The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Canada Strong and Free Network - My Lecture (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_827)

00:00:00.000 Good morning everybody. I'm not sure who scheduled this for 8.30 on a Friday morning,

00:00:05.880 but thank you all for being here. My name is Rick Eckstein, and it's a real pleasure to be here with

00:00:11.940 you, and a true privilege to be able to introduce someone who has made it his life's mission to

00:00:18.200 explore what makes us tick, buy, believe, and sometimes lose our minds. Professor Godd saw it

00:00:25.240 as many things. A world-renowned evolutionary behavioral scientist, a best-selling author,

00:00:31.900 prolific public intellectual, and probably one of the most original voices in academia today.

00:00:38.500 He's a professor of marketing at Concordia University, where he holds the prestigious

00:00:42.940 research chair in evolutionary behavior science and Darwinian consumption. Over the past two

00:00:49.420 decades, Professor Saad has carved out a unique space where biology, consumer behavior, and cultural

00:00:56.200 commentary collide. His work helps explain everything from why we're drawn to certain brands to how

00:01:03.180 ideologies spread like viruses, bypassing reason and hijacking our minds in the process. He's published

00:01:11.280 in top academic journals. He's contributed to major media outlets and reached millions through his

00:01:17.340 lectures, bestsellers, and of course his bold, irrelevant podcast, The Sad Truth. And what makes him stand out

00:01:25.840 is not just the depth of his knowledge, but it's his fearless approach to truth-telling. Whether dissecting

00:01:31.580 consumer habits or confronting campus orthodoxy, he does it all with clarity, humor, and courage. In his

00:01:39.500 powerful book, The Parasitic Mind, he lays out a stark warning. Bad ideas can spread like pathogens.

00:01:45.920 And the reason, and the antidotes, reason, evidence, and intellectual freedom. His message is simple, but profound.

00:01:54.420 Defend the truth even when it's uncomfortable. And here's the thing. He doesn't just talk about courage. He lives it.

00:02:02.420 Born in Lebanon and raised amidst the chaos of civil war, Professor Saad knows what real physical fear feels like. His family fled to

00:02:12.920 Canada to find safety and freedom, and he lived the Canadian dream. He built a life, a career, a family, and a platform

00:02:21.420 rooted in reason and liberty. But today, in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks, and the disturbing rise in

00:02:30.920 anti-Semitism on campus, he's been forced into exile again. This time, not from a war zone, but from his

00:02:39.420 own university. The threats to his safety at Concordia have become so severe that he has taken a year-long leave of

00:02:45.920 absence, and is now teaching at an American institution. What a shame. What a shame. What a

00:02:52.420 shame. What a warning that someone who once fled for his life, and then gave so much back

00:02:56.420 to this country, must now flee again, just to survive. And yet, he still speaks, he still

00:03:02.420 stands, and he still invites us to think more clearly, act more courageously, and, believe it

00:03:08.420 or not, to laugh, even when it hurts. Please join me in giving a warm and meaningful welcome

00:03:15.420 to Professor God Saad.

00:03:17.420 Thank you very much.

00:03:34.420 Thank you, guys. I wore my velvet jacket for you. Okay, I'm, well, yeah, okay. So I got about

00:03:49.420 35 minutes. All right. Why is it not moving forward? Oh, here we go. So today, what I'll

00:03:57.420 do is I'll discuss a bit my background in Lebanon, because it'll be relevant, as Rick mentioned,

00:04:03.420 to some of the realities that are unfolding now in Canada. I thought I had put this in

00:04:10.420 my rearview mirror, but it now comes back to haunt me again. And so I'll talk a bit about

00:04:16.420 that. And then I'll discuss some of the parasitic ideas that some of you may know of if you've

00:04:22.420 read my book. And then I'll briefly tease you with a few little tidbits from my forthcoming

00:04:28.420 book on suicidal empathy. So let's get going. So this is my childhood in Lebanon. The photo

00:04:34.420 on the left is actually very close to where I grew up. But the photo on the right is what

00:04:41.420 I lived during the first year of the Lebanese Civil War. In the West, we manufacture victimology.

00:04:49.420 I didn't have to manufacture victimology. And in Lebanon, death awaited you everywhere 1.00

00:04:55.420 you turn. My parents would tell me, if you're going to play outside, don't pass a particular

00:04:59.420 line, because that would open you up to the vision of the snipers that would blow your brain.

00:05:05.420 So that's the kind of environment we grew up in. And of course, being Jewish, it became impossible 1.00

00:05:10.420 to be in Lebanon. But just to give you, so this is, I always talk about this because it's

00:05:19.420 the first episodic memory that I have of facing Jew hatred in Lebanon. I was five years old.

00:05:27.420 This is 1970. I was almost six. The gentleman on the left is Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was the

00:05:33.420 Egyptian president, a very popular president, because he was a Pan-Arabist. He was trying to unite

00:05:39.420 all the Arabs into one voice to get rid of the pesky Jews in Israel. When he passed away, 1.00

00:05:48.420 as often happens in the Middle East, people go to the streets to do all sorts of lamentations

00:05:53.420 and incantations and so on. And what I kept hearing as a five-year-old boy was death to

00:06:00.420 Jews, death to Jews. And I turned to my mother wondering, why are they saying death to Jews? 0.95

00:06:04.420 What do we have to do with this? And she goes, just keep your head down. Keep quiet.

00:06:07.420 And then the photo on the right, if you're going to call for extermination, at least don't misspell us.

00:06:16.420 At least have the dignity of, or the decency to spell us. So this is how the meme, the evil juice,

00:06:22.420 if you ever hear me referring to Jews, I refer to them as the evil juice. It comes from this Einstein. 1.00

00:06:30.420 This is an actual photo. I think it's probably the second to last photo prior to the start of the Civil War in 1975.

00:06:39.420 And I'm in the first row, the second person from the left with the slightly longish hair.

00:06:45.420 In that photo, there's a young kid who, when asked, we were each asked to stand up and tell the teacher what it is that we want to be when we grow up.

00:06:56.420 You know, I want to be a soccer player. I want to be a policeman. I want to be a fireman. I want to be a nurse.

00:07:02.420 And this kid got up and said, when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer, to raucous laughter and applause. 0.97

00:07:09.420 Now, this is in tolerant, moderate Lebanon. This is in the Paris of the Middle East. 0.98

00:07:15.420 So even when, you know, the Jews weren't being rounded up for extermination, you still had to know your place.

00:07:22.420 And regrettably, this is now what we're seeing in Canada with very, very, with great speed and alacrity.

00:07:33.420 This is an actual newspaper from Lebanon, a clipping.

00:07:39.420 One of my brothers was Lebanese champion in judo for several years.

00:07:43.420 And it became embarrassing to the Lebanese authorities that a Jewish guy was winning every year the Lebanese championship.

00:07:50.420 And so he was, it was explained to him that it was time for him to retire, lest something bad might happen to him.

00:07:59.420 And then he ended up leaving and pursuing his judo career in France.

00:08:05.420 And the irony is that when we moved to Canada, the 1976 Olympics were happening in Montreal, which is where we moved to.

00:08:14.420 And he ended up representing Lebanon in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

00:08:19.420 So the guy who was too Jewish to keep winning the championship in Lebanon, we can overlook his Judaism a few years later when you're representing us in the Montreal Olympics. 0.99

00:08:31.420 That's tolerant and progressive Lebanon.

00:08:34.420 This is the actual photo of my parents who, thank God, are still alive.

00:08:39.420 They're 94 and 90.

00:08:41.420 Thank you.

00:08:42.420 This is their 1950 marriage.

00:08:47.420 My, you know, it's the Middle East, so it's very old school.

00:08:50.420 My mother was just about to turn 16.

00:08:53.420 My father was about 20.

00:08:55.420 And the reason I put their photo up, other than to honor them, is that on one of their return trips to Lebanon after we had emigrated to Montreal,

00:09:05.420 they still had business interests in Lebanon, and so they were kidnapped by Fatah, and some really bad things happened to them.

00:09:13.420 But luckily, through some high political connections, they were able to be freed.

00:09:19.420 So many of the things that we see today with the hostage taking and so on is something that we lived, you know, 40 plus years ago.

00:09:28.420 Now, this one is a very powerful one.

00:09:32.420 I call it the Star of David has come full circle.

00:09:35.420 The top passage is straight from the parasitic mind, but I'll just mention it to you here.

00:09:42.420 The day that we left Lebanon, the actual day, when we cleared the Lebanese airspace, the pilot said,

00:09:53.420 okay, we're now out of Lebanese airspace, my mother puts a Star of David around my neck and says,

00:09:59.420 now you can wear this, be proud, and not hide your identity.

00:10:03.420 Well, then, if you look at the tweet below it, about two weeks after October 7th,

00:10:10.420 this was something that my son said to me at almost the exact same age that I was when we escaped Lebanon back in the 70s.

00:10:19.420 He had picked me up with my wife, he had just played a soccer match in the east end of Montreal,

00:10:26.420 where there's a particular demographic group that is not very amenable to Jewish presence. 0.88

00:10:31.420 And he said to me, if you had come to watch me play where I was today, and you were wearing a Star of David, you'd be dead daddy.

00:10:42.420 So, in 1975, I escaped Lebanon, and I can wear a Star of David.

00:10:48.420 In 2023, I can't wear a Star of David in Montreal, Canada.

00:10:53.420 This is, I think Rick mentioned this in his intro, this is an actual photo of SWAT police in Concordia University.

00:11:07.420 And when I went to my administrator to say, this is insane what's happening with me with all the threats and so on,

00:11:16.420 she said, there's absolutely no Jew hatred at Concordia.

00:11:20.420 About a week or two later, I can't remember the exact temporal period,

00:11:25.420 the president of Concordia was summoned to Ottawa to actually confirm that there is massive Jew hatred.

00:11:32.420 Remember, the average Jewish student who's afraid to go to Concordia, people don't know that he's Jewish.

00:11:39.420 People know who I am and know my position.

00:11:41.420 So, imagine trying to walk in my shoes at Concordia.

00:11:45.420 It's not easy, it's not pleasant.

00:11:47.420 And, you know, regrettably, I've been warning people for decades about this.

00:11:52.420 And, you know, people just are too busy in their lives.

00:11:56.420 It's my daughter's graduation ceremony, I have to pick up the laundry, let someone else worry about it.

00:12:03.420 It's not going, the problem is not going to go away, I assure you.

00:12:08.420 So, now let me get into a bit of the parasitic mind.

00:12:12.420 So, there are two sets of pathogens that affect us.

00:12:17.420 The first one, of course, are biological pathogens.

00:12:20.420 You should be a lot more afraid of mosquitoes than all other animals combined.

00:12:24.420 They've killed way more people throughout history than, you know, the polar bear and the great white shark that you might be afraid of.

00:12:32.420 It actually makes perfect adaptive sense for you to be afraid of the mosquito, as I am.

00:12:36.420 So, of course, you've got bacteria, you've got viruses, parasites, fungi.

00:12:42.420 But I argue in the parasitic mind that there's a second class of pathogens, ideological pathogens, parasitic ideas that can completely zombify our ability to think clearly.

00:12:54.420 And so, what the book does is it discusses all of these parasitic ideas, which I'll spend a few minutes talking about here.

00:13:02.420 And then it hopefully offers an effective vaccine with no side effects.

00:13:08.420 So, what are some parasitic manifestations in nature?

00:13:13.420 Well, the spider wasp, you see it at least to my left, it will sting a much larger spider, rendering it zombified, but completely alive.

00:13:26.420 It carries it to its burrow, lays eggs on it, and then as the offspring hatch, they eat the spider in vivo.

00:13:35.420 Well, I analogize this to political correctness. Political correctness is the spider's wasp, right?

00:13:41.420 Just walk merrily to the abyss of infinite lunacy while then all irrational movements consume you from within.

00:13:49.420 That's what we've seen.

00:13:51.420 The one on the right with the mouse and the cat, this is Toxoplasma gondii, which is actually a neuroparasite that can also afflict human beings.

00:13:59.420 It actually causes human beings to engage in riskier behavior if they are parasitized by this brain worm.

00:14:06.420 In the case of the mouse, it makes evolutionary sense for it to be afraid of cats.

00:14:11.420 When it is parasitized, it actually becomes sexually attracted to the cat's urine, which is not a very good attraction to have if you're a mouse.

00:14:21.420 Another example is of something that we see in Canada, moose ungulates, so elk, moose, deer.

00:14:28.420 When they are parasitized by this particular brain worm, they lose their innate mechanism of fleeing when they see predators,

00:14:36.420 and they just engage in the circling behavior, unable to extricate themselves from this kind of repetitive behavior as the predators come in.

00:14:44.420 Again, you can see the analogy that I'm setting up here with ideological neuroparasites.

00:14:53.420 The top one is a wood cricket.

00:14:56.420 The wood cricket abhors water.

00:14:58.420 It wants nothing to do with water, but when it is parasitized by a hair worm,

00:15:04.420 in order for the hair worm to complete its reproductive cycle, it needs to happen in water.

00:15:09.420 And so, when it is parasitized, the wood cricket will merrily jump and commit suicide in the service of the reproductive interests of the hair worm. 0.97

00:15:19.420 Again, you can see how, yes, yes, some women have penises, is exactly you being a parasitized wood cricket. 1.00

00:15:28.420 Okay? 0.99

00:15:29.420 So, the bottom, now let's look at some human manifestations of this.

00:15:34.420 Queers for Palestine is the ultimate human manifestation of a wood cricket. 0.99

00:15:40.420 Yes?

00:15:41.420 It's geese for foie gras.

00:15:44.420 Okay? 0.96

00:15:45.420 And then we've got Jewish Anna Epstein, who's a lot more progressive and enlightened than all of you degenerates. 0.99

00:15:53.420 And that's why when the October 7th happened, she was at Boston University.

00:16:02.420 She was with great alacrity.

00:16:04.420 She went and pulled down the posters of the babies who were kidnapped because she's very, very progressive.

00:16:13.420 Right?

00:16:14.420 But had she been at the Nova dance festival, she wouldn't have been afforded any reciprocity. 0.97

00:16:21.420 And she would have been gang raped and burned and killed like all of the other 1,200. 0.99

00:16:25.420 But she's much smarter than all of you. 0.97

00:16:29.420 So, this is another Jewish wood cricket, Tal Nitzan, who was, during her PhD at Hebrew University, which is a prestigious university in Jerusalem, was doing some research to try to demonstrate that the IDF engages in rampant rape of Palestinian women.

00:16:51.420 To her dismay, when she conducted the research, she found out that there wasn't a single documented case of such rapes.

00:16:58.420 Now, an honest scientist, once the evidence comes in and it refutes your hypothesis, you go, okay, this happens.

00:17:06.420 You throw the dice in science and sometimes it doesn't work out.

00:17:09.420 No.

00:17:10.420 But she has to ensure that she is epistemologically clean.

00:17:14.420 So, did she revise her opinion that IDF soldiers are devils?

00:17:18.420 No. 0.53

00:17:19.420 No.

00:17:20.420 She then spinned it as follows.

00:17:23.420 Now, I'm glad you're all sitting down because otherwise you'll get woozy. 0.99

00:17:27.420 The IDF soldiers are so evil, they so other, they so marginalized as subhumans, the Palestinian women, that they don't even consider them worthy of rape. 0.99

00:17:40.420 So, had she found that they raped them, they would have been evil. 0.99

00:17:45.420 And if she finds that they didn't rape her, it also confirms that they're evil.

00:17:49.420 Therefore, there is no way to falsify that premise.

00:17:52.420 We know in science, Popper's falsification principle is anything that cannot be falsified cannot be within the realm of reason, of science.

00:18:01.420 And so, this is exactly what she's doing.

00:18:03.420 She's literally anti-scientific.

00:18:06.420 Here's another very, very enlightened guy.

00:18:09.420 This is Karsten Nordl-Hawken.

00:18:13.420 He's, not only is he parasitized, but he's also suicidally empathetic. 0.98

00:18:17.420 He was raped by a Somali immigrant in Norway. 0.93

00:18:22.420 After he, after the Norwegian, oh Norwegian, the Somali rapist served his sentence, not a particularly harsh sentence, because the Norwegians, again, are kind. 0.92

00:18:33.420 They don't believe in retribution.

00:18:36.420 He felt very bad, he the victim, because the Somali was going to be deported back to Somalia where he wouldn't have the chance to maximally flourish. 0.83

00:18:46.420 And that made the victim of the rape feel guilty.

00:18:50.420 Well, I'm here to tell you, as an evolutionary psychologist, that our emotional system did not evolve to particularly care about the future flourishing trajectory of our rapists.

00:19:02.420 But when you are suicidally empathetic, you do care about your rapist.

00:19:07.420 Oops, sorry.

00:19:10.420 So, what are examples of viruses of the human mind?

00:19:14.420 Well, there are many.

00:19:16.420 The one smack in the center is the granddaddy of them all.

00:19:21.420 It's postmodernism.

00:19:23.420 Postmodernism purports that there are no objective truths other than the one objective truth that there are no objective truths.

00:19:30.420 So, we already have an epistemological problem there.

00:19:34.420 Now, for those of you who may have seen this next story, apologies.

00:19:39.420 But I think it's still worth repeating, even if you've seen it.

00:19:42.420 And if you haven't seen it, buckle up.

00:19:44.420 It's going to get fun.

00:19:45.420 So, in 2002, I had been, I was going out with my wife.

00:19:51.420 We didn't have children yet.

00:19:53.420 And one of my doctoral students who had just defended his PhD, and we were going out to celebrate.

00:19:59.420 So, this is 23 years ago.

00:20:00.420 So, way before, you know, the transgender craze, men too can menstruate and so on. 0.60

00:20:05.420 This is well over two decades ago.

00:20:08.420 And he calls me a few hours prior to our dinner to say, oh, I just want to give you a heads up.

00:20:16.420 I'm bringing a date along.

00:20:19.420 I just want to tell you that she's a graduate student in postmodernism, women's studies, and cultural anthropology. 0.99

00:20:28.420 To which I answered, ah, so the holy trinity of bullshit. 0.99

00:20:36.420 I said, oh, but I got you. 1.00

00:20:38.420 I get it.

00:20:39.420 This is your night.

00:20:40.420 I'm going to be on my best behavior.

00:20:43.420 Don't worry about me.

00:20:44.420 Which, of course, was a lie.

00:20:47.420 About halfway through the night, I turned to this lady and I said, so I hear you're a graduate student of postmodernism.

00:20:53.420 And at one of the leading universities in Canada, if not the leading university in Canada.

00:20:58.420 She says, yes.

00:21:00.420 I said, well, I'm an evolutionary behavioral scientist.

00:21:04.420 I believe, for example, that there is a universal human nature.

00:21:09.420 There are human universals.

00:21:11.420 Do you mind if I propose something that would be, that I would consider to be universal and then we can discuss it?

00:21:16.420 She goes, yeah, go ahead. 1.00

00:21:17.420 This is 23 years ago.

00:21:18.420 So, this is, again, as I said, way before transgenderism. 1.00

00:21:22.420 I said, is it not true that within Homo sapiens only women bear children? 0.99

00:21:27.420 Is that not a universal? 0.99

00:21:29.420 So, she scoffs at my imbecility, my simple mind. 0.99

00:21:33.420 And she says, no, that's not true. 0.99

00:21:35.420 I said, how is it not true?

00:21:36.420 She said, well, within some Japanese tribe on some Japanese, off some Japanese island, within the folkloric realm, within the mythological realm of their society, it is the men who bear children.

00:21:51.420 So, by you restricting it to the biological realm, that's how you keep us barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. 0.83

00:21:58.420 So, after I recovered from the mini stroke that I had at hearing this, I then said, okay, well, maybe it was a bit too controversial for me to say something as corrosive and as divisive as only women bear children. 0.76

00:22:12.420 So, let me take a slightly less controversial example.

00:22:16.420 And you'll see in the second, the photo on the right, why there's a hyena there that appears to be dancing.

00:22:23.420 I said, is it not true since time immemorial that sailors have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?

00:22:30.420 And there she used a variant of postmodernism.

00:22:35.420 It's called deconstructionism, right?

00:22:37.420 It's Jacques Derrida.

00:22:39.420 And she said, well, what do you mean by east and west?

00:22:42.420 What do you mean by the sun?

00:22:45.420 That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena.

00:22:49.420 I said, well, fine, the dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west.

00:22:53.420 She said, I don't play those label games.

00:22:55.420 Now, why do I always, I almost always tell this story?

00:22:58.420 Because it perfectly captures the parasitized lunacy.

00:23:04.420 If I am sitting with a grown adult who is a graduate student at a leading university in Canada, and we can't have a space of shared meaning where we agree that for a sexually dimorphic, sexually reproducing species called Homo sapiens, one of the two sexes bears the children.

00:23:24.420 And we can't agree that there's this thing called a star called the sun, then where can we take that, quote, knowledge?

00:23:32.420 It's complete intellectual terrorism.

00:23:34.420 And so that's exactly what I've been warning for decades in academia.

00:23:38.420 And I say this not to be gleeful, I told you so, but because it's very frustrating.

00:23:43.420 Because I was standing on top of the mountain telling people, this is all coming for you.

00:23:48.420 I live it every day.

00:23:50.420 I sit on those granting committees where every single paper is on queer mathematics, feminist architecture, transgender literature, and so on.

00:24:02.420 Okay?

00:24:03.420 This is, because I'm speaking in a Canadian forum, I tried to give examples from Canada.

00:24:11.420 This is from a few years ago.

00:24:12.420 It's been updated, but not for the better in terms of the results.

00:24:16.420 These are 60 universities ranked on four metrics that relate to freedom.

00:24:23.420 And so you could have up to 240 A's.

00:24:26.420 If every university got on every metric an A, you'd have 240 A's.

00:24:30.420 There were six A's out of 240.

00:24:35.420 That gives you a sense of the state of affairs on Canadian campuses.

00:24:40.420 And it's only gotten worse since 2017.

00:24:44.420 This is yours truly.

00:24:46.420 And Jordan Peterson, we were supposed to speak at an event.

00:24:50.420 It used to be called Ryerson College, Ryerson University.

00:24:53.420 Of course, we found out that he was racist.

00:24:57.420 So now it's called Toronto Metropolitan University.

00:25:00.420 The event that we were supposed to speak at was titled,

00:25:03.420 The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campus.

00:25:06.420 Guess what happened at that?

00:25:08.420 It was canceled.

00:25:10.420 And the screenshot on the right is actually a real screenshot.

00:25:15.420 We don't want neo-Nazis in Toronto.

00:25:19.420 I'm Jewish.

00:25:25.420 This is at UBC.

00:25:27.420 Lorna June McHugh was a professor in the law faculty.

00:25:32.420 She hadn't published much, which of course is needed for tenure.

00:25:36.420 She then decided that she was going to levy a human rights complaint

00:25:42.420 because she's Indigenous.

00:25:44.420 And in Indigenous society, knowledge is transmitted through oral means.

00:25:50.420 And therefore, to ask her to write things would be contrary to her Indigenous heritage.

00:25:56.420 And it actually was taken, the case.

00:26:00.420 You didn't laugh her out of the room, but instead you sort of acquiesced.

00:26:05.420 Yes, oh yes.

00:26:06.420 Well, guess what?

00:26:07.420 Jewish history is also based on originally oral tradition.

00:26:11.420 We should have told all those Jewish Nobel laureates not to do this whole writing thing. 1.00

00:26:16.420 This is at Trent University, a seminar on it's okay to be against whites.

00:26:27.420 This is very recent, so get ready.

00:26:31.420 This is at University of Waterloo.

00:26:33.420 As you know, University of Waterloo would be sort of the Canadian equivalent

00:26:36.420 to the high engineering and tech universities in the US, MIT or Caltech, right?

00:26:43.420 Fortran was created.

00:26:45.420 One of the early languages in computer science was created at University of Waterloo.

00:26:49.420 So it's a serious engineering and computer science school.

00:26:52.420 So they had calls for Canada research chairs,

00:26:55.420 which are the highest chaired professorships

00:26:58.420 that are endowed by the Canadian government.

00:27:00.420 So this is for really, this is the epitome of your academic prestige.

00:27:05.420 So the first one, position, this is an actual screenshot, right?

00:27:08.420 This is not my satire.

00:27:09.420 This is not me being hyperbolic.

00:27:11.420 This is an actual screenshot.

00:27:13.420 All areas of artificial intelligence are welcome to apply,

00:27:17.420 but the call is only open to qualified individuals who self-identify as women,

00:27:22.420 transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, or two-spirit.

00:27:26.420 Now, I have a mathematics and computer science degree,

00:27:29.420 and I feel great shame today that when I learned computer science and mathematics,

00:27:33.420 we didn't incorporate queer methodology within our computer architecture.

00:27:38.420 This is at UBC, also Canada research chair in oral cancer research.

00:27:45.420 It's only reserved to people who self-identify as part of a racialized minority.

00:27:52.420 So based on that metric, self-identify, Chief Liza Lot, Elizabeth Warren,

00:27:57.420 could totally have applied to this position because it doesn't matter whether you truly are of a particular heritage.

00:28:04.420 It's what you self-identify as.

00:28:06.420 By the way, I appeared in front of the Canadian Senate in 2017 when I was warning about some of the consequences of Bill C-16,

00:28:14.420 and I exactly predicted this, and the liberal senators, if you go back and watch it, were laughing and scoffing and mocking.

00:28:24.420 I'm still waiting to receive the apology letter.

00:28:28.420 This is at my home university, Concordia University, our five-year strategic plan.

00:28:37.420 Number one, this is a screenshot, it's real, is to indigenize and decolonize the entire curriculum, everything.

00:28:49.420 You teach neuroscience, indigenize that.

00:28:52.420 You teach pure mathematics, indigenize that.

00:28:55.420 And so in my case, I teach courses like evolutionary psychology, psychology of decision-making, consumer psychology,

00:29:04.420 you know, parasitic mind.

00:29:05.420 I would have to look for ways to indigenize that.

00:29:08.420 This is, you might remember a few years ago, a Quebec deputy minister got into a lot of pushback

00:29:17.420 when he said that when you're doing an environmental study and, you know, impact of, you know, for the environment,

00:29:23.420 there's only science that matters.

00:29:26.420 There is no alternative ways of knowing because they were saying, well, you should use indigenous ways of knowing.

00:29:31.420 And then he had to walk back those words.

00:29:35.420 There is no other epistemology than the scientific method.

00:29:40.420 It's the scientific method that liberates us from the shackles of our personal identity.

00:29:45.420 That's what makes science so beautiful.

00:29:48.420 There is no Lebanese Jewish way of doing evolutionary psychology. 0.99

00:29:52.420 There's just evolutionary psychology.

00:29:54.420 And yet he got into hot waters.

00:29:57.420 I'm here to tell you that the very, very important human rights issue in Canada,

00:30:04.420 which is that we achieve menstrual equity.

00:30:07.420 I was unaware that women weren't freely allowed to menstruate in Canada, 0.96

00:30:12.420 but there was a one-day symposium at Concordia on menstrual equity.

00:30:17.420 This is happening in the 21st century at a major Canadian university with your taxpayer dollars.

00:30:26.420 This is the Senate hearing that I was at.

00:30:35.420 This is the gentleman that I subsequently referred to as Senator Genocide,

00:30:40.420 because when it was time for the Q&A period, he sort of looked at me with, you know, very dismissively and said...

00:30:48.420 By the way, my testimony was very sober.

00:30:51.420 It was basically just saying that we're a sexually reproducing species.

00:30:54.420 There really is a way to define what is male or female and so on and so forth.

00:30:58.420 And he said that I was promoting a genocide of transgender people,

00:31:03.420 to which I said, you know, one has to be careful to accuse someone with my background of committing genocide.

00:31:10.420 But this is the kind of discourse that we have.

00:31:13.420 This was, I think, in 2017.

00:31:15.420 I receive all the time emails of how I'm going to be a better ally to women in my job as a professor, 1.00

00:31:26.420 which I always answer.

00:31:27.420 I don't, I address everybody the same way.

00:31:30.420 I interact with everybody the same way.

00:31:32.420 As long as they're intellectually curious, they could be anything.

00:31:35.420 It doesn't matter.

00:31:36.420 But the reality is that the victimology narrative is no longer true.

00:31:40.420 Women outnumber men in every single imaginable way. 1.00

00:31:43.420 This is just data from medical school.

00:31:45.420 But in everything, women outnumber men. 1.00

00:31:47.420 In the United States, for associate's degree, bachelor's degree, master's degree,

00:31:52.420 and doctoral degree across every single race group, women outnumber men. 1.00

00:31:57.420 But yet I receive 25 emails a day.

00:31:59.420 How are you going to be a better ally to women?

00:32:02.420 Shouldn't we revise our victimology narrative when it no longer applies?

00:32:05.420 No, we shouldn't.

00:32:08.420 Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome is something that I discuss in Chapter 6 of The Parasitic Mind.

00:32:15.420 It refers to, metaphorically, I mean, the ostrich doesn't actually do this,

00:32:20.420 but it refers to the idea that you put, you bury your head in sand and la, la, la.

00:32:23.420 I don't want to hear it.

00:32:25.420 So there have been 47,000-plus terror attacks committed by Islamic terrorists since 9-11 alone in nearly 70 countries.

00:32:37.420 The terrorists who've committed the 47,000 terror attacks tell you exactly why they've committed it.

00:32:44.420 They justify it via their canonical material in their holy books, yes?

00:32:50.420 But Westerners are much more suicidally empathetic, and therefore they come up with alternate explanations,

00:32:58.420 because you don't want to marginalize the noble religion of perpetual peace.

00:33:03.420 And so here are some of them. I won't go through all of them.

00:33:05.420 These are not satirical. I can give you the link to every single one of them.

00:33:08.420 Many of them were espoused by professors.

00:33:10.420 So it turns out that if you... Look at the fourth one.

00:33:14.420 If you don't have enough adequate exposure to art, that could radicalize you.

00:33:19.420 Who amongst us who didn't see enough Modigliani, Chagall, and Picasso

00:33:24.420 didn't end up joining ISIS to throw gays off the buildings in Rakta, Syria?

00:33:30.420 It's a direct correlation between not enough Chagall and Picasso and becoming a terror attack.

00:33:36.420 These are professors who propose this, right?

00:33:39.420 Aren't professors supposed to be the purveyors and defenders of truth?

00:33:44.420 Here's another one. I'll just mention one.

00:33:46.420 This is from your favorite science guy, Bill Nye,

00:33:49.420 who explained to us that the Bataclan attack in Paris,

00:33:54.420 where they scream Allahu Akbar as they mow down everybody, 0.62

00:33:57.420 was very conceivably due to solar panels and climate change.

00:34:02.420 And then he offers a causal explanation for that.

00:34:05.420 Well, when you are that removed from reality, when you are so suicidally empathetic,

00:34:10.420 then you shouldn't be surprised to see what is happening in Canada.

00:34:14.420 It's sometimes difficult to face reality.

00:34:17.420 But if you don't face it, it's not going to go away.

00:34:19.420 If the physician tells you you have stage four pancreatic cancer,

00:34:22.420 you could pretend that cancer doesn't exist.

00:34:24.420 It's still going to exist and it's still going to kill you.

00:34:27.420 So wake up.

00:34:28.420 I'm looking at the time, so I want to try to be as quick as I can.

00:34:34.420 My next book, what it does.

00:34:36.420 So parasitic mind looked at what happens to our cognitive system when it is parasitized,

00:34:42.420 what happens to our thinking ability.

00:34:44.420 So suicidal empathy completes the story in saying,

00:34:47.420 well, we're both a thinking and feeling animal.

00:34:50.420 Well, for me to completely zombify you,

00:34:52.420 I need to also hijack your emotional system. 0.84

00:34:56.420 And so what my next book will do is do what parasitic mind did,

00:35:01.420 but to our emotional system.

00:35:06.420 So how do we save our universities?

00:35:07.420 I'll try to.

00:35:08.420 I might be a minute late, so I hope you'll give me grace.

00:35:11.420 How to save our universities.

00:35:13.420 Pursue knowledge unencumbered by ideological activism.

00:35:17.420 No knowledge is forbidden if gathered objectively using the scientific method.

00:35:21.420 We often have in universities, don't do this research.

00:35:24.420 It might marginalize this group.

00:35:26.420 No.

00:35:27.420 It's a deontological process.

00:35:30.420 It's an absolute principle, right?

00:35:32.420 I don't modulate the truth so that I don't hurt someone's feelings.

00:35:37.420 The truth is the truth irrespective of whose feelings are hurt.

00:35:40.420 Freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and the pursuit of truth are deontological principles.

00:35:46.420 No more identity politics and, you know, victimology poker and oppression Olympics.

00:35:52.420 No more coddling of the culture of offense.

00:35:55.420 I had another slide I wanted to do, but I don't think I'll have time.

00:35:58.420 A just society is rooted in the ethos of a meritocracy.

00:36:01.420 Everything in Canadian academics is based on...

00:36:05.420 People say DEI.

00:36:06.420 I prefer DI because DI is a better acronym.

00:36:10.420 It's where meritocracy and excellence goes to DI.

00:36:13.420 If you want to apply for a grant, you have to do a DI statement.

00:36:17.420 So, it's been about seven, eight years that I no longer have research money because I refuse to play that game.

00:36:24.420 I can't be coming up in front of you here saying how bad diversity, equity, and inclusion is.

00:36:29.420 Thank you.

00:36:32.420 But then when nobody is looking to play along.

00:36:36.420 And so, that's the cost you have to bear.

00:36:39.420 Promote an ethos of intellectual and political diversity.

00:36:44.420 And just to show you here...

00:36:46.420 You probably can't read this too well.

00:36:51.420 This is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans across disciplines in the United States.

00:36:56.420 It's as bad in Canada.

00:36:58.420 And you have fields where you would be more likely to run into a winged horse unicorn than you are to run into a Republican professor in the sociology department.

00:37:11.420 That's probably not a good thing.

00:37:13.420 Now, there are some fields where my political orientation as a professor doesn't matter.

00:37:17.420 Neuroscience is neuroscience.

00:37:19.420 The distribution of prime numbers is the distribution of prime numbers.

00:37:22.420 But for many disciplines that have a social implication, then it certainly makes sense to have professors who might be coming at the problem from different perspectives.

00:37:32.420 We cheat our students when we don't do that.

00:37:34.420 And then just to wrap up.

00:37:37.420 So, last slide.

00:37:39.420 Number eight.

00:37:41.420 Promote an ethos of interdisciplinarity.

00:37:44.420 Consilience means unity of knowledge.

00:37:46.420 One of the things that every university does, it always says we want to promote interdisciplinarity.

00:37:51.420 But the second that you try to go and implement an interdisciplinary program, every single dean suddenly becomes very territorial over their discipline.

00:37:59.420 So, from this side of the mouth, we want to be interdisciplinary.

00:38:02.420 From this side of our mouth, shut it down.

00:38:04.420 And so, great ideas in science always come at the cusp or the intersection of disciplines.

00:38:11.420 And so, let's promote that.

00:38:13.420 Number nine is really an important one.

00:38:17.420 Encourage bold thinking in academia.

00:38:20.420 Sorry.

00:38:21.420 Encourage bold thinking.

00:38:22.420 Academia should be about the forming of intellectual navy seals and not bean counters. 0.55

00:38:28.420 I've often joked and people say, oh, well, why are you being insulting to your colleagues?

00:38:33.420 I've said that I've discovered a new species.

00:38:35.420 They're called academics and they're known as the invertebrate castrati.

00:38:39.420 They don't have a spine and you can fill in the rest.

00:38:42.420 And that is literally, that is literally true.

00:38:45.420 They're afraid of their shadow.

00:38:46.420 Yet, they are protected by tenure.

00:38:48.420 So, you would think that there is a mechanism that ensures that you be courageous and bold.

00:38:53.420 And yet, most of them, if I go boo, they go hide in the corner.

00:38:56.420 That's not what we want from our thought leaders.

00:38:59.420 Strike the right balance between specialization and generalization.

00:39:02.420 Number 11 is kind of relevant to a friend of mine in the United States.

00:39:08.420 Remove the stifling bureaucracy in academia.

00:39:11.420 Implement something akin to doge within institutions.

00:39:13.420 If you want to do some research study and you want to clear the ethics board,

00:39:18.420 it sometimes could take you six months to clear it.

00:39:21.420 Where you might no longer be interested in that problem.

00:39:24.420 And then, finally, science, reason, logic, and a commitment to evidence-based thinking

00:39:29.420 trumps ideology, hurt feelings, and fashionable anti-science,

00:39:34.420 faux intellectual gibberish.

00:39:35.420 Thank you very much.

00:39:43.420 Thank you, Dr. Saad, for that fascinating speech.

00:39:47.420 Dr. Saad, before you run away, that was incredible.

00:39:59.420 You know, Jordan Peterson has this theory that Western civilization is crumbling

00:40:03.420 and we have to, because of wokeness and DEI, and that we have to rebuild it.

00:40:08.420 And I think you explained that probably in better words than I've ever heard Jordan explain it.

00:40:13.420 It scared the hell out of me, quite frankly.

00:40:16.420 But I hope you all enjoyed that, Dr. Saad.

00:40:18.420 Thank you very, very much.

00:40:19.420 So much.

00:40:20.420 Cheers.

00:40:21.420 Thank you.

00:40:22.420 Thank you.

00:40:23.420 Thanks, guys.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 27, 2025

Canada Strong and Free Network - My Lecture (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_827)

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