The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Chat with Dr. Chris Milburn - Free Speech in Medicine Conference (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 okay so oh i guess we can um this is a bit strange because i think you're more used to

00:00:09.420 interviewing other people but here i am interviewing you that it's all good i'm sure

00:00:14.280 you're good you've done it both ways many times anyway so uh hello free speech and medicine

00:00:20.600 podcast listeners um thanks for tuning in and uh i really appreciate dr gadsad uh who's a big name

00:00:28.740 in this kind of whole crazy world of free speech that's developed in the last few years uh thanks

00:00:35.580 very much for joining me and thanks for agreeing to come to our conference this year i'm so excited

00:00:41.600 to be with you now and even more excited to be with you in person in a month uh not only because of the

00:00:47.380 context of the event but uh we've never been to that beautiful part of canada so we can't be serious

00:00:53.740 canadians not having visited there so look forward to seeing you soon well you're missing out just so

00:00:59.720 you know it's you know it's very scottish heritage here so we'll have to rename you mixod and you have

00:01:05.000 to wear a kilt and a tamil shantar when you come just to warn you fair enough yeah um so uh a lot of

00:01:12.860 the people who who follow free speech and medicine will really know who you are probably have consumed

00:01:20.080 at least one or maybe both your books but uh maybe you could start off i'll follow the same format as

00:01:27.000 with some of our other speakers maybe just tell us just a brief thumbnail sketch who are you and uh

00:01:32.220 what's your background yeah so i'll give you both a bit of the you know 30 second personal stuff and

00:01:37.960 then the professional i was born in beirut lebanon grew up there had to leave because of the lebanese

00:01:44.620 civil war moved to canada grew up in canada as of the age of 11 then uh went on to pursue my more

00:01:52.440 advanced studies in the united states and i've been back in canada since 2003 in terms of professionally

00:01:58.960 i'm a i'm someone who marries several cognate disciplines and so i apply of course psychology

00:02:06.740 to study decision making to study consumer decision making economic decision making but what is perhaps

00:02:12.660 more unique to my profile is that i apply evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology to study human

00:02:19.300 behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular so i'm at the intersection of evolutionary

00:02:24.620 biology and consumer psychology that's my uh you know i if you like my academic uh profile uh that said

00:02:32.940 i always remind people that i have faced two great wars in my life the first great war was the one in

00:02:39.060 lebanon the second great war is the war on reason that i have faced for the past 30 years as a professor

00:02:44.620 that's what compelled me to then write uh this guy right here the yellow book the parasitic mind

00:02:51.420 where i basically argued uh and which is i mean i think uniquely relevant to a medical oriented uh audience

00:02:59.320 uh neural parasites are parasites that can infect many different animals there's a struggle between the

00:03:06.780 the host and the parasite usually the parasite is trying to alter the neuronal circuitry of the host

00:03:13.100 to suit its own reproductive interest so i took that framework and i argued that human beings

00:03:19.500 whilst they can certainly be parasitized by actual brain worms by actual neuro parasites they can be

00:03:26.180 parasitized by a second class of parasites i call these idea pathogens ideological parasites and so what i do

00:03:33.360 in the book is i trace each of these idea pathogens regrettably as a professor i'm here to tell you that

00:03:40.020 all of these idea pathogens started off in a university ecosystem because it takes intellectuals to come up

00:03:46.600 with some of the dumbest ideas and therefore i talk about these parasites these ideological parasites

00:03:52.780 and then i offer using medical terminology i offer hopefully a mind vaccine to try to inoculate us

00:04:00.400 against some of this imbecility well which kind of leads me into one of the things i wanted to ask you

00:04:07.180 so you you are a professor at a canadian university which is as at least concordia is at least as

00:04:16.280 infected with wokeism as any other university these days how how have you managed to survive that

00:04:22.860 environment it often has made me wonder universities are not a great place these days for people who

00:04:30.380 actually seek the truth and speak the truth and but you're still there how how have you managed

00:04:34.560 are you a cia plant or a mossad agent yeah you know it's it's a question that people often ask me

00:04:44.100 because it is it does uh uh you know strike one is quite uh incredible that given how outspoken i am

00:04:52.100 i mean i probably say more things that are that can that are worthy of being canceled by a given monday

00:04:58.480 morning than most people will say in their career i think there's a combination of things number one

00:05:03.440 uh i am someone who does their homework whenever i take a position so that i'm while i'm very irreverent

00:05:13.100 to political correctness when i take a position boy i can defend it and so good luck to you if you come

00:05:19.520 to me to try to debate me on the content and the merits of the positions that i've taken right so i don't go

00:05:25.280 off the cuff if i take a position i'm able to defend it number one number two i do very much uh

00:05:33.180 exhibit the honey badger attitude which is if you're going to come after me it's going to be very costly

00:05:38.980 now it doesn't mean i'm going to come after you and beat you up but i'm certainly not going to wilt

00:05:43.960 away and you know suck my thumb in a fetal position and so i think that plus the fact that i mean i'm only

00:05:50.720 speaking of myself because you asked me the question right uh i think i do have also a personal

00:05:56.760 style that makes it for for some people it's too spicy but for other people it's quite disarming

00:06:02.920 because i do use humor i do use satire i am someone who smiles a lot and those are certainly cues that

00:06:10.960 even your staunchest enemies i mean i had one guy who interviewed me once and at the end of the chat he

00:06:16.940 said to me you know i'm very upset at you god i said oh why is that he goes because i came with

00:06:21.600 every intention to really dislike you during this chat but god damn it you're so likable and so i

00:06:27.260 i think that also contributes to maybe why i don't get some of the vitriol that others do

00:06:33.140 and to be fair to concordia while they haven't been i mean they haven't been openly hostile towards me

00:06:40.100 what they have done is they have pretended as though i don't exist so in a sense we've we've

00:06:46.380 reached an entente a an implicit entente whereby i go about doing my things and they just stay out of

00:06:52.300 my way which is regrettable because you would think that they should be proud of some of the things

00:06:57.300 that i do but uh they'd rather just avoid uh you know marking the fact that i exist so that's how

00:07:03.800 i've been able to exist so far knock on wood uh you know you know it's a tough time in the university

00:07:08.620 is when the best you can hope for is to be ignored exactly right you've reached the pinnacle i have

00:07:14.860 reached the pinnacle it's like a nobel prize exactly um so there's a lot of us you know i'm i'm a little

00:07:22.700 bit involved with the university through the med school and having taught residence went up but

00:07:28.380 i'm kind of an outsider looking in as most of us is it really as bad as it appears is it really that

00:07:35.780 bad inside the university yeah that's that's a great question so it depends how you want to frame

00:07:40.460 uh the answer to your question so if if if what you're saying is are most of the students who are

00:07:47.460 walking around campus you know as i you know jokingly say blue-haired taliban who are you know

00:07:53.920 woke activists then the answer then the good news is going to be absolutely not right so most just go

00:08:00.280 about merrily about doing their business but then here's the bad part how many people did it take to

00:08:07.000 alter the new york landscape on september 11 2001 was it 19 million terrorists was it 190 million

00:08:15.300 oh no it was only 19 terrorists so in other words it doesn't take many people to create devastating

00:08:22.160 change right and it goes very slowly uh bit by bit the professors become infected with all of these

00:08:29.480 parasitic ideas they pass those on to their students their students become the prime minister of

00:08:36.080 canada who is a walking machine of woke gibberish and so in the day-to-day i can go about my business

00:08:44.540 in class without ever seeing any manifestations of those woke ideas but you have to take a a wider view

00:08:51.700 of the problem uh can you speak freely in class will most students tell you they avoid

00:08:58.060 saying certain things and they engage in self-censorship then the number would be 95 so it depends which

00:09:04.700 metric you're looking at are most students walking activists absolutely not is there an environment of

00:09:11.420 great self-censorship where we are losing the battle on reason absolutely yes um and now i'm going to get

00:09:19.700 into some bigger questions which i i appreciate that it may not be able to answer well in a short format but

00:09:24.960 um do you what you point to is the the maybe the few biggest factors that have led us to that new environment

00:09:33.840 of the self-censorship and this kowtowing to that small percentage of easily offended people how do how do we get there

00:09:44.300 right well yeah that is a big question that's it's basically called the parasitic mind the entire book

00:09:49.200 is all about that so look uh and actually i i'm thinking of using us this kind of framework in in part

00:09:57.460 of my talk uh at the end of the month at at your conference uh operations research is a applied

00:10:04.640 mathematics field where you're trying to optimize something you're trying to minimize something or

00:10:09.620 you're trying to maximize something so how do how do we design this thing to minimize wasted material

00:10:14.960 what should be our manufacturing plant schedule to maximize profit so it's an applied mathematics field

00:10:22.240 that tries to solve what are called objective functions what are you trying to minimize or maximize

00:10:27.260 now why am i saying all this and i touch upon this briefly in the parasitic mind what is the objective

00:10:33.060 function that the university is trying to maximize well historically we would have all agreed

00:10:38.460 that it's to pursue truth it's to enrich your your intellect and therefore those were the metrics

00:10:46.360 that we were all you know weaponizing all of our tools to try to maximize optimize so that the if the

00:10:53.260 student leaves the school having received a well-founded well-reasoned education it could be in

00:10:58.800 classics it could be in medicine it could be in the business school it could be in anything

00:11:02.280 but they are intellectually enriched then we've done our job now imagine if the objective

00:11:07.900 function that i'm trying to now maximize is minimize hurt feelings uh minimize the marginalization of

00:11:17.100 marginalized groups now those objective functions that you're trying to in this case optimize might

00:11:24.580 be perfectly contrary to the original goal which was right so if you're pitting uh minimizing hurt

00:11:31.200 feelings against maximizing truth seeking those things will often and not always but will often coincide

00:11:37.840 uh will conflict right so for example if i want to show you using an evolutionary framework that uh there is

00:11:46.360 a universal sex difference where the the the sex that performs better on that function doesn't fit

00:11:53.400 the politically correct narrative well you better make sure to not publish that because then that might

00:11:59.460 marginalize one sex and it might might perpetuate patriarchal uh sexist stereotypes right on the other

00:12:08.440 hand if you think no if i applied the scientific method truthfully in an unbiased manner then let the let

00:12:15.580 the dice you know let the cards fall where they they fall it is what it is so i think that that's what

00:12:21.860 you know opens the door for all this stupidity to come in now it's the idea pathogens then that

00:12:29.060 oiled the machine of irrationality right so let's start with the granddaddy of all idea pathogens

00:12:35.500 post-modernism post-modernism took took hold of many many disciplines and it basically argued that

00:12:42.660 there are no objective truths other than of course the one objective truth that there are no objective

00:12:47.580 truths and therefore what's up what's down what's left what's right we can't really talk about male

00:12:53.580 or female even that is fluid there is no universal truth to speak of so you might imagine how much of

00:13:00.960 a nihilistic position that is how anti-science it is because scientists do wake up every day thinking

00:13:06.240 that there is a universal truth to be discovered now in science it's provisionally true what we thought

00:13:11.860 was true we used to think in medicine that it was due all diseases were due to the four humors

00:13:16.820 right now we don't think that and so we we understand that science is auto-corrective but

00:13:22.340 we do epistemologically think that there is a truth to be discovered well many of these idea pathogens

00:13:28.180 completely destroy that possibility so that cocktail of stuff that i just said is exactly why we are in the

00:13:34.420 abyss of infinite lunacy today right and um besides the um besides coming to speak at free speech in

00:13:44.540 medicine uh how do we again another huge question but how do you see us best fighting back against

00:13:51.300 this because people people often ask me that like what can i do about this it's so frustrating what do

00:13:55.780 you what do you think the average person could do yeah that's great well listen uh you are the example

00:14:01.400 of what you need to do you you're a physician who undoubtedly leads already a very busy life you can

00:14:07.100 merrily go about treating your patients in a ethical proper manner and say look you know what let let

00:14:12.860 get sad worry about all this stuff you know i think jordan peterson can handle this you know joe rogan's

00:14:17.120 got got a much better platform than me but something within you compelled you to say no however big or

00:14:23.380 small my voice is i think i can contribute to this battle of ideas for the soul of our societies so in

00:14:30.480 exactly that same way everybody can modulate the extent to which they can intervene in this battle it

00:14:38.160 might be as little as when i'm at the pub with my friends so this is a safe environment where someone

00:14:44.340 says oh no but of course we now know that men too can menstruate maybe challenge them on that really i

00:14:50.200 didn't i didn't know that i thought only women menstruate right so the idea is that all i'm imploring

00:14:55.800 people to do is get engaged some of us will have big big weaponry to get engaged some of us will have

00:15:03.280 little water guns but we're all participating we're not diffusing the responsibility on the

00:15:08.420 shoulders of others and if we do that i promise you the silent majority hates that stuff it's the

00:15:14.640 it's the vociferous minority that's holding the silent majority hostage if we all find our voices in

00:15:21.820 unison we'll get rid of this stuff by next tuesday lovely well um as i we have sort of a hard out so

00:15:30.000 i'll ask you another question um i've i've read the parasitic mind very much enjoyed it um i we've

00:15:36.940 bought your new book it's uh sitting waiting to be read so maybe in a nutshell what what is the sad

00:15:43.800 truth about happiness uh well they are well they are find the right spouse find the job that gives you

00:15:52.100 purpose and meaning adhere to the ancient uh uh aristotle maxim of everything in moderation

00:15:59.600 uh view life as a playground seek variety within moderation uh try to live your life so that you

00:16:08.380 don't ruminate in regret later in life uh have uh an ethos of anti-fragility to failure very few goals

00:16:17.780 that we wish to achieve don't are not littered with or or with a minefield of possible failures

00:16:23.900 leonel messi the greatest soccer player of all time was told that he was too small and frail to

00:16:29.580 ever be a professional soccer player uh jk rowling was rejected by every single publisher until the

00:16:35.280 last one didn't reject her steven spielberg uh was rejected not once not twice but three times from the

00:16:42.100 usc film school and so uh i basically go through each of these chapters where i offer some prescriptions

00:16:48.780 but just to to make it clear to the audience unlike most quote self-help books i've got the

00:16:55.700 epistemological humility to say i don't guarantee you that if you pursue these prescriptions you'll

00:17:01.060 be happier but life is about navigating through statistical probabilities if you implement these

00:17:07.460 prescriptions you certainly increase your chances of being happier so that's in a nutshell what the book

00:17:13.220 is about it's a bit of personal anecdotes coupled with ancient wisdoms backed up by contemporary science

00:17:18.460 that that is a great summary and certainly it sounds like people need to get that book well worth it

00:17:25.800 thank you sir yes um so do you want to give us a little hint of uh towards your what you're going to

00:17:33.400 be talking about at free speech in medicine in a sense we we covered a lot of the general themes here

00:17:39.880 i'm going to get into how these idea pathogens proliferate how they affect our ability to uh feel confident

00:17:47.920 enough to engage in freedom of speech so one of the things that i'll talk about which i've recently been

00:17:51.800 talking about in several of my uh invited uh lectures this the important distinction between

00:17:57.680 deontological versus consequentialist ethics deontological is an absolute statement it is never

00:18:03.540 okay to lie would be a deontological statement consequentialist would be it's okay to lie

00:18:08.160 if i'm trying to spare someone's feelings well when it comes to science when it comes to truth

00:18:13.960 seeking when it comes to freedom of inquiry freedom of speech that has to be a deontological

00:18:18.840 principle once you say i believe in freedom of speech but once you say but you are you don't

00:18:25.340 believe in freedom of speech notwithstanding the usual caveats no defamation no invocation to

00:18:30.940 violence and so on and so i will be talking about the importance of viewings these fundamentally

00:18:36.760 important values as deontological principles lovely well we we really appreciate coming i know you

00:18:44.300 were you were invited to the jordan peterson's arc initiative and uh i appreciate that you know

00:18:50.660 rather than hang out with those crazy all right people over there britain you're you're coming to

00:18:54.920 our uh little conference in cape breton so we feel very very fortunate and blessed that you're coming

00:19:00.220 thank you very much and i'll end with a very important question so when i post this podcast

00:19:06.880 i wanted to make sure i use your correct pronouns and is it okay to use he him and please use he him

00:19:14.020 although as we know from the very smart people at harvard my gender identity is situationally fluid

00:19:21.220 so by the time that you posted it may no longer be he him but as we're speaking today it is he him so go

00:19:27.640 with it okay so you can let me know if there's any updates i will indeed thank you so much okay

00:19:32.900 and i look forward to meeting you in both three and a half weeks likewise cheers thanks so much

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 04, 2023

My Chat with Dr. Chris Milburn - Free Speech in Medicine Conference (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_590)

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