The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 14, 2024


A Psychological Explanation of the JD Vance-Martha Raddatz Exchange (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_723)


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

152.2272

Word count

1,449

Sentence count

108

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

J.D. Vance and Martha Raddatz of ABC News debate whether or not Donald Trump's claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over the U.S. are hyperbolic and exaggerated, and the real problem is that there are no Venezuelan gangs in America.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody. This is Gatsad. I wanted to play for you a exchange between J.D. Vance and Martha Raddatz of ABC News.
00:00:14.740 And then I want to come back and offer a few insights. So enjoy.
00:00:20.680 But I want to we played some other comments about migrants, migrants, including in Aurora in Colorado, where Trump said the city had been invaded and conquered by Venezuelan gangs.
00:00:33.880 The Republican mayor of the city said flatly the city and state have not been taken over or invaded or occupied by migrant gangs.
00:00:42.220 So do you support Donald Trump making those claims that the Republican mayor says were grossly exaggerated and have hurt the city's identity and sense of safety?
00:00:52.880 I understand what you're saying, that some people left behind.
00:00:56.000 But he's making these statements that the mayor is flat out disputing.
00:01:02.440 Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated.
00:01:06.000 Grossly exaggerated.
00:01:07.060 There's got to be some that means there's got to be some element of truth here.
00:01:10.740 And, of course, President Trump was actually in Aurora, Colorado, talking to people on the ground.
00:01:16.080 And what we're hearing, of course, Martha, is that people are terrified by what has happened with some of these Venezuelan gangs.
00:01:22.180 Senator Vance, I'm going to stop you because I know exactly what happened.
00:01:25.340 I'm going to stop you.
00:01:26.520 The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment conflicts, apartment complexes.
00:01:33.260 And the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns.
00:01:38.120 A handful of problems.
00:01:40.740 Only, Martha, do you hear yourself?
00:01:43.760 Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs.
00:01:48.900 And Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris's open border.
00:01:52.820 Americans are so fed up with what's going on and they have every right to be.
00:01:57.060 And I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.
00:02:13.920 I worry so much more about that problem than anything else here.
00:02:18.520 We've got to get American communities in a safe space again.
00:02:21.760 So, did you enjoy that?
00:02:24.560 It's just a few apartment complexes.
00:02:27.520 Why are you saying that it's a problem?
00:02:30.680 That's just like saying, you know, the serial killer in question.
00:02:34.320 You're making him out to be some sort of bad guy.
00:02:37.520 Whereas in reality, he's only killed four people. 0.66
00:02:40.520 You're talking about the serial rapist as though he's like a bad person.
00:02:45.660 You know that that guy has only committed six serial rapes.
00:02:50.260 It's not an epidemic that he's engaged in throughout his life.
00:02:55.100 As a matter of fact, for most days of his life, he wasn't raping.
00:02:58.580 Now, why is this happening?
00:03:00.760 Because as I've explained in many places, including in several of my books, people have an uncanny ability to discount any information that is contrary to their anchored positions.
00:03:13.660 So, in this case, it doesn't matter if you show the actual footage that should be horrifying to anybody, right?
00:03:21.220 A bunch of illegal gang members that have taken over.
00:03:24.560 If they took over one apartment, it would be a devastating reality.
00:03:28.760 But it was just only a few blocks, only a few apartments, only a few buildings.
00:03:33.120 So, the real problem here is that Donald Trump was being hyperbolic and he may be exaggerated.
00:03:38.820 That's the real problem.
00:03:40.480 And so, let me read for you two quotes here very quickly.
00:03:43.720 One is from my 2011 book.
00:03:46.260 This is the epigraph of the last chapter, chapter 11.
00:03:55.020 This is a quote by J.B.S. Haldane, who's an evolutionary geneticist.
00:04:02.540 And I've argued that this is possibly my favorite quote of all time by a scientist, which is saying a lot.
00:04:10.360 Here, he's talking about the four stages that scientists go through before they accept a theory that they heretofore were unwilling to accept.
00:04:20.720 So, four stages.
00:04:21.620 So, here we go.
00:04:22.640 So, I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages. 0.77
00:04:26.740 One, this is worthless nonsense.
00:04:29.060 Two, this is an interesting but perverse point of view.
00:04:32.640 Three, this is true but quite unimportant.
00:04:35.580 Four, I always said so, right?
00:04:38.300 So, there is no such thing as migrant gangs taking over.
00:04:43.760 Well, sure, there is migrant gangs but it's really a largely unimportant problem, right? 0.66
00:04:48.900 So, you erect ever weakening forms of cognitive defenses until finally the evidentiary threshold is so surpassed that you say, yeah, yeah, sure.
00:05:02.520 Okay, I always said so.
00:05:03.560 As a matter of fact, Kamala Harris is the really champion of closing the borders.
00:05:09.220 So, that's one.
00:05:10.060 So, remember this from J.B.S. Haldane.
00:05:12.080 Now, let me read you a second quote.
00:05:15.120 This is from The Parasitic Mind.
00:05:19.400 And I've read this quote before for you but it's worth repeating.
00:05:22.560 It's from page 142, the second to last chapter where I talk about how to seek truth.
00:05:31.940 I explained that notwithstanding the fact that you'd want people to be seeking an objective truth,
00:05:38.240 regrettably, the architecture of the human mind is such that you're consistently trying to come up with ways to discount information that is contrary to your positions.
00:05:48.600 And so, here, I'm turning to Leon Festinger who was the gentleman who developed the theory of cognitive dissonance.
00:05:55.880 So, I'm going to read you the whole quote and then I want you to contextualize it in terms of what we saw with the original clip with Martha Raditz.
00:06:05.300 Okay?
00:06:06.040 So, this is from Leon Festinger.
00:06:08.880 This is from page 142 of my book, The Parasitic Mind.
00:06:11.640 A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.
00:06:15.180 Tell him you disagree and he turns away.
00:06:17.620 Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources.
00:06:21.080 Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
00:06:24.660 We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction,
00:06:29.300 especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief.
00:06:33.820 We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions,
00:06:40.280 managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
00:06:44.840 So, you see the footage, the actual recorded footage of what was happening on October 7th,
00:06:52.380 it's not really true.
00:06:53.740 It's really Zionists who did that. 1.00
00:06:55.480 It's the IDF who did that. 0.90
00:06:56.900 It's not really true that there were gang rapes.
00:06:59.420 It's not really true that it was 40 kids dead.
00:07:01.880 As a matter of fact, it's only 36 dead.
00:07:04.440 Well, actually, there are no dead children.
00:07:06.720 So, you come up with never-ending defenses that go contrary to your own lying eyes.
00:07:14.940 All right, let's keep going.
00:07:16.500 But man's resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief.
00:07:20.620 Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart.
00:07:23.620 Suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief,
00:07:26.740 that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it.
00:07:30.020 Finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence,
00:07:37.060 like footage, that his belief is wrong.
00:07:40.620 What will happen?
00:07:41.920 The individual will frequently emerge not only unshaken,
00:07:46.180 but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.
00:07:51.180 Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
00:07:56.960 This is why, when I was asked last year by a British psychiatrist on his show,
00:08:03.280 I keep referencing it because I thought it was such a good question for him to ask me.
00:08:07.220 At the end of our chat, he asked me,
00:08:08.940 what is the singular phenomenon that has most surprised you about, you know, human behavior,
00:08:16.420 Professor Saad, in all my 30 plus years as a behavioral scientist and professor.
00:08:22.780 And I thought for a second, I said,
00:08:24.880 the inability to get someone to change their mind,
00:08:28.860 despite all of the evidence that you might present for them.
00:08:31.320 So I can build you the nomological network of cumulative evidence,
00:08:35.160 but if you go la la la, there's no way for me to reach you.
00:08:38.340 That's exactly what Martha Raddatz was doing, right? 0.81
00:08:43.740 I mean, surely just taking over a few buildings is not such a big thing.
00:08:49.420 And it's certain the much bigger crime is that Donald Trump exaggerated the seriousness of the problem.
00:08:56.880 No, no, it's a deontological phenomenon.
00:09:01.800 Illegal immigrants should not enter the country illegally. 0.99
00:09:06.700 That's that.
00:09:07.740 And when they enter illegally, there shouldn't be a takeover of a single apartment building.
00:09:14.140 But Martha Raddatz thought it was a lot more appropriate to spend her energy and time saying,
00:09:23.300 but, you know, Donald Trump exaggerated the extent of the problem.
00:09:27.960 The human mind is a dark place.
00:09:30.480 Take care, everybody.