The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The War on Reason - How Bad Ideas Hijack Our Thinking (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_682)

00:00:00.000 Never violate deontological first principles that defines the beauty of the West under no

00:00:10.300 circumstances. There is no, I believe in freedom of speech, but the minute that you say, but you're

00:00:16.160 a cretin, you're a fraud. I come across this quote from you, which maybe sums up almost everything 1.00

00:00:21.240 you do. And you said this, any human endeavor rooted in the pursuit of truth must rely on facts

00:00:26.560 and not feelings. For many things in life, we navigate through the world through a consequentialist

00:00:32.120 prison. But when it comes to the pursuit of truth, I argue that you have to be deontological. In other

00:00:37.760 words, you know, we can all be in favor of transgender rights without murdering truth.

00:00:42.480 We don't have to say that men too can menstruate. I could be for individual rights. I could be for

00:00:48.280 fighting for a world free of bigotry without murdering truth. And what neuroparasites do

00:00:53.540 is exactly hijack your neuronal circuitry to the benefit of the parasite. They quietly lead us to

00:01:01.060 the abyss of infinite lunacy so that we say things like, of course men can menstruate. You throw the 0.99

00:01:06.080 truth out, then we lose everything. We can still have all of our nobilities. We can have our causes.

00:01:11.480 We can have our empathies. But if it doesn't all come back to some facts, we need to look ourselves

00:01:15.280 in the mirror and say, what are we doing here, guys? Like we're just kidding ourselves. All of these

00:01:19.580 idea pathogens were spawned on university campuses. It's not the fact that there's going to be six

00:01:25.680 foot four guys knocking at my door. It's the fact that in the internal privacy of my mind, I am

00:01:32.000 calculating as a student, should I say something in class or will I be penalized? Or anything else

00:01:38.120 around you. And pretty soon subconsciously you're self-censoring and just numbing yourself. And then

00:01:42.800 now you really are a zombie, which ultimately harms humanity. It harms our truth. It harms our progress. 0.68

00:01:48.460 It harms everything. Do we want to live in a world where there's this kind of overlord oversight

00:01:54.140 over our every syllable? I venture not. I am a honey badger. And honey badgers, as you know,

00:02:00.060 the expression is, don't give a F. Live your life that way. And you know what? It's liberating.

00:02:06.160 In Judaism, there's an expression, you never kneel in front of anybody other than God. Now,

00:02:11.160 I'm not a very religious person, but I live my life under that. There is nothing worse for me

00:02:16.720 than to lose a millimeter of my honor or dignity. So in other words, I walk like a 70 foot tall

00:02:25.080 person. I'm the height of Messi.

00:02:26.700 The world is changing. Inspiration is everywhere.

00:02:42.740 It has never been so easy to connect, share, and bring people together.

00:02:52.420 We're learning from others and finding the best in ourselves.

00:03:00.740 Challenging our beliefs.

00:03:04.160 Sharing our vulnerability.

00:03:07.920 Overcoming our fears.

00:03:09.460 Transforming ourselves so we can transform the world.

00:03:19.740 How far can we go?

00:03:22.520 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is...

00:03:25.460 This is London Real.

00:03:35.460 I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dr. Gad Saad, the author, evolutionary behavioral scientist and

00:03:41.200 professor of marketing. You pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior

00:03:45.960 and have written over 75 scientific papers. Your hugely popular YouTube channel and podcast,

00:03:51.420 The Sad Truth, deals with issues around religion, freedom of speech, and wokeism.

00:03:56.000 You've written four books, the last of which, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing

00:04:00.920 Common Sense, explores how the progressive left is successfully moving ideas once considered radical

00:04:06.440 from university campuses into political and corporate arenas. You believe that the West

00:04:11.580 intellectual freedom is at risk of extinction if we don't stop the spread of dangerous idea

00:04:17.380 pathogens that are killing common sense and our freedom of speech. Dr. Saad, welcome to London Real.

00:04:23.980 Thank you so much for that lovely invitation. I'm so glad that we are finally able to make it. So I

00:04:29.440 really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. Now, I'm really looking forward to it. And,

00:04:33.960 you know, I come across this quote from you, which maybe sums up almost everything you do. And you

00:04:39.240 said this, any human endeavor rooted in the pursuit of truth must rely on facts and not feelings.

00:04:46.560 It's a very interesting statement. You know, I graduated from 1993 with a degree in engineering

00:04:52.620 from MIT. And I was taught that it all came down to the scientific method to prove things.

00:04:58.280 And now, 30 some years later, it seems like the world has changed dramatically. And I really want

00:05:04.460 to get your thoughts. Also, this is personal because my stepdaughter just started school in Boston

00:05:09.440 at a university there. She's 18, just turned 19 today. And so I'm deeply concerned that she's about

00:05:16.700 to go into a world that I don't even understand, that I can't control. So you tell me, where do we

00:05:22.560 start, doctor? Right. Well, I guess maybe we could start with my most recent experience at USC. So last

00:05:32.140 week, I was invited to speak at a one-day event celebrating the 10-year anniversary of a center

00:05:40.680 at USC. The center is called the Center for Economic and Social Research. And it was a day to celebrate the

00:05:47.620 values of the Enlightenment. And so I decided that I would deliver a lecture on something that is very

00:05:57.840 relevant to the quote that you introduced the segment with, you know, the dichotomy between,

00:06:05.360 you know, pursuing truth versus feelings. But I'm going to put it in more formal terms. So

00:06:10.060 I talked at USC about deontological ethics versus consequentialist ethics. And so let me spend a minute

00:06:17.640 or two explaining what that is. A deontological statement would be an absolute statement. So for

00:06:23.740 example, if I say, it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement. On the other

00:06:29.640 hand, if I say, it is okay to lie, if I wish to spare someone's feelings. So if your spouse asks you,

00:06:37.320 do I look fat in those jeans, and you wish to have a long marriage, you might wish to put on your

00:06:42.800 consequentialist hat and say, no, you've never looked more beautiful. So for many things in life,

00:06:48.640 we navigate through the world through a consequentialist prism. But when it comes to

00:06:54.340 the pursuit of truth, I argue that you have to be deontological. In other words, there is no

00:07:00.760 freedom of inquiry, but dot, dot, dot. There is no freedom of expression, but dot, dot, dot. In other

00:07:07.380 words, I don't need to worry about what the downstream consequences of my research might be,

00:07:15.440 right? So for example, if I'm studying the difference between religious groups in terms

00:07:20.260 of their proclivity to commit terror attacks, well, some would argue that, well, you shouldn't do this

00:07:26.740 kind of research. Because even if that research were to prove veridical, you would be, quote,

00:07:32.560 marginalizing this group. And therefore, you shouldn't do it on consequentialist grounds. Whereas

00:07:37.920 I argue, no, that's a very dangerous, slippery slope. And so I try to take that message to the

00:07:42.980 people at USC in speaking about your stepdaughter and the vipers' den that she's about to enter.

00:07:49.820 And you would have thought that, you know, an esteemed place like USC would be very open to

00:07:57.920 what I consider to be very, very non-corrosive, you know, statements that I'm making that defend

00:08:05.160 freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech, individual dignity, personal agency, the scientific method.

00:08:10.860 And if you saw the hostility that I faced, now the hostility was not, they tried to shout me down,

00:08:18.040 they didn't throw tomatoes at me, it wasn't a physical confrontation, but the level of either

00:08:24.220 overt hostility or passive aggressive hostility. So I was there for the whole day. And usually,

00:08:31.060 you know, people will come up to me, if not to take selfies with me or so on, they at least engage me,

00:08:38.140 it's warm, it's academic. The manner by which people were turning their back to me, as though I

00:08:44.420 were this, you know, I was basically indistinguishable from Himmler, was really laughable.

00:08:49.900 Two people were very, very angry that I proposed something that was truly, you know, beyond the pale,

00:08:57.120 because I argued that, you know, we can all be in favor of transgender rights without murdering

00:09:02.360 truth. We don't have to say that men too can menstruate, and that men too can bear children

00:09:08.740 in the service of protecting your rights. And people thought that those were very, very,

00:09:15.980 very dangerous statements, so much so that one person argued that that kind of speech should be

00:09:22.240 regulated by the government. So if I am at a USC conference, speaking about the values of the

00:09:29.680 enlightenment, and a statement such as men cannot bear children can cause such a reaction,

00:09:36.940 we're down a pretty, pretty dark abyss. Well, that used to get you canceled on Twitter before Elon bought

00:09:43.020 it. And so I guess this has been going on for a while. A quick question for you. Were you getting

00:09:47.700 that from the students or from the faculty as well? And do you think it being in California,

00:09:52.140 where I was born, where you spend time as well, had a reason for that?

00:09:57.380 Of all of the hostile crowd that I faced in the Q&A, I think only one looked young enough to be a

00:10:05.780 student. And some, I actually recognize them. The first one that spoke is actually a very respected

00:10:11.740 psychologist who was so angered by me that his voice was quivering. I mean, you know, when someone is

00:10:19.060 incredibly angry and nervous, that they're having a hard time catching their breath, because that's how

00:10:25.040 triggered they were. So no, it may or may not surprise your audience that these weren't students who

00:10:33.340 were triggered by me. They were actual faculty members, if not research scientists.

00:10:38.840 Now, was it, sorry, to answer your question about California, I don't doubt that there is an element

00:10:46.200 of wokeness that is coming from the fact that USC is in California. But believe me, all of the

00:10:52.780 universities throughout these beautiful lands have fallen to these idea pathogens. So I could have

00:10:59.580 been anywhere else. I mean, I've, you know, I've given talks at University of Michigan, where, you know,

00:11:04.920 people were just as hostile. So I don't think it is something that is unique to California.

00:11:09.600 See, I don't think it's actually hit us over here in the UK yet, doctor. You know, we,

00:11:13.840 we, I see these things on Twitter and YouTube. And for me, it almost looks like I'm watching a

00:11:18.380 movie. It doesn't seem real. But I'm sure if I was in that classroom with you, I would be like,

00:11:23.500 it does it feel sometimes that this is almost a different species than you? It's almost like a 0.81

00:11:27.920 completely different type of, of animal that can get, I don't know, agitated or not listen to reason.

00:11:34.280 Because you seem like the kind of man that comes in and you're like, doesn't everyone see this is

00:11:39.020 logic? This is the scientific method. This is why we came so far in 500 years.

00:11:43.840 And it seems like you're almost speaking a different language to this new species.

00:11:48.720 You know, the incredulity that you're attributing to me is exactly how I feel. So despite the fact

00:11:56.000 that I've been navigating in this ecosystem for close to 30 years as a professor, despite the fact

00:12:01.180 that I've written the parasitic mind, hence, you would think that there is nothing that could surprise

00:12:05.180 me. As I walked out of the USC event, and my family, by the way, had joined me. So my children

00:12:12.720 and wife were in the audience. I have young children who were uniquely disturbed by the hostility that

00:12:20.680 they saw their father, you know, being exposed to. And so as we left, and we were walking around,

00:12:26.400 I said exactly what you said, without saying that there are different species. I said, you know,

00:12:30.960 I can't believe that I can trigger the type of hostility that I just, you know, was the recipient

00:12:39.720 of for saying things that should be so banal and obvious, right? I mean, you would think that we

00:12:47.340 have won that debate, you know, hundreds of years ago. We had, you know, we had the scientific

00:12:52.080 revolution. We had the renaissance. We had the values of the enlightenment. We were coasting along so

00:12:58.960 beautifully. And now to say things like, you know, men can't bear children is something that should be 1.00

00:13:04.200 regulated by the government. By the way, I'm really hopeful that USC, they've promised me that they

00:13:09.960 will be sending me the files of the day's event, which of course, when they do, if they do, I will be

00:13:16.920 posting. So hopefully, everybody could see the kind of lunacy. So yes, I am baffled by it. But I think

00:13:23.380 that exactly speaks to the key premise of the parasitic mind, which is, you know, we attribute,

00:13:29.540 you know, the faculty of reasons of reason to human beings. And yet, just like countless other

00:13:35.920 animals in the animal kingdom, we could be parasitized by brain worms. In this case, the brain

00:13:41.280 worm is not an actual physical brain worm. That's why I call them idea pathogens. But they end up doing

00:13:46.880 the exact same thing as other parasitic infestations that go to the brain, which is they completely

00:13:53.760 zombify you. They take supposedly intelligent people and make them behave in ways that are

00:13:59.520 truly baffling to the human spirit. Now, I wasn't there. And I'm curious, if I was to try to get into

00:14:05.040 their minds, what are they thinking? Like, what are the kind of things they say back to you? I'm sure it's

00:14:10.280 not one thing, but I'm sure it's probably about three different things. But what are the things that

00:14:14.580 are uttering from their minds? Is it cultures being oppressed, and we don't want to upset them,

00:14:18.540 we want to repair for them, we want to take away our privilege? And not what is coming from them?

00:14:23.920 Because obviously, they think they're right. So it's interesting to me to find out why they think

00:14:28.520 they're right. Yeah, that's, that's a beautiful question. I thank you for it. So there are several

00:14:33.120 elements. But if off the top of my head, one that doesn't capture the full phenomenon, but then we can

00:14:39.300 drill down further, is that they are driven by a sense of what I call faux empathy, right? And that,

00:14:46.580 and it perfectly speaks to the distinction between what I set up originally in our conversation between

00:14:53.280 deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics. If I, if I am a pursuer and defender of truth

00:15:01.160 in a deontological way, then I'm never encumbered by, as I said, the downstream effect of, oh, but you

00:15:10.000 know, if I say that men cannot bear children, that is a statement that is fully founded in truth. 1.00

00:15:18.000 Therefore, the fact that there might be 0.01% of people who suffer from gender dysphoria, who might

00:15:24.840 be hurt by that statement, is of no consequence to me, not because I'm a mean person, because my desire

00:15:32.640 to defend truth, and to navigate through reality, supersedes my desire to be full empathetic toward

00:15:40.660 you. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not a very empathetic person. I'm, I'm, I'm sensitive, and

00:15:46.240 sentimental to a fault, but, but my desire to defend truth supersedes that. So I think each of these idea

00:15:53.520 pathogens, which we can, I suspect, get into during our conversation, so postmodernism, cultural

00:15:59.640 relativism, social constructivism, they're all different variants of parasitic idea pathogens,

00:16:07.800 but they share one thing in common. They start off with a noble cause, which then in the service of

00:16:14.820 that noble cause, you're willing to murder and rape truth. And I argue, no, I can chew gum and walk at

00:16:21.360 the same time. I could be for individual rights. I could be for fighting for a world free of bigotry

00:16:27.080 without murdering true in that service. And so let me give you a concrete example. Equity feminism is a 1.00

00:16:33.660 great idea that most reasonable people can support, which is that men and women should be equal under the

00:16:39.500 law. There shouldn't be institutionalized barriers for either sex to, you know, to, to flourish. So

00:16:46.200 that's great. But then militant feminism, feminists took this idea and said, well, wait a second, no, 1.00

00:16:52.980 in the pursuit of eradicating quote, patriarchal sexist ways, we now need to promulgate the idea

00:17:01.040 that men and women are indistinguishable from each other. Men and women do not have any evolved 1.00

00:17:07.360 biological based sex differences, because by promulgating that utter nonsense position,

00:17:12.920 then it will better allow us to fight against the status, the sexist status quo. So you could see

00:17:18.880 again, how it's consequentialist in the pursuit of a otherwise noble goal. I'm willing to fudge the

00:17:25.180 truth in the pursuit of that goal. So to answer your question, and hopefully not too long winded away,

00:17:30.220 they're all coming from what originally seems like a noble place. Why are you marginalizing the noble

00:17:36.860 and peaceful religion of Islam with your facts, Dr. Saad? Why are you marginalizing? Why don't you

00:17:43.700 instead say that all religions have both good and bad people, and all religions could potentially lead

00:17:50.420 to terrorism? Well, in an incredibly banal way, that is potentially true. But you might imagine that

00:17:56.800 extremist Jains, people who practice Jainism, who walk around with a, with a sweeping, you know, 0.99

00:18:06.460 sweeping the floor in front of them, lest they might literally crush an ant, that's how committed

00:18:13.040 they are to never harming any biological organism. You might extreme that, you might imagine that

00:18:20.240 extremist Jains might be less likely to engage in terrorist acts than other religions. But according

00:18:27.620 to the noble people at USC, that would marginalize people. So shut your mouth and go la la la, I don't see

00:18:34.120 the truth. So I think that's the reason why they do what they do. Right. So I think you explained

00:18:37.900 that really well with the militant feminists. They believe in this concept so much that they're 1.00

00:18:42.780 willing to, to, to pace it above the truth. And coming from the scientific method or a science

00:18:48.580 system where I was kind of born as well, you're like, but if you throw the truth out, then we lose

00:18:52.960 everything. We lose our sanity. And you're like, so even though it might offend people, we always need

00:18:58.760 to honor the truth. First, we can still have all of our nobilities. We can have our causes. We can

00:19:04.100 have our empathies. But if it doesn't all come back to some facts, we need to look ourselves in the

00:19:08.300 mirror and say, well, what are we doing here, guys? Like we're just kidding ourselves.

00:19:12.400 Perfectly right. Exactly right. And that's, that's, that's what frustrates me so much because

00:19:16.300 the reality is I'm probably more sentimental and sensitive than all of these people. That's why I call it

00:19:23.440 faux empathy because when you drill down with a lot of these people, they really are, they're

00:19:28.860 authoritarian, but they protect themselves with the cloak of so-called progressivism, but nothing in

00:19:35.600 what they do is actually consistent with truly classical liberal values. And that's why I get so

00:19:41.920 frustrated. So to go back to your earlier question about, you know, do I think that they're aliens?

00:19:45.520 I look at them with the incredulity as though they are aliens, because how could, so the first

00:19:51.740 gentleman who, who spoke that I said is a very well-known psychologist. I mean, if you look

00:19:56.580 objectively at his scientific output, you'd say, I mean, obviously this person is not, you know, 1.00

00:20:02.960 a babbling idiot. I mean, he's a very accomplished psychologist. He used to be at University of 0.99

00:20:08.300 Michigan. Now he's at USC. He certainly has had a wonderful esteemed career, and yet he is fully

00:20:14.920 parasitized. He's a complete zombie. And so, and I think, again, that's the power of the metaphor of 0.98

00:20:21.620 using this neuroparasitological model, because what neuroparasites do is exactly hijack your

00:20:28.900 neuronal circuitry to the benefit of the parasite, right? And that's what these ideas do. They quietly

00:20:36.520 lead us to the abyss of infinite lunacy so that we say things like, of course, men can menstruate. 0.99

00:20:42.460 Of course, you can have six foot four biological males competing with five foot one biological women, 1.00

00:20:50.140 and there are no innate differences between these two. Men don't have any morphological, physiological,

00:20:57.180 anatomical, hormonal, behavioral differences from women. This is not me satirizing their positions.

00:21:04.240 These are their official positions. So when we've gotten that far, that far along the abyss,

00:21:10.280 Houston, we have a problem.

00:21:11.280 Doctor, can you tell me where this all or when all this happened and why all this happened? Because

00:21:18.120 I don't remember maybe this being an issue. Okay, I was at MIT. We didn't exactly talk about

00:21:22.380 social causes. We were in the lab, and they were just beating me until I could figure out my

00:21:27.000 differential equations. But I don't remember it in the early 90s. When did this come about? Why did it

00:21:32.840 come about? I have a guy that's been on my show who was a 77-year-old man who's got a castle in

00:21:38.380 Scotland. He's a high-performance coach, extremely, extremely politically incorrect. And he said

00:21:44.600 that political correctness is a manifestation of a lack of self-esteem. He's been saying that for 20

00:21:50.900 years. And maybe that's just one part of it. But where do you think this came from?

00:21:57.220 So again, fantastic question. Because if you wish to understand, I mean, in the exact same way that

00:22:03.460 we, you know, we tried to understand where the COVID virus originated. And in the pursuit of that

00:22:09.680 objective, people were feather and tarred as racist, because you can't even talk about the geographic

00:22:14.980 origin of an actual biological virus anymore, lest it might marginalize people. So to your point,

00:22:22.940 you know, where did these idea pathogens begin? Why did they begin? Well, of course,

00:22:27.200 I'm here to tell you that in a slight rephrasing of George Orwell's famous quip, it takes intellectuals 0.98

00:22:36.620 to come up with some of the uniquely dumbest ideas. And so all of these idea pathogens were spawned and 0.62

00:22:44.760 began their proliferation on university campuses. So that explains the origin. Now, when did they come

00:22:51.440 about, it depends on the specific idea pathogen. So cultural relativism, the idea that we, you know,

00:22:58.160 we can't really tell, you know, judge a culture unless we judge it in its own context. There are

00:23:05.120 no human universals. Each culture is a microcosm of its own reality. That started, you know, almost

00:23:13.340 180, 90 years ago by Franz Boas, a cultural anthropologist at Columbia, and then his students

00:23:19.860 promoted that. Now, that idea pathogen, and the reason why I call it idea pathogen is because it

00:23:25.740 is perfectly incorrect. All cultures are not equal. Cultures that cut off the clitorises of little 1.00

00:23:33.440 girls are not equal to cultures that don't do that. Cultures that throw off gays from rooftops are not 0.99

00:23:41.180 equal to cultures that don't. So the idea that all cultures are equal is insanely laughable. Okay, but 0.98

00:23:48.300 so let's talk about why that idea pathogen began. Well, in the social sciences, one defines their

00:23:57.200 identity based on their abdication of biology, right? So if you are a sociologist, or an economist, or

00:24:04.280 most psychologists, or an anthropologist, unless you're a biological anthropologist, you share your

00:24:11.500 common disdain for using biology to explain human behavior. So, and that's something that I have faced

00:24:17.940 from the start of my career when I tried to Darwinize the behavioral sciences in general, and the

00:24:24.360 business school in particular, right? So I came in in 1994 as a fresh young assistant professor, where I

00:24:31.020 was arguing, well, how could we study consumer behavior and economic decision making and employee

00:24:35.760 behavior and employer behavior without ever recognizing the biological and evolutionary mechanisms

00:24:41.280 that drive our behaviors? Surely, as consumers, we don't somehow exist in a plane outside the purview of

00:24:47.560 our biological heritage. And that was viewed as, this is insane. What kind of nonsense are you saying,

00:24:52.960 Professor Saad? So cultural relativism arose precisely because, again, it came from a, quote,

00:24:59.420 noble place, which is, there were all sorts of miscreants and cretins that had misused evolutionary 1.00

00:25:07.160 theory. Think about the British social Darwinists, who, it had nothing to do with Darwin, but they

00:25:13.360 usurped Darwinian theory to say, hey, there's a natural struggle between the classes. We're the

00:25:18.000 upper, we're the upper class. You're the lower class. Hey, that's just nature. So if you die out

00:25:23.500 in your polluted environments without any education, hey, that's just nature. Then the eugenicists come 1.00

00:25:28.580 along and say, hey, that's Darwinian. If we sterilize gay people so that they can't reproduce, 1.00

00:25:32.640 hey, that's just natural. That's Darwinian. The Nazis came along and said, hey, it's a natural struggle 1.00

00:25:37.140 between races. We're the Aryans. We win. Hey, that's just Darwinian. And so the cultural

00:25:41.800 anthropologist said, well, we need to find a way through consequentialist ethics to create new

00:25:48.340 edifices of reason bereft of biology, because then that could, you know, stop future scientists or

00:25:56.660 politicians or, you know, demagogues from misusing biology. So that would be a long-winded answer of how

00:26:04.060 that particular cultural, I mean, idea pathogens came to be. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is a

00:26:10.340 bit, you know, younger. So about 40, 50 years ago, a whole bunch of French imbeciles, Jacques Derrida, 0.99

00:26:18.400 Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and then others, developed the idea that, you know, there is no 0.95

00:26:24.480 objective truth. Language creates reality. That's called deconstructionism by Jacques Derrida. To speak

00:26:30.360 of a universal truth is insane, because we're always bound by our idiosyncrasies, by our personal

00:26:36.920 biases, by subjectivity. So there is no capital T truth. So that's why, by the way, I refer to

00:26:42.720 postmodernism as the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, because you can't wake up as a scientist

00:26:48.880 in the morning if you were a postmodernist, because scientists, while they recognize that all truths are

00:26:55.080 provisional, meaning that what was true 50 years ago may no longer be true today, science is

00:27:01.040 autocorrective, we do operate under the premise that there is a truth out there to be discovered.

00:27:06.280 Well, postmodernists say, no, no, no, there is no such thing. And so depending on the id pathogen,

00:27:12.880 the timing of it is slightly different. But I would say between 40 and 80 years ago is when most of them

00:27:19.880 happen. And then it takes a while for it to simmer. And then they all come together and slowly erode

00:27:26.360 our edifices of reason. And that's where we are, where we are today.

00:27:29.940 Has social media accelerated it because of the monkey see monkey do effect, or everyone can publish

00:27:36.280 ideas? Or has that accelerated it? And will it continue to accelerate it?

00:27:41.840 So social media in of itself can be used for good or bad. So in the same way that dreadful

00:27:49.840 ideas could spread, to your point, one could easily argue, but then why can't people who've

00:27:55.380 got the good ideas also use social media as a tool to spread better ideas? So I don't think it's

00:28:01.640 necessarily social media as an inherent system that spreads bad ideas. Now, what you could argue

00:28:07.940 is that there are inherently more, you know, blue haired Taliban activist types who use social media,

00:28:15.720 and therefore they end up being overrepresented on that medium, but it's not inherently the media.

00:28:22.200 Now, the other thing you could also argue is that to the extent until Elon Musk came along and bought

00:28:27.400 Twitter, to the extent that those social media companies are run by supremely woke people who

00:28:34.540 banish others who may not share their views, then to your point, you're exactly right.

00:28:39.940 But inherently, in principle, social media could be used for good or bad. I would have never

00:28:47.060 have built the platform that I have had it not been for all of the tools that are afforded to

00:28:53.320 me through social media, right? I mean, you know, who could have thought that when I first started my

00:28:57.900 YouTube channel, right? I mean, you would think I'm, you know, I'm a professor, I publish papers

00:29:01.940 in peer review journals, you get excited as an academic if your paper gets cited 100 times 10 years after

00:29:09.480 you publish it 100 times. Well, I can get on Joe Rogan's show, and there have been 20 million

00:29:15.980 downloads. How does that compare in terms of the speed and rapidity of the information? So again,

00:29:23.100 social media is not inherently nefarious. It's the people who control social media that we have to

00:29:28.760 worry about.

00:29:29.360 All right, well, then let's talk about that phenomenon. Probably the best way to do it is to

00:29:32.740 talk about the Twitter files, which were revealed after Elon decided to buy Twitter, which some people

00:29:39.220 said was not a company, he was actually buying a crime scene. And I've watched the Twitter files

00:29:43.900 come out. I kind of have a vested interest in that because we were censored pretty heavily

00:29:48.100 in April of 2020. And I can get into that later. But what do you see being revealed in the Twitter

00:29:54.660 files? Like you said, I think it's been proven that 97% of the staff members there all either voted or

00:30:02.320 donated to the Democratic Party. So I think there have been analytics of showing they were a certain way,

00:30:07.180 even though everyone kind of knew that. What do you see there, doctor?

00:30:10.920 Yeah, right. Well, actually, in the parasitic mind, there's a section where I break down the

00:30:15.720 political donations, you know, Democrat to Republican across not just Twitter, across all of the major,

00:30:22.140 you know, social media players. And it is simply astounding. I mean, it's just, you know,

00:30:26.300 it's not 70-30, right? It's 99.2 to 0.08. It's 97 to 3. It's at that level of bias. So you're exactly

00:30:37.040 right. Everybody already knew it. I think all that you're going to get through the analysis of the

00:30:42.060 Twitter files is that people are going to have new hard data to support what everybody already knew. So

00:30:47.900 it's certainly not a useless exercise to go through it. But I doubt that you will see anything that most

00:30:54.380 sane people could not have already told you, I told you so. I already knew that. Because, I mean, I saw it just,

00:31:00.600 you know, I mean, luckily, I was never banned from Twitter. But I very much noticed that my voice seemed to

00:31:07.620 never get amplified. I mean, I, you know, I was completely stagnant for a very, very long time. Then Elon Musk

00:31:14.300 came along. And suddenly, the explosion of subscribers I had, I mean, literally, from one day to the next was just

00:31:22.060 breathtaking. So I don't think we needed the Twitter files to know what was happening. But it certainly

00:31:28.200 helps in terms of building a case of how dangerous it could be to have these companies who control all

00:31:34.160 of our informational flow being lopsided. Have you gone deep on the Twitter files and looked into some

00:31:39.560 of the things surrounding the FBI and the CIA or some of the other repressions or shadow banning? Have

00:31:45.560 you gone into that? I haven't. And that the most that I've done is when they would release,

00:31:50.860 you know, whichever journalist was handling a particular, you know, instantiation of the

00:31:56.000 Twitter files, when they would release their like a long thread, right, that's a 30 piece

00:32:01.760 or 30 tweet thread, I would just read those, but I haven't gone into a, you know, a deep dive into the

00:32:08.860 files. Are you asking because you haven't, there's something that you'd like to discuss?

00:32:13.280 Yeah, well, so I've kept an eye on it. I'll just tell you quickly our story. And I want to get your

00:32:16.840 thoughts and maybe what happened with us. So doctor, I started this show in 2011. I was inspired

00:32:21.880 by Joe Rogan. I was an early fan of the UFC and Brazilian jujitsu. So I was walking, watching his

00:32:27.380 show even 13, 14 years ago when it was just on Vimeo, wasn't even on YouTube. So I was a fan and

00:32:33.660 I got jaded with the banking industry and I just decided I was going to start my own version. And we

00:32:39.340 were having long form conversations, unedited, unscripted. And I did this for nine years, got up to

00:32:45.800 2 million subscribers on YouTube, half a billion views, published about 10,000 videos on the YouTube

00:32:51.100 platform. I was a partner. I'd gone down to the headquarters, obviously getting paid ad revenue.

00:32:56.780 And on April 6th of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I had a guest on my show that was asking

00:33:03.220 questions about masks, about PCR tests, about if we were doing the right things. It was the second

00:33:09.800 largest YouTube live stream in the world that day. 65,000 concurrent viewers. The largest was

00:33:16.420 President Trump's coronavirus briefing at the White House that night. So he just beat us out

00:33:21.160 just by about 20,000 live viewers. And based on a previous episode I'd have with this guest that

00:33:27.680 had been watched about 10 million times, the live stream was 4X. So we extrapolated this would have

00:33:33.340 been watched 40 million times this video podcast. Wow. Which at the time would have been the most

00:33:38.800 watched podcast in history because Elon smoking weed on Rogan was about 25, 30 million. So this

00:33:46.200 thing was going to go to Pluto. And it was an amazing conversation. Again, it's me and a 67-year-old man

00:33:52.260 having a calm conversation like this. We didn't incite violence. We didn't incite political overthrow.

00:33:57.020 We were asking questions when, funny enough, nobody else was. 30 minutes later, doctor,

00:34:02.620 YouTube deleted and banned that video. And it was the first time that ever happened to me in nine

00:34:07.340 years. I thought the weirdos got censored, you know, not me. And it started off this massive fight

00:34:14.320 I had with YouTube and all the other technology platforms about what I could publish. And I was

00:34:20.380 right on the cutting edge of it. And we're about to make a, we're about to release a documentary film

00:34:24.880 about everything that happened. But just to finish the story, I ended up getting two strikes,

00:34:30.740 almost had my entire channel deleted and disappeared, which by the way, was also nine

00:34:36.360 years of my life. It was my digital identity that was being taken away. I got removed from Dropbox,

00:34:43.100 which is interesting because I didn't know they would watch my content, but they took my account out.

00:34:47.160 PayPal suspended my account with over $100,000 in there. Obviously, shadow banned by Instagram,

00:34:53.120 Facebook, LinkedIn dropped me. Like I said, a bunch of other things systematically blocked me.

00:34:58.900 And when I said, who's looking out for my right for freedom of speech? And I looked at the

00:35:02.620 governments, they all pointed the finger. And I know you talk about this in your book. And they

00:35:06.700 said, no, no, no, that's a private company. And you tick the box on their private policy.

00:35:11.480 So you got to go talk to them. And I was like, well, when you lock us in our houses, this feels like

00:35:16.620 a public utility. And there was actually some precedent here in the UK when a company acts as a public

00:35:21.480 utility. It might have to follow the law of the land. But when I finally looked at the Twitter

00:35:25.700 files and I saw that the FBI and the CIA were going into Twitter and suppressing the right to

00:35:32.580 free speech, I thought, wow, here I am asking my government to protect me. They point the finger

00:35:37.740 at the private sector. And then meanwhile, they go in the back door and violate my rights by telling

00:35:42.500 the private sector what to do. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I leave that to my guests,

00:35:47.120 but it also possibly makes sense. And I'm waiting for the YouTube files for a reason why I might

00:35:53.180 have been systematically de-platformed across a lot of different technology companies at once,

00:35:59.280 if it was something like an FBI, CIA, Senate subcommittee. So that's what happened to me.

00:36:04.340 Final point, we ended up creating our own platform and we pulled off on May 3rd of 2020,

00:36:10.840 the largest live stream of a human conversation on our own platform. And I'll be honest,

00:36:15.520 it was kind of a big fuck you to the tech platforms to show them that we could do it ourself. 0.96

00:36:20.140 And so that's how it kind of ended, didn't really end. So that's what happened to me. What are your 0.95

00:36:25.560 thoughts on that, doctor? Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I'm really sorry it happened to

00:36:29.800 you, but I wish I could say I'm surprised. But to me, it's like you just describe every Tuesday of

00:36:36.480 anyone who says anything that those are overlords don't agree with. Now, again, I've never been kicked

00:36:42.660 off in the way you were and the strikes and so on. But first of all, let me just say this.

00:36:47.680 The story that you just said, had you told that story at USC when I was there, I can assure you

00:36:55.060 that you wouldn't have had one empathetic or sympathetic ear. To the contrary, they would be,

00:37:00.920 well, they should have gotten rid of you even earlier. It's amazing that they let you stay there.

00:37:06.120 And again, they would have said so precisely using a consequentialist ethic, which is it doesn't

00:37:13.080 matter whether what you and that gentleman were discussing could potentially be true. As far as

00:37:19.340 their concern, it was too dangerous given public policy measures for you to be holding such

00:37:25.200 conversations. So, I mean, the Nazis use the consequentialist ethic for why they need to get 0.84

00:37:30.500 rid of, you know, those vermin Jews, right? So, the idea of using consequentialism to support your 1.00

00:37:36.480 otherwise, quote, noble cause is an indelible part of the human spirit. So, it doesn't surprise me.

00:37:42.860 Now, in my case, speaking, I think the gentleman you were talking to was about COVID, correct?

00:37:47.900 Correct.

00:37:49.420 So, let me tell you, and I mentioned this, by the way, at USC. So, and I don't know if this was the

00:37:55.480 gentleman that you talked to, but do you know who Matt Ridley is? I just had him on my show,

00:38:01.480 actually, about three, four weeks ago. Okay. Well, so Matt and I know each other well. He's been on my

00:38:07.320 show, I think, twice. He actually provided a blurb for the parasitic mind. Just a lovely chap, 0.98

00:38:17.540 trained in evolutionary biology, and so on and so forth. House of Lords. So, certainly not a quack guy.

00:38:23.600 His team reached out to me when his last book came out, where he, you know, he was discussing

00:38:31.180 the possibility that it's, you know, the lab leak theory and so on. And at the time, and I said,

00:38:38.780 I'm ashamed that I'm admitting this, and I said this at USC. At the time that they reached out to me,

00:38:44.980 I told his folks, I can't remember who it was, the publicist or the publisher or whatever. I said,

00:38:50.480 look, I'm perfect. I mean, you know, I'm the ultimate honey badger, right? I mean, I get a

00:38:55.240 million death threats from people that are a lot scarier than, you know, the mask orgy folks. But 0.95

00:39:01.460 let's be pragmatic. If we hold the chat, here's what's going to happen. It's going to be removed

00:39:09.800 14 seconds after we post it. And in the worst case, in the best case scenario, I get a strike

00:39:16.560 against my channel. In the worst case scenario, I'm taken off. And just like you, you had spent,

00:39:22.560 you said nine years. I started in 2014. I'm going to lose all the years of effort that I've built to

00:39:29.840 build this inventory of content. And so I said, look, it seems like reckless martyrdom to just do

00:39:37.540 it. So it's, again, it's not that I'm, I'm afraid to hold difficult conversations because I've,

00:39:42.500 I've, I've taken positions that are astoundingly more quote dangerous than discussing the lab leak

00:39:48.320 theory, but pragmatically, I know it's not going to lead us anywhere. Now that you can't imagine how

00:39:54.000 much that kept me up at night because what was happening is in my pragmatic understanding of how

00:40:00.520 the overlords control us, I was acquiescing to the fact, you know what, let's not have the chat.

00:40:06.820 It's not going to lead anywhere. And I felt dirty. I felt disgusted. I felt cowardly,

00:40:12.160 even though I was being too harsh on myself, because as Aristotle explained to us, you know,

00:40:17.720 being a cowardly soldier is bad, but being a reckless martyr of a soldier is also bad.

00:40:24.620 There is the golden mean. And so I was kind of beating myself because I, I was saying, well, 0.55

00:40:30.340 why am I being pragmatic in my calculation? But the reality is I know what would have happened.

00:40:36.100 The exact same thing that happened to you. Now, is this the kind of world we want to live in

00:40:40.200 where someone like me or someone like you, the size, you know, should I even have this

00:40:45.280 conversation? By the way, that's, that's the biggest danger is, and I discussed this in the

00:40:49.160 parasitic mind. It's the calculus of self-censorship. That's the most dangerous part. It's not the fact

00:40:55.260 that there's going to be a six foot four guys knocking at my door. It's the fact that in the

00:41:00.900 internal privacy of my mind, I am calculating as a student, should I say something in class or will

00:41:08.520 I be penalized? Should I host Matt Ridley or will my YouTube channel? That's how freedom dies bit by

00:41:16.940 bit. And so I'm truly sorry for what you went through, but I'm glad that you've come back bigger

00:41:21.380 and stronger than ever before. Yeah, I'm thankful for it now, but it was a real defining moment in

00:41:26.040 my life. And I think, I don't know if it was my upbringing in the States, but my initial reaction

00:41:30.680 was one of anger when that happened. And so we just fought back and just decided to push it. But

00:41:37.340 the self-censorship is the most dangerous thing because you start doing at a subconscious level

00:41:41.960 and it's that parasite which you were saying, and that might be about your wife in the jeans

00:41:46.940 or anything else around you. And pretty soon subconsciously you're self-censoring and just 0.85

00:41:52.000 numbing yourself. And then now you really are a zombie and you walk around and you can't say what

00:41:56.920 you think, which ultimately harms humanity. It harms our truth. It harms our progress. It harms

00:42:02.480 everything. And to watch it happen on a social media channel is fascinating because first they take away

00:42:08.560 your shares and your virality. Then when you're still a bad boy, then they demonetize you. Then when

00:42:15.140 you're still a bad boy, they give you a strike. And then when you really don't want to listen,

00:42:18.280 they take you off the platform. And these little things start to just really make you smaller and

00:42:25.200 smaller and smaller. And it works. Can I, can I give you a few examples that I've had? So

00:42:30.700 on LinkedIn, I've had countless posts removed for insane reasons. So for example, if I criticize

00:42:39.560 some policy of, you know, by Joe, Joe Biden's administration, I will receive a thing, this

00:42:48.300 tweet, this post has been removed because it is considered, you know, harassed, you know,

00:42:53.820 unprofessional and harassment and bullying. So in a free society, nevermind that I'm a professor who

00:42:59.760 weighs in on these issues. If I'm just a, if I'm a trucker, anybody, I cannot directly criticize a

00:43:07.280 policy by the president of the United States, because that's considered harassment and bullying

00:43:12.600 to whom, to the, to Joe Biden. Right. So, so I've had countless of those on LinkedIn. On Facebook,

00:43:19.480 I've had several strikes that where they say, you know, you're about to lose your Facebook page

00:43:26.380 forever, because I will take a screenshot of a death threat that I received. For those of you who

00:43:35.400 don't know, who are listening to me for the first time, we are Lebanese Jews. I'm Jewish from Lebanon,

00:43:41.060 from the Middle East. So I received many death threats of the, this is how we're going to boil

00:43:46.600 you Jew. This is how we're going to put you in the oven Jew. We like you. So you'll be the last 1.00

00:43:51.320 to go in the oven and all kinds of stuff. So I will take a screenshot of it, especially when the person

00:43:57.080 is stupid enough to identify who they are or their email, and I will advertise it. I will get 0.99

00:44:03.640 banned for spreading hate. So then I try to, to write to Facebook. I say, I'm just describing

00:44:12.020 the death threat that I'm receiving. Now, if you want to be charitable, you might say, oh, but that's

00:44:17.700 just an algorithmic glitch, or that's just, you know, the, the, the person who is reviewing the

00:44:23.180 things that is not paying attention. But again, do we want to live in a world where there's this kind

00:44:27.880 of overlord oversight over our every syllable? I venture not.

00:44:33.260 No, we don't. And yeah, sorry for the fact that you get those death threats. They're not nice.

00:44:38.380 I ended up running for mayor of London afterwards, and I got them too, which isn't a nice thing. But

00:44:43.640 when, when they start threatening your family members, that's really not nice. And then when

00:44:48.160 the police tell you there's not much they can do, it's not a nice thing to do. But I guess it's just

00:44:52.940 par for the course, if you want to try to get those messages out there. Doctor, you have something

00:44:57.580 in the book where you say. To continue watching the rest of the episode for free, visit our website

00:45:03.400 londonreal.tv or click the link in the description below.

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The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - June 10, 2024

The War on Reason - How Bad Ideas Hijack Our Thinking (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_682)

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