Dave Portnoy and the ＂F＊＊k the Jews＂ Saga (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_833)
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Summary
A psychological analysis of the idea behind Dave Portnoy, using a teachable moment approach, to explain why people do bad things, and why they will stop doing them if you teach them that they don't know any better.
Transcript
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I'd like to offer a psychological analysis of what the idea was behind Dave Portnoy
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using a teachable moment approach for the F the Jews saga that took place.
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But first, let me set the theoretical background.
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My first book came out, The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption.
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And in one of the later chapters where I'm talking about all sorts of deleterious behaviors
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that people engage in, excessive suntanning and pathological gambling and internet pornographic
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addictions and propulsive buying and excessive suntanning, one of the typical arguments for
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why people engage in behaviors that are detrimental to them is that they don't have better information.
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If only they had better information, then they wouldn't do what they're doing.
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So if you are fat, overweight, and have high blood pressure, and you spend all day on your couch,
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you know, stuffing your face with French fries, it must be because you don't know any better.
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Now, if only the benevolent, empathetic government were to create public service announcements
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teaching you that it's bad to, you know, be a beached whale and never exercise and never have,
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If you learn otherwise, then you'll stop engaging in this behavior.
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And of course, this is known as the economics of information approach.
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And so the example that I like to often give is that when you are trying to, say, reach men
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and get them to stop smoking, you could give them the epidemiological actuarial tables of
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the likelihood of them getting cancer or heart disease in 40 years from now.
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But the average young guy who's 20 and full of vigor and thinks that they are immortal
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doesn't give a damn about what's going to happen in 40 years.
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But if you explain to him instead that the best predictor of a young man having a physiological
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based erectile dysfunction, not psychological based, but physical based, it's if you are a
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And so if you tell that young man that he's likely to trigger people into doing actions
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That's why I tell my students that understanding evolutionary psychology is ultimately something
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that will help you throughout your life, whether you are an employer or an employee or a manager
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or a husband or a wife or a sibling or an investor.
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You know, anything that you're going to do in life is only going to be served by having
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And that accurate understanding of human nature can only come via a proper understanding of
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Other example, if you're trying to tell women to stop suntanning, I published a paper in
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2006 with a dermatologist whereby we were looking at, you know, behavioral patterns and excessive
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Not surprisingly, the literature has found that young single women are the ones most likely to engage
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in this behavior, whether it be exposure to natural sunlight or, you know, purchasing a surface in
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It is overwhelmingly women who engage in this behavior, despite the fact that research shows
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that women are more knowledgeable about the deleterious of such behaviors than men are.
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So this falsified the premise that the reason why people do bad things is because they don't know
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otherwise and simply teach them and they'll stop doing it.
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So now you can see why I just gave this background framework to the Dave Portnoy story.
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Dave Portnoy found out that at a bar that he owns, a couple of waitresses had put up a sign,
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fuck the Jews. And one of the guys, I think there were two guys involved in the thing. One of them
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is surprisingly named Muhammad. Of course, surprisingly, because Islam only loves the Jews,
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right? There's absolutely no proof whatsoever that Islam hates the Jews. That's why there are
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hugely thriving Jewish communities in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco,
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Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Just gorgeous, fertile, rich, exciting Jewish
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communities in those countries. And to the extent that Jews have disappeared in all those countries
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where the Jews were there thousands of years before Islam ever existed, it must be because the
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Jews are Islamophobic. Because when Muhammad said on his deathbed, promise me that you will rid Arabia
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of the Jews, he meant it in the most peaceful of ways. And when in the past 1400 years, hundreds of
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millions of people have been killed and subjugated under the love and peace of Islam, that must just be
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a misunderstanding. So Muhammad here, who was a Temple University student, was involved in this. And so at
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first, Dave Portnoy had the reflex, the justified moral indignation to say, I'm going to go after you,
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I'm going to get you, whoever did this. And then he swallowed a pill of suicidal empathy,
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and he channeled his Barack Obama, who was, you know, as a, quote, professor,
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he, you know, who is always teaching us, you know, the noble prophet Muhammad is, not Muhammad,
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Barack Obama is always teaching us. And so he's the one who really popularized the term teachable
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moment, if you remember, when he was president. And so Dave Portnoy decided to turn this into a
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teachable moment. And he thought, I'm going to send these two guys, one of whom is named Muhammad,
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I'm going to send them to Auschwitz, so that they could learn about what the Jews have gone through.
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Yes. Of course, the argument there being is that to the extent that these two individuals hate the
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Jews, it must be because they don't know any better. And if only we can explain to them what's
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happened to the Jews, then we can maybe humanize the Jews. And as I mentioned in the first round of
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doing this X spaces, which I hadn't regrettably recorded, not to be pedantic, but Dave Portnoy said
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that it was in Germany, and Auschwitz is not in Germany. So it might be good to make sure that our
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geographic accuracy is veridical. But notwithstanding that small error, he thought, hey, let me send them
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to see what happened to the Jews, and then they could come back all full of love and respect for
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the Jews. Well, in many, many countries, not just Islamic countries, you don't teach the Holocaust.
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And in the European countries, now the many of the classrooms that have a great preponderance of
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Muhammad's, they are forcing the teachers in France and Britain to no longer teach the Holocaust,
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because the Holocaust is offensive to Muslims. Did you hear that? It's offensive to teach
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the Holocaust. And by the way, the Holocaust is just a holo-hoax. It didn't happen. And if it did
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happen, it was only 60 Jews that were killed, not 6 million. The Jews make up that stuff so they can
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play victims. So the idea that if only you could send these two guys and teach them about Jewish
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history and what the Jews have gone through, suddenly they would find love towards the Jews,
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is exactly the perfectly incorrect understanding of what drives this. It's not lack of information
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that caused these two folks to hate the Jews. In the case of Muhammad, it is the central feature
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of what defines his identity. Okay? So if anything, you could show him a million footage of the Holocaust.
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It's going to only embolden him. There's a clip that I've often shared where you see an imam who is
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watching all of the bodies of the Jews that are skeletal being pushed by a bulldozer into a common,
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anonymous grave. And he is lamenting, oh, ya Allah, oh, ya Allah, why did you not give us the pleasure
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to kill the Jews? Why do you hate us so, Allah, that you gave that pleasure to eradicate the Jews
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to Hitler and not to us? Why do you hate us, Allah, that you didn't cause us the pleasure to kill off the
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Jews? Does that strike you as though that imam needed to be sent to Auschwitz?
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Yes. So while I appreciate that Dave Portnoy was trying to appear magnanimous and taking the high
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road by offering these two degenerates a teachable moment, as you found out now that Muhammad has
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flipped, I think it was the Muhammad who flipped 180 degrees now and is no longer, is recanting his
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admission and so on, whatever it is. Basically, it has forced Dave Portnoy to
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withdraw his offer to send these two guys on his own expense to Auschwitz. So again, the lesson here is
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that a proper understanding of what drives people to engage in behaviors is incredibly crucial when
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you are subsequently trying to implement an intervention strategy. And the idea that people
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do bad things, think wrong things, act in wrong ways, simply because they don't know any better,
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is one of the most fundamentally erroneous views as relating to these issues. It's exactly the opposite.
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People fully know the reality, and yet they persist in that behavior.
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There you have it, folks. I hope that this time around, it has recorded the session. I will also be posting
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this on my podcast and on my YouTube channel. Thank you to everybody who came for round two.
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Thank you. I'll talk to you soon. Cheers, everybody.