The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Judea Pearl - On Zionophobia, Jew-Hatred, and the Promise of AI (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_937)

00:00:00.000 Hi everybody, this is Gatsa. Today I have a repeat guest and I am envious because he lives in Southern 1.00

00:00:05.940 California. Professor Judea Pearl, how you doing sir? Hi, great. It's a good day. I hope you have

00:00:12.120 a good day too in Montreal, right? Yes, I mean officially I am a scholar at Ole Miss but this

00:00:20.780 year we're doing it, I'm doing it remotely because our daughter is graduating high school

00:00:24.900 so I go back and forth from Montreal to Oxford, Mississippi. But before I celebrate today's

00:00:33.880 release of your latest book, I want for the people who may not know you to tell them a bit

00:00:38.620 about you. You were here last, by the way, without looking into your notes unless you've already done

00:00:43.380 so, do you remember when you had come last on my show? No, I don't remember the date. I remember the

00:00:50.220 general feeling, it was a good feeling, right? It was wonderful. Three and a half years ago,

00:00:55.820 I can't believe how quickly time passes. It's yeah, it was August 2022. At the time you had come

00:01:02.900 on the show to discuss your previous book, The Book of Why, big title. You are the Chancellor's

00:01:11.300 Professor of Computer Science and Statistics and the Director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory

00:01:15.980 at UCLA. Now this next one is impressive. The recipient of the Turing Award. Guys, that's

00:01:23.560 a big deal in 2011. I looked up your Google Scholar metrics. Way to make me feel bad about

00:01:30.080 my life. 164,000 plus citations. H index of 127. And we come to the best to last. Today is the

00:01:40.520 official release of Coexistence and Other Fighting Words, Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002 to 2025.

00:01:48.900 Congratulations on the release of your book. Let's start with the book. Why did you put it all together?

00:01:55.140 Because I felt that certain ideas which are conveyed in the books are simply not in public

00:02:01.860 a conversation. And I wanted to bring them to the awareness of people who are concerned with today's

00:02:10.440 problems, which, you know, among many conflicts in the Middle East, the terrorism, the anti-Semitism.

00:02:23.120 And it was important for me to convey to people that certain narratives are simply not known.

00:02:36.980 And they are supported by evidence.

00:02:41.740 Now, the articles that you chose to include in your compendium, are they largely about, you know,

00:02:49.720 Israel-related issues, anti-Semitism? Or could you be talking about, you know, the open border policy

00:02:57.400 of immigration in the West? Or are you largely restricting your choice of what you included to

00:03:03.860 the, you know, sort of Middle Eastern issues? It was largely Middle Eastern issues, but including

00:03:10.620 my personal experience in the fight on terrorism, my dialogue that I did with the Muslims,

00:03:18.900 Muslims, and my visit to Doha. Yeah, it was largely the conflict in the Middle East or East-West

00:03:27.980 relationship.

00:03:28.580 How much of, I mean, you know, you've, you've, you've, you've lived a long life, and hopefully many more years,

00:03:35.820 as we say in Arabic, may you at least reach 100, if not more, but, you know, 120, I have a contract.

00:03:44.620 120, fair enough. Even more, inshallah. But were you uniquely surprised, never mind what happened on October 7th,

00:03:54.740 post-October 7th? Did it take, did it sideswipe you to see the orgiastic global Jew hatred? Or someone 0.81

00:04:03.700 coming with your background is hardly surprised by anything at this point?

00:04:08.360 No, Jew hatred, in general, did not surprise me. I was born in Israel, as you know,

00:04:17.440 and I've seen a lot of attacks. I've seen, I know, I wasn't surprised by the cruelty and the barbarity

00:04:29.200 of our enemies. That did not surprise me, because I remember growing up on story of the Hebron massacre

00:04:36.440 and the Ramallah lynch. So, yeah, what did surprise me was something totally different, a change in the mood

00:04:47.040 that this hate took on. Let me summarize it like that. Before October 7th, it was accepted that Israel 0.97

00:05:00.060 has the right to exist. Even our enemies said, used to say, you know, of course, Israel has the right

00:05:07.020 to exist, but it ought to behave according to the way we want it to behave, okay? No more.

00:05:14.760 Now on, it became normative to say, who said that Israel would exist? It shouldn't. It was born in sin, 1.00

00:05:23.040 it was conceived in sin, it was conceived in sin, and it should be undone by some miracles.

00:05:30.640 They moved from the map of the globe, okay? Now, this has changed, because now it becomes, it's not

00:05:39.640 strange anymore for young kids from the neighborhood, or even a scholar of my colleagues

00:05:49.900 in university to say, who said Israel should exist? Perhaps it shouldn't. Not perhaps, and some of them 1.00

00:05:58.280 said, obviously it shouldn't. So that has changed, okay? And it reveals that throughout this time,

00:06:07.160 the idea that Israel should exist was only surfacely accepted. It wasn't accepted to the deep level

00:06:18.920 of one's mind and sentiments. Do you feel that, I mean, I guess I'm jumping to maybe a question

00:06:28.120 that I should ask towards the end of the show, where we're hopefully trying to build some optimism.

00:06:32.600 Do you feel that this is an inerrant part of the reality of the world, that the Jews, in general, 0.96

00:06:41.900 and Israel in particular, are always going to have these, you know, hateful dynamics thrown at them,

00:06:48.240 or is there a vaccine against Jew hatred? 0.73

00:06:53.100 There is an element which always is going to remain there, and this is that Jews are different. 1.00

00:07:01.120 Jews are different on the scale of human ranks, okay? It starts with Jews are sinners, they kill the deity, 1.00

00:07:19.680 Jews are different because they didn't believe in Muhammad, Jews are different because it elevates itself to 1.00

00:07:27.520 Jews are different, Jews are different, Jews are different because we have to, and we have to protect them. 0.99

00:07:34.120 Moreover, Jews are different, and we have, we can admire them. Admire, but not equal. 1.00

00:07:41.760 And that's a big difference, which means they're not normal.

00:07:47.680 There is something strange about them, and they should know their place.

00:07:55.000 Their place is to be a bit different, and that led to my slogan that a Jew will never be totally equal in the family of men 1.00

00:08:09.620 unless Israel becomes equal in the family of nations. 0.73

00:08:15.000 Indeed. Now, do you think, I can't remember if I had mentioned this to you in our last conversation,

00:08:22.840 but even if I have, it's worth repeating.

00:08:26.180 So I argue, I mean, of course, as you mentioned yourself, there are some theological reasons why Jews are hated,

00:08:32.380 whether it be by our Abrahamic cousins or, you know, and so on.

00:08:36.160 But I think there is a singular reason for Jew hatred that is part of the frailties of the architecture of the human mind. 0.99

00:08:48.000 And so let me propose this to you.

00:08:49.740 And again, forgive me if you've heard me mention this before.

00:08:53.060 So in psychology, there's what's called the self-serving bias.

00:08:56.980 The self-serving bias is the idea, speaking of causality, something that you know a bit about,

00:09:02.700 how to draw up causal explanations of the world.

00:09:06.660 The self-serving bias basically argues, Judea, that when something successful happens to me,

00:09:14.240 I attribute it to internal causes.

00:09:17.580 I did well on the exam because I'm very smart and I studied hard.

00:09:21.600 If, on the other hand, failures, I attribute them externally.

00:09:26.120 I did very poorly on the exam because Professor Pearl is unfair and he's a Jew. 1.00

00:09:31.820 So, of course, it's going to be unfair.

00:09:34.000 So this mechanism is really an ego-defensive mechanism.

00:09:37.840 I take in the wins and I put out the losses.

00:09:42.460 Well, how convenient it is that we can find an external culprit for all of our failures,

00:09:51.420 whether it be at the individual or collective level.

00:09:54.380 Now, the question that still remains for this explanation to be full is,

00:09:58.060 but why do you blame the Jew?

00:09:59.560 And here, what is common across history is that Jews are always a very, very minuscule minority, 0.97

00:10:07.460 wherever they are, and they're always punching way above their weight class.

00:10:12.580 25% of Nobel Prizes for 0.2% of the world's population.

00:10:17.220 So it becomes very easy, irrespective of time period or cultural setting, 0.99

00:10:22.200 for me to take my failures and say, look at those assholes. 0.99

00:10:26.420 They're leading in banks and philosophy and academia and Hollywood. 0.99

00:10:30.360 What do you, do you think that it could be as simple as that?

00:10:33.740 And as Thomas Sowell said, if you want people to no longer hate the Jews, they have to fail.

00:10:40.040 Yeah, I agree with you totally, but the question still remains, why the Jews? 0.99

00:10:46.680 I mean, you can take another kind of collective of individuals, let's say left-handed people or bold people,

00:10:56.100 but the Jews are also visible, they are distinct, they dress differently, at least in the diaspora, in Europe.

00:11:07.180 They hang together, hang out together, and they like to be together.

00:11:18.740 It's a cotton effect and it's a feedback effect.

00:11:21.460 Jews like to be together because they're being more safe, and they hate them because they cling together. 0.94

00:11:27.200 So, yeah, I agree with everything you said.

00:11:31.600 I can see that, and it's also a confirmation bias.

00:11:36.560 Indeed.

00:11:37.860 Do you feel that in your interactions, you said that, you know, you've been having a lot of dialogues with Muslims and so on.

00:11:47.280 Do you see any changes?

00:11:50.300 For example, you used to speak to person X who was a diehard anti-Zionist, but through your repeat interactions, you've moved them.

00:11:59.300 And before you answer, Judea, I was once asked not too long ago on a show by a, the host was a British psychiatrist,

00:12:07.160 he asked me, what is the singular phenomenon in all of your years as a behavioral scientist that has most surprised you about humans?

00:12:16.280 And then I paused for a second.

00:12:17.900 And I said, the inability for most people to change their minds, irrespective of the amount of evidence that you've shown them.

00:12:25.500 So, in your case, when you're having all of these good faith conversations, do you see the needle move or no?

00:12:32.060 No, I haven't seen the needle move.

00:12:34.940 Even in my dialogue with Muslims, moderate Muslims, enlightened Muslims, right? 1.00

00:12:42.180 When it came to Israel, the dial stopped, okay? 0.91

00:12:47.500 Because Israel represents more than just another state. 0.98

00:12:51.800 It represents humiliation for Muslims and definitely for Palestinians. 1.00

00:12:59.920 And humiliation is something that is very hard to unroot.

00:13:04.000 So, then do you think if, and I mean, you know, you're a very, you know, mild-mannered gentleman who, you know, speaks very, you know, with temperance.

00:13:17.520 And if, so it's not as though they're reacting to you being aggressive or bombastic or that.

00:13:22.000 So, if someone with your personal qualities can't get the needle moving at all, does it become a futile exercise or you just haven't found the right delivery system to be able to move the needle?

00:13:39.100 Well, I'm one person.

00:13:40.340 So, I believe that someone else with a greater influence or with a greater power, and I'll tell you who he is, okay, can do, can move the needle.

00:13:56.600 Who is that person?

00:13:58.300 Look at Abraham, our ancestor, and the Abraham Accord, okay? 0.96

00:14:05.160 And the way that the Abraham Accord came to fruition, almost fruition, I'm saying, not entirely, yeah.

00:14:14.220 But you moved countries like the Emirates into, in Morocco even, yeah, into accepting the idea that we have a common ancestor, namely Jews really belong here.

00:14:30.900 That is the symbol of Abraham.

00:14:32.540 It was very smart.

00:14:34.100 Thank you, yeah.

00:14:34.460 The Jews are part of us, and all it takes is a little bit of explanation and a little cheating with the Koran, and we're going to get there.

00:14:47.060 We can accept them, right?

00:14:49.240 Yeah.

00:14:49.640 So, it's doable.

00:14:51.320 I believe it's doable.

00:14:53.800 And the Abraham Accord is a proof that it is doable. 0.99

00:14:58.520 But it takes more than one person.

00:15:00.820 It takes more than just logical argument.

00:15:03.760 Do you feel, so I recently had on my show the former director of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, and I mentioned briefly to him that, you know, what explains the fact that Israel is so powerful when it comes to kinetic interventions, right? 0.66

00:15:24.420 You know, in war, you've got incredible commanders and so on.

00:15:28.760 Yet, even from my perspective of someone who certainly would love to see Israel better represented in the global narrative, I feel as though they don't do as well in that informational war as they do in the kinetic war.

00:15:45.940 Or is that also your sentiment?

00:15:48.900 I feel they don't do enough, and they don't do it the right way.

00:15:54.920 There are arguments that Israel can use which are much more powerful than what they have been using now.

00:16:01.940 So, for instance, for instance, the emphasis on anti-Semitism, instead of emphasis on anti-Zionism, which I call Zionophobia. 0.61

00:16:12.120 This is a new form of anti-Semitism.

00:16:17.900 Some people say it's a new form of anti-Semitism.

00:16:20.620 It just mutates to a new variant.

00:16:25.240 No, I think it's a totally different animal that we should address with different vaccine and address it squarely.

00:16:33.820 And I think the argument is on our side.

00:16:37.800 We should argue against Zionophobia rather than against anti-Semitism.

00:16:45.600 What would be the difference between...

00:16:47.960 Because usually, when I scratch an anti-Zionist, it doesn't take me much scratching to get to the Jew hater.

00:16:56.500 But you're arguing that they're two distinct phenomena.

00:16:59.080 And if so, how are they distinct?

00:17:03.720 The moment you mention anti-Semitism, you lost the game.

00:17:09.460 Why?

00:17:09.760 Number one, anti-Semitism call for...

00:17:14.660 Declare ourselves as victims.

00:17:19.780 You automatically bring up all the history of the Jewish people and say,

00:17:24.000 We are victims.

00:17:24.840 We have been persecuted.

00:17:26.020 Okay.

00:17:26.360 We deserve a break.

00:17:27.760 Okay.

00:17:28.400 We are not victims.

00:17:30.600 We have something to offer to the world.

00:17:33.580 Something very substantial and beneficial.

00:17:39.760 And plus, when you mention anti-Semitism, they keep on saying,

00:17:48.740 Yes, but look at how Israel behaves. 0.90

00:17:52.860 And you go and it's automatically being confused with criticizing the policies of the government of Israel.

00:18:02.280 When you say anti-Zionism, you go to the core of the thing. 0.95

00:18:06.880 Do you object to the very existence of the right of Jews to a homeland?

00:18:13.080 So you get to the core of anti-Zionism, which totally changed the conversation and moved it away from all this, you know, criticism of the government of Israel, away from the West Bank, away to the core of the problem.

00:18:31.600 Can you accept Jews as equal? 1.00

00:18:36.060 And that's something that we can win hand down.

00:18:38.300 But it seems to me, so as you probably know, Judea, people are cognitive misers, which is a fancy way for me to say that it's too effortful to think.

00:18:51.240 And therefore, people use these shortcuts, right?

00:18:54.440 These heuristics, which, of course, if one studies decision-making, they know all about it.

00:18:58.540 So when most people, certainly Westerners, see the poor, helpless, shoeless Palestinian kid who's 14 with a slingshot and the really mean, super advanced Zionist tank, 0.86

00:19:20.760 that image becomes a lot more seared in my mind when I'm trying to calculate who's equal, who's got the power and not.

00:19:31.880 So that, to me, is part of the frailties of the architecture of the human mind that I'm always going to side with the Palestinians 1.00

00:19:40.740 because they just seem a lot more hapless than the really mean Zionist. 0.53

00:19:45.920 Can we overcome this bias?

00:19:47.480 We cannot overcome the power of the retina.

00:19:53.520 Images can always overcome, will always overcome our brain.

00:20:01.660 However, we can start talking about the real narrative here.

00:20:08.740 And my narrative, which I'm trying to convince other people of its validity.

00:20:15.080 This book right here.

00:20:17.480 That Israel is a David and our enemies are the Goliath. 0.96

00:20:22.040 And if you look at it from a historical perspective, where have you seen a nation that denies no normalcy for 78 years

00:20:35.920 and is besieged at the cost of 30,000 dead and who knows how many orphans and parents that lost their children and maims

00:20:52.900 and for 78 years and for 78 years denied even one day of normalcy and being bombarded with who knows how many rockets and the world doesn't even talk about it.

00:21:06.900 They look at it.

00:21:07.560 It's okay.

00:21:08.360 Israel has a right to defend itself.

00:21:10.940 Do we?

00:21:11.440 We have the right not to need to defend ourselves.

00:21:17.780 What can the world, the enlightened world, look at 78 years of harassment and besiegement?

00:21:25.720 Okay.

00:21:26.180 And quiet.

00:21:27.500 And take it as a normal situation.

00:21:30.920 And even claim that Israel is a military power.

00:21:34.140 Now, there are three sources of anti-Semitism that, you know, come from different dynamics.

00:21:43.620 There is the Islamic-based, you know, Jew hatred. 0.83

00:21:47.000 There is the, you know, the extreme right, neo-Nazis, the Jews will not replace us type of, you know, Jew haters. 0.85

00:21:53.960 And then there is the ecosystem that we both inhabit, the academic left.

00:22:00.300 Yeah.

00:22:00.920 Of these three, I mean, do you, would you agree that the one that is most perplexing is the one of our colleagues who walk around wearing the keffiyeh? 1.00

00:22:13.600 Or are they all equally perplexing to you?

00:22:16.940 How do you, what's the hierarchy of how perplexed you are by these three sources of Jew hatred? 0.56

00:22:20.900 I'm not perplexed by the former two.

00:22:25.580 I'm perplexed, if we are talking about perplexed, being perplexed, I'm perplexed by the third one.

00:22:33.700 Exactly.

00:22:34.820 Enlightened people, some of them are academics, some of them are ordinary neighbors, okay?

00:22:41.240 Ordinary people like me, and they can wear the keffiyeh and shout from the river to the sea.

00:22:50.900 Without even looking at the ramification of what from the river to the sea means, it means taking eight million people, human beings like you and me, right?

00:23:01.000 And subjecting them to stateless status in a bad neighborhood like the Middle East. 1.00

00:23:10.000 What does it mean?

00:23:10.840 Plus, taking into account that the Israelis are the little mishigas, and they have this idea that they are going to defend to the last man their sovereignty. 0.99

00:23:21.220 And they have this in mind.

00:23:22.760 They are not going to give up, which means you are condemning eight million people to genocide.

00:23:31.040 Have you heard anyone saying that the wery keffiyeh has genocidal implications?

00:23:39.000 Why not?

00:23:40.280 It obviously leads to genocidal ramifications, right?

00:23:45.040 Have you heard anybody blaming our academic colleagues with being genocidal?

00:23:50.700 Listen, I want to be the first, if I'm the first, and do it loudly. 0.96

00:23:56.200 Yes, my dear professor, you are genocidal. 0.99

00:23:59.740 You are racist and genocidal, in the open and with shame. 0.96

00:24:03.860 In you, I mean, for all the last nearly 25 years that you've been writing these articles that are covered in this book, and in your public outreach right now, have you had conversations in the faculty lounge with keffiyeh-adjacent people? 0.92

00:24:24.380 And if so, how did that go?

00:24:27.600 You know, you used to be good friends with your colleague that you published a Beliefs Networks paper on, but now you find out that he's keffiyeh-adawning, and that relationship has gone to hell. 1.00

00:24:39.580 Has that happened?

00:24:40.140 Well, first of all, keffiyeh was not as popular before 7-11 became popular now.

00:24:51.700 So it's not a keffiyeh, but the idea that we can teach it in the history department, for example, that we can teach false narrative about Israel and indoctrinate students that Israel should not exist.

00:25:14.240 That was in my time, too, and I go through it in the book, and it has been my fight.

00:25:23.460 I wouldn't say successful fight, but I have exposed those professors by name.

00:25:31.080 I even complained to their department chair, not very successful, okay, but I've exposed them on a daily basis.

00:25:38.980 Yes, yes, and at least we have to start with exposing what they are doing, and I've been fighting throughout my career against this phenomenon.

00:25:55.820 So, yes, and I have been fighting with the administration, too, to take care of this phenomenon, to be aware of what's going on.

00:26:04.800 At UCLA, I remember one of, I mean, there were many places and many universities, but I think most famously, wasn't there sort of a barricade set up where they did not allow, they didn't say Israelis, Jews were not allowed or something to pass.

00:26:20.820 That happened at UCLA, right?

00:26:23.220 Yeah, they called them encampment.

00:26:26.500 Encampment, that's right, yes.

00:26:27.940 Encampment, yes.

00:26:29.240 No, they were careful, they say, we have Jews among our ranks, too.

00:26:34.980 Yes, of course.

00:26:36.200 But, so we are just excluding Zionists. 0.95

00:26:39.920 That's right.

00:26:41.120 And they even asked questions, are you a Zionist?

00:26:43.360 And if you said, yes, they put a different card on your arm, and you are allowed only to go through a certain path to your classroom.

00:26:56.080 Yeah, it was a shameful exhibition.

00:26:59.520 But all that took place after October 7th.

00:27:04.500 Has there been any repercussion to the ones who led those types of encampments, or let's just forgive and forget?

00:27:14.980 No, there was a lawsuit.

00:27:17.860 It was a lawsuit by individuals.

00:27:20.600 I think two professors and four students, and there was a settlement of six and a half million dollars that was given in their favor.

00:27:34.620 But that's all.

00:27:36.020 As far as I know, none of the organizers of the encampment had consequences, legal consequences.

00:27:46.320 And most importantly, none of the professors who instigated this whole circus had suffered any repercussions.

00:27:56.820 Have you had anybody, you know, I don't know if you still teach any classes, come and start shouting you down?

00:28:05.020 Or have you been targeted because of your open Zionism?

00:28:10.180 No, I haven't.

00:28:11.540 Number one, I'm shielded in the STEM part of campus, which means we are in engineering or in the science court.

00:28:24.040 We are shielded by reasonable people.

00:28:27.400 The moment you take a step into the north campus, you enter into the enemy territory.

00:28:33.700 Sociology and ethnic studies.

00:28:35.720 Mostly ethnic studies.

00:28:39.820 Yes.

00:28:40.500 You would be surprised by the women's studies. 1.00

00:28:43.480 Yes.

00:28:44.900 Asian American studies and history of all departments.

00:28:49.140 Yes.

00:28:49.500 When you lose a history department, you lose a weight.

00:28:55.560 So how much of your daily, you know, Judea wakes up in the morning, he rubs his hands at the, you know, prospects of the day to follow.

00:29:06.300 How much of your day is spent thinking and writing about the issues covered in this book versus going back to good old computer science, belief networks and statistics?

00:29:18.120 After 7-11, October 7, has been quite a bit.

00:29:28.000 I would say 60% of my time.

00:29:30.440 Really?

00:29:31.260 Really, yes.

00:29:33.000 Before that, it used to be just maybe 20, 30%.

00:29:38.020 Yes, but I have been talking a lot with the administration because I believe that university administration can do much more than they do now, not through the legal path, but through their charter.

00:29:54.600 As chancellor or president of university, you have the mandate to dictate norms of discourse, and they are not using that to its fullest, except for one person, the president of Cornell.

00:30:17.160 Which happens to be my alma mater.

00:30:20.460 Well, yeah, it was only one place where I said, when I found a president Martha Pollack, he said, no more.

00:30:29.740 I spoke in first person and say, it disturbs me.

00:30:36.060 They have this power to impose their own personal set of values on the academic discourse, and they're not using it.

00:30:48.440 What's wrong with a president saying, I don't, I don't, I'm a Zionist?

00:30:55.620 Oh, it's my belief that Israel has the right to exist, and if you defy that, if you refuse that, what you're saying doesn't match with our values, or it's the values that I would like to see prevalent on our campus.

00:31:12.140 I have this mandate, fire me if you want, but as long as I'm a president, this is going to be the academic discourse on this campus.

00:31:24.580 I don't see any reason why they shouldn't do that, and they don't utilize this power.

00:31:29.480 Well, I know why, they are afraid for faculty uprising, or faculty, but I think they are scared too much.

00:31:37.720 Faculty is on their side.

00:31:40.060 Right.

00:31:40.260 I have 400 professors at UCLA who are strong Zionists, and are willing to fight, and decided to come forward and say, no more, enough is enough. 1.00

00:31:54.520 You have 400 that have agreed to?

00:31:58.380 Yes, 400 unlisted, which means, but their presence, their existence, it's unknown.

00:32:07.060 That's part of the reason why I have this book.

00:32:10.440 Now, why do you think, so most academics tend to be, if you forgive the generalization, and of course it doesn't apply to you, but tend to be prone to a self-selection of meekness, right?

00:32:26.340 They weren't the star army commando, I mean, maybe Israelis were, because they have to serve in the military, but the archetype of the academic is one who's meek, who's sheepish, which is something, of course, that I've written extensively about, and I don't make many friends in academia by speaking openly about it. 0.99

00:32:47.780 So, do you think that in many cases, the reason why, whether it be those 400 or whatever other issue, transgender issues, why don't more professors come out openly and say, are you crazy that you should allow biological males to compete with women?

00:33:03.900 That is the most fundamental violation of human nature.

00:33:06.600 So, do you think that it's largely stemming from the fact that, you know, professors are staying in your lane, you know, I know my computer science, I know my organic chemistry, I know my classics, and I don't want to ever stray away from that.

00:33:22.560 And if that is a concern, can we ever train academics to be intellectual commandos?

00:33:29.040 Well, you know that academics is the most conservative club in our society.

00:33:40.240 Not in the political sense, you mean conservative in that they don't take bold risks.

00:33:45.080 They don't take risks against the herd.

00:33:48.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:33:48.880 Yeah, it's a herd rule society, a club, or cult, okay, because you depend on your peers in every step of your career, first to be hired, then to get tenure, and then to be invited for the committee of so-and-so, and so on.

00:34:11.240 Yeah, so it never ends, the entire career depends on others to evaluate you, and it's done not in the open, it's done behind the scenes.

00:34:23.760 So you are really scared of your colleagues, you have to be nice to them, or you have to give the appearance that you agree with them, that you support them, okay?

00:34:32.100 Maybe, perhaps, but I thought it's the most herd-ruled society in a club in our society, but I changed my mind, because there's another one, which is even more.

00:34:46.220 More than academics.

00:34:47.560 More than academics.

00:34:48.440 Okay.

00:34:48.960 It's related to this.

00:34:50.320 These are scientists, scientists, okay, changing their mind about, you know, about a narrative, or about a paradigm, a paradigm shift in science.

00:35:01.840 Look how long it took for quantum mechanics to kick in, okay?

00:35:05.660 Look how long it took for even to atomic physics to kick in, not to speak about the computer Boolean algebra.

00:35:17.080 So it takes a lot of miracles to change paradigm in science, too.

00:35:24.980 But we are talking about a combination of academics and science, and you see what's happening.

00:35:34.980 It's an extremely inertial system.

00:35:39.620 Yeah.

00:35:40.300 Some people relate it to ferromagnetics, you know, that you have to move the atoms.

00:35:46.880 You have hysteresis in the ferromagnetism, because every spin depends on the field in the neighborhood, and they reinforce each other to align in the same direction, okay?

00:36:07.340 And once they are aligned, it takes energy to flip them over, and that's why we have hysteresis in ferromagnetism, okay?

00:36:16.300 Indeed.

00:36:17.420 You have to overshoot, yeah.

00:36:19.920 Yeah.

00:36:20.280 I mean, most of the historical figures that I'm attracted to, I mean, within academia, usually share that rare quality, which is the opposite of what you're saying, where they just say, I don't care, I'm following my own beat.

00:36:37.200 Oh, you're right.

00:36:38.140 Most of them find an excuse by saying, I want to stick to what I know, okay.

00:36:46.440 But you see, in such an environment, it takes only one loud mouth to change the whole department.

00:36:54.300 And usually it comes from our enemies, okay?

00:36:57.280 Yes.

00:36:57.600 If you have one person who screams about Palestinians being in genocide in Palestine, you got it. 1.00

00:37:07.460 The whole department moves around with this loud mouth, and suddenly the good name of university is being attached to the department,

00:37:18.240 and being attached to, carry the entire authority that university has.

00:37:28.220 And the student gets the idea that this is the mode of thinking that I should follow.

00:37:37.200 The university is behind it, right?

00:37:39.700 So that's how it goes.

00:37:41.020 One loud mouth can do it. 0.97

00:37:42.640 Yeah, by the way, that speaks to the point that often when I'm asked, oh, are you saying that the whole campus is full of the woke people?

00:37:51.360 And I say no, but it doesn't take many woke terrorists to keep the rest of the folks in line, right?

00:37:58.800 It didn't take 19 million hijackers to bring down those planes.

00:38:04.060 It only took 19 of them.

00:38:05.520 So it's not in the numbers that it matters.

00:38:09.720 It's in the commitment of how loud your voice is.

00:38:12.500 So you're exactly right.

00:38:13.840 Okay.

00:38:14.100 It's not in the commitment, yes.

00:38:15.640 I want to speak a bit about AI, but folks, this is the book.

00:38:19.640 It's out today.

00:38:20.920 So I'm so honored to have Judea on the day of his book's release.

00:38:24.640 Can we talk a bit AI, Judea?

00:38:26.700 Would that be okay?

00:38:27.580 Sure, sure.

00:38:28.780 Okay.

00:38:29.060 So number one, I don't know if...

00:38:32.020 So the last time you were on was 2022.

00:38:34.380 So yes, of course, there was already a lot of talk about AI.

00:38:37.140 But it seems as though it is increasing at an increasing rate.

00:38:42.680 What do you explain the factors that caused us to have a winter of AI, right?

00:38:49.200 I studied artificial intelligence in the mid-1980s when I thought it was such a cool thing.

00:38:54.720 I took a course with Monty Newborn, who was on the team that studied deep blue, you know,

00:39:00.640 with the chess grandmasters and so on.

00:39:02.640 And I thought, my God, this is going to take over the world.

00:39:04.740 And then AI disappeared.

00:39:06.640 And in the last 10 years, all we hear about is AI.

00:39:10.120 So what caused this lull?

00:39:12.640 And is it just computational power that has allowed us to institute many of these ideas?

00:39:18.420 What's happening?

00:39:22.040 First, the summer and winter of AI in the past 70 years, you know, it's just fashion.

00:39:30.920 If you have a strong person like Penrose, then you have a winter.

00:39:34.180 If you have some other philosopher who is popular, then you have a summer or a spring.

00:39:42.000 I wouldn't go there.

00:39:43.100 But yes, there was a big surprise in the past five years about the success of LLMs,

00:39:51.160 large language models that can change everything that we are doing.

00:40:00.400 And they have changed everything we are doing.

00:40:04.060 The surprise was what you can get by function fitting.

00:40:10.420 This is what they are doing.

00:40:12.500 But function fitting, we don't realize how much power you have when you have very many dimensions.

00:40:23.660 When we talk about function fitting, you think we always have a picture of a few dots,

00:40:28.540 a cloud of dots, and we pass a line through them, pass the best fit line through them,

00:40:36.140 or the best fit polynomial.

00:40:37.940 Big deal.

00:40:40.200 Our mind doesn't grasp what it means to do that in a 10,000 dimension space.

00:40:47.080 Right.

00:40:47.580 It's a totally different terrain.

00:40:50.220 You have hills and valleys and local milima, local maxima.

00:40:55.140 It's unbelievably more complex.

00:40:58.540 And they can do it.

00:40:59.920 If you have enough data, and if you have enough computer power,

00:41:04.580 you can fit function in 10,000 dimension, even more dimension space,

00:41:09.980 and they do it very well.

00:41:12.000 Okay.

00:41:12.500 So it's still function fitting.

00:41:14.500 And another trick was the trick that they have not been using data coming directly from the environment.

00:41:25.980 They're using data coming from text written by people.

00:41:32.260 They're using what you have in knowledge that are available today on the internet.

00:41:37.120 Right.

00:41:37.760 Namely, your papers, my papers, everybody's papers is available as a training set for the AI program.

00:41:46.840 So let me just summarize what you just said for our viewers.

00:41:49.380 So in the old days, we didn't have the richness of data to input into the learning sets that we do today.

00:41:59.080 But with everything now being networked and connected, the capacity to use such rich data set results in effectively much more powerful AI systems,

00:42:10.940 even though in the abstract we had all that knowledge, but we didn't have the substrate to make the AI models as powerful as they are.

00:42:18.880 Did I summarize that correctly?

00:42:20.680 There are two elements that should be separated.

00:42:23.660 Number one is the ability to fit a very complex function to a lot of data.

00:42:35.020 That's number one.

00:42:36.960 Okay.

00:42:37.480 Number two is to take the points, the training set, the points to which you fit a function, are not really points.

00:42:47.640 They are articles written by you and me.

00:42:51.200 Right.

00:42:51.520 And they have wisdom.

00:42:54.700 They have knowledge.

00:42:56.060 They have our knowledge about the world.

00:42:59.080 Okay.

00:43:00.220 The first part is a very powerful, surprising tool that they can do it.

00:43:06.740 But it has a very well formulated limitation.

00:43:12.960 We know what such a function-fitting system can do and what it cannot do.

00:43:18.100 For instance, it cannot predict the effect of actions.

00:43:22.440 It cannot give you explanation.

00:43:24.920 It just looks at the data and gives you a summary of the data.

00:43:28.720 That's all it can do.

00:43:29.820 But now, assuming that the training set is not just points, but it is a whole article by professors who have already causal knowledge about the world,

00:43:44.200 they have theories about the world, now you are summarizing their world views.

00:43:54.840 Right.

00:43:55.840 Right.

00:43:55.860 I sort of feel that a bit.

00:43:59.240 I don't use AI much in my life at all other than recently, and maybe this is a plug for Elon Musk. 0.97

00:44:08.440 I'll go on Grok, and I'll just say, for example, recently I was doing a clip on Somalia, because you remember there was the whole controversy with Trump saying that Somalia is garbage.

00:44:21.920 So I wanted to very quickly find out what are all of the global indices, nonpartisan, serious global indices that rank countries on a whole bunch of metrics, right?

00:44:36.780 Now, if I sit down and do that exercise, just from a computational perspective, it's going to take me six hours.

00:44:43.720 Well, I go to Grok, and I go, good morning, Grok, can you give me a general synopsis of all of the leading global indices that measure happiness and, you know, human flourishing, and then give me where Somalia ranks on these?

00:45:01.540 In exactly two seconds, Judea, I got the whole thing.

00:45:06.400 Correct.

00:45:07.480 I mean, it's unbelievable, right?

00:45:09.500 Yeah, the ability to summarize is immense.

00:45:12.380 It's surprising and miraculous.

00:45:16.820 Do you feel that that will alter, so my daily life and yours, as we're writing our academic papers, so the first place I see it might be, as you're drafting your literature review, you might want to ask Grok, hey, am I right here?

00:45:35.820 You know, have I covered all the things that I need to cover?

00:45:38.640 Where else do you see, other than a very rapid synthesis of existing material, where might be some other places where AI systems can alter the way that we do our scientific work?

00:45:51.760 Well, it's in every scientific work, every scientific exercise.

00:46:01.720 So statistical analyses?

00:46:04.120 Yeah, of course.

00:46:06.860 In medicine.

00:46:08.900 Right.

00:46:09.400 As a diagnostic tool?

00:46:12.020 As a diagnostic, therapeutic.

00:46:13.960 And it's approaching the explanation part.

00:46:19.240 Right.

00:46:19.540 And in many cases, it actually outperforms the human, because it can go to a rare 1800 case that happened in Rwanda, and it could tell you that it's the exact same symptoms, whereas the average human capability of a physician who specializes in infectious diseases is not going to know of that case, yes?

00:46:41.640 Absolutely, yes.

00:46:42.640 Absolutely, yes.

00:46:43.640 Moreover, recent work that we've been doing is talking about personalized decision-making, personalized medicine, where you're not only talking about the population that you have seen, but the individual patients, the individual knife, and the individual bed that the patient lies on.

00:47:06.520 And you're asking about this particular case, can you tell me what would benefit these patients, or what is the probability that these patients would benefit from this kind of therapy?

00:47:23.560 And benefit is a counterfactual entity, and benefit means that if I operate, the guy will improve.

00:47:33.160 If I don't operate, he or she will die.

00:47:37.840 So we're talking about one individual, if you do one thing, you will benefit, and this very individual, if you do the other way, will be hurt or damaged.

00:47:47.780 Okay, so here we are, the counterfactual, because you cannot run the two things at the same time.

00:47:54.800 Yeah, that's the point.

00:47:56.000 But still, we have a logic of counterfactual, so we can use the logic to supplement the data and come out with an answer.

00:48:03.580 So, right now, we focus the last five, ten minutes on, of course, many of the benefits of AI.

00:48:11.320 Then there are sort of the naysayers, the doomsayers that say, you know, once AI becomes sufficiently powerful, we will no longer be in control.

00:48:21.460 Are you in that camp as well, or do you think it's overblown?

00:48:25.940 Where do you fit on the doomsday scenario of AI powers?

00:48:30.240 The doomsday scenario exists, is real, but not for this direction of AI.

00:48:39.420 I don't think that NLMs, even if they're given enough power and enough data, are going to take over and be responsible for the fears that ought to be feared.

00:48:51.320 Okay, and I, eventually, if AI, general AI, can do lots of harm, can really take over and use us as pets.

00:49:04.020 Okay, and that is a fear that exists, that is real, and we should be conscious of, and we have no idea of how to control it.

00:49:16.380 Okay, we have no, we don't have the means to prevent that from happening, if we really go to the general AI.

00:49:27.980 Do you feel that there, you know how, you know, in, certainly in medicine, and you have, you know, a bioethicist, right?

00:49:37.020 There's a field, right, of bioethics, where you're applying ethical calculus to these biological issues.

00:49:44.100 I can easily foresee, if it doesn't already exist, a future where there will be an ethicist specialty as relating to AI.

00:49:55.000 Does that already exist in university departments, as far as you know?

00:50:00.300 I don't quite understand what you mean by that.

00:50:03.760 Like, in other words, exploring...

00:50:06.100 The ethical component of a certain profession.

00:50:08.520 Of AI, just...

00:50:11.100 Right, because we don't have a handle of it.

00:50:14.560 Right.

00:50:14.800 Once the computer, and I'm talking about smart computers, once a smart computer gets the idea that it can control the operator, control the programmer, control the engineer who is about to unplug it.

00:50:31.600 And once it has its own goal, one of the goals will be to take, to have more control, and have more control, which means apply any means to dissuade you to do what he or she wants.

00:50:46.540 And he or she means the program, right?

00:50:48.200 There's no limit for that dangerous entity to take over and blackmail you into doing what he or she wants, and to do it in the first, in the way that you think that you really wanted to do it.

00:51:08.700 Right.

00:51:08.960 You really wanted to be a pet for this, because that was your life dream.

00:51:15.640 And if you don't get to that, it can black you, blackmail you, so blackmail you, and you know how the mafia works. 0.81

00:51:25.320 Not black you, because you can say, okay, I have nothing to hide. 1.00

00:51:28.280 You do have, you do have, they black you, not for what you have to hide, but for what you are, what you haven't done, but they can shame you with. 0.98

00:51:37.900 Right.

00:51:38.280 So that, there's no impediment to that happening with general AI.

00:51:47.820 I don't see any impediment.

00:51:50.560 And so today we don't have the tools to contain it.

00:51:55.100 But that's why it worries me.

00:51:59.000 But still, it doesn't stop me from working on the three of us to understand the limitation and to work and enhance it with greater capability.

00:52:12.440 Does the fact that AI is now a lot more in our daily lives, does that put new wins in your sales, given that the type of academic work that you do is within that area?

00:52:30.120 Or would your, you know, trajectory have been exactly the same, whether we were now in a winter of AI, or we are in the blooming summer of AI?

00:52:41.980 Nothing would have changed in your academic trajectory.

00:52:45.860 No, my academic trajectory was the same, has been the same.

00:52:50.800 Right.

00:52:51.820 Irrespective.

00:52:52.380 It's strange to say, but I remember it was in the 1960s, when I arrived at Princeton, and we worked on magnetic cores, memories, okay?

00:53:05.960 The understanding among a group was that eventually everything which is done by human being could be emulated by the computer eventually.

00:53:18.960 There was no question in our mind about it.

00:53:21.920 In the 1960s.

00:53:23.220 Wow.

00:53:24.180 Just as a set of belief and a set of aspirations.

00:53:28.900 When the programming instructions were with punch cards, I'm guessing, yes?

00:53:32.560 Absolutely, yes.

00:53:33.520 Now, I'm trying to remember, in the 1960s, John von Neumann would have died by then.

00:53:42.220 Is that true?

00:53:44.760 I don't remember when he died.

00:53:46.880 Okay, but I guess that means that you wouldn't have had a chance to meet him, because, boy, I could have kept you for a few more minutes, because he's one of my intellectual heroes as the ultimate polymath, yes?

00:53:59.020 I mean, if anything, John von Neumann is the opposite of the stay-in-your-lane professor that we talked about earlier, yes?

00:54:06.360 Correct, yes.

00:54:07.600 Very good.

00:54:08.060 He was a pioneer in...

00:54:10.660 In everything.

00:54:12.820 Everything.

00:54:13.560 Talking about game theory.

00:54:16.740 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:18.640 Utility theory.

00:54:21.660 Computer.

00:54:24.660 Store program computer.

00:54:26.320 I guess another one that would be along the same lines, which also, of course, you would know, would have been...

00:54:33.160 Actually, I had the pleasure and honor of meeting him when I was a doctoral student at Cornell.

00:54:37.440 Herb Simon would be another one of that genre, correct?

00:54:41.260 Correct, yes.

00:54:42.300 Herb Simon was another giant.

00:54:44.960 And not wishing to be too tribal in my glee, I am sorry to have to repeat people that they were both Jewish.

00:54:53.540 Maybe it is connected, I'm telling you, I don't know how, but the Jews had to survive.

00:55:02.620 That's right.

00:55:03.520 The only capital that we could carry with us is what's in the brain, isn't it?

00:55:08.360 And I never miss an opportunity to mention my teachers in high school, okay?

00:55:15.580 So I want to use this opportunity and give them thanks for everything that me and my generation had.

00:55:23.060 Oh, that's lovely.

00:55:24.260 Wherever they are, I'm sure that they're very happy to have heard that.

00:55:27.700 Hey, Judea, I want to remind people, today, December 10th, 2025, this beauty drops a compendium of, I think, 45 articles.

00:55:38.260 Is that right?

00:55:38.920 45 articles chosen over the past 23 years about of Judea.

00:55:44.120 25 years now, yeah.

00:55:45.140 25 years.

00:55:46.400 Go get it, download it, whatever, however way you can get it.

00:55:50.720 Hey, Judea, let's not wait another three and a half years before we have you back on. 0.95

00:55:54.720 What do you say?

00:55:55.740 Great.

00:55:56.620 Okay, anytime.

00:55:57.820 Thank you so much, Judea.

00:55:58.820 Stay on the line so we can say goodbye offline.

00:56:01.140 And best of luck with the book.

00:56:02.620 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:56:04.100 Thank you, God.

00:56:05.100 Thank you.

00:56:05.400 Thank you.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 12, 2025

Dr. Judea Pearl - On Zionophobia, Jew-Hatred, and the Promise of AI (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_937)

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