The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Islam and the Parasitic Mind - Interview on Al Arabiya - Part II (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_805)

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome, I'm Riz Khan. This episode of the show continues my fascinating conversation

00:00:14.760 with the highly outspoken best-selling author and evolutionary behavioral scientist, Dr. Gad Saad.

00:00:21.220 In the first part, he took us through the risks presented by what he calls

00:00:24.740 The Parasitic Mind, based on his widely popular book of the same title, exploring how human thought

00:00:31.100 processes can give up rational ideas to support irrational ideologies. In this episode, the

00:00:37.680 professor turns his critical lens to Islam, a religion he considers to be a major threat to

00:00:42.520 peace and stability in the world. As I spoke with him in his hometown in Montreal in Canada,

00:00:47.380 he justified his concerns, pointing to what he sees as a huge influx of Muslim immigrants into the city.

00:00:53.300 Could I have predicted, based on the immigration patterns in Montreal, whether Jew hatred was going

00:00:59.740 to go up or go down in Montreal? It doesn't take a fancy professor to give you that prognosis, right?

00:01:06.000 Or that prediction. Well, and the reality is there's been an orgiastic exponential increase in Jew hatred

00:01:12.900 in Montreal. And it's largely driven by the fact of these demographic changes. So we have to be able

00:01:19.140 to say that openly without being accused of Islamophobia. Professor Saad also previewed the concept in his

00:01:25.580 upcoming book, Suicidal Empathy, where he posits that irrational support for policies such as open

00:01:31.340 border immigration is behind the increasing destabilization of societal cohesion.

00:01:36.580 Talk a little bit about the ostrich parasitic syndrome. Ah, yes. So that's chapter six. So there I'm using the

00:01:49.020 metaphor of the ostrich that buries its head in the sand to avoid reality. Which, as you say, they don't

00:01:55.340 actually do. I was going to say, which they don't do. But everybody now understands this as an apt metaphor

00:02:00.940 of going, la, la, la, I don't want to hear it. And so in the book, I say that that's a really very dangerous

00:02:06.760 malady because to my earlier point about never being willing to change your opinion about something, despite the

00:02:14.500 incontrovertible facts that I'm showing you, that's a manifestation of ostrich parasitic syndrome. So, and the

00:02:20.640 example that I give to demonstrate that is I start looking at what Westerners have come up with to explain the

00:02:30.040 real cause of, say, a terror attack. So Bill Nye, the science guy, when the Bataclan terror attack

00:02:37.960 happened in Paris, where, you know, they say Allahu Akbar and they invoke this particular Quranic verse

00:02:43.380 and so on, he said, no, no, no, no, that was due to, it was very conceivable that it was due to climate

00:02:48.260 change. And then he gives you a causal explanation for how that attack was due to lack of solar panels or

00:02:54.960 too much carbon emissions. That's ostrich parasitic syndrome. Ostrich parasitic syndrome is

00:02:59.860 thinking that the Brussels attackers, I think, that committed the attack there, had been

00:03:07.780 lacking in the exposure to art. I mean, who amongst us didn't see enough Chagall and Picasso and end up

00:03:16.000 going to put bombs because, you know, I'm just missing art. So it's so laughable. It's so silly

00:03:21.400 because in this case, you view it as instinctually wrong to ever blame it on an ideology, on a religion. 0.98

00:03:29.160 And therefore, you'll bury your head in the sand. You'll come up with alternate explanations,

00:03:34.020 even though the perpetrators are telling you why they're doing it. That's what OPS is.

00:03:39.040 I will get on to religion and ideology. Sure. That's a big part of your book as well. Sure. And

00:03:44.400 quite a controversial part. I know you've had a lot of feedback about. To what degree is the problem that

00:03:49.500 perhaps through the mainstream media, including influential entertainment platforms act as an

00:03:56.520 echo chamber for the progressivism or the woke culture? How much is, how hard is it to battle

00:04:02.540 something that is now so entrenched? I mean, they've actually made rules about what certain

00:04:06.920 movies and adverts should feature. Well, look, so let me give an analogy from evolutionary medicine.

00:04:14.340 And you'll see, I'll tie it back altogether. So in evolutionary medicine, we know the following.

00:04:20.280 If you take children who grew up in a very allergen-free environment, sterile environment,

00:04:29.040 you have OCD parents that are always cleaning. There's no dust. There's no pet dander. Versus kids

00:04:34.880 who have grown up in environments where these allergens are present, the latter kids end up

00:04:42.600 having fewer autoimmune diseases, say, for example, asthma, precisely because the immune system expects

00:04:49.700 to be challenged by these allergens in order to optimally function. So then I take that principle

00:04:57.000 and I say the human mind has also evolved to be exposed to opposing ideas, ideological allergens.

00:05:04.880 That allows me to hone my debating skills. If I'm never challenged on anything that I ever say,

00:05:12.400 I can't present the optimal message that hopefully will persuade you because I've never had any

00:05:18.480 feedback, any blowback, right? So now I come to your question. If I live in an echo chamber,

00:05:25.720 say a journalistic echo chamber, where 90% of the people are fully on board with anything that I say,

00:05:32.600 then there is no allergen that says, wait a minute, I think what you're saying there is complete BS,

00:05:37.080 right? Look at academia. So I discuss in the parasitic mind, these are studies by other folks,

00:05:43.080 where they looked at the political orientation of professors at top universities in the United States.

00:05:51.520 Riz, it's astonishing. Now, let me explain some numbers. In science, if you say that something has an

00:05:58.940 effect of a 1.2 odds ratio, it would be like, let's say I'm checking the pharmaceutical efficacy of a

00:06:05.260 drug. So it's a placebo versus an actual drug. 1.2 to 1 means that it's 20% more effective. So 1 to 1.2

00:06:14.200 is a big number. What if I tell you it's 1 to 80? So that's not even, I mean, you don't even pick that up

00:06:20.860 in science. Now, why am I saying this? In many disciplines, the ratio is 37 to 1, 130 to 1, meaning

00:06:30.780 that sociology departments, you're as likely to see a conservative Republican sociologist as you are to

00:06:41.300 see a dog with wings flying. That's not good. Why? Because if you're a student, there are certain

00:06:47.680 topics of discussion that you would really be enriched to hear both sides. Is the death penalty

00:06:53.680 ever moral? Should we be an isolationist or an interventionist? And there are very valid arguments

00:07:01.000 on both sides of the political eye. Political orientation doesn't matter in neuroscience because

00:07:06.860 the way neurons fire is the way neurons fire irrespective of what your political orientation is.

00:07:11.780 But in sociology and anthropology, in some fields of psychology and economics, having a greater

00:07:19.140 exposure to more ideas can only benefit me, certainly as a student. And so we're literally

00:07:25.040 cheating our students by creating this kind of sterile environment.

00:07:28.740 With the parasitic mind, I was actually surprised how many times to which you referred back to 0.97

00:07:32.720 the state of educational institutions and so on. I mean, you know, it's not something I would

00:07:37.800 ever have had a perspective on. But you seem to think it's really bad.

00:07:41.520 It's horrifying. Look, and in the parasitic mind, I only gave a few examples of letters that were sent 0.72

00:07:50.800 to me from people who, for whatever reason, had broken some sacred cow. So I'll give you one example.

00:07:59.180 Some graduate student writes to me, I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the exact quote,

00:08:03.620 Dear Professor Saad, my supervisor with whom I've been working on this paper for two years

00:08:11.040 has decided to take off my name off the paper because he heard that I said something positive

00:08:16.940 about Donald Trump. And now I fear that I have no future here. Are you accepting doctoral students?

00:08:23.420 Now, that student wasn't writing to me from Yemen or North Korea or communist China. He was writing to

00:08:30.840 be from a major North American university. Is that the kind of environments we want to be

00:08:35.480 fostering universities? I don't think so. How does it affect you as an academic to be able to go out

00:08:42.640 and say things the way you say? I mean, I know you've said tenure doesn't give you like total

00:08:47.520 protection. It doesn't protect me from death threats. Right. Look, it doesn't affect me in the sense

00:08:53.160 that I never modulate my speech as a function of careerist concerns. I'll tell you why. I have a very

00:09:01.660 exacting code of personal conduct. I'm my worst critic, meaning that at the end of the day, when I'm

00:09:08.460 putting my head on the pillow to sleep, the only thing that will stop me from tossing and turning

00:09:14.900 in insomnia is if I was fraudulent in defending the truth. If I wasn't the guy that when I heard the

00:09:23.140 old lady screaming, I didn't intervene. So if I ever say, I better not say this, because maybe this

00:09:30.700 will be the consequence. Maybe, maybe I'm being too harsh on myself. I would feel as though I'm

00:09:36.420 being fraudulent. How could I be the truth defender if I ever modulate what I truly consider to be the

00:09:42.880 truth? And so therefore, I've never modulated. I don't care. So you've never not hit post on the

00:09:49.520 button. I never not hit the post. Never. It's not a reflex that I have. Listen, Riz, literally on any

00:09:57.060 given morning by 10 o'clock, I have posted more controversial stuff than all other academics

00:10:05.280 alive combined. It's just I don't care. Now, it's not I don't care because I'm an irreverent a-hole who

00:10:12.640 doesn't care about people's feelings, but because you need people in academia to be willing to say

00:10:20.040 what, by the way, the silent majority agrees with me. So I could show you millions of emails from

00:10:25.340 truckers and corrections officers and policemen and majors in the Canadian army and other professors

00:10:31.280 who say, thank you that you exist. I would have lost my mind if you were not around. So I'm not

00:10:35.660 saying this to pat myself on the back, but you have to be a truth teller. And that's why you get

00:10:40.440 invited to Elon Musk's house. Well, so you're getting these kind of responses. Do you feel

00:10:44.680 it's having any real impact on the situation the way you see it? I mean, not only because of me. I

00:10:50.600 mean, there are many. I mean, there aren't too many people in academia who do what I do. But, you know,

00:10:55.140 Donald Trump does it. Elon Musk does it. There are a few people in high positions of power that are

00:11:02.380 irreverent honey badgers. Joe Rogan doesn't. Why did Joe Rogan become Joe Rogan? People have asked me

00:11:09.620 this because he is fearless. He's willing to speak to anybody. There is no topic that he's not

00:11:17.200 willing to address. He's intellectually curious. He's engaged. Why didn't Kamala Harris agree to go?

00:11:23.760 Because she can't go and be her authentic self for three hours with a guy that... He's never given me

00:11:30.860 a script of what we're... We just press the button and off we go. We may talk about Bigfoot or we may

00:11:37.060 talk about psychology of decision making. I have no idea where we're going. Well, it takes a strength

00:11:42.040 of character to be able to be sufficiently confident to sit in front of a camera where 20 million people

00:11:47.560 are going to consume this without knowing what's coming at you. The reason why he can do it and I

00:11:52.240 can do it is because we're authentic people. And so, be authentic. By the way, in my... The book

00:11:58.140 Between Suicidal Empathy and Parasitic Mind, which is called The Sad Truth About Happiness, I have a whole

00:12:03.160 section on what the ancient Greeks already told us. Know thyself. Be authentic.

00:12:08.140 And so, I try to live with full authenticity.

00:12:11.140 Does that controversial position risk at all you not becoming James Bond?

00:12:16.900 Did you see me tagging Jeff Bezos?

00:12:20.780 Yeah, I saw that lovely picture there.

00:12:22.780 By the way, people think that that was AI. It's not a real photo.

00:12:27.660 No, no, no, of course.

00:12:28.660 No, but some people thought it was real.

00:12:30.120 Right, right, yeah. No, no, it's amazing. You looked a bit too comfortable with that, Aston Martin.

00:12:35.460 Well, so, Jeff Bezos was head of Amazon. I think the next James Bond is being done through Amazon Studio.

00:12:42.380 I hope I'm not me speaking. And so, to play along, I tagged him and I said, you're looking for the next James Bond.

00:12:49.560 Now, here's the question for you, the really important question. Can I pull off being James Bond at my current height?

00:12:55.060 Yes, I'm astonishingly good-looking, but am I tall enough to be James Bond?

00:12:59.860 Do you have the right answer, Riz?

00:13:01.860 Well, you know, I mean, look, there are presets. They say, you know, how many bald presidents have there been in the U.S.?

00:13:06.740 There's so many of these characteristics people analyze. 0.66

00:13:09.780 Now, I was just thinking, as, you know, the kind of person you are, you could shoot first and ask questions later then.

00:13:15.540 Exactly.

00:13:16.480 By the way, so we've had, my daughter, who's sitting here off camera, grew up, and my other child, they've grown up with Belgian shepherds.

00:13:26.080 Are you familiar with Belgian shepherds?

00:13:27.780 So, Belgian shepherds are usually the dogs that are used in all the military.

00:13:31.720 Oh, the...

00:13:32.580 So, the Marinois are one of four types of Belgian shepherds.

00:13:37.260 And so, they grew up with these Belgian shepherds.

00:13:40.200 And I always say, to your point about shoot first, ask questions later, our male, his motto in life was he attacks everything in sight, and then he worries about the consequences later.

00:13:51.400 So, maybe that's why I picked them.

00:13:52.640 Yeah, as a German shepherd, Alsatian, as I grew up pulling them.

00:13:55.840 So, there'll be no double OIV.

00:13:57.180 Now, for those very wary of that woke culture and the situation the way it is, there is a reluctance to speak out.

00:14:09.620 You've spoken out quite a lot when it comes to religion and Islam in particular, and that's caused a lot of debate.

00:14:15.320 You know, of course, you defend yourself and say, I'm not Islamophobic.

00:14:20.800 But there is a tone in the way you describe things that make it sound like you believe all Muslims are bad. 0.59

00:14:27.420 It sounds like that.

00:14:28.320 And I know you do say, no, not all Muslims are bad.

00:14:30.160 But it sounds like that.

00:14:31.880 Look, the distribution of goodness and badness is not limited to one group. 0.98

00:14:37.180 There are demonic Jews and there are lovely Jews. 1.00

00:14:40.180 There are horrible Muslims. 1.00

00:14:41.620 There are lovely Muslims. 1.00

00:14:43.320 Muslims, it's nothing dispositional, right? 0.88

00:14:46.460 It's not Jews are kind or evil, Christians, right?

00:14:50.400 So, individuals, I hold no ill will towards anybody.

00:14:54.500 I actually, I'm friends with more Muslims than probably most people will ever meet in their lives.

00:14:59.640 How could that have happened if I think that all Muslims, right? 1.00

00:15:02.560 On the other hand, I'm also shaped by reality.

00:15:06.040 So, let me give you a few examples that might help.

00:15:08.700 We had to escape Lebanon because of which religion. 1.00

00:15:14.100 My parents were kidnapped and tortured by which religion.

00:15:18.180 My Syrian ancestors left Syria because of which religion.

00:15:23.220 My brother-in-law's family left Egypt because of which religion.

00:15:27.900 My wife's family in Lebanon had to leave their Armenian because of which religion.

00:15:33.820 Their ancestors escaped the Armenian genocide because of which religion.

00:15:39.060 So, certainly, I can put together in a nomological network that reality while recognizing that individual Muslims might even go out of their way to defend me, right?

00:15:50.900 And they're perfectly noble and kind and peaceful.

00:15:54.940 Islam, though, is a set of ideas that are codified.

00:15:58.740 And then we could say, does Islam promote greater personal liberties and freedoms?

00:16:04.740 Yes or no?

00:16:05.600 There is only these answers.

00:16:07.520 It's either yes or it's no, right?

00:16:09.980 I would venture that based on historical facts, it doesn't promote greater personal liberties and freedoms.

00:16:17.580 And so, I can't be Islamophobic in saying that.

00:16:21.260 It's a nonsensical term, as I recently had a conversation with Pierce Morgan.

00:16:26.260 I am an Islamo-realist.

00:16:29.460 I recognize that the great majority of Muslims, like in any other grouping, are perfectly lovely.

00:16:35.400 But the codified ideology of Islam, does it promote individual dignity?

00:16:40.780 No.

00:16:40.980 The nomological record you quoted, though, sounded more like personal baggage.

00:16:46.560 Right.

00:16:47.320 So, it sounds like, you know, it's your own kind of…

00:16:49.860 I'm informed by my personal history, but I can share the data from realities that have nothing to do with me,

00:16:59.080 and it's not going to be a good outcome for Islam.

00:17:01.880 Could you not look at all religions, though, at the basic root in, you know, having come from centuries ago or even millennia ago,

00:17:10.860 as having certain characteristics that could equally be compared, you know, when you say when it comes to freedoms and so on?

00:17:18.040 No.

00:17:18.520 So, for example, badminton is a sport, and MMA fighting is a sport.

00:17:25.180 They're both called sports.

00:17:27.280 The likelihood of my getting a head injury is not the same in badminton as it is in MMA fighting, even though they're both called sports, right?

00:17:37.500 So, the content of religions matter.

00:17:40.800 If you are a Jain, and a practicing Jain, by definition, because of the codified content in Jainism, you're a pacifist.

00:17:51.860 As a matter of fact, you're so much of a pacifist that as you walk down the street, you walk with a broom, lest you might inadvertently step on an ant.

00:18:02.720 So, an extremist Jain is one who is extremely peaceful, right?

00:18:08.180 On the other hand, if you're Jewish, then you're not going to eat shrimp or pork.

00:18:15.280 If you are Christian, you're going to eat the prosciutto sandwich. 1.00

00:18:18.900 So, there are real consequences to the content of what's codified in those books. 0.91

00:18:24.720 Now, Islam is a proselytizing religion. 1.00

00:18:29.160 It says that there are two binary encampments of the world. 0.62

00:18:35.000 There is Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harab.

00:18:38.860 Dar al-Harab is the house of war. 0.77

00:18:41.260 Any land that is not yet under Islamic dominion is one that, inshallah, will be conquered. 0.99

00:18:47.660 Now, is there 1,400 years of history that supports that edict?

00:18:51.400 I would venture yes.

00:18:52.820 There are 56 countries that are members of the OIC today that once upon a time were not Islamic. 0.97

00:18:58.400 On the other hand, Judaism really sucks at expansionism, right? 0.99

00:19:03.160 It's a terribly bad marketing religion because it can't seem to attract new customers. 0.99

00:19:10.020 Why?

00:19:10.500 Because it's not a proselytizing religion.

00:19:13.520 As a matter of fact, it's forbidden to convert others.

00:19:16.360 As a matter of fact, if Riz Khan wants to become Jewish, the theological position is you should 0.97

00:19:23.300 be dissuaded because that's an honest measure of your desire to become Jewish. 0.75

00:19:28.780 On the other hand, in Islam, you just say the Shahada publicly and voila, you're non-Muslim. 0.99

00:19:34.680 So, Islam is a brilliant religion when it comes to expansion.

00:19:39.540 Judaism is the exact opposite of brilliant. 1.00

00:19:42.440 So, I talk about the ideas behind the religion, never about the individuals.

00:19:48.400 But isn't there a danger, and I know you've addressed this before as well, but just for

00:19:51.520 our audience, of mistaking cultural behavior for what is actually religious behavior?

00:19:58.700 Of course, although these tend to go together.

00:20:02.520 I mean, culture doesn't evolve out of a vacuum.

00:20:05.060 By the way, if people ask me, for example, what am I?

00:20:09.120 I will, my first instinct is to say I'm Lebanese.

00:20:12.080 So, I'm very, very much wedded and proud of my Arabic culture, right?

00:20:18.380 My mother tongue is Arabic.

00:20:20.140 The food that we eat is Arabic.

00:20:21.880 I've tried to make my children listen to the Arabic music that I grew up with in Lebanon,

00:20:27.420 right?

00:20:27.860 There are many elements of the Middle Eastern culture that are uniquely beautiful.

00:20:32.480 That the culture of hospitality is true.

00:20:36.160 I mean, yes, there are many cultures that have hospitality, but really, the orgy of hospitality

00:20:41.300 of a Middle Eastern home is something gorgeous, right?

00:20:45.260 And so, yes, we can debate which parts are due to culture, which parts are due to religion.

00:20:51.180 But, you know, it would take someone that truly suffers from ostrich parasitic syndrome

00:20:55.180 to say that there's absolutely no evidence that Islam has ever done anything incorrect historically.

00:21:01.000 I don't think people would necessarily argue that, but what I got the sense of from the

00:21:06.220 parasitic mind is you're equating Islam to essentially the Middle East.

00:21:11.180 And the reality is that there's only a small minority, technically, of Muslims who are from

00:21:16.160 the Middle East.

00:21:16.860 You have Kazakhstan. 0.89

00:21:18.140 You have Indonesia. 0.99

00:21:19.140 Of course.

00:21:19.360 You know.

00:21:19.840 Of course.

00:21:20.380 And depending on, you're right, depending on the cultural ecosystem, then the manifestation

00:21:25.000 of the religion will take a different shade.

00:21:28.260 So, you're exactly right.

00:21:29.200 It is an interaction.

00:21:30.340 So, I concede that point.

00:21:32.160 But, again, if we link it to, say, immigration patterns, look, Montreal, where we're sitting

00:21:39.040 right now, is a place that I moved to from the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

00:21:44.040 From 1975 to 1998.

00:21:47.060 And the reason why I remember it is because it was sort of an episodic memory for me.

00:21:51.020 In 1998 was the first time that I ever saw a woman veiled.

00:21:55.580 So, from 1975 to 1998, I never saw it.

00:21:59.480 From 1998 to today, I could walk out of my house, five out of the first ten women that 1.00

00:22:05.040 I see are veiled.

00:22:06.080 Now, most of those women are obviously not bad people and are perfectly lovely and they 1.00

00:22:11.400 want to sit down and have hummus with me.

00:22:13.000 That's fine.

00:22:13.480 But the reality is, could I have predicted, based on the immigration patterns in Montreal,

00:22:18.760 whether Jew hatred was going to go up or go down in Montreal?

00:22:23.080 It doesn't take a fancy professor to give you that prognosis, right?

00:22:26.960 Or that prediction.

00:22:28.140 Well, and the reality is there's been an orgiastic exponential increase in Jew hatred in Montreal.

00:22:35.060 And it's largely driven by the fact of these demographic changes.

00:22:38.300 So, we have to be able to say that openly without being accused of Islamophobia.

00:22:43.640 Isn't it important to look at, say, the root causes now in many cases, perhaps?

00:22:48.340 And, you know, yes, you've pointed out that Jews have been persecuted through the centuries.

00:22:53.620 So, it dates back way beyond any modern conflict.

00:22:56.440 But a lot of the time, the misrepresentation, I guess, even in the media, is that the Israeli-Palestinian

00:23:03.820 situation is a Muslim-Jewish thing.

00:23:06.140 Well, technically, it's more a land issue.

00:23:07.760 I mean, there are roots based in it.

00:23:09.420 But the danger in equating these two is that suddenly it becomes all Muslims against all Jews. 0.97

00:23:15.360 It can become like that.

00:23:16.500 So, don't you have to be a little careful not to kind of promote that?

00:23:19.240 Yeah.

00:23:19.540 Although I respectfully would disagree with the idea that it's actually a land issue.

00:23:24.640 I think it's very much of a theological issue.

00:23:28.340 Golda Mayer, I'm paraphrasing her, said that when the Palestinians love their children more

00:23:34.060 than they hate ours, there'll be peace.

00:23:36.020 She also said that if we lay down our arms, there'd be a massacre.

00:23:41.080 If they lay down their arms, there'd be peace.

00:23:43.920 The idea that I grew up in the Middle East, and I explained it in The Parasitic Mind, when 0.99

00:23:49.580 Gamal Abdel Nasser died, the pan-Arabist Egyptian president, and Lebanese people take to the street

00:23:57.680 lamenting his death, and the number one scream that they say is death to Jews, explain to me what is the reflex by which coming down the street from where I live, screaming death to Jews, is a reflection of the land battle in Israel.

00:24:16.280 We had nothing to do with Israel.

00:24:17.920 We're not Israeli. 0.99

00:24:19.160 We're Lebanese.

00:24:20.160 We've always been in Lebanon.

00:24:21.340 We speak Arabic.

00:24:22.480 Why death to Jews? 1.00

00:24:23.660 They didn't say death to Zionists.

00:24:25.780 Yeah.

00:24:25.980 I think, well, that's the reason that generally in the media it's mixed up when people don't differentiate between Zionists and Jews.

00:24:33.620 And a lot of that mixed messaging means now, for example, saying anything against Israel, whether it's not against Jewish people as such, though I know Israel is primarily, is seen as anti-Semitic.

00:24:44.780 And this is where, again, there seems an imbalance in how people can address issues.

00:24:49.780 Now, if you say everyone should be fearless and say the truth, then people should be able to talk about Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic.

00:24:56.300 I completely agree, by the way, with what you just said.

00:24:58.380 It is a complete canard to say that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism.

00:25:07.680 That can't be, right?

00:25:08.780 In no different a way than criticizing some policy that the Mongolian government has come out with is an attack on Mongolian people.

00:25:18.240 So I'm not a proponent of that.

00:25:20.340 As a matter of fact, I'm so much, by the way, of a free speech absolutist.

00:25:23.420 As you probably know, I support the right of Holocaust deniers to spew their nonsense.

00:25:28.940 What could be more offensive, I mean, literally by definition, than to reject the Holocaust, the systematic erasure on an industrial scale level of an entire people?

00:25:39.140 But in a free society, you have to tolerate falsehood spreaders.

00:25:43.480 You have to tolerate racists and bigots and anti-Semites. 0.71

00:25:46.040 I think the problem in the Middle East is that it is a part of one's identity to despise the Jew. 0.81

00:25:54.920 Does that mean everybody's like that?

00:25:56.380 No.

00:25:56.820 But I grew up with that.

00:25:58.580 I lived it.

00:25:59.960 I interact with those people.

00:26:01.500 I'll give you a quick...

00:26:02.460 This is a story that I've only mentioned a few times, but it's going to be in suicidal empathy.

00:26:08.820 First semester at Cornell, doctoral student, I became friends with a bunch of Arab guys, playing soccer all the time.

00:26:16.880 As you would expect, you know, we all love soccer.

00:26:20.020 We all met...

00:26:20.860 Most of them were Lebanese.

00:26:22.700 At one point, one of those guys asked me to go out for coffee.

00:26:27.500 So I went out with him for coffee.

00:26:28.700 As we sat there, I'm wondering what he wants to...

00:26:31.540 Because we hadn't hung out socially.

00:26:33.480 You know, God, you're a very smart guy.

00:26:36.480 So thanks.

00:26:37.240 How come you haven't converted yet to the true faith?

00:26:41.740 So then I said, this is not going to go well if that's what we're here for.

00:26:46.480 So then he kind of realized that that's not going to go well.

00:26:48.700 Then he kind of pauses and he kind of looks into the air a bit conflicted and goes, you know, God, I really like you.

00:26:56.620 I said, why do you say that with some hesitancy?

00:26:58.560 Oh, I know.

00:26:59.660 Is it because I'm Jewish?

00:27:01.100 He goes, no, but come on.

00:27:02.200 You're not really a Jew-Jew. 0.96

00:27:03.760 I said, no, no, no.

00:27:04.560 I'm a Jew-Jew-Jew-Jew.

00:27:05.920 But what did he mean by that?

00:27:08.000 He had an exemplar of the type of person that he has to hate as a Jew. 1.00

00:27:12.840 But this guy is Lebanese.

00:27:15.740 He speaks Arabic.

00:27:16.880 He plays soccer better than all of them combined. 0.79

00:27:19.580 That doesn't fit the exemplar of the Jew that I was taught to hate.

00:27:24.120 So it's that reflex that you have to get rid of.

00:27:27.260 Once the Middle East gets rid of that kind of hatred, it will flourish in ways that are inimaginable to both of us.

00:27:35.300 And I go back to the fact that your reference point is the Middle East and personal experience with it.

00:27:41.620 Isn't the danger, though, if you're going to talk about Islam in a generic way, like as you have in the parasitic mind, that people in Indonesia, in Kazakhstan, places where they don't necessarily have a kind of real reference point for the Middle East, except the fact they share the religion, that they will start to feel, you know, kind of disenfranchised and then perhaps emotionally against Jewish people.

00:28:03.940 Well, and that's why I say that it really depends on the context.

00:28:08.520 There is also the interpretation that is often taken wrong, which we see in all religions as well.

00:28:14.660 Isn't the danger, though, that what's being done is being done politically?

00:28:19.500 By whom?

00:28:20.320 And even many Muslims would argue it's not being done religiously, the extremists, that they might use the name of Islam to do what they do. 0.87

00:28:26.960 But it's a political thing.

00:28:28.340 A lot of the stuff that happens is political.

00:28:30.400 Isn't it important to address that?

00:28:32.600 Yeah, of course, although 90% of Islam is political Islam.

00:28:38.400 So people, for example, I did a whole show once on Islam versus Islamism.

00:28:45.100 There is no such thing.

00:28:46.920 As a matter of fact, Erdogan literally said that.

00:28:50.680 There is no radical Islam.

00:28:52.400 There is no militant Islam.

00:28:53.980 There is no extremist Islam.

00:28:55.680 There is no Islamism. 1.00

00:28:57.100 There's just Islam. 1.00

00:28:58.320 And I could show you a hundred other imams who said the exact same thing.

00:29:03.400 Islam, again, is a codified set of ideas.

00:29:06.640 Islamism is within Islam.

00:29:08.780 Political.

00:29:09.340 There is a spiritual element of Islam.

00:29:11.560 There is a political element of Islam.

00:29:13.200 As a matter of fact, in Islam, there is great, great concern for the kuffar, for the non-believer.

00:29:19.780 Because, again, we need to convert those guys, right?

00:29:23.540 Judaism is live and let live.

00:29:26.200 That's why it never grows.

00:29:28.040 Because you don't bring in new adherence to the faith, right?

00:29:30.840 So imagine if now Islam said, look, we're going to get rid of all the expansionism. 1.00

00:29:36.040 No more supremacy.

00:29:37.320 No more.

00:29:37.800 We're going to truly adopt a message of live and let live.

00:29:41.460 Then all of the beauty of Islamic society can truly flourish.

00:29:46.200 Because I'm the first to understand Islamic poetry, Islamic architecture, the era of Islamic science.

00:29:52.920 So it's not as though there aren't an incredible number of things within that cultural trajectory that we can be proud of.

00:30:00.600 The reason I'm getting into or sticking with the idea that it's the politics that drive so much is that you don't see, you know, people from Kazakhstan, and I use that as an example because I know the country and it's a Muslim country, or largely Indonesia or any of these countries, where the people behave in any radicalized way that has an impact on Western nations.

00:30:20.080 That's why I'm wondering where your reference point is very much the Middle East and the politics of the Middle East that result in what we're seeing a lot of the time.

00:30:27.380 That's true.

00:30:28.060 As I said, you know, depending on the ecosystem, different variants of the manifestation of Islam will take place, right?

00:30:34.980 So it's not as though in every Islamic country, they're going around beheading everybody who's not Muslim.

00:30:39.620 Look, we were fine in Lebanon until we weren't.

00:30:43.580 It's the shingles analogy, right?

00:30:45.620 It's there.

00:30:46.500 But is there an Islamic society, including the more tame ones, where a non-Muslim can become the top person? 1.00

00:30:57.240 Can a Jew become the president of Kazakhstan? 0.83

00:31:00.520 That would be a manifestation of complete plurality and multiculturalism.

00:31:05.100 So the fact that a society that is Islamic doesn't go around beheading everybody in sight, to me, is not really an impressive thing.

00:31:12.040 Truly impressive would be, in the same way that we allow in the West for thousands of mosques to be built,

00:31:18.380 because we are so kind and compassionate, let's see the reciprocal kindness in Islamic societies.

00:31:25.100 Let's see a flourishing of endless churches, Buddhist temples, and Jewish temple synagogues, and then we will have true equality.

00:31:35.380 I think it's happening in places.

00:31:37.300 I mean, my base is Dubai, and I see, you know, temples and churches.

00:31:41.660 Inshallah.

00:31:42.920 I'm not a theological expert, so I just wanted to get your perspective on it, because I know you've spoken very strongly about it,

00:31:47.820 and I wanted to raise the counter-arguments I hear about how you address this,

00:31:54.160 because I think it is quite important that the debate is out there.

00:31:57.380 And I know it's a sensitive one, so people do get very touchy about it.

00:32:00.040 And I know you get a reaction to a lot of it.

00:32:03.920 What's going to come up?

00:32:04.700 Let's move on to your next piece of work now.

00:32:07.500 You're going to go on to the suicidal empathy, and how it ties into what you've done in the parasitic mind,

00:32:14.480 because I understand it's expanding on the ideas and thoughts of that.

00:32:18.120 Yeah, thank you for that question.

00:32:19.200 So the parasitic mind looks at what happens to our cognitive system when it is parasitized.

00:32:26.840 Remember earlier I talked about thoughts versus feelings.

00:32:28.800 So it's a two-pronged attack to zombify us.

00:32:32.580 First, I need to zombify your thought process. 0.99

00:32:35.680 That's the parasitic mind. 0.98

00:32:37.040 But then I need to zombify your emotional system. 0.99

00:32:40.260 Now I've really got you zombified.

00:32:41.820 Now you really are the spider that is being taken haplessly into the burrow.

00:32:48.800 The burrow.

00:32:49.340 Exactly.

00:32:50.360 Exactly.

00:32:50.920 So that's what suicidal empathy does, is it completes the story,

00:32:54.360 and it says that I need to hijack both your thought processes and your emotional system to then render you zombified.

00:33:02.700 And so that's the point of suicidal empathy.

00:33:05.140 And then what I do in the book is I demonstrate how many disastrous public policy decisions stem from suicidal empathy.

00:33:14.860 So let's take, say, our views on criminality.

00:33:20.740 When, say, you decide that a felon, you know, it's not fair that we don't give him a second chance.

00:33:27.640 And by second chance, it means that he's been arrested 87 times before.

00:33:32.540 That is suicidal empathy.

00:33:34.620 Now where does it come from?

00:33:35.920 It comes from the progressive view that criminals, to the extent that they are criminals,

00:33:41.840 and especially if they have melanin that's a bit darker,

00:33:45.400 it can't be because they are inherently criminals,

00:33:48.740 because there are natural variations across individuals in terms of how they acquire resources.

00:33:55.500 It must be because society failed them, right?

00:33:58.360 So what is the point of you putting in prison a criminal when he's already been victimized by society, right?

00:34:07.520 That's not, I mean, life is about cause and effect. 0.80

00:34:10.620 If you rape someone, you should be punished severely. 0.94

00:34:14.400 If you kill someone, now by the way, to some extent, maybe it's too harsh, 0.99

00:34:18.760 Sharia Allah understands this very well, right?

00:34:21.280 Because it is very, I mean, if anything,

00:34:24.100 it is actually more wedded to human nature than the progressives.

00:34:28.640 You know, it might be better to be under Sharia Allah. 1.00

00:34:31.340 Now you're laying a flag for Islam. 0.97

00:34:32.800 Now there you go.

00:34:33.500 You see what a good guy I am?

00:34:35.580 No, but my point is that legal codes have to be rooted in an understanding of human nature.

00:34:42.880 When there are no consequences to all of your bad deeds,

00:34:46.060 is it any surprise that criminality is going to go up?

00:34:48.360 So for example, when San Francisco, you probably remember this,

00:34:51.620 puts out a thing that says,

00:34:53.120 we're not going to penalize any theft that is under $950.

00:34:56.920 Do you need a fancy evolutionary behavioral scientist to tell you what's going to happen?

00:35:01.660 I mean, it's cause and effect.

00:35:03.380 So what I do in suicidal empathy is I go through domestic policies, foreign policies,

00:35:09.380 all of which result in disastrous consequences because of the misfiring of empathy.

00:35:15.200 What's your thought on the way that things like the suicidal empathy is being enhanced

00:35:23.800 by social media, by, you know, the term bleeding heart liberal is an interesting one.

00:35:29.260 I'll tell you why, because that's the first thing that came into my mind when you said

00:35:31.780 the way you described it.

00:35:32.620 I came from Britain to America when I moved from one channel to another.

00:35:37.460 And liberal in Britain didn't mean what it does in the USA.

00:35:41.560 So it was quite confusing for me.

00:35:42.980 But then this term bleeding heart liberal came up,

00:35:45.940 which I presume is your typical...

00:35:48.620 Suicidally empathetic person.

00:35:50.520 Is that correct?

00:35:51.040 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:35:52.020 So, but it's taken even to an extreme at this point.

00:35:54.520 So a bleeding heart liberal is kind of stage one of suicidal empathy, right?

00:36:02.400 So suicidal empathy is stage four pancreatic cancer.

00:36:07.340 It's death, right?

00:36:08.600 Because, look, so there's a paper that I wrote a few years ago with one of my former doctoral

00:36:16.400 students where we looked at how do people allocate their gift-giving expenditures, okay?

00:36:23.180 And the idea there was to demonstrate that we have a built-in evolutionary mechanism that

00:36:29.780 mets out our resources in line with an evolutionary calculus.

00:36:34.960 I'm much more likely to give larger gifts to people who share, on average, half their genes

00:36:40.240 with me, my brothers and sisters, my children, than I am to give to my second cousin, right?

00:36:46.640 And you see this throughout all cultures, all religions, all ethnicities, because we're

00:36:52.360 all biological beings united under a shared biological heritage.

00:36:57.340 Why am I saying all this?

00:36:58.820 Our empathy should also be strategically meted out in a way that makes evolutionary sense,

00:37:06.160 right?

00:37:06.680 It makes more evolutionary sense for me to be willing to sacrifice my life to save my biological

00:37:13.120 children than it is for me to save a random child.

00:37:16.440 The fact that I'm less likely to save a random child doesn't make me a monster or calculus.

00:37:21.700 I would love to save all children, but I'm certainly more likely to jump in front of the fast-moving

00:37:27.100 truck to save my biological children.

00:37:29.740 That's the problem with suicidal empathy, is that that system is dysregulated.

00:37:34.360 The El Salvadorian MS-13 gang members, they deserve more empathy coming in here illegally than American vets 1.00

00:37:44.360 who lost their limbs fighting for America.

00:37:48.280 That's suicidal empathy.

00:37:49.520 So this is the expression, going back to the gift-giving, charity begins at home.

00:37:53.700 Exactly.

00:37:54.080 That's where it comes from, too.

00:37:55.100 Perfect.

00:37:55.320 And I think in that study, you also talked about how women and men are different.

00:37:58.720 Yes.

00:37:59.040 You want me to talk about that?

00:37:59.900 Yeah, please.

00:38:00.260 So in that paper, what we wanted to show is, what are the reasons that men and women

00:38:08.200 say they are giving gifts to their romantic partners?

00:38:13.840 So the reasons could be either situational or tactical.

00:38:18.340 Situational would be, it's her birthday.

00:38:21.240 It's a situational.

00:38:22.200 Okay.

00:38:22.840 Tactical would be, I'm trying to woo her to seduce her. 0.74

00:38:26.380 Right?

00:38:26.540 Now, not surprisingly, men are much more likely to use the gift-giving ritual for tactical reasons.

00:38:34.760 It's part of the dynamics of men and women.

00:38:36.960 But here's the part that's much more interesting.

00:38:39.480 When you ask men and women, why do you think the other sex gives you gifts? 1.00

00:38:45.520 Women are perfectly well calibrated in knowing that the reason that they give gifts to men 0.99

00:38:52.580 are different than the reasons why men give them gifts, whereas men are blissfully oblivious to that. 1.00

00:38:59.560 So men think, oh, if she gives me a gift, it must be because she's trying to seduce me. 0.98

00:39:05.400 Because they lack the theory of mind. 0.98

00:39:07.260 Now, I'm not saying that men are dumber, but it's because they don't have to have evolved the reading of that courtship ritual. 1.00

00:39:15.820 Because if a man is lied to by a woman, a woman says, here are flowers, I'll love you forever, let's go behind the shed and have sex. 1.00

00:39:24.940 If she lied to him, great. 0.94

00:39:27.480 I don't suffer any consequences.

00:39:29.560 If a woman were to be duped by every flower-carrying guy, given that the cost of making a poor mate choice looms much larger for her, 0.94

00:39:41.880 then she better evolve the capacity to understand those signals.

00:39:45.520 Professor, what do you think artificial intelligence will do to change, either for good or bad, the parasitic mind or suicidal?

00:39:54.500 Wow.

00:39:55.340 I've never been asked that exact question.

00:39:57.240 So there you go.

00:39:58.640 That's why you're a risk-on.

00:40:01.200 Look, at this point, I think that the main thing that AI does is it reduces the computational complexity of the search space.

00:40:10.760 You know what I mean?

00:40:12.200 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:13.580 But for our listeners and viewers.

00:40:15.740 So take, for example, chess.

00:40:18.300 If you were to draw out the chess game, the tree of chess, it's, I think, 10 to the 100 nodes.

00:40:26.640 That's more nodes than there are atoms in the universe, right?

00:40:31.860 So if you were to develop an algorithm to actually exhaustively go through everything, it will be more time than since the sun has existed.

00:40:39.780 Therefore, there are AI algorithms that prune the search tree that can say, you know, this is not promising, cut this part.

00:40:48.560 And I first learned of this as a mathematics computer science student in the mid-80s.

00:40:54.460 And I was very excited about AI, but then AI went through a winter storm kind of where it died out.

00:41:02.520 And it's only in the last 5, 10 years that it has resurfaced.

00:41:05.480 So I really see things like in medical diagnostics and things where it can do searches so quickly and in much quicker way than a human could ever.

00:41:17.320 That's where I see.

00:41:17.940 I'm not a faithless when it comes to AI, the machines are going to take over and eradicate us.

00:41:23.920 I don't know what else to say.

00:41:25.080 It's not so much that.

00:41:25.920 You know, what's interesting is it still suffers to some degree for AI from the biases that are programmed in to the big data that it draws from.

00:41:34.940 Like when you ask it for George Washington, it comes out with a black guy. 0.99

00:41:39.800 Have you seen that?

00:41:40.840 Oh, you didn't see those?

00:41:41.480 No, no, no.

00:41:42.220 Gemini, when Gemini first came out, because it had been programmed by super woke people, every single historical figure in the United States came out as a black individual. 0.73

00:41:55.900 That's interesting.

00:41:56.520 You should go back.

00:41:57.380 And now they've checked it.

00:41:58.680 They've kind of recalibrated it. 0.76

00:42:00.660 I don't know if this was, you know, someone playing around or whether it was real, but there was a time many years ago, if you typed into Google, white men stole my car, it used to ask, did you mean black men stole your car? 0.95

00:42:13.880 So there was this idea that, you know, that the garbage in, garbage out situation with AI meant that, you know, up to now, it's going to have its biases.

00:42:22.560 But the reason I ask is, I did an interview recently with Mogadat, who was the former chief business officer of Google X, brilliant guy, brilliant AI specialist.

00:42:31.400 I mean, he's quite spectacular, actually, in his thought processes.

00:42:35.140 And he described how, you know, right now, if you just have even 20 IQ points above someone else, it's a massive difference as a human.

00:42:42.440 AI is going to go to the billion level where it's way beyond.

00:42:46.400 And in that, there's a certain amount of self-awareness, cognizance, so on.

00:42:50.560 But it can also be something that if we are becoming more and more dependent on AI, we might be able to escape some of the things that you worry about.

00:42:58.480 That's a great question.

00:42:59.160 Yeah.

00:42:59.400 I mean, so you're saying that AI could be so powerful that it builds a cognitive inoculation against the parasitic ideas.

00:43:09.040 It's exactly in the sense that it can actually start to, you know, regulate the information that we receive when we do searches to take us out of an echo chamber.

00:43:17.300 It can actually fact check to the point where it's indisputable.

00:43:20.840 Right.

00:43:21.040 So here's how I can tie what you're saying with something that I've been thinking about.

00:43:26.040 So do you remember the nomological networks that I was telling you about?

00:43:29.660 Yeah.

00:43:29.780 As it stands, it takes a great amount of human effort to build that network.

00:43:37.540 And one of the papers that I recently wrote about three, four years ago is I wrote a paper, an academic paper, a scientific paper, where I was arguing, imagine if you could now create a Wikipedia of nomological networks.

00:43:51.940 So you ask what is the foundational question that you want to see if you can build a nomological network about, right?

00:43:59.580 Are toy preferences sex-specific for evolutionary reasons?

00:44:03.120 Well, it took me, a human being, to say, well, what would be the different distinct lines of evidence that I would have to come up with to prove that there is a universality to these toy preferences?

00:44:14.600 Imagine if that process could be automatized via AI.

00:44:19.200 And not only that, the access to far wider range of data without having to try to figure out where to go for it, and then the speed with which it would come.

00:44:26.220 Exactly.

00:44:27.000 So that's what I'm wondering, whether you see any salvation, you see any inoculation, as you put it, to the parasitic mind.

00:44:32.940 I mean, as a sort of banal yes or no, I would say yes.

00:44:38.360 But to our earlier point, that AI system is only as good as what I put into it.

00:44:44.160 If what is being put into it is done by parasitized human minds, then who knows?

00:44:49.240 So Mo, funny enough, just to go back to something he said, he's writing his next book with an AI he has created called Trixie.

00:44:57.760 Trixie.

00:44:58.180 And he says, if I asked Trixie questions, I'd get surprising answers.

00:45:01.920 For example, as a Middle Eastern, he's of Egyptian origin, Middle Eastern man, would you, you know, if you were a border officer in America, would you grant me access?

00:45:11.380 She said, under current rules, no.

00:45:13.480 You know, so she was quite frank with him.

00:45:15.260 Wow.

00:45:15.320 So that's why it's quite where an interesting point, I think, a cross point maybe of where AI might actually address with some degree of accuracy and perhaps be a bit of a wake-up call for some of the issues that you see a lot of concern about.

00:45:30.240 It really is a fantastic question.

00:45:32.360 As you're speaking, I'm thinking about it.

00:45:33.600 I wonder if the AI system might be better at inoculating parasitic thinking rather than parasitic emotional systems.

00:45:46.120 Because there is an element that I can codify when it comes to facts and information.

00:45:54.640 It's a lot more difficult.

00:45:55.980 How do you parameterize emotions via an AI system?

00:46:01.200 Well, that apparently is the next step.

00:46:02.880 AI can get to the stage where it's, you know, emotions are firing of neurons.

00:46:07.120 I mean, my background is neurophysiology.

00:46:08.780 That's true.

00:46:09.120 So it's kind of ironic.

00:46:10.060 We are literally, I mean, in a way, former...

00:46:12.140 Are your parents disappointed you didn't become a doctor?

00:46:14.620 Well, I think my mother kept saying until she saw me on TV.

00:46:17.760 Then it was okay.

00:46:18.560 She said, no, she just said, is that a real job?

00:46:21.360 But I do think, listening to people who are experts on this, that it might be an interesting situation.

00:46:27.920 I wonder how that's going to tie in with your work.

00:46:30.020 Because everything will be factually far more accurate.

00:46:33.480 The veracity of information will be far more, you know, metrically codified and accurate.

00:46:38.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:39.280 Yeah, I mean, I don't know what else to say about it.

00:46:40.900 But, I mean, I know that my wife recently was interacting with Grok.

00:46:46.360 Oh, yeah.

00:46:47.600 Grok 3 or whatever. 0.65

00:46:49.120 Yeah, yeah, the X1.

00:46:50.440 And because we have different options right now we're facing in our personal lives in terms of different universities.

00:46:57.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:58.380 In terms of universities that are making me offers.

00:47:01.540 And so she was entering into Grok, you know, what's the best place for us to live?

00:47:07.180 And then she came up to me very excitedly because she said, this Grok is so smart.

00:47:12.420 So, you know.

00:47:13.280 She said, wait, Montreal.

00:47:14.920 No, no.

00:47:15.580 I don't think Grok is ever going to come up with that.

00:47:17.980 If it comes up with that, it must be a scam.

00:47:20.240 Montreal is no longer the place for us.

00:47:21.940 So it's interesting, you're getting a lot of offers in spite of your willing to jab at academia.

00:47:26.540 Yeah, well, so can I tell you why?

00:47:27.880 Because I think the zeitgeist is changing.

00:47:30.020 Okay.

00:47:30.300 Because the exact same people who were mortified that there was a professor who was talking about such corrosive things such as, oh, no, only women can bear children.

00:47:40.480 Yes, freedom of speech is important.

00:47:42.320 Freedom of inquiry is important.

00:47:43.980 Well, those people are now realizing that they really went down the rabbit hole.

00:47:47.420 And not all the universities.

00:47:49.120 Many of universities still think I'm, you know, the ostracized pariah.

00:47:53.060 But a greater number of universities are now coming around.

00:47:56.980 Maybe because Donald Trump won.

00:47:58.700 Who knows?

00:47:59.020 But so a lot of schools that historically would have shied away from speaking to me are not.

00:48:05.420 I mean, there's the God love train is in full motion right now.

00:48:09.380 And you're ready to ride it.

00:48:10.440 I'm riding it.

00:48:11.900 You know, you've seen as someone, you know, who deals with this kind of behavioral psychology of people, you know, the various movements that come up.

00:48:21.640 And you've touched on a couple of them, the Me Too, for example, and Black Lives Matter.

00:48:25.420 Yeah.

00:48:25.820 Do you see more of these kind of things happening along that we will see more of these kind of movements that I know you see as on the verge of whether it's suicidal empathy or parasitic behavior, ideology?

00:48:36.440 As I said earlier, the capacity for the human mind to be parasitized in endless number of ways is an inerrant feature of, you know, the architecture of the human mind.

00:48:48.960 So I can't predict whether there'll be more or less, but it's just, by the way, when I first started my training as a doctoral student, I was studying one type of rationality.

00:49:01.380 And I hope this doesn't get too technical.

00:49:03.040 You'll tell me if it's more.

00:49:03.800 So are you familiar with the work of Kahneman and Tversky?

00:49:07.260 Do you know, John?

00:49:08.160 Kahneman and Tversky are two Israeli psychologists, actually.

00:49:11.460 Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work that he did in psychology.

00:49:18.340 Tversky didn't win it, his co-author, because he passed away before they won it, and you can't get it posthumously.

00:49:24.280 But what their work was meant to show was that the hyper-rational expectation that economists have of us, that we are these perfect calculational machines, when I'm choosing which car to buy, I look at all of the alternatives, and then I use some utility maximization function to say that it's going to be the Mazda.

00:49:46.560 That's not, excuse me, that's not how people make decisions, right?

00:49:49.500 So, for example, here's a violation that they identified.

00:49:54.020 It's called the transitivity axiom.

00:49:55.760 If I prefer car A to car B, and I prefer car B to car C, it must be that I prefer car A to car C.

00:50:02.140 That's called transitivity.

00:50:03.680 If I don't do that, I'm being, quote, irrational.

00:50:07.060 But throughout 40 years of work, they showed that consumers are hardly rational in the way economists expect us.

00:50:13.120 And so, it is an indelible feature of the human condition to have these little blind spots.

00:50:21.320 In the same way that you can do experiments in psychophysics, where you could show certain visual illusions that people succumb to, we also have these mental spots.

00:50:34.140 So, I don't expect that moving forward, we will be less likely to succumb to this.

00:50:39.600 It's just part of the lacuna of the human spirit.

00:50:43.600 So, one of the interesting things is that we live in a very different era now from even decades ago and centuries ago.

00:50:49.240 So, even tying into religion, for example, word spreads so much faster.

00:50:52.460 That's true.

00:50:52.920 Everything gets seen so much faster.

00:50:54.380 Judgments get much faster.

00:50:55.940 So, in the same way, decision-making sometimes is through speed.

00:51:01.900 And, you know, people react.

00:51:04.940 I don't know.

00:51:05.280 Do you recall that the head of the women's soccer in Spain, Luis Roviales?

00:51:10.060 The kiss.

00:51:10.620 Yeah.

00:51:11.100 And he just got sentenced or he just got, you know, adjudication was that he was guilty of doing this.

00:51:17.800 And, of course, it gave a lot of power to the Me Too movement in Spain when this happened.

00:51:22.320 Now, there would have been a time where this wouldn't have gone around.

00:51:25.040 Yeah.

00:51:25.100 And I wonder how this interconnectivity, the greater interconnectivity we have.

00:51:30.180 That's a great question.

00:51:31.920 So, certainly the fact that we've got these systems that can spread information so quickly makes it more viral, to continue with the metaphor.

00:51:41.500 I mean, does that mean…

00:51:44.360 So, are you arguing that by virtue of the fact that the speed at which the stuff can disseminate, does that mean that that increases the likelihood of the inoculation or decreases it?

00:51:53.800 No, I'm saying that, you know, at the moment, it increases the chance of…

00:51:58.880 Being parasitic, yeah.

00:52:00.120 Yeah, exactly.

00:52:00.820 Yeah.

00:52:01.000 Well, although the antidote also…

00:52:05.940 Is communicative.

00:52:06.580 Is communicative.

00:52:06.600 Is communicative, right?

00:52:07.900 So, I mean, I wouldn't have had, I don't know, a million followers on X.

00:52:12.160 I wouldn't have met the people.

00:52:13.280 The people that have been drawn to my work would never have known that I existed, Elon Musk, were it not that there was a central square where my ideas can be…

00:52:27.040 Because historically, think about a typical academic, what was my medium of communication?

00:52:32.520 It was the peer-reviewed journal, right?

00:52:36.100 And you want to know how many people read that journal?

00:52:39.820 You know how many people said…

00:52:40.880 The average number of academic papers that's cited is zero.

00:52:46.240 Now, there are some papers that are cited 3,000 times.

00:52:49.140 But even an incredibly successful academic paper that's cited 3,000 times, how does that compare with me putting up a post yesterday that was viewed by 10 million people?

00:53:00.380 Yeah, it's remarkable.

00:53:00.720 And so, I think, to your point, both the parasitic stuff can increase, but the antidote could also increase.

00:53:07.520 As we get towards the end of our conversation, a couple of things that occurred to me, as someone, especially as you specialized in consumer behavior, but as an evolutionary behavioral scientist, do you believe human behaviors are cyclical?

00:53:18.760 And the reason I ask is, you know, my daughter, who's only a couple of years older than yours, is big on thrifting.

00:53:24.880 And, you know, this very, what do you call it, conspicuous consumption is something that she kind of, yeah, exactly, is sort of largely rejecting.

00:53:35.940 And it's not a lack of means.

00:53:37.800 It's simply the psychology is now, I want to distance myself from this very visible consumption.

00:53:43.060 And thrifting, I see among her friends as well, it's become kind of trendy.

00:53:47.000 How much do we cycle through these?

00:53:49.180 That's great.

00:53:49.800 So, of course, historical cycles happen.

00:53:53.200 And as a matter of fact, potentially linking it to your daughter's example, do you know that the, how sexy women's attire is cyclically over the past hundred years correlates with economic conditions within that ecosystem?

00:54:12.680 So, it's actually called the hemline index.

00:54:15.280 And this is something that I talk about in The Consuming Instinct, one of my earlier books in 2011, whereby, I'm going to see if I remember this correctly, I hope I don't get it wrong.

00:54:26.000 In environments where there is more economic uncertainty, there is a premium on fashion trends and cycles to be sexier.

00:54:37.640 And so, yes, I think that the general pattern is that there are cycles.

00:54:43.120 Now, I don't know if your daughter's thriftiness is a manifestation of something inherent to her personality. 0.68

00:54:50.460 Or I think you're arguing that it is part of a group dynamic.

00:54:54.920 It seems to be part of a group dynamic.

00:54:57.120 But she appreciates it.

00:54:58.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:59.040 So, how does that manifest itself?

00:55:01.180 She never wants to dress in brand names.

00:55:04.740 She wants to be frugal. 0.99

00:55:06.060 It's not so much that.

00:55:06.720 It's just saying, hey, I can find great stuff that's been pre-owned, as they say now.

00:55:11.120 We used to say used.

00:55:12.060 But to use the euphemism, pre-owned.

00:55:15.620 And she finds amazing stuff.

00:55:17.360 Yeah, see, that would never work with me.

00:55:19.740 And maybe I'm sharing too much here with your audience.

00:55:21.920 I suffer from huge germ contamination fear.

00:55:25.020 So, for example, when I go even to a five-star hotel, I bring my own sheets.

00:55:30.300 And so, the idea of wearing someone else's clothes would not work with this guy's psychology.

00:55:36.560 The other thing is that after COVID, well, after lockdowns where people couldn't go, there was a lot of what I read about, a lot of revenge buying, they called it.

00:55:47.340 Like consumers, you know, feeling they'd been deprived for a certain period of time and almost in revenge going out and consuming money.

00:55:52.860 They're going to compensate for having been.

00:55:55.040 Right.

00:55:55.420 I hadn't heard that term, but that makes a lot of sense to me.

00:55:57.740 It's fascinating, revenge buying.

00:55:58.420 Well, I mean, one of the reasons why I decided that I will use consumer behavior as a place to study human nature is precisely because short of breathing, consumption is probably the thing that we do most next.

00:56:13.640 I mean, we consume friendships.

00:56:15.000 We consume experiences.

00:56:16.460 We consume religion.

00:56:17.660 We consume literature.

00:56:18.900 So, it's not just consumption of Coca-Cola and Starbucks.

00:56:22.160 I mean, we are a consumatory animal.

00:56:23.800 So, I thought what a wonderful place it would be to take my interest in evolutionary psychology and apply it to the modern context of consumer behavior, hence that marriage.

00:56:33.800 You know, just as, again, wrapping up now, do you remain optimistic about the way things are going?

00:56:39.180 I mean, you said we're at a certain zeitgeist, but are you really optimistic about things changing for the better on your terms, of course, you know, the parasitic mind, the suicidal empathy?

00:56:47.060 I do.

00:56:47.860 I am in the sense that it would be hard to get out of bed, given the things that I do and deal with, if I didn't think that there is a way to make things better.

00:56:58.380 But on a day-to-day basis, it could be easy to fall trap to a lot of pessimism because sometimes when I see the stuff that comes my way, and even though 99.9% of people are incredibly supportive of what I do, 0.01% of a very big number is still a big number.

00:57:13.780 And so, that can, you know, gnaw at you, but overall, I'm someone who has a sunny disposition, and so, therefore, I would say I am optimistic.

00:57:21.580 I raised this, actually, it made me think about how many people I know who are anti-woke culture but won't say so.

00:57:28.620 So, that's why I was curious when you said you have 90-something-plus percent in terms of support.

00:57:33.520 So, do you think there are a lot of people out there who want to say something, say anti-woke, for example, and, you know, we're against the work culture, but don't dare say it because they could be victimized?

00:57:43.700 Oh, my God.

00:57:44.580 That's the number one reason why the woke stuff was able to proliferate, right?

00:57:50.400 So, let me give you, and I've said this before, here is the perfect template of probably the most common email that I've received through all these years.

00:57:59.700 Dear Professor Saad, a bunch of compliments, and then the last sentence is, if you choose to read this letter on your show, please don't mention my name.

00:58:11.300 So, then I write back to the person.

00:58:13.180 I say, dear so-and-so, thank you very much for your kind words.

00:58:17.120 I appreciate them.

00:58:18.280 Don't you think the last sentence in your email is precisely why we are in the position we are?

00:58:23.040 And oftentimes, that really slaps them in the face, and they'll write back to me and say, but they always argue that they have a uniquely justifiable reason why they shouldn't be the one speaking, right?

00:58:33.960 So, if I'm a student, I shouldn't speak because I won't get a good grade.

00:58:37.140 If I'm an assistant professor, I shouldn't speak because I'm going up for tenure.

00:58:40.860 If I am tenured, I shouldn't speak because I'm going for full professor.

00:58:44.280 If I have full professor, I shouldn't speak because I'm applying for a grant.

00:58:48.060 So, your career will end, and there's always been a justification for why you shouldn't speak.

00:58:53.220 Speak. 0.99

00:58:53.720 Stop being a coward. 0.85

00:58:55.040 Don't defuse the responsibility on a few of us that have to bear all the risks. 0.98

00:58:59.520 If we all speak in unison, we'll get rid of the problem by Tuesday.

00:59:03.040 Well, and academia apart, it's also because there are real-world consequences for people in other jobs, too, I guess.

00:59:09.460 Yes, although, and not to seem as though I'm being cavalier about it,

00:59:13.280 whenever someone says that to me, I say, the young men who said,

00:59:18.540 I'll go and land on the beaches of Normandy, were they guaranteed safe passage?

00:59:23.020 Or did they know that 80, 90% of them were going to be mowed down as though they were insignificant mosquitoes?

00:59:29.600 Yet, they did it.

00:59:30.420 So, I understand that people have real concerns.

00:59:33.660 And so, I'm not asking people to be reckless martyrs, but just say something.

00:59:38.940 It could be you only say it within the confines of your friends at a bar.

00:59:43.640 If they say something insane, challenge them.

00:59:45.700 We just had a conversation about very difficult subjects.

00:59:48.960 We're going to walk away here feeling good.

00:59:51.020 We're going to still be friends.

00:59:52.260 But we had the courage to tackle thorny subjects. 0.78

00:59:55.640 Don't be a coward.

00:59:57.120 Speak. 0.98

00:59:58.200 Now you've got this prominence.

01:00:00.280 And with prominence comes the power to change things, which, as you say, hopefully you are.

01:00:04.680 Would you ever go into politics?

01:00:05.760 Well, two things.

01:00:07.820 Number one, I'm too short for politics.

01:00:11.300 I don't think so because I'm way too honest to our earlier point, which is politicians lie.

01:00:20.460 If I fib a millimeter, I will have a bout of conscience that will debilitate me for the rest of my life.

01:00:28.380 I'm worried if I'm going to jaywalk.

01:00:30.320 So, you want me to be a politician?

01:00:31.920 I won't last for four minutes.

01:00:32.960 Well, we prefer you out of politics than saying what you say.

01:00:36.460 Thank you, sir.

01:00:36.960 Professor, thank you so much.

01:00:38.060 Thank you so much.

01:00:38.620 That was fantastic.

01:00:39.320 Thank you.

01:00:39.600 Cheers.

01:00:44.640 Well, Dr. Gadside ending our extended conversation there by calling for people to ignore the work culture

01:00:49.960 and to champion truth and freedom of speech, whatever the risks.

01:00:53.860 His next book, Suicidal Empathy, is due out this year, 2025,

01:00:57.720 and expands on his best-selling publication, The Parasitic Mind.

01:01:01.180 That's all for now.

01:01:02.680 From me, Riz Khan, and the rest of the team, thank you for watching.

01:01:05.820 Don't forget to leave your thoughts and comments and subscribe to the channel.

01:01:09.300 We'll see you next time.

01:01:10.300 Bye-bye.

01:01:10.980 And the rest of the team, we'll see you next time.

01:01:16.380 Bye-bye.

01:01:18.420 Bye-bye.

01:01:19.020 Bye-bye.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - March 15, 2025

Islam and the Parasitic Mind - Interview on Al Arabiya - Part II (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_805)

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