The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Restoring the Sciences - Evolutionary Psychology and Mind Parasites (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 Okay, good afternoon. Welcome, everyone. I see people are trickling into this webinar. I'd like to welcome you to today's episode of our webinar series, Restoring the Sciences.

00:00:12.540 I'm Scott Turner, and I'm Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, which also sponsors this webinar series.

00:00:19.660 Our topic today is this. Why is it that bad ideas seem to spread so quickly and seem to have such staying power that the good ideas end up being crushed?

00:00:31.220 Is this a kind of mind contagion at work, a social disease of the human mind?

00:00:36.540 Or is there a kind of Gresham's Law at work where bad ideas, like bad money, drives out the good?

00:00:43.160 Our guest today is eminently qualified to address this question.

00:00:46.580 He is Gadsad, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University in Montreal, and until recently was the Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption.

00:00:58.540 Certainly an intriguing title there.

00:01:00.980 And apt.

00:01:02.720 Gadsad is a prominent proponent of evolutionary psychology, and we're going to be going into what evolutionary psychology is during our conversation today, so I'll defer that for the moment.

00:01:13.640 But during his career, Gadsad has made a name for himself using principles of evolutionary psychology to understand the psychology of consumer behavior, marketing, advertising, and many other interesting topics.

00:01:27.340 Lately, he's been a prominent critic of the latest mind parasites to infect our culture, most seriously, it seems, in the academy, namely the fixation on the cult of, capital letters here, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:01:43.340 Or perhaps that would be phrased more descriptively as diversity, inclusion, and equity, and I will leave it to you, the audience, to parse out the acronym for yourself.

00:01:52.840 He has a prominent media presence, he has a YouTube channel, podcasts, webinars, his YouTube channel is called The Sod Truth, which attracts more than 7 million subscribers, and his podcast is equally, if not more, widely known and subscribed to.

00:02:11.260 He's the author of several books, including his most famous one, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, which was published in 2020.

00:02:22.460 And prior to this, he published a book with nearly my favorite book title of all time, The Consuming Instinct, What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift-Giving Reveal About Human Nature, published in 2011 by Prometheus Press.

00:02:37.820 I'll be putting links to all these and more into the chat box, so please have a look and copy them at some point if you're interested.

00:02:45.460 And also, we like to have question and answer in these things.

00:02:51.600 Please do post questions at any time into the chat box or preferably into the Q&A box.

00:03:00.640 Please, God and I will have a conversation going for about 45 minutes, and after that, we'll open up the floor to Q&A from you, the audience.

00:03:10.500 You don't have to wait until Q&A starts to post these questions.

00:03:13.840 Please post them at any time, and we'll have a really nice conversation as a consequence of that.

00:03:20.660 So, with all that, welcome, God, to Restoring the Sciences, and we're really pleased that you're here.

00:03:26.660 Oh, I'm so glad to be with you, and it was so nice to meet you in person at my alma mater last month at Cornell.

00:03:35.800 The pleasure was mine as well.

00:03:37.560 Okay, so let's just jump right into a very basic question here.

00:03:42.660 So, you describe yourself as an evolutionary psychologist, and that designation in itself is a little bit controversial.

00:03:50.180 There's no shortage of people out there who criticize the whole notion of evolutionary psychology.

00:03:57.600 Mostly the criticism seems to come from people conflating evolutionary psychology with sociobiology in particular, and more generally with Darwinian evolution.

00:04:08.860 And so, I'm not sure the validity of these kinds of things or the connections.

00:04:13.420 So, let's start off by clarifying what it is that you mean by evolutionary psychology.

00:04:19.480 What is it?

00:04:20.740 Right.

00:04:21.440 Thank you for that opening question.

00:04:23.700 It's nice to be back to my original wheelhouse of evolutionary theory.

00:04:28.500 So, evolutionary psychology is a lens that I was first exposed to in my first semester as a doctoral student at Cornell.

00:04:38.060 I had taken a course in advanced social psychology, and about halfway through the semester, the professor, his name is, he's now retired, Professor Dennis Regan, assigned a book to the class called Homicide, which was written by two of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, Martin Daly and Margot Wilson, husband and wife team.

00:04:59.140 They were actually based out of McMaster University in Canada.

00:05:03.020 And in the book, they looked at universal patterns of criminality that occur in exactly the same form, irrespective of culture and irrespective of time period.

00:05:15.520 And so, the idea is there might be some underlying biological slash evolutionary mechanisms that explain these invariant patterns.

00:05:24.420 So, example, I'll give you two because I want to kind of give the genesis of how I then developed evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior and so on.

00:05:34.880 And so, if you look at patterns of child abuse, social scientists have come up with a million different, quote, causative agents that might predict why child abuse happens.

00:05:47.100 Maybe you're born in the wrong side of the tracks, maybe your parents were alcoholic, maybe they were abused or they repeated the abuse with you.

00:05:55.140 And all of these have some validity.

00:05:57.600 But it turns out, Scott, that the number one biggest predictor of child abuse, it's a hundredfold more predictive than the next one.

00:06:07.940 Now, for our viewers who may be not understanding what a hundredfold means, if you're studying the pharmaceutical efficacy of a drug and it has an odds ratio of 1 to 1.2, that means it's 20% more effective.

00:06:22.100 So, it's 1 to 1.2.

00:06:24.280 This is 1 to 100.

00:06:27.020 You can only dream of such findings in science.

00:06:30.420 Well, it turns out that if there is a step-parent in the home, that's a hundredfold greater predictor of there being child abuse.

00:06:39.620 That eventually became known in the scientific literature as the Cinderella effect.

00:06:44.380 The Cinderella effect, of course, comes from the universal fable of the evil stepmother, but who is strategically evil.

00:06:52.200 She's only evil to her stepdaughter, but not to her two biological children.

00:06:57.580 And now, we have very similar patterns of differential treatment as a function of whether the children are mine or not across many animal species.

00:07:08.960 In lion prides, when new dominant males come in and kick out or kill the resident dominant males, the first thing they do is kill off all the cubs that could not have been sired by them.

00:07:23.020 And incidentally, that causes the lionesses to go into estrus.

00:07:28.400 So, I often joke with my students that if you want to get the ladies in the mood in a pride, kill their children, and then they're ready to mate with you.

00:07:35.880 And so, that was a big eureka moment because it demonstrated to me the parsimony and the explanatory elegance of the evolutionary framework.

00:07:44.220 I'll give one other quick example, and then I'll explain what evolutionary psychology is.

00:07:47.500 If you look at the most dangerous person in a woman's life throughout all time periods and all cultures, it could be the Yanomomo tribe in Amazon, it could be 1950s Detroit neighborhood.

00:08:03.440 It's not the serial killer who is hiding in the bushes.

00:08:06.940 It's her long-term partner.

00:08:09.380 And what is the absolute, unequivocal, number one reason that that guy is driven to homicidal rage, either due to suspected or realized infidelity by his female partner?

00:08:23.940 Why would that happen?

00:08:25.380 Because in the human context, we're a bi-parental species.

00:08:29.120 Therefore, males have evolved to invest quite heavily in their children.

00:08:32.740 And we do have paternity uncertainty.

00:08:34.760 Therefore, your ancestors and mine are not those that didn't mind if their ladies went around with 50 guys, because that would be a suboptimal evolutionary strategy.

00:08:45.660 And so, when I saw, and there were many, many other examples like that in the book, I had my eureka moment.

00:08:50.720 I said, okay, well, I found what I'm going to do.

00:08:53.080 I'm going to take this evolutionary framework.

00:08:56.260 Instead of applying it to criminality, I'll apply it to the behavioral sciences in general, to decision-making and consumer behavior in particular.

00:09:04.860 Hence, I ended up founding the field of evolutionary or Darwinian consumption.

00:09:09.580 Now, specifically, what is evolutionary psychology?

00:09:12.400 There is a few key tenets.

00:09:14.040 Number one, evolutionary psychology recognizes that the mind is not tabula rasa.

00:09:19.520 We are not born empty slates, and it is strictly socialization that teaches us how to be.

00:09:26.840 We are born with certain innate biological imperatives.

00:09:30.440 And we can demonstrate that in many, many ways.

00:09:32.520 So, for example, if I want to show that a child has an innate preference for facial symmetry,

00:09:38.300 I can take children who are too young to have been socialized,

00:09:41.400 and I can demonstrate that they already have that perceptual and sensorial penchant, okay?

00:09:46.840 So, number one, the human mind does come with some biological blueprints.

00:09:52.180 Number two, there's what's called the domain specificity of the human mind.

00:09:58.160 So, most psychologists, non-evolutionary psychologists,

00:10:02.100 view the mind as an amalgamation of domain general mechanisms.

00:10:06.540 So, for example, our intelligence is a domain general ability.

00:10:11.180 I can use my intelligence to do well in my job, to find a mate, to solve calculus problems.

00:10:19.000 So, it's a universal key that I can use across many domains, right?

00:10:23.540 Domain specificity argues something very different.

00:10:27.820 It says that, yes, we have domain general mechanisms in our brain,

00:10:32.820 but we also have domain-specific computational systems

00:10:36.640 that evolved to solve specific evolutionary problems

00:10:41.320 that were recurring in our evolutionary past.

00:10:44.160 Find mate, retain mate, build coalitions, invest in kin, avoid predators, you know, and so on.

00:10:51.980 So, therefore, for people to understand what that means,

00:10:56.340 think of the Swiss army knife.

00:10:58.100 The Swiss army knife is made up of an amalgamation of different blades,

00:11:03.320 each of which cannot be transferred to another task.

00:11:07.100 I can't use the part that uncorks the wine bottle to cut butter,

00:11:12.680 whereas a domain general knife, if you'd like, could be used for many different things, okay?

00:11:17.720 So, evolutionary psychologists recognize that the brain is made up of both domain general

00:11:23.420 and domain-specific computational systems.

00:11:26.800 And the third one, and then I'll stop.

00:11:28.960 Forgive me for the long technical answer.

00:11:31.740 The third thing that evolutionary psychologists posit,

00:11:35.740 although it applies not just to evolutionary psychologists,

00:11:39.020 but to evolutionists in general,

00:11:40.480 is that we recognize that scientific explanations operate at two epistemological levels.

00:11:47.620 The proximate level, which explains the how and the what of a phenomenon.

00:11:55.080 How does diabetes work?

00:11:57.060 What are the factors that increase your proclivity to get diabetes?

00:12:01.300 So, and much of science operates at the proximate level.

00:12:04.500 Most Nobel Prizes have been won at the proximate level.

00:12:06.980 That's great.

00:12:08.020 But here is where the evolutionary lens offers something unique.

00:12:11.820 They offer what's called the ultimate explanation.

00:12:14.800 Ultimate doesn't mean superior.

00:12:18.200 It means ultimate in that if you unfold the causal chain,

00:12:23.280 it answers the ultimate Darwinian why.

00:12:26.640 Why did the mechanism evolve to be of that form?

00:12:30.180 Why have we evolved romantic jealousy?

00:12:33.220 Why have we evolved sexual territoriality?

00:12:36.480 Why do women experience pregnancy sickness?

00:12:39.560 So, when you're studying any biological agent,

00:12:43.460 if you only restrict your explanation to the proximate world,

00:12:47.140 you're only getting part of the answer.

00:12:49.300 If you study the phenomenon at both proximate and ultimate levels,

00:12:53.440 now you fully understand something.

00:12:55.480 So, that's what evolutionary psychology is.

00:12:57.880 Okay.

00:12:58.420 All right.

00:12:58.880 So, you know, I've been looking around for a long time

00:13:03.900 at critiques of evolutionary psychology.

00:13:06.800 And, you know, just to make a general point

00:13:11.440 that we might expand on a little bit later,

00:13:15.380 you know, people have, I think,

00:13:18.140 a very great difficulty in looking at these problems

00:13:25.440 from multiple epistemological levels, as you've said.

00:13:29.820 And one of the criticisms, well,

00:13:33.840 some of the criticisms that I've seen

00:13:35.600 seem to conflate evolutionary psychology

00:13:38.560 with kind of a very crude gene selectionism,

00:13:42.120 which is almost a kind of genetic determinism, you know.

00:13:47.340 And they use genetic determinism as a kind of,

00:13:51.500 well, the critique is that you're using genetic determinism

00:13:54.860 as a means of kind of a social Darwinist idea

00:13:59.920 that because it has benefited reproduction,

00:14:02.840 that somehow it's been selected for

00:14:05.320 and that somehow, in some strange way,

00:14:09.400 justifies the behavior, you know.

00:14:11.400 And so, you know, this seems to be a problem

00:14:17.040 that runs through a lot of controversies in biology right now.

00:14:21.020 You know, you can see it in the whole transgender issue,

00:14:25.520 for example, and we've had some interviews

00:14:27.420 with just some fascinating critics

00:14:31.000 of the whole transgender ideology.

00:14:34.160 It seems that the argument is

00:14:37.380 you have to either go completely gene determinist

00:14:40.720 or you have to go completely to tabula rasa.

00:14:44.760 And yet biology is a little bit of both, right?

00:14:46.980 I mean, if you understand this,

00:14:50.280 if you understand the biology,

00:14:51.700 you'll know that there's a certain amount

00:14:53.280 of adaptability, flexibility,

00:14:55.420 these kinds of things in any basically cognitive system,

00:15:00.380 even if it's as sophisticated as a human brain, for example,

00:15:04.680 or the human mega brain, the social brain, if you will,

00:15:07.880 right down to things like microbial mats

00:15:10.180 and those kinds of things.

00:15:11.040 They also have a kind of odd sort of intelligence.

00:15:14.200 And in every case, there's a component of genetic heredity

00:15:17.700 and there's also a component of adaptability,

00:15:21.440 you know, flexibility and those kinds of things.

00:15:24.720 So how do you respond to people

00:15:28.360 who are criticizing evolutionary psychology

00:15:30.760 as a kind of, you know,

00:15:33.260 crude Darwinian genetic determinism?

00:15:35.740 What's your argument that you bring?

00:15:37.140 Yeah, that's a fantastic question.

00:15:38.800 And actually, you were kind enough

00:15:41.040 in the introduction to mention one of my earlier books,

00:15:44.340 the 2011, The Consuming Instinct

00:15:46.500 with the subtitle that you so appreciated.

00:15:49.960 In that book, in the chapter one,

00:15:53.440 I actually go through some of the main positions

00:16:00.240 that detractors of evolution in general

00:16:02.800 and evolutionary psychology make.

00:16:05.320 And I then offer a rebuttal.

00:16:07.460 So I'll certainly address the ones that you raised,

00:16:11.480 but I can certainly address a few others.

00:16:13.460 So let's first talk about the genetic

00:16:16.440 or slash biological determinism argument.

00:16:18.940 You are exactly right.

00:16:20.400 And when someone makes the argument

00:16:22.700 that evolutionary psychology is biologically deterministic,

00:16:27.040 they're simply saying,

00:16:28.400 I am an utter imbecile

00:16:30.060 who doesn't understand a thing about biology.

00:16:32.320 Because exactly to your point,

00:16:35.400 and what evolutionists call

00:16:37.040 the interactionist framework,

00:16:39.320 it's exactly what you said,

00:16:40.640 which is for most, you know,

00:16:44.140 important phenomena that we might talk about

00:16:47.380 for any species, let alone humans,

00:16:49.600 it really is an interaction

00:16:51.180 between our genes and our environment.

00:16:53.220 Even specifically, genes get turned on or off

00:16:57.300 as a function of environmental inputs.

00:16:59.940 But evolution itself operates

00:17:02.820 within a specific environment.

00:17:04.900 So it is absolutely incorrect

00:17:07.440 to presume that once you believe

00:17:10.380 that evolutionary forces shape,

00:17:12.340 let's say, the human mind,

00:17:13.660 that that means that we are just

00:17:15.720 invariant executors of our genetic imperatives.

00:17:19.560 Nothing could be further from the truth.

00:17:21.000 Now, that sounds all very sort of

00:17:22.660 fancy science language.

00:17:23.980 So let me put it more concretely.

00:17:25.640 There is a universal mechanism

00:17:29.840 that makes men,

00:17:32.520 that makes them compelled to seek status

00:17:35.300 because status is the universal preference

00:17:40.140 that women have across all studied cultures.

00:17:43.260 Like there is no culture

00:17:44.280 that's ever been studied

00:17:45.180 where women say,

00:17:46.760 you want to maximize your chances

00:17:49.500 of mating with me?

00:17:50.760 Please be apathetic,

00:17:52.440 pear-shaped,

00:17:53.280 nasal-voiced,

00:17:54.120 unambitious,

00:17:56.300 beta,

00:17:57.480 never wants to do anything.

00:17:58.960 Boy, that gets me into a sexual frenzy.

00:18:00.980 On the other hand,

00:18:01.580 women say,

00:18:02.240 I want an ambitious,

00:18:03.720 creative,

00:18:04.720 go-getter,

00:18:05.420 socially dominant,

00:18:06.420 so on, okay?

00:18:07.320 Even if they might not be rich,

00:18:09.420 the men,

00:18:10.180 but if they're exhibiting cues of ambition,

00:18:12.600 right?

00:18:12.760 That's why you,

00:18:13.440 that's why women are attracted

00:18:14.500 to the starving,

00:18:16.380 potential future rock stars.

00:18:18.280 They may not have any money,

00:18:19.560 but they exhibit drive,

00:18:21.080 ambition,

00:18:21.740 creativity,

00:18:22.480 talent,

00:18:22.800 okay?

00:18:23.660 Well,

00:18:24.580 the universal mechanism

00:18:26.120 might be seek status,

00:18:27.720 but the specific manifestation

00:18:31.160 of how each of us

00:18:32.760 instantiate that imperative

00:18:34.460 is completely different.

00:18:36.260 I may decide to become

00:18:37.680 a famous soccer player,

00:18:39.060 you may decide to be

00:18:40.340 a famous politician,

00:18:42.540 the next guy might become

00:18:44.340 a great opera singer,

00:18:46.520 so it is an interaction

00:18:48.580 between that biological imperative

00:18:51.480 of seeking status

00:18:52.860 and the idiosyncratic

00:18:54.800 personal trajectory

00:18:56.200 and talents

00:18:57.020 of each of our individual

00:18:58.480 personhoods.

00:18:59.980 So, no,

00:19:01.920 being an evolutionary psychologist

00:19:03.320 does not in any way

00:19:04.480 imply that you are

00:19:06.040 a genetic determinist.

00:19:07.280 As a matter of fact,

00:19:08.460 one of the disciplines

00:19:09.960 within the greater

00:19:11.100 evolutionary behavioral sciences,

00:19:13.820 that's the chair

00:19:14.740 that I held

00:19:15.300 as you kindly pointed to

00:19:17.340 in the introduction,

00:19:19.360 behavioral ecology

00:19:20.700 is the study

00:19:22.400 of cross-cultural

00:19:24.420 differences

00:19:25.380 across populations,

00:19:26.820 precisely in recognition

00:19:28.480 of the fact

00:19:29.160 that we've evolved

00:19:31.160 plasticity.

00:19:34.040 Adaptability

00:19:34.720 is itself

00:19:35.780 an adaptation.

00:19:37.240 The immune system

00:19:38.480 is adaptable

00:19:39.900 and that's the adaptation.

00:19:41.780 So, it is such

00:19:42.580 a laughably

00:19:44.220 incorrect view.

00:19:45.980 Now, the reason why

00:19:46.920 it triggers my ire

00:19:48.960 is because it's the phoenix

00:19:50.760 that never dies.

00:19:52.940 Every generation,

00:19:54.860 a new tsunami

00:19:55.740 of imbeciles

00:19:56.520 comes along

00:19:57.440 and gives us

00:19:58.400 the exact same arguments

00:19:59.720 and then you write

00:20:00.860 yet another paper

00:20:01.980 that demonstrates

00:20:02.660 that it's completely false

00:20:03.980 and then the next generation

00:20:05.440 comes and raises

00:20:06.320 the exact same point.

00:20:07.320 So, there's never

00:20:08.220 any cumulative learning

00:20:09.920 at the core knowledge level.

00:20:12.080 Some of your other arguments,

00:20:13.700 oh, if you provide

00:20:14.980 an evolutionary explanation,

00:20:17.140 you're justifying it

00:20:18.480 or condoning it.

00:20:19.640 That's one of the classic ones.

00:20:21.040 So, if you explain

00:20:22.540 why child abuse happens,

00:20:25.120 you are lending credence

00:20:27.900 to why it is natural

00:20:29.380 for it to happen.

00:20:30.880 Usually, the analogy

00:20:32.140 that I offer

00:20:32.900 that hopefully makes them

00:20:34.520 understand it,

00:20:36.760 an oncologist

00:20:37.960 studies cancer.

00:20:40.580 Who would say

00:20:41.700 that that means

00:20:42.540 he or she

00:20:43.940 is for cancer?

00:20:45.460 He is justifying cancer.

00:20:47.640 He is condoning cancer.

00:20:49.660 People will say,

00:20:50.280 no, of course,

00:20:50.700 that doesn't mean that.

00:20:51.500 It's the same thing.

00:20:52.880 Studying the evolutionary

00:20:54.140 signature of rape

00:20:55.740 or murder

00:20:56.780 or domestic violence

00:20:58.460 or child abuse

00:20:59.480 doesn't mean we are

00:21:00.460 condoning it

00:21:01.580 or justifying it.

00:21:02.580 It means to the extent

00:21:03.440 that they are part

00:21:04.260 of the repertoire

00:21:05.420 of human reality,

00:21:06.640 we have to offer

00:21:07.760 a valid explanation.

00:21:09.100 So, yes,

00:21:10.180 I've gone through

00:21:11.100 all those detractors

00:21:12.720 and, boy,

00:21:13.620 they are immortal.

00:21:14.460 They never go away.

00:21:16.180 So, are we winning

00:21:17.160 or are we losing, God?

00:21:18.540 What do you think?

00:21:19.100 Well, I want to be optimistic.

00:21:22.340 So, I think that if I were,

00:21:24.020 so, maybe I hate to say it,

00:21:26.340 but I'm now old enough.

00:21:27.700 I've been a professor.

00:21:28.840 I'm about to enter

00:21:29.660 my 31st year.

00:21:30.980 I can't believe

00:21:31.700 that's true.

00:21:32.100 I still think of myself

00:21:32.920 as a 12-year-old,

00:21:34.080 wide-eyed kid.

00:21:35.880 If I compare

00:21:37.200 the reaction

00:21:38.260 of my social science colleagues

00:21:40.700 to all of my evolutionary stuff

00:21:43.320 in 1994, 95, 98,

00:21:46.420 to now,

00:21:47.880 I'd have to say unequivocally

00:21:49.380 that there's more

00:21:50.120 acceptance of it.

00:21:51.320 In other words,

00:21:52.060 many of the people

00:21:52.980 who thought,

00:21:53.860 what kind of baloney

00:21:54.820 is this that Gadsad

00:21:56.320 is doing

00:21:56.840 with all this evolution stuff,

00:21:58.620 now they come around

00:21:59.760 and they invite me

00:22:01.020 to be the plenary speaker

00:22:02.200 at their thing.

00:22:02.920 So, there's certainly

00:22:03.740 in 20, 25, 30 years

00:22:05.760 there's been improvement,

00:22:07.040 but maybe it's my impatience

00:22:10.240 that says,

00:22:11.220 but why is it even something

00:22:12.740 that we have to debate, right?

00:22:14.160 To me, anybody who doesn't

00:22:16.420 somehow see the relevance

00:22:18.320 of applying evolution

00:22:19.640 to explain the most important organ

00:22:21.900 in our personhood

00:22:22.820 called our brain

00:22:24.320 is, I call them flat earthers

00:22:26.580 of the human mind, right?

00:22:27.740 It should really be

00:22:28.800 in the least bit contestable

00:22:31.260 that, you know,

00:22:33.620 I mean, if our pancreas

00:22:34.900 evolved through evolution,

00:22:36.240 if our opposable thumbs

00:22:37.660 are due to evolution,

00:22:38.900 I often joke that

00:22:40.440 many of those folks say,

00:22:41.620 but yeah, yeah,

00:22:42.020 that's all good,

00:22:42.980 but it stops right here.

00:22:44.740 Anything above here

00:22:45.940 cannot be due to evolution.

00:22:47.620 So, we are winning,

00:22:49.760 but very small W,

00:22:52.140 I'd like it to be

00:22:53.020 a definitive mic drop win.

00:22:55.660 Yeah, I mean,

00:22:56.780 you know,

00:22:57.560 when you talk about

00:22:59.080 the scientific inquiry

00:23:00.440 stopping at the neck,

00:23:01.600 you know,

00:23:01.920 this is one of the striking things

00:23:04.800 to me about the whole

00:23:06.060 bun fight over race

00:23:08.800 and intelligence,

00:23:09.500 I mean,

00:23:10.900 you would not be troubled

00:23:13.440 by saying that

00:23:14.580 people of African descent

00:23:15.740 will have,

00:23:17.240 you know,

00:23:17.800 slightly different physiology

00:23:19.340 and these kinds of things

00:23:20.860 as results of selection

00:23:23.260 in their environment,

00:23:24.220 you know,

00:23:24.460 sickle cell anemia

00:23:25.300 being the classic example

00:23:26.900 of this,

00:23:27.520 you know,

00:23:27.900 and yet,

00:23:31.120 we're upset

00:23:33.500 by the fact that,

00:23:34.840 well,

00:23:35.660 why can't cognition

00:23:37.700 be a part of that variability

00:23:39.320 and why can't intelligence

00:23:40.600 be a part of that variability

00:23:42.120 and it has nothing to do

00:23:44.320 with higher or lower

00:23:46.320 or inferior or superior

00:23:47.580 or white supremacy

00:23:48.560 or any of these kinds of things,

00:23:50.060 but for some reason,

00:23:51.900 you know,

00:23:52.820 the Overton window,

00:23:53.840 if you will,

00:23:54.300 has been closed

00:23:55.140 on those kinds of things

00:23:56.340 and so you get a very

00:23:57.300 kind of inconsistent,

00:24:00.300 dissonant way

00:24:01.260 of thinking about this,

00:24:02.460 you know,

00:24:02.640 some things

00:24:03.760 can fit comfortably

00:24:05.040 under this,

00:24:05.860 you know,

00:24:06.840 dual epistemology,

00:24:08.400 but others,

00:24:08.980 you know,

00:24:09.180 you just have to

00:24:09.820 kind of stay away from it

00:24:10.940 and,

00:24:11.560 you know,

00:24:13.440 why do you think that is?

00:24:14.640 Why is it that people

00:24:16.220 have this

00:24:17.000 very narrow

00:24:18.980 Overton window

00:24:19.760 when it comes

00:24:20.280 to that sort of thing?

00:24:21.460 Well,

00:24:21.840 so,

00:24:22.200 because they are

00:24:23.060 instantiating

00:24:24.000 what I think

00:24:24.900 is a dreadful idea

00:24:26.040 in science,

00:24:26.680 which is forbidden knowledge,

00:24:28.140 right?

00:24:28.340 If you remember

00:24:29.340 the movie,

00:24:32.020 The Name of the Rose,

00:24:34.460 I think it was called,

00:24:35.460 it was a movie

00:24:36.260 in the mid-80s

00:24:37.260 following a famous book,

00:24:39.440 adaptation of a famous book,

00:24:41.080 where there is this,

00:24:42.540 I think he was

00:24:43.320 a Benedictine monk

00:24:44.560 played by Sean Connery

00:24:46.180 who goes to this monastery

00:24:47.740 during the,

00:24:48.660 I think it was

00:24:48.980 the late Dark Ages,

00:24:50.020 if I'm not mistaken,

00:24:50.960 where all of these monks

00:24:52.660 are dying

00:24:54.000 in mysterious ways

00:24:55.900 and they have

00:24:56.860 this blue

00:24:58.380 kind of dot

00:25:00.320 on their tongues

00:25:01.540 and they don't know

00:25:02.400 what it is

00:25:02.960 and it turns out,

00:25:04.380 and of course

00:25:05.100 I'm going to come back

00:25:05.720 and link it to your question,

00:25:06.900 and it turns out

00:25:07.820 that it's because

00:25:08.580 the head monk

00:25:09.600 had,

00:25:10.540 they had this

00:25:11.160 forbidden library

00:25:12.360 where Aristotle's book

00:25:14.600 on humor

00:25:15.540 had been

00:25:17.640 sealed there

00:25:19.320 and he didn't want them

00:25:21.320 to read that book

00:25:22.460 because,

00:25:22.900 you know,

00:25:23.200 humor is the work

00:25:24.180 of the devil

00:25:24.700 or whatever

00:25:25.380 the theological position was,

00:25:26.860 and yet these monks

00:25:28.120 who were hungry

00:25:29.460 for Aristotle's knowledge

00:25:31.440 would go

00:25:32.560 to the forbidden library

00:25:34.440 and would read the book

00:25:35.760 and as they

00:25:36.440 would turn the pages,

00:25:38.420 he had laced the pages

00:25:39.700 with poison

00:25:40.640 and therefore

00:25:41.640 they would eventually die.

00:25:43.500 Now,

00:25:43.740 why am I saying all this?

00:25:44.860 Because the reflex

00:25:46.000 for someone

00:25:47.340 to come along,

00:25:48.360 in French you say

00:25:49.320 les bien pensants,

00:25:50.560 the better thinkers,

00:25:51.740 the anointed ones,

00:25:52.620 right?

00:25:52.980 There is someone

00:25:53.820 who should tell us

00:25:55.360 what is appropriate

00:25:56.880 to explore,

00:25:58.620 to read,

00:25:59.500 to think,

00:26:00.340 what is settled science,

00:26:01.780 what is not.

00:26:02.620 And so,

00:26:03.560 to your question,

00:26:04.980 once you study

00:26:06.040 sex differences,

00:26:07.660 once you study

00:26:08.740 racial differences,

00:26:10.000 then you are

00:26:11.360 attacking

00:26:12.020 one of the most

00:26:13.080 fundamental

00:26:13.880 parasitic ideas

00:26:15.600 that I discuss

00:26:16.400 in this yellow book,

00:26:17.640 The Parasitic Mind,

00:26:18.460 which is

00:26:19.500 that

00:26:20.200 men and women

00:26:21.860 are indistinguishable

00:26:23.620 from each other

00:26:24.400 and any differences

00:26:25.360 that exist

00:26:26.120 could only be due

00:26:27.220 to socialization.

00:26:28.780 All racial groups,

00:26:30.200 all cultures

00:26:30.880 are equal.

00:26:31.920 How dare you say

00:26:33.220 that this culture's

00:26:34.760 belief system

00:26:35.540 might be viewed

00:26:36.540 as barbaric?

00:26:37.700 Then you're imposing

00:26:38.600 your cultural

00:26:39.560 imperialism on them.

00:26:42.000 So,

00:26:42.220 Franz Boas,

00:26:43.820 a Jewish

00:26:44.620 anthropologist

00:26:45.720 nearly a hundred years ago,

00:26:47.500 started the whole program

00:26:49.320 of cultural relativism

00:26:50.520 and then that led

00:26:51.640 to many

00:26:52.180 of his famous

00:26:53.300 doctoral students,

00:26:54.440 Margaret Mead

00:26:55.040 and so on,

00:26:55.860 arguing that

00:26:56.500 there is no such thing

00:26:58.160 as a human universal.

00:26:59.240 There isn't a single thing

00:27:00.960 that you can

00:27:01.900 lay your hat on

00:27:03.360 as a human universal.

00:27:04.880 Well,

00:27:05.080 the average

00:27:05.580 three-day-old squirrel

00:27:06.800 knows that that's false.

00:27:08.020 What do you mean

00:27:08.340 there are no universal?

00:27:09.440 There is no culture

00:27:10.600 where this frown,

00:27:11.780 look at this frown,

00:27:12.880 where this means

00:27:13.920 I'm happy.

00:27:15.360 There is,

00:27:15.840 we haven't found

00:27:16.560 that culture.

00:27:17.500 There is no culture,

00:27:18.840 notwithstanding

00:27:19.540 Margaret Mead's

00:27:20.460 attempt to argue

00:27:21.200 that she had found

00:27:22.340 such a culture,

00:27:23.040 which was complete nonsense,

00:27:24.380 there is no culture

00:27:25.480 where women

00:27:26.440 are not

00:27:27.840 more sexually

00:27:28.940 judicious

00:27:29.680 than men.

00:27:30.580 It doesn't exist.

00:27:31.920 And the answer

00:27:32.780 is very simple

00:27:33.520 because the

00:27:34.720 cost of making

00:27:36.900 a poor mate choice

00:27:38.500 looms larger

00:27:39.600 for women

00:27:40.220 than it does

00:27:40.800 for men

00:27:41.300 and that is true

00:27:42.520 across any culture,

00:27:43.940 across any time period.

00:27:45.160 So that's the reason,

00:27:47.640 so to answer your question

00:27:48.440 and again

00:27:48.800 in a perhaps

00:27:49.480 slightly long-winded way,

00:27:50.780 it's because

00:27:51.460 we've created

00:27:52.840 these parasitic ideas

00:27:54.660 that are very noble

00:27:56.540 and hopeful

00:27:57.260 but that are perfectly

00:27:58.500 rooted in nonsense.

00:28:00.120 Mm-hmm, yeah.

00:28:00.920 so most of the

00:28:04.700 applications

00:28:05.420 of evolutionary psychology

00:28:07.920 as you practice it,

00:28:09.200 I gather,

00:28:09.740 have been in the business world

00:28:11.080 how to create

00:28:12.620 effective advertising

00:28:14.040 and understanding

00:28:15.060 consumer mentality

00:28:17.300 and those kinds of things.

00:28:18.460 so there are some

00:28:21.000 obvious things

00:28:22.520 one could say

00:28:23.220 about that,

00:28:23.920 you know,

00:28:24.180 you use

00:28:25.120 sexual attractiveness

00:28:26.700 to flog products

00:28:27.980 and those kinds of things

00:28:29.000 but what's the

00:28:31.400 most

00:28:31.980 paradoxical,

00:28:35.300 the most

00:28:35.740 almost contrary

00:28:36.700 prediction

00:28:37.200 that's come out

00:28:38.020 of your studies

00:28:39.360 in this?

00:28:40.140 Very good.

00:28:40.960 Before I try

00:28:41.800 to answer that,

00:28:43.440 it actually is,

00:28:44.900 I mean,

00:28:45.140 yes,

00:28:45.380 of course,

00:28:45.880 using sex

00:28:46.660 to sell

00:28:47.200 as an obvious one

00:28:48.020 but,

00:28:48.760 you know,

00:28:49.200 my 30 plus year research,

00:28:51.180 you know,

00:28:51.620 does a lot less obvious stuff

00:28:53.340 so let me give you examples.

00:28:54.820 We know

00:28:55.580 that across many

00:28:57.140 species,

00:28:59.620 females of that species

00:29:01.040 go into estrus

00:29:02.220 and when they go into estrus

00:29:03.740 meaning they become

00:29:04.620 sexually receptive,

00:29:06.000 they exhibit

00:29:06.780 all sorts of

00:29:08.000 very conspicuous cues

00:29:09.800 to say,

00:29:10.360 hey,

00:29:10.660 I'm open for business

00:29:12.600 so to speak.

00:29:13.440 Well,

00:29:13.660 in the human context,

00:29:14.780 it's not quite as explicit

00:29:16.580 and how conspicuous

00:29:17.920 it is

00:29:18.300 but so I did a study

00:29:19.800 with one of my

00:29:20.340 former graduate students

00:29:21.340 where we looked at

00:29:22.500 how do women

00:29:24.120 beautify themselves

00:29:25.600 as a function

00:29:26.660 of where they are

00:29:27.620 in their menstrual cycle

00:29:28.780 and as you might expect

00:29:30.940 if you are evolutionary minded,

00:29:32.680 when they are

00:29:33.480 in the maximally fertile phase

00:29:35.320 of their menstrual cycle,

00:29:36.640 that's when they really engage

00:29:38.240 in vigorous sexual signaling.

00:29:40.360 Here's another study

00:29:41.360 and again,

00:29:42.820 it's all coming

00:29:43.920 from an understanding

00:29:44.960 of the animal kingdom,

00:29:47.040 right?

00:29:47.340 And that's the beauty

00:29:48.800 of being an evolutionist

00:29:49.880 is that you could

00:29:50.460 look at homologies

00:29:51.680 and analogies

00:29:52.740 across species

00:29:53.820 in order to make

00:29:55.140 certain predictions

00:29:56.260 for humans in general

00:29:57.740 and consumers in particular.

00:29:59.480 So I did a study

00:30:00.380 with one of my

00:30:00.920 other graduate students

00:30:01.860 where we wanted

00:30:02.600 to demonstrate

00:30:03.360 the effects of testosterone

00:30:05.200 on wins and losses.

00:30:07.200 We know from across species

00:30:08.480 that let's say

00:30:09.340 when two males fight,

00:30:10.540 the winner will have

00:30:11.560 a rise in testosterone

00:30:12.600 and the loser will have

00:30:13.640 a drop in testosterone.

00:30:15.020 Well, how might that

00:30:16.020 manifest itself

00:30:16.880 in an economic

00:30:17.760 slash consumer context?

00:30:19.240 Well,

00:30:20.200 we got men

00:30:22.760 to drive

00:30:23.500 either a fancy Porsche

00:30:24.980 or a beaten up

00:30:26.440 old sedan

00:30:26.960 and we took

00:30:28.100 salivary assays

00:30:29.580 before they drove

00:30:31.100 those cars

00:30:31.660 and after they drove

00:30:32.820 their cars

00:30:33.340 and of course

00:30:34.220 as most of your audience

00:30:35.900 can probably predict

00:30:36.940 at this point,

00:30:37.880 we found that

00:30:39.040 when you put young men

00:30:40.360 in a Porsche,

00:30:41.180 their endocrinological system

00:30:43.000 explodes

00:30:43.620 because I have

00:30:44.360 immediately imbued you

00:30:45.800 with huge social status

00:30:48.020 via the interaction,

00:30:50.380 you know,

00:30:50.640 ownership of a

00:30:51.560 high status product.

00:30:52.980 So it's not always,

00:30:55.440 oh,

00:30:55.840 applying evolutionary theory

00:30:57.420 to better create advertisements,

00:31:00.200 although that could

00:31:00.840 certainly be the case.

00:31:01.980 I'm really trying

00:31:03.160 to examine

00:31:04.400 the signatures

00:31:06.060 of our human nature

00:31:07.600 in a modern context.

00:31:09.260 That would be the way

00:31:10.240 that I would describe it.

00:31:11.480 Now,

00:31:11.760 what are some things

00:31:12.540 that have surprised me?

00:31:14.140 So I was recently asked

00:31:15.840 on a show

00:31:16.620 that I appeared on.

00:31:17.620 It was hosted

00:31:18.300 by a British psychiatrist.

00:31:20.860 He asked me

00:31:21.760 at the end of the show,

00:31:22.760 so kind of

00:31:23.520 to your question,

00:31:24.820 what is the singular

00:31:27.280 phenomenon

00:31:29.080 that you have become

00:31:31.260 aware of

00:31:31.960 in your 30 years

00:31:32.940 as a professor

00:31:33.820 and evolutionary scientist

00:31:35.220 that surprised you the most?

00:31:37.420 And so in a sense,

00:31:38.820 it's a broader question

00:31:40.080 than what you asked.

00:31:41.280 And my answer to that

00:31:42.980 after, you know,

00:31:43.820 thinking for about

00:31:44.440 20, 30 seconds

00:31:45.500 is the inability

00:31:47.560 for humans

00:31:50.120 to change their minds

00:31:52.280 once it is anchored

00:31:54.080 in a position

00:31:55.100 irrespective of the amount

00:31:57.480 of evidence

00:31:58.420 that I can offer you

00:32:00.280 to get you

00:32:01.280 to change your mind.

00:32:02.420 But now I'm going to offer

00:32:03.780 an evolutionary twist to it,

00:32:05.580 so I am going to link

00:32:06.600 it to your question.

00:32:07.980 There is a great book

00:32:09.740 written by two French psychologists

00:32:13.280 where they argued

00:32:15.100 that our capacity

00:32:16.920 to reason

00:32:18.060 did not evolve

00:32:20.220 in the pursuit

00:32:21.660 of some abstract notion

00:32:23.660 of truth,

00:32:24.420 but rather

00:32:25.640 our faculty of reasoning

00:32:28.020 evolved to win arguments.

00:32:31.180 Right?

00:32:31.440 So once you put it that way,

00:32:33.500 then you understand

00:32:34.740 the reflex of people go,

00:32:36.340 la, la, la,

00:32:36.840 I don't want to hear it, right?

00:32:38.300 And so that even if I,

00:32:40.280 so one of the things

00:32:40.980 that I do

00:32:41.340 in chapter seven

00:32:42.220 of the Yellow Book,

00:32:43.300 The Parasitic Mind,

00:32:44.200 I talk about

00:32:45.160 this incredibly powerful tool

00:32:47.720 which I call

00:32:48.380 nomological networks

00:32:49.580 of cumulative evidence.

00:32:50.900 When I'm trying

00:32:51.720 to demonstrate to you

00:32:52.940 that a phenomenon,

00:32:54.460 let's say,

00:32:54.800 is an adaptation,

00:32:56.100 how will I go

00:32:56.900 about doing that?

00:32:57.700 Well, I will get you data

00:32:58.820 from across cultures,

00:33:00.180 across species,

00:33:01.300 across time periods,

00:33:02.520 across methodologies,

00:33:03.600 across dependent measures,

00:33:05.340 all of which triangulate

00:33:06.920 to showing you

00:33:07.880 that my position

00:33:08.680 is the veridical one.

00:33:10.060 Well, that's a great methodology

00:33:12.580 as long as my interlocutor

00:33:15.000 has the intellectual honesty

00:33:17.640 to allow me

00:33:18.840 to present that evidence to him.

00:33:20.940 If the interlocutor goes,

00:33:22.820 la, la, la,

00:33:23.400 I'm never going to

00:33:24.940 agree to your position

00:33:26.940 because I simply can't accept

00:33:29.000 that I will ever be

00:33:30.040 anchored away from my position,

00:33:31.220 then I can't administer

00:33:32.880 the mind vaccine to you.

00:33:34.020 So I think that's probably

00:33:35.820 the most disheartening

00:33:37.640 and most surprising thing

00:33:40.480 that I have found

00:33:41.500 about the human mind.

00:33:43.600 Okay.

00:33:44.760 So turning just briefly

00:33:48.600 to, you know,

00:33:50.240 if this is a parasitic disease

00:33:52.560 or something along those lines,

00:33:54.640 these memes

00:33:58.000 that lead people

00:34:00.340 into incoherent

00:34:01.580 or illogical things,

00:34:06.160 you know,

00:34:06.600 it can either be

00:34:08.240 an epidemiological phenomenon

00:34:10.160 where you can measure spread

00:34:11.860 and persistence

00:34:14.940 of these memes

00:34:17.740 or whatever you want to call them

00:34:19.180 in the population.

00:34:21.740 and I think you implied

00:34:23.740 your answer

00:34:24.300 in your last response,

00:34:26.480 which is that

00:34:27.080 if you want to cure people

00:34:29.060 of this,

00:34:29.520 you need to administer

00:34:30.700 some kind of medicine,

00:34:31.940 if you will,

00:34:32.800 and the medicine

00:34:33.940 is evidence,

00:34:35.440 logic,

00:34:36.580 these kinds of things

00:34:37.580 which people

00:34:38.200 are resistant to.

00:34:40.380 But the other

00:34:41.420 is that,

00:34:42.580 and in the introduction,

00:34:44.380 I mentioned that,

00:34:45.780 well,

00:34:46.900 maybe there's a kind

00:34:47.720 of Gresham's Law

00:34:48.640 operating here,

00:34:49.940 you know,

00:34:50.380 the whole analogy

00:34:51.640 of bad money

00:34:53.200 tends to drive out good.

00:34:54.960 And there are really

00:34:56.700 two explanations

00:34:57.560 for Gresham's Law.

00:34:59.120 I got into this,

00:35:00.720 actually,

00:35:01.140 and found it quite fascinating.

00:35:02.840 One of them

00:35:03.520 is that

00:35:04.400 the well-known one,

00:35:06.500 which is that

00:35:06.960 bad money drives out good,

00:35:08.380 you know,

00:35:08.680 and the reason for that

00:35:09.680 is that bad money

00:35:10.420 stays in circulation

00:35:11.320 because nobody wants

00:35:12.520 to hang on to it,

00:35:13.860 you know,

00:35:14.140 you want to take

00:35:14.640 the good money

00:35:15.220 and you want to hold

00:35:15.980 it to yourself.

00:35:16.540 That's the logical thing.

00:35:17.700 But the other reason

00:35:19.480 for it,

00:35:20.040 and some economists

00:35:20.800 have mentioned this,

00:35:22.100 is that Gresham's Law

00:35:23.660 operates actually

00:35:24.940 through government action,

00:35:27.320 mostly in the case

00:35:29.100 of manipulating

00:35:29.840 exchange rates.

00:35:31.180 And these kinds

00:35:33.020 of things

00:35:33.460 can keep,

00:35:35.020 under government fiat,

00:35:36.400 can keep bad money

00:35:37.520 circulating

00:35:38.080 and drive out

00:35:39.520 the good.

00:35:41.340 And this is leading

00:35:43.000 up to kind of a,

00:35:45.000 kind of my question,

00:35:46.000 which is that

00:35:46.720 these ideas,

00:35:48.120 which are very destructive,

00:35:50.000 very damaging

00:35:52.620 to our society,

00:35:55.440 to what extent

00:35:56.140 is this kind of

00:35:56.900 a government

00:35:59.400 or elite manipulation

00:36:00.940 of the intellectual currency

00:36:03.360 that we deal with?

00:36:04.780 Right.

00:36:05.360 Now that's a great,

00:36:06.760 yeah, go ahead,

00:36:07.300 finish your book.

00:36:07.920 I was saying,

00:36:08.820 do you think

00:36:09.360 there's something to that,

00:36:10.740 that we're getting it

00:36:11.400 because we're subsidizing it?

00:36:13.040 Right.

00:36:13.880 I mean,

00:36:14.460 there could be a bit of that.

00:36:15.540 So in the parasitic mind,

00:36:17.400 I actually try

00:36:18.600 to answer that question

00:36:20.160 by asking the following.

00:36:22.760 To the extent

00:36:23.880 that these parasitic ideas

00:36:26.100 are able to infect

00:36:27.900 so many people,

00:36:29.300 why are they so alluring?

00:36:30.980 Right?

00:36:31.220 So if I,

00:36:32.800 I got the idea

00:36:34.400 for the neuroparasitological

00:36:35.860 framework

00:36:36.440 from studying

00:36:37.920 neuroparasitology

00:36:39.320 in the animal kingdom,

00:36:40.520 right?

00:36:40.800 There are

00:36:41.540 an incredible number

00:36:43.140 of examples

00:36:43.800 where there is a parasite

00:36:45.100 so parasitology

00:36:47.100 is just a study

00:36:47.940 of the interaction

00:36:48.960 between parasites

00:36:49.840 and hosts.

00:36:50.760 So a tapeworm

00:36:51.500 is a parasite,

00:36:52.160 but it's going

00:36:52.840 in your intestinal tract,

00:36:54.500 whereas a neuroparasite

00:36:56.160 is looking

00:36:57.040 to find

00:36:57.740 its ultimate destination

00:36:59.000 in the host's mind.

00:37:00.820 And usually

00:37:01.380 what it does

00:37:02.080 is it alters

00:37:02.960 the circuitry

00:37:04.160 of the host

00:37:05.300 to suit

00:37:06.140 typically

00:37:06.700 its reproductive interest.

00:37:07.820 So the wood cricket

00:37:10.420 despises water,

00:37:12.060 but when it is

00:37:12.920 parasitized

00:37:13.660 by the hairworm,

00:37:14.980 then it is,

00:37:16.020 it merely jumps

00:37:16.980 and commits suicide

00:37:17.920 by jumping into water

00:37:19.140 because the hairworm

00:37:20.480 needs to be in water

00:37:21.580 to complete

00:37:22.080 its reproductive cycle.

00:37:23.000 So now

00:37:23.660 taking that framework

00:37:25.460 and hence applying it

00:37:26.560 for the parasitic mind,

00:37:28.120 but okay,

00:37:28.820 so why do

00:37:29.700 these parasitic ideas

00:37:30.920 infect so many people?

00:37:33.860 And so there

00:37:34.480 I argued

00:37:35.420 that they are alluring

00:37:37.420 because they free us

00:37:39.500 from the pesky shackles

00:37:41.480 of reality.

00:37:42.960 In a sense,

00:37:43.980 they are liberating,

00:37:46.200 right?

00:37:46.940 It's nice to know

00:37:48.140 that I am not bound

00:37:49.820 by my genitalia.

00:37:51.680 I could be a woman

00:37:52.860 even though

00:37:53.480 I have a penis.

00:37:54.580 I could,

00:37:55.000 as a matter of fact,

00:37:55.840 I could be 74,000

00:37:57.040 different genders

00:37:58.100 and sexes.

00:37:59.000 That's liberating,

00:38:00.320 in quotes.

00:38:01.360 It's liberating

00:38:02.440 to succumb

00:38:03.340 to the social

00:38:04.420 constructivist

00:38:05.620 neuroparasite.

00:38:07.000 Social constructivism

00:38:07.940 is we're born

00:38:09.020 tabula rasa

00:38:09.660 and it's only

00:38:10.240 social construction

00:38:11.060 that makes us

00:38:11.700 who we become.

00:38:12.660 Well,

00:38:13.020 that's very liberating

00:38:14.140 to a parent.

00:38:14.960 Why?

00:38:15.520 Because as a parent,

00:38:17.000 I love the idea

00:38:18.220 that when my child

00:38:19.300 is born,

00:38:20.560 he or she

00:38:21.720 has an equal chance

00:38:23.320 of becoming

00:38:24.160 the next Lionel Messi,

00:38:25.660 the next Albert Einstein,

00:38:27.020 or the next Michael Jordan.

00:38:28.700 Because then,

00:38:30.000 if only I hug them enough

00:38:31.700 or not enough

00:38:32.500 or hug them

00:38:33.100 in the right amount

00:38:34.080 of schedule

00:38:34.600 of reinforcement,

00:38:35.740 they too

00:38:36.260 could be the next

00:38:37.360 Lionel Messi.

00:38:38.240 I don't want to hear

00:38:39.420 that there is

00:38:40.400 an innate

00:38:41.440 biological potentiality

00:38:43.980 difference

00:38:44.460 between my child

00:38:45.720 and Michael Jordan

00:38:47.060 when he was born,

00:38:48.120 that Michael Jordan

00:38:49.020 simply had a greater

00:38:50.040 chance of becoming

00:38:50.900 an NBA star.

00:38:52.220 That's not a very

00:38:53.000 hopeful message.

00:38:54.080 So I'd rather live

00:38:55.060 in unicornia

00:38:56.160 and believe

00:38:57.460 that message,

00:38:58.560 right?

00:38:58.760 And so I can

00:39:00.240 take each

00:39:01.220 of those parasitic

00:39:02.220 ideas, Scott,

00:39:03.320 and demonstrate

00:39:04.200 to you that

00:39:05.040 using kindergarten

00:39:06.260 logic,

00:39:07.160 they're very

00:39:07.840 alluring.

00:39:08.920 So that's why

00:39:09.940 you often have

00:39:10.920 the young folks

00:39:12.040 who are first

00:39:13.260 most likely

00:39:13.860 to be wokesters.

00:39:15.080 That's why

00:39:15.440 people start off

00:39:16.560 loving

00:39:17.260 La Revolución,

00:39:18.640 Che Guevara,

00:39:19.440 Marxism,

00:39:20.120 and then they grow

00:39:21.200 out of it

00:39:21.880 because they realize

00:39:22.840 that that's not

00:39:23.920 how life operates.

00:39:25.080 We are not

00:39:25.540 social ants,

00:39:26.380 as E.O. Wilson

00:39:27.520 told us.

00:39:28.420 Communism,

00:39:29.140 great idea,

00:39:30.020 wrong species,

00:39:30.940 he said, right?

00:39:31.960 So the reason

00:39:33.700 why these

00:39:34.740 parasitic ideas,

00:39:36.140 so I don't,

00:39:36.880 so to your

00:39:37.380 question,

00:39:38.280 I don't think

00:39:39.020 there is a cabal

00:39:39.980 like a Davos cabal

00:39:41.500 that said,

00:39:42.480 brouhaha,

00:39:43.420 how should we

00:39:44.100 screw with people?

00:39:45.200 I think what

00:39:46.020 happened is that

00:39:47.100 these parasitic

00:39:48.860 ideas all

00:39:50.980 were spawned

00:39:51.680 on university

00:39:52.280 campuses,

00:39:53.420 always originally

00:39:54.580 with a

00:39:55.260 perfectly

00:39:56.080 noble reason

00:39:57.200 why they

00:39:57.640 were spawned,

00:39:58.480 but perfectly

00:39:59.480 incorrect,

00:40:00.560 and then they

00:40:01.380 came together

00:40:02.400 in a

00:40:03.400 devastating

00:40:04.440 cocktail,

00:40:05.360 like life

00:40:06.360 is about

00:40:06.780 timing,

00:40:07.360 and so all

00:40:08.280 of these

00:40:08.680 parasitic

00:40:09.180 ideas came

00:40:09.920 together,

00:40:10.600 and then they

00:40:11.540 created

00:40:12.320 Justin Trudeau,

00:40:13.920 who's called

00:40:14.560 our prime

00:40:15.140 minister,

00:40:15.760 so he becomes

00:40:16.800 the walking

00:40:17.940 manifestation

00:40:18.660 of every

00:40:19.880 parasitic

00:40:20.440 idea that

00:40:21.480 he was

00:40:21.900 exposed to

00:40:22.700 in his

00:40:23.320 nonsensical

00:40:24.120 posh schools

00:40:24.940 in Quebec,

00:40:25.580 right?

00:40:25.760 So my

00:40:27.240 feeling is

00:40:28.020 it's a

00:40:28.580 lot less

00:40:29.280 willful

00:40:30.360 and a

00:40:31.120 lot more

00:40:31.860 organic

00:40:32.780 nonsense

00:40:33.640 that started

00:40:34.400 on university

00:40:35.100 campuses.

00:40:36.640 So have

00:40:37.380 the universities

00:40:37.880 failed?

00:40:39.460 Have the

00:40:40.140 universities

00:40:40.480 failed?

00:40:40.860 Is that

00:40:41.060 what you

00:40:41.240 asked?

00:40:41.940 Yes.

00:40:42.820 So I

00:40:44.040 actually

00:40:44.380 address that

00:40:44.920 in the

00:40:45.100 parasitic

00:40:45.440 mind,

00:40:45.740 in that I

00:40:46.160 say that

00:40:46.680 notwithstanding

00:40:47.420 the fact

00:40:47.840 that I'm

00:40:48.120 being very

00:40:48.580 critical of

00:40:49.160 the university

00:40:49.640 ecosystem,

00:40:50.300 I'm still

00:40:51.400 a very

00:40:52.700 staunch

00:40:53.240 defender of

00:40:55.460 the university

00:40:56.800 model as

00:40:58.840 long as

00:40:59.820 it is

00:41:00.400 wedded to

00:41:01.540 intellectual

00:41:02.340 enrichment,

00:41:03.420 to logic,

00:41:04.900 to science,

00:41:05.640 to reason,

00:41:06.320 to evidence-based

00:41:07.100 thinking.

00:41:07.720 So it hasn't

00:41:09.000 failed in that

00:41:09.700 I don't think

00:41:10.560 we need to

00:41:11.380 scratch

00:41:12.100 universities and

00:41:13.500 start with

00:41:14.200 something new.

00:41:14.880 I think

00:41:15.720 though that

00:41:16.440 bad ideas

00:41:18.240 wax and

00:41:18.840 wane,

00:41:19.280 we've always,

00:41:20.040 by the way,

00:41:20.420 humans have

00:41:20.820 always been

00:41:21.660 parasitized by

00:41:22.800 bad ideas.

00:41:23.780 What's unique

00:41:24.360 about the

00:41:24.780 current moment

00:41:25.460 is the

00:41:26.160 specific

00:41:26.860 ideological

00:41:28.180 parasites that

00:41:29.140 have infected

00:41:29.700 our brains,

00:41:30.260 right?

00:41:30.520 I can give

00:41:31.300 you endless

00:41:32.720 examples throughout

00:41:33.640 history of

00:41:34.300 other parasitic

00:41:35.160 ideas that

00:41:35.740 people succumb

00:41:36.360 to, right?

00:41:36.780 I mean,

00:41:36.960 let's throw

00:41:37.660 the woman

00:41:38.920 in the water

00:41:39.660 and if she

00:41:40.520 swims,

00:41:41.140 then she is

00:41:41.660 a witch and

00:41:42.200 if she

00:41:42.660 drowns,

00:41:43.560 oh,

00:41:43.800 oops,

00:41:44.100 I guess she

00:41:44.560 wasn't a

00:41:44.980 witch,

00:41:45.300 okay?

00:41:45.740 So it's

00:41:46.400 not as

00:41:46.980 though this

00:41:47.860 is a

00:41:48.300 unique moment

00:41:49.280 where the

00:41:50.180 human mind

00:41:51.040 has suddenly

00:41:52.240 failed.

00:41:52.920 It's always

00:41:53.660 had a

00:41:54.320 proclivity to

00:41:55.180 find parasitic

00:41:56.540 ideas alluring.

00:41:57.780 It's just

00:41:58.180 that these

00:41:58.940 unique cocktail

00:41:59.920 of parasitic

00:42:00.560 ideas are

00:42:02.260 going to

00:42:02.660 destroy the

00:42:03.180 world.

00:42:04.760 Well,

00:42:04.800 this is where

00:42:05.200 the subsidization

00:42:06.100 argument of

00:42:07.080 Gresham's

00:42:08.020 law comes

00:42:08.800 in, you

00:42:09.220 know,

00:42:09.360 because,

00:42:10.220 you know,

00:42:10.460 there's a

00:42:10.780 certain

00:42:10.980 demographics of

00:42:12.120 the university

00:42:13.300 population of

00:42:14.400 academics,

00:42:14.860 as you

00:42:15.440 well know,

00:42:16.140 and people

00:42:17.380 respond rationally

00:42:18.520 to incentives

00:42:19.340 and disincentives.

00:42:20.820 And it

00:42:21.820 seems that

00:42:22.320 what we have

00:42:23.160 now,

00:42:24.220 and I've

00:42:25.460 witnessed this

00:42:26.040 from the time

00:42:26.840 I began as

00:42:27.840 an assistant

00:42:28.280 professor,

00:42:28.960 you know,

00:42:29.200 too many years

00:42:29.720 ago to

00:42:30.200 actually say

00:42:31.440 explicitly right

00:42:32.500 now,

00:42:33.380 but the

00:42:35.160 faculty seem

00:42:35.840 to have been

00:42:36.400 replaced by a

00:42:37.300 growing cohort

00:42:38.060 of professors

00:42:39.940 who are

00:42:41.280 immersed in

00:42:42.440 this woke

00:42:43.280 ideology,

00:42:44.280 this kind

00:42:44.560 of postmodernist

00:42:45.620 idea.

00:42:47.260 And as

00:42:48.680 a consequence,

00:42:50.620 university

00:42:52.300 professors,

00:42:53.200 they're still

00:42:53.560 very fine

00:42:54.160 people there

00:42:54.720 who are

00:42:55.040 wedded to

00:42:55.580 the ideals

00:42:56.320 that we're

00:42:57.820 talking about

00:42:59.180 for the

00:42:59.520 university,

00:42:59.960 but there's

00:43:01.060 a very

00:43:01.580 and growingly

00:43:02.540 powerful

00:43:03.120 cohort of

00:43:05.120 people who

00:43:05.560 don't buy

00:43:05.940 into that

00:43:06.400 anymore.

00:43:06.920 And we're

00:43:09.360 seeing this

00:43:10.000 in the

00:43:11.020 eruptions

00:43:11.620 that have

00:43:12.060 been going

00:43:12.500 on on

00:43:13.100 campuses

00:43:13.920 for a long

00:43:14.660 time.

00:43:15.280 I was in

00:43:16.580 college at

00:43:17.160 the time

00:43:17.620 when Richard

00:43:20.520 Nixon

00:43:20.940 started bombing

00:43:22.340 Cambodia and

00:43:23.280 all the

00:43:24.500 disruption that

00:43:25.640 went along

00:43:26.120 with that,

00:43:26.600 but of

00:43:27.320 course,

00:43:27.800 we're seeing

00:43:29.660 the same

00:43:30.120 thing again

00:43:31.180 now in

00:43:32.880 a rather

00:43:33.240 alarming,

00:43:34.780 what's the

00:43:36.620 word?

00:43:36.980 I want

00:43:37.300 to say

00:43:38.860 inflorescence,

00:43:39.840 but there's

00:43:40.260 a fulmination

00:43:41.240 is the word

00:43:41.820 that I'm

00:43:42.140 looking for

00:43:42.680 of mobilization

00:43:45.720 against Israel

00:43:47.020 and the

00:43:48.560 defense of

00:43:49.200 their own

00:43:50.080 country against

00:43:50.860 what are

00:43:51.460 arguably

00:43:52.020 atrocities that

00:43:53.160 were committed

00:43:53.740 against it

00:43:54.920 by Hamas.

00:43:56.400 And,

00:43:56.740 you know,

00:43:57.660 the professors

00:43:58.700 are right out

00:43:59.380 there supporting

00:44:01.140 this,

00:44:01.720 and you've

00:44:02.360 been out

00:44:02.960 there as

00:44:03.440 well prominently

00:44:04.940 arguing against

00:44:06.020 it.

00:44:07.040 You mentioned

00:44:07.940 Cornell at

00:44:09.140 the beginning

00:44:09.520 of our

00:44:10.120 conversation.

00:44:11.920 You know,

00:44:12.140 you were

00:44:12.440 there actually

00:44:13.340 to make

00:44:15.400 some very

00:44:15.800 powerful

00:44:16.160 comments on

00:44:17.080 the expansion

00:44:20.520 of tent

00:44:21.000 cities,

00:44:21.760 the disturbing

00:44:23.740 level of

00:44:24.300 anti-Semitism

00:44:24.960 that's going

00:44:25.760 on in there,

00:44:26.780 and this

00:44:27.900 ties into

00:44:28.500 your personal

00:44:29.420 story.

00:44:30.660 You're Jewish

00:44:31.540 and you came

00:44:32.040 from Lebanon

00:44:32.560 and you

00:44:33.000 left there

00:44:33.680 under some

00:44:34.640 rather alarming

00:44:36.740 circumstances.

00:44:38.240 To what

00:44:38.980 extent did

00:44:39.560 your experience

00:44:40.520 as someone

00:44:42.460 who basically

00:44:43.360 is a refugee

00:44:43.960 from Lebanon,

00:44:46.500 how has that

00:44:46.980 influenced your

00:44:47.800 reaction and

00:44:48.800 your mobilization

00:44:49.980 against what's

00:44:50.560 going on on

00:44:51.080 campus?

00:44:51.540 Yeah,

00:44:52.020 thank you.

00:44:52.360 That's a great

00:44:52.720 question.

00:44:53.960 In several

00:44:54.700 ways,

00:44:55.300 so let me

00:44:57.280 start with the

00:44:57.760 following,

00:44:58.880 Lebanon was

00:45:00.260 the perfect

00:45:01.260 model of

00:45:02.620 what happens

00:45:03.300 to a society

00:45:04.220 that's organized

00:45:05.320 according to

00:45:06.020 the ethos of

00:45:06.760 identity politics.

00:45:08.460 Because Lebanon,

00:45:09.920 I mean,

00:45:10.260 literally in its

00:45:11.100 constitution,

00:45:12.180 it says the

00:45:13.300 prime minister

00:45:14.000 has to be of

00:45:14.800 that religion,

00:45:16.040 the president

00:45:16.600 has to be of

00:45:17.380 that religion,

00:45:18.280 the number of

00:45:19.160 seats that this

00:45:19.980 group gets is

00:45:20.720 this much because

00:45:21.540 of that demographic

00:45:23.100 reality, you get

00:45:24.320 one this,

00:45:25.240 four that,

00:45:26.040 and so on.

00:45:26.340 So everything

00:45:27.920 in Lebanon,

00:45:29.000 whether it be

00:45:29.520 institutionally,

00:45:30.720 politically,

00:45:31.420 or in daily

00:45:32.580 interactions,

00:45:33.600 or whom you

00:45:34.340 invite to parties,

00:45:36.400 is viewed in

00:45:37.220 this case,

00:45:38.100 not whether you're

00:45:39.100 transgender or

00:45:40.000 not, or gay or

00:45:40.920 not, it's what

00:45:41.660 your religious

00:45:42.460 affiliation is.

00:45:44.040 As a matter of

00:45:44.460 fact, in Lebanon,

00:45:45.580 you had internal

00:45:46.680 ID cards that

00:45:48.360 you had to carry

00:45:49.100 if, let's say,

00:45:49.580 the police stopped

00:45:50.340 you or a militia

00:45:51.040 group stopped

00:45:51.560 you.

00:45:51.960 In Arabic,

00:45:52.640 that card is

00:45:54.180 called Hawiyeh,

00:45:55.400 and the most

00:45:56.000 conspicuous

00:45:57.840 element of

00:45:58.580 that card

00:46:00.820 is what

00:46:01.860 religion you

00:46:02.440 are.

00:46:02.720 So in our

00:46:03.440 case, we

00:46:03.920 were, we

00:46:05.020 are Jewish.

00:46:06.040 It wasn't

00:46:06.600 even written

00:46:07.060 in Arabic,

00:46:08.120 Jewish is

00:46:09.100 Yahudi.

00:46:09.920 You wouldn't

00:46:10.540 say Yahudi,

00:46:11.440 it was written

00:46:12.020 Israeli,

00:46:13.060 Israelite,

00:46:13.820 so it even

00:46:14.260 created greater

00:46:15.100 animus.

00:46:15.720 You somehow

00:46:16.580 lost your

00:46:17.380 Lebanese identity,

00:46:18.380 even though we

00:46:19.000 were Lebanese,

00:46:19.660 we speak Arabic,

00:46:20.480 we're not

00:46:20.920 Israeli,

00:46:21.800 we're Lebanese,

00:46:22.860 happen to be

00:46:23.360 Jewish, but

00:46:23.680 we're Lebanese,

00:46:24.320 we're Arabic.

00:46:24.760 So as I

00:46:28.120 saw how

00:46:29.480 the progressives

00:46:31.120 adopted the

00:46:32.300 ethos of

00:46:32.920 identity politics,

00:46:33.980 I said,

00:46:34.840 well, let me

00:46:35.440 tell you what

00:46:36.440 happens at the

00:46:37.740 extreme when a

00:46:39.000 society becomes

00:46:39.940 fully tribal and

00:46:41.200 entrenched in its

00:46:42.040 identity politics

00:46:43.120 orientation.

00:46:43.700 So that's

00:46:44.260 certainly one

00:46:45.420 way that my

00:46:46.240 personal history

00:46:47.040 affected my

00:46:48.000 subsequent

00:46:48.360 engagement.

00:46:49.780 More generally,

00:46:50.780 though, and I

00:46:51.860 think I

00:46:52.200 can't remember

00:46:53.000 if I

00:46:53.260 mentioned this

00:46:53.920 in the

00:46:55.460 talk that

00:46:55.900 you're referring

00:46:56.300 to at

00:46:56.620 Cornell.

00:46:57.880 It turns

00:46:58.700 out, Scott,

00:46:59.580 as you may

00:47:00.140 have noticed,

00:47:00.700 that some

00:47:01.360 of the

00:47:01.740 staunchest

00:47:02.820 defenders of

00:47:04.800 the Western

00:47:05.380 tradition are

00:47:07.080 often immigrants,

00:47:08.920 are often

00:47:09.740 refugees.

00:47:11.160 And the

00:47:11.800 reason for

00:47:12.260 that is

00:47:12.780 actually not

00:47:13.320 very mysterious.

00:47:14.040 It's because

00:47:14.780 we have

00:47:15.680 sampled from

00:47:17.160 the entire

00:47:17.860 buffets of

00:47:19.600 societies that

00:47:20.480 exist, and

00:47:21.640 therefore we

00:47:22.300 know that

00:47:23.360 the default

00:47:24.260 society is

00:47:25.740 not the one

00:47:26.480 that you see

00:47:27.040 in the West.

00:47:27.560 As a matter

00:47:27.820 of fact, the

00:47:28.240 one that you

00:47:28.580 see in the

00:47:29.000 West is a

00:47:30.280 bleep.

00:47:31.760 It's an

00:47:32.180 anomaly.

00:47:33.000 It's an

00:47:33.300 outlier of

00:47:34.740 historically how

00:47:36.540 societies were

00:47:37.360 organized.

00:47:38.160 And so we

00:47:38.580 come along to

00:47:39.320 the West and

00:47:40.040 we stand on

00:47:41.180 top of the

00:47:41.640 mountain and

00:47:42.120 we start

00:47:42.640 screaming really

00:47:43.600 loudly, be

00:47:44.680 careful, you're

00:47:46.260 replicating that

00:47:47.280 which I

00:47:47.720 escaped from.

00:47:48.980 It's not

00:47:49.420 going to end

00:47:50.060 pretty.

00:47:50.480 Whereas the

00:47:51.380 Americans and

00:47:52.260 the Canadians,

00:47:52.900 they're playing

00:47:53.640 the John

00:47:54.140 Lennon

00:47:54.500 Imagine song

00:47:56.020 and Life

00:47:56.560 is Beautiful

00:47:57.080 and so on.

00:47:57.820 So they

00:47:58.440 can't know

00:47:59.680 what's down

00:48:00.520 the pipeline

00:48:01.820 because they

00:48:02.480 can't imagine

00:48:03.260 that such a

00:48:03.780 reality exists.

00:48:04.960 So it is

00:48:06.260 incontestable

00:48:07.240 that the

00:48:08.060 fact that

00:48:08.600 I've had

00:48:09.160 my personal

00:48:10.760 tragic

00:48:11.540 history has

00:48:13.680 shaped my

00:48:15.020 future

00:48:15.480 engagement.

00:48:16.480 So for

00:48:16.720 example, here's

00:48:17.720 a more concrete

00:48:18.280 example.

00:48:18.720 I don't

00:48:20.620 want the

00:48:21.660 West to

00:48:22.440 be

00:48:22.640 Islamized.

00:48:23.740 No sane

00:48:24.280 person should.

00:48:25.260 That doesn't

00:48:25.780 mean that there

00:48:26.500 aren't millions

00:48:28.060 upon millions

00:48:29.020 of lovely

00:48:29.900 Muslim people.

00:48:30.760 There are nice

00:48:31.260 Muslims, mean

00:48:31.940 Muslims, nice

00:48:32.920 Jews, mean

00:48:33.720 Jews.

00:48:34.640 No one

00:48:35.100 contests that.

00:48:36.460 But do I

00:48:37.240 want a

00:48:38.180 society where

00:48:39.380 Islam has an

00:48:40.720 ever-growing

00:48:41.500 presence in the

00:48:42.380 West?

00:48:43.380 No.

00:48:44.400 Why?

00:48:45.260 Because we've

00:48:45.860 got 1,400

00:48:46.520 years of

00:48:47.320 data that

00:48:47.880 suggests that

00:48:48.600 if that

00:48:48.980 happens, and

00:48:50.020 if you care

00:48:50.480 about personal

00:48:51.120 liberties and

00:48:51.760 freedoms, it's

00:48:52.540 probably not

00:48:53.360 going to

00:48:53.880 increase those

00:48:54.660 freedoms.

00:48:55.300 It's not

00:48:55.880 Islamophobic,

00:48:56.900 it's not

00:48:57.300 bigoted, it's

00:48:58.120 not racist, it's

00:48:59.440 called having a

00:49:00.240 brain.

00:49:00.640 And so, of

00:49:01.600 course, my

00:49:02.240 personal history

00:49:03.020 has shaped some

00:49:03.760 of my public

00:49:05.120 positions.

00:49:06.440 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:07.180 I mean, as

00:49:07.820 one would expect.

00:49:09.200 And speaking

00:49:10.140 of your

00:49:11.540 observation that

00:49:12.600 the people who

00:49:13.920 are most

00:49:14.360 appreciative of

00:49:15.320 Western values

00:49:16.320 here are

00:49:17.100 immigrants.

00:49:17.960 You know, we've

00:49:19.300 had some

00:49:20.260 presence at the

00:49:21.140 AAAS meetings,

00:49:22.180 American Association

00:49:23.080 for the Advancement

00:49:23.980 of Science, and

00:49:24.760 as we all know,

00:49:26.260 they've gone full

00:49:26.980 identity politics

00:49:28.080 in their

00:49:29.400 organization.

00:49:31.040 And so, we

00:49:31.940 had our

00:49:32.340 exhibit set up

00:49:33.320 at the

00:49:33.640 AAAS meeting

00:49:34.560 last year, and

00:49:35.660 people would

00:49:36.800 walk by, you

00:49:37.680 know, kind of

00:49:38.160 like this and

00:49:39.080 so forth.

00:49:39.940 But the people

00:49:40.460 who came up

00:49:40.980 to us with

00:49:42.380 complimentary

00:49:42.840 things to

00:49:43.480 say, they

00:49:44.540 were invariably

00:49:45.620 from Russia or

00:49:47.340 Eastern Europe,

00:49:48.060 people who had

00:49:48.660 experienced

00:49:49.160 depression, people

00:49:50.660 from the Indian

00:49:51.260 subcontinent who

00:49:52.300 had been

00:49:52.720 immersed still

00:49:53.640 in these ideals

00:49:54.700 of inquiry, free

00:49:56.100 inquiry, and so

00:49:56.900 forth, and

00:49:58.340 refugees from

00:49:59.620 China.

00:50:00.420 So, it's

00:50:02.400 really true, but

00:50:04.060 again, there's

00:50:05.180 this demographic

00:50:07.060 issue.

00:50:08.040 You know, you

00:50:08.300 have this large

00:50:10.160 class of

00:50:10.680 people in

00:50:11.820 universities that

00:50:12.680 don't actually

00:50:13.160 subscribe to

00:50:14.160 this anymore, and

00:50:15.020 I'm very

00:50:16.100 troubled by that.

00:50:17.520 I see that

00:50:19.640 we've got

00:50:21.060 questions coming

00:50:22.180 into the Q&A.

00:50:23.300 Thank you for

00:50:23.780 those.

00:50:25.500 We're about

00:50:26.200 50 minutes in, so

00:50:27.500 why don't we go

00:50:28.140 to the Q&A

00:50:29.080 discussion, and

00:50:30.320 as I said, feel

00:50:31.420 free to put in

00:50:32.120 your comments at

00:50:33.020 any time,

00:50:33.740 questions, either

00:50:34.480 in the chat box

00:50:35.540 or the Q&A, but

00:50:36.720 as I said, we

00:50:37.340 prefer Q&A.

00:50:38.120 So, let's go

00:50:39.420 to Q&A right

00:50:41.080 now, and we'll

00:50:42.660 just go through

00:50:43.580 and have a look

00:50:44.960 and see what's

00:50:45.680 interesting there.

00:50:47.660 So, let's see

00:50:49.820 here.

00:50:54.920 So, all right, so

00:50:56.420 here's a little bit

00:50:57.180 of a challenging

00:50:57.680 question from

00:50:58.480 Richard Allen.

00:51:00.320 So, at the

00:51:01.440 Battle of Midway

00:51:02.180 Torpedo Squadron

00:51:03.400 8, all the

00:51:04.860 pilots tried to

00:51:05.760 attack Japanese

00:51:06.520 ships, all 16

00:51:07.900 of the TBFs

00:51:09.420 were shot

00:51:10.360 down, 45 of

00:51:11.480 the 48 men

00:51:12.320 in the squadron

00:51:13.020 died.

00:51:14.000 So, is this an

00:51:15.100 evolutionary trade?

00:51:17.200 I don't follow

00:51:18.140 the question.

00:51:19.080 I don't get it.

00:51:20.880 Perhaps.

00:51:21.280 What's the

00:51:21.640 evolutionary trade?

00:51:22.600 What does that

00:51:22.940 mean?

00:51:23.320 Yeah, I think

00:51:24.720 he means, and

00:51:26.300 Richard, if you

00:51:27.020 want to chime

00:51:27.900 in here and

00:51:28.640 clarify this, I

00:51:31.400 think he means

00:51:32.260 what's the

00:51:33.260 evolutionary value

00:51:35.120 of people

00:51:37.320 sacrificing

00:51:38.340 themselves with

00:51:39.200 a high degree

00:51:39.760 of certainty

00:51:40.320 in a war.

00:51:41.540 I think that's

00:51:42.220 what he's

00:51:42.920 aiming at.

00:51:44.640 So, there are

00:51:45.040 several ways I

00:51:45.760 could answer

00:51:46.160 that.

00:51:46.540 So, one of

00:51:46.960 the ways, so

00:51:48.480 do you remember

00:51:49.320 how earlier you

00:51:50.820 referenced the

00:51:52.440 subtitle of

00:51:53.960 the consuming

00:51:56.240 instinct?

00:51:56.860 It said, what

00:51:57.920 juicy burgers,

00:51:59.820 Ferraris,

00:52:00.480 pornography, and

00:52:01.240 gift-giving reveal

00:52:02.160 about human

00:52:02.680 nature?

00:52:02.940 Why am I

00:52:03.640 mentioning this?

00:52:04.780 Because I

00:52:05.380 argue in my

00:52:06.160 work that you

00:52:08.000 can pretty

00:52:09.160 much use four

00:52:10.460 key Darwinian

00:52:11.580 modules to

00:52:12.880 explain much

00:52:13.820 of purpose of

00:52:15.680 behavior of

00:52:16.440 humans, including

00:52:17.580 consumers.

00:52:19.320 It can be

00:52:20.320 related to the

00:52:20.960 survival instinct.

00:52:22.360 It could be

00:52:23.080 related to the

00:52:24.220 mating drive.

00:52:25.520 It could be

00:52:26.100 related to

00:52:26.800 kin selection,

00:52:28.740 hence kin

00:52:29.280 altruism, or it

00:52:30.500 could be related

00:52:31.100 to reciprocal

00:52:32.040 altruism.

00:52:33.580 And let me

00:52:33.960 explain what

00:52:34.520 those are, the

00:52:35.760 last two, and

00:52:37.160 then we'll link

00:52:38.180 it to Richard's

00:52:39.040 question.

00:52:40.120 So, why

00:52:41.100 would an

00:52:42.120 organism, whether

00:52:43.660 it be a

00:52:44.160 human organism

00:52:47.260 or other

00:52:48.100 animal, why

00:52:49.080 would you ever

00:52:49.920 take the

00:52:51.340 massive risk

00:52:52.820 of dying to

00:52:56.220 save three of

00:52:57.660 your family

00:52:58.140 members?

00:52:58.540 if evolution

00:53:00.460 operated at

00:53:01.740 the organism

00:53:02.520 level, then

00:53:03.560 there should

00:53:03.940 never be an

00:53:05.060 evolutionary

00:53:05.660 pressure for

00:53:06.420 such altruism

00:53:07.240 to arise.

00:53:07.940 It should

00:53:08.320 never be

00:53:08.980 valuable from

00:53:10.280 an evolutionary

00:53:10.700 perspective for

00:53:11.380 me to give

00:53:11.920 up my life

00:53:12.620 in the

00:53:13.260 service of

00:53:13.840 helping.

00:53:14.300 But if I

00:53:14.680 understand, and

00:53:16.320 hence this is

00:53:17.000 sort of the

00:53:17.620 Richard Dawkins

00:53:18.340 1976 book,

00:53:20.480 that I

00:53:20.780 understand that

00:53:21.360 things should

00:53:21.880 operate, that

00:53:22.500 mechanisms

00:53:22.900 should, or

00:53:23.580 selection should

00:53:24.140 operate at the

00:53:24.700 gene level,

00:53:25.320 well then, if

00:53:27.900 I jump into

00:53:28.640 the river to

00:53:29.660 save three of

00:53:30.520 my children,

00:53:31.880 each of which

00:53:32.720 on average

00:53:33.360 shares half of

00:53:34.340 their genes

00:53:34.820 with me, and

00:53:35.740 if I die in

00:53:36.600 the service of

00:53:37.400 that heroic

00:53:38.140 act, that's

00:53:39.340 perfectly fine.

00:53:40.440 And so there

00:53:40.780 are very clear

00:53:41.460 arguments for

00:53:42.120 why kin-based

00:53:43.440 altruism arises.

00:53:45.160 But now we

00:53:45.740 come to

00:53:46.140 Richard's

00:53:46.620 question, which

00:53:47.700 is reciprocal

00:53:48.340 altruism.

00:53:49.040 Okay, we

00:53:49.840 have a mechanism

00:53:50.500 to explain why

00:53:51.400 I jump into

00:53:51.980 the river to

00:53:52.600 save three of

00:53:53.220 my children,

00:53:55.320 children, but

00:53:56.580 why do I

00:53:57.140 jump into

00:53:57.740 the river to

00:53:58.940 save Scott,

00:54:00.560 who's just a

00:54:01.120 friend, or

00:54:01.960 even better,

00:54:03.220 Scott, who's a

00:54:04.340 random stranger,

00:54:05.740 right?

00:54:06.100 We have many

00:54:06.940 of these heroic

00:54:07.620 acts.

00:54:08.340 And so here

00:54:09.100 it's Robert

00:54:10.420 Trivers'

00:54:12.280 understanding of

00:54:14.120 why reciprocal

00:54:15.320 altruism would

00:54:16.720 evolve, and

00:54:17.580 that is that

00:54:18.280 in the case of

00:54:19.780 a highly social

00:54:20.880 animal where

00:54:21.880 it makes

00:54:23.700 sense for

00:54:24.600 us to

00:54:25.220 develop this

00:54:26.180 bonds of

00:54:26.900 reciprocity

00:54:27.780 where today

00:54:29.040 I will

00:54:29.500 scratch your

00:54:30.060 back, tomorrow

00:54:30.920 you will

00:54:31.360 scratch mine.

00:54:32.860 That's why, by

00:54:33.640 the way, we're

00:54:34.100 very, very

00:54:34.840 attuned to

00:54:35.600 social cheaters.

00:54:36.800 If I

00:54:37.320 constantly invite

00:54:38.300 you for dinner

00:54:38.920 and I notice

00:54:39.660 that you never

00:54:40.220 reciprocate, I'm

00:54:41.480 probably not going

00:54:42.380 to be your

00:54:42.840 friend because I

00:54:43.340 realize that you're

00:54:44.040 a social parasite.

00:54:45.440 And so the

00:54:46.100 idea is that

00:54:47.280 many of these

00:54:48.420 grand heroic

00:54:50.060 acts, say, in

00:54:51.840 the military

00:54:52.400 contexts, as

00:54:53.380 what do you

00:54:54.540 call them?

00:54:55.260 Band of

00:54:55.940 brothers.

00:54:56.900 You use

00:54:57.620 kin-based

00:54:58.720 terms to

00:54:59.880 describe the

00:55:00.780 bonds of

00:55:01.260 affiliation.

00:55:01.940 As a matter

00:55:02.180 of fact, many

00:55:03.000 soldiers, when

00:55:03.780 they come back

00:55:04.680 from war, can't

00:55:06.400 love their

00:55:07.080 families as

00:55:08.540 much as they

00:55:09.280 love the guys

00:55:10.400 that they were

00:55:10.900 in the trenches

00:55:11.440 with because

00:55:12.960 those decisions

00:55:14.900 that we were

00:55:15.540 facing at that

00:55:16.480 moment were

00:55:17.140 literally, I'm

00:55:18.440 jumping left

00:55:19.740 and right to

00:55:20.520 save you with

00:55:21.320 the expectation

00:55:22.060 that you would

00:55:22.620 do the same

00:55:23.160 for me, is

00:55:24.160 what keeps us

00:55:24.820 alive.

00:55:25.520 And so that's

00:55:26.660 the grand

00:55:27.400 framework to

00:55:28.280 explain why we

00:55:29.200 engage in such

00:55:30.180 unbelievably

00:55:31.240 altruistic and

00:55:32.120 heroic acts, even

00:55:33.140 amongst non-kin.

00:55:35.040 Yeah, and of

00:55:35.400 course it doesn't

00:55:35.760 even have to

00:55:36.520 extend to these

00:55:37.420 very heroic acts

00:55:38.380 of sacrificing

00:55:39.100 your life.

00:55:39.720 I mean, David

00:55:40.180 Sloan Wilson

00:55:40.760 has dealt

00:55:43.300 with this in a

00:55:43.900 big way.

00:55:46.380 Altruism can

00:55:46.980 work just to

00:55:47.700 benefit communities,

00:55:48.920 you know, to

00:55:49.360 lift everybody up

00:55:50.620 and so forth.

00:55:52.660 So, you

00:55:54.060 know, it can

00:55:55.480 work in a

00:55:56.680 multiplicity of

00:55:58.600 ways, but when

00:55:59.780 we're talking

00:56:00.220 about, say,

00:56:03.720 reciprocal

00:56:04.200 altruism in

00:56:05.340 communities, we're

00:56:07.160 getting very

00:56:08.220 close to

00:56:09.220 ideas, and I'm

00:56:11.600 not saying this

00:56:12.120 is the bad

00:56:12.580 thing, but we're

00:56:12.980 getting very

00:56:13.420 close to ideas

00:56:14.480 that a lot of

00:56:17.920 critics of

00:56:18.540 evolutionary

00:56:18.940 psychology don't

00:56:20.300 want to deal

00:56:22.120 with, which is

00:56:22.800 that, well, you

00:56:23.960 know, civic

00:56:24.960 virtue is a

00:56:25.800 thing, you

00:56:26.420 know, it's

00:56:27.380 the evolutionary

00:56:29.800 value of it

00:56:30.900 is that, you

00:56:31.920 know, a group

00:56:33.120 of people with

00:56:33.760 a certain

00:56:34.040 amount of

00:56:34.360 civic virtue

00:56:34.980 will participate

00:56:37.200 in communities

00:56:37.920 that actually do

00:56:38.980 better than

00:56:39.640 those that

00:56:40.340 don't.

00:56:41.100 And so,

00:56:42.400 Richard, I

00:56:44.320 hope this

00:56:44.800 answered your

00:56:47.160 question, but

00:56:47.900 this does, I

00:56:50.240 think, get

00:56:50.900 into, well,

00:56:52.540 actually gets

00:56:53.060 us away from

00:56:53.860 the kind of

00:56:54.240 crude genetic

00:56:55.320 determinism that

00:56:56.600 you find, even

00:56:57.820 in a thing

00:56:58.440 that's supposedly

00:57:00.160 rigorous kin

00:57:00.820 selection, you

00:57:01.520 know, there's

00:57:02.460 the whole

00:57:02.920 theory of

00:57:07.100 collective

00:57:08.740 inheritance and

00:57:09.560 those kinds of

00:57:10.100 things.

00:57:10.860 Interestingly enough,

00:57:11.640 by the way,

00:57:12.180 this argument

00:57:13.200 works very well

00:57:14.020 for hymenotera

00:57:16.000 and for bee

00:57:16.560 colonies and

00:57:17.300 ant colonies,

00:57:18.760 the skewed

00:57:19.840 sex ratios of

00:57:20.880 males and

00:57:21.280 females there, it

00:57:22.020 works very well

00:57:22.800 for that, but it

00:57:23.820 doesn't for

00:57:24.220 termites, which

00:57:24.860 have an entirely

00:57:25.580 different form of

00:57:27.540 sex determination.

00:57:28.840 Oh, I can tell

00:57:29.800 I'm speaking to a

00:57:30.580 biologist.

00:57:31.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:32.800 Anyway, that's

00:57:33.460 just me getting

00:57:34.720 my biology geek

00:57:35.860 add-on.

00:57:36.820 But, yeah, it's,

00:57:38.220 okay, so let's

00:57:39.320 go on to another

00:57:41.380 question.

00:57:41.860 And our

00:57:42.380 friend Randy

00:57:42.820 Wayne from

00:57:43.940 Cornell.

00:57:44.920 Oh, what a

00:57:45.840 I, Randy is

00:57:47.960 what a scholar

00:57:49.380 should aspire to

00:57:50.980 be, gentleman

00:57:52.000 and a scholar.

00:57:53.160 I once called

00:57:53.840 him the

00:57:54.260 professor's

00:57:54.800 professor.

00:57:55.600 So that's

00:57:56.060 very true.

00:57:56.980 Yeah, anyway, so

00:57:57.740 he asked a

00:57:58.240 question, evolutionary

00:58:00.200 psychology exactly

00:58:01.780 explains why my

00:58:02.800 university

00:58:03.660 colleagues think

00:58:05.460 there is no

00:58:06.040 such thing as

00:58:06.680 cancel culture

00:58:07.460 and that FIRE,

00:58:09.140 the group

00:58:09.500 Foundation for

00:58:10.400 Individual Rights

00:58:11.660 and Expression,

00:58:12.680 I think it is

00:58:13.240 now, is a

00:58:14.140 far right-wing

00:58:15.200 organization.

00:58:16.900 There's some

00:58:17.240 peculiar dynamics

00:58:18.160 going on there.

00:58:18.900 What are your

00:58:19.200 thoughts on that?

00:58:21.060 I mean, is he

00:58:22.460 meaning it

00:58:23.020 facetiously or is

00:58:24.080 he being serious

00:58:24.840 and linking it

00:58:25.600 to evolutionary

00:58:26.060 theory?

00:58:26.660 I think he's

00:58:28.080 doing it with a

00:58:28.840 wink-wink if I'm

00:58:30.500 hearing Randy's

00:58:31.580 voice.

00:58:31.900 So why is it

00:58:36.860 that academics

00:58:37.940 tend to

00:58:39.120 over-apply

00:58:40.780 the

00:58:41.220 you're a

00:58:41.800 far-right

00:58:42.320 Nazi to

00:58:43.140 anybody who

00:58:43.940 is to the

00:58:44.460 right of

00:58:44.780 them?

00:58:44.980 Is that

00:58:45.300 sort of

00:58:45.600 the more

00:58:46.020 rephrasing

00:58:47.580 of that

00:58:47.920 sentence?

00:58:48.260 I think so.

00:58:49.680 I think he's

00:58:50.300 he might be

00:58:51.360 referring, and

00:58:51.860 Randy, you

00:58:52.240 can chime in

00:58:53.440 here if I'm

00:58:53.940 getting this

00:58:54.340 wrong, that

00:58:55.480 there's a

00:58:57.180 kind of

00:58:57.900 denialism, I

00:58:59.300 hate to use

00:58:59.660 that word, but

00:59:00.260 denialism amongst

00:59:01.400 his colleagues

00:59:02.740 that refuses to

00:59:05.120 see a problem

00:59:05.880 and is likely

00:59:07.800 to try to

00:59:09.260 purge the

00:59:10.280 community of

00:59:11.320 whoever is

00:59:11.860 expressing that.

00:59:12.500 So I do

00:59:14.300 describe that

00:59:15.520 in the

00:59:15.980 parasitic

00:59:16.400 mind.

00:59:16.800 I have a

00:59:17.200 chapter, an

00:59:18.680 entire chapter

00:59:19.560 on what I

00:59:20.600 call ostrich

00:59:22.100 parasitic

00:59:22.800 syndrome, OPS.

00:59:24.860 Well, OPS, of

00:59:25.820 course, I mean,

00:59:26.240 we know that the

00:59:26.820 ostriches don't

00:59:27.740 literally, you

00:59:29.000 know, burrow

00:59:29.640 their heads in

00:59:30.300 the sand, but

00:59:30.960 the metaphor has

00:59:31.840 become understood

00:59:32.660 to mean I

00:59:33.680 don't want, I

00:59:35.180 want to deny

00:59:35.720 reality, la, la,

00:59:37.220 la, by putting

00:59:37.900 my head in the

00:59:38.500 sand.

00:59:38.780 So it doesn't

00:59:39.640 matter how much

00:59:40.260 evidence you

00:59:40.780 show me, that's

00:59:41.680 not true.

00:59:42.100 That must be a

00:59:42.840 right-wing

00:59:43.140 conspiracy.

00:59:44.380 So I think

00:59:45.080 that while it

00:59:45.980 is absolutely

00:59:46.460 true what

00:59:47.060 Randy is

00:59:47.460 saying, that

00:59:47.960 definitely

00:59:48.920 academics suffer

00:59:50.080 from OPS, I

00:59:51.660 regret to

00:59:52.300 inform the

00:59:52.960 audience that

00:59:53.580 that's an

00:59:54.100 indelible part

00:59:55.180 of the

00:59:55.580 architecture of

00:59:56.280 the human

00:59:56.620 mind, right?

00:59:57.400 There is no

00:59:58.200 diabetes because

00:59:59.480 my family nor

01:00:00.860 I have ever

01:00:01.880 had diabetes,

01:00:03.180 right?

01:00:03.500 There is no

01:00:04.420 anti-Semitism

01:00:05.340 until some

01:00:07.140 wealthy Jewish

01:00:08.460 billionaires had

01:00:10.180 it, knocked

01:00:10.900 them over the

01:00:11.780 head at their

01:00:12.740 alma mater, then

01:00:14.200 they woke up to

01:00:15.220 this thing called

01:00:16.200 anti-Semitism.

01:00:18.200 But until it

01:00:19.280 came in the

01:00:20.360 shower with

01:00:21.180 them, they

01:00:22.160 didn't know it

01:00:22.900 existed.

01:00:23.480 They were busy

01:00:24.160 doing other

01:00:24.860 stuff.

01:00:25.760 That's, I

01:00:26.320 think, the

01:00:26.780 difference between

01:00:27.700 the ones who, I

01:00:29.680 guess, suffer from

01:00:30.420 Cassandra's curse, I

01:00:31.460 think that's the

01:00:31.880 right reference,

01:00:32.620 right?

01:00:32.800 The ones who

01:00:33.300 stand on top of

01:00:34.180 the mountain and

01:00:34.800 say, I'm warning

01:00:35.600 you, it's

01:00:36.420 coming, this is

01:00:37.480 what's coming down

01:00:38.180 the pipeline and

01:00:39.860 most people say, I

01:00:41.460 don't want to hear

01:00:42.020 it, I'm busy, I

01:00:43.100 have to get my

01:00:44.220 daughter's prom

01:00:45.540 dress tonight, I've

01:00:47.460 got to pick up the

01:00:48.160 mushrooms that my

01:00:48.820 wife told me to

01:00:49.500 pick up.

01:00:50.180 So there is an

01:00:51.260 existential myopia

01:00:52.760 such that I don't

01:00:54.240 need to worry about

01:00:55.220 those things and as

01:00:56.500 long as they don't

01:00:57.340 affect me personally,

01:00:58.640 they probably don't

01:00:59.840 exist.

01:01:00.420 It's a way to cope

01:01:01.680 with the world.

01:01:02.380 It's a very

01:01:02.920 inefficient way to

01:01:04.400 cope with the world

01:01:05.140 because instead of

01:01:06.980 stopping the problem

01:01:07.920 today, you're

01:01:09.040 waiting that it's

01:01:10.000 10 steps ahead

01:01:11.580 before you

01:01:12.120 intervene.

01:01:12.900 So I don't think

01:01:14.060 it's a unique

01:01:15.100 reality of

01:01:16.500 academics, I

01:01:17.400 think it's just

01:01:18.240 the reality of

01:01:19.180 most people, they'll

01:01:20.360 only respond once

01:01:22.020 it hits them

01:01:23.140 directly and

01:01:24.100 personally, then

01:01:25.200 they suddenly

01:01:25.740 realize that, oops,

01:01:26.700 we have a

01:01:27.060 problem.

01:01:28.280 Yeah, I mean,

01:01:28.800 we've seen this

01:01:29.400 in academia and

01:01:31.480 in particular

01:01:33.140 among academics

01:01:35.980 in the STEM

01:01:36.860 professions, you

01:01:37.660 know, science,

01:01:38.460 technology, engineering

01:01:39.400 and mathematics

01:01:40.540 and I've run

01:01:42.440 into innumerable

01:01:44.280 people who

01:01:45.220 have said

01:01:46.680 who are

01:01:48.120 actually surprised

01:01:49.380 that this

01:01:50.140 pernicious

01:01:51.280 development that's

01:01:52.200 actually been

01:01:52.780 unfolding in the

01:01:53.600 academy for about

01:01:54.600 two decades now

01:01:55.600 that all of a

01:01:56.940 sudden it's

01:01:57.360 consuming them,

01:01:58.360 you know, and

01:01:59.340 that's a sad

01:02:02.680 reality and

01:02:03.880 this is where

01:02:04.440 the demographic

01:02:06.940 starts to come

01:02:07.780 in, you know,

01:02:08.320 the people who

01:02:10.040 still hold on to

01:02:10.920 those values are

01:02:12.180 old, like me,

01:02:14.100 you know, for

01:02:14.720 example, they're

01:02:15.840 close to

01:02:16.220 retirement and

01:02:17.060 their natural

01:02:17.580 response is to

01:02:18.620 keep the head in

01:02:19.880 the sand, you

01:02:20.440 know, hope that,

01:02:21.160 well, I'm very

01:02:21.620 close to retirement,

01:02:22.600 why rock the

01:02:23.120 boat now?

01:02:23.700 And they're being

01:02:24.300 replaced, I think,

01:02:25.520 by a more

01:02:28.420 aggressive cohort

01:02:30.460 that actually

01:02:32.060 lashes out

01:02:32.940 against people

01:02:37.260 who still hold

01:02:38.280 those ideas,

01:02:39.420 you know, and

01:02:39.840 this is one of

01:02:40.420 the reasons why

01:02:41.080 cancel culture is

01:02:42.020 becoming prominent

01:02:43.420 among scientists,

01:02:44.500 you know, one of

01:02:45.520 the surprising

01:02:46.080 things, well, one

01:02:48.020 of my surprising

01:02:48.780 experiences was

01:02:49.920 taking a stand on

01:02:51.700 something like,

01:02:52.300 well, no, you

01:02:52.700 can't tell me how

01:02:53.360 to teach, you

01:02:54.100 know, and the

01:02:55.560 most vociferous

01:02:56.520 opponents of that

01:02:57.680 opposition to

01:02:59.280 that is actually

01:03:00.320 coming from my

01:03:00.940 own colleagues,

01:03:01.760 my younger

01:03:02.160 colleagues, and

01:03:03.240 anyway, I'm not

01:03:05.120 sure how we

01:03:05.780 correct that

01:03:06.600 because, you

01:03:07.340 know, these

01:03:07.640 people enjoy

01:03:08.400 the protections

01:03:09.420 of tenure, as

01:03:10.820 they should,

01:03:11.220 nothing against

01:03:11.740 tenure, but it's

01:03:12.580 going to make

01:03:12.940 it very, very

01:03:13.440 hard, I think,

01:03:14.160 to get our

01:03:14.560 culture back to

01:03:15.780 what it should

01:03:16.800 be.

01:03:17.460 Can I just add

01:03:18.180 one quick thing

01:03:18.760 before you go to

01:03:19.260 the next question?

01:03:20.380 Yes, of course.

01:03:20.920 So, two

01:03:21.640 additional things

01:03:22.700 that I think

01:03:23.380 are endemically

01:03:25.040 problematic in

01:03:26.000 academia, and I

01:03:26.860 think I might

01:03:27.300 have mentioned

01:03:27.720 this in a

01:03:28.780 private conversation

01:03:29.600 with Randy, if

01:03:30.980 he's still there.

01:03:32.340 Number one, many

01:03:33.580 academics or

01:03:34.900 universities in

01:03:35.760 general view

01:03:36.560 their number one

01:03:37.580 mission is to

01:03:38.860 be, you know,

01:03:39.920 good activists

01:03:41.620 before being good

01:03:43.300 intellectuals,

01:03:44.220 right?

01:03:44.400 So, intellectual

01:03:45.900 pursuits take a

01:03:48.400 backseat to being

01:03:49.820 a good citizen

01:03:51.540 of activism.

01:03:52.720 No.

01:03:53.060 My job as a

01:03:54.580 professor is to

01:03:55.860 create and

01:03:57.020 disseminate

01:03:57.680 knowledge, not

01:03:58.840 to be an

01:03:59.480 activist for

01:04:00.300 cause A, B,

01:04:01.200 or C.

01:04:01.620 Yes, I defend

01:04:02.500 truth, I defend

01:04:03.760 freedom, so I

01:04:04.520 defend these

01:04:05.020 deontological

01:04:05.680 principles, but

01:04:06.600 it's not for me

01:04:07.460 to elevate

01:04:08.260 marginalized voices.

01:04:10.040 No, I'm here to

01:04:11.160 understand human

01:04:12.300 nature better and

01:04:13.140 hopefully to add to

01:04:13.980 the pantheon of

01:04:14.820 human knowledge.

01:04:16.140 The second thing

01:04:16.980 that I think, if

01:04:18.500 you were to ask

01:04:19.040 me what has been

01:04:19.740 the most

01:04:20.620 disappointing

01:04:21.540 thing that I've

01:04:23.040 seen amongst

01:04:24.080 my academic

01:04:25.000 colleagues, it's

01:04:27.260 so I'm going to

01:04:28.240 answer it, it's

01:04:29.220 how astonishingly

01:04:31.740 non-intellectual

01:04:33.720 most professors

01:04:35.980 are, right?

01:04:37.160 There's a

01:04:37.720 difference between

01:04:38.560 being called a

01:04:39.960 professor and

01:04:41.360 being an

01:04:41.900 intellectual.

01:04:42.640 Now, you'd

01:04:42.960 like to think

01:04:43.540 that those two

01:04:44.240 are completely

01:04:45.140 to say one is

01:04:46.880 to say the

01:04:47.320 other, but it's

01:04:48.800 no longer true

01:04:49.480 because many

01:04:50.360 academics are

01:04:51.720 careerist

01:04:52.660 academics, whereas

01:04:54.120 if I can speak

01:04:55.500 of myself, but I

01:04:56.280 can certainly

01:04:56.820 speak on behalf

01:04:57.860 of Randy because

01:04:58.540 I've had the

01:04:59.380 pleasure of

01:05:00.120 communicating with

01:05:00.840 him many times,

01:05:01.720 he's the

01:05:02.080 professor's

01:05:03.100 professor because

01:05:04.100 he embodies

01:05:04.920 what you should

01:05:05.520 be.

01:05:05.840 We can talk

01:05:06.540 about the

01:05:07.060 philosophy of

01:05:07.840 aesthetics, or

01:05:08.920 we can talk

01:05:09.660 about group

01:05:10.260 selectionism of

01:05:11.260 David Sloan

01:05:11.860 Wilson, or I

01:05:12.980 could ask him

01:05:13.680 about plant

01:05:14.360 physiology, which

01:05:15.540 I know very

01:05:16.100 little about,

01:05:17.300 meaning that I

01:05:19.160 am infinitely

01:05:20.580 intellectually

01:05:21.920 inquisitive and

01:05:23.480 curious.

01:05:24.340 I want to

01:05:25.200 know everything

01:05:26.320 there is to

01:05:27.040 know in the

01:05:27.440 world, even

01:05:27.920 though I know

01:05:28.420 very little of

01:05:29.240 what there is to

01:05:29.820 know in the

01:05:30.160 world.

01:05:30.660 That's what an

01:05:31.520 intellectual is.

01:05:32.620 Most of my

01:05:33.560 academic

01:05:34.800 colleagues can't

01:05:36.280 say an

01:05:37.080 intelligent

01:05:37.700 syllable outside

01:05:39.040 the silo of

01:05:41.420 their very narrow

01:05:42.480 hyper-specialized

01:05:43.700 field.

01:05:44.100 They're complete

01:05:44.880 babbling

01:05:45.660 morons.

01:05:46.340 that's not

01:05:47.540 what an

01:05:47.880 intellectual is.

01:05:49.100 So yes, you

01:05:49.680 can be called

01:05:50.280 professor, doctor,

01:05:51.440 so-and-so, that

01:05:52.500 doesn't make you

01:05:53.140 an intellectual.

01:05:53.840 So what I

01:05:54.220 would love to

01:05:54.860 see as a

01:05:55.380 general reinvigoration

01:05:58.680 of the

01:05:59.940 intellectual spirit

01:06:01.280 in our

01:06:01.900 academia.

01:06:02.680 Let's go

01:06:03.420 together to the

01:06:04.140 faculty lounge

01:06:04.860 today and talk

01:06:06.020 about the

01:06:06.560 philosophy of

01:06:07.320 beauty.

01:06:08.200 Let's get an

01:06:11.100 intellectual orgasm

01:06:12.100 going.

01:06:12.740 Most academics

01:06:13.660 are how do

01:06:14.980 I bullshit

01:06:16.300 some paper so

01:06:17.440 that I can get

01:06:18.060 another paper so

01:06:18.980 I can get

01:06:19.500 tenure.

01:06:20.060 And that has

01:06:20.720 always turned me

01:06:21.600 off.

01:06:22.540 On the one

01:06:23.000 hand, it made

01:06:23.700 me the pariah of

01:06:24.620 a lot of my

01:06:25.160 colleagues because

01:06:25.720 they knew that I

01:06:26.340 wouldn't play

01:06:26.740 along with their

01:06:27.480 scamming.

01:06:28.600 On the other

01:06:29.220 hand, it's allowed

01:06:30.300 me to have a much

01:06:31.100 bigger platform than

01:06:32.060 all of them

01:06:32.500 combined.

01:06:33.860 Yeah, well, the

01:06:35.620 platform's a thing.

01:06:36.800 But of course,

01:06:38.040 you know, this

01:06:39.440 comes back to the

01:06:40.520 Gresham's Law

01:06:41.680 subsidy argument.

01:06:43.620 You know, Stephen

01:06:45.640 Turner and

01:06:46.200 Daryl Trubin

01:06:46.900 published a very

01:06:48.240 interesting paper

01:06:49.020 on issues in

01:06:50.580 science and

01:06:51.040 technology a few

01:06:52.060 years ago.

01:06:52.580 And they made

01:06:54.100 the point that

01:06:54.840 the entire ethic

01:06:56.580 of science has

01:06:57.500 changed since the

01:06:59.080 expansion of

01:07:00.060 government money,

01:07:01.080 NSF, and all the

01:07:02.180 extramural programs

01:07:03.300 into academia where

01:07:05.300 it had not been

01:07:06.140 before.

01:07:07.240 And they have a

01:07:09.240 very compelling way

01:07:09.960 of speaking about

01:07:10.720 it.

01:07:10.880 They talk about

01:07:11.520 we've moved from

01:07:12.360 an ethic of

01:07:12.980 discovery where

01:07:14.160 you're valued and

01:07:15.320 encouraged to

01:07:16.120 discover new

01:07:16.980 things, to do

01:07:17.820 exactly what you

01:07:18.660 said, to, you

01:07:19.840 know, go into

01:07:20.360 the faculty lounge

01:07:21.400 and talk about

01:07:22.520 the, you know, I

01:07:24.280 forget what the

01:07:24.920 example was.

01:07:25.500 The philosophy of

01:07:26.340 beauty.

01:07:27.260 That's what I,

01:07:27.820 yeah, okay, yeah,

01:07:28.580 thanks for that.

01:07:29.220 I mean, fascinating

01:07:29.940 subject.

01:07:30.820 And now we're in

01:07:33.000 an ethic of

01:07:33.740 productivity where

01:07:34.860 increasingly academics

01:07:36.160 are judged by

01:07:37.120 numbers, you know,

01:07:38.540 which usually have

01:07:39.700 nothing to do with

01:07:40.560 what we're supposed

01:07:41.100 to be as

01:07:41.620 intellectuals.

01:07:42.360 You know, we

01:07:43.480 all know the

01:07:43.900 drill, numbers of

01:07:44.680 publications, citation

01:07:46.200 index, H-index,

01:07:47.660 numbers of students,

01:07:49.240 numbers of grant

01:07:49.940 dollars that you

01:07:51.360 bring in.

01:07:52.460 And this is the

01:07:54.200 climate of incentives

01:07:56.340 and disincentives as

01:07:57.720 operating in the

01:07:58.980 present academic

01:08:01.540 ecosystem.

01:08:02.580 And it's just

01:08:03.760 killing the

01:08:05.060 intellectual aspect

01:08:05.980 aspect of it.

01:08:06.720 And yet we're

01:08:07.160 paying big money

01:08:08.360 to make that

01:08:09.020 happen, you know.

01:08:10.560 And I'm not sure

01:08:11.180 most of my

01:08:11.820 colleagues really,

01:08:13.000 really understand

01:08:14.220 what's going on

01:08:14.860 around them.

01:08:15.640 Primarily because

01:08:16.440 we're there

01:08:17.300 primarily to, you

01:08:18.780 know, explore the

01:08:19.780 endless frontier,

01:08:20.980 to use Vannevar

01:08:21.940 Bush's words.

01:08:23.320 So, okay, well,

01:08:24.660 let's go on to

01:08:26.720 some other

01:08:27.140 questions.

01:08:27.600 John Weiss has a

01:08:29.900 series of questions

01:08:31.240 here, and I'm

01:08:31.880 just trying to

01:08:33.420 sort out what's

01:08:35.440 from there.

01:08:37.340 So, he says,

01:08:39.020 bad ideas make

01:08:40.140 us take leaps of

01:08:41.000 faith, leaving the

01:08:41.940 old worth to

01:08:43.340 travel across the

01:08:44.220 ocean to an

01:08:44.920 unknown fate with

01:08:46.980 no money and no

01:08:47.760 contracts.

01:08:48.420 I'm not sure I

01:08:49.120 agree with that.

01:08:49.620 I think there's a

01:08:50.460 lot of money and

01:08:51.120 contracts being

01:08:51.940 pushed into this.

01:08:53.780 But anyway, we

01:08:54.700 can discuss that.

01:08:55.780 Social, the best

01:08:57.100 made powerful.

01:08:58.520 He goes on to

01:08:59.300 say, he looked at

01:09:00.320 differently discussing

01:09:01.300 the Gaza thing.

01:09:02.760 I think about

01:09:03.240 Jacques Barzun from

01:09:04.280 Dawn to Decadence,

01:09:05.260 the rise and fall

01:09:05.900 of empires, but

01:09:07.360 aren't people

01:09:07.880 inherently tribal to

01:09:09.020 some extent?

01:09:09.860 And he concludes

01:09:11.180 with saying,

01:09:11.760 looking at the

01:09:12.240 Jewish religion,

01:09:13.020 it's very difficult

01:09:13.840 to comprehend how

01:09:16.160 secular Jewish

01:09:17.660 folks accept

01:09:18.540 these tenets while

01:09:19.500 Hasidic and

01:09:20.480 others are

01:09:21.080 disturbed by the

01:09:22.140 liberal ideas

01:09:22.980 infecting society.

01:09:24.080 I think you

01:09:26.900 can see these

01:09:27.700 questions if you

01:09:28.880 just look at the

01:09:29.400 Q&A.

01:09:29.580 Oh, where do I

01:09:30.600 go?

01:09:30.820 Is it in the

01:09:31.360 Q&A chat box?

01:09:33.220 Yes, that's

01:09:33.720 right.

01:09:33.960 The Q&A, yeah,

01:09:34.760 down at the

01:09:35.240 bottom.

01:09:37.020 So I've got it.

01:09:38.600 Sorry, I'm

01:09:38.880 putting on which

01:09:39.740 one.

01:09:40.040 I'm going to the

01:09:40.580 bottom.

01:09:42.100 Wesley Brown,

01:09:43.120 Randy Wayne,

01:09:44.200 Joe Nalvin,

01:09:45.140 John Weiss.

01:09:46.220 That's right.

01:09:46.840 Yeah, you can

01:09:47.180 see.

01:09:47.300 Looking at the

01:09:47.800 Jewish religion,

01:09:48.240 it's very difficult

01:09:48.780 to comprehend how

01:09:49.380 secular Jewish

01:09:49.920 folks accept

01:09:50.720 these tenets

01:09:51.320 while Hasidic.

01:09:52.220 Which tenets are

01:09:53.120 we talking

01:09:53.460 about?

01:09:54.480 I think

01:09:55.260 John Weiss

01:09:55.960 needs to tell

01:09:57.060 something.

01:09:57.420 He might be

01:09:59.180 talking about

01:10:01.000 this dispute,

01:10:04.380 especially among

01:10:05.060 the American

01:10:05.780 Jewish community

01:10:06.560 about how,

01:10:08.140 well, the

01:10:08.820 anti-Israel

01:10:09.880 American Jewish

01:10:11.220 community.

01:10:11.740 And, you

01:10:13.900 know, there's

01:10:14.560 some political

01:10:15.200 opposition amongst

01:10:16.240 American Jews

01:10:17.160 to the

01:10:17.780 establishment of

01:10:18.460 Israel, as we

01:10:19.160 all know, and

01:10:20.720 the legitimacy of

01:10:22.000 Israel, and I

01:10:24.540 think that might

01:10:25.320 be what he's

01:10:26.260 talking about.

01:10:27.360 So, where does

01:10:28.100 John live?

01:10:29.420 Which state does

01:10:30.220 he live?

01:10:31.060 Because he needs

01:10:31.960 to get off

01:10:32.660 wherever he

01:10:33.300 lives because he's

01:10:34.340 sitting on

01:10:34.760 occupied land.

01:10:36.360 Okay, all right.

01:10:37.760 Well, what I mean

01:10:38.360 by that, I'm not

01:10:39.140 trying to be

01:10:39.520 facetious, what I

01:10:40.800 mean is, there

01:10:41.860 is no, there

01:10:43.200 isn't a

01:10:43.780 millimeter of

01:10:44.740 land on

01:10:45.620 earth that

01:10:46.680 wasn't at

01:10:47.400 some point

01:10:48.020 occupied by

01:10:48.940 somebody else.

01:10:49.860 So, therefore,

01:10:50.940 if we play

01:10:52.240 the game, I

01:10:53.780 mean, the

01:10:54.440 discipline of

01:10:55.780 history is

01:10:57.120 literally a

01:10:58.220 forensic accounting

01:10:59.300 of who did

01:11:00.240 what, to

01:11:00.760 whom, when,

01:11:01.560 and where,

01:11:02.420 right?

01:11:02.860 So, if we

01:11:04.160 were to sit

01:11:05.400 and wallow

01:11:06.440 over what

01:11:07.460 happened 300

01:11:08.360 years ago or

01:11:09.300 60 years ago

01:11:10.100 or so, then

01:11:10.940 none of us

01:11:11.660 could have ever

01:11:12.440 done anything

01:11:13.300 in our lives

01:11:13.940 because we

01:11:14.600 would still be

01:11:15.240 fighting over

01:11:15.940 what my

01:11:16.740 home was

01:11:18.200 stolen and

01:11:19.280 occupied.

01:11:19.860 Literally, my

01:11:20.860 home in

01:11:21.520 Beirut, by

01:11:22.340 Palestinian

01:11:23.180 refugees.

01:11:24.800 My parents

01:11:25.480 were kidnapped

01:11:26.180 by Fatah and

01:11:27.440 tortured.

01:11:28.480 Many bad

01:11:29.220 things happened

01:11:29.860 to us.

01:11:30.780 It's horrible.

01:11:31.820 It's tragic.

01:11:32.760 It's part of

01:11:33.380 my personal

01:11:33.860 history.

01:11:34.660 I've moved

01:11:35.180 on and I've

01:11:36.400 hopefully done

01:11:37.220 something meaningful

01:11:38.200 in my life.

01:11:39.080 I didn't go

01:11:39.820 and bomb

01:11:40.340 places.

01:11:41.240 I didn't

01:11:41.640 create terrorism

01:11:42.600 against Palestinians.

01:11:44.060 That's the

01:11:44.620 organic nature

01:11:46.040 of how lands

01:11:47.820 move from

01:11:48.420 what, so we

01:11:48.940 don't need

01:11:49.280 to talk

01:11:49.620 about who

01:11:50.620 owns the

01:11:51.280 land of

01:11:51.900 Israel because

01:11:52.440 if we use

01:11:52.920 a historical

01:11:53.440 argument, then

01:11:54.100 certainly they

01:11:55.080 have the

01:11:55.620 oldest ancestral

01:11:56.900 claim to

01:11:57.760 that land.

01:11:58.600 But I don't

01:11:59.220 think that's

01:11:59.840 relevant.

01:12:00.800 There is a

01:12:01.300 reality today

01:12:02.200 that Jews

01:12:03.960 exist in

01:12:05.040 this land

01:12:05.500 that is now

01:12:06.240 existent in

01:12:07.260 its current

01:12:07.660 modern form

01:12:08.180 since 1948.

01:12:09.720 We can either

01:12:10.600 accept it and

01:12:11.680 hopefully live

01:12:12.480 as co-neighbors

01:12:13.420 and we can

01:12:14.000 both flourish

01:12:14.940 or you

01:12:16.140 can keep

01:12:16.720 raising your

01:12:17.400 children, and

01:12:17.960 I say you

01:12:18.560 keep, meaning

01:12:19.180 Palestinians, keep

01:12:20.200 raising your

01:12:20.820 children straight

01:12:22.020 out of the

01:12:22.660 womb to say

01:12:23.680 inshallah one

01:12:25.080 day we will

01:12:25.820 eradicate all

01:12:26.800 Jews.

01:12:27.620 That is a

01:12:28.380 fact that is

01:12:29.940 enmeshed within

01:12:32.020 the teachings of

01:12:33.720 Islam.

01:12:34.460 It is in the

01:12:35.380 charter of

01:12:36.780 Hamas.

01:12:37.740 It is in

01:12:38.640 every conversation

01:12:39.880 when I speak to

01:12:40.700 someone in

01:12:41.120 Arabic, how do

01:12:41.980 we kill all

01:12:42.760 the Jews, and

01:12:43.780 so the

01:12:44.740 bottom line

01:12:45.360 is Israel is

01:12:47.080 not likely to

01:12:48.000 go away unless

01:12:48.800 you exterminate

01:12:49.680 every Jew in

01:12:50.380 Israel, so how

01:12:51.580 about you stop

01:12:52.540 trying to

01:12:53.360 eradicate a

01:12:54.200 people, let's

01:12:54.980 get along, let's

01:12:56.120 build the great

01:12:56.780 co-societies next

01:12:58.080 to each other, and

01:12:59.220 stop doing the

01:13:00.400 forensic accounting

01:13:01.240 of who owns

01:13:01.880 what.

01:13:03.400 Yeah, and of

01:13:03.820 course prior to the

01:13:04.560 establishment of

01:13:05.240 Israel and the

01:13:05.880 whole settlement of

01:13:06.940 the Middle East

01:13:08.560 post-World War

01:13:09.540 II, this kind of

01:13:12.180 mixed society was

01:13:13.220 actually quite

01:13:14.180 widespread throughout

01:13:16.000 the Middle East,

01:13:16.740 you know, there

01:13:17.140 was a fairly

01:13:17.780 substantial Arab

01:13:18.940 population in

01:13:19.900 Israel, and in

01:13:20.960 countries that are

01:13:23.080 outside of Israel,

01:13:24.660 there were a lot of

01:13:25.960 Jewish people there

01:13:26.740 as well, so it was a

01:13:27.860 society that had the

01:13:28.800 potential for that

01:13:29.920 sort of thing, and

01:13:30.840 yet, of course, as

01:13:32.080 we've seen, you

01:13:33.520 know, the

01:13:34.340 population of

01:13:35.920 Jewish people in

01:13:37.540 places like Saudi

01:13:38.460 Arabia and Syria

01:13:39.720 and those kinds

01:13:41.300 of places, they've

01:13:42.060 gone down

01:13:42.500 precipitously, and

01:13:43.660 they're non-existent.

01:13:45.740 I mean, in

01:13:46.120 Lebanon, there's

01:13:47.360 now 40, the

01:13:48.680 latest sort of

01:13:49.520 unofficial census

01:13:51.080 is that there may

01:13:52.060 be 40 hidden

01:13:53.220 Jews in Lebanon,

01:13:54.240 in other words, that

01:13:54.820 they don't practice

01:13:55.680 Judaism openly.

01:13:56.760 They got married to

01:13:57.900 someone in 1967 who

01:13:59.720 was Christian, and

01:14:00.800 yes, they are

01:14:01.420 Jewish, but they

01:14:02.100 don't practice

01:14:02.820 Judaism, there's no

01:14:03.640 Jewish community,

01:14:04.780 and as you said,

01:14:05.800 it's true in

01:14:06.340 Afghanistan and in

01:14:07.360 Yemen and in Egypt

01:14:08.500 and in Syria and

01:14:09.580 in Libya and in

01:14:10.480 Tunisia and in

01:14:11.260 Algeria and in

01:14:12.080 Morocco and in

01:14:12.900 Iran, what happened

01:14:14.100 to the Jews?

01:14:14.840 Okay, you don't

01:14:15.320 want to talk about

01:14:15.780 Jews, what happened

01:14:16.640 to the Christian

01:14:17.280 communities?

01:14:18.060 You don't want to

01:14:18.500 talk about that?

01:14:19.100 What happened to

01:14:19.720 the Zoroastrian?

01:14:20.860 What happened to

01:14:21.580 the Baha'i?

01:14:22.620 So, yes, there

01:14:24.040 have been coexistence

01:14:26.080 in those regions, but

01:14:27.160 it's very important

01:14:27.920 for your viewers and

01:14:30.080 listeners to

01:14:30.660 understand what

01:14:31.360 coexistence means and

01:14:32.920 the ethos of the

01:14:33.700 Middle East.

01:14:35.340 Coexistence means we

01:14:36.500 tolerate you until we

01:14:38.320 don't, right?

01:14:39.400 There's a Quranic

01:14:41.000 principle called

01:14:42.320 dimmi.

01:14:43.820 Dimmi means it's

01:14:45.160 not even a second

01:14:45.900 class citizen, it's a

01:14:46.960 third class citizen.

01:14:48.280 Know your place,

01:14:49.700 Jew, right?

01:14:50.640 So, if I have

01:14:52.260 the zine on your

01:14:53.220 beautiful daughter and

01:14:55.060 I come to you and

01:14:56.020 ask her in marriage,

01:14:57.440 do the right thing,

01:14:58.740 Jew.

01:14:59.200 So, yes, we

01:14:59.940 tolerate you.

01:15:00.580 I mean, it is

01:15:01.660 true, it is

01:15:02.300 incontestable that

01:15:03.240 Jews have existed in

01:15:04.660 Islamic lands, but it

01:15:06.200 always ends up badly

01:15:07.340 because at some

01:15:08.040 point there's a

01:15:08.740 catalyst that says,

01:15:09.880 yeah, we've had

01:15:10.460 enough of tolerating

01:15:11.300 the Jews.

01:15:12.020 And when that

01:15:12.480 happens, Gadzad,

01:15:14.120 11 years old, puts

01:15:15.180 on his really fancy

01:15:16.440 sneakers and runs

01:15:17.740 really fast so that

01:15:19.160 his head is not

01:15:20.060 detached from the

01:15:21.800 rest of his body.

01:15:23.020 So, coexistence has a

01:15:25.040 very different meaning

01:15:26.260 than the way it is

01:15:27.220 used in the West.

01:15:29.040 Yeah, yeah,

01:15:29.940 definitely.

01:15:30.540 And I think a lot of

01:15:31.280 us in the West don't

01:15:32.120 really understand that,

01:15:33.100 you know, the

01:15:33.500 remarkable ignorance

01:15:35.200 about the history of

01:15:36.140 the Middle East and

01:15:36.760 even, actually, I

01:15:37.780 have to say,

01:15:38.220 remarkable ignorance

01:15:39.120 of the history of

01:15:41.120 the United States.

01:15:41.960 I mean, I live in

01:15:42.780 upstate New York and

01:15:44.980 there's a resurgent

01:15:46.480 group of the

01:15:49.940 Iroquois nation and,

01:15:52.580 you know, making

01:15:53.380 claims that, oh,

01:15:56.100 you know, we were

01:15:56.600 here first, why did

01:15:57.620 you take our land

01:15:58.560 away and these kind

01:15:59.640 of things.

01:16:00.040 But, of course, you

01:16:01.200 know, the existence of

01:16:02.180 the Iroquois here is

01:16:03.100 predicated upon, you

01:16:04.600 know, the driving

01:16:05.120 out of other

01:16:06.120 tribes, like the

01:16:07.680 Mulhock or the

01:16:08.460 Algonquin or those

01:16:10.120 kinds of things.

01:16:10.900 So, this kind of

01:16:12.220 argument that, oh,

01:16:14.040 we were here first,

01:16:15.720 it just astonishes me

01:16:17.060 that it still has

01:16:17.940 legs because everyone

01:16:20.040 is there where they

01:16:21.180 are by conquest of

01:16:22.720 some sort, I think,

01:16:23.660 and that's what we

01:16:24.480 have to deal with.

01:16:25.420 Exactly.

01:16:26.340 Okay, so Wesley

01:16:27.280 Brown asked a

01:16:28.580 question.

01:16:29.240 By the way, John

01:16:29.840 Weiss closes with

01:16:32.640 a common one.

01:16:33.880 He's waiting for

01:16:34.480 your book to

01:16:35.020 arrive, so he's

01:16:35.860 clearly looking to

01:16:36.860 buy it.

01:16:39.360 And so, thank you,

01:16:41.340 John, for that.

01:16:42.340 Thank you, John.

01:16:43.560 And, anyway, Wesley

01:16:44.940 Brown asked an

01:16:46.240 intriguing question.

01:16:48.840 He's saying,

01:16:49.860 enjoying the

01:16:50.420 discussion, is there

01:16:51.320 any room in your

01:16:52.040 thinking for the

01:16:52.980 a priori God?

01:16:55.460 For the a what?

01:16:56.820 A priori, you know,

01:16:59.880 as opposed to a

01:17:01.060 posteriori, a priori,

01:17:03.140 the previous God.

01:17:04.020 I'm not sure what the

01:17:06.100 previous God is.

01:17:07.280 The previous God?

01:17:08.020 G-A-D, you.

01:17:10.560 Sorry.

01:17:11.380 Maybe I need to read

01:17:12.360 that question because I

01:17:13.200 don't understand the

01:17:14.060 structure of that

01:17:14.700 question.

01:17:15.660 Hold on.

01:17:16.100 Where is he?

01:17:16.540 Is he towards the

01:17:17.200 end?

01:17:17.960 Yes, he's Wesley

01:17:18.720 Brown.

01:17:19.220 He's got a green

01:17:20.220 Wesley Brown.

01:17:20.860 Enjoying the

01:17:21.280 discussion.

01:17:21.680 Any room in your

01:17:22.740 thinking for the

01:17:24.340 a priori God?

01:17:26.660 I have no idea what

01:17:27.740 that means.

01:17:28.240 Which a priori God?

01:17:29.680 Which God is that?

01:17:31.200 Yeah, we all have

01:17:32.260 a priori selves.

01:17:33.380 I mean, yesterday I

01:17:34.880 was a priori God to

01:17:36.460 today.

01:17:36.900 I don't know what

01:17:37.320 that means.

01:17:37.940 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:40.300 Yeah, I don't

01:17:41.280 either, I have to

01:17:42.040 say.

01:17:42.760 Maybe he could

01:17:43.560 elaborate on that.

01:17:44.940 If he does, I'd be

01:17:45.740 happy to take a shot

01:17:46.700 at answering it.

01:17:47.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:48.440 So, anyway,

01:17:49.920 let's see, carry

01:17:51.320 on down.

01:17:52.480 Tom Conklin, who

01:17:53.620 has not, we

01:17:55.800 have not heard

01:17:56.260 from yet, so

01:17:57.480 let's look at his

01:17:58.360 question.

01:17:58.860 He's down towards

01:17:59.540 the end as well.

01:18:00.940 He says, the

01:18:01.300 history of the

01:18:01.920 world is

01:18:02.620 dominant and

01:18:03.440 colonized.

01:18:04.260 The myopic

01:18:04.780 view of those

01:18:06.200 complaining is

01:18:07.360 unconscionable,

01:18:08.360 kind of related

01:18:09.200 to the topic

01:18:10.160 that we just

01:18:10.840 were speaking

01:18:11.580 about.

01:18:12.340 Exactly.

01:18:13.020 I mean, look,

01:18:13.620 in the parasitic

01:18:14.700 mind, I talk

01:18:15.540 about the

01:18:16.320 dominant and

01:18:19.020 ubiquitous

01:18:20.460 Jewish tribes

01:18:21.640 that were

01:18:22.280 in Arabia,

01:18:23.180 what is

01:18:23.460 modern-day

01:18:24.360 Saudi Arabia,

01:18:25.140 where Muhammad

01:18:25.680 was, right?

01:18:26.480 I mean, one

01:18:26.780 of the reasons

01:18:27.940 for the

01:18:28.360 animus of

01:18:28.980 Muhammad

01:18:29.380 towards the

01:18:30.120 Jews is

01:18:30.920 because he

01:18:31.840 went to the

01:18:32.480 Jews and

01:18:32.920 said, okay,

01:18:33.420 I'm the

01:18:34.260 final prophet,

01:18:34.960 and they

01:18:35.280 said, ah,

01:18:35.720 yeah, sorry,

01:18:36.400 we're good.

01:18:37.080 We already

01:18:37.440 have our

01:18:37.920 monotheistic

01:18:38.780 beliefs, and

01:18:40.340 he wasn't

01:18:40.720 very happy

01:18:41.200 about that.

01:18:41.540 So I

01:18:42.520 want, I

01:18:43.200 mean, the

01:18:43.820 day that

01:18:44.780 Israelis should

01:18:46.320 walk away

01:18:47.160 from land

01:18:47.800 that, certainly

01:18:49.120 from an

01:18:49.640 ancestral

01:18:50.040 historical

01:18:50.500 perspective

01:18:51.240 they have

01:18:51.620 claimed to,

01:18:52.660 I'll be

01:18:53.420 happy for

01:18:54.020 the Israelis

01:18:54.540 to leave

01:18:55.140 right after

01:18:56.820 all the

01:18:57.640 Jews are

01:18:58.140 reinstated in

01:18:59.120 Saudi Arabia,

01:19:00.080 right?

01:19:00.440 But we

01:19:01.580 recognize that

01:19:02.800 history is

01:19:03.680 in flux,

01:19:04.780 right?

01:19:05.320 And if we

01:19:06.840 did that,

01:19:07.400 there'd be

01:19:07.660 no end to

01:19:08.280 it.

01:19:09.000 I mean,

01:19:09.440 let's just

01:19:10.200 do Europe.

01:19:10.800 How many

01:19:11.720 people have

01:19:12.500 lived in

01:19:13.060 places today

01:19:14.100 that weren't

01:19:14.800 theirs 400

01:19:15.880 years ago?

01:19:16.640 So it's

01:19:17.420 such a losing

01:19:18.260 ridiculous

01:19:18.840 proposition.

01:19:20.080 Why don't

01:19:20.440 you accept

01:19:21.260 reality?

01:19:22.220 That doesn't

01:19:22.580 mean you

01:19:23.120 forgo the

01:19:24.080 fact of

01:19:24.540 your history,

01:19:25.180 right?

01:19:25.620 Whenever my

01:19:26.940 personal history

01:19:27.840 is relevant to

01:19:28.900 a discussion,

01:19:29.640 I share it,

01:19:30.520 but I don't

01:19:31.220 wallow in it.

01:19:32.440 As a matter

01:19:32.860 of fact, I

01:19:33.460 define my

01:19:34.260 success in

01:19:35.340 the fact that

01:19:36.000 I have

01:19:36.440 overcome those

01:19:37.740 tragedies,

01:19:38.580 right?

01:19:38.900 That's what

01:19:39.580 makes me

01:19:40.140 successful in

01:19:40.780 life.

01:19:41.260 I don't

01:19:41.700 expect to

01:19:42.480 get any

01:19:43.000 reparations

01:19:43.720 from

01:19:44.240 Palestinians

01:19:44.860 because they

01:19:45.500 stole everything

01:19:46.140 from us in

01:19:46.680 Lebanon.

01:19:47.540 It was tragic.

01:19:48.640 I've moved

01:19:49.040 on.

01:19:49.920 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:51.420 And one

01:19:51.900 wishes this

01:19:52.900 kind of

01:19:53.440 attitude

01:19:54.100 prevailed.

01:19:54.840 You know,

01:19:55.060 I mean,

01:19:55.280 people do

01:19:55.800 thrive and

01:19:56.780 almost wherever

01:19:58.660 they're planted.

01:20:00.980 But this

01:20:01.780 kind of

01:20:02.060 historical

01:20:02.520 ignorance of

01:20:03.640 the Middle

01:20:04.620 East is a

01:20:06.580 real problem.

01:20:07.220 I often

01:20:09.580 get in

01:20:09.940 trouble by

01:20:10.500 pointing out

01:20:11.020 to people

01:20:11.460 that, well,

01:20:12.040 okay, if

01:20:12.400 you look at

01:20:12.700 the Middle

01:20:13.040 East, all

01:20:13.680 right, it

01:20:14.480 was Jewish

01:20:15.100 for a long

01:20:16.420 time.

01:20:17.120 And until

01:20:17.800 about 700

01:20:18.560 AD, the

01:20:20.960 Byzantine

01:20:22.500 Empire was

01:20:23.180 Christian.

01:20:24.160 In fact, the

01:20:25.220 original spread

01:20:26.300 of Christianity

01:20:26.920 was not to

01:20:28.560 Europe, right?

01:20:29.340 As we know,

01:20:29.880 it was actually

01:20:30.420 to the East,

01:20:31.560 around the Red

01:20:34.020 Sea and

01:20:34.600 into areas

01:20:35.380 that are

01:20:36.660 currently

01:20:37.300 strongly Muslim.

01:20:39.520 And that

01:20:39.900 Muhammad was

01:20:40.600 a relatively

01:20:41.100 late interloper.

01:20:42.360 So who was

01:20:43.420 there first,

01:20:44.140 you know?

01:20:44.460 And who has

01:20:45.940 the right to

01:20:46.440 be there by

01:20:47.300 that argument?

01:20:48.200 And again,

01:20:49.480 without

01:20:50.200 realizing that

01:20:53.460 people adapt,

01:20:56.460 they flourish,

01:20:57.660 they make

01:20:58.120 their own

01:20:58.680 worlds,

01:20:59.580 we're really

01:21:00.660 not going to

01:21:01.160 get anywhere.

01:21:02.120 So, okay,

01:21:03.740 I see that

01:21:04.360 we're close

01:21:05.100 to the end

01:21:05.560 of our

01:21:05.800 time.

01:21:06.560 Let me

01:21:06.940 just mention

01:21:08.020 a few

01:21:08.340 things about

01:21:09.140 this webinar

01:21:12.340 series and

01:21:13.080 about the

01:21:13.400 National

01:21:13.680 Association of

01:21:14.540 Scholars,

01:21:15.080 and then,

01:21:15.500 God, I

01:21:15.880 will give

01:21:16.500 you the

01:21:17.020 last word

01:21:17.600 before you.

01:21:18.580 So let me

01:21:18.960 just say

01:21:20.620 a close

01:21:21.960 here.

01:21:22.380 So thanks

01:21:22.920 again for

01:21:23.740 joining us

01:21:24.240 today.

01:21:25.260 And I

01:21:26.260 just want to

01:21:26.680 put in a

01:21:27.140 few plugs

01:21:27.680 for the

01:21:28.600 group I

01:21:28.940 work for,

01:21:29.460 the National

01:21:29.820 Association of

01:21:30.620 Scholars,

01:21:31.180 this webinar

01:21:31.880 among other

01:21:32.480 things,

01:21:32.780 is sponsored

01:21:33.240 by that

01:21:33.720 group.

01:21:34.380 And I

01:21:35.020 hope you

01:21:35.320 enjoyed our

01:21:35.880 webinar today.

01:21:37.800 We're a

01:21:38.760 membership-based

01:21:39.900 organization,

01:21:40.560 and if you're

01:21:41.400 already a

01:21:41.860 member, thank

01:21:42.900 you so much

01:21:43.540 for your

01:21:43.800 support.

01:21:44.600 And if you

01:21:45.100 enjoyed the

01:21:45.640 webinar, but

01:21:46.440 you're not a

01:21:47.080 member, you're

01:21:48.180 always welcome

01:21:48.720 to come back.

01:21:49.600 We're public,

01:21:50.700 but maybe

01:21:51.460 consider joining

01:21:52.240 us because

01:21:52.660 we're a fun

01:21:53.480 group.

01:21:54.480 I just also

01:21:55.480 want to say

01:21:56.040 that if we

01:21:57.100 didn't get your

01:21:57.640 comments today,

01:21:58.660 I apologize,

01:21:59.640 we only have so

01:22:00.280 much time.

01:22:00.840 But this

01:22:01.860 video will be

01:22:02.660 available as

01:22:03.620 soon as we're

01:22:04.080 done here to

01:22:05.660 the public on

01:22:06.380 the NAS YouTube

01:22:07.160 channel.

01:22:08.340 The links I

01:22:08.980 posted in the

01:22:10.160 chat box with

01:22:12.820 links to God's

01:22:14.340 personal webpage and

01:22:15.860 links to his

01:22:16.340 books and those

01:22:18.180 kinds of things,

01:22:18.980 they'll be posted in

01:22:19.840 the comments section.

01:22:21.120 But of course,

01:22:21.660 you're all welcome

01:22:22.440 to post comments

01:22:23.380 there, and we

01:22:25.440 do monitor that.

01:22:27.500 And if we

01:22:28.920 didn't get to

01:22:29.380 your question,

01:22:30.280 please post them

01:22:32.180 there, or you

01:22:32.960 can email your

01:22:34.040 questions to me at

01:22:34.960 my email address,

01:22:35.980 it's turner at

01:22:37.320 nas.org, and I'll

01:22:39.240 do my best to see

01:22:40.600 that we'll get you

01:22:41.760 an answer of some

01:22:42.920 sort.

01:22:43.760 So, God, you

01:22:45.540 have the last

01:22:46.060 word.

01:22:47.040 Oh, thank you so

01:22:47.800 much.

01:22:47.960 Well, first, what a

01:22:49.120 pleasure it is to

01:22:50.120 have had this chat

01:22:51.920 with you.

01:22:52.320 Thank you so much

01:22:52.800 for the opportunity.

01:22:53.360 Maybe I'll end it

01:22:54.700 on, I guess, an

01:22:55.840 intellectual plea.

01:22:57.480 You know, you

01:22:58.020 can't see it here,

01:22:58.920 but I'm in my

01:22:59.720 study, and I am

01:23:01.100 surrounded by this

01:23:03.020 massive personal

01:23:04.340 library of books,

01:23:05.780 many of which I've

01:23:07.020 yet to read, and I

01:23:08.060 often wake up in a

01:23:09.880 panic that, am I

01:23:11.400 going to have

01:23:12.220 enough time to

01:23:13.740 read all of these

01:23:14.880 glorious books that

01:23:16.040 I keep collecting,

01:23:17.620 you know, assiduously

01:23:18.820 and feverishly?

01:23:20.300 And so, my plea to

01:23:21.420 people is, there's

01:23:22.520 so much beautiful

01:23:24.080 stuff to learn.

01:23:25.460 Life is short.

01:23:27.100 Don't wallow in

01:23:28.180 hate and in

01:23:29.620 tribalism, and

01:23:31.020 Trump is an

01:23:31.840 existential crisis,

01:23:33.880 you know, so

01:23:35.080 on.

01:23:35.640 There's just

01:23:36.620 play.

01:23:37.560 Play in all

01:23:38.380 ways.

01:23:38.920 This conversation

01:23:39.700 was a form of

01:23:40.640 intellectual play.

01:23:42.160 Reading is a

01:23:42.900 form of play.

01:23:43.780 Just get out

01:23:44.420 there, read, have

01:23:45.680 fun, be

01:23:46.740 productive, and

01:23:47.760 hopefully good

01:23:48.360 things will happen.

01:23:49.080 And thank you so

01:23:49.580 much for this

01:23:49.940 opportunity.

01:23:51.420 And on that

01:23:51.940 wonderful note,

01:23:52.880 thank you God's

01:23:53.800 side for joining

01:23:54.800 us today on

01:23:55.400 Restoring the

01:23:55.900 Sciences.

01:23:56.900 Thank you guys.

01:23:57.780 Cheers.

01:23:58.680 Goodbye.

01:23:59.000 Thank you,

01:23:59.040 Bye.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 18, 2024

Restoring the Sciences - Evolutionary Psychology and Mind Parasites (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_671)

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