The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Parasitic Mind VIRUS That Has Brainwashed Society - Disruptors Podcast (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_792)

00:00:00.000 The biggest threat to freedom of speech is not the institutional obstacles,

00:00:05.460 but the self-inflicted restrictions.

00:00:08.500 That's for God's side. 0.70

00:00:09.280 God's side.

00:00:09.780 God's side.

00:00:10.280 For God's side.

00:00:11.000 Is Elon Musk a net positive or a net negative for humanity?

00:00:16.060 Nothing will be remotely as important as him having purchased Twitter.

00:00:21.280 Have you got beef with ****?

00:00:22.820 For years, I bit my tongue, so I went after him. 0.96

00:00:25.860 He ended up blocking me, but such is life.

00:00:27.780 So, Dr. Saad, you've got my mind racing.

00:00:30.400 Get ready, Rob.

00:00:31.140 I hope you're sitting down.

00:00:33.000 There is a second class of brain worms, which I call parasitic ideas,

00:00:37.420 that can cause you to hold certain positions that are removed from reality.

00:00:43.580 What's a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told?

00:00:47.740 My life is an open book.

00:00:49.680 Well, here's a secret.

00:00:50.600 Dr. Saad, are Jews the most persecuted, if you could call it race, in history?

00:00:59.920 You're asking me to comment about whether I think that's true or not?

00:01:02.880 I think that it's certainly the most eternal form of hatred.

00:01:09.380 There is endless forms of bigotry that don't involve the Jews,

00:01:12.880 so certainly there isn't a monopoly of hatred specifically on the Jews.

00:01:16.880 But in terms of historical ubiquity, then it would probably be that, yes,

00:01:23.440 Jews have been probably the most persecuted people on earth.

00:01:26.580 And why do you think that is?

00:01:29.280 So there are many different viable and veridical explanations.

00:01:35.060 I've offered one that is rooted in, you know,

00:01:39.480 my background in behavioral science and psychology.

00:01:42.280 There is a bias called the self-serving bias in psychology,

00:01:46.640 whereby the way you attribute failures and successes in your life.

00:01:51.760 So, for example, most people have the following attributional style.

00:01:55.700 I attribute successes internally and I attribute failures externally.

00:02:01.160 So I did very well on the exam because I'm a smart guy and I studied hard.

00:02:05.920 It's internal.

00:02:07.140 Or if I did poorly on the exam, I did very poorly on the exam 0.99

00:02:10.440 because of that Jew bastard Professor Saad, right? 0.99

00:02:14.320 And so now for most people, other than clinically depressed people, 0.99

00:02:19.160 that's a pretty healthy way to go through life

00:02:22.060 because it kind of gives you that rosy lens to protect your ego.

00:02:26.560 Now, imagine if I can have a mechanism by which I can attribute all failures externally,

00:02:34.320 as I just explained, and I've got the perfect culprit. 0.96

00:02:38.060 It's the Jew. 1.00

00:02:39.240 So why am I not successful? 0.64

00:02:42.100 Because the Jews control Hollywood. 1.00

00:02:44.900 That's why I never made it as a Hollywood star.

00:02:47.380 Why am I not doing well financially?

00:02:50.100 Because the Jews control banking. 1.00

00:02:52.560 Why am I not doing well in academia? 0.88

00:02:55.000 That's because the Jews control academia. 1.00

00:02:57.680 Why is there a problem in immigration in England with Mohammeds raping our daughters? 1.00

00:03:04.740 It's because it's the Jews who let in the Mohammeds into England. 1.00

00:03:08.520 So it becomes a beautifully elegant and parsimonious way for me to be able to explain all of my failures,

00:03:17.400 both personal failures and collective failures, on one culprit.

00:03:22.060 Now, your next question could be, but why specifically the Jew?

00:03:25.960 Why not blame it on someone else?

00:03:27.940 Well, it's because, for reasons which we can also get into, Jews historically are a very successful minority in many, many cultures.

00:03:40.680 This is what my friend, Yale professor Amy Chua calls market-dominant minorities,

00:03:47.280 of which it's not only the Jews that are an example of.

00:03:51.040 You know, Armenians can be that in many cultures.

00:03:53.760 The Lebanese can be that.

00:03:54.960 You could have in Malaysia and in Indonesia, you've got Chinese that are very small in percentage, 1.00

00:04:05.220 but yet control much of commerce.

00:04:07.400 And so if I am part of a Jewish community in societies where I am a minuscule minority,

00:04:15.660 and yet I wield incredible influence in that society,

00:04:20.300 then it doesn't take a fancy evolutionary behavioral scientist to explain why I could turn to that minuscule minority and say, 1.00

00:04:27.800 those are the assholes. 0.99

00:04:29.180 So that would be a psychological explanation for why you have Jew hatred throughout history. 1.00

00:04:34.640 So I'd love to now flick the switch, and thank you for being so open about that.

00:04:39.520 I want to know what successful minority Jewish people know about money so I can get rich like them. 1.00

00:04:49.400 Because I look at success in a very different way.

00:04:52.880 I don't look at it and go, it's their fault I failed.

00:04:56.620 I look at them and go, I can learn from them and maybe pick up some tips.

00:05:01.660 So Jewish people of the minorities must be very good with money. 1.00

00:05:05.980 It's no accident, surely.

00:05:07.080 So, I mean, there is an explanation for why Jewish people are successful,

00:05:13.420 which then manifests itself in many places, one of which is money.

00:05:18.320 And so I'll give the more general explanation using a personal anecdote.

00:05:22.680 And this is actually a story that I recount in one of my books, In the Parasitic Mind.

00:05:28.680 So I always was very good at two things.

00:05:32.220 And I was only interested in becoming one of those two things, a soccer player and a professor.

00:05:38.440 So you could have gone to me when I was 10, and I would have told you, I'm going to become a professor and I'm going to become a professional soccer player.

00:05:45.060 For various reasons, which I've recounted elsewhere, including in the Parasitic Mind, my soccer career didn't flourish as much as I would have liked it to.

00:05:54.560 I did reach a high level, but not nearly as high as I would have wanted to, injuries and so on.

00:05:59.000 And so I quickly then embarked on my academic career, got my first degree.

00:06:05.220 And me telling you about my CV is relevant to the story.

00:06:09.240 So I'm not just using this opportunity to tell you about my degrees.

00:06:13.300 So my first degree was in mathematics and computer science at one of the leading universities, certainly in Canada, if not the world.

00:06:20.680 My second degree was in MBA with a mini thesis in operations research, which is an applied mathematics field.

00:06:28.540 And then I was going on to pursue my MS and my PhD.

00:06:33.320 At one point, I had been invited to University of California, Irvine.

00:06:37.720 They had accepted me for my PhD.

00:06:39.740 I ended up going elsewhere to Cornell.

00:06:41.520 But because I was visiting UC Irvine, it happened to be where one of my brothers lived.

00:06:47.760 He's about 10 years older than me.

00:06:50.680 At the time, he was a very successful entrepreneur.

00:06:53.740 And he was trying to convince me, since he lived very close to that university, he was trying to say, well, look, you already have an undergrad and MBA.

00:07:02.760 Why don't you come work with me, put on the proverbial suit, get a couple of years of experience, and then you could go back to pursue your PhD.

00:07:10.060 He's my older brother, so I have to be respectful and listen to him.

00:07:12.860 But I really was not interested in not pursuing my PhD because I already knew what my trajectory would be.

00:07:18.340 Well, when my mother got wind of the fact that my brother was trying to convince me to not pursue my PhD and I had returned to Montreal and I was visiting them at their house, she takes me in sort of very alarmed, agitated state to another room.

00:07:33.460 She says, I have to talk to you.

00:07:34.680 I'm thinking, well, what's up?

00:07:36.780 I say, what's up, mom?

00:07:38.000 She goes, well, I'm hearing that you're thinking about quitting school.

00:07:41.020 I said, well, before I could finish, she says, well, you know that then people are going to view you as somebody who dropped out of school.

00:07:51.020 That's going to be very shameful.

00:07:52.620 Now, that answers your question.

00:07:54.760 Having an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science and an MBA, both of which were degrees from a top global university,

00:08:02.020 if I stopped at that point, I would be perceived as somebody who dropped out of school.

00:08:10.460 So what's the secret to success is that the standards that are expected of you in a Jewish home are astoundingly high. 1.00

00:08:19.560 Now, of course, I didn't pursue a PhD because, you know, mommy thought it would be a cool thing to do, right?

00:08:24.200 I mean, I knew of a PhD before she knew what it meant to have a PhD, but it gives you the sense of what is expected of you, right?

00:08:32.180 So there's the old joke of, you know, a Jewish mother is sitting at the inauguration of her son,

00:08:40.880 whose inauguration as president of the United States, and she turns to the person next to her and she says,

00:08:48.520 you know, my other son is a doctor, right?

00:08:50.900 So meaning, again, that despite the fact that here is her son who is president of the United States,

00:08:57.060 she is showing off about the fact that her other son is a doctor.

00:09:00.320 So that is inbred within the fabric of your existence as a Jewish person. 1.00

00:09:06.360 Learn, succeed, excel, do great things in life.

00:09:11.460 That's the secret of Jewish success.

00:09:13.480 So two questions from that.

00:09:15.680 One, is that healthy?

00:09:17.700 Because, you know, an overbearing parent can have drawbacks.

00:09:22.280 And two, is there a way we can create that accountability within ourselves and hold ourselves to the same high standard?

00:09:29.980 Yeah, great, great questions.

00:09:31.480 So the first one first.

00:09:32.780 First, in my latest book, in the happiness book, I have an entire chapter on something that Aristotle had already explained to us, the golden mean.

00:09:46.460 The golden mean, put in the parlance of today's language, too little of something is not good.

00:09:53.820 Too much of something is not good.

00:09:55.540 Find the sweet spot.

00:09:56.460 So in the case of Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, he was talking about, for example, a soldier.

00:10:02.660 If the soldier is very cowardly, it's a bad thing.

00:10:05.640 But if the soldier is so courageous that he's taking unmitigated risks while he's going to die in three seconds, and that's also not good.

00:10:13.720 The medium, the ideal, the optimal is somewhere in the middle.

00:10:17.740 So to your question, that's the secret to life.

00:10:21.360 You don't want her to be so overbearing that she stifles you, her meaning the prototypical Jewish mother. 1.00

00:10:28.340 But you certainly want her to be more than everybody gets a trophy.

00:10:34.160 You're all perfect.

00:10:35.420 You're all great.

00:10:36.100 No, we, oh, you got six A's and one A minus.

00:10:40.480 Why the A minus?

00:10:41.840 Why are you bringing shame to the family?

00:10:44.020 Why wasn't your grade?

00:10:45.380 So, of course, you don't want it to be so oppressive that, you know, you're afraid that you're going to be beaten if you come home with an A minus.

00:10:54.140 But you have to find that temperance point.

00:10:56.260 The second one, how do you teach people to have that mindset?

00:11:00.620 Well, have the accurate attributional style that I spoke about earlier.

00:11:05.960 Not all faults are due to the nasty outside world, right?

00:11:11.520 So, for example, if you are an entrepreneur who has failed in your last five endeavors, a good entrepreneur would say, well, of course, there are vagaries that couldn't have been under my control.

00:11:24.860 But are there any decision-making processes that I'm making that perhaps could have contributed to these five failures?

00:11:32.520 Well, the mere fact that you asked that question at least offers you the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. 0.95

00:11:39.220 But if I come into the process a priori saying that, by definition, it could never be due to me, it must be that the customers are too stupid to have understood my brilliance, well, I'm likely to fail again. 0.51

00:11:51.740 So be humble in how you attribute successes and failures in your life. 0.97

00:11:55.560 So I want to come to the parasitic mind soon.

00:11:59.900 And I know you're talking a lot at the moment on X about suicidal empathy.

00:12:04.280 I'd like to talk about that.

00:12:05.800 But first, should we fear Donald Trump as the president?

00:12:12.240 No, we shouldn't.

00:12:13.920 I was honored to be invited to Mar-a-Lago last month for a mega event.

00:12:21.960 Mega stands for make education great again.

00:12:26.960 And, you know, given that he is, you know, orange Himmler and he's an existential threat, I'm happy to report that I made it into the den of evil and came out alive, despite the fact that I'm sure that his henchmen knew that I was Jewish.

00:12:43.380 So apparently it's safe to be within a 10 meter radius of him and survive.

00:12:48.660 So, no, you've got nothing to fear.

00:12:50.040 Were you ever against him being president?

00:12:54.540 Not even close.

00:12:56.300 And that's not because I'm exhibiting hubris.

00:12:59.360 And you can actually go back.

00:13:00.780 My positions are publicly available.

00:13:02.820 So, for example, before Donald Trump had won his first term, I had appeared on many shows, most famously on Sam Harris's show, just before the election.

00:13:17.180 I think it might have been in October 2016.

00:13:20.080 And, you know, Sam had already, you know, gotten pretty agitated about the possibility of Donald Trump.

00:13:26.800 And I was trying to explain using principles from behavioral decision theory, how perfectly rational people could totally vote for Donald Trump.

00:13:37.640 And I'll restate one of those here.

00:13:39.660 So, for example, in decision making, one decision rule that people can use is what's called the lexicographic rule.

00:13:47.800 So the lexicographic rule basically says choose your most important attribute and choose the candidate that scores best on that attribute.

00:13:57.440 So, for example, if I'm choosing between cars and if I'm Greta Thunberg and I only care about green issues, then I will choose the car that has the best gas efficiency because I'm going to use the lexicographic rule.

00:14:10.740 Notice that if I apply that rule, I didn't look at the other 25 attributes that define cars.

00:14:16.580 I only looked at that singular attribute.

00:14:19.620 Now, consumers use the lexicographic rule for many decisions.

00:14:23.340 When I'm buying toothpaste, I don't care about which one gives me better cavity protection.

00:14:28.540 I just pick the one that's most on sale.

00:14:30.960 Therefore, I'm using the lexicographic rule when choosing toothpaste.

00:14:34.060 So now let's apply that for the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the time, 2016. 0.96

00:14:41.060 If all I care about is immigration policy, that's my lexicographic attribute.

00:14:47.060 And if rightly or wrongly, although it turns out to be rightly, I think that Donald Trump would perform better on closing the borders than a perfectly rational human being would choose Donald Trump.

00:14:59.620 And so I laid all that out with all of the fancy professorial things that you could imagine.

00:15:05.160 And yet many people were still screaming a la Sam Harris.

00:15:08.860 And so, yes, I never questioned the fact that he should be president, especially in light of the people whom he was going up against.

00:15:18.440 There could have been a different world where you would have said between Donald Trump and this other person, who do you prefer?

00:15:24.580 And I would have chosen someone other than Donald Trump.

00:15:26.640 But it was absolutely clear to me that given the zeitgeist, Donald Trump was unequivocally the better candidate. 0.97

00:15:33.460 So what is a parasitic mind?

00:15:36.320 So let me step back and get to that term.

00:15:40.200 When I first began as a professor, so this is my 31st year as a professor, my goal.

00:15:46.260 So the academic career that I was trying to trace for myself was to infuse evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology in the study of human behavior in general and consumer and economic behavior in particular.

00:16:02.740 That's why I'm housed in a business school.

00:16:04.700 Right.

00:16:04.800 And so how do you apply biological principles to explain our consumatory nature? 0.92

00:16:10.160 And as I began that career, I quickly saw that most of my colleagues were astonishingly imbecilic, whereby they actually thought that it was a terribly controversial idea. 0.89

00:16:27.980 Get ready, Rob, I hope you're sitting down that, you know, hormones affect human behavior. 1.00

00:16:34.760 Holy shit. 0.99

00:16:35.380 Who could have ever imagined that? 1.00

00:16:36.840 Because they exist in the rarefied ivory tower where you speak with a progressive lisp where biology applies to lowly creatures like the mosquito, like the zebra, like your dog.

00:16:52.440 But surely, human beings are cultural animals, we transcend our biology, right?

00:16:58.500 And so that was my first exposure to sort of the, oh, Houston, we have a problem here.

00:17:04.880 Well, how could these otherwise educated, intelligent people be so hostile to what seems to me to be a profoundly obvious thing, which is, of course, our biology affects our behavior.

00:17:17.840 And it doesn't stop affecting our behavior when we put on our consumer hat.

00:17:22.520 So that was my first exposure to ideological rapture.

00:17:28.040 And as my career progressed, and as I explained in The Parasitic Mind, I first faced the first great war in my life was the Lebanese Civil War.

00:17:37.420 The second great war was the war on reason that I saw every day around me on university campuses.

00:17:45.400 So then I thought to myself, okay, what could explain this kind of zombified rapture, right?

00:17:54.280 And so because I'm an evolutionist, therefore I look at the behavior of other animals, I started looking for a framework that would help me understand this kind of zombified thinking.

00:18:07.000 And so the field of parasitology is the study of interactions between parasites and their hosts in nature.

00:18:16.540 Well, a parasite could be in many places in the host's body.

00:18:21.080 So for example, a tapeworm parasitizes your intestinal tract.

00:18:26.260 But I was looking for a parasite that would find its home in the host's brain, altering its behavior to suit the interest of the parasite.

00:18:36.000 So once I found that, which is the field called neuroparasitology, I said, aha, I have my epiphany now.

00:18:43.920 I will now argue that human beings could not only be parasitized by actual physical brain worms.

00:18:51.680 There is a second class of brain worms, which I called parasitic ideas or idea pathogens that can cause you to hold certain positions that are bafflingly removed from reality and hence zombify you, right?

00:19:09.920 So on a given analogy for the people who may not be familiar with my work, the wood cricket is an insect that abhors water.

00:19:19.000 It wants no part of anything to do with water.

00:19:22.240 When it is parasitized by a hair worm, it's a neuroparasite, the hair worm needs the wood cricket to jump into water so that it could complete its reproductive cycle. 0.72

00:19:34.200 Well, a parasitized wood cricket will merrily jump and commit suicide in the service of that hair worm, right? 0.92

00:19:43.900 Because it's zombified, right? 0.99

00:19:45.640 That's what explains something like, of course, six foot four, 285 pound John with a nine inch penis could tomorrow call himself Linda, become a girl and is fully justified in sharing the bathroom with your eight year old daughter. 1.00

00:20:09.580 Only Neanderthal buffoons, baboons would say otherwise. 1.00

00:20:16.240 You see the analogy between the wood cricket jumping into the water and this kind of position.

00:20:21.820 And so that is how I then developed the idea of ideological neuro parasitic rapture and hence the parasitic mind.

00:20:32.280 And so you wrote the book, I believe, the parasitic mind. Is that right?

00:20:36.000 Yes. In 2020, it came out.

00:20:37.860 What was the purpose of writing that book? What was your aim?

00:20:41.400 Right. So it was to, well, first to explain all that I just did, how human minds that are supposed to be endowed with the capacity to reason could become so utterly removed from reason.

00:20:53.940 Where do these idea pathogens come from? 0.88

00:20:56.900 And regrettably, as I have repeatedly explained, they all were spawned on university campuses because it takes the unique insights of professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. 0.55

00:21:09.900 So I explain where those ideas come from.

00:21:12.760 And then toward the end of the book, I offer a mind vaccine against those dreadful ideas.

00:21:19.160 Now, what are those dreadful ideas?

00:21:21.440 Postmodernism is the granddaddy of all idea pathogens because it purports that there are no objective truths other than the one objective truth that there are no objective truths.

00:21:33.360 Right. That's what allows me to then say up is down, freedom is slavery, war is peace, nine inch penis men are women and so on. 0.89

00:21:42.900 Right. So postmodernism is the root idea pathogen from which all of the other ones can flourish. 0.94

00:21:50.380 Cultural relativism is another one.

00:21:52.200 Who are we to judge the cultural practices of another culture? 0.99

00:21:56.800 If they like to cut off the clitorises of five-year-old girls, don't be a bigot, Rob. 0.98

00:22:02.880 Do not judge others for wanting to do that. 0.99

00:22:05.520 Well, that makes me then impotent to be able to fight against these ideas in my society.

00:22:11.780 Radical feminism is another idea pathogen. 1.00

00:22:14.500 There are no innate sex differences between men and women.

00:22:17.240 The only reason why Rob can bench press more than Linda is because his parents taught him to play rough and tumble, whereas they taught Linda to play soft and nurturing.

00:22:27.980 There are no physiological, hormonal, morphological, anatomical, behavioral differences between men and women.

00:22:36.060 So each of these idea pathogens start off with a noble cause.

00:22:41.280 But then in the service of that noble cause, if they have to murder and rape truth, so be it.

00:22:46.600 And so what the book does is it traces the history of all this nonsense and then offers an inoculation against the nonsense.

00:22:55.340 Is that to some degree what a woke mind virus is?

00:23:00.280 Yes.

00:23:00.680 So the woke mind virus is using the language of the Internet.

00:23:06.620 Woke mind virus is the parasitic ideas that I talk about in the parasitic mind, right?

00:23:12.200 So it is exactly that.

00:23:13.380 Now, many people have asked, but is the woke mind virus something that is unique to the current period?

00:23:21.020 Is there something in the water today that made us susceptible to being parasitized?

00:23:26.520 And the answer is yes and no.

00:23:29.100 The ability for human minds or the capacity for human minds to be parasitized is not new to the current period, right?

00:23:37.120 So there was a time a couple of hundred years ago where when we thought that our neighbors were witches, where we would throw them into, we would throw my neighbor Linda into water. 0.85

00:23:50.620 And if she swam, then that proved that she was a witch and then we would burn her at the stake. 0.99

00:23:55.760 And if she sank and drowned, then oops, I guess she wasn't a witch, right? 0.98

00:24:00.400 And that was a perfectly reasonable way to organize society.

00:24:05.180 So that was a parasitic idea.

00:24:07.000 There was a time when we thought that the black blade that killed, I think, one third of Europe, guess who was the cause of that?

00:24:14.820 Yeah, you guessed it, Rob.

00:24:16.200 It was the Jews, right? 0.99

00:24:17.760 So the capacity for human minds to be parasitized by insane ideas is part of the human architecture since time immemorial.

00:24:31.320 What is unique to the current period are the specific idea pathogens that are infecting our minds, right? 0.96

00:24:38.080 So postmodernism didn't exist until 50, 60 years ago when a bunch of French bullshitters came up with some of this nonsense. 1.00

00:24:46.620 Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and so on, right?

00:24:51.220 So the specific idea pathogens that lead to the woke mind virus are specific to today's era.

00:24:58.920 But the capacity for the human minds to believe bullshit, that has existed since the start of time.

00:25:05.520 So, Dr. Saad, you've got my mind racing on why this is and what we can do to, I guess, be in touch with reality.

00:25:19.740 So something I've aspired to do for many years, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years and trying to successfully balance having a successful business,

00:25:28.960 being a successful person, doing good and being commercial and balance all those.

00:25:35.520 One of the things I've tried to seek out is what is objective reality as opposed to subjective fantasy?

00:25:44.860 Because I think if you're objective about the reality of what's going on in your personal life and in business and on your balance sheet,

00:25:50.800 and if you're a good person or not, you can improve because you can find your strengths and weaknesses.

00:25:56.140 The problem with seeking objective reality is how can we be objective?

00:26:03.080 Because everything is filtered through ourselves.

00:26:05.600 Therefore, we are inherently defined as subjective.

00:26:08.880 So we've almost got to negate self and subjectivity and our own ideologies to be able to seek reality.

00:26:17.080 But is that not impossible?

00:26:19.380 Right. Wow. Big question.

00:26:20.880 It depends in which domain, right?

00:26:24.000 So, of course, to your point and to my earlier point about attributional styles,

00:26:29.480 we tend to have ego defensive strategies that tries to elevate how good we feel about ourselves

00:26:36.680 that may be removed from an objective assessment of how truly good we are, right?

00:26:40.800 So there's the old story of when you ask professors how good their work is, 90% of professors say it is better than average.

00:26:51.780 Well, statistically, that can't be, right?

00:26:54.160 Well, that's because all professors walk around thinking that they're much better teachers than they really are,

00:26:59.420 much better researchers.

00:27:00.800 And there is an evolutionary reason for why we've got these rosy lenses.

00:27:04.880 But when it comes to the pursuit of truth, right?

00:27:10.320 So I wake up every day as a professor and scientist with the epistemological understanding that there is a truth to be discovered.

00:27:19.180 Now, science is humble in that we always say provisional truth,

00:27:23.960 meaning that what we thought was true 300 years ago, we autocorrect and change in light of incoming evidence.

00:27:31.400 So it's not a revealed truth in the way that you would have in religion.

00:27:35.680 It is true because it's in my book.

00:27:37.540 Therefore, it's true. 1.00

00:27:38.480 Shut up. 0.99

00:27:38.980 Don't test it, right? 1.00

00:27:39.980 That would be religious truths, right?

00:27:43.040 But we do believe that there is such a thing as a truth to be discovered.

00:27:48.240 So, for example, in mathematics, there are axiomatic truths, right?

00:27:53.220 That we know are true within the contrived system of that mathematical, you know, axioms.

00:28:01.920 There are truths.

00:28:02.840 So here is an axiomatic truth, which, by the way, has been violated.

00:28:07.620 If I prefer car A to car B and I prefer car B to car C, then through transitivity, it must be that I prefer car A to car C.

00:28:17.260 If I don't do that, I am being intransitive and therefore I'm being irrational.

00:28:21.540 It is absolutely true that men are taller than women. 0.99

00:28:26.100 That is a true statement.

00:28:28.160 Even though your Aunt Linda is taller than your Uncle Jethro.

00:28:33.000 The singular datum does not invalidate what is true at the population level.

00:28:38.240 So science could not exist if there weren't objective truths.

00:28:43.380 By the way, this is the reason why, depending on which discipline you are in university, will determine the extent to which you are inoculated against those parasitic ideas.

00:28:55.420 No one is completely inoculated, but I'm housed at a business school.

00:29:01.740 So the top two departments or schools that are least likely to be parasitized by this nonsense are the business school and the engineering school.

00:29:12.200 Why?

00:29:12.800 Because they are wedded to this thing.

00:29:15.760 You ready?

00:29:16.580 It's called reality, right?

00:29:19.100 Because I can't build mathematical models of the economy using postmodernist mathematics.

00:29:26.320 That wouldn't predict economic reality.

00:29:30.420 I can't build bridges using postmodernist physics.

00:29:35.460 There's just physics. 0.98

00:29:36.660 Even the postmodernists, when they go to their bullshit academic conferences, have to get on a plane. 0.98

00:29:44.900 And that plane adheres to this thing called physics, right? 1.00

00:29:49.380 So even they're completely swimming in bullshit, wink, wink. 0.98

00:29:57.100 They recognize that they are wedded to reality when they get on that plane to then espouse all of their nonsense. 0.99

00:30:05.480 So yes, you're right.

00:30:07.900 There are many domains in our lives that are inherently subjective and prone to bias.

00:30:13.240 But there are many other domains, certainly the pursuit of truth, where if you come with the premise that everything is relative, then you might as well not get out of bed.

00:30:24.620 Is Elon Musk a net positive or a net negative for humanity?

00:30:31.600 Astronomically net positive and almost no negative, right?

00:30:36.260 Now, I can answer this both just as a person who's in the public space and I can see what Elon Musk is doing, or I can use the fact that I know him personally and have spent time with him.

00:30:50.980 You know, Elon Musk, his metric, and I mean, I'm not speaking for him because we had a chat, a public chat, where he said this himself.

00:30:59.500 Elon Musk wakes up every day and says, what are some important problems that exist and how could I put my mind to solving those problems?

00:31:10.740 That strikes me as something by which we should all be adhering to those pursuits, right?

00:31:16.100 So, you know, his pecuniary success, meaning his monetary success, has come as an outcome of his other pursuits, right?

00:31:28.180 Like, he didn't wake up in the morning and say, I'd like to be the richest person in human history.

00:31:36.280 He took a bunch of decisions.

00:31:39.160 He obviously has a bright mind.

00:31:41.980 He's obviously very entrepreneurial.

00:31:44.120 He's very bold.

00:31:45.400 He possesses all of the unique skills that would have made him aspire to be Elon Musk.

00:31:51.960 And then he set out and did them.

00:31:53.980 And it turns out that great success came to him because he's not a fence sitter, because he doesn't equivocate.

00:32:02.080 By the way, one of the reasons I think that we have mutual respect for one another is because we share those traits, right?

00:32:10.460 He does it in his own ecosystem.

00:32:12.580 I do it in mine.

00:32:13.720 But I've spent 31 years now living a very difficult life in academia, because given the bizarro world we live in, all of the stuff that I espouse is extremely dangerous and corrosive.

00:32:29.200 But like freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry, and there is such a thing as male and female, and biology does matter, right?

00:32:36.940 The average three-day-old squirrel would understand that to be true, but it's apparently not clear in academia.

00:32:43.080 But I stuck to my guns.

00:32:45.460 I held out.

00:32:46.840 I held the line.

00:32:49.240 And then to those who take the great risks come great successes, right?

00:32:54.220 So therefore, today, I sit with a very different profile than most professors have had throughout human history.

00:33:03.880 But I never set out, right?

00:33:05.760 I never set out with, I hope one day to be famous enough that Elon Musk notices me, or that I could be well-known enough that Rob Moore or Pierce Morgan invited me on my show.

00:33:16.660 I took certain decisions.

00:33:18.760 I took certain stands.

00:33:20.680 And then the right people pay attention to that.

00:33:23.920 And so live your life with authenticity.

00:33:27.120 And if you do, hopefully good things will happen.

00:33:30.160 Do we have true freedom of speech?

00:33:34.060 And if we do, do we have Elon Musk to thank for that in part?

00:33:38.020 I mean, we don't have complete freedom of speech.

00:33:42.220 And I'm going to answer it in a way that might at first seem surprising.

00:33:45.880 The biggest threat to freedom of speech, I mean, short of you living in North Korea or under ISIS, is not the institutional obstacles to freedom of speech, but the self-inflicted restrictions.

00:34:02.860 Should I say this?

00:34:04.260 Oh, you know what?

00:34:04.880 Maybe I better temper that.

00:34:06.260 Now, for better or worse, I don't suffer from that reflex.

00:34:09.940 I never modulate a millimeter of what my heart and mind tells me to say, for better or worse, because based on my own code of personal conduct, if I modulate that, then I feel that I'm being fraudulent, that I'm not being fully truthful.

00:34:28.500 I can't put my head on my pillow at the end of the night to sleep if I say, oh, you know, I should have actually said really what I meant.

00:34:35.860 No, I just come at you, not because I'm mean, not because I'm impolite, because no metric is more important than being truthful.

00:34:45.880 So we don't have full freedom of speech because we self-regulate, unfortunately, right?

00:34:53.480 So the student who sits in class, notwithstanding that you tell them, please feel free to say whatever you want in this class, even though I've given them full reign to say whatever they want, they may decide, I better not say that I actually love Donald Trump because my group members will think I'm a bad person, so let me shut up.

00:35:18.120 Well, therefore, he doesn't have full freedom of speech because he's self-regulating.

00:35:21.500 What Elon Musk did with him purchasing Twitter, I mean, literally, probably within a day or two of that announcements being made, I went publicly and said, and I even have a clip on my YouTube channel where I say this, I said that of all things that Elon Musk has done so far, and of all things that he will ever do in the future, nothing will be remotely as important as him having purchased Twitter.

00:35:50.440 And I think the reality proves that to be an accurate prediction, because imagine the world we would be in if we weren't able to speak the way that we can on X today, it would be unthinkable.

00:36:04.900 Wow. Just recently, Dr. Sardin, I'm sure you saw this, Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan, and I respect what he's done in his field and as an entrepreneur, so I'm certainly not a hater.

00:36:17.620 But, you know, I have had, I have put thousands of hours into that platform, honestly, putting content out every day for eight, ten years, built up half a million followers the hard way, and I must have been shadow banned, dereached, slapped, demonetized, this, that, and the other a dozen times.

00:36:37.440 And as it turns out, what I said was true.

00:36:42.140 And then he comes out and it's like, oh, well, it was like something out of 1984 and the Biden administration made me do it, and we're getting rid of fact checkers, and we're all for not, you know, no censorship.

00:36:54.960 And part of me thought, hallelujah, I support the right decision. 0.96

00:36:59.380 And part of me thought, I fucking knew it, and I'm still pissed off with you.

00:37:03.780 What are your thoughts? 0.90

00:37:04.700 Yeah, forgive me, I didn't mean to interrupt you, because I got your question.

00:37:09.920 I'm completely in agreement with you, in that on the one hand, you want to show grace to people who come around, you want the tent to be fully welcoming, you want to adhere to the adage, better late than never.

00:37:25.220 So, yes, I agree with you, but I also share your incredible frustration, not only because he also, I mean, for probably eight years, I didn't have a single growth of my following on Facebook, right?

00:37:40.620 So, I could have millions of followers elsewhere, and even until today, I'm almost, by the way, I've been rejected getting verified on Instagram many, many times, right?

00:37:51.780 Because no one's ever heard of me, right?

00:37:54.780 Whereas you can have 300 followers, and you're verified immediately.

00:38:01.000 I've tried several times, not because it's an ego boost to have the blue mark, but because I don't want other people to be, you know, mimicking my profile and so on, and it's been rejected.

00:38:13.040 And now, if you go on Instagram, I'm not verified.

00:38:15.460 So, I should, but I actually have even more disdain than you do towards Mark Zuckerberg.

00:38:23.560 I was mentioning earlier that there's nothing more important than authenticity, than truth, right?

00:38:29.960 I admire Elon Musk greatly because he exhibits all of those traits.

00:38:37.460 Effort.

00:38:38.200 I'm going to take my position, let the consequences be whatever they may be.

00:38:44.240 That's a man. 0.99

00:38:46.080 The one who comes, Sally, come lately to the thing, you read the room, and you read that your bullshit is no longer going to be tolerated. 0.99

00:38:57.160 Suddenly, you go on Joe Rogan and give us that. 0.98

00:39:00.240 That, to me, is the definition of what an invertebrate castrato looks like. 0.99

00:39:06.060 Invertebrate, no spine, castrato, no balls, right? 0.96

00:39:08.860 So, I'm going to be less diplomatic than you regarding Mark Zuckerberg. 0.97

00:39:12.360 It doesn't take much courage to be the last person who comes around. 1.00

00:39:17.400 It takes a lot of courage when everybody in the room says, you're an asshole, to stand up and say, I don't care. 0.99

00:39:24.580 I know that I'm right, and I'm going to defend those principles. 1.00

00:39:27.740 That's why, by the way, in biology, we have what's called a costly signal.

00:39:34.960 And let me explain what that is.

00:39:37.200 It's an incredibly powerful concept, which I originally described in my evolutionary psychology work, and then applied it to, say, virtue signaling in the woke context.

00:39:48.520 Everybody can put hashtag BLM or can put the Ukrainian flag, right?

00:39:55.200 But that is not a costly signal.

00:39:57.380 It doesn't take much cost to do this.

00:40:02.200 On the other hand, if you speak out against Islam while you're living in Islamic societies, that's a costly signal, right? 0.91

00:40:11.680 Now, where does the term costly signal come from in biology?

00:40:16.780 Natural selection is the Darwinian mechanism that explains how animals, including humans, evolve traits that confer survival advantage, right?

00:40:27.540 So, for example, we prefer the taste of fatty foods because we've evolved an environment of caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty, and therefore, it makes sense that your ancestors and mine have evolved those gustatory preferences, okay?

00:40:39.840 So, that's called natural selection.

00:40:42.560 Sexual selection explains how we've evolved traits that do not confer survival advantage but confer mating advantage.

00:40:53.380 How?

00:40:54.280 The peacock's tail could not have evolved through natural selection because it actually reduces its survivability.

00:41:02.560 Having a big tail makes it more burdensome to take flight, makes it more conspicuous to predators.

00:41:09.100 So, it couldn't have evolved via the process, the calculus of survivability.

00:41:15.280 Therefore, it must have evolved for another purpose.

00:41:17.700 Well, life is a two-step game.

00:41:20.780 First, I've got to survive, but I could survive all you want.

00:41:24.580 If I don't extend my genes, it's for naught.

00:41:27.480 Therefore, I have to survive and reproduce.

00:41:29.900 Well, to reproduce, I have to attract mates.

00:41:33.460 Therefore, I have to signal something that is uniquely desirable to the other sex. 0.97

00:41:38.100 And that's called sexual selection. 0.88

00:41:40.660 So, why is the peacock's tail so burdensome?

00:41:45.320 Because for it to be an honest signal, it has to be costly, okay?

00:41:53.360 Meaning that if the signal that the peacock emits is one that all the bullshitters can copy, 0.82

00:42:01.960 then the peahen cannot know who is the real genetically superior mate to the one who is only faking it.

00:42:09.840 This is why I explained in my first book, in my 2007 book, The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption,

00:42:14.940 why certain rites of passage evolve to be very costly.

00:42:21.000 So, for example, so there is no rite of passage where I just have to do five sit-ups,

00:42:27.040 and if I do, I get sexual access to all the beautiful girls in my tribe. 1.00

00:42:31.580 Because every single moron, including the fat ones, can do five sit-ups. 1.00

00:42:37.300 But if you have to tie my feet to vine ropes that could break, put me up on a platform that's 80 to 100 feet up, 1.00

00:42:49.520 have me jump head first into the wind, where if that vine rope does not hold me, my head will splatter.

00:42:57.820 Boy, this, by the way, is a rite of passage in Vanuatu, in the Pacific Islands.

00:43:05.000 Now, the one who has the courage to do that gets the pretty girls, 0.99

00:43:09.860 because we will quickly find out if Rob is courageous or Rob is a cowardly, meek guy. 0.80

00:43:16.580 That's going to be the costly signal.

00:43:19.160 So, all this to say, Mark Zuckerberg did not engage in costly signaling.

00:43:24.860 Elon Musk engaged in costly signaling every minute of every day.

00:43:31.340 That's why he's a hero.

00:43:33.300 So, one more main question, and then we'll do a few quick fires.

00:43:38.020 So, what is suicidal empathy?

00:43:41.540 In the parasitic mind, I'm arguing that our cognitive system,

00:43:47.460 our thought processes, could be parasitized and hijacked.

00:43:50.900 But, of course, human beings are both a thinking and feeling animal, right?

00:43:56.760 We also have evolved our emotional system.

00:44:00.660 Our sense of jealousy exists for an evolutionary reason.

00:44:04.480 Envy, pride, shame, right?

00:44:07.380 All our emotions exist because they helped us solve specific adaptive problems, okay?

00:44:14.000 So, to complete the story of how human beings can be zombified by ideological rapture,

00:44:23.000 I have to explain how both the cognitive system could be parasitized, hence the parasitic mind,

00:44:30.260 and how the emotional system can be parasitized, hence suicidal empathy.

00:44:35.180 So, that's the big story.

00:44:36.200 But what is specifically suicidal empathy?

00:44:39.840 Remember earlier I mentioned that everything is within moderation, hence the inverted U-shape,

00:44:46.900 too little, not good, too much, not good, somewhere in the middle, the Aristotelian golden mean.

00:44:51.980 Well, there is nothing inherently bad about empathy.

00:44:55.840 As a matter of fact, we've evolved our sense of empathy for very important evolutionary reasons.

00:45:01.480 We are a social species.

00:45:02.960 We need to put ourselves in each other's minds.

00:45:06.080 This is called theory of mind.

00:45:07.720 One of the ways I develop theory of mind is by having the reflex of being potentially empathetic

00:45:15.180 to your plight, Rob, and that oils our sociality.

00:45:19.320 So, there are perfectly valid and evolutionarily important reasons why we should be empathetic.

00:45:25.200 But when empathy misfires, when it's misregulated, when it targets the wrong targets, when it is hyperactive

00:45:37.520 to the point of it becoming suicidal, that's called suicidal empathy.

00:45:43.180 And let me draw an analogy.

00:45:46.600 OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, is a debilitating psychiatric condition.

00:45:51.740 But its roots are in an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism.

00:45:58.700 So, let me explain what that means.

00:46:00.960 The fact that we scan the environment for environmental threats makes perfect evolutionary sense.

00:46:07.260 So, when I meet Rob, and I notice that Rob sneezed into his hand a second ago, 0.99

00:46:14.080 and then he puts out his hand to shake my hand, I go, shit, he's going to infect me. 0.97

00:46:18.980 So, I will quietly and politely, after I shake your hand, go to the bathroom and shake my hands 0.99

00:46:23.700 so that hopefully I don't get your bronchitis.

00:46:26.240 Okay?

00:46:26.700 So, it makes perfect evolutionary sense for all of us to have developed the mechanisms

00:46:31.580 of checking the environment for threats.

00:46:34.400 I check the back door to make sure it's locked.

00:46:37.260 Here is where OCD comes in.

00:46:40.460 That warning flag that makes me attend to your having sneezed into your hand,

00:46:45.320 and then I go wash my hands, the warning flag comes up, I tend to it, and it goes down.

00:46:51.140 And then I move on with my day.

00:46:53.120 But if the warning flag is so hyperactive that I spend eight hours a day

00:47:00.620 washing my hands and scalding hot water to the point that my skin is peeling off,

00:47:07.000 that I can't get to work because I can't extricate myself from the infinite loop of my germ contamination fear,

00:47:14.920 then it becomes maladaptive.

00:47:16.780 So, I take this principle and I argue that that's exactly what's happening with empathy.

00:47:23.740 Within certain norms of reaction, empathy is perfectly evolutionarily adaptive once it misfires

00:47:30.660 by becoming not only hyperactive, but by targeting the wrong target.

00:47:35.980 Yes, Guatemalan people deserve good things in their life,

00:47:41.140 but they don't deserve it more than American vets who've lost their limbs fighting our war.

00:47:49.500 I'm speaking if I were an American now, right?

00:47:51.500 So, yes, if I had infinite empathy, I would met it out to everybody in equal measure.

00:47:58.240 But that's not the world that we live in.

00:48:00.440 It has a fixed, just like your car tank has a fixed amount of gas in it.

00:48:07.600 Well, my empathy tank cannot be meted out indiscriminately to everyone, right?

00:48:13.580 So, when I care more about my rapist than I care about me, that's suicidal empathy.

00:48:21.060 So, let me give you an example of that.

00:48:22.920 There is a guy in Norway, because in Norway, they're incredibly empathetic,

00:48:28.940 much, much more so than all of you Neanderthals. 1.00

00:48:32.840 So, in Norway, and by the way, on his bio, he says that he is an anti-racist and male feminist ally.

00:48:45.280 We already have a problem, okay? 0.94

00:48:47.500 So, he got sodomized by a noble Somali immigrant, okay? 1.00

00:48:55.140 Now, in Norway, a typical rape is, you know, no McDonald's for you for three weeks. 0.99

00:49:03.000 That's your punishment, okay?

00:49:04.480 They're not exactly terribly judicious in their application of the penal code.

00:49:10.640 So, he got, I don't remember the exact details.

00:49:13.260 It's all referenced in my forthcoming book.

00:49:15.460 He got, he meaning the Somali immigrant, got whatever, a three-year sentence or something 0.66

00:49:19.980 for sodomizing another man, raping him. 0.95

00:49:23.800 But then, when the sentence was over, he was going to be deported. 0.97

00:49:29.380 The guy who was sodomized felt incredibly bad and incredibly guilty, because now his sodomizer

00:49:41.920 would not flourish maximally in Somalia and have all the opportunities that he would otherwise

00:49:49.080 have in Norway. 0.53

00:49:50.280 Well, when you are sodomized by someone and you stay up at night worrying that your sodomizer

00:49:59.100 is now not going to lead the most maximally flourishing life, that's called suicidal empathy.

00:50:06.260 Has that proliferated out into society, hence why you're writing about it?

00:50:10.340 Oh, it pretty much explains every single insane public policy that has gripped the West into

00:50:22.160 its death spiral, right?

00:50:24.400 I write something about, you know, the dangers of open-door immigration. 1.00

00:50:30.820 Some degenerate lobotomized imbecile will write back to me, you're such a hypocrite. 1.00

00:50:37.340 You're an immigrant, as is your buddy, Elon Musk. 1.00

00:50:42.020 Okay, so now imagine what kind of lack of cognitive ability that is.

00:50:47.680 I'm called an immigrant.

00:50:49.780 The people that I'm worried about are called immigrants. 1.00

00:50:53.200 Therefore, we're all immigrants.

00:50:55.040 So what are you complaining about?

00:50:56.480 That is exactly like arguing, as I explained in suicidal empathy, that Fido, your house cat,

00:51:04.720 is a feline.

00:51:05.940 The wild lion in the savannah is a feline.

00:51:13.060 You see, Rob, they're both called feline.

00:51:16.420 Therefore, they're the same.

00:51:18.320 This is why when I see a wild lion, he is indistinguishable for me than my house cat,

00:51:26.300 Fido.

00:51:26.980 And I jump out of my safari truck so that I can cuddle with the male lion.

00:51:32.660 And oops, it turns out that he ate me.

00:51:35.780 But I was eaten while being fully proud of the fact that I didn't discriminate between 0.99

00:51:42.980 these two felines.

00:51:45.240 That's the kind of lunacy that you're facing in the West.

00:51:49.840 And that's why I'm gatsad.

00:51:51.340 Wow.

00:51:54.320 Right.

00:51:54.840 And on that note, let's do a quick fire round.

00:51:58.300 Have you got beef with Lex Fridman?

00:52:00.420 I did.

00:52:02.400 And to our earlier point of always having a open door of a tent whereby people can reconnect,

00:52:11.780 we've kind of warmed up to each other and have even talked about the possibility of me

00:52:17.840 doing his show the next time that I'm in Austin.

00:52:22.300 What was the beef and why did you kiss and make up? 0.76

00:52:26.200 So the beef stemmed from the fact of, look, he's a very, he is a, he seems like a good

00:52:33.380 person.

00:52:33.820 He's a very kind person, but too much kindness directed to the wrong people doesn't make you

00:52:41.420 noble.

00:52:42.140 Right.

00:52:42.380 And so I was getting pissed off by his positions about, you know, but if only there's more love

00:52:50.060 in the Middle East, then, you know, let, can't we just all love each other? 0.97

00:52:54.320 I don't care about people's genitalia. 0.95

00:52:56.640 I just care that you're human.

00:52:58.440 Okay.

00:52:59.220 I mean, in a very banal way, that's also sweet and kind, but that's not the world we live

00:53:04.680 in.

00:53:04.900 Right.

00:53:05.120 I mean, so I was getting upset at what I was considering as an inauthentic shtick.

00:53:12.680 So I went after him and I mean, I'm, I don't call people, I mean, I didn't call him names,

00:53:17.760 but I was satirizing his stuff as I can.

00:53:20.880 It can be quite punchy and spicy.

00:53:23.920 He didn't take well to it.

00:53:25.560 And I get that.

00:53:26.760 But the reality, the reason why we made up is because I don't like to have beefs, permanent

00:53:34.020 beefs with people.

00:53:34.760 My, my, my general disposition is I'm a very warm guy.

00:53:39.040 I'm a very affable guy.

00:53:40.640 Now I do come after you if I think you're raping truth, but I do it not because I'm a

00:53:46.860 meanie because the highest goal is to pursue truth.

00:53:50.400 So that's why, by the way, I was conflicted with Sam Harris because I knew him personally.

00:53:56.280 I didn't want to go after him.

00:53:58.120 And for years I held, bit my tongue until I could no longer take his insane Trump derangement 0.96

00:54:04.200 syndrome. 0.95

00:54:04.800 So I went after him.

00:54:05.800 He ended up blocking me.

00:54:07.300 Now, I think that had he been sufficiently mature and elegant, he would have said, you

00:54:11.840 know what, God, you're probably raising some good points.

00:54:14.020 Why don't I have you back on our, my show and let's iron it out to Lex's credit.

00:54:19.460 But he did, he did do that.

00:54:21.240 He said, Hey, you know, I I'm always open.

00:54:23.300 I'm like, you know what?

00:54:24.500 I'm really sorry that, you know, if, if, if I came across as though I was being spicy

00:54:28.140 with you, I would love to come on your show.

00:54:30.480 Let's do it.

00:54:31.100 And it's not as though I'm going on a show because I lack opportunities to be on big

00:54:36.280 forums, right?

00:54:37.000 It's because I don't want to hold beefs with people.

00:54:39.600 And I think he's a genuinely good person.

00:54:42.480 And the fact that he extended an open, you know, handshake and as I did, Hey, it's in

00:54:48.200 our past.

00:54:48.700 Let's move forward.

00:54:49.320 Which of your stances has got you in the most trouble?

00:54:54.920 That is a fantastic question.

00:54:56.940 And it's going to surprise you that it's not the ones that you would think of.

00:55:03.320 So, uh, probably the biggest, so it depends what you mean by trouble.

00:55:09.240 So for example, death threats, then yes, it comes mostly from, you know, things relate

00:55:15.120 to Islam, but in terms of, you know, calls to have me fired from my professorship and

00:55:22.560 all that, it's actually subsequent to an appearance I did on Joe Rogan, uh, past appearance, but

00:55:32.080 the one before that I had gone on the show to, uh, well, just to chat with Joe, uh, but

00:55:39.320 also, you know, to talk about my, my last book on happiness and so on.

00:55:42.640 And in our conversation, he had mentioned, um, oh, you know, I was just in Greece with

00:55:48.820 the family.

00:55:49.720 It was great, blah, blah.

00:55:50.500 And I said, oh, you know, we just came back from, uh, Portugal.

00:55:54.660 Uh, we loved it.

00:55:55.900 What Portuguese, beautiful culture, beautiful people, beautiful, but I got to tell, this

00:56:00.560 is me speaking.

00:56:01.320 I got to tell you, I'm not a fan of that language. 1.00

00:56:04.760 Uh, and so I made a joke about the language and then I continued, you know, I mean, he's a

00:56:09.640 comedian.

00:56:10.000 I'm a funny guy.

00:56:11.100 We're having fun.

00:56:11.960 I said, oh, but by the way, Hebrew, which is one of the languages I speak, well, that's

00:56:16.540 a violently ugly language, but nothing is as bad as the French Canadian accent. 1.00

00:56:25.300 Well, that's just an affront to human dignity.

00:56:28.420 Now that is a joke in that, well, first of all, I'm Francophone.

00:56:33.180 I'm, I learned French before I did English.

00:56:35.640 So it's not as though, you know, I'm being anti-Francophone.

00:56:39.380 I live in Montreal.

00:56:40.720 I speak French before I did English.

00:56:43.960 The affront to human dignity is a running gag.

00:56:46.720 If you just go on my X feed, if you don't love Lionel Messi, you're an affront to human

00:56:52.180 dignity.

00:56:53.080 If you, uh, if you think that you too is a nice group, you're an affront to human dignity.

00:57:00.000 Don't get me started on the Beatles.

00:57:01.840 They're an affront to human dignity.

00:57:02.980 It's a joke.

00:57:04.260 It's part of the gad charm.

00:57:07.520 It's I, I use bombastic language to me, to make a point. 0.99

00:57:12.580 Every moron could have understood this. 0.99

00:57:15.620 Well, a French Canadian journalist, because they're very uptight about their language, wrote 0.99

00:57:22.400 this big hit piece in the biggest newspaper in Quebec, where he said, we opened our doors

00:57:30.940 to this ingrate immigrant. 1.00

00:57:33.120 In 1975, asshole, I've given you back more than you've given me. 1.00

00:57:38.560 And we opened our doors and he's committing linguistic genocide on us. 0.99

00:57:43.860 Yes, because I joked flippantly in a one second period about the French Canadian accent.

00:57:51.180 By the way, thousands of French Canadians wrote to me and said, I'm French Canadian.

00:57:55.500 And I was cracking up laughing because I agree with what you said. 0.97

00:57:59.020 Our accent sucks. 0.97

00:58:00.700 Okay. 1.00

00:58:01.740 But many, many French Canadians thought that I was the definition of what a dangerous immigrant

00:58:09.620 is, not that I defend freedom of speech, not that I defend all of the foundational secular

00:58:17.480 values of Quebec society.

00:58:19.220 That didn't matter.

00:58:20.760 I made a joke about the French Canadian accent.

00:58:23.400 There must have been many, many hundreds of letters sent to my university to get me fired. 0.97

00:58:30.120 So lesson, life lesson, Rob, criticize Islam if you want, criticize transgender. 0.97

00:58:38.380 Never joke about the French Canadian accent. 0.97

00:58:42.440 They don't mess around.

00:58:44.640 So what's the secret you've never shared or a story you've never told?

00:58:49.380 Never on Joe Rogan, never on Piers Morgan, just on Disruptors.

00:58:54.540 It's going to be very anticlimactic.

00:58:57.020 If I haven't shared it, that it's such a secret, although I can't think of one, I'm not sure

00:59:02.320 why I would share it here.

00:59:03.560 And if it was some juicy thing, I would have probably shared.

00:59:07.200 My life is an open book.

00:59:09.520 Well, here's a secret.

00:59:11.220 My I'm I'm a gay man because my wife, who's a biological female woman, identifies as a man

00:59:20.240 and therefore I'm in a same sex union.

00:59:22.480 Is that is that a good one?

00:59:23.860 I'm being sarcastic, by the way.

00:59:25.500 Well, I think you just came out live.

00:59:28.440 Exactly.

00:59:28.960 Now, I don't want to be dishonest.

00:59:31.420 I do believe that I've previously come out as a gay man.

00:59:34.780 So I'm not sure if it adheres to your goal that it would be the first time here.

00:59:40.260 But let me reiterate, by virtue of being married to a transgender man who is a biological female

00:59:50.200 with whom I've had children, I am a proud gay man in front of you.

00:59:55.780 Hallelujah.

00:59:56.120 Do you feel empowered?

00:59:59.880 Just the authenticity is just streaming through.

01:00:04.680 OK, so what's your biggest failure or regret?

01:00:10.220 Almost all of the ones that I have listed as regrets, because in the happiness book, I have a chapter on live your life

01:00:19.840 so that at the end of your life, when you're sitting on the proverbial porch and looking back at your life,

01:00:25.420 you hopefully have as few regrets as possible.

01:00:28.280 And in the pursuit of writing that, I wanted to answer the question that you just asked me.

01:00:34.200 So at one point, I was chatting with Megyn Kelly.

01:00:38.120 Do you know who Megyn Kelly is?

01:00:39.400 Yeah.

01:00:39.520 And I was telling her, I mean, on air, you know, I wonder if I should have at times modulated a bit more my speech to my earlier point.

01:00:52.240 Now, I knew that deep down I didn't regret that.

01:00:54.480 But like because I know that, you know, there were professorships in Southern California where I wanted to end up that I knew the people were very interested in bringing me.

01:01:05.260 Oh, but, you know, he used that word on Twitter.

01:01:07.840 And so I thought, you know, I wonder if I if I would have played the game a bit more, you know, would that have led me to not be living in the frozen tundra for the last number of years?

01:01:19.320 And then Megyn Kelly, to her credit, said something, which, frankly, in the deep recess of my mind, I agreed.

01:01:26.400 And given my authenticity, I don't regret that I'm so authentic.

01:01:30.380 She said, but had you not done those things, then we wouldn't be in love with the person that you are.

01:01:37.900 You wouldn't have the form that you are.

01:01:39.560 Had you gotten your soccer career?

01:01:41.800 And that's probably my biggest regret, frankly, that I wasn't able to fully instantiate my talent in soccer.

01:01:47.600 Her answer was, then you wouldn't be who you are.

01:01:50.060 So probably every four years when the World Cup comes and I see the magic of the World Cup and I think, my God, how metaphysical it would have been to be playing in a field with 100,000 people, you know, screaming when you make a beautiful pass.

01:02:11.800 I regret that I'll never experience that, but such is life.

01:02:16.000 So I know you've written a book about happiness and I've been trying to figure out happiness, maybe more deep or intellectually, maybe the last 20 years.

01:02:29.460 And a mentor of mine was sat in the back of a car as we were going to an event and he was meditating and I was finding it a bit weird.

01:02:37.260 And he came out of his meditation and he looked at me and he said, Rob, I gave up happiness years ago because it made me so damn depressed.

01:02:47.780 Right.

01:02:48.300 And that really, you know, upside downed my thought about happiness, which was, you know, the pursuit of freedom and, you know, feeling good, whether it was elation or contentment or, you know, satisfaction.

01:03:05.420 But I realised, this is a theory I'd like to ask you about, is that I don't think happiness is the goal of life.

01:03:15.880 I think it's an ideology that's very much of the left.

01:03:19.560 It could be suicidal empathy, in fact, to think that the mission is happiness.

01:03:24.200 And they, they, Johnny got sixth place and we're all really happy.

01:03:29.300 And I feel like my happiest moments have been right after the hardest moments, the hardest interviews, the hardest property projects we've developed.

01:03:39.000 You know, the hardest challenge.

01:03:42.320 Immediately afterwards, you get that sense of I earned that, I beat that and I feel good.

01:03:48.060 What's your theory on happiness?

01:03:49.900 Yeah, that's a great question.

01:03:50.940 So in the last chapter of my happiness book, I take a quote from Viktor Frankl, you know, The Meaning of Life, where he's saying, you don't seek success, you, I'm paraphrasing it, I don't have the exact quote for me, but it is an outcome of making the right decisions.

01:04:13.440 And I said, well, just replace the word success with happiness and there you have it.

01:04:18.500 So I don't wake up in the morning and say, what are the willful things that I can do to be happy, right?

01:04:27.240 It's an outcome.

01:04:28.260 Remember earlier I said, when I talked about Elon Musk, I said, he never set out to become the richest man in history.

01:04:36.000 He had a certain vision of how he wants to live his life, which is, I want to solve important problems.

01:04:43.620 As a result of that objective, he got the downstream effects of also picking up money.

01:04:49.740 I view happiness the same way.

01:04:51.440 Now, about 50% of our individual differences in happiness stem from our genes.

01:04:57.740 Now, that part you can't control.

01:04:59.180 You're born with a sunny disposition or you're born with a more dour disposition, that you can't control.

01:05:05.660 But the good news, Rob, is that if 50% of your happiness is inscribed in your genes, that means there's another 50% up for grabs.

01:05:14.300 Now, I don't wake up and say, so what can I do to be happy?

01:05:19.740 But I do know that there are certain predictors that if I adopt those mindsets or if I make those right decisions, it will statistically increase my chance of being happy.

01:05:31.280 So, for example, I argue that the two top decisions that will either impart the most happiness or the most misery upon you are choosing the right spouse and choosing the right profession.

01:05:43.140 And it's not terribly metaphysical and difficult to explain.

01:05:47.560 If I wake up in the morning next to someone and my reaction is either yes or not another one next to this one, well, I'm on my way to either being very happy or being very unhappy.

01:05:59.740 Now, after I leave that person, if I go to a job that gives me great purpose and meaning, to your point, the toughest interview you did, you came out, yeah, that was amazing.

01:06:10.420 The toughest real estate project that you did, if that gives me purpose and meaning, okay, great.

01:06:16.080 And now I return home to that person that I really love, I've pretty much cracked the code of living a good life.

01:06:22.420 Now, is it guaranteed that the person you choose will give you?

01:06:27.320 No, that's why life is navigating through statistical probabilities.

01:06:32.220 But there are things that I can do that augment the likelihood of finding the right spouse.

01:06:37.960 So, for example, birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract.

01:06:43.660 Those are two opposites maxims in terms of who you should choose your life.

01:06:48.440 Well, the research is unequivocally clear that when it comes to long-term success of a union, a marriage, birds of a feather flock together is much more operative.

01:06:59.580 Now, flocking on witch feathers, if we share values, if we share belief systems, if we shared worldviews, that is going to greatly increase the likelihood of us being happy.

01:07:11.980 Why?

01:07:12.640 Well, let's take an example. 1.00

01:07:14.160 If I am a acerbic atheist, I think religion is complete bullshit. 1.00

01:07:19.820 It's a poison. 1.00

01:07:20.520 If my spouse is a committed Catholic who lives her life being closer to Christ, it doesn't take a fancy professor to say we're starting on the wrong footing.

01:07:32.440 Yes, you'd like to think that love conquers all, but it doesn't.

01:07:36.440 And so, if you can find someone that shares your foundational values, you're certainly doing a good job.

01:07:43.620 So, for example, I'm a very playful person, the fact that I could be with someone who appreciates my playfulness, who shares, that birds of a feather flock together makes our union that much more enjoyable because she really is truly my best friend with whom I say she.

01:08:01.000 I'm sorry.

01:08:01.580 Earlier I said that I'm gay.

01:08:03.300 He is my best friend and therefore we could play together, right?

01:08:08.020 So, to summarize the long-winded answer that I gave you, don't pursue happiness willfully, rather pursue life with honesty, dignity and authenticity and the downstream effects as you'll wake up and you'll say, hmm, life is good.

01:08:27.140 And the final question is, this show is called Disruptors.

01:08:31.060 What does the word disruptive mean to you?

01:08:34.100 It means going against the orthodoxy.

01:08:37.060 It means that if 99 other people say this, it doesn't mean that you have to say so if you've got compelling evidence that suggests otherwise.

01:08:47.400 Be a honey badger.

01:08:49.220 A disruptor, in a sense, has to be a honey badger.

01:08:53.380 Let me explain to, I don't know how much of your audience is British or not, but many people don't understand the reference of a honey badger.

01:08:59.720 In the last chapter of The Parasitic Mind, I implore people to activate their inner honey badger.

01:09:05.420 Why did I choose that animal?

01:09:07.680 Because it has been ranked as the most ferocious and fiercest animal.

01:09:14.140 Now, that's a big title to have because there's a lot of fierce animals out there.

01:09:19.460 It's the size of a small to medium-sized dog, 40 pounds, and yet it is so ferocious that six adult lions can come to it in the savannah and they see it and they go, oh, I don't want to mess with this guy.

01:09:35.740 How does it do that?

01:09:36.920 It is astoundingly self-assured and ferocious, right?

01:09:41.240 So that the lions are thinking, okay, I can go after it and probably he's going to give me a good licking or I can go elsewhere.

01:09:50.180 So it stands as though it's six foot eight, even though it's five foot three, so to speak, right?

01:09:57.400 And therefore, when I tell people activate your inner honey badger, I'm not imploring them to be physically violent.

01:10:04.200 I'm saying, look, if you have a certain set of principles that you can fundamentally defend, don't cower away.

01:10:13.120 Be a disruptor.

01:10:14.740 Be a honey badger.

01:10:16.300 Fight for what's right.

01:10:17.180 And where are you most active on social media and which one of your books should we start with?

01:10:24.300 Thank you for that question.

01:10:26.740 Probably by far the place where I've got the biggest reach and where I contribute the most is on X.

01:10:33.720 So at Gadsad, G-A-D-S-A-A-D, that's the place.

01:10:38.440 Of course, I host a show called The Sad Truth both on YouTube and on podcast, so you can watch me there.

01:10:45.300 In terms of the books, probably the one that has resonated the most with people so far has been The Parasitic Mind.

01:10:53.280 So, of course, I recommend that.

01:10:55.020 But each of my books, you know, is quite different.

01:10:57.680 If you're very interested in, you know, evolutionary psychology and how an understanding of our biological heritage affects our human behavior, then you want to go into my earlier books.

01:11:08.000 If you're interested in happiness, you want to go to my latest book, but probably the kind of entry point to Gadsad that most people are not familiar with is The Parasitic Mind because it was the most popular book I wrote.

01:11:19.720 So this has been fun, entertaining, enlightening.

01:11:24.180 I've had a great time.

01:11:25.460 Thank you for being on the show.

01:11:27.700 I reciprocate all those warm sentiments.

01:11:30.200 Thank you so much.

01:11:31.060 It was a pleasure talking to you.

01:11:32.260 Cheers.

01:11:58.580 Cheers.

01:11:59.140 Cheers.

01:11:59.680 Cheers.

01:12:00.280 Cheers.

01:12:00.340 Cheers.

01:12:00.600 Cheers.

01:12:00.640 Cheers.

01:12:00.840 Cheers.

01:12:00.920 Cheers.

01:12:00.960 You

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - February 10, 2025

The Parasitic Mind VIRUS That Has Brainwashed Society - Disruptors Podcast (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_792)

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