00:00:00.000Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, by having an open border
00:00:08.640immigration policy, you end up with 250,000 plus white girls having been systematically abused0.95
00:00:17.160and raped. Hey, guess what, America, you're going to be added to that list very soon.1.00
00:00:21.52025 years ago what was the best argument in favor of immigration into the european union
00:00:31.040uh because my guest today is dr gad sod gad argues that empathy while one of humanity's
00:00:40.220greatest virtues can become destructive he brings a unique perspective to questions about human
00:00:44.740behavior culture and why societies flourish or decline today we'll talk about the evolutionary
00:00:50.080roots of human behavior, and what it takes to think independently in an age of ideological
00:00:55.240conformity. Why are there so many black men in prison? Well, one reason could be that black men0.81
00:01:03.180actually have committed more crimes per capita, but that feels icky. For me to say that people1.00
00:01:10.280from Waziristan or Afghanistan or Yemen are less likely to assimilate within the ethos of American
00:01:18.580exceptionalism would be racist, would be bigoted, would be xenophobic. I'm not a stay in your lane
00:01:24.880professor, and that's very much defined my entire career. You're never going to be perfectly happy
00:01:31.480all the time. The best you can hope for is to be reasonably happy. How does a marketing professor
00:01:43.400become a commentator on socio-political issues uh well that's like saying and i'm not i'm not
00:01:52.840answering you in a spicy way how did darwin become the leading biologist of all time he doesn't have
00:01:59.820a phd in biology right i have this thing called the brain and i have this thing called eyes which
00:02:06.200allow me because of my academic training to then understand certain patterns in the world i also
00:02:13.300I'm endowed with a personality that doesn't allow me to just sit quietly when I see people0.96
00:02:19.200swimming in a beautiful infinity pool of bullshit and therefore I decide to weigh in on it. I'm not0.98
00:02:27.600a stay in your lane professor and that's very much defined my entire career. So marketing
00:02:35.780professor is a bit of a misnomer because I'm a marketing professor in that I apply evolutionary
00:02:42.420biology and evolutionary psychology to study consumer behavior. But I'm really a behavioral
00:02:49.200scientist who then wants to understand human behavior and all of its complexities. I decided to
00:02:55.860focus on the consumer aspect in my academic career because much of our innate human nature
00:03:01.940manifests itself in the modern world via our consumatory nature. But then when I see how
00:03:08.480people consume ideas how they could be parasitized by bad ideas it's a very easy jump to make from
00:03:16.000you know my academic career to then commenting on all sorts of social ills so you have a unique
00:03:23.040academic background but you also have a unique family story you were born in lebanon tell me
00:03:30.400me about your childhood sure uh so i was born in lebanon in 1964 uh we were part of the last
00:03:39.320remaining community of lebanese jews not drews not d-r-u-s-e j-e-w-s jews in lebanon because
00:03:50.780actually the reason why i make that distinction is because they almost could sound similar in a
00:03:55.140podcast. Although many of the Druze are actually, Druze, D, are quite sympathetic to the Jewish
00:04:03.000cause. Many of the Israeli Druze serve honorably in the IDF. But in any case, we were part of the
00:04:09.680last remaining group of Jews in Lebanon. Much of my extended family had already left before the
00:04:17.220start of the Civil War, 1975, when I would have been 10 at that point. By the time we left, I was
00:04:24.22011 uh and for whatever reason my parents uh you know had not had decided not to read the very
00:04:32.980very clear writing on the walls that you know are uh the tolerance that was extended to uh toward us
00:04:40.080was likely coming to an end so in 1975 the civil war broke out it became impossible to be jewish
00:04:48.280in Lebanon. And so we were there the first year of the civil war and then eventually
00:04:52.980emigrated to Canada. And now I'm emigrating from Canada to the U.S.
00:05:01.080Can you offer a thumbnail description of what suicidal empathy means?
00:05:10.760Sure. Well, first, in defining what it is, I'll also explain what it's not, because
00:05:17.340you know many of the folks who decided to write hit pieces even before the book had come out so
00:05:23.920by definition they couldn't have read it they hadn't received advanced reading copies of the
00:05:28.080book they decided the following uh narrative uh which is not what suicidal empathy is they said
00:05:35.100you know here's the the jewish professor who who has the ear of elon musk and the donald trump
00:05:42.660administration who's trying to usher a dark world where empathy ceases to matter. That demonstrates
00:05:49.260how diabolical the Jew puppeteer is. Of course, I'm doing no such thing. As an evolutionary1.00
00:05:57.340psychologist, I fully understand the evolutionary roots of why empathy is an adaptive and rational
00:06:06.820virtue to possess. We are a social species. As a social species, it makes a social species that's
00:06:14.340obviously highly intelligent. We have a big prefrontal cortex. So it makes perfect sense
00:06:20.340for you and I to have the capacity to put each other, one another in each other's mind. That's
00:06:27.000called cognitive empathy or theory of mind. We want our physicians, our veterinarians,
00:06:33.400our therapists, our spouses, our best friends to be empathetic. So there's nothing wrong
00:06:37.880with well-calibrated empathy. But like most things in life, including psychiatric disorders,
00:06:45.960and as Aristotle explained to us several thousand years ago via his golden mean and his
00:06:51.920Nicomachean ethics, too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good,
00:06:57.460and much of life is about finding that sweet spot now let's apply it to empathy if i have no empathy
00:07:04.180go ahead yeah well if i have no empathy i'm a sociopath exactly so if i have so it so this is
00:07:10.740called an inverted u curve so let's do the little to no part of the curve if to your point if i have
00:07:17.380no empathy i'm likely a psychopath if i have too much empathy i'm on the other side of the curve
00:07:23.940in the too much range, if I have too much empathy in that it hyperfires, if it hyperfires in the
00:07:31.320wrong situations, and if it hyperfires in targeting the wrong targets, put that cocktail together and
00:07:40.260you end up with suicidal empathy. And let me explain why the term I use suicidal empathy.
00:07:45.980Okay. Arnold Toynbee is an eminent, was an eminent British historian who did a 12-volume set study, a huge set of books, studying the historical context for why civilizations die.
00:08:04.920And the end one line maxim of his entire mammoth study is that civilizations die not by murder, but by suicide.
00:08:17.040And so what I'm arguing in this book is that the specific manifestation of the civilizational suicide that we're currently committing is happening through dysregulated empathy.
00:08:29.180And you say suicidal episode is sending the West into a death spiral.
00:08:35.780Right. So let's look at another historical context.
00:08:41.020There are many cases where suicides have happened throughout history in many different societies where it's actually something that is condoned at the individual or at the group level.
00:08:53.080So let's take, for example, in Japanese society, where because of the culture of honor and shame, where there is nothing worse than losing face. Now, you might imagine that if you were to lose face in a context where it really becomes detrimental to your reputation and to those close to you that you are engaging in a shameful act, like the samurai class.
00:09:15.640Well, then the only way to expiate that problem, the only way to seek redemption, having committed this shameful act, whatever it may be, is to commit seppuku.0.86
00:09:25.760Seppuku is the term for self-disembowelment.0.63
00:09:29.380And so then I introduced the term civilizational seppuku because what the West is doing is taking the noble, and I say that sarcastically, the noble blade of suicidal empathy and engaging in civilizational self-disembowelment because then hopefully that could send us back to the pathway of existential redemption because we are born of sin because we live on stolen land.
00:09:57.360we've committed genocide against the indigenous people we're committing a daily genocide against0.52
00:10:02.400transgender people of color black people can't walk in the street today because there's a daily0.99
00:10:07.440genocide committed by the racist cops we live in a transphobic islamophobic patriarchal misogynistic0.98
00:10:14.720society so we are existentially damaged and the only way is to go for the virtuous civilizational0.99
00:10:22.480Hey, everybody. We'll be back with Gad Sod in just a second, but I had some housekeeping notes
00:10:28.460for you. Be sure to stick around until the end of the show. I've got some takeaways that are
00:10:34.620especially interesting, profound, complicated at the end of this show, because I know this is a
00:10:40.220sticky topic, but one that merits our attention and merits our thoughts. So stick around for those.
00:10:45.940I also want to let you know that there's a link in the show notes for some upcoming shows I have
00:10:49.960on July 21st in Los Angeles, California.
00:10:55.060On July 23rd at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco,
00:10:58.940August 1st at the Southampton Cultural Center
00:12:24.820Oh, good. And of course, as you know, there were supplicants in the Catholic faith that would engage in self-flagellation, right?0.85
00:12:33.980And so that's why, I don't know, I know that you are a professional comedian, so I don't know if you've ever consumed some of my satirical pieces, but one of the many types of satirical pieces I have is I literally take a whip, I call it the whip of self-loathing and the whip of self-disgust,
00:12:58.720And I will start literally satirically whipping myself for whatever progressive reason that I can think of.0.98
00:13:07.300Incidentally, jokingly, although it's true, someone said, how come you have that sex toy?0.99
00:13:15.480And no, regrettably, it's not because I'm kinky.0.96
00:13:19.400It's because I used to use in my earlier instantiations of that skit.0.69
00:13:24.060I would use literally either my belt or like a mosquito swatter.
00:13:29.140And then someone, a fan, sent me that thing and said, you know, if you're going to lean into that skit, this is what you should be using.
00:13:38.000So when you have time and you'd like to laugh at the lunacy, go and check out my self-flagellations on my YouTube channel.0.88
00:15:10.520so if i want to sell you a mutual fund i will engage your cognitive system or what's called
00:15:18.920your central root of persuasion so here are the seven reasons why you should buy our mutual funds
00:15:24.280i'm engaging your thought processes if i'm trying to sell you a hedonic product like perfume
00:15:29.780i'm not going to tell you here are the nine reasons why harvard physiologists who study the
00:15:35.520science of olfaction told us, because then that seems to be incongruent with trying to sell you
00:15:41.100a hedonic product. Instead, what I'll do there is I will invoke your affective system, your
00:15:47.000peripheral route of persuasion, by showing you a sexy girl with luxuriant hair, you know, running0.93
00:15:54.320or, I mean, riding the horse. And then I put you some French sounding name for the perfume,0.99
00:16:00.060mystère. I didn't give you one key selling point why you should buy that perfume. So recognizing
00:16:06.280that we are both a thinking and feeling animal is something that is relevant to many things,
00:16:11.780including psychology of marketing and persuasion. Okay, why am I saying all this? Because for me to
00:16:18.220fully parasitize, and we should get into why I use that specific framework, for me to hijack
00:16:25.360your capacity to think clearly i need to do two things i need to hijack your affective system
00:16:32.620your emotional system that's what i'm doing in suicidal empathy but i need to also hijack your
00:16:38.100cognitive system your thought processes that's what i did in the parasitic mind so now let me
00:16:43.200link them culture to immigration and so on one of the parasitic ideas that i discuss in parasitic
00:16:51.440mind is cultural relativism. It's the idea that you should not be judging, and certainly if you
00:16:58.120are of the West, you should not be judging the practices, the beliefs of another society,
00:17:05.860because that's a form of cultural imperialism. So if another society wishes to engage in the
00:17:12.600cutting off of five-year-old girls' clitorises, shut up, racist. If they wish to engage in child1.00
00:17:20.640brides, shut up, racist. If they wish to engage in honor killings because a woman brought shame1.00
00:17:26.600to the family by stoning them, shut up, racist. Now, if I internalize that parasitic idea called0.99
00:17:34.060cultural relativism, then it makes me fully impotent to make any value judgments about the
00:17:42.220types of people that I wish to let into my society. I mean, precisely for what I just said.
00:17:48.720Therefore, for me to say that people from Waziristan or Afghanistan or Yemen are less likely to assimilate within the ethos of American exceptionalism than people from Sweden, indigenous people, white people from Sweden, not Swedish people from Mogadishu, right?0.93
00:18:09.020The indigenous people of Sweden or Denmark, for me to argue that inherently they have greater what's called cultural homophily, they're more similar to me, would be racist, would be bigoted, would be xenophobic.0.70
00:18:23.800So by internalizing that parasitic idea called cultural relativism, it renders me fully capable of swimming in the infinity pool of suicidal empathy when it comes to open border policies.0.94
00:18:37.520Okay, so 25 years ago, what was the best argument in favor of immigration into the European Union?
00:18:48.900Well, the argument should always be the same one.
00:18:52.660What it might have been 25 years ago or what it will be 25 years from now is irrelevant because you should be using one key metric in deciding who should be let in.
00:19:03.040First of all, it has to be aligned with the following calculus. Does letting in this person provide a net benefit to my society? If yes, let's keep talking. Doesn't mean I've let you in, but let's keep talking.
00:19:20.800Does this person, are they fully likely to assimilate within the foundational principles that define our society?
00:19:34.220If yes, you've cleared that obstacle.1.00
00:19:37.360If no, then sorry, brother, but you can keep your nonsense in the country where you come from.
00:19:44.380Now, many cultural values, irrespective of which culture we're speaking of, are shared. Those are called human universals, or just to get slightly technical, near universals.
00:19:59.560Near universals would mean that they could be slightly malleable. They start off as a universal, but the dial of the radio tune could be shifted this way or that way, depending on local conditions.
00:20:14.380That's why it's called near universal.
00:20:16.240So, for example, an absolute universal is incest taboo between mother and child.
00:20:21.660There is no culture that says, no, no, no, mothers, once your boy, your son becomes of0.99
00:20:27.520sexual age, just have massive orgiastic sex with him.0.99
00:20:30.800That's a great thing in our society.0.99
00:20:32.200So that would be a human universal that's shared.
00:20:35.940Near universal would be the following example.
00:20:39.460all cultures prefer the men of those cultures prefer women to have a particular morphology
00:20:47.980in terms of their body type that's called the hourglass figure it's been studied across endless
00:20:52.760cultures across many many eras and you always come to that exact hourglass figure but then the
00:20:59.440dial could be changed this way or that way depending on whether that society has historically0.79
00:21:05.700faced endemic famines so you you're more likely to prefer more rotund women if you come from
00:21:12.860those societies that would be called the near universal okay but so why am i saying all this
00:21:18.460because there are many shared values that make us all human together i say in quotes because that's
00:21:25.240the typical thing that progressives invoke well why shouldn't ahmed and muhammad have equal chance
00:21:31.800has Elon Musk to come. Well, if they share the foundational values of the West, freedom of
00:21:39.280religion, freedom of inquiry, don't impose your religion on others, don't stone people, don't kill
00:21:46.320Jews, don't engage in 100% conversion therapy, 100% effective conversion therapies of gays.0.78
00:21:54.720It's called gravity-based conversion, whereby we throw you off the top of buildings and let your0.98
00:21:59.820brain splatter on the floor when it lands. If our foundational values are consistent with the
00:22:07.820prospective immigrants that are coming in, come in, my brother. If not, sorry, we don't need you1.00
00:22:13.200here. Okay. So in what way have we seen that these lack of shared values has made countries
00:22:21.980that accepted a lot of immigrants weaker uh the west sweden spain italy france germany britain
00:22:37.180canada australia hey guess what america you're going to be added to that list very soon you're
00:22:44.360a very very big country with a huge population with two big oceans so you think you're protected
00:22:50.920from suicidal empathy. Well, that's only because you're at stage two suicidal empathy. But keep
00:22:56.480doing your nonsense. And I will regrettably and with much chagrin eventually put you in the very0.99
00:23:04.900laudable elite status of suffering from stage five suicidal empathy, which is higher than the
00:23:11.780heretofore known stage four that we use in medicine. The only countries right now that I
00:23:17.760can proudly say are in stage five would be Canada, Britain, and then we could debate about a few
00:23:24.180others. So in Britain, for example, by having an open border immigration policy that is irrevocably
00:23:32.120changing British society, you end up with, this is a low estimate, with 250,000 plus British white
00:23:41.700girls having been systematically abused and raped over the past 30 years up and down britain from
00:23:48.500small villages to big cities and the great majority 90 percent plus of the perpetrators0.75
00:23:59.340of that particular phenomenon stem from muslim background but the authorities the politicians
00:24:08.900the police forces said look we've got two competing metrics here we can either invoke
00:24:16.340the most fundamental instinct of protecting our children or we can invoke the fact that
00:24:23.340if we were to ever identify who the perpetrators of those crimes are it would create lack of
00:24:29.640community cohesion and it would it pains me to say because that word is so hurtful it really
00:24:35.580hurts me to think that we could have a raise i have to take a break i have to take a we might
00:24:41.980have a raise in islamophobia and there's literally nothing worse on earth than having an increase in
00:24:48.180islamophobia as you'll appreciate this as a comedian as the late canadian comedian norm
00:24:54.960mcdonald beautifully expressed in a tweet from 2016 i'm paraphrasing it because i don't have it
00:25:02.720in front of me but you could read the exact quote in my book if the if muslims were to detonate a0.83
00:25:09.900nuclear bomb that would kill 50 million americans the things that i would really worry about and we0.99
00:25:17.560would all be worried about worrying about would be the blowback against islam that's what suicidal
00:25:24.440empathy looks like so you mentioned policing you have an evolving or um yeah an evolving0.71
00:25:33.640two-tier justice system in the united kingdom indeed right i mean you you can whisk someone
00:25:42.680away for saying i am british i love british society i love british heritage and i don't
00:25:52.080want my society to become Lahore, Pakistan, the cops will knock on your door and say, this is
00:25:59.960really dangerous to speak, and we're going to have to whisk you to prison. But if you end up
00:26:07.440raping hundreds of times with hundreds of men, a 12-year-old girl, you really have to understand0.83
00:26:16.100that they didn't know it from their cultural perspective that it's not okay to be doing this0.74
00:26:22.700because they have this beautiful practice of bachabazi which is the sexual exploitation by
00:26:30.280powerful men in those islamic society of young beautiful boys because as they also explain to0.96
00:26:36.660us and shut up racist don't don't you dare judge what i'm about to say women are for reproduction0.98
00:26:43.340boys are for pleasure now isn't that a beautiful equally lovely by the way the u.s military when0.99
00:26:51.420they were in afghanistan many u.s soldiers were well aware of the practice of bacha bazi but and
00:26:59.240when they would go and say hey this little boy is getting abused in ways that are unimaginable
00:27:05.360the higher up said we don't want to create lack of community cohesion we have to be pragmatic
00:27:14.120about these things this is their culture right so not only in a deontological way and if you
00:27:21.200want i could explain what that word means uh not not implying that you may not understand that
00:27:26.220many people may not know what the word means deontological ethics would be absolute statements
00:27:31.640of you know for example moral truth this is never okay to lie would be a deontological statement if
00:27:37.920i were to say it is okay to lie to spare the feelings of someone i love that would be a
00:27:42.980consequentialist statement so you would like to think that soldiers coming into a place would be
00:27:49.580abiding by the deontological ethic that not on my watch am i going to see a little boy being
00:27:57.780sodomized by tribal warlords. It's not going to happen on my watch. Well, you have to understand
00:28:05.900that their culture is very different. So let's apply a consequentialist ethic. Just let this
00:28:11.040take one for the team, for community cohesion. But that brings up another point that tolerance
00:28:18.360is only one way here, that we have to be tolerant of people who come to our culture. But if we were
00:28:25.780go to their culture that same courtesy is not extended well that's and that's why maybe and i
00:28:34.340will answer your exact question but maybe this is the right place to introduce the term
00:28:39.700the parasite that i use when i was writing the book and here i'm going to go back go back to
00:28:46.260sort of evolutionary biology and so on in in nature there are many types of relationships
00:28:51.380For example, mutualism is a relationship between two animals whereby they engage in a behavior that promotes a form of reciprocity or mutualism.
00:29:04.040So, for example, you can have what are called cleaner fish.
00:29:07.220This is where a bigger fish that has a very ominous looking jaws of death will open its mouth at a cleaner station and the smaller fish will actually go inside the jaws of this bigger fish, which at first it makes him, is he insane?
00:29:27.720What is he doing? He's going to get eaten. But they've evolved this mutualism because what is going to end up happening is that there are morsels of food or literally parasites that are in the jaws of this bigger fish that the smaller fish will clean.
00:29:45.920It's a form of dentistry, if you'd like. And by that behavior evolving, both parties benefit from it.
00:29:53.660A parasitic relationship is one, to your question, that is only one way, right?
00:30:00.480The parasite benefits from, you know, its relationship with the host, but that's not reciprocated.
00:30:08.700Let me give an example of that because it relates to a specific term that, one of my terms that has also gone viral. When I refer to someone, for example, as a wood cricket Jew, what I'm basically, why am I saying that? Because the wood cricket is a insect that wants nothing to do with water. It doesn't jump in water. It doesn't, it has not, it wants to avoid water.
00:30:32.660But when it is parasitized by a neuroparasite, meaning a parasite that ends up in its brain, called the hair worm, the hair worm needs the wood cricket to merrily jump in water, committing suicide and suicidal empathy, committing suicide in order to serve the reproductive interest of the hair worm, which can only complete its reproductive cycle in water.
00:30:59.800so now to your question when we go to their land shut up and abide by their customs don't dress in
00:31:10.440bikini you have this is our land you abide by us but when they come to our culture it would be mean
00:31:18.860for us to expect reciprocity that's why when we go to their culture we abide to their beliefs and0.61
00:31:26.700values. And when they come to our culture, we abide to their beliefs and values. And this is
00:31:33.480wonderful because then we could caress, we could stroke our luxuriant hair while staring at
00:31:40.680ourselves in the mirror of moral preening, knowing that we are good people.
00:31:45.720Gat, I want to play devil's advocate here. How is what you're saying different than the kind of
00:31:52.360things your own family faced from anti-Semites who said Jews can't fit into our Christian society
00:32:01.840and we shouldn't have them here? Because facts matter, right? Okay. You have to be wedded to
00:32:12.000reality. The people who are saying Jews don't belong here, the reflex of that sentiment is not
00:32:18.780rooted in a moral and rational calculus right we also in american slavery people thought that it's
00:32:28.100okay to do what they did to black people because well you know are they really part of our same
00:32:33.700species right so the fact that degenerates hold certain values doesn't mean we create a false
00:32:39.680equivalency, right? Jews do not possess foundational values that are antithetical
00:32:49.680to Western values. And let me give a specific exact context. Judaism is a non-Persilatizing0.94
00:32:59.840religion. It actually is constructed in a way that it makes it astoundingly onerous for you1.00
00:33:09.600to convert to Judaism therefore Judaism sucks as a marketing project that's why how ironic is that0.96
00:33:19.720right it has only attracted 15 million adherents there's another religion called Islam that is0.95
00:33:27.700the best of all marketing religions because all of its internal circuitry is rooted in the ultimate
00:33:37.680objective, which is the most canonical edict of the religion, which is that every single human
00:33:45.980being on earth and every millimeter on earth belongs to Allah and it will be under the flag
00:33:53.840of Allah and Islam. So with all due respect, saying we don't welcome Jews here is not the
00:34:01.740same thing as saying we don't welcome someone else whose foundational values are perfectly0.79
00:34:06.480incongruent with american constitution and the bill of rights and and so on and so forth okay
00:34:12.560we could talk about this forever but we both have things to do today so let's hit another one of the
00:34:18.160elements of suicidal empathy and that's the anti-meritocracy movement right so
00:34:28.400when you navigate through life there's something called attribution theory how do i attribute or
00:34:35.600ascribe the things that happened to me? Are they due to my internal disposition? Or are they due
00:34:43.500to external factors? Okay. So there's something in psychology called the self serving bias,
00:34:49.380which operates as follows. People tend to attribute all successes internally, and all
00:34:56.780failures externally. That's how I explain my career trajectory. There you well, that just
00:35:01.940makes you human so i did well on the exam because i'm smart and i studied hard i did poorly on the0.93
00:35:10.280exam because professor sad is a jerk and he's unfair right now obviously there are clear reasons
00:35:16.760why people would have that kind of rosy and at times inaccurate attribution style because it's0.97
00:35:23.560an ego defensive strategy it protects my ego okay so now let's apply that general mechanism
00:35:28.880to homelessness, to criminality, to anything that leads to an outcome. So if there are tons of Jews1.00
00:35:42.420that have won Nobel Prizes at an astoundingly higher rate than the per capita expectation,
00:35:51.300right about 25 percent of Nobel Prizes go to Jews there are 15 million Jews on earth0.92
00:35:57.200is there something in the inherent circuitry of being Jewish that is more likely to result in
00:36:05.560you being successful that's an internal disposition or is it that the Nobel Prize committees are just0.60
00:36:13.000a bunch of Zionist guys that unfairly grant all those things to Jews so now let's apply that to0.67
00:36:21.060DEI. Well, I don't like to say DEI. I say die because diversity, inclusion, and equity die0.80
00:36:28.040kills as a cancer for individual dignity, right? So if we don't have enough transgender women of1.00
00:36:39.400color in mathematics departments in the Ivy League, is that due to the fact that all of the0.92
00:36:47.980Ivy Leagues, eight Ivy Leagues, have been in cahoots to ensure that transgender women of color
00:36:56.680don't hold any chaired professorships in pure mathematics? Or could there be other reasons why1.00
00:37:05.180noble transgender women of color are not represented in that arena? Well, if you believe
00:37:13.560that there has to be equality of outcomes, then the only reason why there are ever any differences
00:37:21.740must be due to nefarious reasons. So for example, why are there so many black men in prison? Well,0.93
00:37:31.400one reason could be, and this is going to be deeply KKK racist, is that black men actually0.98
00:37:38.620have committed more crimes per capita, but that feels icky. The other reason is that the penal0.82
00:37:46.360and carceral systems are inherently racist, right? So therefore, what DEI does is it corrects for
00:37:55.260that, right? So let me give you a very concrete example, but I list a whole bunch of these in the
00:38:00.900book. University of Waterloo is one of the top engineering and computer science schools in
00:38:08.200Canada, not unlike, say, how Caltech would be in the US or MIT. Okay, so they have a school of
00:38:15.160computer science, where they were advertising for Canada research chair professorships. This is
00:38:22.940the most prestigious professorship in Canada, because it is the Canadian government that's
00:38:28.140endowing the chair. And so what you're doing there is you're saying, we're going to now
00:38:32.740make sure that canada will attract the top talent from around the world for us to be scientifically
00:38:41.100competitive okay so far so good so the university of waterloo sheridan school of computer science
00:38:47.720put up a call for two canada research chairs in artificial intelligence because you know ai is
00:38:55.340is the big hoopla today well the in the call for for the chair professorship it was solely
00:39:04.260restricted this is not god sad satire it's not god sad hyperbolic humor it was restricted to0.92
00:39:12.620two spirit gender fluid gender by whatever all those bullshit terms only those people0.97
00:39:21.020could apply for it. So you could have been the leading AI person in the world, but you suffered0.97
00:39:29.120from truly epistemologically and existentially from a fatal disease. You were a white heterosexual0.98
00:39:36.920male. F you asshole. We don't need your kind here. We're looking for unique people that have access1.00
00:39:45.720to queer computing by the way that's a real term because the zero one binary by which you code1.00
00:39:53.820the circuitry in computer architecture by it being binary you are promoting antiquated binaries like
00:40:02.320male female that feels queer phobic we are kind in canada therefore we open it up to gender fluid0.86
00:40:10.760people that's what's wrong with dei those zeros and ones they can be tricky disgusting okay you're0.97
00:40:19.800talking about education so i've got to ask you this is about suicidal empathy but as i'm reading
00:40:26.840this i'm thinking this is about career suicide no academic would be embraced by writing this kind of
00:40:35.560stuff in today's world how has this affected your career you mean if i were the one writing queer
00:40:44.200computing or if i'm the one criticizing if you're writing what gad saw is right oh well it's not been
00:40:52.140an easy ride but as to your earlier point when you asked me you know how do you end up in this place
00:40:57.480i'm really for better or worse i'm endowed with a personhood that simply cannot stomach this stuff
00:41:06.220and therefore i speak because i'll tell you why when i go to bed at night and i put my head on
00:41:10.980the pillow the only thing that ensures that i won't have insomnia is if i know that i was fully
00:41:18.180true to myself meaning that i did all that i could to defend truth to defend freedom if i were to ever
00:41:25.440modulate that, then I would feel as though I'm a fraud. You may not know it, but I know it in the
00:41:31.300deep recesses of my mind. And then I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. So the reason why I walk
00:41:35.880very tall in the world, even though I'm not a tall guy, I'm the height of Lionel Messi,
00:41:41.380is because of that larger than life personality. Okay, now, to your question, that causes me huge
00:41:52.060problems in academia. Number one, because I'm literally attacking every single sacred cow
00:41:57.800that is truly sacrosanct in academia. But even my style, right? The fact that I'm humorous,
00:42:05.680the fact that I am satirical, I can be self-deprecating, I could attack other people
00:42:11.600with spice on social media. Decent professors who are fully castrated and who cross their legs
00:42:20.000in the beautiful way that Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama do, would not be doing such a thing.
00:42:26.740So therefore, I'm sort of this mean, somewhat uncouth professor, even though, according to
00:42:32.960the metrics that matter to them, objective metrics of academic prestige, I outrank all of them by
00:42:40.400miles. I'm just mean, just in the exact same way that Donald Trump, via his style, is
00:42:49.200disgusting to them because he is an aesthetic injury. He doesn't speak a diplomatic language.0.96
00:42:56.260He's direct. So what makes him loved by millions, if not billions of people, is exactly what makes
00:43:05.700him disgusting to the very lofty, highfalutin class of the progressive elites. And so it's not
00:43:13.880been an easy ride, but first of all, I lived my life with full dignity and honor. And two,
00:43:21.180I dare say that my career has had more influence than pick your random 5,000 professors collectively
00:43:30.120and I will be a lot more known in the future than all of them combined. So it's okay. I'll take the
00:43:36.860it. And you are now associated with the University of Mississippi. So I got to say
00:43:44.000hotty toddy, Dr. Saad. Yes, sir. How did that come about? Well, it's truly the majesty of life
00:43:53.860that somehow at points leads us in places. I was on social media, lamenting, as I might often do
00:44:02.440about something that's pissing me off in canada or whatever it might be and uh i have a very you
00:44:10.000know large following so it's very likely that i will miss some reply on some tweet i put out 30
00:44:17.160posts a day but just by the magic of life i notice someone writing some i don't have the exact post
00:44:25.200in front of me but something to the effect of well we'd love to have you at o'miss meaning like we
00:44:29.380can free you from whatever you're complaining about and so i i notice it and i just reply0.92
00:44:35.020thinking that it's probably some bullshit or whatever some fraternity boy some fraternity0.70
00:44:40.600boy who's just as a fan of mine and you know it's not gonna leave i say well send me an email0.92
00:44:46.000well sure enough the next day or two i don't remember when it was i receive an email i am
00:44:51.800the gentleman who wrote you uh you know i'm i've got some pull in in these regions uh can i connect
00:44:58.260you with a professor at Ole Miss who would love to speak with you I said great we connect we set
00:45:05.840up a zoom meeting and by the end of that one hour zoom meeting he's like well I think we're we're
00:45:13.100ready to make you an offer and so then I went down to visit Ole Miss thinking that probably it's
00:45:19.520really a long shot because I had several other you know wonderful universities that were you know I
00:45:25.380was fortunate enough that they were courting me. And I went down there saying, well, as of now,
00:45:30.220the ranking is that Ole Miss is last on my list. I don't know much about them. And then after I
00:45:35.820went there, I came back home and my wife said, so how did it go? I said, well, I really think we
00:45:40.420should be moving to Oxford, Mississippi. She's like, what? And so there really was something
00:45:45.960quite magical for many reasons. Number one, it's incredible to your earlier question about how did
00:45:52.020you write such things while being an academic. Imagine now I am going to be achieving what I
00:45:58.420achieve, not despite all the obstacles that are put in front of me, but I am actually aided. I am
00:46:06.260given, you know, I'm given support, go do your thing. And so this was a bit of a revelation for
00:46:14.100me. And so it just seemed like the natural fit. Have you been to a football game and the pregame
00:46:20.700festival in the grove i have not and it's funny that you ask this i've had i've gone several
00:46:28.860visits so far to to old miss and each time we specifically organized it on the weekend when
00:46:37.080they're not playing because it becomes too chaotic it's hard to get a a hotel room it's hard to bring
00:46:43.860my whole family. So I haven't, but they've already promised that, I don't know if I will
00:46:51.320have season tickets, but shortly, Inshallah, as we say in the Middle East, it'll be happening this
00:46:57.740fall, both the pregame stuff and the game. I wonder how many times Inshallah has been invoked
00:47:04.440related to the prospects of the Ole Miss Rebels. Probably not too many. Well, I just interviewed
00:47:12.260bruce filer who is an author that talks about ritual and having just gone to the world cup
00:47:18.380match yesterday here in new york i don't think there's any ritual more beautiful than sec
00:47:26.600football it's a beautiful thing you mean outranking the world cup well no i just i just think the
00:47:33.800world cup was beautiful too and i just and so i'm imbued by this sense of like hope through sport
00:47:40.720and sec football is just this other beautiful way it comes together yeah well i i can totally
00:47:48.620understand what you're saying yeah i'm not sure if i've ever mentioned this publicly i maybe once
00:47:53.600or twice so but let's assume that i'm breaking a new story here for you you're getting an exclusive
00:47:58.180so one of the skits that i was hoping to do at some point uh that would just go viral by the way
00:48:04.920that shows you how as a professor i'm not a stay in your lane you know with my pipe and you know1.00
00:48:10.580I'm better than all the the plebs down there I wanted to do a skit where I call it the put me1.00
00:48:19.200in coach where I would suit up in my you know in my whole on my best day five foot seven but1.00
00:48:28.340probably less stature as a 61 year old man and then I would go to a practice with the Ole Miss
00:48:36.580team, all of whom would be eight times my size. And then it's kind of like, put me in coach.
00:48:43.180And then, of course, they would kind of doctorate that I'd be the running back to break free and
00:48:49.100score a touchdown. But it would be sort of used as a metaphor of, you know, put me into the fight
00:48:55.140of fighting for American freedom and American liberties. And I thought that that would probably
00:48:59.920go viral. The 61 year old Lebanese Jewish professor who's breaking through the line and
00:49:05.340scoring a touchdown what do you think i love it i think there'll be some ai guy that will help you
00:49:10.220with that at old miss but there you go but okay so does does this move to old miss and the fact
00:49:17.740that there's places that want to embrace you does that give you hope for the marketplace of ideas
00:49:23.700it really does and that's that's such a good question because to your to the reflex of your
00:49:31.660question is the fact that there is a movement that is building. Now, as it so happens, and one
00:49:38.580can debate why it's happening in this form, it's mainly in the American South where these
00:49:46.420freedom centers are sprouting, right? University of Florida has the Hamilton Center. Of course,
00:49:56.340at Ole Miss, we've got the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American
00:50:01.380freedom. Gorgeous title. There are other schools, University of Tennessee at Knoxville is also
00:50:08.060developed. So there is something in the South where they're saying, look, you know, we've had
00:50:13.520enough with the woke stuff. We've had enough with the self-loathing. There is something unique and
00:50:18.560exceptional about the ethos of American liberties and freedom. So unquestionably, it gives me hope.
00:50:24.760Now, does that mean that overnight, all of these parasitic woke ideas are going to cease to exist
00:50:31.080on university campuses no but it's a stop and you know what's happening to those universities
00:50:37.080demand from students has never been higher i live in new york city now but but grew up and
00:50:44.960lived for new york it lived in atlanta for 15 years and everybody wants to go to an se school
00:50:52.600up here exactly right and i think what while you know it's not written in my contract with
00:51:00.200Ole Miss. One of the things that I'm hoping to achieve, as I think they are, is exactly what you
00:51:08.040just said, which is, hey, there used to be a time where it was natural for you, I'm talking about
00:51:13.840to the parents, to be thinking about sending your kids to Brown, Dartmouth, or Cornell. And as we've
00:51:21.000discussed offline, you went to talk. I was a visiting professor at Dartmouth. My MS and PhD
00:51:29.800are from Cornell. Okay, they're historically great universities, but they don't necessarily
00:51:35.160today imbue all of the values that we would want at our American universities. But in the South,
00:51:43.600they are. And so one of the things, by the way, I'm receiving unsolicited emails from people
00:51:50.060saying to me, oh, now that I know that you're at Ole Miss, I'm going to insist that my son or
00:51:57.400daughter go to Ole Miss so I don't know if I'm going to revolutionize their enrollment but
00:52:03.560certainly I should be able to stand up and say hey guys make sure to put Ole Miss within your
00:52:11.080consideration set of possible schools for your kids. Okay one last question before and I'll let
00:52:16.240you go but you're Dr. Saad you're now a medical doctor for society what's your prescription?
00:52:22.680that's a great question look out to use the medical analogy let's suppose you go to see
00:52:32.280your physician and he or she says i'm so sorry to tell you you've got this disease
00:52:38.740and there is absolutely no intervention strategy you're going to die you got four weeks get your
00:52:45.020life in order that would be the worst possible case what we're facing currently in the west
00:52:50.360is not that. So I'm going to give you now the good news and the bad news. The good news is
00:52:55.880that the existential threats that we are facing are not an intractable problem. There is a template
00:53:03.520of there is a set of auto correction procedures that we could implement to right the ship. So
00:53:10.860that's the good news. It's not you have pancreatic cancer, you're dead. Here's the bad news. I see0.86
00:53:17.280almost zero evidence that the west has the testicular fortitude to implement even one
00:53:25.540millimeter of those autocorrective procedures so you've got the cure it's there i can administer0.97
00:53:31.320it to you but you go no no the disease doesn't exist it's a zionist plot blah blah blah so so
00:53:38.540that's the problem now but if you ask me what are this i mean chapter eight the last chapter of
00:53:44.980suicidal empathy is a chapter where I offer a vaccine against suicidal empathy. I mean,
00:53:52.200we can get into the specifics, but the more general thing is to take away the following.
00:53:58.040Empathy is a wonderful thing, but it follows the inverted U shape of endless other phenomena.
00:54:06.040Too little is devastating. Too much is devastating. In the middle is the right range. As I said,
00:54:13.520Aristotle knew this. And not only Aristotle, Maimonides knew this. There are Buddhist precepts
00:54:18.580that recognize this. So it's not more empathy is always better. And let me, if I may, I know
00:54:26.840we're wrapping up. Take your time. Maybe I should mention it. Let me explain it in the context of
00:54:32.540another psychiatric disorder in terms of how the dysregulation, the dysregulation of an otherwise
00:54:38.200adaptive process can become maladaptive. If you and I were to meet in New York City
00:54:44.040at a party, and I noticed that prior to you coming up to say hello and shake my hand,
00:54:50.180you were incessantly sneezing into your hand. You've met me. You've seen it.
00:54:56.300There you go. I'm scanning the environment for potential threats, and I go, this guy looks like
00:55:01.380he's got a bath cold, and now he just shook my hands. When you're not noticing, so hopefully I
00:55:06.540don't offend you. I'll head off to the bathroom and I will wash my hands to ensure that I don't
00:55:12.140catch your cold. Now, that was an adaptive process. I scanned the environment, identified a threat,
00:55:18.760and tended to that threat. Now, let's look at the dysregulated version of that mechanism.
00:55:25.280People who suffer from OCD, and to use the specific example, germ contamination fear OCD
00:55:33.020version, are stuck in an infinite loop in that mechanism. What started off as me washing my
00:55:41.320hands once and I move on with my day, they can't extricate themselves from the infinite loop of
00:55:47.580that process, right? Therefore, they'll spend eight hours a day assiduously washing their hands
00:55:53.680and scalding hot water. They lose their job because they can't get to their job on time
00:55:58.340because they're washing their hands as their skin is falling off. What started as an adaptive
00:56:03.340process became maladaptive once it hyper-fired. That's what's happening with empathy. There is
00:56:12.180nothing noble or virtuous about violating every evolutionary precept in your quest to be
00:56:21.160infinitely tolerant, compassionate, and empathetic. That doesn't make you a good person.
00:56:27.060that makes you complicit in the demise of your civilization.
00:56:31.520So in the 30,000-foot Dr. Saad version of the prescription,
00:56:36.900always recognize that optimality is at the sweet spot.
00:56:42.820Great. Gadsad, thank you so much for your time.
00:56:46.100Where can our readers find out more about your work?
00:56:50.180Well, for the book, you can purchase it anywhere on Amazon and endless others
00:56:55.480in terms of following me on social media it's on i'm probably most active on x at gad g-a-d s-a-a-d
00:57:04.140i also have a show not unlike how you've got your show but i don't just do long form conversations i
00:57:10.480might do a self-flagellation clip because i'm i'm pissed off about something because i'm kinky and
00:57:16.760so that's called the sad truth s-a-a-d it's i think i'm in maybe my 12th year now or something
00:57:23.520like that so you could follow me there i'm easy to find yeah all right we'll put links to it in
00:57:28.700the show notes the book is called suicidal empathy dying to be kind with my guest today
00:57:34.920dr gad sod thanks again gad thank you so much cheers all right thanks so much to gad sod for
00:57:42.080that uh intriguing conversation if you found yourself interested or pissed off i strongly
00:57:47.480suggest you read his book and consider his thoughts for yourself it's called suicidal
00:57:52.620Empathy, Dying to Be Kind. It has been on the New York Times bestseller list for eight weeks