The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Why Empathy Can Become Dangerous (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_925)

00:00:00.000 Okay, guys, special guest for you all today, Dr. Gad Saad, scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi, also author of many books, including Parasitic Mind and his forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy. Thanks for your time today, doctor.

00:00:16.380 Great to be with you. Thank you.

00:00:18.240 Did the book come out yet, the new release?

00:00:20.220 No, it hasn't come out yet. We're aiming, hopefully, with the publisher for a release in April. Only a single person has read it so far. And the response was, this book, as promised, is terrific. So I'm feeling it.

00:00:36.840 What was the inspiration for making this book? What compelled you to write it?

00:00:39.660 So, let me step back a bit and sort of give people a 30,000 feet overview. I've been a professor now for 32 years, and my main area of scientific research is to apply evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology to study human behavior. And I do so within the business school.

00:01:02.740 So I study consumer psychology, economic psychology, and so on. And I was amazed very early in my career to see how people could be completely resistant to what seems to me completely obvious and banal truths, which is that human beings are shaped by biological forces.

00:01:20.220 For most of my social science colleagues, what makes us human is that we transcend our biology. Biology matters for your dog. Biology matters for the giraffe. It matters for the mosquito.

00:01:29.960 But surely, but surely it can't apply to human beings. And so that was my original idea of saying, you know what, even very intelligent people that have professor before their name could be complete morons. 0.99

00:01:41.080 And so that led me to write The Parasitic Mind, which came out, this book right here, the other one. It came out about five and a half years ago now. Almost, it was in 2020 it came out. 0.95

00:01:52.440 So that book looks at what happens to your brain when it is hijacked by ideological capture. The next book, Suicidal Empathy, looks at what happens to your emotional system when it is hijacked.

00:02:06.380 So if I can hijack and parasitize both your thinking ability and your emotional ability, then I have you completely zombified. And so that's the full story.

00:02:16.160 Interesting. And do you feel like a lot of people right now have their emotional system hijacked?

00:02:21.420 Yes. And most of them, regrettably, come from largely one side of the political aisle. And that's not because I'm trying to make a political statement. That's just the sheer reality.

00:02:33.100 Most of the, well, all of the parasitic ideas that I talk about in The Parasitic Mind, postmodernism, cultural relativism, radical feminism, identity politics, they all were spawned on university campuses by leftist professors because the academia is overwhelmingly dominated by leftist professors.

00:02:54.480 Then these dreadful ideas, then these dreadful ideas eventually seep their way into culture, into Hollywood, into journalism, into, you know, everything, into business, into politics.

00:03:06.160 And so what ended up happening is in the pursuit of these parasitic ideas, people's empathy began to misfire, right?

00:03:16.380 So it's not nice to, you know, give a felon who's only been convicted 83 previous times, not to give him another chance.

00:03:26.760 By other chance, it means the 84th time.

00:03:28.940 It's really not nice, and it's mean to stop homeless people who are defecating, fornicating, and shooting up acid where your children play, to round them up and move them elsewhere. 0.54

00:03:42.700 That lacks empathy.

00:03:44.600 It lacks empathy when you don't allow every single person from around the world to just come through the borders.

00:03:51.500 And if we are truly empathetic, then we should be giving them free health care.

00:03:56.640 And who cares about American vets who've lost their limbs, if not their lives, in defending the West?

00:04:02.800 And so what happens with suicidal empathy is that it takes a noble virtue.

00:04:07.940 It's perfectly fine to be an empathetic person, right?

00:04:10.940 This is not an attack on empathy.

00:04:13.260 But it's, as we know from Aristotle 2,000 years ago, all good things in moderation.

00:04:18.920 It has to happen to the right people in the right situation in the right amounts.

00:04:23.600 Suicidal empathy is the dysregulated application of an otherwise noble virtue like empathy.

00:04:31.760 That makes sense.

00:04:32.520 Do you see the pendulum swing when it comes to college campuses?

00:04:36.360 Do you see it ever going more center or more towards the right?

00:04:39.280 I mean, from your lips to God's ear, I mean, I'd like to think there is some auto-correction taking place.

00:04:45.660 So, for example, when Donald Trump came to power, by the way, just for your listeners who may not know who I am, I'm Canadian.

00:04:52.900 So it's not as though I voted in the American election.

00:04:56.120 So if I say something that is positive of Donald Trump, it's not because I have posters of Donald Trump in my bed.

00:05:03.080 I don't have a dog in this fight other than the pursuit of reason, logic, and common sense.

00:05:10.180 So when Donald Trump came along with just one stroke of an executive order, he can immediately reverse all of the insanity regarding Title IX. 0.79

00:05:20.820 You know, when six foot three, you know, women with nine inch penises, yesterday they were called Bubba, but today they're called Linda. 1.00

00:05:29.800 And therefore, when they transitioned to becoming Linda, they absolutely, the science is settled, have become a girl. 0.79

00:05:36.840 And therefore, we have to be empathetic to the trans community and allow them to destroy the dreams of every biological female athlete in the world. 1.00

00:05:45.660 Well, he came along and said, OK, no more of this nonsense.

00:05:48.740 So that's nice.

00:05:49.700 That's good, because there is a return to some form of normalcy.

00:05:53.400 But the parasitic ideas and the suicidal empathy that originally began festering on university campuses took 50 to 100 years to take a real foothold within the culture.

00:06:08.040 So it's not because Donald Trump comes along or because there is some sort of auto correction in the university campuses that suddenly we're going to eradicate these bad ideas.

00:06:17.540 It'll take many generations of assiduous fighting, but God willing, we'll get rid of this stuff.

00:06:23.400 Yeah, I wonder if they'll ever all be fully eradicated because there'll always be bad ideas, parasitic ideas, and social media is amplifying these.

00:06:31.580 So at what point does it become accountability, right?

00:06:35.300 Indeed.

00:06:35.900 But I mean, one of the reasons why I love to do shows like I'm doing today with you is because you typically have a lot more of the left that, you know, are the loud, boisterous folks.

00:06:49.580 And certainly if they're professors, right, most professors would never be caught dead saying something positive about Republicans because Republicans are indistinguishable from Hitler.

00:07:00.500 Literally, they're Hitler, right? 0.89

00:07:02.140 And so I'd like to think that what I contribute, I mean, I'd like to think I contribute many things to the public discourse.

00:07:08.800 But one of the things that I do is that it emboldens people who might be saying, but all of my professors are, you know, leftist folks.

00:07:18.920 Well, not everybody.

00:07:20.560 There are good ideas on the left.

00:07:22.260 There are good ideas on the right.

00:07:23.740 If you're a student, you would certainly be enriched in hearing from the full panoply of ideas.

00:07:28.580 And so that's my way of coming on social media and hopefully correcting some of the lopsidedness.

00:07:34.500 Yeah, I feel like being from Canada actually gives you an advantage because you could be pretty objective, right?

00:07:38.880 Right.

00:07:39.460 Well, although I sometimes look at you with great envy because in the U.S., at least, you have several mechanisms that allow you to have an easier auto correction.

00:07:52.080 In Canada, when Justin Trudeau first came to power, I mean, I had been warning about Justin Trudeau for years and nobody would listen to me.

00:08:00.480 Then he came along and he was a disaster.

00:08:04.320 And then Canadians said, here's a great idea.

00:08:06.000 Why don't we reelect him again the second time?

00:08:08.780 He was a disaster.

00:08:09.880 Then they said, well, here's a great idea.

00:08:11.460 Why don't we elect him a third time?

00:08:13.220 He was a disaster.

00:08:14.240 So then they said, well, why don't we elect another guy who doesn't look quite as sexy as Justin Trudeau, but is just as nefarious in his progressive parasitic stuff called Mark Carney.

00:08:24.860 And hopefully things will work out.

00:08:26.580 Whereas in the United States, just because of the way the system is set up, you can implement auto corrections much more quickly, as you see with Trump.

00:08:34.520 Right.

00:08:34.660 We got the midterms coming up, right?

00:08:36.580 Indeed, you do.

00:08:37.560 How do you feel about him?

00:08:39.000 It looks like the right's going to lose, to be honest.

00:08:40.660 And I'm slightly to the right.

00:08:42.400 I'd label myself, but it's not looking good, right?

00:08:45.380 Yeah.

00:08:45.720 Well, I mean, you often have this sort of incumbent, you know, there's a blowback against the incumbent party, especially when they now control everything.

00:08:55.160 What do you think?

00:08:55.680 I mean, it shouldn't be me who's interviewing you, but I'd like to.

00:08:59.400 No, it's just.

00:09:00.620 Mangdani.

00:09:01.800 Oh, God.

00:09:02.640 Yeah, I just did podcasts in New York and I was getting people's opinion on him out there, but it looks like he's going to win.

00:09:08.040 So we'll see what happens.

00:09:09.720 Yeah, it's a great idea when New York City has been the center of capitalism, the center of, one can argue, liberty, the center of Jewish life outside of Israel, to then elect an Islamist, avowed communist, 24 years after 9-11, probably nothing could go wrong. 0.87

00:09:32.540 Good luck, sir.

00:09:33.420 He had a good run.

00:09:34.620 Yeah.

00:09:35.080 I mean, hate him or love him, his marketing is definitely effective, right?

00:09:38.420 Yes, yes.

00:09:39.580 He has such a beautiful smile.

00:09:42.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:09:43.160 It's captivating.

00:09:44.080 How did you think he did on the debates?

00:09:45.520 Did you watch the debates?

00:09:46.360 I did it.

00:09:46.940 I tried.

00:09:47.680 I need to control my blood pressure. 1.00

00:09:49.900 And so seeing the degenerate, you know, spewing his bullshit is not really good for my health. 1.00

00:09:55.580 Yeah. 1.00

00:09:56.400 Well, I love your stuff, man.

00:09:57.840 I saw your podcast with Charlie Kirk, actually, where you talked about Islam.

00:10:01.260 Is it compatible with the West?

00:10:02.860 And that was a very good episode.

00:10:03.960 Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

00:10:05.540 And actually, that was probably, I'm guessing about maybe a month, a bit more than a month before the tragedy.

00:10:11.960 So, yeah.

00:10:12.340 Yeah, it was one of his last episodes, I believe.

00:10:15.120 Yeah.

00:10:15.520 Crazy what happened there.

00:10:16.940 But just to reiterate your stance, you don't think it's compatible, right? 0.99

00:10:20.720 No, so look, I hate to do this preface, but for all the lobotomized idiots, I need to. 1.00

00:10:30.700 Individual Muslims come in all forms, just like individual Jews, Christians, Seventh-day Adventists, Buddhists, and Hindus, right? 0.99

00:10:38.740 This is not an attack on individuals.

00:10:41.720 Islam is a set of codified ideas. 0.96

00:10:45.220 You can find them in three sources.

00:10:48.180 It's called the Quran.

00:10:49.540 It's called the Hadith, the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. 0.70

00:10:53.880 And it's in the Seerah, which is the biography of Muhammad.

00:10:57.040 So, we can go to those primary sources and see what is stated as the fundamental principles of Islam.

00:11:05.000 And if that's your question, then the foundational principles of Islam could not be any more incongruent with the foundational principles of Western societies. 0.98

00:11:17.520 Yeah.

00:11:17.980 And what do you think about the Christian nationalism movement that I guess people associate Charlie Kirk with, how there's a rising, growing Christian movement in America?

00:11:26.260 Yeah, I don't stay up at night worrying that, you know, Christian nationalists are going to eradicate the rights of all other people.

00:11:35.740 Look, they are good and bad in every people.

00:11:37.860 They are orthodox Jews.

00:11:39.820 I mean, not that they are violent, but they hold positions that I know, as an evolutionist, are perfectly inconsistent with scientific knowledge, right?

00:11:49.420 So, the capacity for religious dogma to spew nonsense exists across all religions.

00:11:56.760 But the United States is founded on certain Judeo-Christian principles, and its founding fathers were called Christians.

00:12:07.120 And therefore, I don't stay up at night worrying that there'll be an uprising of Southern Baptists or Seventh-day Adventists who are going to kill the rest of us.

00:12:17.740 Because Islam, though, we have 1,400 years of history that tells us very clearly what happens in a society if Islam becomes majority. 0.96

00:12:27.880 You don't need to guess.

00:12:28.960 You don't have to question.

00:12:30.380 You don't have to, you know, put on your optimistic hat.

00:12:34.560 We have tons of data.

00:12:36.320 So, for example, currently, there are 56 countries that are part of the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

00:12:45.260 Each of those countries, once upon a time, had 0% Islam.

00:12:50.960 Zero.

00:12:51.540 None.

00:12:52.240 And then one day, you close your eyes and you open your eyes, and they become 100% Islamic. 0.99

00:12:58.860 How does that happen?

00:13:00.160 Is it by magic?

00:13:01.300 Is it by Socratic dialogue?

00:13:03.080 Is it by spreading sweets to everybody?

00:13:05.460 Or could it be something that might be nefarious in how Islam is spread?

00:13:10.440 And so, Islam is incompatible for several reasons.

00:13:14.260 I'll give you just one example, but I keep you here for the next six hours.

00:13:19.160 In American jurisprudence, Lady Justice has a blindfold on her. 1.00

00:13:26.380 She's supposed to be blind. 0.99

00:13:28.100 Blind to what?

00:13:29.260 Blind to the identity of the perpetrator and the victim, right?

00:13:34.800 I don't give you a higher penalty if the perpetrator is white and the victim is black or vice versa. 0.74

00:13:41.920 At least in spirit, it's supposed to be that.

00:13:45.140 In Islam, under Sharia law, it is literally codified in Sharia law that depending on the identity of the perpetrator and the victim, the punishment is completely different.

00:13:58.300 So, if, for example, a Jewish man kills a Muslim man, that is a very different penalty than it's the other way around. 0.64

00:14:05.760 And so, just that tells you whether it's compatible with American jurisprudence.

00:14:10.620 I didn't know that.

00:14:11.500 Is the majority of Islam in the West, are they on the left or the right? 0.59

00:14:14.280 Have there been any studies on that?

00:14:15.500 So, I can't tell you empirically what it is, but to your point, paradoxically, and you raise a good point, oftentimes, you know, when you say sometimes these shifting alliances make for strange bedfellows.

00:14:28.560 So, for example, when it comes to trans issues and when it comes to, you know, twerking drag queens teaching your five-year-old children how to read, because we all know that children best learn how to read if you have twerking drag queens teaching you bring happy hour, right? 0.92

00:14:49.400 And so, there what you'll see is you'll see a cacophony of Jewish conservatives, Christian conservatives, and Muslim conservatives standing in unison against their children being taught all this nonsense.

00:15:03.480 So, depending on the issue, you have shifting alliances.

00:15:07.260 Yeah.

00:15:08.140 Which ideology has done the most damage to the West, in your opinion?

00:15:12.580 Throughout all of history?

00:15:14.300 I would say recently.

00:15:15.800 Like, right now, I know that anti-Semitism's pretty prevalent.

00:15:19.140 But what do you think right now is doing the most damage?

00:15:21.800 Well, I mean, certainly, I think the parasitic ideas that I talk about in the parasitic mind are the ones that have caused the most trouble.

00:15:31.440 And maybe, just because it might sound too abstract to just say parasitic idea, let me give you a specific exemplar of that.

00:15:39.140 So, post-modernism is a philosophical movement that started about maybe 50 years ago with a bunch of French bullshitters. 1.00

00:15:49.140 Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault are some of the fathers of post-modernism.

00:15:56.080 And what the framework purports is that there are no objective truths.

00:16:01.240 You're always shackled by your biases.

00:16:04.640 You're always shackled by the idiosyncrasies of the moment.

00:16:07.960 You're always shackled by your relativistic biases.

00:16:11.040 So, there is no objective truth to speak of.

00:16:13.940 Now, you could see how, if you start with that framework, then there is no objective truth that men are physically stronger than women, innately.

00:16:22.980 There is no objective truth that my chromosomes and my genitalia determine my sex, hence transgenderism.

00:16:29.920 And so, I think there is a set of these parasitic ideas that have been so detrimental to the edifices of reason in the West that if I had to pick in the current moment the ones that have caused the most harm, I would say the cocktail of parasitic ideas with suicidal empathy will bring down the West.

00:16:52.080 And what do you think the breeding ground is for these parasitic ideas?

00:16:55.180 Do you think it's the college campuses?

00:16:56.400 Do you think it's the news outlets?

00:16:57.760 Where do you think it starts?

00:16:58.500 It's 100% the university campuses. 1.00

00:17:02.100 Every single dreadful, moronic, imbecilic idea was spawned on university campuses because, as I hate to remind people, it uniquely takes professors to come up with the truly dumbest ideas. 1.00

00:17:16.820 Now, why is that? 1.00

00:17:18.400 Is that because I think academia is nonsense?

00:17:20.820 Of course not, right?

00:17:21.740 I've spent my entire life in academia.

00:17:24.520 I'm an academic through and through.

00:17:26.160 It's in my DNA.

00:17:26.920 But here's the problem, Sean.

00:17:30.000 When academics sit on top of the ivory tower and with a progressive lisp and a highfalutin affectation, they can espouse all kinds of things while 20-year-olds sit like this and go,

00:17:46.340 oh, professor, this is so brilliant, fully decoupled from reality, right? 1.00

00:17:51.260 There is no autocorrective mechanism that slaps them in the face and says, what are you sprouting, moron, right? 0.98

00:17:58.240 And so what that does then is it allows for the big mean pathogenic virus, mind virus, to then spread because there is no doorstop to challenge it, right? 0.99

00:18:10.100 The 21-year-old is not going to tell their professor, what are you talking about, professor, that men can menstruate? 1.00

00:18:16.300 What kind of idiocy is it to say something as ridiculous as this? 0.98

00:18:20.720 Until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people that had lived on Earth, that's a real number, a real estimate, they seem to perfectly know how to navigate through the very difficult conundrum of identifying what is male or female. 0.99

00:18:36.720 But 15 minutes ago, when we took women's studies courses at Oberlin College, we stopped knowing what male or female was.

00:18:45.020 And so that's the problem.

00:18:46.920 You have university professors completely devoid of any link to reality, spouting nonsense.

00:18:55.080 Now, here's the interesting point.

00:18:58.180 Across disciplines, you see a greater likelihood of parasitic ideas or a lesser likelihood.

00:19:05.220 So, for example, I'm housed in the business school.

00:19:09.080 There is a lot less parasitic ideas.

00:19:11.840 If you're in an engineering school, there is a lot less parasitic ideas.

00:19:16.020 Why?

00:19:16.660 Because those disciplines are wedded to this thing called reality.

00:19:21.660 You can't build bridges using postmodernist physics.

00:19:26.460 The bridge collapses.

00:19:27.440 You can't develop an economic model to predict consumer choice using postmodernist feminist mathematics. 1.00

00:19:35.500 Then you won't predict anything. 0.96

00:19:37.400 So because those disciplines are applied disciplines rooted in reality, they are, in a sense, they have a built-in inoculation against this kind of imbecility.

00:19:48.260 But if I'm in sociology and ethnic studies and Africana studies and lesbian dance therapy studies, then there is no link to those things.

00:19:59.320 And therefore, the lunacy can flourish unencumbered by reality.

00:20:04.400 And do you think this is American universities, Western universities worldwide?

00:20:07.980 Do you think this is a worldwide issue?

00:20:09.480 Oh, it's a worldwide issue.

00:20:11.040 It's everywhere.

00:20:11.600 I mean, Canada, by the way, Canada, well, let me correct myself.

00:20:17.240 It's a worldwide Western issue.

00:20:20.960 So, for example, if I'm at an Ethiopian university, I don't have the luxury to espouse the position that men, too, can menstruate.

00:20:32.220 Because as Rob Henderson calls them, luxury beliefs, right, I don't have the luxury to espouse parasitic nonsense when I'm worried whether, by the end of the day, my children are going to have their caloric needs met.

00:20:47.060 But when I live in a society of plenty, it becomes a form of intellectual orgiastic nonsense, right, where I can demonstrate the amount of leisure I have by espousing things that are perfectly decoupled from reality.

00:21:00.940 It's interesting, right, how the most affluent nations struggle with more mental issues.

00:21:06.720 Indeed, indeed.

00:21:08.280 The human, humans will always find something to annoy them or piss them off, seems like, huh? 1.00

00:21:13.660 But to your earlier point when you said, oh, I don't know exactly what you had asked, but like, oh, there's always the capacity to have parasitic ideas or something to that.

00:21:22.460 Your point is well taken because it's not as though the current reality, previous generations of human beings were not parasitized.

00:21:35.100 What's unique about the current moment are the specific parasitic ideas that have infected our brains today.

00:21:42.360 So 300 years ago in Salem, Massachusetts, I looked at my female neighbor.

00:21:48.840 I thought that she was very likely a witch, and therefore I and the rest of the community thought that it was a great idea to throw her in water.

00:21:56.620 And if she swam, then that proved that she was a witch. 0.80

00:21:59.780 And if she sank, then, oops, I guess she wasn't a witch.

00:22:03.140 Now, that was a form of parasitic thinking, right? 0.95

00:22:05.600 When people in Europe thought that the Black Death, the Black Plague, was really due to Jews, well, that was a form of parasitic thinking. 0.94

00:22:17.180 So the capacity for the human mind to be parasitized, it's an indelible part of the architecture of the human mind.

00:22:24.460 What is unique to this current period are the specific mind viruses.

00:22:29.360 And when you say specific, you mean like hijacked?

00:22:33.500 Exactly.

00:22:33.900 So I mean post-modernism, this is a recent thing, 50 years ago.

00:22:38.400 Cultural relativism is another parasitic idea.

00:22:41.640 It basically reports, who are we to judge the cultural beliefs or religious beliefs of another society? 0.77

00:22:50.280 Don't be a racist.

00:22:51.560 Don't be a cultural imperialist. 0.58

00:22:53.180 It's not for you to judge.

00:22:54.820 Well, guess what?

00:22:55.760 That's nonsense. 0.99

00:22:56.520 I stand before you judging cultures that think that cutting off the clitorises of five-year-old girls is within their purview of their religion, right? 0.98

00:23:06.060 So once you relativize everything, there is no objective truth, there are no objective standards of universal aesthetics, there is no objective morality, then you descend into nihilism, into lunacy. 0.88

00:23:21.660 And so these are the specific parasitic ideas that I'm talking about.

00:23:25.980 Wow.

00:23:26.280 And do you think we're heading that way right now?

00:23:28.760 Well, certainly.

00:23:29.960 I mean, let me give you an example from art, okay?

00:23:33.640 Because now I've been so far talking about, you know, ideas that parasitize the mind.

00:23:38.220 But when you go to a museum, you're trying to get your sense of aesthetics to be titillated, right?

00:23:44.120 I want to see a beautiful painting that makes me go, wow, how could such a person create such art?

00:23:49.580 Well, and I talk about this, by the way, in this book right here, in The Yellow Book, The Parasitic Mind.

00:23:54.220 So in, I think it was 1996, this was, I'd only been a professor for a couple of years.

00:23:59.720 I was going to visit one of my colleagues who had done his PhD with me at Cornell.

00:24:06.920 He was a young assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

00:24:11.640 So I had gone to visit him and he was teaching a class or whatever, he was busy.

00:24:17.800 So I said, you know what, I'll go to the Carnegie Museum while waiting for you to finish your class

00:24:21.920 and then we'll hook up when you're done, we'll go for dinner, whatever.

00:24:25.160 So I walk into the Carnegie Museum and I'm looking at the art.

00:24:29.080 And at one point, there was an empty canvas.

00:24:32.940 That was the art piece.

00:24:34.700 Wow, bravo, so beautiful, so daring.

00:24:38.280 And so, of course, I understand what the reflex there was, which is, who are you to judge what art is?

00:24:44.540 The blank canvas is itself a form of art.

00:24:46.780 So I got pissed off.

00:24:48.220 I demanded to see the museum curator.

00:24:51.780 They sent some other hack.

00:24:54.040 How can I help you, sir?

00:24:55.480 I said, I paid money to come into this museum.

00:24:58.860 Yes?

00:24:59.440 Yes, sir.

00:25:00.840 Why am I looking at an empty canvas?

00:25:03.160 Now, I could have already predicted for you what the answer is going to be.

00:25:05.520 Well, isn't it beautiful, sir, that this piece is allowing us to now have a dialogue?

00:25:11.400 No, I want my money back.

00:25:13.540 I didn't ask for my money back.

00:25:15.140 But that gives you a sense of what happens when everything is relativized, right?

00:25:19.440 You've probably seen the famous banana on the way.

00:25:25.060 Art Hazel, yeah.

00:25:26.040 Wow.

00:25:26.880 How gorgeous is that?

00:25:28.460 I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, move aside.

00:25:31.360 We now have a real artist before us.

00:25:35.200 So you see it in all sorts of, you see it in philosophy where everything is postmodernist.

00:25:40.560 You see it, you know, queer architecture, queer mathematics. 0.52

00:25:45.720 What the hell does that mean?

00:25:47.060 Look, I studied mathematics, right?

00:25:48.740 I have several mathematics degrees.

00:25:51.100 My PhD minor was in statistics.

00:25:53.320 My undergraduate was in mathematics and computer science.

00:25:55.920 What does it mean to queer mathematics? 0.69

00:26:00.140 If there ever was a field by definition that cannot be under the influence of your identity,

00:26:07.900 it would be mathematics.

00:26:09.680 Why?

00:26:10.140 Because it's axiomatic.

00:26:11.620 It's the distribution of prime numbers exists in exactly its form,

00:26:17.400 whether I am a queer transgender Latins or whether I'm Lebanese Jewish Gatsad.

00:26:24.280 It doesn't matter.

00:26:25.980 But yet now we are queering mathematics.

00:26:28.600 We're queering physics.

00:26:29.900 We're queering architecture.

00:26:32.560 So yes, you see it everywhere.

00:26:34.860 That is scary.

00:26:35.540 So we're heading towards a society where there's no right or wrong.

00:26:38.640 There is.

00:26:39.120 Exactly.

00:26:39.780 I mean, of course, there is blowback.

00:26:41.980 Some of the blowback is called Gatsad.

00:26:44.920 But regrettably, not enough professors who are otherwise the first line of defense against 0.87

00:26:52.760 this nonsense, they're all completely castrated.

00:26:57.380 So and today, I don't know why I'm even more fiery than usual.

00:27:02.000 Maybe you bring maybe your calm demeanor brings out my fires.

00:27:07.000 I refer to academics as a new biological species.

00:27:11.360 I call them the invertebrate castrati.

00:27:14.920 Invertebrate means they have no spine. 1.00

00:27:16.900 Castrati means they have no balls because there is no greater cowardly bunch of people 1.00

00:27:23.920 than academics. 1.00

00:27:25.260 Right.

00:27:25.420 I mean, when you when you think about, say, Navy SEALs, right, what do you think about?

00:27:31.280 You think of brawny guys that can, you know, withstand all physical ailments.

00:27:37.040 I mean, until, of course, Joe Biden created a more inclusive military that was more based

00:27:42.680 on, you know, trans rights and so on.

00:27:44.580 But until Joe Biden, we when we think about the Navy SEAL, we think of someone who has

00:27:50.640 incredible athleticism, courage and so on.

00:27:53.600 That's what we want in our Navy SEALs. 0.75

00:27:55.560 Well, our intellectual Navy SEALs, meaning our academics, should be exhibiting that kind

00:28:01.460 of boldness, that kind of ferocity, that kind of intellectual courage.

00:28:07.040 They're exactly the opposite of that.

00:28:09.200 They're the most sheepish folks because they're so afraid to ever be ostracized from the cool

00:28:17.600 kids party.

00:28:18.380 Right.

00:28:18.800 You know, I don't want to speak out because I'm going up now for a promotion to associate

00:28:23.360 professor.

00:28:24.000 OK, now I become a associate professor.

00:28:25.940 Well, I don't want to speak out because now I'm going up for a full professorship.

00:28:29.500 OK, well, now I don't want to speak up because I'm going up for a chaired professorship.

00:28:33.900 Well, now I don't want to speak up because if I speak up, then I won't get my National

00:28:38.080 Science Foundation grant.

00:28:40.820 So there is always a reason why it is justified for me not to speak out.

00:28:46.720 It's OK.

00:28:47.260 Gadsad will have the courage to speak on my behalf while I go to class and say, yeah,

00:28:52.100 yeah, of course, men, too, can menstruate.

00:28:54.220 Of course, biological men should be competing with women. 1.00

00:28:58.400 This is completely natural because there are no sex differences between men and women,

00:29:02.880 which otherwise a three day old pigeon knows to be false.

00:29:06.320 But I certainly am not going to stand up.

00:29:08.600 And so what I've had over the past 30 plus years, Sean, is I've had thousands and thousands

00:29:14.420 of emails sent to me from professors that have the following structure.

00:29:19.540 You're ready.

00:29:20.660 Dear Professor Saad.

00:29:22.740 Several paragraphs of beautiful compliments.

00:29:25.700 And then there is a final sentence.

00:29:27.440 Can you guess what that final sentence is?

00:29:29.740 What is it?

00:29:31.240 If you decide to read my email on your show, please don't mention my name.

00:29:39.020 Oh, wow.

00:29:39.860 So then I write back, dear Professor so-and-so, thank you for the lovely words.

00:29:45.800 I really appreciate them.

00:29:47.420 Do you think that maybe the last sentence in your email is exactly why we are in the problem

00:29:53.120 that we're currently at fight, see ourselves in?

00:29:55.920 So, and again, that usually slaps them because they realize how cowardly they are, right?

00:30:00.680 So they don't even have the courage.

00:30:03.180 So nevermind that they don't have the courage to fight these bad ideas.

00:30:06.660 They don't have the courage to stand next to the guy who fights the bad ideas.

00:30:12.520 Because, so I'll give you a great example.

00:30:14.740 Very, very famous scientist.

00:30:18.100 I won't mention his name out of courtesy, but maybe he doesn't deserve it.

00:30:22.380 A guy that I highly admire.

00:30:24.420 He's about 20 something years older than me.

00:30:28.240 Incredible scientist.

00:30:29.560 Incredible writer.

00:30:30.360 I invited him on my show where it would be a no-brainer for us to have a conversation

00:30:36.580 because we share so many scientific interests.

00:30:40.860 He decided not to come on my show because some third-party colleagues told him that I had

00:30:48.620 said some, you ready?

00:30:50.240 This is really dark secret.

00:30:51.680 It turns out that some of my tweets exhibited a possible favorable disposition towards Donald

00:31:00.880 Trump.

00:31:02.480 And so he didn't want to be tarred in speaking to me on my show, even though 99% of things

00:31:11.140 we agree on.

00:31:12.320 And by the way, we wouldn't have to talk about politics on the show.

00:31:15.460 Like if he told me, if I come on your show, we only talk about our scientific interests.

00:31:20.320 I would say, absolutely, you got it.

00:31:22.960 But the mere fact that he would be seen publicly speaking to me would be very problematic in

00:31:29.340 the cool kids party.

00:31:30.800 I can relate to that.

00:31:31.580 I've invited a lot of professors and academics on the show and they've turned it down because

00:31:34.600 I'm too political or I've had controversial guests.

00:31:37.220 There you go. 0.99

00:31:38.280 So imagine how cowardly you are, right? 0.98

00:31:41.420 I mean, look, I always tell people it's better to live five minutes tall and proud than to live 1.00

00:31:48.160 500 years on your knees as a meek coward, right? 0.93

00:31:52.060 And that's the problem. 0.93

00:31:53.500 I mean, by the way, that's, I mean, I'd like to think that there are several reasons why

00:31:57.100 I've been able to build such a big platform.

00:32:00.140 And certainly as an academic, right?

00:32:02.200 I'm not an actor.

00:32:03.720 I'm not a comedian, right?

00:32:05.680 For me to be able to build such a gigantic platform is because I'm resonating with the

00:32:13.140 general public, right?

00:32:14.220 Because the general public hears the people that don't come on your show and they say

00:32:19.760 they sound fraudulent.

00:32:21.620 They sound inauthentic.

00:32:23.620 They sound too measured.

00:32:25.380 But Ghat Saad, of course he could hang with all the fancy professors, right?

00:32:30.200 I could be one day invited to speak at Stanford and the next day joke around with Joe Rogan.

00:32:36.740 And it's that multiplicity of my personality that then allows me to connect with a broad

00:32:42.240 range of people.

00:32:43.000 The people who are not accepting to come on your show are really shooting themselves in

00:32:47.940 the foot.

00:32:48.240 Because when I first received the fit, when my team told me, okay, this gentleman is inviting

00:32:54.640 you, I didn't know who you were, but then I see how big your platform is.

00:32:59.780 And right away I say, oh, this seems like an interesting place to go to.

00:33:04.380 Why?

00:33:04.940 Because I'm in the business of doing two things.

00:33:07.000 I'm in the business of creating knowledge and disseminating knowledge.

00:33:10.580 Well, if coming on Sean's show, I now introduce these ideas to a million new people that otherwise

00:33:20.160 would have never heard of these ideas, I'm winning.

00:33:23.200 So I've got the humility to say, I speak to anybody.

00:33:27.160 I don't just speak to the, you know, the, the anointed ones, as Thomas Sowell says, I'll 1.00

00:33:33.000 speak to anybody who's intelligent, who has a nice platform to, to engage me.

00:33:39.260 Let's have at it.

00:33:40.420 I'm the same way.

00:33:41.400 Yeah.

00:33:41.520 I'm pretty against cancel culture.

00:33:42.960 In fact, a lot of my guests have been canceled.

00:33:44.680 I know you have as well.

00:33:45.800 Um, so I love giving people the opportunity.

00:33:48.580 It'll be a beautiful, beautiful.

00:33:50.440 God bless you.

00:33:51.140 Um, when do you think academics started getting scared to speak out?

00:33:55.120 Do you think this was something in our lifetime or way before?

00:33:58.000 No, I, I mean, again, this speaking out against the specific parasitic ideas of today is a 0.89

00:34:05.520 more recent thing, but the fact that academics are very tepid, very meek, very cowardly is 0.88

00:34:14.760 regrettably a feature of becoming an academic, right?

00:34:18.520 I mean, one of the things that I love about, take for example, Mark, do you know who Marcus

00:34:23.340 Aurelius is?

00:34:24.140 Yes.

00:34:24.320 Yeah.

00:34:24.860 Okay.

00:34:25.500 So Marcus Aurelius is my guy.

00:34:28.000 Why?

00:34:28.860 Because this guy is emperor of Rome. 1.00

00:34:32.680 I mean, he's doing shit. 1.00

00:34:34.160 He's, he's busy. 1.00

00:34:35.220 He's the most powerful man in the world.

00:34:37.620 Meanwhile, he also wants to have time to read his books and to engage in philosophy.

00:34:45.560 So he's both brawn and brain.

00:34:49.400 Yes.

00:34:50.100 Yeah.

00:34:50.280 Uh, what I love about say Victor Davis Hanson, I mean, not to compare Victor Davis Hanson to

00:34:56.240 Marcus Aurelius, but Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist.

00:34:59.480 He's a, uh, he's at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

00:35:03.380 He is a great historian.

00:35:06.740 He's also a farmer, meaning that he is wedded to reality.

00:35:12.200 So if he talks about the aqueducts of ancient Rome, he can also connect them to his farming

00:35:18.880 practice.

00:35:19.480 And so I'll give you one more example and then I'll link it back to me.

00:35:24.000 Uh, Socrates, not the philosopher, Socrates, the captain of the 1982 Brazilian national team

00:35:33.380 in soccer.

00:35:34.080 I mean, this is the Brazilian national team.

00:35:37.120 He's the captain of that team.

00:35:38.880 He was also a physician and a philosopher while he's doing soccer on the Brazilian national

00:35:46.140 team.

00:35:46.560 And so I think one of the reasons why, again, I resonate and maybe some of the other academics

00:35:52.320 haven't been able to build these platforms is because they don't know how to modulate

00:35:57.360 their public interventions in a way that maximizes the exposure, right?

00:36:03.400 If I'm always going to speak in the very delimited way of how academics speak, then I'm going to

00:36:12.440 reach four people.

00:36:14.960 If I know how to go on Joe Rogan and make the research come alive, suddenly I've opened up

00:36:21.460 evolutionary psychology to 20 million people.

00:36:24.240 And that's a good thing.

00:36:25.580 Yeah.

00:36:25.660 You've done a great job with that, going on big platforms and kind of dumbing it down so

00:36:29.940 the average person can understand what you're talking about, right?

00:36:31.840 Because some of these academics, it's like another language, the way they speak.

00:36:35.660 Indeed.

00:36:36.060 And by the way, and I say this truly and with complete honesty, I get a lot more visceral

00:36:45.660 pleasure and satisfaction when I receive a fan letter from a trucker or a corrections officer

00:36:53.900 or a military guy than I do when I receive it from a fellow colleague at Harvard and Cornell

00:37:00.880 and Stanford.

00:37:01.580 Not that I don't love receiving those lovely things from my colleagues.

00:37:05.180 It's always beautiful for your colleagues to say, hey, we love your work.

00:37:09.380 So don't, I love that.

00:37:11.260 But when the trucker writes to me and says, you know, I do the route from, you know, whatever,

00:37:17.920 from Oregon to Kansas three times a month.

00:37:22.240 And what allows me to enjoy my drive is I just sit and listen to you and learn so much.

00:37:28.260 I mean, imagine the sense of satisfaction I get.

00:37:32.040 I'm reaching the trucker who's, you know, that's beautiful.

00:37:37.120 That's incredible.

00:37:38.080 Yeah.

00:37:38.620 Perfect segue into my next question about happiness, because I know you wrote a book on happiness.

00:37:43.620 It's called The Sad Truth About Happiness, right?

00:37:46.800 Yes, sir.

00:37:47.680 And do you think these days, it's hard to measure, I guess, what previous civilizations were

00:37:53.360 in terms of happiness levels.

00:37:54.320 But these days, it seems like our happiness levels are really low, right, compared to the past.

00:37:59.760 Great question.

00:38:00.360 Before I answer it, maybe I could just give you a quick background to why I wrote that book.

00:38:06.120 Because it seems like that book comes, so, I mean, there's a bunch of books that I wrote

00:38:10.940 before on sort of evolutionary psychology and consumer psychology and so on.

00:38:15.020 Then Parasitic Mind.

00:38:17.000 Then there's a happiness book.

00:38:18.600 Then there's Suicidal Empathy.

00:38:19.980 Where did the happiness book come from?

00:38:21.580 And that really came, and then I'll answer your question, that came from receiving a lot

00:38:28.600 of emails from people saying, what's your secret to always appearing so joyful and happy?

00:38:37.480 And even when you're dealing with very difficult subjects, you're always joking around and so

00:38:42.240 on.

00:38:42.480 What's your secret?

00:38:43.440 Tell us your secret.

00:38:44.540 And so at one point, I thought, why don't I write a book on those secrets?

00:38:48.140 At first, I was a bit hesitant, because if there is one topic that even the ancient Greeks,

00:38:56.260 going back to the ancient Greeks, have written the most about, is how to live the good life,

00:39:01.220 how to live a meaningful life.

00:39:02.780 So I thought, could I write something that is unique and fresh and distinct?

00:39:07.280 And I'd like to think that I did.

00:39:08.580 So now to answer your question, there is some research that is looked at over, say, the

00:39:14.420 past 40 years.

00:39:15.580 So I can't give you data from 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece.

00:39:20.320 But over the past 40 years, men's happiness hasn't decreased, while women's happiness has 1.00

00:39:27.420 decreased a lot.

00:39:28.280 And one of the arguments that I make in the happiness book that you kindly mentioned is

00:39:34.560 that that stems from women having been parasitized by a lot of dreadful, parasitic ideas.

00:39:43.600 So let me give you an example.

00:39:45.680 When second wave feminism came along and said, hey, ladies, anything that a man can do, you 1.00

00:39:53.980 can do, and you should do, burn your bras, both literally and metaphorically, a lot of

00:40:00.940 women took that call to action seriously and did it. 0.97

00:40:03.780 So here's what they did.

00:40:05.440 I want to have as accomplished as a career as any man.

00:40:11.700 I don't want to start having children at all.

00:40:15.000 I want to have a lot of meaningless one-night stands.

00:40:19.860 If men can desire doing it, so why shouldn't I?

00:40:24.680 Well, then they wake up at 40.

00:40:27.100 By the way, none in what I'm saying implies that women shouldn't have fully accomplished

00:40:32.680 careers or that women don't have a desire for sexual variety, but they certainly don't 1.00

00:40:38.880 have it to the same extent as men, right?

00:40:42.240 There's actually very clear evolutionary evidence that suggests that women, too, have not evolved

00:40:48.980 to be monogamous.

00:40:49.820 So that's clear.

00:40:51.540 But studies around the world conducted in an astoundingly different number of cultures

00:40:57.620 have found the exact same principle when it comes to the desire for short-term mating and

00:41:03.840 sexual variety.

00:41:05.400 Men desire that a lot more than women for very clear evolutionary reasons. 0.64

00:41:09.880 So now when a woman says, hey, if a guy goes to a bar every night and has meaningless sex, 0.97

00:41:15.720 why can't I as well, then it shouldn't take a fancy psychologist to tell you she will wake 0.96

00:41:20.840 up when she's 47 feeling unhappy at having internalized those principles.

00:41:25.780 Because there are many things that men and women are identical on, but there are many things

00:41:31.400 that men and women are perfectly different on.

00:41:34.480 And what explains those differences is evolutionary psychology.

00:41:37.620 And so in my view, what explains the rather sharp decline in women's happiness, at least in 0.99

00:41:45.360 a Western context, in the United States context, stems from having internalized those idiotic 1.00

00:41:50.900 ideas. 1.00

00:41:51.840 Very interesting.

00:41:52.840 Wow.

00:41:53.160 I got to tell my wife about that one.

00:41:54.580 That is so fascinating.

00:41:57.020 Any link with happiness levels and income levels?

00:42:01.120 A very good question.

00:42:02.420 So the classic study shows that up to a certain point, happiness and income are linked.

00:42:12.160 Beyond that point, it adds nothing to your happiness.

00:42:15.780 Okay.

00:42:15.960 No problem.

00:42:16.320 Which makes sense, right?

00:42:17.600 If every day I'm not sure whether I'll be able to put enough calories in my children's

00:42:25.180 bodies, then it's kind of difficult to pursue self-actualization through reading and going to

00:42:32.300 museums.

00:42:33.480 But once I've reached a certain level, and as a matter of fact, I tested this theory with

00:42:40.780 the richest person who's ever existed on earth.

00:42:45.720 His name is Elon Musk, who happens to be a friend of mine.

00:42:50.820 And we had a chat on my show.

00:42:53.720 It was in X Spaces, where I asked him exactly that question.

00:42:57.540 And not surprisingly, he answered, I mean, that Elon Musk is worth $400 billion does not

00:43:07.640 make him several hundred billion times happier than someone else who may have a great marriage,

00:43:14.880 a great wife, wonderful kids, and a wealthy person might not have those things. 0.60

00:43:20.880 So up to a point, it's fine.

00:43:23.100 And after that, it gives you zero weight.

00:43:25.180 What gives you a lot more happiness, if I can answer that?

00:43:28.840 Well, there are several things that I discuss in the book, but let me mention a few.

00:43:33.960 Overwhelmingly, and you mentioned your wife, overwhelmingly, the singular decision that

00:43:39.140 you'll make that will either impart great happiness to you or great misery, depending on whether

00:43:44.900 you made the right choice or not, is the choice of mate that you make.

00:43:48.700 Now, there is no foolproof method, right?

00:43:51.300 Life is about navigating through statistical minefields, right?

00:43:56.500 And so statistically speaking, this is what is most likely to increase your chances of

00:44:01.660 having successful marriage.

00:44:02.800 You ready?

00:44:04.000 So in evolutionary psychology, we have two principles.

00:44:07.280 One is called assortative mating, or birds of a feather flock together.

00:44:11.440 The other one is called opposites attract.

00:44:13.640 For short-term mating, opposites attract works well.

00:44:19.180 I might be a very introverted person that is very sexually restrained.

00:44:24.280 The person that I am connecting with might be the exact opposite, and that creates a complementarity

00:44:30.740 that ends up leading us to have a nice trice behind the bushes.

00:44:34.980 But for long-term success, for long-term mating, a marriage, birds of a feather overwhelmingly

00:44:42.380 predicts success.

00:44:43.500 Now, birds of a feather flocking on which feathers?

00:44:46.420 Here, we're talking about whether you share the same foundational values.

00:44:52.160 So if I, for example, am an outspoken atheist, and you organize your entire life around your

00:45:01.700 religion, well, it's nice to think that love conquers all, but you really are starting on the wrong

00:45:08.560 statistical foot, right?

00:45:10.760 Because my atheim is so important to me, your religiosity is so important to you, we're going

00:45:17.620 to have problems down the line.

00:45:18.900 And so birds of a feather flock together is incredibly predictive of future success.

00:45:27.260 May I add one more, or am I speaking?

00:45:29.520 Okay.

00:45:29.760 The other thing that I, this hasn't been tested, I first actually proposed it on Joe

00:45:38.920 Rogan, and then I worried that somebody would steal the idea before I did it.

00:45:42.460 So I argue that there's a second component that can really predict the happiness of your

00:45:48.160 marriage.

00:45:48.760 So when we first mate, we are assorting on our overall mate value.

00:45:58.500 So for example, on a scale of zero to 100, the totality of how attractive of a mate I am might

00:46:04.980 place me at an 80, okay?

00:46:06.920 Whatever that means.

00:46:07.820 So I'm charming, and I'm educated, and I make good money, but I'm not tall.

00:46:15.200 This is true, okay?

00:46:17.500 Well, in a dream world, I would be even more attractive if I were six foot two, but I'm

00:46:24.300 not.

00:46:24.660 But I can compensate for those by being very good at other things, luckily.

00:46:28.840 Otherwise, I would have never found a mate, yes?

00:46:31.360 Yeah.

00:46:31.540 But so that overall, my score might be whatever it is.

00:46:34.560 It's an 80 on 100.

00:46:35.800 Well, typically, we end up assorting with people that have roughly similar mating value.

00:46:44.240 So an 80 ends up going with an 80, right?

00:46:47.640 Now, here's where the problem comes in.

00:46:50.460 Let's suppose we met when we were both high school sweethearts.

00:46:54.720 I was the star quarterback.

00:46:57.280 You were the cheerleader, gorgeous girl.

00:47:00.620 And at that point, we both had the same mating value.

00:47:03.620 So it made sense for us to hook up and get married young.

00:47:07.460 Later on, I lose my hair.

00:47:10.580 I don't make it to the NFL.

00:47:12.640 I become a guy who plays video games all day.

00:47:15.760 I get fat, whereas my cheerleader girlfriend, who was really hot in high school, went on to

00:47:22.700 become a neurosurgeon, and now she is surrounded by a lot of male neurosurgeons. 0.50

00:47:27.960 So what's happened is that our original mating values, which were both at 80, suddenly her mating value is now at 93, while my mating value is at 42.

00:47:39.980 That divergence in our mating value is going to put great stressors on our marriage.

00:47:46.340 So make sure that you evolve together in your mating values.

00:47:51.520 Otherwise, I'm predicting a divorce.

00:47:53.600 Yeah, that's a very relatable.

00:47:55.900 I feel like that happens to a lot of people.

00:47:57.720 And do you think if that were to happen to you, I don't know if you're in the wrong if you were to leave that relationship, you know what I mean?

00:48:04.220 Because you're still growing so fast and they're not keeping up with you.

00:48:07.260 Exactly.

00:48:07.880 And I mean, that's why, I mean, you often hear that, oh, marriage takes work.

00:48:12.760 I mean, you'd like to think that it doesn't take too much work and that you found your soulmate, but this is part of work.

00:48:20.000 If I see my wife making all sorts of moves to improve herself, to improve the lot of my family, and I'm sitting all day long playing video games, I mean, it doesn't take a fancy evolutionary psychologist and professor to tell you you're not doing your part.

00:48:38.160 And when that gorgeous, tall, accomplished neurosurgeon that she works with every day starts paying her attention, well, she's human. 0.99

00:48:46.800 You're a loser at home getting fat. 0.99

00:48:48.900 She's hanging around with fancy accomplished guys. 1.00

00:48:52.000 It's going to put a stressor.

00:48:53.780 Yeah.

00:48:54.300 Do you think the mating scores for males and females have different things when it comes to creating the score?

00:49:00.960 Oh, great question.

00:49:02.220 So a few things, they're the same, and many things, they're very different.

00:49:06.040 So for example, kindness and intelligence are universally preferred by both men and women.

00:49:15.160 Okay?

00:49:15.360 So those are called necessities in the evolutionary psychology literature.

00:49:21.480 Other ones are different depending on whether you're male or female.

00:49:26.380 So for example, the premium on physical beauty and youth, there is no culture that's ever been studied or discovered where men don't place a greater premium on those two traits.

00:49:38.920 And there is no culture that's ever been discovered nor will ever be discovered where women don't place a greater premium on men's social status.

00:49:51.820 Now, social status can be measured differently in different cultures.

00:49:57.600 Yes?

00:49:57.800 If I am in the Hadzat tribe in Central Africa, maybe it's the number of cattle heads that I own that makes me the cool guy. 0.99

00:50:05.960 In other cultures, it might be if I have the Ivy League degrees.

00:50:09.500 In other cultures, it might be the number of zeros in the bank or whatever.

00:50:13.120 By the way, I could be an aspiring artist as a man who doesn't yet have any money,

00:50:20.060 and yet I can still attract a lot of desirable women because they're banking on my future trajectory, right? 0.92

00:50:27.280 I exhibit a hard work ethic.

00:50:33.180 I clearly have a talent as a rock star musician.

00:50:37.060 Sure, I haven't been discovered yet, but she's banking on the fact that I will become the next big thing.

00:50:43.480 But here is what no woman has ever said in any culture.

00:50:49.120 You ready?

00:50:50.060 Find me the man who is whiny-voiced, pear-shaped, cries all day watching Bridget Jones' diary,

00:51:02.380 exhibits no assertiveness, social dominance, or ambition. 0.98

00:51:06.380 That drives me into a sexual frenzy. 1.00

00:51:10.140 Ravish me, unemployed loser. 1.00

00:51:12.740 Ravish me now. 0.98

00:51:14.000 That doesn't exist. 0.91

00:51:15.240 That's why there are no song lyrics that say, I'm looking for a loser that plays video games all day.

00:51:22.280 But we have many songs where women, for example, are denigrating a guy who's not doing his end of the bargain. 0.64

00:51:29.180 No scrubs by TLC.

00:51:31.180 I don't want a guy who lives with his mom who doesn't own his car.

00:51:35.200 I don't want a guy who doesn't shower me with investments and gifts.

00:51:38.900 Well, I could show you that exact same song in Arabic.

00:51:42.940 I can show you that exact same song in French.

00:51:45.540 I could show you that song in Urdu, the language they speak in Pakistan.

00:51:49.300 The reason why every single culture has the exact same song lyrics is because the biological imperatives that shape women and men's desires don't suddenly change as a function of cultural contingencies.

00:52:04.460 Those are called universals.

00:52:06.140 So to answer your question and to summarize the answer, yes, there are many things that men and women's mating scores are the same across the two sexes, but there are many that are perfectly different.

00:52:16.980 Makes sense.

00:52:17.560 Doctor, this was a really fun episode.

00:52:19.600 Thanks for your time today.

00:52:20.440 Where can people pre-order your book and get your other books and everything?

00:52:23.680 Thank you.

00:52:24.360 Well, it's not yet.

00:52:25.480 Suicidal Empathy is not yet available for pre-order, but I know that the publisher, given how viral and how much buzz there is around it, is trying to get the book out hopefully by next April.

00:52:36.840 So I suspect in the next two, three months, it should be available for pre-order.

00:52:42.020 The book is titled Suicidal Empathy.

00:52:44.540 Please do pre-order it as soon as it's available to do so.

00:52:47.560 Because what ends up happening, if let's say tons of people pre-order it, the first day that the book is released, all of the pre-orders then count as sales, right?

00:52:57.860 So what happens is you could enter on day one of the book's release into the bestsellers list, and then that creates the avalanche.

00:53:06.220 So please pre-order it as soon as it becomes available.

00:53:08.840 Awesome.

00:53:09.280 Thanks for your time, doctor.

00:53:10.460 Thank you, sir.

00:53:11.240 Cheers.

00:53:11.520 All right.

00:53:11.720 See you guys.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 01, 2025

Why Empathy Can Become Dangerous (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_925)

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