The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Psychology of Irrational Empathy - Fueling Cultural Chaos (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_834)

00:00:00.000 Thank you for joining us. I'm Scott Atlas. Welcome to The Independent, my show that tries to bring

00:00:05.300 a rational perspective to some of the more complicated issues facing society today.

00:00:10.620 Today's guest is Gad Saad. He's a professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal

00:00:17.060 and is serving as a visiting professor at Northwood University. Professor Saad has pioneered the use

00:00:23.500 of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include several

00:00:29.440 books and published papers, many at the intersection of psychology with advertising,

00:00:35.100 medicine, and economics. He's also working on a new book, Suicidal Empathy, which follows the 2020

00:00:41.860 release of his previous bestseller, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

00:00:49.720 His YouTube channel and podcast, both called The Saad Truth, S-A-A-D, have garnered millions of views.

00:00:58.380 Gad and I have a conversation about what he sees today and how he explains the behavior and thinking

00:01:03.920 of the public, especially young adults, and relates it to what might come next in the interplay between

00:01:10.680 the media, universities, politics, and public behavior. Thanks for joining us and stay tuned.

00:01:16.400 Okay. Gad Saad, welcome. Thank you for coming. Oh, it's so good to be with you. I can't believe it's

00:01:28.840 been more than two years since the Global Liberty Institute in Florida. So great to be with you,

00:01:35.480 Scott. Thank you. Right. And that you were at the first of that meeting, which of course, as you know,

00:01:43.100 is intended to think not just short term, and we'll talk about this because this is a generational issue

00:01:50.540 and educating and emboldening people to think independently. And I think that's sort of the

00:01:56.920 topic of what this whole discussion will be. You know, I'll start by saying you are a scholar in

00:02:07.060 human behavior. That's the way I look at it. And specifically on how people's thinking is

00:02:14.400 influenced, whether in marketing or in actual thought. And you've moved to take that concept

00:02:22.820 and put it into this very, very important book you wrote in 2020 called The Parasitic Mind,

00:02:31.280 How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. And it's based upon your concept that ideas,

00:02:39.360 ideologies are serving as infectious ideas or infections, they're pathogens. I'd like you to

00:02:46.660 explain that for the audience. Sure. Thanks for that question, Scott. So as I was trying to come up

00:02:53.200 with a framework to explain how it is that people could be so irrational in their folk psychology,

00:03:00.820 in their worldviews, I started to scour through the animal literature. So at first I, you know,

00:03:08.120 looked at the field of parasitology, which simply looks at parasite host interactions, but a tapeworm

00:03:16.300 could be a parasite that parasitizes your intestinal tract. But neuroparasitology is a subfield of

00:03:24.080 parasitology where the parasite ultimately ends up going to the host's brain, altering its circuitry

00:03:33.840 to suit its reproductive interests. So example, a wood cricket, an actual wood cricket, abhors water.

00:03:41.500 It wants nothing to do with water. But when it is parasitized by a neuroparasite that's called a

00:03:47.240 hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to go into water so that it can complete its reproductive 0.79

00:03:53.220 cycle. So the wood cricket will merrily jump into the water, commit suicide in the service of the

00:04:00.780 neuroparasite that has hijacked its brain. And so that was my epiphany. Aha, I will now use the

00:04:07.600 neuroparasitological framework to argue that human beings could not only be parasitized by actual brain

00:04:14.260 worms, Toxoplasma gondii is one, but they could be parasitized by idea pathogens, hence the parasitic mind.

00:04:21.740 Sure. So the idea pathogens that you talk about, and I think we're all aware of these if you start

00:04:31.020 thinking it with that framework, what you called radical feminism, postmodernism, etc. And

00:04:45.300 your key point here, at least in my reading, is that these things are really stemming from

00:04:54.000 academia. Okay. I mean, this, this, and you and I are part of academia, of course.

00:05:01.040 And, you know, we, we were all raised probably like everybody else. I'm making the assumption,

00:05:04.900 you know, we, we, we, uh, we have a lot of respect for academia, for universities, for professors.

00:05:12.500 Uh, and the, but the, the origin of these so-called mind viruses, and this is sort of a,

00:05:19.500 you know, that's the concept is the university.

00:05:23.420 Indeed.

00:05:24.180 Tell me how you came from that to that and why that's such a problem, of course.

00:05:29.480 Right. So my first, if you like, academic exposure to these parasitic ideas was in the pursuit of my

00:05:38.680 scientific work, where I was trying to Darwinize the behavioral sciences. What does that mean?

00:05:45.900 Most psychologists, most behavioral scientists study human behavior without ever invoking the

00:05:53.820 biological and evolutionary roots of why we behave the way that we do. Why do we have the emotions

00:05:59.720 that we do? Why does our, why is our cognitive system structured the way that it is? And so in

00:06:05.740 my first semester as a doctoral student at Cornell, I had taken an advanced social psychology course and

00:06:11.960 about halfway through the semester, the professor had assigned the book called Homicide, which is

00:06:17.320 probably the book that most altered my sort of intellectual life. The book was written by a husband and

00:06:23.620 wife team, two pioneers of evolutionary psychology, where they were arguing that certain patterns of

00:06:30.180 criminality occur around the world and across time periods in exactly the same way because of

00:06:37.280 evolutionary reasons. Now, when I saw the elegance, the theoretical elegance, the theoretical parsimony

00:06:44.440 with which evolutionary theory was able to explain complex human behaviors, that's when I decided,

00:06:51.120 okay, well, I'm going to take that framework and I'm going to apply it to the behavioral fields that

00:06:55.720 interest me. And I thought that's pretty, pretty banal. I mean, of course, human beings are biological

00:07:01.220 beings. You're a physician. You, you know that we are biological beings, but apparently my colleagues in

00:07:07.320 the social sciences and in the business school and in economics departments thought that I was insane.

00:07:12.300 Surely, according to them, biology matters for every species on earth except human beings. And if, if we

00:07:22.000 are going to afford the courtesy of applying evolutionary psychology or evolutionary theory to human

00:07:28.240 beings, it should stop at the neck. So sure, we could explain why we have opposable thumbs according to

00:07:33.980 evolutionary theory. But surely, Dr. Saad, you're not one of those quack Nazis that thinks the most

00:07:39.520 important organ in your body called your brain is prone to the forces of evolution. Yes, I do think

00:07:45.600 that. And so that was my first exposure to how perfectly, supposedly reasonable academics could

00:07:54.440 be parasitized by absolute nonsense. So that was my first exposure very early. So I finished my PhD in

00:08:00.080 1994. So 31 years ago. And then over the next 31 years, I just saw this incessant war on reason where

00:08:09.940 I would be sitting in meetings where I am evaluating, you know, grants to decide whether to grant that

00:08:17.200 grant or not. And it's, you know, queer glaciology and, you know, feminist mathematics and all the 0.87

00:08:24.040 nonsense. And so, you know, it's been a long exposure to this war on reason, which then led me to write

00:08:31.260 the parasitic mark. Yeah, I think you're sort of pointing out a couple of things that are interesting

00:08:38.160 to me. Number one, we've seen this happen, people in our age bracket, for decades. This is not a sudden

00:08:47.820 phenomenon. And so that's sort of a point to consider. This is a gradual process that has

00:08:56.000 occurred and been on campus, frankly, for decades, while most of us were not paying attention to what

00:09:04.000 was happening, really. But the second part is, we're talking about it now, suddenly, more than ever

00:09:11.140 before. And I actually, my contention is, it's because of what happened during the pandemic, because

00:09:17.120 the pandemic put, exposed things. It wasn't that it created anything. It exposed in a very personal

00:09:24.020 way. We were all affected in one way or another. Some people very severely with their families and

00:09:29.800 people died and their kids have severe psychological problems. But others of us were just watching this

00:09:36.300 unfold with horror. And so I think this really put it front and center. And this is sort of in a funny

00:09:41.840 way or a strange way, the silver lining of the pandemic was that it finally forced the issue to

00:09:48.460 be confronted. That's how I view it. So we're sitting here and we're looking at this happening

00:09:54.800 on campus. Okay. So you sort of identified, you said this sort of infestation, this distortion of

00:10:02.780 thinking among the university professors themselves, in your meetings. But what's happened is that

00:10:09.600 these people are so credible in society, like I mentioned, right? We're all raised to

00:10:17.980 respect them. Our kids, my own kids, personally, they were taught really, okay, listen to the professor.

00:10:26.240 Society uses professors, as you know, as our experts. That is the sort of expert class in many ways.

00:10:32.780 And so now we've given these people such credibility that they are very able to transmit

00:10:41.000 these strange, illogical ideas to our own children, who are obviously the next leaders of society.

00:10:51.840 Right. So two points to make. Number one, while I agree with you that certainly COVID

00:10:55.820 crystallized a lot of the lunacy, but to use your COVID example, in the same way that we now

00:11:02.520 most of us agree that it was a lab leak theory. So the virus starts off at the Wuhan lab, but it

00:11:09.680 eventually it escapes. The exact same corollary happens with bad ideas. The reason why many people

00:11:16.420 were not paying attention, including within the academic class, because their reaction to me when

00:11:22.380 I would be standing on top of the mountain and screaming and warning people was, but come on, 0.99

00:11:26.980 God, that's just some esoteric stupidity in some humanities. And I hate to be the guy who says, 1.00

00:11:33.460 I told you so. I would tell them, but guess what? It'll break out of the humanities. Eventually it

00:11:39.800 will become our last prime minister called Justin Trudeau, who is a walking manifestation of every

00:11:46.180 parasitic idea and every reflex of suicidal empathy that I've spent decades talking about. And so,

00:11:52.140 yes, at first it seems as though it is restricted to a small microcosm, but you know that pathogens

00:11:59.900 eventually escape. So that's number one. The other thing I would say regarding your point about the

00:12:06.500 authority and so-called expertise of professors, there's actually a very interesting psychological

00:12:11.760 phenomenon here, Scott. So in one of the most beautiful social psychological phenomena that I

00:12:20.580 learned of early in my PhD was something called the fundamental attribution error. So how do you

00:12:28.540 attribute things in your life? And many of us, it's called the self-serving bias, we attribute successes

00:12:34.700 internally and failures externally, right? I did well on the exam because I'm smart. I did very poorly on the

00:12:41.600 exam because Professor Atlas is a mean jerk, okay? Sounds familiar, by the way. Go ahead. 1.00

00:12:47.200 I faced that sentiment myself many times. Now, imagine a postmodernist professor stands up and starts

00:12:57.880 espousing the endless nihilistic gibberish that is completely nonsensical. Now, the average audience

00:13:05.600 member is faced with two possible options. Either they say that the guy who is espousing this stuff must be

00:13:14.240 so profound that I'm simply too dumb to understand it, or they will say he's espousing bullshit and I see 0.99

00:13:22.160 through him. Now, regrettably, there's the cognitive sleight of hand. Most students will say it's because 0.99

00:13:28.460 I'm too dumb. And therefore, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault and all of the rest of the 0.95

00:13:36.320 bullshitters, I hope I can say that word, all of the French postmodernists and so on, can get away with what 1.00

00:13:41.340 they're doing? Because they realize the frailty of the human condition, which is, I am the fancy 0.95

00:13:47.020 professor standing on top of the podium at Princeton. Surely, I can't be espousing nonsense.

00:13:52.800 And we all nod and say, oh, yes, professor, you're very fancy.

00:13:57.300 Right. I mean, part of this really is not just the respect that society has for the scholarly,

00:14:04.840 learned professors. And by the way, as you know, well, this is not just a Western society

00:14:12.580 construct. This is, you know, I mean, I'm sure you've traveled and I've traveled as a visiting

00:14:17.740 professor in places like India or Southeast Asia and China. You know, you're revered as a professor,

00:14:24.900 perhaps even more, I think probably more so than in places like the United States or Canada.

00:14:30.300 But there's also the intimidation factor that even leaders have. It's not just students. And this is

00:14:39.560 something that I saw. And I think it's very true that when you have people in power, whether it's

00:14:45.660 a prime minister or a president, they're generally laymen. I'll use that term, not in a critical way,

00:14:52.480 but that's a literal way in terms of particularly when things like that are scientific or in your field

00:14:58.700 of psychology and in medical science and all of these areas where they are intimidated because

00:15:05.060 partly we are taught as young people that, okay, these people must know this knowledge is esoteric.

00:15:12.560 Right. So they defer. And society does this quite a bit. And I think this is one of the problems with

00:15:18.620 people not being independent thinking. It's not just that they're not independent thinkers. It's simply

00:15:26.200 that, okay, they're intimidated by people who, quote, have the credentials.

00:15:32.140 Agreed.

00:15:32.500 And I actually think, and I'd like to hear your thought on this. One of the things I like to,

00:15:36.980 I hope is that the era of trusting people based solely on their credential must be over. We need

00:15:43.700 to be critical thinkers.

00:15:45.640 I agree. And that's why I abhor whenever, you know, I interact with all sorts of people on social media.

00:15:52.500 I don't care how many followers you have. If I think that whatever you're posting is,

00:15:57.040 is worthy of an interaction, I will interact with you. And oftentimes I, you know, I'll see people say,

00:16:03.180 you know, whatever pediatrician here, which is kind of the start, right? I've never said,

00:16:08.960 you know, professor, Dr. Gadsad, BSC, MBA, MS, PhD, Cornell here. Right. I mean,

00:16:15.920 you judge me based on the veracity of my ideas. If my ideas stand the test, the sniff test, the

00:16:23.240 ecological test, the theoretical test, then it's worthy. By the way, it's interesting that you talk

00:16:29.480 about sort of the, that, that, that kind of ivory tower. We are the, you know, to use Thomas Sowell's

00:16:36.100 anointed ones, right? I was, and I hate to say this, Scott, I know you were at Stanford,

00:16:41.760 but in the first chapter of the parasitic mind, I talk about a incident that happened at Stanford.

00:16:48.000 I had been invited to Stanford business school, which certainly is one of the meccas of academia

00:16:52.760 to give a talk on sort of my evolutionary psychology research, how I apply it to consumer behavior,

00:16:59.040 to economic decision making. And the gentleman who took me out the night before my talk the next day

00:17:05.180 was himself a professor at Stanford business school. And as we sat down to have dinner,

00:17:10.640 he looked at me and said, Oh, you know, I was doing sort of a deep dive to kind of get a better

00:17:15.220 sense of your profile. Oh, I didn't know you, you know, you had been on Joe Rogan so many times.

00:17:20.080 I said, Oh yeah, yeah. Many times. He goes, yeah, well, you know, and I'm going to try to put on the

00:17:24.180 smug, arrogant, elitist face that he used. He goes, yeah, well, you know, at Stanford, we don't condone

00:17:29.860 that. I said, you don't condone that. By the way, I've seen that smug, arrogant face many times

00:17:34.780 Stanford and elsewhere, by the way, but God. And I said, uh, you, you don't condone what at

00:17:41.160 Stanford? Exactly. He goes, well, we don't do our research so it could be sexy enough so that we can

00:17:46.800 go on Joe Rogan's show. I said, well, I don't do that either, but here's where he, that there was a

00:17:53.500 chill for the rest of the evening because I, I, I retorted with a classic gaddism. I said, well,

00:17:59.320 isn't it better to do valuable research and then go in front of 20 million people and try to excite

00:18:05.420 them about the research that you're doing rather than publishing your research in a peer reviewed

00:18:11.160 paper that will be read by the editor, the two reviewers and your mom. And he, he just went cold,

00:18:18.960 right? Now, again, I'm not denigrating and I'm sure you're not either the power and the value of

00:18:24.600 peer reviewed papers, but shouldn't it be part of our professional responsibility to excite the

00:18:31.560 public about the hopefully cool things that we do? Well, according to Stanford and Cornell and all

00:18:37.680 of the anointed ones, no, we only speak to each other. We don't talk to the great unwashed. 1.00

00:18:43.620 Right. And this is your, uh, your, your concept as well as mine that you wrote, uh, it takes haughty,

00:18:51.160 I'm quoting here. It takes haughty professors decoupled from reality within the walls of their 1.00

00:18:56.500 ivory tower to come up with some of the most imbecilic ideas imaginable. And, and that is, uh, 1.00

00:19:02.280 that's so true. And it's been said in different ways really over the history by, by a lot of people,

00:19:08.160 but it reminds me of Orwell. Orwell sets along those lines. Yeah. Right. You know, it reminds me of a,

00:19:16.540 of a cartoon I once saw of people toasting at a PhD postdoc party who to someone who was just

00:19:24.780 awarded the PhD in the toast was, and may our research never be practical, you know, never be

00:19:32.300 used. I mean, this is, it is, there's sort of this reverse snobbery kind of thing going on about the,

00:19:38.540 about that. But I want to talk about something that's a very important concept to all of the

00:19:43.320 things that you've, uh, elucidated, which is this idea of misplaced empathy. Okay. This is in your

00:19:51.340 fourth, you're writing another book, which is called suicidal empathy, uh, to examine this, uh,

00:19:57.000 which I want to mention for the, for the viewers, but this whole concept of misplaced empathy,

00:20:02.760 it's sort of tied in with a guilt, guilt-ridden behavior. Could you, could you go, uh, and give us

00:20:09.960 the explanation of this? Yes. Thank you for that question. So let me kind of give the background.

00:20:14.820 So take, for example, OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. You can study OCD actually from an

00:20:21.380 evolutionary perspective in the following way, and I'll link it in a second to how I came up with the,

00:20:26.380 the framework for suicidal empathy. Okay. The idea that we should scan the environment for

00:20:33.160 environmental threats makes perfect evolutionary sense. It makes perfect adaptive sense, right? So

00:20:38.560 if, if I see you at a party, Scott, and I noticed that you sneezed into your hand,

00:20:43.580 then you go out to shake my hand, then I'm going to very quietly after we shake hands,

00:20:48.820 go to the bathroom and wash my hands because I don't want to catch your flu. That makes perfect

00:20:53.080 evolutionary sense. The fact that I go to the back door of our house, make sure that it's locked

00:20:57.520 makes perfect adaptive sense. The problem arises when the scanning of the threat becomes hyperactive.

00:21:05.160 So what happens to an OCD person? The, the, the warning flag goes up, you tend to it. And then

00:21:11.360 the warning flag goes up again, and now you're stuck in an infinite loop of checking. So if you

00:21:16.060 suffer from germ contamination, OCD, you spend eight hours cleaning your hands and scalding hot water.

00:21:22.720 You don't make it to work. So you get fired. Your skin is starting to fall off because you're

00:21:28.000 washing it for eight hours, right? So what, what began as an adaptive process becomes maladaptive

00:21:35.060 when in this case it hyperfires. And so when I had that framework, I said, aha, that's exactly what

00:21:42.560 I'm going to argue for empathy. Empathy is a very noble emotion to have. It actually oils our

00:21:50.460 sociality, right? So for example, part of empathy is having theory of mind, right? Putting yourself

00:21:56.460 in the mind of another. We know, for example, that autistic children, one of the ways that we

00:22:01.160 diagnose them as being autistic is they fail a theory of mind task. They can't put themselves 0.97

00:22:07.600 in the mind of another, which is one of the symptoms or one of the manifestations of autism.

00:22:12.880 So empathy is great as long as it is within certain regulated zones. It's, it's applied to the right

00:22:20.380 target at the right time and the right amount, which by the way, Aristotle explained that to us.

00:22:26.460 Several thousand years ago, when he talked about the golden mean, too little of something is not

00:22:31.460 good. Too much of something is not good. And much of life is finding that middle sweet spot. And so

00:22:36.900 I put all those together and I said, aha, that's exactly what we're seeing right now. Misguided,

00:22:43.800 misplaced, orgiastic, weaponized, suicidal empathy. Therefore, MS-13 gang members are way more

00:22:52.020 worthy of our empathy than American vets who've lost limbs, if not their lives fighting for the

00:22:58.560 United States, right? Or even the victims of the gang members.

00:23:03.020 Or, or, exactly. I mean, you don't want to put this, especially if let's say he's a person,

00:23:10.240 a criminal of color. I mean, he's already been victimized by the society that the white supremacist 0.72

00:23:16.600 society that drove- In their theory, in their theory.

00:23:19.560 In their theory, of course. That drove, that drove him to criminality. Now you're going to

00:23:24.200 double whammy him by putting him within the penal racist justice system? That's not nice. And so what

00:23:30.600 I do in the book is I look at all of the astoundingly disastrous, both domestic and foreign policies,

00:23:39.140 and I argue they are all rooted in this suicidal empathy.

00:23:44.000 Yeah. So I think a big, a big one that has been in the news quite a bit that everyone's familiar

00:23:48.720 with is the, the somehow hyper concern with the rights of some people to the point where it totally

00:23:58.800 destroys the rights of, of the other people, including in, in a dangerous way. And my, my example

00:24:05.280 that I'm thinking of here, uh, is if I, uh, we talk about the trans issue with sports. Okay. It's

00:24:13.080 one thing to start talking about, okay, trans biological men who are now considering themselves

00:24:21.360 women, they want to compete in sports. It's not just actually, although partly it's the opportunity 1.00

00:24:29.620 lost to the biological women in the sports, because the fact is as nature, as all biology knows, 1.00

00:24:36.380 biological men have physical attributes that are beneficial in sports over biological women. 0.99

00:24:42.480 That's just not even arguable, uh, to be opposed to that idea. But the second part is that even to

00:24:50.280 force women, young girls to allow biological men in their locker rooms, in their showers. Okay. And I, 0.71

00:24:59.140 I think this is an, a great example of what you're talking about where, yes, we're, we, we care about

00:25:05.560 the wellbeing and the rights of everyone. But at some point, this is, this is already completely

00:25:13.020 irrational to go to the extreme of insisting that the rights of biological males override any rights,

00:25:23.400 including privacy and personal security of girls. Exactly. And so a couple, a couple of things to

00:25:30.540 answer. Number one, you can go to, to my YouTube channel and search Gadsad Canadian Senate. In 2017,

00:25:39.620 I was summoned, summoned in front of the Canadian Senate. What was then a bill that was tabled that

00:25:46.200 was being discussed. It has since passed called bill C 16, which of course, famously Jordan Peterson

00:25:51.600 also tried to fight. And if you listen to my testimony, again, I hate to be the guy to say,

00:25:57.620 I told you so, but I told you so I exactly predicted every single thing that came down the line. I called

00:26:03.800 it the tyranny of the minority, right? I said, look, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that all people 1.00

00:26:11.120 should live in a world that is free of, you know, endemic bigotry. That's great. Sign me up for that.

00:26:16.060 But in the pursuit of that laudable goal, we don't rape and murder truth to achieve that,

00:26:22.460 right? So we don't all, you know, nod our heads and go, yes, yes, of course, men can menstruate. Yes,

00:26:27.960 yes, of course, men too can bear children, right? Yes, yes, of course, we're going to call women

00:26:32.520 cervix havers. That's, that's literally true. Cervix havers, because women really, there's no, 1.00

00:26:38.560 we don't know what is a phenotype of a woman. So until about 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people 1.00

00:26:44.920 that had existed on earth, that's, that's an actual estimate, were able to fully navigate

00:26:50.080 through the very difficult conundrum of finding out who is male or female. But 15 minutes ago,

00:26:55.040 we lost the ability to do that. So that's point one. Point two, the idea that we should met out our

00:27:03.440 investments in an evolutionarily strategic way is again, foundational to evolutionary theory. So for

00:27:09.440 example, I am much more likely to jump in front of a moving bus to save my own biological child than I

00:27:17.280 am to save a random person, not because I'm a callous and mean person, but because you would expect

00:27:22.960 that my emotional, cognitive and behavioral systems would have evolved in such a way that it confers upon

00:27:29.620 me some evolutionary advantage. I would like to save the random person. But if given the choice, I'm more

00:27:34.560 likely to save my biological child. Now, why am I saying that? Because it speaks to how you met out

00:27:40.340 your empathy gas tank, right? Yes, I want to be empathetic to the one in 10,000 transgender people

00:27:47.800 who may or may not be facing bigotry, but not at the expense of the empathy that is owed to all

00:27:54.380 biological women, to your point, right? Right. The calculus that was in, that is within our brain 1.00

00:28:00.760 has to make evolutionary sense. Suicidal empathy eradicates all that.

00:28:06.360 But how, so how do we, you know, this, this idea of this very bizarre empathy, which I'm, I, I have a

00:28:15.300 couple of sort of random thoughts about it. Number one, I'm, it's so irrational. I'm not even ready to

00:28:22.820 accept that it's sincere, even by the people who espouse it. I'm not sure because you get to this issue

00:28:29.140 of virtue signaling. There's a secondary gain here. And again, I'm not a psychologist, but as my father

00:28:37.200 used to say, a keen observer of the human condition, he said that jokingly. But, you know, it is true

00:28:43.800 that people get secondary gain from showing empathy, from even if it's pretend empathy. And I don't know

00:28:52.500 where, I'd like to hear if you think that's going on here.

00:28:55.980 I think there's definitely some of that. I think some of it is, you know, you know, vacuous,

00:29:02.540 factuous, you know, virtue signaling, but some of it, I think, and hence the parasitic nature,

00:29:08.960 right? That's why the wood cricket jumps in the water, not virtue signaling his suicide. He literally

00:29:16.060 commits suicide because you are altering people's value systems in a way where nothing becomes more

00:29:23.920 important, right? So to use, to use the term of operations research, which is a field of applied

00:29:30.280 mathematics, where you try to use algorithms to solve some optimization problem, the ultimate value

00:29:37.340 that they are seeking to optimize is signaling to your point, in a sense, how good people they are.

00:29:44.060 They're, they're tolerant, they're kind, they're compassionate in lieu of any other conflicting

00:29:50.460 value, right? So, and let me give you a... And even when it, when it shows that they're actually not

00:29:56.100 all those things. Exactly right. So here's a fantastic example. And my forthcoming book has

00:30:02.900 a million of those. There is a Norwegian man who was raped by a, so this is a male who was sodomized 0.70

00:30:12.980 by a Somali immigrant to Norway. Of course, Norway is very kind, is very empathetic. They don't believe 0.88

00:30:22.280 in harsh penalties. And so after a very, very short, you know, laughable sentence, they were going to

00:30:28.460 deport the Somali sodomizer. The, the victim of the rape is such a good and kind person that he felt 0.76

00:30:38.600 very guilty. Earlier, you mentioned guilt. He felt very guilty and torn and hurt that this guy, if he

00:30:46.780 ends up going to Somalia, will not be able to, you know, maximally flourish. He's not going to ascend 0.93

00:30:54.500 to Maslow's, you know, self-actualization, apex of actualization. He didn't use those words, but I'm

00:31:03.260 adding it to it. Now, I'm here to tell you as an evolutionary psychologist that the, the human

00:31:08.860 emotional system did not evolve to feel sympathy and empathy for the one who sodomized you. But see,

00:31:16.480 he has transcended those material biological realities that keep you and I grounded to this.

00:31:24.440 He has, he's at a higher spiritual plane. He forgives his sodomizer. It's insane. Exactly to your point.

00:31:30.980 Irrational. Yeah. I mean, you have to, a part of me always says what's dangerous is these people

00:31:37.960 actually believe what they're saying. Uh, even though it defies all common sense. Uh, the second

00:31:44.720 part, I w I want to take a little diversion here and talk about something else, which is in the field

00:31:49.920 of how this works in advertising specifically. And this is, uh, one of my, I think biggest, uh,

00:31:59.220 sort of, I'm totally disgusted by the, the advertising world combining with this idea of

00:32:06.380 infecting somebody's brain into some bizarre sort of empathy. And that is the glamorization

00:32:11.880 that we've seen, particularly in the United States, but elsewhere of obesity. Okay. This

00:32:16.840 has been going on for 20 years. You know, my, my, uh, experience going or walking around lower

00:32:22.500 Manhattan and Soho, where they have these big billboards of advertising for years, for 15,

00:32:28.480 20 years, we have seen, and on the covers of women's fashion magazines, the new healthy,

00:32:33.720 the new beautiful, and it's these morbidly obese people. Uh, and it just, uh, it's a shocking

00:32:42.080 abuse of the public by people who think that they're nicer people because, oh, we're, we're trying

00:32:50.600 to say that you shouldn't be discriminating against obesity. And I think this has a real

00:32:55.680 significant health impact because it's, it portrays obesity is good. It's not good. It's

00:33:01.500 very bad. It's the worst possible thing. Pretty much you can do for your health.

00:33:05.880 You're, you're, you're, you're predicting, or you're, you're foretelling one of the sections

00:33:10.240 in suicidal empathy, where I get it to the body positivity as a form of misplaced empathy. Right.

00:33:16.800 But it speaks to my earlier point about which objective function you're trying to maximize,

00:33:22.800 right? You're a physician. You obviously know, first do no harm, but now do no harm on which

00:33:29.860 metric. Now you would understand it as, well, there is quite incontrovertible evidence that

00:33:36.200 all things equal being 80 pounds overweight is probably not a good thing. But how about if I

00:33:41.520 were to rearrange your objective function that you're trying to maximize, whereby I say the most

00:33:47.000 important function to maximize is the sense of self-esteem of your patient. In that case,

00:33:54.680 you're now in a, a bit of a quandary. Should you tell your patient that there is unbelievable amount

00:34:01.460 of evidence that suggests that you're probably going to die early if you're 80 pounds overweight,

00:34:05.760 or should you say you go girl healthy at any weight? Well, if you've been parasitized by suicidal

00:34:12.460 empathy, the latter is the way for you to go. So throw away your Hippocratic oath, manage people's

00:34:18.660 self-esteem. As part of this sort of parasitization of, of what you're thinking, really, it's not just

00:34:29.080 teaching it. It's not just the advertising. It's also, there's a, there's a negative. There's a,

00:34:34.840 there's a cancel culture that people have to face. So I think particularly young people, okay, people

00:34:40.540 like, perhaps you, you and I don't care as much, uh, what people think of us, or it wouldn't be so

00:34:47.680 outspoken. Uh, but we know we have, we're pretty comfortable, not just in our own skin, but we have

00:34:52.640 a social structure. Uh, whereas younger people understandably, and here I'm being empathetic,

00:34:59.160 understandably, uh, care a lot about what their friends and their social world thinks they're

00:35:06.180 growing up. And I, and I, I do, uh, understand that, but this cancel culture is very effective,

00:35:12.440 I think. And I wonder, uh, what, what you think about that and what role that's playing in sort of

00:35:18.560 making people have these totally, uh, irrational, really senses of where empathy should be?

00:35:27.960 Great question. And I hope you'll appreciate my answer, although it might sound slightly harsh

00:35:34.000 in terms of the exacting code of conduct by which I abide. I care a lot less about what other people

00:35:42.000 think of me as compared to what I think of me, meaning that I am my harshest critic. And therefore

00:35:49.620 I set my code of conduct to be so exacting that I will never walk away from the defense of the truth

00:35:59.620 and the service of managing the impression that other people have of me. Because Scott, when I put

00:36:07.180 my head on the pillow to go to bed at night, I can't go to sleep and I will suffer from insomnia

00:36:13.200 and I'll have to come to Dr. Scott Atlas to help me with my insomnia because I will feel as though

00:36:20.200 I were a fraud. I'm a charlatan. How could I be? I couldn't agree more with you. You know, this is,

00:36:25.880 uh, of course, I think we're, we're very, uh, simpatico with this kind of stuff. I mean, uh,

00:36:32.000 personally, I don't know how these people look at themselves in the mirror. The people that in my case,

00:36:37.180 the lockdowners, the people at Stanford university who refuse to admit they were wrong and refuse to

00:36:43.760 admit I and others are right. I don't know how they can look at themselves. I don't know how

00:36:47.720 they can look at their children. Can I tell you how they do it? So there is a, and I feel as though

00:36:53.460 I should getting like some kind of cut of their royalties. If all of my promotion of their book

00:36:58.680 is, is causing an increase in sales. There's a, there's a book that was written by two French

00:37:03.520 psychologists, cognitive psychologists, one of whom has been on my show. It's Hugo Mercier and

00:37:09.180 Dan Sperber. They wrote a book called the enigma of reason. And they are, they argued very provocatively,

00:37:16.180 but very convincingly in my view, that the faculty of reasoning, human reasoning did not evolve to seek

00:37:25.200 some objective truth, but rather to win arguments, right? Now that's a very disheartening, you know,

00:37:33.520 insight to have, because what that basically says is most people don't care about the truth. Most

00:37:40.120 people care about winning arguments. So your Stanford colleagues are never going to come and say,

00:37:47.360 you know, in light of the incoming evidence, I now concede that Scott or Jay were right.

00:37:53.580 I would rather die before I ever accept that. So in, in, in our utopian epistemological view,

00:38:00.980 we think that all professors are simply pursuing truth. No, they're pursuing the objective of winning

00:38:08.740 arguments. So you're going to be waiting a long time before they send you that apology letter, Scott.

00:38:13.480 Yeah. Which, which now I, I, I'm not anticipating one, but, uh, you know, I, I do really, uh, feel

00:38:20.560 comfortable. It's not, it's sort of something we have to reconcile as a society that these people

00:38:29.380 will not admit they were wrong. They will not accept fact. They will not talk about what the

00:38:37.380 evidence shows. And now, now we have to figure out how to move forward when you have a society like

00:38:43.160 that. Because we're literally living in a, in a society where facts don't carry the day. Facts

00:38:49.720 don't matter. And I think that's a very cynical sort of message, but I, I'm, I am grappling with,

00:38:57.360 uh, how, how we move forward. How do we get closure, particularly again, from the pandemic

00:39:02.520 where millions of people were killed from the wrong policy. Children were, were cutting their,

00:39:07.860 their wrists were, were killing themselves, have severe psychological damage. We shifted the burden

00:39:12.480 to the poor. All these grossly unethical and immoral things were done. And yet, uh, half of

00:39:19.900 the country or whatever, we'll just simply, they want to turn the page. They want to just forget it.

00:39:25.020 They will never admit they were wrong. I mean, I do have in chapter seven of the parasitic mind,

00:39:30.920 the chapter is titled how to seek truth. I do offer a methodology for demonstrating to even your

00:39:39.880 staunchest detractors, the veracity of your position. Now, if they go, la, la, la, I don't

00:39:45.600 want to hear it. Then, then they are impervious to anything I might present. But as long as they

00:39:49.560 grant me the courtesy to at least lay out the arguments, I do have a way of doing that. Would

00:39:55.040 you like me to, to share? Sure. Absolutely. So there is a thing, uh, that I call nomological

00:40:02.300 networks of cumulative evidence, which is a mouthful, but it basically means that when you

00:40:09.820 are trying to demonstrate the, the veracity of a position you're taking, what if I get you data

00:40:16.740 from across cultures, across time periods, across species, across methodologies, all of which

00:40:23.700 triangulate to demonstrating that my position is correct. Now it's a lot more than a literature

00:40:29.040 review. It's much broader. It's a lot more than a meta-analysis. Meta-analyses are much more pointed

00:40:34.180 to a specific relationship between a couple of variables. This is a, an epistemological, you know,

00:40:41.340 you know, chainsaw. So let me give a concrete example. Let's suppose, Scott, that you were a

00:40:46.860 social scientist who argued, as do most social scientists, that toy preferences are socially

00:40:52.400 constructed. So the reason why little boys prefer certain types of toys and little girls prefer other

00:40:58.300 types of toys is because of social construction. And I want to come and prove to you that no,

00:41:03.040 there is a universality to the sex specificity of toy preferences that is due to biology. How would I go

00:41:08.980 about doing that? Okay. So now I'm going to build a partial nomological network to show you that.

00:41:14.020 Okay. You with me? Okay. Yes. I can get you data from developmental psychology showing you that

00:41:19.500 children who are too young to yet be socialized. So by definition, they could not have been socialized.

00:41:24.880 They haven't reached that cognitive developmental stage. They're already exhibiting those sex 1.00

00:41:29.460 specific toy preferences. That's a pretty incontrovertible piece of evidence, but I'm not

00:41:35.400 going to stop. I can get you data from rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys and chimpanzees showing

00:41:42.480 you that their infants exhibit the exact same sex specific toy preferences as we do. I can get you data

00:41:48.400 from other cultures that are completely non-Western, sub-Saharan Africa, showing you that they exhibit the 0.98

00:41:54.400 same sex specific toy preferences. I'll just do two more, but the network is actually much bigger.

00:41:59.420 I can get you data from 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, where on funerary

00:42:06.280 monuments, on mausoleums, little boys and girls are depicted playing with exactly the same types of

00:42:12.920 toys as today. And I'll get you one more, if only because you're from medicine. I can get you data

00:42:18.480 from pediatric endocrinology showing you that little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal

00:42:24.700 hyperplasia, which is a disorder that masculinizes little girls' behaviors and morphologies. Girls who

00:42:32.340 suffer from this disorder have the exact sex specific reversal of their toy preferences. So look what I did.

00:42:39.860 I got you data from across cultures, from developmental psychology, from across species, from across time

00:42:45.480 periods, and so on, all of which triangulate to the incontrovertible nature of the position that I'm

00:42:52.340 taking. Now, you earlier mentioned cancel culture. So let me now close out by going back to cancel

00:42:58.280 culture. Many people ask me, how is it that you're undoubtedly probably the most outspoken professor by

00:43:06.100 orders of magnitude, and yet you're not canceled? Well, there are several reasons for that. One of which

00:43:12.260 is that I have very, very well-regulated epistemic humility. When I know something, I walk with someone

00:43:20.280 who's got all the swagger of having built my nomological network. Good luck if you want to

00:43:26.420 debate me. But when I don't know something, I'm the first to say, hey, Scott, that's a great question.

00:43:32.060 Unfortunately, it's out of my area of expertise. It's above my pay grade. So I don't try to wing it.

00:43:37.900 And what that does is you could never catch me. I've been on Joe Rogan a million times. There is,

00:43:43.820 you know, 30, 40 hours of content, yet you've never caught me with my, quote, you know, proverbial 0.98

00:43:50.740 pants down because I never bullshit. I exactly know what I know and what I don't know. And so I think if 0.69

00:43:57.700 people could have that epistemological discipline, we could have a society more built on truth and less

00:44:04.480 on emotional incontinence.

00:44:06.180 Mm-hmm. No, I think that's very important. No doubt. When things get crazy, I think people drop

00:44:17.480 that though. Part of it is like, for instance, in the sort of the pandemic where people, the fear,

00:44:26.000 there were a lot of emotions. It wasn't just an argument. It was something bigger. But I think

00:44:30.980 the second reason that you don't get canceled is that you're not going to allow yourself to be

00:44:36.340 canceled. I mean, I think that, and you know, this is really a fundamental point that I'm sure you,

00:44:42.160 you probably agree is that there's a, we, first of all, we need to speak out for truth. We can't

00:44:49.760 have an ethical society without the truth being spoken. But more importantly, in a funny way,

00:44:58.460 is that the value of speaking out is that you, you facilitate other people speaking out. Not

00:45:05.280 everybody has to be the tip of the spear, but we need some tips of spears. Yeah. And when you do that,

00:45:11.480 and people have said this to me many times, I'm sure you've been told the, one of the most important

00:45:15.680 things you've ever done is speak out for things that other people agree with, but they're, they're

00:45:19.980 not necessarily comfortable or they're afraid to speak out. When they hear you speak out, they say,

00:45:24.360 well, yes, I agree with that. I mean, I think there's a very important part of having the courage

00:45:30.840 to speak out. Uh, and you know, you're certainly one of those people. I want to, I want to talk a

00:45:38.260 few minutes about sort of the Trump election. Uh, now I, I view the Trump election. I think everybody

00:45:45.840 does, uh, who's following this as a repudiation of failed policies. I think this was a policy election,

00:45:52.520 uh, you know, whether it's the economy or rampant crime, uh, international instability that, that

00:46:00.640 we all saw happen under, uh, the Biden administration, but there's something more and it's hard to

00:46:06.760 quantify if it was that impactful, but it's what I call sort of a reaction of what I call cultural

00:46:13.820 perversions that defy common sense. Uh, you know, girls should be forced to allow biological men in 1.00

00:46:20.420 their locker rooms at anybody. If you're a parent of a daughter, I don't know how you would tolerate

00:46:25.760 that. I have sons, but I still, it's so obvious to me or that biological men want to be in a women's 1.00

00:46:33.300 prison, even though they're a rapist. I mean, you know, because they're going to say they're a woman,

00:46:37.600 you know, uh, how do you view the awakening? I'll call it of at least the American voter.

00:46:46.100 Uh, why did that happen? Because, okay, this, this sort of, I mean, it took something to change

00:46:53.960 this, to awaken people. Maybe it was not, uh, the cultural stuff at all. I don't know. I'd like

00:47:00.140 to hear your thoughts on that. And then I want to talk about a concern I have, which is I sense that

00:47:07.720 there's a lot of people that think, okay, Trump won. Now we're done as problem solved. There's a,

00:47:14.460 almost a very premature sort of complacency going on, but that's the second part. First,

00:47:20.460 I want to hear your views on what it means that Trump was elected. Well, I, I think you're right

00:47:26.440 on both points. I think that, you know, most decent people are tired of feeling insecure about

00:47:36.360 whether they can say that only women menstruate. I mean, let me, let me give you a very specific

00:47:41.100 example. I receive emails from ostensibly functioning adults who write to me the following

00:47:49.360 email, dear professor Saad, you know, I know that you are an evolutionary behavioral scientist who

00:47:55.240 studied sex differences, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I mean, is it, does science now consider it that,

00:48:02.240 you know, men can menstruate now imagine on the shaky grounds you're on in terms of to use the

00:48:10.840 term that everybody uses now on terms of gaslighting that you need to write me to receive my

00:48:17.100 imprimatur to something that the average three day old squirrel would otherwise know. Right. So that's

00:48:23.920 the trick that has taken place over the past 50 to a hundred years with all of these parasitic ideas

00:48:29.920 infecting our minds where I no longer what up is down left is right. Men are women. Slavery is, 0.68

00:48:36.320 is freedom and so on. And so most people woke up one day. I mean, it takes some tipping point and

00:48:42.000 said, like, I've had enough. I've had enough of going to DEI things where I'm told that I'm a disgusting 0.83

00:48:48.100 white heterosexual male. I've had enough and I'm voting for whichever candidate, you know, 0.98

00:48:54.600 frees me of that nonsense. So, so your first point is certainly true, but I really love your

00:48:59.640 second question because I've been exactly warning against, I mean, I literally started warning about

00:49:05.660 this the day after Trump won. Yes, I was elated as a Canadian that Trump had won because the, the

00:49:12.780 alternative would have been that much more disastrous, but I kept saying to anybody who would listen to

00:49:18.200 me, don't rest on your laurels. It took 50 to a hundred years for these disastrous ideas to flourish

00:49:26.380 and become part of accepted society. We're not going to eradicate this by four year term of Trump.

00:49:34.280 Yes, he's an important doorstop. The opposite would have been disastrous, but it's a long battle. Now,

00:49:40.200 I'd like to think that it won't take 50 to a hundred years to develop the vaccine against all these

00:49:46.420 parasitic ideas, but it's not going to start and end with Trump. I completely agree with you, Scott.

00:49:51.260 Yeah. And I, and I think, uh, part of the, uh, of the issue is that in my view, there's this idea of

00:50:00.900 turning the page on what I consider the most heinous, abusive leadership in our lifetimes,

00:50:08.800 which was the pandemic lockdowns. And it's not that everything is about the pandemic, but it's that,

00:50:15.140 again, the exposure, uh, of unbridled power and the people's acquiescence, which I think was even

00:50:22.720 more shocking to me. But if we turn the page on these things and just assume, okay, we're done.

00:50:29.580 We're, we fixed it. Uh, Trump is elected or whatever. Uh, we have people that are going to

00:50:34.940 repeal some of these healthcare things or, or add, uh, transparency or whatever. I think that we

00:50:40.900 eliminate the closure that is needed for people, a, who lost their family, whose older parent died

00:50:49.540 and they were forbidden from seeing them, whose child killed himself, who, uh, who became, uh,

00:50:55.620 the hundreds of millions of people who are thrown into abject poverty in the world, all these things.

00:50:59.920 We need, we need a closure of recognizing truth. But secondly, that eliminates all accountability

00:51:07.620 to those in power. If we just turn the page, we don't want to talk about it. It's uncomfortable.

00:51:12.820 So we're not going to, we're not going to go through that. And I, and I think, uh, I don't

00:51:17.640 know about the psychology of turning the page because it is easier to not talk about things that are

00:51:23.340 unpleasant, particularly since most people are shamefully complicit in not just allowing it to

00:51:30.440 happen as an acquiescence kind of thing, but also even advocating it. Uh, to me, it, it reminded

00:51:37.560 me of the historical views of what happened in Nazi Germany, where a lot of quote, good people

00:51:43.880 were complicit in watching the Jews being put on the trains and even actively through stones at them.

00:51:50.860 You see it in the movie clips, good people. Okay. The banality of evil, uh, Hannah Arendt, uh, you know, 0.96

00:51:58.080 the, and, and I'm, I'm very concerned about, so there's a, a complacency and also almost a desire

00:52:04.420 to move on as if there's no problems now, because I, and I agree with you if I, if I can go on one

00:52:12.560 more sentence, which is that I'm not sure that there is somebody like Donald Trump again. Okay.

00:52:19.300 I mean, this guy is a unique, he's the tough, I, I said, he's the toughest SOB I've ever known.

00:52:25.540 And I'm saying that in a positive way. He's a unique person. He galvanized support. He's,

00:52:32.500 he identifies with the common man, the common man identifies with him. And, uh, he's an inspirational

00:52:38.320 figure to a lot of people. And I, I'm not, I'm, I'm concerned that it's a one-off.

00:52:43.500 Well, I'll, I'll just mention your point about how you're qualifying Trump. I just posted a tweet

00:52:49.560 today. I think it's, it's currently pinned on my feed. It was a, a, a post directed to Pierre

00:52:56.820 Poilier who had an insurmountable lead in the Canadian, in the forthcoming Canadian election.

00:53:02.560 I mean, really like 30 points and now it has flipped. And so the, the point of my tweet,

00:53:08.520 and I'll, I'll kind of paraphrase it. I said, look, I said, dear Pierre, you know, here's some

00:53:13.040 unsolicited advice. You could take it or leave it. Truly historical figures are not fence sitters.

00:53:20.880 They don't equivocate. Donald Trump won the presidency twice because he doesn't give an F.

00:53:26.800 I mean, and I put star for the F. Elon Musk has achieved what he's achieved because he doesn't

00:53:33.680 give an F. Joe Rogan done what he's done because he doesn't give an F. So real historical figures,

00:53:39.620 whether they are in the, in the, in the evil side of the ledger or the positive side of the ledger,

00:53:45.240 just see a path forward and they just move forward. And in, in the case of, I hate to say it,

00:53:52.080 but in the case of Kualiev, he's, he's doing the Kamala thing, which is, you know, I won't go on Joe

00:53:57.060 Rogan because the political consultants told me I shouldn't and so on. And you're not going to win

00:54:01.380 this way. So I completely agree with you. I mean, Donald Trump is a historical figure,

00:54:05.760 like probably no other that we will ever see in our lifetimes. And it's not because I've got Donald

00:54:10.500 Trump posters in my bedroom, right. As a marital, right. I'm Canadian. I truly don't have a dog in

00:54:16.260 this fight, but no one that I can think of has had as much thrown as, as, as he has and come out

00:54:22.900 victorious. So that has to be right now regarding the, the other issues you're talking about the,

00:54:28.940 the banality of evil and the acquiescence and so on. One of my favorite experiments in all of

00:54:36.940 behavioral sciences and all of psychology, which is saying a lot, there's a lot of research in

00:54:41.240 psychology. That's great. Is the Solomon Ash conformity experiments to your, Oh, this is amazing.

00:54:47.860 Yes. I've watched this over and over again. I mean, and now, so do you mind if I explain it to our,

00:54:53.280 to the, go ahead. Absolutely. Now, several reasons why, and I've lectured this a million times,

00:54:58.920 I still get goosebumps when I lecture it, because I tell my students, you don't have to do convoluted

00:55:04.140 research for it to be some of the most impactful stuff that anybody could ever do, because I could

00:55:10.380 explain the structure of this experiment to a 10 year old. They'll get it and they'll go, wow,

00:55:15.140 this is unbelievable. That's the magic of Solomon Ash. So here's what Solomon Ash did. I'm going to put

00:55:20.780 three lines on the left. The three lines are very, very different in terms of their length. Like

00:55:26.680 a blind person would see the difference between those three lines. And then there's another line

00:55:32.580 here, X. So there are three lines here and one line here. One of these lines is the same length as one

00:55:38.300 of these three. So all I'm going to ask people is to tell me out loud, which of these three lines is

00:55:44.980 the same one as this one. Now, again, this is not ambiguous stimuli. It's very, very clear.

00:55:50.700 Right. It's obvious. It's obvious from Mars. It's obvious. But what I'm going to do now is I'm going

00:55:58.240 to test people's capacity to engage in herd-like mentality to your point about COVID. Yes, yes.

00:56:06.900 Okay. I'm happy to be stuck in a draconian prison for the next three years because dear leader said it.

00:56:12.560 I don't care what the evidence is. I am a sheep, right? So he puts, he meaning Solomon Ash,

00:56:19.280 he brings in eight people to the lab. The first seven are confederates, meaning that they are 0.87

00:56:24.860 fake subjects, unbeknownst to the eighth subject, who is a real subject. And so the first, and then

00:56:31.780 he's going to randomly allocate who sits where. And I say randomly in quotes, because it's not random.

00:56:37.000 The first seven that are going to give the answer, it's already faked. It's already rigged. And so the

00:56:43.680 first person gives the wrong answer. The second person gives the wrong answer and so on. Now,

00:56:48.440 you'd like to think that anybody who's not blind and has a modicum of a spine would look at the other 0.99

00:56:55.420 seven and say, are you effing insane? What kind of answer are you giving? But guess what? An astonishing 0.94

00:57:02.460 high number of people go, yeah, okay, yes, whatever they said. How could it be? What about your lying

00:57:09.800 eyes? So once you understand Solomon Ash, it really doesn't come as a surprise to you what happened

00:57:16.440 in COVID. Ash already explained it to us seven decades ago.

00:57:20.940 Absolutely. And I encourage people to look up. There's a video of that experiment where the first

00:57:26.360 time the real test subject, after listening to all these wrong ones, he says the right answer,

00:57:33.860 although he's uncomfortable. And then very soon thereafter, he starts just simply agreeing with

00:57:39.780 the crowd, even though it's obvious. It's really quite astonishing and frightening, frankly.

00:57:45.940 I want to just ask a quick follow-up to that one. And that is, why are some people so

00:57:52.960 acquiescent to that sort of peer pressure, but others are not? I mean, I was stunned.

00:58:02.960 And my personal experience, again, during the task force meetings was I was looking around the room

00:58:09.260 saying, am I the only person that's hearing this stuff? Why am I the only person speaking out

00:58:14.800 against what is clearly inane, illogical, and pseudoscientific statements made by Dr. Fauci and

00:58:22.140 Dr. Birx? And I wonder, people have asked me, why am I not like that? Why was I willing to be

00:58:29.100 outspoken? But I'm sort of asking you the opposite question, which is, why are people so... What is

00:58:35.220 this phenomenon of herd mentality, herd thinking, sheep-like behavior? I mean, why are some people

00:58:42.120 immune from it, and some people are just happy to go along?

00:58:46.000 So I'll answer it in two ways, both actually very, very informed from an evolutionary perspective. So

00:58:51.240 there was a study that was done now more than, I think, 15 years ago, where they primed people

00:58:56.960 either for survival or for mating. And they gave them one of two types of advertising,

00:59:03.180 either what's called a social proofing appeal. Hey, 6 billion peoples have been served and loved

00:59:08.800 it. Shouldn't you also try our burger? So social proving means everybody's done it. Shouldn't you

00:59:13.740 as well? It's been tested. The other type of appeal is one of scarcity. You know, you're the only one.

00:59:20.220 It's premium. It's newly developed and so on. It turns out that when people are primed for survival,

00:59:26.240 they're much more likely to prefer the social proofing appeal, the one where you are part of

00:59:32.600 the herd. You're moving all in sync. Because when you prime me about survival, I don't want to stick

00:59:37.680 out. I want to be part of the herd. On the other hand, when you prime me about mating, then I do want

00:59:43.580 to stick out. I don't want to be part of the herd so that I can get a chance that you pick me. So that

00:59:47.860 already gives you a sense of the evolutionary dynamics of when it makes sense to be part of the herd

00:59:53.120 and when it makes sense for me to stand up. The second point I'm going to make is that

00:59:57.960 at first it's going to sound as though I'm not answering your question, but I'm going to bring

01:00:02.580 it back. Your more general question is really, why is there a heterogeneity of personality types?

01:00:11.560 That's really your question. But why is it that you are a honey badger, Scott Atlas, but all the other

01:00:16.980 people in that room were, you know, castrated cowards. Why? Well, the answer is that evolution 0.99

01:00:23.820 would never have chosen for a singular optimal personality type because depending on the

01:00:31.720 ecosystem, different personality profiles might be the optimal one. So for example, the fact that we

01:00:38.580 have 10 fingers now, that's called a fixed trait, right? Now, some people are born with a congenital

01:00:45.180 disorder whereby they have 11 fingers or nine fingers, but the fixed phenotype is set at 10

01:00:51.300 and selection is no longer working on that problem. But when it comes to personality types, there is an

01:00:58.260 argument to be made for the conditions under which being a herd-like castrated guy would be adaptive

01:01:06.400 and where it would be adaptive for Scott atlases to emerge. And therefore, that's why you have a

01:01:13.400 distribution of both. Goddamn, where is my Nobel Prize? Look at all of these explanations. 0.98

01:01:19.660 No, but in all seriousness, you see my point? Like, there is no evolutionary reason why it should be

01:01:28.160 that the world is only inhabited by castrated herd-like people or by only Scott atlases. And

01:01:35.800 that's why we've got the mix of both types.

01:01:37.740 Mm-hmm. Well, I think a lot of people are happy that the world is inhabited by not just only Scott

01:01:43.040 atlases. Let's put it that way.

01:01:45.040 Not your wife, though. She's very happy you did.

01:01:48.440 Okay, Gad, it was really a great pleasure chatting with you. And I'm going to have you back again,

01:01:53.940 because we never got to the part about how do we fix this? And I think this is part of, again,

01:02:00.220 an extension of your whole work is what is the solution? How do we make sure we can stop

01:02:07.460 these sort of mind viruses from being so destructive? I don't think the answer is very

01:02:13.340 simple, but we're going to catch up with you again and get a blowout on that. 0.90

01:02:18.840 I'm available at your leisure. I'll always be happy to come back. Thank you so much, Scott.

01:02:22.320 Excellent. Thanks a lot for being here, and I'll see you next time.

01:02:26.520 Cheers. Take care.

01:02:27.820 Thank you for listening to The Independent with Scott Atlas. If you want to check out more about

01:02:32.300 today's guest, Gad Saad, check out his podcast and YouTube channel, The Saad Truth. That's S-A-A-D.

01:02:41.120 Read his books and watch his interviews. And don't forget, please subscribe to this show on YouTube,

01:02:46.100 as well as Spotify, Apple, Google, and anywhere else you're listening to podcasts right now,

01:02:51.520 and I'll see you next time.

01:03:02.300 Thank you.

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The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 07, 2025

The Psychology of Irrational Empathy - Fueling Cultural Chaos (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_834)

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