone now who's been long enough in academia for 26 years, I warned about every single one.

00:20:34.760 As a matter of fact, my satire, I often joke, but I'm being serious, that my satire is prophetic.

00:20:41.160 The reason why my satire is prophetic, because I take a current position, and then I apply, if you like, an extrapolation to some future date.

00:20:51.120 I satirize that extreme condition, and then I put my hands like this, and I wait for reality to catch up to my satire.

00:21:00.320 So, listen to the proverbial canary in the cold mines who is warning you.

00:21:06.260 Don't brush it off as hyperbolic talk.

00:21:08.620 Look, my child right now, one of my children, has a teacher who has BLM as a sign, you know, on her avatar, right?

00:21:20.300 There are two things that one can do now.

00:21:22.180 Say, well, hey, so what?

00:21:23.400 You know, I love black people.

00:21:25.220 I want to support black people.

00:21:26.420 What's wrong with that?

00:21:27.100 But that would be a very facile understanding of BLM.

00:21:30.260 BLM is a political organization that has certain positions that either I agree with or disagree with.

00:21:35.600 But irrespective of that, it shouldn't be my child's teacher who is putting it as a political position, right?

00:21:45.020 So I have two choices.

00:21:46.220 I could either be quiet, or I could contact nicely, politely, quietly, behind closed doors, the principal, and say, hey, I don't think this is appropriate for...

00:21:55.660 So this is what I mean by there are many ways by which you can get involved.

00:21:59.580 Not everybody has my platform.

00:22:01.340 Not everybody has my position.

00:22:02.600 But each of us has some sphere of influence from which they can engage their engagement.

00:22:09.540 Don't sit idly. 0.95

00:22:11.080 Don't be a coward.

00:22:12.420 Don't diffuse the responsibility onto others.

00:22:15.060 You have a voice.

00:22:16.120 Use it.

00:22:17.480 Excellent.

00:22:18.100 Well, let's get into your book a little bit more, Professor Seid, because I think it's a really important book.

00:22:22.560 I admit I haven't read it yet because we set this interview up pretty fast, and the book doesn't come out until October 6th.

00:22:29.100 So as I was researching the book, I'm really excited to read it.

00:22:32.860 So hopefully you can help explain and talk about what it's all about.

00:22:38.200 But the book is called The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

00:22:43.000 That is a great title, and it's so true because the least common thing in our society right now, it feels, is common sense, the thing that's supposed to drive us all.

00:22:52.580 But maybe you can tell us a little bit about what some examples are of these infectious ideas that are killing common sense.

00:22:59.840 So perhaps I could start off with the analogy from the animal kingdom.

00:23:04.660 So the way I thought about, you know, using idea pathogens and parasites, parasitic mind, is if you think of parasites in nature, parasites can infect a host in many organs.

00:23:20.360 A tapeworm can go into your intestines. 0.81

00:23:22.200 But neuroparasites are parasites that specifically seek an organism's brain. 0.99

00:23:29.120 They're brain parasites, brain worms.

00:23:31.020 So the classic example that some of your viewers might know, and that's why I'm going to use it,

00:23:36.600 Toxoplasma gondii is a brain parasite that can inflict actually humans.

00:23:40.220 But the classic example is when it infects the brain of a mouse, the mouse loses its innate fear of cats,

00:23:48.440 and it actually becomes sexually attracted to the cat's urine, which is not a good thing for a mouse to exhibit.

00:23:56.040 Or, yeah, or you could have, for example, a type of brain worm that parasitizes the brains of ungulates, deer, moose, elk.

00:24:04.900 And so when they are parasitized by this brain worm, they start engaging in what's called circling behavior.

00:24:10.180 They kind of bob their head up and down, and they can't extricate themselves from this, you know, motor pattern.

00:24:16.340 So even if the looming predators are coming, they're stuck in this pattern, right?

00:24:20.500 So parasites can cause animals to engage in behaviors that are maladaptive to them,

00:24:27.620 but adaptive to the reproductive cycle of the parasite.

00:24:32.120 And so I said, aha, as someone who is an evolutionary psychologist, so I study oftentimes comparison across species,

00:24:38.360 I said, aha, I'm going to use that example to argue that human beings could be not only parasitized by actual physical brain worms in the same way that the mouse can,

00:24:51.580 but we can be regrettably parasitized by a completely other class of brain worms, which I called idea pathogens.

00:24:57.800 So in this case, these are terrible ideas that instead of causing us to go around in a circling behavior,

00:25:05.400 they lead us to the abyss of infinite lunacy quietly, right, in a docile manner.

00:25:11.660 So as any good epidemiologist would do, I then say, okay, well, where did this infestation begin?

00:25:18.060 So if we are studying the origins of the COVID-19 virus, well, we can also study where do these idea pathogens come from?

00:25:26.660 And I'll give examples of idea pathogens in a second.

00:25:29.280 And I argue that all of these dreadful idea pathogens, regrettably, I say, because I'm a professor,

00:25:35.760 all come from the university ecosystem. 0.97

00:25:38.480 It takes intellectuals to come up with really uniquely dumb ideas, right? 0.58

00:25:44.420 So now that I've kind of set up the parasitological model, the epidemiological model, 0.81

00:25:50.620 what are some examples of idea pathogens?

00:25:52.780 So the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, because it literally negates truth, is, as I mentioned earlier, postmodernism.

00:26:02.460 Postmodernism is the granddaddy of idea pathogens because it literally removes our ability for sensemaking, right?

00:26:08.780 There is no point in me waking up in the morning as a behavioral scientist thinking that there might be some regularities that I could study in the world if there are no objective truths.

00:26:18.800 It's my truth. It's subjective truth. Who are you to judge my truth and so on, right?

00:26:23.380 So postmodernism is intellectual terrorism.

00:26:28.260 Now, postmodernism then leads to all sorts of other idea pathogens.

00:26:32.140 So, for example, militant feminism is itself an idea pathogen, not because I don't support equity feminism,

00:26:41.000 which basically says that men and women should be equal under the law.

00:26:43.620 Well, any enlightened person would agree with that. But militant feminism goes much beyond that. 1.00

00:26:48.740 It rejects the possibility that there are evolutionary-based sex differences.

00:26:53.480 So a lot of times I draw ire from people because I'm an evolutionary psychologist because evolutionary psychologists are racists, are sexists.

00:27:01.340 Nothing could be further from the truth.

00:27:03.640 All that evolutionary psychologists are doing is study the evolutionary mechanisms that led to the human mind, right?

00:27:10.520 So trans-activism is another idea pathogen.

00:27:14.120 Now, that doesn't mean that transgender people don't exist.

00:27:16.920 It doesn't mean that we should not fight against bigotry against transgender people.

00:27:22.080 When it comes to that, I'm about as liberal as they can come.

00:27:26.200 But in the pursuit of social justice towards transgender people, I don't have to murder truth.

00:27:32.360 I don't have to argue that it is not true that a 270-pound guy who's 6'4 can suddenly change his gender, become a trans woman,

00:27:42.680 and now you are transphobic if you don't allow him to compete against a 100-pound woman because, bruh, it's transphobic to presume that there are any biological differences between these two individuals, right?

00:27:55.360 So what happens with idea pathogen in many cases, well, in all cases, is that they share one thing in common.

00:28:02.580 They all are completely committed to the rejection of reality.

00:28:07.020 It frees us from the shackles of reality.

00:28:10.040 You put trans, it frees me from the shackles of my biology and my genitalia.

00:28:14.660 You put postmodernism, it frees me from the possibility of a universal truth.

00:28:19.360 So all of these idea pathogens, cultural relativism, trans activism, militant feminism, identity politics, the culture of perpetual offense, right?

00:28:30.900 Feeling, being higher than thinking.

00:28:34.020 All of these various strands of idea pathogens, when put together, result in truly hallucinatory positions.

00:28:43.020 And they are starting to tear our society apart.

00:28:46.300 One of the things that I noticed about all these different idea pathogens that you mentioned is that at the very basic level, they have something going for them.

00:28:55.760 Like the idea of postmodernism, it's like, I remember when I was in university, the whole idea is that you have to develop critical thinking.

00:29:03.100 So it's important to question things.

00:29:05.080 But the problem with postmodernists is that they question everything.

00:29:08.240 They pull apart the very foundation until there's nothing left and you don't have anything.

00:29:13.220 And it's the same with feminism. 1.00

00:29:14.300 It's like, you know, there's been a history of women being sort of marginalized, not being allowed to vote, not being full citizens, not being able to own property, those kind of things.

00:29:23.740 It's like, yeah, it's important that we fight so that women have equal, like you said, equal rights under the law.

00:29:29.880 It's just that at a certain point, you know, it goes from fighting an injustice that we can all more or less agree with.

00:29:38.820 Then they go overboard and they take it to keep going and going and going to its logical conclusion where it starts to sort of tear everything apart.

00:29:46.880 So I wonder, how do you stop that process from happening?

00:29:51.440 How do you say, like, at what point do you say, you know, yes, transgender people need to be protected and we should treat them with dignity and we should make sure that they're physically safe?

00:29:59.920 To, you know, crossing that line to say, you know, now we're going to allow children and very young people to take pills to alter their entire chemistry of their body and have long term biological effects.

00:30:13.420 Or we're going to allow, you know, boys to play sports, physical sports with girls just because they say that they identify as a woman.

00:30:20.800 And now there's no such thing as gender whatsoever. 0.55

00:30:23.620 At what point has it gone too far and how do we stop it at that point?

00:30:28.200 Well, it's gone too far whenever in the pursuit of social justice, in the good sense of the term, we in any way murder a millimeter of truth.

00:30:42.100 Right. In other words, so in the first chapter of my book, I talk about what are the two fundamental ideals that drive my life.

00:30:51.540 And I argue that they are truth and freedom.

00:30:55.860 Right.

00:30:58.360 In other words, there's there's no way for me to do what I do if I don't.

00:31:02.580 And when I say freedom, by the way, I don't mean just freedom of speech.

00:31:05.000 I mean, so, for example, I give examples in my book of how when I used to be a soccer player, I used to play the number 10 position, which is the playmaker position that allows me to kind of freely move around the field looking for spaces to exploit.

00:31:17.420 When a coach would put a positional restriction on me, you're going to play today, Gad, more on the left side of midfield and you're going to track back this guy.

00:31:25.540 My brain would explode because it would remove my capacity to be free.

00:31:29.260 Right. If you tell me publishing only these types of journals because you are housed in a business school.

00:31:34.640 No, I want to publish in medicine and in economics and in psychology and in business.

00:31:38.740 I don't care. I just pursue interesting problems.

00:31:41.320 So the pursuit of freedom is a fundamental driver for me.

00:31:45.080 The pursuit of truth, the defense of truth is fundamental for me.

00:31:49.280 So to answer your question, the point at which we say no is when in the pursuit of laudable goals like protecting transgender people, having equal rights for all people, we start being consequentialist in our ethics.

00:32:04.120 What do I mean by that?

00:32:05.480 When you have truth, you could be one of two types of truth seeker.

00:32:11.180 You could be what's called the deontological person.

00:32:14.320 It is always wrong to lie.

00:32:16.480 That is a deontological position.

00:32:18.120 A consequentialist position would be it is OK to lie if the consequences are to protect your feelings.

00:32:25.080 Right. So one.

00:32:26.100 And the reality is it's not that we should always be deontologically minded is that depending on the context, it may if your spouse tells you, do I look horrible and fat in those jeans and you want to have a long lasting marriage?

00:32:38.340 Maybe you want to be consequentialist and say, no, no spouse.

00:32:42.140 You look gorgeous. Right.

00:32:43.420 So I'm not suggesting that you always have to be deontological.

00:32:46.240 But when we're dealing with grand topics of societal importance, we should never be consequentialist about the truth.

00:32:53.920 Right.

00:32:54.100 I can I can I can completely walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:32:58.420 I could defend the rights of women whilst accepting that there are innate sex differences. 0.99

00:33:04.240 I could defend the rights of transgender people whilst saying that 270 pound guy that's 300 pounds with a nine inch penis is not a woman. 0.99

00:33:14.660 That should not cause me to be canceled for saying something that is as obvious as a two year old recognizing this. 0.70

00:33:22.460 So this is what I mean, pursue justice, pursue truly liberal ideals, but never give up one inch of truth.

00:33:33.480 Absolutely. So I guess that would be chapter three of your book, which is called Non-Negotiable Elements of a Free and Modern Society.

00:33:40.640 OK, I want to talk about chapter four because the title is anti-science, anti-reason and illiberal movements.

00:33:49.900 And there's so many times I'll give you just an example in Canada.

00:33:54.300 You know, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau and his party are called the Liberal Party.

00:33:58.620 But, you know, the ideas that they pursue and the ideas they put forward are hardly liberal.

00:34:04.100 They don't they don't live up to that ideal of small L classical liberalism.

00:34:07.760 And we see we see them sort of say we're the party of science and if you're a conservative, you're anti-science.

00:34:14.620 And we're starting to see this a little bit in the U.S. as well.

00:34:17.320 I know you've been critical of Joe Biden for saying that he's he's the scientific he's a party of science.

00:34:24.520 And if you believe in science, you're going to vote Democrat.

00:34:27.240 Maybe you can talk a little bit about this chapter and how sort of politicians manipulate some of those words.

00:34:32.160 Sure. So first, I'll address this left, right and science denialism thing.

00:34:38.220 It is absolutely unsure that, you know, the right are the science deniers and the left are the pro science folks.

00:34:45.080 The reality is both engage in science denialism as a function of whether the particular scientific truth, you know, clashes with their ideological positions.

00:34:55.860 So it is much more likely that a Republican senator from the South, to be stereotypical, might reject evolution because of some evangelical belief.

00:35:06.720 But it is equally true that when it comes to evolutionary psychology, the application of evolutionary principles to the study of the human mind, say sex differences, then it becomes much more the left who become grotesque anti-science folks.

00:35:20.680 Right now, as someone who inhabits the ecosystem of the university, all of the idea pathogens that I speak of, all of which are perfectly anti-scientific, they all stem from the left.

00:35:34.040 So it's not that I am a pro right guy and an anti left guy.

00:35:38.700 It's because the ecosystem that I inhabit is one where it is completely driven, driven by leftist science denialism.

00:35:46.800 That would be like arguing that if I am a physician that treats diabetes, you come to me and say, but doc, why don't you ever talk about melanoma?

00:35:57.300 Well, because I don't specialize in melanoma.

00:35:59.520 It doesn't mean that melanoma is not important, but I treat diabetes.

00:36:03.820 That's my specialty.

00:36:04.900 So the fact that I critique the left as science deniers doesn't at all mean that the right doesn't do it.

00:36:10.340 So that's number one.

00:36:11.320 You're exactly right about so-called the liberal party, and that's why I've got illiberal in that chapter heading, because a lot of the positions that the Democrats and the left and the liberals currently espouse could not be any more illiberal.

00:36:25.640 I mean, literally, you could not define an idea pathogen that is more illiberal than some of the platforms that they take.

00:36:32.000 So let's go back, for example, to the di-religion, diversity, inclusion, and equity, and that will speak to some of the stuff that I discuss about anti-science and so on.

00:36:41.860 So I talk about, for example, the indigenization of the Canadian campuses, right?

00:36:47.660 Well, indigenization happens in many forms.

00:36:50.820 So indigenization could be that at a ceremony, say, graduating ceremony, you first have to start off by self-flagellating publicly that you are stealers of the land and you're all evil who are sitting in this thing, and then we go on with the ceremony. 0.95

00:37:06.420 Well, first, I argue that that's really grotesque because the students who are there, where it is their moment to shine, have to first begin by having the cloak of intergenerational guilt placed on them.

00:37:20.800 That's not a progressive thing.

00:37:22.680 That is a grotesque thing.

00:37:24.360 You couldn't imagine something with lesser nobility than to impose that collective guilt on them.

00:37:31.300 This doesn't mean that indigenous people were not mistreated, but it means that Joe Blow should not have to experience it right now when he's graduating with his commerce degree.

00:37:41.380 So that's at one level where we see this kind of nonsense.

00:37:44.720 Let's take it at another level.

00:37:46.980 The peer review process in science is fundamental to educating what is correct or not.

00:37:53.380 We put a paper through the peer review, your colleagues break it apart, every syllable, and then eventually through multiple rounds of revision, we can then publish this paper as something that's been vetted.

00:38:05.560 Well, there is an indigenous professor at University of British Columbia who several years ago, when she didn't get tenure, filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal,

00:38:15.400 arguing that this process of having to write things down by publishing them was an affront to her oral tradition history as an indigenous person.

00:38:26.240 Well, you know who else has oral traditions?

00:38:28.940 Jewish people, for much longer, for 5,000 years.

00:38:32.940 So I should have told all those Jewish Nobel Prize winners to never write things down because, brah, oral tradition. 1.00

00:38:39.620 So that's second level.

00:38:42.280 Third level.

00:38:43.060 When we adjudicate any controversy in science, we use the scientific method.

00:38:50.860 There is no alternate way of knowing.

00:38:53.240 So, for example, when we say indigenous way of knowing, it is perfectly fair to say that if you're going to study something in the Great North,

00:39:02.640 to the extent that those folks have lived in that land for thousands of years,

00:39:07.120 they may have unique knowledge about the flora and fauna of that land that we should be engaging with.

00:39:13.300 So that's perfectly fine.

00:39:14.800 So specific domain-specific knowledge, that is indigenous knowledge.

00:39:19.840 But there isn't an indigenous way of knowing that is different from the scientific method.

00:39:25.140 I can't pray to my ancestors to better understand environmental impact that is different from the scientific method.

00:39:32.820 But guess what?

00:39:33.740 The Quebec minister of, I think, Environment was placed in very hot waters a few years ago because when they were talking about environmental impact studies,

00:39:42.020 and he said, well, what do you mean indigenous way?

00:39:44.680 Don't we use the scientific method to decide that?

00:39:47.580 He was basically feather and tarred as, you know, a Nazi. 0.62

00:39:51.360 So, no, there is no Lebanese Jewish way of knowing or really good-looking people way of knowing or indigenous way of knowing. 0.92

00:40:00.000 There's just the scientific method.

00:40:02.160 The scientific method is what liberates us from the shackles of our unique identities.

00:40:07.340 It's what allows all of us to meet in a common arena and use an incredibly powerful framework,

00:40:14.440 free of biases, if it is practiced properly, to adjudicate different ideas.

00:40:20.160 So, this is one example of what I talk about, anti-scientific ideas.

00:40:24.580 There is no unique ways of knowing.

00:40:26.520 There's the scientific method, and that's it.

00:40:29.020 Well, it's interesting.

00:40:29.920 It reminds me a couple of years ago, Professor, there was a Black Lives Matter protest in Toronto,

00:40:34.340 and one of the speakers called Justin Trudeau a white supremacist.

00:40:38.760 And it was kind of shocking because, you know, to us, Justin Trudeau is this sort of loopy leftist that is, you know, loving of all people or whatever.

00:40:46.420 And hearing someone on the far, far left call a left-wing politician white supremacist just didn't really make sense.

00:40:52.400 But over the past few years, we've seen this new kind of shifting definition of words.

00:40:57.800 So, what used to be a racist?

00:40:59.500 A racist used to be, you know, someone who judged or believed in inferiority based on race,

00:41:06.500 whereas now it's someone who, I guess, opposes immigration or someone who is not part of the woke left,

00:41:14.180 someone who fights back against Black Lives Matter.

00:41:16.340 You know, the term racist can apply to just about anyone.

00:41:19.660 And it's the same thing with white supremacy.

00:41:21.940 It's sort of what you're talking about, that they believe that, you know,

00:41:25.520 just the very idea of scientific method is a white supremacist idea.

00:41:30.820 And we've sort of seen that creep up more and more over the past few years,

00:41:35.680 where now you're talking about how it's sort of mainstream in society.

00:41:40.460 So, how can we push back against that?

00:41:43.420 Well, in many ways, you could push.

00:41:45.420 I mean, if you're in my position, you do it in the way that I'm doing it.

00:41:47.840 But if you're a parent and you see your kid learning stuff that is insanely, you know, grotesque,

00:41:55.800 if not an affront to truth, you say, hey, wait a minute.

00:41:58.300 No, I will not be quiet.

00:42:00.260 And again, as you said, the problem is that most people simply can't activate their inner honey badger

00:42:06.060 because, regrettably, the eighth deadly sin, which didn't make it into the list of seven deadly sins, is cowardice, right?

00:42:13.160 Most people say, look, I mean, I've got enough stress in my life.

00:42:16.420 I don't want to go and meet the principal who I'm probably going to have a heated exchange with.

00:42:23.360 So, let me be quiet.

00:42:24.400 Well, as you're being quiet, your child is being slowly parasitized by these idea pathogens so that three years down the line,

00:42:32.100 eight years down the line, they do wake up with their blue hair in the feminist glaciology course at their university 1.00

00:42:39.320 because, you know, you can't study ice formation without recognizing that it's patriarchal.

00:42:44.500 Even ice has patriarchal connotations.

00:42:47.960 By the way, I'm not being satirical.

00:42:49.060 There literally is a paper on feminist glaciology, right?

00:42:52.280 There's a section in the book where I talk about all of the different, you know, feminists and fill in the blank. 0.96

00:42:57.520 There's feminist physics, feminist mathematics. 1.00

00:42:59.840 I mean, I studied mathematics.

00:43:01.760 I thought what mathematics does is it offers us axioms that couldn't be any freer from bias precisely because they're axiomatic.

00:43:10.620 They are self-contained process.

00:43:12.560 No, no, no.

00:43:13.060 Even mathematics can be enriched by a feminist perspective. 1.00

00:43:18.000 So you can either tackle the problem when you see your child in grade three being parasitized by this BS or you can wait till they have red and blue hair when they're 22.

00:43:29.220 And again, of course, I'm being satirical and facetious when I say this, but the reality is that that's the progression.

00:43:35.520 So, you know, there isn't a singular recipe for how everybody should engage.

00:43:40.600 You have to find what is your sphere of influence and simply not walk away from a fight.

00:43:46.380 So it could be somebody posts something on Facebook who's a friend of yours and you think that you disagree with, engage them publicly, politely. 0.99

00:43:55.220 I'm not saying you have to be an ass.

00:43:57.160 I'm not saying you have to be impolite, but don't constantly walk away from possible teachable moments because you're afraid to judge. 0.99

00:44:06.540 You're afraid to confront.

00:44:07.960 Everybody has influence.

00:44:09.540 It literally is a trench, street-to-street battle of ideas, and we all have a voice.

00:44:17.040 So just get engaged.

00:44:18.760 Well, absolutely.

00:44:19.440 I mean, there's so many examples that I know of.

00:44:21.360 I have a friend.

00:44:22.720 I have a friend who lives in Palo Alto, which is like a very kind of liberal left-wing city in California.

00:44:29.240 And basically at her brother's son's school, it's a small private school, and at this point more than half the students in this child's class,

00:44:38.140 I think he's like 12 or 13 years old, more than half the students now identify as being transgender or part of the LGBT community in some way.

00:44:46.640 And I think that terrifies a lot of parents because they don't want to be seen as bigoted.

00:44:52.640 They don't want to be seen as being not understanding of what kids are going through and that kind of thing.

00:44:59.780 But obviously when you have that kind of ratio, there's something political happening in the school.

00:45:05.160 And like you said, if you don't stand up against it now, I mean, what's going to happen when the child gets to university or, you know, when they get older?

00:45:14.300 It can be pretty terrifying.

00:45:16.480 Dr. Saad, I feel like these problems have been present on university campuses for years and years.

00:45:23.100 We all know the story of Jordan Peterson and how he sort of stood up and fought back and had this huge sort of mob of hatred.

00:45:29.880 But he was ringing the alarm bell.

00:45:31.040 You've been ringing the alarm bell for years and years.

00:45:33.260 And I feel like this is maybe the first time we start to see these ideas spill out into society.

00:45:38.580 So it's not just university campuses anymore.

00:45:41.120 It's corporations, it's newspapers, it's media companies, it's political parties.

00:45:46.580 Maybe you could talk a little bit about the origin of how this started on campus and then how it's now spreading into society.

00:45:55.500 Yeah.

00:45:55.740 So it started with a confluence of idea pathogens.

00:46:00.180 So, for example, cultural relativism is a idea that first developed, you know, 100, almost 100 years ago by Franz Boas, who was a anthropologist, who, a cultural anthropologist, who wanted to really remove the influence of biology in understanding human phenomena.

00:46:21.420 And the reason originally started as a, quote, noble reason, which is that at various points in history, people have usurped evolutionary ideas to their nefarious political pursuits.

00:46:35.260 So in the 1930s and 40s, the Nazis said, hey, there's a Darwinian natural struggle between the races.

00:46:43.680 We won. 0.99

00:46:44.480 So who cares if we kill those lower folks? 1.00

00:46:46.600 The British class social elitists much earlier had said, hey, there's a struggle between the classes and if the lower classes lose out. 0.66

00:46:54.640 So who cares if they don't get educated and they don't get health care?

00:46:57.320 Hey, that's a natural Darwinian struggle.

00:46:59.200 It's called social Darwinism.

00:47:00.960 Well, none of these ideas have anything to do with Darwinian theory.

00:47:04.180 It's not as though they are a natural, you know, consequence of Darwinian theory. 0.58

00:47:10.180 But all of these cretins usurp these ideas. 1.00

00:47:13.320 So a bunch of anthropologists, under the guise of trying to stop these from happening in the future, created a new edifice of knowledge where you completely reject that there are any human universals. 0.91

00:47:26.860 So, for example, Franz Boas' eventual student, Margaret Mead, who was a committed cultural anthropologist, came up with the idea that, you know, there are some folks in some exotic island where their sexual behaviors are exactly opposite to the typical pattern.

00:47:44.680 Men are chaste and virginal and no, no, no, I don't want to have sex. 0.82

00:47:48.340 And it is the women that run after them. 1.00

00:47:50.300 And that was an example that even when it comes to sexual behavior, there are no universal.

00:47:54.120 Well, guess what? 0.99

00:47:55.140 That whole study and all that research was utter bullshit, complete nonsense. 0.99

00:47:59.120 There is a book that came out called The Faithful Hoaxing of Margaret Reid. 0.98

00:48:02.700 But she was so desperate to believe in the idea that there are no human universals.

00:48:06.820 There is no possibility that there is a biological set of imperatives that define our common shared humanity that she was parasitized by that idea pathogen.

00:48:16.780 So, different idea pathogens on campuses arose for different reasons, but they each did their part in destroying the edifice of truth. 0.98

00:48:27.180 So that 40, 50, 60, 70 years later, we end up with women who have nine-inch penises. 1.00

00:48:33.680 Boys, too, can menstruate. 0.97

00:48:35.100 Again, me stating that does not reject or negate or make light of the fact that transgenderism is a real issue and these people should exist in complete freedom of bigotry.

00:48:47.340 So, that's the problem is that once you are permissive to allow a small chip to the edifice of truth, it's a domino effect.

00:48:55.680 So, you have to be engaged.

00:48:58.400 If you see your child being taught white fragility, you say, oh, no, no, no, you're not going to teach my child that they have to feel bad because they have a certain skin you.

00:49:09.660 No way.

00:49:10.800 And if enough people do it, if enough people activate, when I say activate your inner honey badger, let me explain the analogy clearly or the metaphor.

00:49:20.960 A honey badger is the size of a small dog.

00:49:24.060 It can be attacked by six.

00:49:26.320 You can go on YouTube and see one honey badger fending off six lions, right?

00:49:34.260 Why?

00:49:34.860 Because once you annoy it, it goes berserk.

00:49:39.280 It is so ferocious that the lions say, yeah, I don't want to deal with that, right?

00:49:44.500 So, what does it mean to activate your inner honey badger?

00:49:48.040 It means that if you attack my sense of dignity, my sense of truth, I lose it.

00:49:54.920 Now, lose it doesn't mean I become violent, but that means if you think with your blue hair you're going to come at me being indignant, I'm going to match you a hundredfold with my indignation.

00:50:06.380 Why?

00:50:06.880 Because I could defend my principles.

00:50:09.120 I mean, look, even how I'm speaking now, I'm the warmest and fuzziest guy, but if you piss me off, I'm coming for you, right?

00:50:14.980 So, I understand that people have different personalities, but if you are going to defend your child from a pedophile, right, you should also defend your child from idea pathogens.

00:50:26.720 Both are dangerous to a child.

00:50:28.620 The pedophile is dangerous to your child in one way, and having your child grow up hating himself or herself and his or her culture and his or her skin color, that too is horrific.

00:50:39.560 So, be indignant.

00:50:41.340 Fight for true principles.

00:50:43.680 Well, amen to that, Dr. Saad.

00:50:45.680 I think that so many people get frustrated.

00:50:48.720 They see things happening online, and that's how they feel inside, but they don't really have the courage.

00:50:54.400 And so, you know, so important books like yours and people like you who are sort of out there day in, day out, living and fighting these culture wars, you know, serve as an example.

00:51:04.860 Because just to bring it back to the idea of common sense, you know, it's like they can sit there and tell you that there's no difference between men and women.

00:51:13.460 But, you know, we all have our lived experiences.

00:51:15.840 We all see it every day.

00:51:16.920 I mean, I have an 18-month-old son, and I can tell you with no bit of uncertainty that the preferences that he's shown since he was a very little boy were masculine. 0.97

00:51:29.380 You know, he likes to play with balls.

00:51:30.960 He likes to play with sticks.

00:51:32.260 He likes to throw rocks.

00:51:33.780 Very different than his cousin who, you know, she likes to have dolls.

00:51:38.460 She likes to play with, like, you know, hug things.

00:51:41.180 And it's just very different.

00:51:43.060 You can see it in small, small children before they're even socialized.

00:51:47.200 So to sit there and say, you know, the reason that boys play with trucks and rocks and balls is because of the way they're socialized.

00:51:54.460 It's like, well, you know, anyone who's ever had kids knows that that's just not true.

00:51:59.020 And I think that, you know, that's just one example of millions, that common sense is being fought against, and we're told basically to, you know, to disbelieve our lying eyes, basically.

00:52:12.280 Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up the example of toys.

00:52:15.120 I don't know if that's because you're familiar with some of my work on toy preferences or it was just serendipitous.

00:52:19.900 But in Chapter 7, where I talk about how to seek truth, I argue that we can build an unassailable argument by using what I call nomological networks of cumulative evidence.

00:52:33.740 It's a lot of fancy words, so let me break it down, and I will use the example of toy preferences to explain it.

00:52:39.400 So let's suppose I want to prove to you that toy preferences are not socially constructed.

00:52:45.020 By the way, social constructivism is another one of the idea pathogens that I discuss in the book.

00:52:49.280 Social constructivism is the idea that we are born empty slate with equal potentiality, and it's only, you know, evil socialization that makes us go into one trajectory or another.

00:52:59.940 So toy preferences, the typical social science argument, is that toy preferences is a manifestation of gender socialization.

00:53:07.900 We teach little Johnny to play rough and tumble with trucks and balls and sticks, and we teach little Linda to play with nurturance with dolls.

00:53:18.320 And that starts a cascade of gender role specialization. 1.00

00:53:22.000 And so if I want to actually prove to you that, no, there are sex-specific toy preferences that are not due to social constructivism, how would I go about doing that?

00:53:34.320 So I would build a nomological network of cumulative evidence.

00:53:38.160 What does that mean?

00:53:38.900 It means that I would say to myself, what would be the evidence that I would need to amass stemming from different time periods, different cultures, different disciplines, different methodologies, different everything you could imagine such that it becomes impossible for you to negate the tsunami of evidence that I'm drowning you in.

00:54:01.880 And so let me just give you a few.

00:54:03.820 I won't build the whole network, but let me give you a few.

00:54:06.540 You touched on the fact that if you take children who are in the pre-socialization stage, they already exhibit those preferences.

00:54:13.360 Well, those studies have actually been done.

00:54:15.480 This is how we establish that something is not due to socialization.

00:54:18.260 We go to developmental psychologists and we elicit those preferences from children who could, by definition, didn't have the cognitive ability to yet be socialized.

00:54:27.860 So already that would be enough to, you know, offer a death blow to the social constructivist argument.

00:54:34.840 But let me give you a few more.

00:54:36.920 You could take different species.

00:54:39.740 So you could take vervet monkeys.

00:54:41.280 You could take rhesus monkeys.

00:54:42.620 You could take chimpanzees and you could show that the infants in those species exhibit the same sex-specific preferences as human infants.

00:54:52.320 Well, to argue that that's due to the sexist patriarchy would be a bit of a tough sell unless you're arguing that the sexist patriarchy affects little mama vervet monkey and little papa vervet monkey.

00:55:03.700 So now I've used data from developmental psychology and from comparative psychology, comparative psychology means across different species, to demonstrate that there is something that is beyond social constructivism when it comes to toy preferences.

00:55:17.220 Let me give one or two other ones.

00:55:19.040 You could take little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes little girls.

00:55:28.660 They become masculinized in their morphology.

00:55:31.260 They become masculinized in their behaviors.

00:55:33.200 Well, little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia are more likely to exhibit male, boy-based preferences.

00:55:41.860 So this is suggesting that there is a hormonal signature, biological signature to toy preferences.

00:55:47.540 Now, I could provide you with many, many other such evidence.

00:55:51.520 When put together, it becomes impossible for you to argue against me.

00:55:56.560 You could take your best shot, but I've drowned you.

00:55:59.040 So one of the things that I argue in Chapter 7, or the main thing that I argue in Chapter 7, is that when you're engaging in debates, don't be hysterical.

00:56:08.680 Don't let your emotional, affective system kick in.

00:56:12.200 Simply say to yourself, what would I need to provide as evidence to Candace so that I could at least put a chip, if not trash, her ideological walls? 0.77

00:56:24.440 And I do this exercise not just for evolutionary-based arguments.

00:56:28.380 So in the book, for example, I use that epistemological tool to answer the question, is Islam peaceful or not?

00:56:36.760 I don't have to ask Justin Trudeau or George Bush or Barack Obama what he is going to tell me that Islam is.

00:56:48.000 Can I build a nomological network that completely establishes whether Islam is peaceful or not? 0.96

00:56:54.660 I'll leave it for your viewers to read the book to decide what the answer is.

00:56:57.980 But in other words, there is a time when you need to engage your affective system, your feelings, and there's a time to engage your cognitive system.

00:57:08.680 One last thing I know, I hope I'm not being too long-winded.

00:57:12.280 One should also have epistemic humility, meaning to know what you know and know what you don't know.

00:57:17.380 When I know something, and I'm being interviewed on a show like yours, I will speak with all of the swagger of someone who knows what they're talking about.

00:57:24.900 But if you were to ask me now, by the way, Professor Saad, what about the legalization of marijuana under Justin Trudeau?

00:57:32.580 What are the net position on that?

00:57:35.240 I frankly don't know the answer to that.

00:57:37.560 I haven't built my own internal nomological network to answer that.

00:57:41.900 So I would be the first to say, you know what, I simply don't know enough about this.

00:57:45.700 So part of being a truly pious person in an intellectual sense is to know what you know and know what you don't know.

00:57:52.540 Well, that's very good advice.

00:57:55.320 I think humility is something that we should all work towards.

00:57:59.500 And also, you know, gratitude is another area where people just don't really, you know, show the gratitude.

00:58:06.920 So, you know, a lot of the Indigenous land ceremony thing that you talked about earlier, it's like instead of acknowledging that we live in this tremendous society

00:58:14.880 and that Western civilization has brought so much good to the world and so much order and peace and freedom and all these things, you know, we can only look at the negative things.

00:58:24.500 So we focus on the things that we need to improve upon or that pull our society apart.

00:58:30.020 And I think that that too is part of the problem.

00:58:34.200 Well, I'll just ask you a final question because, you know, you keep bringing it back to the universities as sort of the origin of these dangerous idea pathogens.

00:58:42.560 And you are a university professor.

00:58:44.220 You've seen it unfold.

00:58:46.460 I think a lot of parents sort of worry about sending their children to university.

00:58:50.220 They worry about what kind of ideas they'll get, what the culture will do to them.

00:58:54.180 Like you say, you know, you can't help but not turn into sort of a blue haired feminist in some of these departments. 1.00

00:59:00.320 I know my own experience at university was that most students were kind of tuned out and they didn't really care.

00:59:05.800 They didn't really listen to their professors.

00:59:07.140 And it was really kind of hard to understand and grasp all the concepts they were trying to teach us because the very nature of postmodernism is that it's really confusing and it doesn't really lead you anywhere.

00:59:18.180 It doesn't provide any good in your life.

00:59:20.640 You just kind of are left feeling lost, basically.

00:59:24.220 So you have children yourself.

00:59:26.600 I imagine that you would encourage them to go to university.

00:59:29.820 But, you know, is there an alternative?

00:59:31.540 Is there a school in Canada that's particularly better than other ones or that's good?

00:59:37.600 What is your advice to parents about sending their kids to universities?

00:59:41.840 Look, obviously, I'm someone who is very committed to education.

00:59:45.600 Universities are the great purveyors of knowledge, but also the great purveyors of BS.

00:59:51.520 That's the that's the the irony.

00:59:53.980 So what I would suggest is, well, number one, of course, you don't have to be educated.

00:59:57.880 You don't only have to go to university.

00:59:59.220 We now have you can go on YouTube and get much better education than what you could have imagined ever.

01:00:05.380 You want to study evolutionary psychology?

01:00:07.000 Well, there are clips of every great evolutionary psychologist that you could ever imagine.

01:00:11.320 And that's going to be much better than any evolutionary psychology course you take at the university setting.

01:00:15.240 So so lifelong learning is something that we should all aspire to pursue.

01:00:19.160 I always tell the story that when I walk into my study where I'm sitting right now talking to you, there are probably over 200 books in my own personal library that I've yet to read.

01:00:28.120 And I often am filled with angst as to when am I going to get to reading?

01:00:31.920 There's all this great knowledge that I've yet to learn, and I would probably place myself on the higher end of people who know things.

01:00:39.760 And yet I am humbled by how little I know and how much more there is for me to know.

01:00:44.080 So that the instinct to always want to learn more does not need to only come from universities.

01:00:48.860 But to to come to your the crux of your main question, I can't say this university is more parasitized by the blue haired folks than this university.

01:00:56.400 But what I can say is that you need to explain to your children that they should go to university for a growth of their spirit.

01:01:04.640 I don't mean that in the in the, you know, religious sense, but knowledge is truly liberating.

01:01:10.380 It can take us to all sorts of wonderful landscapes.

01:01:12.460 And I don't mean to imply that your education should only be practical or only be, you know, only do natural sciences or the business school or medical school.

01:01:21.100 No, you could study the humanities in a very, very liberating way, in a very cerebral way.

01:01:26.800 But you should never be in university number one to be an activist.

01:01:31.480 That's not the goal of universities.

01:01:32.800 When I go to a restaurant, it's not because I want to go bowling.

01:01:36.080 It's because I want to eat.

01:01:37.500 So when I go to university, it's to go on an intellectual enrichment.

01:01:43.660 Right.

01:01:43.840 I go to Jamaica for the sun.

01:01:45.580 I go to university to grow as a cerebrally.

01:01:49.440 So just be sure that when you are sending your kids and spending your hard earned money for their tuition, that they are not engaging in these parasitic ideas.

01:02:00.620 Now, I understand that you can't be monitoring every single thing that they study in class.

01:02:04.620 But if they're going to study feminist epistemology of ice, well, then maybe I'm not going to fund your tuition.

01:02:11.180 If they're going to study neuroscience or Shakespeare or business school or law school, by the way, those things can, too, be parasitized by all this nonsense.

01:02:21.440 At least give them the tools to be able to protect themselves from all of these dreadful ideas.

01:02:27.720 I remember I had a professor of first year university.

01:02:30.920 I went to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and it was the history of political thought.

01:02:35.660 So political philosophy.

01:02:36.900 And she told us on the first day, you know, there's three other professors that teach the same course.

01:02:41.540 It's a requirement for all political science students.

01:02:44.040 Why don't you go and sit in on each of these teachers and listen?

01:02:47.540 Because we have very different philosophies and different worldviews.

01:02:49.880 And, you know, later in school, I remained in her class, but, you know, a couple of years later, I realized that, like, two of the professors that taught the class were ardent Marxists, where she was much more of a classicalist.

01:03:00.980 And, you know, I thought that's something that a first year student wouldn't really know.

01:03:04.660 But as you get more experienced in university, you can kind of see the difference that there are still really good teachers out there and there's still good programs that do.

01:03:15.140 And also the fact that you can learn so much on YouTube and these kind of channels.

01:03:19.620 I know you have a very popular YouTube channel, The Sad Truth, where you're pretty prolific.

01:03:25.400 You post a lot of videos up there commenting on all the different day-to-day culture war things.

01:03:32.280 And then your book.

01:03:33.080 Why don't you tell us where we can find your book and the best ways that we can continue to follow you?

01:03:38.520 Thank you.

01:03:39.440 So, yeah.

01:03:40.320 So, The Parasitic Mind will be out on October 6th.

01:03:44.000 So, it really matters if you pre-order it, because when the book is released, it really helps if there are tons of pre-orders, because then they go into sales the first day it's released.

01:03:53.220 So, if you're planning on buying the book, please pre-order it.

01:03:55.960 You can do it from any – all the portals carry it.

01:03:58.820 So, that's easy to find.

01:04:01.120 You can follow me on Twitter, at Gadsad, G-A-D-S-A-A-D.

01:04:05.480 I have a public Facebook page.

01:04:07.300 And as you said, I have a YouTube channel where I can either just open up the camera and talk about something that's pissing me off.

01:04:14.300 Or it could be chats just like the one you and I are having.

01:04:18.240 So, I have a whole series, almost 200 chats with really incredible people.

01:04:22.940 Most of them are scientists, but all sorts of interesting people.

01:04:25.860 So, comedians, actors, lawyers, anybody that I think would be fun to have a conversation with, I'm likely to invite.

01:04:33.900 And so, if you've just tuned into Who I Am, you have about 1,133 episodes to catch up on.

01:04:42.740 And so, good luck with that.

01:04:43.860 Well, I definitely recommend that everyone go check that out and definitely pick up the book.

01:04:49.260 Dr. Zai, I noticed it's already a number one bestseller on Amazon.

01:04:52.320 So, it shows, you know, how big of a following that you do have.

01:04:56.380 Thank you for all the work you do.

01:04:57.620 Keep it up.

01:04:58.000 And thank you for joining us on the Turn North Speaker Series.

01:05:00.540 Oh, thank you so much for having me.

01:05:01.600 It was really fun.

01:05:02.120 Thank you.

Juno News - September 22, 2020

Ep 13 ｜ Dr. Gad Saad ｜ Activate Your Inner Honey Badger

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