#47 — The Frontiers of Political Correctness
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Summary
Gad Saad is a marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, who has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. He is the author of several books, including The Consuming Instinct, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, and Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences. In this episode, he talks about how he got started in evolutionary psychology, how he came to study consumer behavior, and why he believes that evolutionary psychology should be applied to consumer behavior and marketing. He also talks about why he thinks evolutionary psychology is a useful tool for understanding human behavior and how it can be applied in the context of marketing and other areas of the modern business world. He also discusses the dangers of political correctness and postmodernism, and how to deal with them in the real world, and what it means to be a smart consumer and a smart marketer in the 21st-century economy. You can find more information about his work at his blog, The Sad Truth, The Saad Truth, at the website. If you like what he has to say, please consider becoming a supporter of his work, and share it with a friend, colleague, colleague or colleague. or subscribe to The Making Sense Podcast on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to his YouTube channel, The S-A-D-D, wherever you get your news and information about the things you care about! to get the latest episodes of the podcast. , wherever you re listening to the latest in podcasting and other things going on in the making sense. Thank you for listening to Making Sense. . making sense? Sam Harris is a podcast by Sam Harris is a friend of the Making Sense podcast on the podcast making sense by making sense, and in the podcast by , by , and by the podcast by The S.A.D podcast, of ? by The Making sense Podcast, by S. is making sense by . Thank you, Sam Harris, and the podcast is or ( ) if you like the podcast? by Sam is a fellow making sense ? thanks for listening, , thanks so much the podcast makes sense, in this podcast, and so on and so much more thank you, so thank you for being a friend?
Transcript
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Many of you know Gad from his video blog, The Saad Truth.
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And if you know Gad, you know that he's been fighting some of the same battles online against
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Gad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal.
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He's also taught at Cornell and Dartmouth and UC Irvine.
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And he's pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior.
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And his books include The Consuming Instinct, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, and Evolutionary
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He's published many scientific papers, and again, he regularly podcasts at the Sad Truth,
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As you'll hear, Gad and I get into some controversial areas, and we spend a fair amount of time talking
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Obviously, we have many fans in common, and many people listening will know who you are.
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But for those who don't, just tell us something about your background, and how do you describe
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And I also hold the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
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What basically that means is I try to marry evolutionary theory in the context of consumer behavior.
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So generally, in the behavioral sciences, but in particular, since I'm housed in a business
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school and I'm in a marketing department, I try to look at what are some of the biological
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and evolutionary underpinnings that make us who we are as consumers.
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So now how did you come to focus on consumer behavior?
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So consumer behavior, so I had done an MBA, and where, you know, my curiosity with this field
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Although I had a background, a very technical background in mathematics and computer science
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and some operations research, but I had always been interested in behavioral sciences.
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And so it seemed like consumer behavior would be the nice place for me to marry my technical
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background, because I was originally thinking of being a mathematical modeler of consumer
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And then when I went to pursue my PhD at Cornell, the gentleman who became my eventual doctoral
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supervisor suggested that I take some psych courses.
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And in one of those courses, advanced social psychology, halfway through the semester, the
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professor assigned a book called Homicide, which was written by two Canadian evolutionary
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psychologists, where they explain criminality from a biological and evolutionary perspective.
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And so that was the genesis of my interest in evolutionary psychology.
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And since I wanted to study consumer behavior, that's where I had the idea, okay, well, since
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no one has looked at the biological roots of consumer behavior, that's what I will focus on.
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For those who don't know, and they can discover your podcast on YouTube, on The Sad Truth,
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you are a very committed enemy of political correctness and moral relativism, postmodernism and
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identity politics and all of these other intellectual and ethical trends that seem to be going in
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Do you ever regret getting into this swamp and dealing with these issues?
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You know, it's funny, because you probably heard the term, of course, having skin in the
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It's difficult to have more skin in the game than somebody who is sort of in the cesspool of
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all of these ideas that you mentioned a few minutes ago, and yet try to, you know, critique
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Look, the reality is, I think that my unique personhood is such that I sort of couldn't
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live with myself if I don't tackle wherever I see some enemies of truth or reason manifesting
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And so, in a sense, I can't be anything than what I am.
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Uh, so I regret in the sense that if I were a bit more of a careerist, if I were a bit
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more strategic in my thinking, uh, then I might have taken a slightly different road.
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I always try to be, uh, as kind as I can be, uh, always have decorum.
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But I can't sit idly while, you know, the humanities and some of the social sciences are being
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infected with movements that are genuinely grotesque to human reason.
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They're an affront to human decency, if I dare say.
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And so, uh, and, and that, if you like, shapes a lot of what I do.
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I mean, of course, when you, when you are an academic, when you're a scientist, you're
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trying to pursue some area of truth or try to get closer to understanding some phenomenon.
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Uh, but I think that more academics need to be using their training to weigh in on topics
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outside of their very limited scope of sort of official training and expertise.
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I, I'm quite, uh, astonished that there aren't more people who lend their voices.
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I mean, I realized that it takes a particular type of personality to put your ideas out there
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And most people probably feel more comfortable being in their lab, speaking only to their colleagues
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But it's a shame because these are all important issues that you mentioned, and there has to
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Which of these issues or which among the many things on the menu that people are inclined
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not to talk about, which do you think is the most radioactive?
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Do you have a, a sense of what gets you into the most trouble at this point?
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So it depends if you mean in the general campus or in science.
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So if we're talking about science, there was a paper that was published, I think in 2005,
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What are some research questions or research topics that you should stay away from?
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And probably the top two ones that are, to use your term, the most radioactive would be racial
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differences, any research on racial differences.
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And then probably second would be difference, sex differences.
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So, and of course, that's, that's definitely where I come in because a lot of the research
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that I do from an evolutionary perspective recognizes that we, that human beings are sexually
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And so to have a debate as to whether, you know, there are sex differences that are innate
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is preposterous to most people who are biologically inclined, but yet much of the social sciences
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have, you know, built edifices of, you know, theories and empirical edifices completely rejecting
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And so from a scientific perspective, I would say probably sex and racial differences, but in
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the general campus, uh, anybody who attacks, uh, not so much postmodernism, uh, but political
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So anybody who ruffles the feathers of the thought police, uh, is in trouble.
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So it could be if you attack affirmative action, if you're against it, well, that's wrong thing
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And then there's the specific scientific fields that are radioactive.
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Are there any topics that you have just decided you won't touch?
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Obviously there are topics that don't interest you, or you think to touch them would just
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be, you would just have no motive to touch them or, or, or they would, you know, you'd
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have to have some negative motive in order to want to go there.
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But is there any topic that you think that is valid and should be productive to talk about,
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Uh, so I've never consciously thought of an interesting problem to pursue and then using
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the calculus that you just mentioned, decided against it.
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If I've not tackled the problem, typically the criterion that I've used is that I'm, I
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don't find that problem sufficiently interesting for me to spend some time on it.
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And so really that's, that's the key driving metric.
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There's, there's a great paper that I think all doctoral students should read in their doctoral
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training is a paper from the early seventies titled, that's interesting with an exclamation
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It was written by a sociologist whereby he was offering a framework for trying to understand
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how do we determine whether a research question is worthy of pursuit.
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Uh, and oftentimes one of the things that we forget is whether at the end of the journey of your
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research journey, whether people would scream out and excitement, that's interesting.
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And so really what drives me to a fault, I think, and I, and I'll explain in a second
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why I say to a fault is what I call cerebral hedonism.
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I just like to pursue intellectual landscapes for no other reason than because they're interesting.
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So if Sam Harris comes to me today and says, Hey, there's this really interesting FMNR FMRI
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And if you convince me that it's an interesting problem, I'm on board.
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Now, the reason why I think that that's a bit of a fault is because as, as you may know,
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and I say this with regret and academia, uh, what's more promoted is for you to be very,
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So if you study emotions, then spend the next 40 years studying emotions and fill in the blank.
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And so I just go wherever the spirit moves me, so to speak.
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You know, we don't find actual boundaries on our intellectual landscape apart from those
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we erect based on just methodological concerns and bureaucratic concerns and how, you know,
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the fact that you have to physically go to one building to learn about medicine and another
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building to learn about biology on a university campus.
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But obviously the boundary between medicine and biology is non-existent.
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Once you look closely at it, obviously I'm very sympathetic with this appetite to go wherever
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I guess I'm also sympathetic, and this is where these taboos, I think, creep in for even well-intentioned
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I'm sympathetic with the feeling that there are certain questions upon which any kind of
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significant interest suggests that there's something wrong with you, you know.
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So, you know, one, I'm not speaking about you personally, Gad.
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So, you know, I see these people who seem extremely interested in, say, racial differences in
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They're outraged that it's, you know, a no-go area for science.
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It's a completely legitimate question to pose biologically, but one wonders what is the purpose
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of seeking that information, and what would you do with it if you had it?
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I can propose a possible criterion of relevance for the exact issue that you just mentioned.
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So, if you're an evolutionist, you study what are the selection pressures that would have
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resulted in the evolution of a wide range of traits, right?
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I mean, why is it that some people are darker-skinned than others?
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And so, from a strictly theoretical perspective, one, and I'm glad you said that it's certainly
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a valid question to study, one could argue, are there selection pressures that have faced
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groups of individuals in our evolutionary history that would have resulted in the evolution
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of, you know, various, if you like, intelligence abilities at the group level?
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Now, the reason why that's, of course, very, very toxic is because it's one thing to argue,
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you know, for the evolution of a morphological feature like your melanin level.
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It's another thing to say group A at the group level is somehow less creative or has
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lower IQ than group B. But from a strictly conceptual theoretical reason, it's perfectly
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reasonable to ask that question. And incidentally, that's exactly what Philip Rushton, who's probably
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the most known, he recently passed away a few years ago. So, he's a guy who spent his career
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studying racial differences. And his argument was roughly what I just said, which is, look,
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it's an interesting question to study for reasons A, B, and C. I don't have a racist bone in my body,
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but I follow wherever the data takes me. And then, of course, people argued, no, there is no way
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that you could study this question if you didn't have ulterior motives. And so, then they would
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concoct these associations. You know, he got money from the Heritage Foundation Institute,
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and they're a nefarious group, so he must be a neo-Nazi. And I don't know the answer. I don't
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truly know whether he was a racist or not. But at the conceptual level, there's no reason why that
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But you just see that of all the topics in the universe to spend weeks and months and years
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fixated on, it's easy to see how people who would fixate for the wrong reasons would be interested
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there. And you can see them seize upon the data, such as they are with glee. But the irony,
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of course, is that both sides of this issue are taboo. So, for instance, if you wanted to talk
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about a given community and why they may not be thriving to the degree that some other is,
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and you're going to ask the question, is there a genetic reason for this? Well, that's obviously
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But what's left for you to consider at that point is a cultural reason for this. But to say that
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there's something wrong with a given culture is also taboo. So, you have just taken off the table
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the only two facets of reality that science can deal with. And so, you can basically say
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nothing scientifically about differential degrees of thriving in various communities. And, you know,
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that's obviously not a great situation to maintain for centuries in science. It's interesting that
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this taboo really only works in one direction. Because if you're looking for good things about
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a culture, if you're saying that Asians are showing some aptitude academically, or, you know,
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let's say quantitatively, or, you know, Ashkenazi Jews have shown a history of real literacy and
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a contribution to intellectual life disproportionate to their numbers, as is undeniable. To look into
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the biological or cultural basis of that, it may be taboo in some quarters, but it's certainly less
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Well, what's interesting about, I mean, you're talking about nature, nurture, and genes, and
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environment. I think, on average, people would construe the genetic explanation as more taboo than the
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cultural one, if only because it is perceived, at times, wrongly so, that it is more immutable,
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right? There's nothing, supposedly, that I can change about my genes, but culture, we can change
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it. And I think that, and the reason why I say that that's incorrect, incidentally, is because much of
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who we are, as you know, is really an interaction between our genes and our environment. And so,
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you know, to sort of separate them as though genes can't be, I mean, genes are turned on or off as a
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function of environmental inputs, right? So, people have a wrong idea of what's immutable or not.
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But I think that point is really at the root of, I think, our common friend, Stephen Pinker. I mean,
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when he took on the blank slate, and I've taken it on in my own research, I mean, the blank slate is
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really appreciated within the social sciences, precisely for the reason that we're mentioning
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right now, which is, you know, it's nice to believe, it's a very hopeful message, it's nice
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to believe that no one starts off in life with anything other than, you know, equal potentiality,
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right? And that it's only, you know, the nefarious forces of our environment and socialization and so
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on, that take us down the life trajectories that we go down. That's a nice message. So, anybody can be
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Lionel Messi, anybody could be Einstein, anybody could be Michael Jordan. So, I think a lot of the
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nonsense that's been spewed in the social sciences over the past hundred years is not because, you
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know, most social scientists are, you know, walking degenerates who don't understand anything about
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life. It's, I think it comes from a good place, right? So, for example, the cultural relativists,
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you mentioned earlier, cultural and moral relativism. So, that started with Franz Boas, the cultural
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anthropologist, who sort of was aware that having a biological explanation for things could have a
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downstream effect that's bad, right? And we know all the different reasons for that, right? And
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therefore, let's create a worldview that, while completely incorrect, is at least more hopeful.
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And that, to me, is an affront to the truth, and therefore, I will attack it.
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Again, I'm a little torn on some of these issues, because I do see some of them as just not being a
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direction worth going. I mean, actually, it's interesting, because this is really not my bent
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at all intellectually. I just tend to go where the facts lead. But I'm sympathetic with the idea that
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certain types of research, certain facts, which can be as factual as any other, can be so reliably
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misunderstood or misappropriated that it's, on some level, knowledge not worth having. There's nothing to
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do about it, necessarily. Or if there is, that's not obvious. And the result could be reasonably
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expected to be bad or unproductive for society. And so, I still think that this, the search for
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racial difference in specific areas like intelligence or, let's say, aggression, there's no doubt they exist.
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I mean, it would be a miracle if populations that show significant phenotypic differences by
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dint of their distinct evolutionary paths showed exactly the same level of traits for every trait
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we value. I mean, there's just no way that's true, right? So, if we could really get down in a fine-grained
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way to the details here and scale all these different populations on intelligence and empathy
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and aggression and everything else that is psychologically interesting to us, what then,
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right? And this does come back to what you said about a misunderstanding of just what it means for
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something to be genetically determined or to have its basis in biology. Because obviously, as you said,
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ideas modify the regulation of our genes. Experience does. The brain is not a closed system. The brain
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is in dialogue with the world. So, the boundary between nature and nurture is not hard and fast.
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And if you look closely enough, it really doesn't exist. So, when you're talking about the ways that are
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left open to you to use this knowledge, you're not talking about changing the genomes of people to
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improve them. At least, you're not talking about that yet. And also, there's a misunderstanding that
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creeps in that the variance is likely to be significant enough that it would be rational to
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judge someone based on the population they come from. Let's say it's just a fact that Koreans are,
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on average, better at math than white Americans. You know, I'm just making this up, but let's say
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something like that's true. Sure. And you introduced me to a random Korean and a random Caucasian. It
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would not be rational for me to think I knew anything about their mathematical ability based
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on their racial characteristics. But no one's going to follow that, really. And people are just going to
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make these blanket judgments about populations based on the facts we find. Right. And incidentally,
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by the way, what you just mentioned, I mean, yes, you took the most toxic of the topics,
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racial differences, but almost verbatim, what you just said, has been used to cast a negative light
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on anybody who does sex differences research. Right. And people say, well, you know, why can't
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you study something that unites us something? I remember I received once a review, you know,
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reviewers comments submitted a paper to a top journal. So, you know, why are you so focused on sex
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differences? What's the point of that? Why not study something that unites us? Well, the reality
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was I was studying sex differences in information search prior to choosing or rejecting a mate,
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right? How much information do men need to acquire or women before they decide that they've seen enough
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information to either reject a prospective suitor or to choose a suitor? So this was really at the
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intersection of information search and mate choice. And by definition, the nature of that research
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question was about a sex difference, right? I was using principles from biology to argue why I would
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expect a sex difference. Well, this particular reviewer, I mean, in line with some of the language
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that you use said, well, what's the point of that? Why not study something that transcends our sex,
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that unites us? And that is a bit of a arbitrary point to take. I mean, if I could just draw another
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example, I mean, Fermat, right, the French mathematician, developed theories, or proposed
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or proved theorems, you know, several hundred years ago, that collected dust for several hundred
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years. And then today, many of these principles are used in cryptography. Well, had he used the
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benchmark then of I better do applied research that has clear immediate application value, he would have
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never done this. So I think when it comes to the issue that we're discussing, I tend to be a purist.
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If whatever I'm doing adds to this sort of greater pantheon of human knowledge in a way that's valuable,
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then go for it. That's my benchmark. Yeah, but then you smuggled in value there at the end,
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you know, so the question is, what is valuable, given that there's an infinite number of things we can
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study, and there's not enough time to do it? I totally agree with you. Obviously, my bias is in
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the same direction as the one you expressed. So to some degree, what the noises I'm making now are
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kind of devil's advocate position, you know. I think the idea that any of these kinds of questions
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are taboo is ultimately dangerous, because the reason why it's taboo is because we're living in
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a cultural landscape where people are defining themselves in terms of the narrow communities
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they're a part of, is the problem of identity politics. I mean, there is no result, I can tell
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you, there is no result that could come out about Ashkenazi Jews that I would take personally,
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right? The sky's the limit. I mean, it could be, you know, everything from penis size to
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acquisitiveness. I mean, I'm just trying to imagine what would offend people, but it's just,
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there's nothing, right? And for me, clearly, we have to get to a time where basically everyone
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feels that way about the community that they're in based on these superficial differences with
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respect to skin color and all the rest. So I'm sympathetic with your bias here, but I do recognize
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that it's just, though the landscape is changing, there are different trends here, and in some ways
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it's changing for the worse. And we have, as you say, this commitment to political correctness,
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especially within academia, and especially among the young, that is making it impossible to talk
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about things that are obviously hugely important to talk about, not, you know, racial difference in
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intelligence, but things like the spread of political Islam. So that's, I worry that if you attach
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yourself to too many controversial things and aren't kind of curating your offense a little more
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carefully, and again, I speak not about you personally, but all of us, you sort of wear out
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your welcome. So that's the reason why I haven't gotten the offer from Stanford. Otherwise, there's
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no rational reason why it hasn't come yet. Right, right, right. And that's an obvious problem that people
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have to consider, you know, is what happens to your career when you touch any of these topics? I mean,
00:25:49.040
when you think about someone like Charles Murray, right, who I don't know, I mean, I've met him
00:25:53.660
once briefly, and, you know, the bell curve guy, right? Yeah, so he wrote The Bell Curve with his
00:25:59.120
colleague, who I think has passed away, and that was a hugely controversial book, obviously, and
00:26:04.940
honestly, I never even read it, right, and I haven't read the chapter, I think it was just one chapter
00:26:10.440
that was the epicenter of the controversy. And I don't, you know, frankly know whether what's in there
00:26:16.300
justifies any of the opprobrium that has been heaped upon him, but there's no question that his
00:26:21.660
life has been affected by this. You know, I'm sure everyone who collaborates with him or introduces
00:26:27.160
him as a speaker has to, on some level, apologize in advance for his history of controversy, and some
00:26:34.540
of it might be totally unwarranted. Again, I don't know, but whenever I have looked into one of these
00:26:39.140
scandals, like Larry Summers at Harvard, he was speculating about a different degree of variance
00:26:44.860
in male and female populations with respect to math ability, and his remarks, they're just as plain
00:26:54.000
vanilla speculation as you could imagine, and yet he was, you know, hurled out of Harvard for it.
00:27:01.720
In any case, that's the landscape in which we are being asked to function, and I think you do have
00:27:07.200
to sort of pick your battles, although I seem to pick so many of them that it's kind of strange
00:27:12.160
coming from me. But luckily for you, you're outside of academia, so in a sense, it affords you a bit
00:27:17.500
more leeway, right? You're not in the vipers' den, so to speak, right? Yeah, but, you know, obviously I
00:27:22.840
still want to be taken seriously and given a fair hearing when I decide to open my mouth, and I have
00:27:29.280
certainly paid the price for having touched so many of these topics, and even this conversation we're
00:27:35.620
having now will be readily spun against me. And what happens is you wind up building all these
00:27:43.000
friction points where you have to start a conversation dealing with the thing that someone
00:27:48.420
heard about you that, in fact, is not true. And again, I see that I am contaminated by this with
00:27:56.360
respect to other people. So, you know, I see, you know, someone says, oh, you got to have
00:28:02.620
And so I take a look at what he's been saying and what's being said about him, and I think,
00:28:07.000
I don't have the time to figure out whether this guy is really a racist crackpot. And to some degree,
00:28:12.060
everyone is dealing with this problem, and certainly they're dealing with this problem
00:28:17.480
Well, you know, I mean, your point is one that I have had to deal with in my own choice of,
00:28:24.620
you know, whom to invite on my show. And as you were trying to come up with some of these names,
00:28:29.300
and you came up with Stefan, I could mention a few from my own show, Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer,
00:28:38.820
Anne-Marie Waters, and a whole bunch of other guys, all of whom, I mean, really are, you know,
00:28:44.060
probably in the circle of sort of, you know, you're in Islamophobe land, they probably score,
00:28:51.460
you know, much higher than you. And I was, you know, very, very minimally concerned about,
00:28:56.220
you know, exactly the issue that you mentioned. And then again, my personhood kicked in, which said,
00:29:01.120
no, I will not be silenced, I will give these guys a fair hearing. And I'm here to report that
00:29:07.040
you can't imagine how many people wrote to me, Sam, saying, you know, I had been, you know,
00:29:14.440
hoodwinked into thinking that Tommy, you know, Robinson is, you know, he's on, he's basically Mengele,
00:29:20.700
you know, from the Nazi party, right. And then I heard him speak on your show. And he struck me as
00:29:25.140
very, very reasonable and very measured. I mean, I mean, he's not, he's not the most eloquent guy in
00:29:30.500
the world, if I may say, but he's certainly bright, he's measured, and their opinions were changed. So
00:29:36.980
it's a fine line. I mean, on the one hand, I understand, we don't live in a vacuum, and we
00:29:42.020
don't want to be fighting the fights. And of course, you fight them probably 100 fold more than I do.
00:29:47.340
But on the other hand, if we, if we succumb to that mob pressure, then they're basically dictating
00:29:56.080
whom we can speak to, correct? Have you ever interviewed someone who you regret interviewing
00:30:01.580
for reasons of along these lines that you didn't actually appreciate who they were, and they managed
00:30:07.520
to fool you and pass for reasonable, but then you discovered something heinous about them, and now you
00:30:13.580
feel solid? Yeah, right. So I have to be a bit diplomatic, which is not easy for me. There is
00:30:19.580
one gentleman that I interviewed, who I think it would be pretty fair to say, he is an Islam
00:30:26.760
apologist on steroids. But I was very calm and, you know, very measured. So I don't have any
00:30:32.600
stories similar to your, what do you call it, the greatest podcast ever?
00:30:37.320
The best podcast ever. Yeah. Right. So I don't have a story like that. Now, I do have a gentleman
00:30:42.660
who's coming on next week, who used to be, I hope I'm not misspeaking, but I think he used to be
00:30:49.080
a terrorist. And then eventually he reformed. And now he advises, you know, the Canadian security
00:30:58.600
services about, you know, quote, radical Islam. And I think that may potentially be a difficult
00:31:05.820
conversation, although it won't be on my end. But I sort of noticed he put out a couple of tweets
00:31:11.260
where he started accusing me of, oh, so is this what I should expect? You're an anti-Muslim bigot
00:31:17.800
type of guy. And then I wrote him privately. And I said, look, if this is the kind of discourse that
00:31:22.600
we're going to end up having, then it's not really very fruitful. If you think that simply
00:31:27.240
questioning you on some issue of Islam is going to, you know, have this appellation thrown at me,
00:31:33.120
then it's a useless conversation. And he said, no, no, no. Okay, brother, no problem. We're good.
00:31:36.980
So I don't know. So I haven't had any that remotely match your level of, you know, craziness on your
00:31:43.660
podcast. But hey, the future is long. You never know. Although that craziness is of a different
00:31:49.480
sort. So what I'm picturing here is talking to someone who you really should challenge on specific
00:31:57.180
points because they have said crazy, divisive, irrational things in the past, but they're just
00:32:03.080
not saying them on your show. So you get them there. And, you know, it turns out this person's
00:32:07.760
a grand dragon in the KKK, but you don't know that. And you're talking about racial differences
00:32:14.660
in IQ or something in a good-natured academic way. And you don't realize that this person's
00:32:21.400
interest in this topic is just the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg is horrendous.
00:32:27.420
I think that's a situation one could be in. I mean, you know, obviously, I think that you could
00:32:32.120
have an interesting, potentially interesting conversation with anyone. You know, I would,
00:32:35.720
you know, I'd be willing to go into a prison and talk to a serial killer.
00:32:40.040
Because I think that would be a fascinating conversation. There are many questions I would
00:32:43.340
want to ask someone who has killed many people. But at least in that situation, I would
00:32:48.120
understand who I was talking to. And what I worry about with many of the people you name,
00:32:53.160
someone like Robert Spencer, he comes so fully stigmatized that unless you've paid enough
00:33:00.120
attention to the kinds of battles he's fought to be confident that you know that all of that
00:33:07.720
opprobrium is unwarranted, well, then you just don't, you don't actually know who you're talking to.
00:33:12.080
Well, one of the ways that I handled specifically the Robert Spencer case is as people started
00:33:17.900
writing to me saying, Hey, why are you speaking to this Nazi and so on? I said, Look, you know,
00:33:23.140
the comment section on my YouTube channel is open. Why don't you share some manifestations of,
00:33:31.060
you know, some nefariously racist, you know, horrible things that he's done. And then at least
00:33:35.800
I could be educated. Guess what? I didn't see it. So, you know, so I think that's one of the ways by
00:33:40.780
which you could, I think, take their concerns seriously, right? I mean, you're exhibiting that
00:33:45.420
you're open to having the opinion that they'd like you to have of him. You're open to that
00:33:50.720
possibility. But the onus is on you to share that information. So I won't accept that he's simply
00:33:56.160
a vile Nazi Islamophobe at face value, and then not bring him on. And I've had this even with guys
00:34:02.840
who are less toxic, right? People said, you know, why are you speaking to Paul Joseph Watson on
00:34:08.500
the Alex Jones Network? You know, Alex Jones is this kind of bombastic guy. Do you know who that
00:34:14.040
is? I know Alex Jones. I don't know Paul Joseph Watson. Right. Well, and the reality is that to
00:34:20.460
me, I was very pragmatic about it. It's a forum. It's a large forum that would allow me to share
00:34:26.720
ideas. And probably a bunch of people who otherwise would have never heard of me now know of my work
00:34:32.680
precisely because I went on that show. So I think it's difficult to always run away from folks that
00:34:37.940
come with a dangerous appellation, because then it'll be just you and I talking to one another
00:34:43.080
all day. Although, from my perspective, maybe speaking to you is going to get a lot of hate on
00:34:48.600
me now. You never know. So it was, let's get into these controversial waters with respect to Islam,
00:34:55.460
because obviously, you and I have both spent a lot of time here. And we agree. I think we agree
00:35:01.540
largely, I think there are probably some interesting points of disagreement, though, but
00:35:04.900
we certainly agree that the reflexive denial that the unique problems we're seeing in the Muslim
00:35:13.880
world have anything to do with religious doctrine, that denial that we see everywhere is a real cause
00:35:19.800
for concern, and it's intellectually and ethically unjustifiable. And, you know, you and I both spend a
00:35:26.580
lot of time convincing people that there really is a connection between the way people behave and what
00:35:32.780
they believe, and they're telling us what they believe, and we should believe them, in most cases.
00:35:38.400
So it's, you know, jihadism is not merely political. You know, it's amazing that that's still a
00:35:43.900
controversial point. I think we probably do have some different intuitions on certain points. So tell me a
00:35:49.920
little bit. I think you and I once had dinner, and you were talking about how living in Montreal gave
00:35:55.680
you a somewhat different picture on questions of immigration and whether Islam was amenable to
00:36:04.780
reform in the way that someone like Majid Nawaz suggests. And so give me your picture of what's
00:36:11.360
And incidentally, when you mentioned earlier, a conversation that, you know, would have been
00:36:17.800
difficult to be had, I tried to have that conversation with Majid. I reached out to him
00:36:24.040
because I disagreed with some of his prescriptions. And, you know, he blew me away because apparently
00:36:32.600
the final inerrant word had been written in a book that you had done with him. So that would be a
00:36:37.700
manifestation in my eyes of someone who wasn't willing to engage in a discussion, notwithstanding
00:36:42.840
the fact that I had started my clip by saying that I applaud his work. And this is the type of
00:36:48.600
guy that we should be supporting. But there were specific details that I disagree with him. But that
00:36:52.620
said, so to go to the to your Montreal question, look, the reality is that, and you've said this a
00:36:59.420
million times in very large forums, we have to differentiate between, of course, individuals and
00:37:05.400
between the ideology, just let's say it for the one millionth time. So individual Muslims might be
00:37:11.280
lovely, but what happens to a society when it becomes more Islamized? That, if you'd like, is a
00:37:20.440
Actually, Gad, before you get into that, which is exactly where I want you to go, you might just
00:37:26.520
tell listeners who aren't aware of it, that you have a background that gives you a kind of a life
00:37:36.000
Yeah, no, that's a great point. So I was born in Lebanon. I grew up in Lebanon. And so my mother
00:37:42.800
tongue is Arabic. We're Arabic in a multiplicity of ways. And some of the music that we listen to
00:37:49.440
and the foods. And if you saw us, you wouldn't know that we are anything but Arabic. The only
00:37:54.720
asterisk is that we're Lebanese Jews. And when the civil war broke out in Lebanon in the mid 70s,
00:38:02.180
it became about as precarious as anything can be to be Jewish in Lebanon. And so we had to leave
00:38:09.720
under imminent threat of execution. So some of the things that people in the West now are used to
00:38:15.440
seeing in terms of ISIS and so on is stuff that I grew up with in Lebanon, right? That was my reality.
00:38:22.100
That's what I escaped from. And so I have firsthand experience. I mean, not that that means that
00:38:28.860
whatever I say should be more trusted. But of course, I am shaped by my own unique experience.
00:38:34.600
And my own unique experience says that at any point, something could be dormant, and then it
00:38:40.200
comes alive. And when it comes alive, look out, right? Because people will point to, oh, but didn't
00:38:45.160
you have an otherwise peaceful existence in Lebanon before that point? Well, yes and no. I mean,
00:38:51.380
we were tolerated, right? To be tolerated in the context of the Middle East is very different than
00:38:57.880
to be equal, right? You're tolerated, it means that we're not going around decapitating you.
00:39:04.180
Well, that to me is not the best benchmark of being an equal citizen under the law, right?
00:39:08.660
So there were institutionalized laws that did not permit Jews to do certain things, even in the
00:39:15.140
most progressive of Middle Eastern countries, Lebanon, right? My brother, who was the Lebanese judo
00:39:20.260
champion, I think three years running, had to leave Lebanon before the civil war, because there
00:39:25.440
were threats on him that he could no longer compete in judo, because, you know, it wasn't
00:39:30.800
good for a Jew to constantly, you know, win the title. So these realities are things that we faced
00:39:36.540
every day, even pre-war. So that's really the background that I come from. My parents were
00:39:42.600
subsequently, after we emigrated to Canada, and you may or may not know this, I'm not sure if we
00:39:47.180
discussed it in our last get-together. But my parents kept going back to Lebanon after we
00:39:52.220
emigrated to Canada. And in 1980, they were kidnapped by Fatah. And some really nasty things
00:39:58.080
happened, but luckily, we were able to get them out. So, you know, I have, in the same way that
00:40:02.420
some of the other people who are in this space have personal history with this reality, I mean,
00:40:07.780
I have it all, right? I mean, I've lived it, I've escaped it. You know, for about 20 or 25 years
00:40:13.240
after we escaped Lebanon, I used to have a recurring nightmare where, you know, they're
00:40:18.080
coming to kill us, and I have a gun that either malfunctions, or I run out of ammunition. So
00:40:24.400
this is real, right? This is part of my, if you'd like, my memory DNA. So that's my background. And it
00:40:32.080
shapes what I'm now seeing in Montreal, which is that Montreal is becoming increasingly Islamized.
00:40:38.860
So if we compare, you know, the number of people that we would see in Islamic Garb in Montreal,
00:40:44.640
you know, 12, 13, 14 years ago to today, I mean, it's just breathtaking. Does that mean that we've
00:40:50.480
turned into Yemen? Of course not. But we can sort of guess what the trajectory is. With more Islam,
00:40:57.400
is there more peace? Is there more tolerance? Is there more freedom of speech or less? I mean,
00:41:01.480
it's a very simple calculus, right? In the same way that at the end of every day,
00:41:05.160
we can determine whether that day I've put on weight, nothing has changed in my weight,
00:41:10.480
or I've lost weight. We could ask the very same question. When Islam becomes a majority
00:41:15.760
in a particular society, is it for the better? And by better, I mean, by all the tenets that we
00:41:22.580
hold dear in the West? Does it, is it unchangeable? Or does it get worse? And so that's what we really
00:41:28.460
have to look at. Not so much whether, you know, how many terrorists we let in, if we let in
00:41:33.700
immigrants, is does Islam, once it becomes dominant, change the fabric of our societies?
00:41:41.400
Yeah. Yeah. So this is one of these topics that's very fraught. And, you know, I have a
00:41:46.400
position here with respect to Muslim immigration in the current context of the election, because
00:41:53.400
I've been struggling to figure out what someone like Hillary Clinton could say that would make sense,
00:42:00.160
given the realities we're talking about, that wouldn't be just the sanctimonious drivel that
00:42:06.200
you hear from, unfortunately, from the current president and from really all Democrats, which
00:42:11.440
is that this has nothing to do with Islam, and to even think about paying attention to somebody's
00:42:18.500
religious background when you're deciding whether to admit them into the country, that is synonymous
00:42:24.160
by definition with the worst forms of bigotry. So, as listeners to this podcast know, I'm not a fan
00:42:32.540
of Donald Trump's, and yet, if you catch him in the midst of a single sentence or something that
00:42:39.620
purports to be a sentence, you will hear a more honest note struck here. It'll be something like,
00:42:47.000
listen, this is coming from one religion. It's Islam. And we know this, and we can't lie about it.
00:42:54.780
And therefore, the fact that someone has a Muslim background tells us something about the possibility
00:43:01.680
of, one, that they're jihadist, and two, that they harbor opinions. Now I'm starting to speak in a way
00:43:09.280
that Trump wouldn't, but that they may in fact harbor opinions that are deeply inimical to everything we
00:43:18.100
value culturally, free speech, and the rights of women, and the rights of gays, and all the rest.
00:43:24.760
And so, it is just a fact that if you're going to let in a hundred thousand Muslims from a country like
00:43:33.060
Syria, even with the best of intentions, and even with some process of screening, you will let in
00:43:40.980
some percentage of that hundred thousand. And you know what that percentage is, by the way, Sam?
00:43:46.160
Do you want to take a guess what that number is? Well, this all turns on how good your screening is,
00:43:51.340
right? So, with no screening, then you're sampling the whole society. But one hopes that there's some
00:43:57.440
process of vetting here that weeds out people who are obviously Salafists, or obviously sympathetic
00:44:04.180
with ISIS, or all the rest. So, Douglas Murray was talking about this on the podcast, you know, some
00:44:10.060
probably a year ago now, when the migrant crisis was really kicking off. No matter how good your screening
00:44:15.900
is, you have to honestly acknowledge that no screening paradigm is perfect, and that there's so much
00:44:22.920
political correctness on our side that one, you know, has good cause to doubt whether any screening
00:44:29.360
procedure would be of the sort that you and I would support, right? So, like, are they really going
00:44:35.940
to ask intrusive questions about a person's religious convictions, and are such questions sufficient to
00:44:42.200
tease out attitudes? I mean, let's say you could screen out all the jihadists by, you know, magically asking
00:44:49.360
the right questions. Are you going to be committed to screening out people who really, down to the,
00:44:55.720
you know, the soles of their feet, despise freedom of speech, right? People who, you know, it would take
00:45:02.980
10 years for them to figure out that they want to live in a society where cartoonists can draw the
00:45:08.420
profit, right? Because right now they think that those people should be hurled from rooftops. The numbers
00:45:13.220
of people who believe that in the Muslim world is far in excess of anyone who would say they support
00:45:20.560
ISIS or even jihadism. And so that's the situation you're left with, is to let in great numbers of
00:45:27.700
Muslims is different than letting in great numbers of Christians, even from the same societies or
00:45:34.040
Yazidis from Iraq, because of specific facts about the doctrine. And this is what is refreshing about
00:45:42.620
the juggernaut of narcissism and delusion that is Donald Trump. Most people are in denial about
00:45:48.400
this reality. And it's something we just have to honestly talk about. Now, I say all this believing
00:45:53.660
that the prescription of not letting in Muslims or not letting in anyone who could be Muslim from any
00:46:01.200
of these societies is not workable and, in fact, not wise for the reason that many sanctimonious
00:46:08.980
liberals espouse, but obviously they espouse it in the context of not actually acknowledging the nature
00:46:15.200
of the problem. I mean, the buffer against Muslim extremism and the only prospect for reform in the
00:46:23.380
Muslim world is Muslim moderation on some level. So it's got to be, at minimum, it's the ex-Muslims,
00:46:31.700
right? It's the, it's, it's, it's someone like, you know, you know, Sarah Hader, right?
00:46:36.700
Who, who, who just, who, you know, you know, 10,000 Sarah Haders given huge platforms.
00:46:42.900
That's what the world needs. And if you keep Sarah Hader out because she came from the wrong country,
00:46:47.160
or you keep Faisal Saeed Al-Muhtar out because he came from Iraq and he was Muslim, those are the
00:46:53.520
people who have to be empowered. And those are the people who have to, who have to be given all the
00:46:57.100
resources we can muster. And those are the people who we need here. And then we need people who are
00:47:03.160
just like them in their commitment to liberalism and pluralism and tolerance and rationality, but
00:47:10.100
who, for whatever reason, are still identified as Muslims, like the Majinawas. You need people like
00:47:17.280
that at the mosque in Montreal or New York or Houston or Los Angeles. And those are the people who are the,
00:47:26.800
you know, our early warning system against, and really our immune system against the, the spread
00:47:33.180
of quote, Islamic extremism. So if we just followed the, the Trumpian line of saying, okay, you know,
00:47:41.940
no more Muslims, I don't see how we have taken the step to empower the reformers.
00:47:48.040
So, look, I completely agree that somewhere between Trump's prescription of no more entry of Muslims
00:48:00.040
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