Modern WisdomGad Saad | The Death Of Truth And How To Revive It | Modern Wisdom Podcast 217
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,922 words- 0:00 – 1:41
Intro
- GSGad Saad
Probably the granddaddy of all of these idea pathogens would be post-modernism, because post-modernism, if you'd like, is the negation of the scientific method. It's the negation that there is a truth with a capital T that is out there to be discovered. Post-modernism says that there's only subjective truth, everybody is bound by their biases, by their subjectivity. There are no objective truths, everything is subjective.
- CWChris Williamson
It has been very long time coming but I'm finally joined here by the man behind The Sad Truth, the godfather himself. So good to have you here.
- GSGad Saad
Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Good to be with you.
- CWChris Williamson
Pleasure. Burning question that obviously everyone has come here to work out, is Adele's hairstyle problematic?
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Deeply problematic. I, I didn't know that she was, uh, a mixture of Himmler and Hitler, but, uh, apparently, she is. By the way, for those of you who don't know this, about a few years ago, I did a couple of Sad Truths. The one sad truth was where I gave temporary clearance to anyone who wanted to eat Lebanese food. I gave them a 24-hour period. Because I'm Lebanese, I'm entitled to speak on behalf of all Lebanese, and so I gave a culinary clearance for 24 hours. And then I asked for everyone to take a photo of their, uh, passports so that they can give me clearance in whatever they want to give me clearance in. So, for example, a Portuguese person would write and say, "My name is, uh, Jose," whatever, "Rodriguez, and I give you clearance to eat Portuguese ch- spicy chicken." So you should go check it out because it shows you that most people are still sane and make fun of this stupidity.
- 1:41 – 8:54
Academic Background
- GSGad Saad
- CWChris Williamson
So that's like a, an IOU reciprocal altruism thing that you've got going on here.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I eat your food, you eat my food, but you can only eat it once. And then it's like a ... You've got a track and trace thing going on as well, which-
- GSGad Saad
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... COVID. Uh, so we're gonna talk about your new book, Parasitic Mind. But before we do, could you give us a bit of an overview of your background as an academic? Like, why, why do you have license-
- GSGad Saad
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... to talk about this subject?
- GSGad Saad
Sure. Uh, so I have been a professor for 26 years. Uh, my main area of scientific research, although I'm someone who's a true polymath, I'm all over the place, uh, I truly believe in interdisciplinarity. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption, which is basically applying evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study our consummatory nature. So just to give you one quick example would be, uh, here's one, uh, how do our hormones affect our behaviors as consumers? For example, when men engage in conspicuous consumption, what happens to their testosterone levels? When women are going through the various stages of their menstrual cycles, how, what kinds of foods do they eat? How do they dress? Does that vary across the menstrual cycle? So I look at the biological underpinnings of, uh, our consuming instinct, if you'd like. And as part of being an evolutionary/consumer psychologist, I've always been interested in, uh, interspecies comparisons. This is a field called comparative psychology. So oftentimes if you wanna make the argument that some behavior is an evolutionary behavior within the human context, you will study cognition in other species to make the link because they are our evolutionary cousins. And so as a result of my, if you like, my openness to studying other animals, I noticed that there was a field called neuro-parasitology which is the study of how parasites can infect the brains of a whole host of hosts. So for example, Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that affects the brains of, uh, mice. And when they are infected with this brain worm, they lose their innate fear of cats. They become sexually attracted to the urine of the cat, which is not a good thing for a mouse to, to be attracted to. And so I took this principle from animal, uh, context, and I argued that humans suffer not only from actual brain worms in the same way that the mouse does, but we suffer from another class of idea pathogens, and those are actual ideas that are parasitic. And, of course, your original question is what allows me to make those, you know, arguments. Well, having lived in the ecosystem of academia for the past 26 years, I can promise you that all of the most idiotic ideas all stem from academia.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
Does that give you a good answer?
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely, yeah. You were patient zero for this. So what's-
- GSGad Saad
I am patient zero.
- CWChris Williamson
... what's an, what's an infectious idea?
- GSGad Saad
Right. So, uh, probably the granddaddy of all of these, uh, idea pathogens would be post-modernism, because post-modernism, if you'd like, is the negation of the scientific method. It's the negation that there is a Truth with a capital T that is out there to be discovered. Now, I should always, I always like to preface that scientists do have epistemic humility. So we recognize that what is true today might become untrue tomorrow in light of new evidence. But at any given point, we do operate under the premise that there is a truth out there to be discovered. There is, for example, a universal human nature. As an evolutionary psychologist, I want to study that. There is, uh, certain recurring patterns of how women respond to their ovulatory cycles. Uh, post-modernism completely blows up this edifice of reason because it says that there's only subjective truth. Everybody is bound by their biases, by their subjectivity. There are no objective truths. Everything is subjective. And so there's a, uh, uh, a now famous story that I recount which for some of your viewers who might not be familiar with my work, it's maybe worth repeating. Uh, I once had a chat with a post-modernist radical feminist and cultural anthropologist, so kind of the holy trinity of bullshit.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- GSGad Saad
And
- CWChris Williamson
That's the dark triad, isn't it?
- GSGad Saad
That is the dark triad, right.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
And, and, and so she, um ... I had gone out to dinner with, uh, my wife-... my doctoral student who had just de- defended his dissertation, and she was, this woman was his date for the evening. And he had warned me that this person, sh- you know, is infected with these parasites, although he didn't use those words. Uh, and so y- he was kind of imploring me to be on my best behavior so we can have a good time, uh, because we were out to celebrate his accomplishment of having finished his PhD, to which I said, "Yes, of course, I'll be on my best behavior," which of course was bullshit.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
Uh, and so, and so halfway through the, the dinner or whenever it was, I said to her, "So I hear you're a postmodernist." Uh, "Yes. Yes, I am." Uh, "So there are no universal truths." "Absolutely not." "So do you mind if I maybe offer you some universal truths, and then you can tell me how you think I might be wrong?" She said, "Yes, go ahead. Go for it." I said, "Well, is it a universal truth that within the human species, only women bear children? Is that not a truth? Can we, can we hang our hat on this one?" She says, "Absolutely not." "Oh, no? How so?" "Well, there is a tribe off some island in Japan where within the folkloric realm, within the spiritual realm, it is the men who bear children. So by you restricting the conversation of bearing children to the physical realm, this is how you keep us pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen." After I am resuscitated with an ambulance from the stupidity of her point, uh, I then say, "Okay, maybe I shouldn't ask you something as controversial as, you know, bearing children. Maybe that's just too corrosive of a topic, so let's do something a bit less, uh, sensitive. Is it true since time immemorial that within the vantage of Earth, sailors have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? Is that not a universal truth?" And then here she uses a subform of postmodernism called deconstructionism, language creates reality. So she says, uh, "Well, what do you mean by east and west? Those are just arbitrary labels. And what do you mean by the sun? That which you call the sun, I call dancing hyena," to which I retorted, "Well, the dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west. I put on dancing hyena lotion when I go to the Caribbean so I don't get dancing hyena burn." To which she said, "I don't play those label games." Now that was an incredibly, uh, uh, p- prescient story, if you'd like, because this happened in 2002. And today, you can get canceled for saying that only women bear children. You can get fired for saying that there are two sexes. You can get fired for saying that only women menstruate. And so this is what happens when, in this case, the granddaddy of idea pathogens takes over academia. Up is down, left is right, there are no truths.
- 8:54 – 11:08
Social Justice Apps
- GSGad Saad
- CWChris Williamson
It does seem like postmodernism is the source code that's-
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... underwritten everything. And then what you've got on top of that are some apps. So you-
- GSGad Saad
Very v- nice, nice way of putting it. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So you have the particular operating system, that's postmodernism, and then you have... Give us some of the apps. What are some of the apps that people have downloaded onto their social justice phone?
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Sure. So, so for example, anything with the trans prefix becomes an instantiation of, "It's my truth, there is no truth," right? So there is transgender. Now, by the way, when I say this, that doesn't mean that I'm negating the fact that there is such a thing as transgender people and there is such a thing as we should not, we should not be bigoted against them and they should live free of bigotry. So one doesn't imply the other. But for example, when in the pursuit of trans activism you negate biological realities that the average three-day-old newborn pigeon knows-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
... then that becomes a problem, right? So you have to be able to chew and walk at the same time. I could full- I could be fully liberal and supportive of transgender rights while also saying, "Look, if you're 270 pounds and six foot four and suddenly you call yourself a woman, no, you can't compete against biological women, and it doesn't make you a transphobe." My t- my very young children look at this quizzically and they don't understand it. Are they transphobes? Are they Hitlers? So, so that would be one example. Radical feminism is another perfect manifestation of this, right? In the pursuit of equality under the law, which we should all support, that doesn't mean that we reject that there are innate sex differences. But most radical feminists think that by giving leeway to the possibility that men and women might be difference, different, this opens the door to maintaining the sexist patriarchal status quo. No. We can recognize that men and women are equal under the law and there shouldn't be any institutional bigotry while also recognizing that there is such a thing called sexual selection, Darwin, which basically says that we have evolved many things similarly, but many things differently precisely because we are a sexually reproducing species. So these would be a few examples. Do you want
- 11:08 – 15:04
Kernel Of Truth
- GSGad Saad
me to give you more, or are you good to go?
- CWChris Williamson
No, I think we've got, we've got some good ones there. It seems to me that the, the pernicious thing about these ideas is that they've got a kernel of truth.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And is that the, the delivery mechanism? Is that the delivery mechanism of the parasite?
- GSGad Saad
So gi- give me an example of how rejecting that only women c- could menstruate could have a kernel of truth. I s-
- CWChris Williamson
No. So for instance, with regards to the trans rights, we want to ensure that people who are transgender are treated fairly, equally in society.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
With radical feminism, everyone believes that women, perhaps in the past, there were some particular prejudices that they had to battle against. We had the Suffragette Movement.
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Those e- you know, they're fairly objective. You couldn't vote, you couldn't do X, Y, and Z. But it's when that gets turned up to 1,111, uh, that-
- GSGad Saad
Right. So, so... Sorry, go ahead.
- CWChris Williamson
That's it. Just that there's kernels of truth, most of which appear to be kind of archaically grandfathered in.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah, I would say that there are different objectives. It's not that... The objective of seeking social justice in the true sense of the term, not in the pejorative social justice warriors, that is something that we should all seek if we are, you know, rational, liberal, you know, good-hearted people. In the pursuit of that objective, we never murder truth, we never rape truth. That's the problem, is that what they do is they conflate the pursuit of social justice with a consequentialist ethic, right, which basically says it doesn't matter if I murder and rape truth in the service of this more laudable goal called social justice. No. As a purist, I'm, and a- and a true classical liberal person, I believe in the rights of transgender people, but without sacrificing a millimeter of my commitment to truth, to science, to logic, to common sense, to rationality. So that's why I separate these- these two things.
- CWChris Williamson
Why the parasite analogy?
- GSGad Saad
So the parasite analogy is exactly, as I said, stemming from the neuro-parasitology literature, which demonstrates that... You know, it's almost science fiction, right? You can have this parasite. Now, by the way, the reason why I say neuro-parasitology, because parasites can take hold in different parts of your body, right? So you could have a tapeworm that's in your gut, right? So neuro-parasites are ones that seek the brain, because as part of their reproductive cycle, this is where they have to kind of go. So there's a parasite that will infect the brains of certain, uh, insects, causing these insects, who are otherwise very water-phobic, to jump into the water as if they're kind of committing hara- you know, s- kamikaze thing. They hate the water, because the parasite needs the water to then complete its rebe- reproductive cycle. So it is rewiring your circuitry to its benefit. Well, idea pathogens are doing the exact same thing, right? They can take a otherwise supposedly functioning human being, and then you can have these idiotic ideas infect your brain so that you could become a mush of bullshit, so that you, instead of- i- instead of jumping into the- the water, as the insect does, you now jump off the abyss of infinite lunacy, right? So, uh, you know, "All borders are racists." Well, there is this thing called countries and nations, and countries have borders. And last I checked, it wasn't only the Nazis who were condoning borders. But I can sh- walk with you on university campuses where that is the official position. Borders are a form of white supremacy. So when people start saying things that are so... such departures from common sense, then the parasitology analogy is really quite an
- 15:04 – 22:04
Parasitology
- GSGad Saad
apt one.
- CWChris Williamson
With parasites, you have no control over... I'm gonna guess it's not due to will that the mice go and become attracted to the cats. They're not thinking, "I fancy about being at-" "Oh, that's kind of- it's kind of sexy, bit of- bit of sort of cat wee over the far side." The- it's- they're compelled to do it.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
With... This is semantic, right? This is- this is an idea. This is- there's an abstraction to this. There must also be an ability-
- GSGad Saad
A way out?
- CWChris Williamson
Y- yeah. Tha- well, the- this is both as an, um... Before we get to how can we protect people-
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... how can people protect themselves?
- GSGad Saad
Yes, that's-
- CWChris Williamson
How can you get the parasite out of yourself?
- GSGad Saad
That's a great question. So it really, it... So anything that I'm going to say in answering that question, ho- how do we- how do we inoculate ourselves against this, how do we vaccinate ourselves against, if we're already parasitized, how do we cure ourselves, that rests on one single, you know, a priori tenet. And that is that you are at least open to my evidence, right? So- so if you just go, "La la la la la, my ears, and I'm not gonna listen," then there's absolutely... you're impenetrable. There's no way for me... I- it's kind of like saying y- you'd like to benefit from the vaccine, but you're too scared of the needle and therefore you- I can't give you-
- CWChris Williamson
Great analogy.
- GSGad Saad
Well, I can't-
- CWChris Williamson
Great analogy.
- GSGad Saad
Right? So- so o- once we agree that you are open to the vaccine, then here is how... There are several things that we can do, but let me discuss the- the- the biggest one. So there is a thing in chapter seven of my book, which I call nomological networks of cumulative evidence. Now, this originally comes from my work in evolutionary psychology, actually, which I now apply to this context. So nomological networks of cumulative evidence is the idea that if I'm trying to convince you of an explanation, let's say a scientific explanation, I have to start thinking this way. What would be the data that I would need to show you that becomes so unassailable that even the most dogged detractor will be drowned in a sea of evidence, right? Now, as someone... You're- you're in Britain, correct?
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- GSGad Saad
All right. So Charles Darwin, if you'd like, is perhaps the most famous example of someone who was thinking synthetically in this way. Synthetically meaning putting a whole bunch of stuff together, creating consilience, unity of knowledge. Now, he didn't use the term normological networks of cumulative evidence, but that's exactly what he was doing, because in demonstrating that his theory of natural selection was veridical, was correct, what did he do? He assiduously over many decades collected data from an incredible number of sources, from paleontology, from animal husbandry, from embryology, from comparative anatomy, from geology. And each of these small pieces of the puzzle, once you put the whole thing together, made it impossible for you to argue against it, despite the fact that 150 years later, people are still trying to falsify it without being able to, right? And so I take this mindset and I formalize it in this thing called nomological networks of cumulative evidence. Maybe if I give you a specific example, it will...... help explain how... Okay. So let's suppose I want to sh- I want to prove to you that toy preferences are not due to social construction. In other words, it's not just mommy and daddy are sexist pigs and they teach little Johnny to play with the truck and little Linda to play, you know, with the doll, right? In other words, there, there is something beyond the social constructivist argument. How would I go about demonstrating this to you? So now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna say, can I get data from different cultures, different time periods, different paradigms, different disciplines, different methodologies, all of which point to the same incontrovertible final conclusion? Well, so let... I'll just do a few, okay? Well, I can look at children who are in the pre-socialization stage of their cognitive development, meaning they're too young to have been socialized. They're three months old. They're six months old. And I could study their sex-specific toy preferences. Now you might say, "Well, how would you elicit their preference? They can't speak yet. They're three or six months old." Well, you can do it through eye gaze. You could do it through how they... what do they go towards, and what you show is that children who are in the pre-socialization cognitive developmental stage are already exhibiting the sex-specific toy preferences that we then see in later childhood. Now if I already stop there, I'm already giving you evidence that is slowly, you know, making the co- you know, the nail in the coffin. But I'm gonna give you a lot more, okay? If you take little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes their morphology and masculinizes their behavior. So little girls who suffer from this disorder are more boy-like. And we take this group of little girls and look at their toy preferences. What do you think happens to their toy preferences? They are reversed. They're exactly like those of boys. So now I've given you two data sets. I've given you data sets from developmental psychology, and I've now given you data from pediatrics, from pediatric endocrinology. Now already, the social constructivist thing should be in the dustbin of bullshit history, right? But let's go on. I could look at other species, vervet monkeys, rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, to see whether the infants in those species exhibit the same sex-specificity in toy preferences. And guess what, my man. They do. Well, you'd have to argue that mama vervet monkey and papa vervet monkey are prone to the same patriarchal sexist influences that we see in humans, right? So now I've given you, if you like, three boxes of the nomological network. Bit by bit, I will drown you in evidence so that it becomes very difficult for you to stick to your position. So what I try to then argue to people, that epistemology that I just described need not only apply to scientific arguments or to evolutionary-based arguments. It could apply to any phenomenon that has a lot of contentious debate around it. So the example that I give in the book, the sort of the final example in chapter seven is, is Islam a peaceful religion or not? Now I don't need to get into hysteria. I don't need to listen to noble prophet Barack Obama tell me that it is peaceful or not. I simply need to build a nomological network, and if that nomological network says that Islam is peaceful, then we've proven that it's peaceful. If it says otherwise, then we've proven otherwise. So I don't need hysteria. I don't need emotionality. I don't need to trigger my affective system. I simply go where the data tells me to go. Does that give you a good sense of how to get vaccinated against BS?
- 22:04 – 26:14
Literature Review
- GSGad Saad
- CWChris Williamson
It does. But is that an effort that people have to do individually? So have I got to go and do this literature review where I scour the internet and I look at this stuff, and is that a veritable source and so on and so forth?
- GSGad Saad
So that, that's a great question. In a sense it's a slightly, uh, less extreme version of putting my ears, am I right? Because what you're saying is, okay, even if I don't... even if I'm open to listening to you, do I have the cognitive, uh, desire to expend-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, more so than, more so than that. The, um, effort for me to protect myself potentially from one of these ideas, is that on me to go out and search for this much stuff, or is, uh, uh, is there some platform or there's some particular voices? Have you got a-
- GSGad Saad
Oh, very good.
- CWChris Williamson
... a book?
- GSGad Saad
Yes. So, so one of the, one of the projects that I'm currently working on, and I just published an academic paper on exactly that, so one of the ideas that I have is to have something akin to a Wikipedia platform-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
... where... What is it?
- CWChris Williamson
It's a joke.
- GSGad Saad
I'm not... This is not a joke. This is real.
- CWChris Williamson
I know it's not a joke, but it's funny. I, I, I've got a question, I've got a question coming up that, that this relates to, so I'm gonna let you go and then I'm gonna give the, I'm gonna give you this question.
- GSGad Saad
Sure. So, uh, but now what I'm gonna say is specific only to evolutionary psychology, so it's not to any debate. So one of the, one of the things that I find most galling when imbeciles argue against evolutionary psychology... Sorry, I don't mean to say imbeciles. That's not diplomatic. People with a differing opinion, also known as lobotomized idiots.
- CWChris Williamson
Morons.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, right. So they will say things like, "Well, you know, bro, evolutionary psychology, it's pseudoscience." Uh, yeah. You're a moron.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
Uh, the mind didn't come from magic. It didn't arise through a magical cultural process. Culture exists in this form because of biology, not instead of biology. Socialization matters, but socialization is not something in lieu of biology. It's because of biology. So unless you...... unless you think that everything in our body is due to evolution, short of the organ that most defines our personhood, this thing called the human mind, then there is no such thing as evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience. Now, you can argue that this particular study in evolutionary psychology did not meet the evidentiary threshold that I like for me to be convinced, but that's also true when astrophysicists are deciding whether the universe is expanding or contracting. So the fact that you- we may debate about specifics in evolutionary theory or evolutionary psychology doesn't imply that the epistemological exercise of evolutionary psychology is false, it's pseudoscience. To say that evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience is like saying chemistry is pseudoscience. There is no other game in town. If you believe that the human mind evolved through material processes, it's not God who put it, there is no other game in town, right? So to come back to the earlier Wikipedia point, so one of the things that I- I'm trying to do here is to, if you like, counter the most common criticism of evolutionary psychology that comes from fellow academics, and usually it is that evolutionary psychology is just a bunch of fanciful just-so storytelling, right? So I sit around, I put on my sexy Barry White music, I- I'm smoking a pipe, sipping some cognac, and I just come up with some bullshit pontification as to why men... And as I showed you a few minutes ago, no, when I want to prove to you that toy preferences are sex-specific for an evolutionary reason, I actually go through incredible length to do so, much more so than other sciences. So i- in my attempt to thwart this, I thought, "Well, if I can get more people to think along the ways of nomological networks and start building these, like a wisdom of the crowd where we can build together." So if you want to go see what is the current state of cumulative evidence to prove that men have a preference for the hourglass figure, you can go to that Wikipedia of nomological networks and see it. Does that
- 26:14 – 31:20
What Are You Bored Of
- GSGad Saad
give you a good feel?
- CWChris Williamson
I- I love that. I think James Lindsay is trying to create something similar, right? But less on the scientific side and more kind of in the rhetoric side.
- GSGad Saad
Is that... Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, very interesting.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, he's, he's got like 300 different definitions of... So he's trying to provide a, a... It'd be brilliant for you to reach out to him. Right, so here's a question. It's supposed to be further down. I'm supposed to ask you this later on, but I'm go- I'm going to ask you it now. Um, this comes from seeing Douglas Murray live. He's been on the show and he-
- GSGad Saad
Mm-hmm. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
I went to go see him speak at a live event for The Spectator. Um, and in it he said something that stuck with me, which is a line he's used before, which is, uh, "When the barbarians are at the gates, we'll be debating about what gender they are." Um-
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Yes, I've heard that quote before. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and that, that married with a quote that all of the listeners will be familiar with, which is that "The greatest minds of our era have been spent, uh, have spent their time working out how to get people to click on ads." Now, my concern is I've got someone like you, multi-discipline polymath, James Lindsay, PhD in pure mathematics, I don't want the brightest minds of our time to be taken up... I don't want this... In the nicest way possible, I wish that you hadn't had to write this book.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Yes. I- I hear you.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, what... Are you bored of talking about social justice?
- GSGad Saad
You know, uh, fantastic question. More than bored, I'm indignant. So oftentimes-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) You are the most-
- GSGad Saad
Right?
- CWChris Williamson
... one of the most indignant people I know. Yeah, I love it.
- GSGad Saad
Right? And, and, but, and, and sometimes people say, "Oh, you know, but when I meet you or I see you, you seem like such a affable, warm and friendly..." It- it's because they mistake my very punchy, my very, at times, acerbic wit and sarcasm as, you know, I'm this mean guy. I'm, I'm, I'm exactly the opposite. I'm the, the... truly the warmest, friendliest guy, but I'm indignant, I'm, I'm angry f- for exactly the reasons that you're saying. I'm angry that hundreds of thousands of students in a world with limited resources and limited time, instead of studying many wonderful things... And by the way, I don't believe that you could only, you should only be studying in university, you know, medicine or law or business or the natural sciences. You could study the social sciences very seriously. You could study the humanities very seriously. You could study literature very seriously. But there's always a commitment to a common discourse, to a commitment to reason, irrespective of whether it's in the humanities, the social sciences or natural sciences. But what I see in the universities, it's a minority, but it's certainly a, a powerful minority, they, uh, they ruin the lives of thousands of students, let alone the bank accounts of their parents who are spending 70, 80, $90,000 for somebody to take queering architecture and feminist glaciology. That angers me. Why? And this, by the way, goes to chapter one of my- of The Parasitic Mind, because I want to explain exactly why I'm indignant. And, and I argue that there are really two life ideals that drive who I am. One is truth and the second one is freedom. And I give examples from many different areas of my life, not just my academic life. So let's take for example freedom, okay? So freedom could be, you know, freedom of speech, right? I'm a champion of freedom of speech. But when I used to be a competitive soccer player, I played the, the playmaker role, the, the number 10 role where I just kind of float around. Whenever I had a coach who would put restrictions on me, "You're playing today more on- in left midfield, and you have to track back and cover somebody," suddenly my brain would explode, because you were removing what I considered to be my greatest asset, which was to kind of look for spaces to freely roam around looking for those opportunities, right? So freedom is something that constantly comes up in my life, whether it was when I was a soccer player, when I'm deciding which topics to pursue as a scientific project. So for example, the reason why I'm a polymath is because I could never accept that...... I'm in a business school, therefore I should only publish in these types of journals. That suffocates me. If I decide-
- CWChris Williamson
You're the playmaker of academia.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly, right? So because of these two driving goals of freedom and truth, I see the world around me through very pure lenses. So then when I see, uh, what I call intellectual terrorists, so the, the post-modernists are l- like, the 9/11, they flew planes onto buildings. Well, the intellectual terrorists, they fly planes of bullshit onto our edifices of reason, right? That angers me. Why? Because I come from civil war, I come from chaos, I come from tribalism, I come from identity politics. And now 40 years after leaving this garbage in Lebanon, I now see it taking foot in academia. So yes, I wish I didn't have to do it, but to the extent that you see me being punchy on social media, it comes from indignation, not from
- 31:20 – 33:23
Gads Background
- GSGad Saad
meanness.
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat) Yeah. Again, I don't have a problem with the way that you deliver things. I think you and Taleb and James Lindsay and, and...
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Is, is, is that the thing? Is that the background that you and Taleb both have? 'Cause there is definitely some similarities in the way that you deliver your discourse online.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah. That, that's another great question. Uh, I think Nassim and I are very good friends for several reasons. One of which, at least if I can speak for him, uh, in terms of... You know, I always joke that Nassim thinks 99% of humanity are useless cretins that should be, you know, killed, because they're imbeciles beyond redemption, and that I am one of the few who makes it into his scene-
- CWChris Williamson
You're in the cut. You're in the 1%.
- GSGad Saad
I'm, I'm, I'm really in, like... I, I think, I think getting the approval of Nassim might be bigger than a Nobel Prize, right? I mean, I say that slightly facetiously, but I think the reason for that is because he appreciates in me that I am a costly signaling guy, meaning that I walk the walk. I don't give a shit.
- CWChris Williamson
Skin in the game, man.
- GSGad Saad
Mm-hmm. Right? So because of that, he respects that, and I also respect that in him. So partly because of our similar personhood when it comes to that combativeness, maybe partly because of the Middle Eastern thing, when you are my friend, I will die for you, right? So... And I won't get into specifics, but I've, I could tell you that when it came to, at certain points, him defending me for something, he was willing to blow up the world to come in my defense. Now, for many people, we... So for example, I have other friends who Nassim despises, and they will say to me... They can't understand why I would be friends with him, right? Because they see him as this vile, nasty... But the reality is that if you're in his corner, he's much more likely to fight and die for you in the trenches than those highfalutin bullshitters who would turn away when you're screaming for help and pretend that they didn't hear you. So I think because of that trait, uh, we're simpatico on
- 33:23 – 35:34
Living Standards
- GSGad Saad
that dimension.
- CWChris Williamson
Fairweather friends, man. No one needs any of them.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Why is it the West where these ideas are proliferating? Surely, living standards being high should give people less to complain about, not more.
- GSGad Saad
So there are several reasons for that. I mean, some of it comes from the Frankfurt School that kind of kicked off some of this bullshit stuff. Uh, some of it is that, you know, if I am suffering every day not knowing if I'm going to get my caloric, minimal caloric, you know, food for the day, I don't have time to pontificate about feminist glaciology. So in a sense, it is a measure of the decadence of the West, right? Like, it's kind of the Caligula effect, right? When Rome becomes too, uh, you know, imbued with all of this hedonic pursuits, it kind of self-implodes. So I think there's a similar thing here where instead of, you know, feasting at the buffet of gluttony, the actual food, we're, we're, we're feasting at the gluttony of bullshit ideas, because in a sense, it demonstrates how well we have it in the West, right? But by the way, that's another thing that really pisses me off, because-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
... the people who, (laughs) the people at Wellesley College who are complaining that they were misgendered should have lived Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock in the morning of my childhood in Lebanon, where I didn't know at 10 o'clock whether at 10:05 my head would still be connected to the rest of my body. Maybe that's another source of indignation, right? When you're constantly whining, when you simply don't know what else there is in the world, right? That is frustrating to those who have lived that, right? So Ayaan Hirsi Ali, do, do you know who that is? Yeah. So Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be someone that people s- seriously listen to, because she's lived Islam, and yet she is a, you know, Hitler bigot who is an Islamophobe. I mean, if a Black woman from Somalia who is an ex-Muslim is somebody that doesn't carry the right identity markers to speak about Islam, then we've, we're lost, right? So I think that's another reason of my indignation, and that is that, boy, are you sheltered when you complain about the things that you do in the West.
- 35:34 – 40:31
Our Values
- GSGad Saad
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting, this. I've been playing with this all year, uh, the idea that in the absence of a real crisis, we create our own, and in the presence of a real crisis, we reset our values. It's like this abundant scarcity paradigm also-
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... is mapped onto, uh, the abstraction and the realism of the problems that we have, and I think very much as you said there, it's a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing. Like, no one's having an existential crisis if you don't know where your next food's coming from. You might be worried about where the next meal's coming from, but you're not that fussed about whether or not your, your social network's quite right or whether you've actualized and you're r-... You just want to be warm, be fed, and go to sleep in somewhere safe. So I, man, I, I, I totally agree. Um, what role does ridicule play in defending the public from these ideas?
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Well, I have a whole section in The Parasitic Mind on the power of satire, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. Is this from-
- GSGad Saad
And-
- CWChris Williamson
Sorry. Is this from an evolutionary perspective as well? Because I'd love to hear-
- GSGad Saad
It-
- CWChris Williamson
I'd love to hear how this maps onto that.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, so I don't... In, in, in the, in the section in The Parasitic Mind, I don't specifically link it to an evolutionary underpinning, although...Off the top of my head, since you asked, w- and this is not specific to satire, but certainly humor has been studied from an evolutionary perspective. Then I'll come back to satire in particular. Uh, humor has been studied in the following way from an evolutionary perspective. It is a, uh, honest signal of your intelligence, right? So, so when women constantly say they are attracted to a funny guy, but you don't, you seldom hear guys saying, "You know, she's gorgeous with the most beautiful hourglass figure, but if she's not funny, there's no-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
"... sex for you laughing ] Linda." Right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. She just doesn't make me laugh. Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
"She just doesn't make me laugh, but my God, what a beautiful behind she has."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
"But, but too bad 'cause she's not gonna get any of me because she doesn't make me laugh, right?"
- CWChris Williamson
Yep. Yep.
- GSGad Saad
So, but the reason why women insist on a, on, uh, funny guys is because usually it is a very good correlate of intelligence, right? It's very hard to be witty, sardonically witty, to be sarcastic at the right delivery if you're a, you know, babbling fool, right? You, you have to have a very sharp mind to be able to i- very quickly identify these things. So now coming back to satire, I think satire... So the, the, the, the expression I like to use is properly activated satire is like the surgeon's scalpel cutting through warm butter, right? Because it cuts to the heart of the mo- the, the stuff, right? So for example, I'll give you one quick example that I just started recently. So right now, on, on social media, I'm not sure if you've seen it or not.
- CWChris Williamson
I have.
- GSGad Saad
I ha-
- CWChris Williamson
I know what you're gonna say. Yeah, it's great. (laughs)
- GSGad Saad
W- what is it? What? Number one.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it, is it where you've been suggesting the most outrageous books that you can for people to read-
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... and then saying, "If you don't read this, then you're a bigot."
- GSGad Saad
I, I, I, I have done that. Thank you for noticing that. No, but now if any-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, there's different weapons, right? There's different weapons-
- GSGad Saad
There, there are different ways-
- CWChris Williamson
... that you're pointing.
- 40:31 – 43:56
The Sharp Tongue
- GSGad Saad
- CWChris Williamson
I would... I mean online is a perfect example. I would much less like Andrew Doyle or Zuby to come after me than Nasim.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And the reason for that is there's going to be so much social embarrassment because they're gonna find a thing that I did or that I said, and they're gonna make me feel so dumb. And this is the, uh, the particular modus operandi of yourself and Andrew Doyle specifically, and Zuby's very famous video where he did the-
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... deadlift record. It's utilizing the weaponry, the semantic weaponry against people who are weaponizing it against you. Um, but yeah, uh, thinking about the satire thing for yourself, I don't know whether you've played... you almost certainly won't have done, but Call of Duty: Warzone is super popular at the moment, and my housemate plays it. And you get to choose like a preference of a loadout of your different weapons, and you can have like this automatic rifle and this knife and this gun or whatever. And it definitely feels like satire is like the go-to primary weapon for you.
- GSGad Saad
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like that's the one that you get. That's the first gun that you pick up, and then maybe there'll be a little bit of this and then a little bit of that. And there's quote tweeting quite a bit, and there's...
- GSGad Saad
Becau- uh, specifically because on social media, I don't have the platform to build you nomological networks of cumulative evidence, right? So I have to take the sharp surgeon's scalpel and very quickly, right? So for example, I say, "You know, it disgusts me when a noble faith that is responsible for 36,000 deaths, uh, 36,000 terror attacks since 9/11 alone in 70 countries, when people associate that faith to violence. That's disgusting. That's phobic." Well, come at me. I'm being truthful. I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, you only have 36,000 data points from 70-plus-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
... countries varying across every ethnic, racial, economic system, linguistic system. If only there was a way to identify a common thread across these. Well, how could you attack me, right? Because you li- uh, right? So by, by providing you with the packets of information in a way that is...... enrobed in sarcasm, in sardonic wit, in satire, it almost makes it- Now the difficulty though is, it's hard to kind of teach a seminar on this, right? Because it's hard to say, "Please come to Professor Saad's sardonic wit seminar so that you can castrate the morons," right? B- because in a sense, there are certain rules that you can use in building your satirical arguments, but it's also instinctual. So i- some people just have it, right? Y- for example, I don't believe that charisma is something that you could teach in leadership class, right? Y- you're either charismatic or not, right? Uh, now you could within certain, you know, little plus/minus epsilon can teach somebody to be a slightly better orator. So even Martin Luther King wasn't as good an orator, you know, early in his career as later in his career, but he had to start off with the stuff which someone else doesn't. So I've always kind of questioned, is there a way for me to truly have a how-to playbook of satire? I don't know. Well, what do you think? Do you think it's possible to teach?
- 43:56 – 46:09
Can You Teach
- CWChris Williamson
I'm currently reading Robert Plomin's book, uh...
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... about, about Blueprint, about genetics.
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And, um, increasingly, I'm no- r- r- realizing just how restricted we are with all of our characteristics, the classic like NBA, I'm not 6'6", I can't play in the NBA example. The same thing goes for this. There are certain immutable truths and capacities and restrictions that you have. Some of them are visible, some of them are invisible.
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And the invisible ones, you know, not everyone's built to be a podcaster. I'm shy to art. Like, I'm really, really... I have the, still the drawing skills I had when I was about five years old. Um-
- GSGad Saad
I, I'm the exact same way.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic. Well, we're birds of a feather. Um, right.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We've done... Your book is fantastic. It will be linked in the show notes below. And that is, that's the... I'm stopping now the talk about social justice and I want to utilize you for the next 20 minutes on some other good topics.
- GSGad Saad
Sure. Go for it.
- CWChris Williamson
Who do you think will win the US election?
- GSGad Saad
Oh, wow. What a great question. Uh...
- CWChris Williamson
I warned you. I warned you that we were out of the safe words-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and we're into the...
- GSGad Saad
I, I mean, the only reason I'm hesitant is because I genuinely don't have a good sense. Uh, I could tell you who I'd like to, who I'd like to win-
- CWChris Williamson
No, that's not, that's not the question that I asked, Gad.
- GSGad Saad
I'm still gonna go with Trump will win.
- CWChris Williamson
Would you have said that in April?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, so at the start of the... So before COVID, I would have said it's 95% sure that he would win. With COVID and all of the imbeciles that now say, "Well, look, the deaths, it's Trump," right? This is like your aunt got diabetes during Trump. Well, there's really only one conclusion. It must be that Trump caused her diabetes because, bruh, it's during his presidency, right? Uh, an Amazonian frog just died in the Amazon. It is during Trump's presidency. So how could you not see the link, moron, right? So because most people have the cognitive abilities of a newborn pigeon, they are regrettably all placing the blame on Trump. So now, um, I think it's almost a toss-up. I think that the polls still show Biden as winning for similar reasons as to what happened with Hillary Clinton. When it comes down to finally going to the booths, I still
- 46:09 – 52:01
Trump vs Biden
- GSGad Saad
think Trump will win.
- CWChris Williamson
If that happens, with the last few months of very, very vehement manipulation by press, and also such compromise by a lot of the people who are weaponizing, um, movements of goodwill for a political agenda on, like, in all different manners, by any means, it was a consequentialist, uh-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... outcome that you were talking about earlier on. It's like, by any means, if we get him out of office, if the orange man fucks off-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's worth it. If he gets voted back in, that is the kitchen sink's been thrown out, the cat's gone at them, you know, somewhat, someone's pooed in the hand, they've had a cra- a crack at that, that is everything they've thrown at him, and it still hasn't worked.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah. Uh, so you're saying what would happen if he were to win in terms of-
- CWChris Williamson
No. Just I, I just think that if it happens, and he, he does win after every weapon under the sun that has been picked out by mainstream media and individuals and movement groups and stuff like that, I think it's a stark message about just how wrong the Democrat messaging, the left messaging generally-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is at the moment, and how much it doesn't resonate with the normal people, not the people that live on Twitter.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. Uh, look, uh, d- do you want me to talk a bit about-
- CWChris Williamson
Sure. Sure.
- GSGad Saad
... why a lot of people have a hard time... "But, you know, Professor, I look up to you, how could you support a maniac like Trump?" First of all, there's a difference between the positions that I take and supporting Trump, right? I always say that I don't have posters of Trump which my wife and I use in the bedroom as foreplay, right? It's, so it's a, so the fact that I explain why Trump is a very viable option doesn't mean that I'm a pro-Trump guy. I understand that he's brash and he's vulgar and he's non-presidential. But as I explained recently in a clip, a Sad Truth clip, there is an expression that I, that, that I bring from, from Arabic that basically says to get drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle, right? So-
- CWChris Williamson
What is, what is that in Arabic please?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, ʾTiskar bil zbibi." Zbibi means like the raisins, but you can also apply it for the cork, okay? Uh, so, so here's the, here's the cork, right? So I could either drink the wine to get drunk or I could just go, "I'm already drunk." Now do you understand the, the, the analogy here? That, that means that it takes very little to get me drunk because I'm a moron, because I'm a lightweight, right? So here's what most people do, including some of my very highfalutin, highbrow, cerebral friends. Okay? Uh, Trump is vulgar. He speaks in a brash way. He's cantankerous. He's...... brazenly boastful. Therefore, he attacks my sense of aesthetics. This is what I call an aesthetic injury, right? But, now look, you see, (inhales sharply) I'm getting drunk. You see? On the other hand, Obama, he's lanky, he's tall, he's majestic. He's got a radiant smile. (inhales sharply) I'm getting more drunk by the second. You see, I'm getting a bit wobbly, right? H- he's got a mellifluous voice. (inhales sharply) Oh my God, I'm getting drunk. He's presidential. Now, what Obama says is utter garbage. It's rehearsed, platitudinous, vacuous bullshit. Okay? I- if anything, the semantics of what Trump might say might actually be much more substantive, but Trump is vulgar and disgusting. He repulses me, therefore, he is a monster, right? This is why in chapter two of The Parasitic Mind, I have a section, uh, uh, the chapter is about feeling versus thinking. It is wrong to pit these two systems against one another. Humans are both a thinking animal and a feeling animal. The problem is when you activate the wrong system at the wrong moment, right? W- when I'm walking down an alley and I see four young mens loit- loitering in the alley and my heart starts racing and I start getting kind of an anxiety thing, so my affective system is kicking in, it makes perfect sense. I've evolved to have that fear response. In that case, having my affective system kick in makes perfect sense. On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, my affective system is not as good to activate as my cognitive system. So when it comes to choosing my presidents, using my affective system as the key driver, he disgusts me, he's repulsive, he's... No, he's... Yes, he is that, but what's the content? He supports freedom of speech, the left doesn't. I already have enough to support him. The fact that he is a brazen narcissist, I couldn't give a shit. Obama was as much of a narcissist, but I didn't succumb to the, the cork, because I see through his bullshit. Y- you get what I'm saying? And I think regrettably, most of my highfalutin colleagues are unable to see this, because they come from a rarefied world where you speak in a c- uh, I can speak as fancily and probably 10 times more fancily than all of them combined, but I can also say bullshit, right? And that, that, that's why I say I'm the professor of the people. So I can connect with Trump on his level. I get what he's doing. He's a buffoon in that... in a style sense, but the content of what he says, he is against open immigration. He cares more about radical Islam. So how could you have one of my friends, you probably can guess who he is, who has historically built his career criticizing Islam, but then when it came to supporting Trump or Hillary Clinton, he supported Hillary Clinton, who is the one who would have opened the door to the whole e- so how do you reconcile this? Well, as he tells me, but he disgusts me.
- 52:01 – 53:59
Trump is simple
- CWChris Williamson
As someone who spent an awful lot of time trying to, uh, separate himself from his emotions, that is not the answer that he should have given. It's, it's so interesting, man, especially as a Brit. L- I don't have a dog in this fight. I mean, I, I, I don't want the world to break, um, uh, but the, uh... I have no preference, and yet I, I can totally see how people get confused by that. But the, the, the bottom line for me is that, yeah, Trump is, um, uncouth and he's simple in a way-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... but that simpleness belies honesty. And-
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... I think that's a big part of why people didn't vote for Hillary, that they were sick of the barefaced... Uh, actually, no, sorry. They were, they were sick of the very manipulative, very malicious, cleverly constructed lies. Like, they'll take the uncomfortable, brash, glitzy, covered in golden stardust sort of ugly truth over, uh, a platitude that they know will never materialize.
- GSGad Saad
100%. And linking back to what you just said to Nassim and I, our friendship, we're both direct talkers, right? We're both no BS, therefore we can see what Trump is. It's not as though we're simpletons who don't understand that he's got certain qualities or qualities or-
- CWChris Williamson
Predilections. Yeah. Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
Right. Exactly. But it's that... I, I don't want to speak for Nassim, I'll... so I'll speak for myself, his authenticity is something that I greatly value. I prefer a bull in a China shop that is uncouth, as you said, who is vulgar, rather than the platitudinous radiant smile of Obama. To me-
- CWChris Williamson
You know why he's stunned.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
You know why he's stunned. Um-
- GSGad Saad
And, and I have a hard time... Before, before... Just sorry, just... I have a hard time understanding why my otherwise very bright colleagues don't see that.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- 53:59 – 1:07:03
Shifts in sexual norms
- CWChris Williamson
I'm... Me and you are cut from the same cloth when it comes to that. I think that there's maybe a little bit of, uh, grumpiness being used as a, um, appropriate measuring tool there. The fact that if you have, not a short fuse, but a, a short tolerance for bullshit, that you actually are able to kind of cut through at least some of the sort of rhetoric that's been pushed recently. Um, we've been talking a lot recently about, uh, the gender sex gap on this podcast.
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, how much do you think that the shifts in sexual norms and sexual marketplace, like less monogamy in Tinder and gender imbalance on campuses and incels and so on, has contributed to the current social unrest among young people?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, an- any specific area of society that we haven't talked about?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, the fa- the fact that we're so ready to riot and loot and also be very vi- uh, sort of, um, vociferous online when we don't have anything to back it up.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, it just seems like there's a lot of unrest among young people. Is it the fact that they're not getting laid?
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Well, I, I, so I don't know if I can tie the incel phenomenon to the, you know, the chaos that we see. Uh, I think it's a bit of a... I like to be very tight, I'd like to have my nomological network exactly tight before I, I pronounce one. But I can certainly tell you that evolutionarily speaking, we do know that societies that have many men twiddling their thumbs in frustrated celibacy is not the recipe for a stable society, right? So for example-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
... if you look around the world across cultures, about 85% of cultures have either condoned or accepted or had some form of polygyny. Polygyny means one man, multiple women. Uh, about 15%, so the rest of the pie is monogamy, and a very, very, very small percentage, way less than 1% is polyandry, one woman with many men.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
Now, in those cases, the, the most famous example of that is called, uh, fraternal Tibetan polyandry. In those cases, it's, it's a Tibetan system where one woman is shared by multiple men, but the multiple men are brothers. In other words-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh my God. (laughs) That's so fucked up.
- GSGad Saad
Right. But, but now let me explain the evolutionary reason for that. For whatever reason, we don't have to get into the details, you don't want to have a whole bunch of men... For example, you don't want only the eldest to have access, sexual access, but then all the younger brothers to be twiddling their thumbs. That's not gonna lead to a stable society. So the next best thing is to have multiple men share a woman, but they're brothers, because then in that case, if the... The best thing is for me to extend my genes directly through direct reproductive fitness. I am sure that it is my child. The next best thing is if the woman that I'm sharing has a child, let it at least be someone who is genetically related to me. So that-
- CWChris Williamson
50% from my genes or whatever. Yeah, exactly.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. So then I can increase my fitness indirectly through kin selection. So, so I can't answer the incel versus chaos, but I can certainly tell you that a lot of evolutionists have thought about what happens to societies when you get a lot of sexually frustrated men, and it's never a good thing.
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say, so evolutionary science, would it say sexual inequality is as powerful of an explanation for rage as economic inequality, say?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, well, it depends what you mean by sexual inequality. I mean, the, the, the, uh, uh, the-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
This... You see what I mean? So it, it could-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, the imbalance, yeah. I guess is what you mean.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. There are different currencies you could use, right? So, uh, but, but speaking of the gender gap issues, this may or may not be where you want it to go, but, uh, one of the things that we talk about in universities is something that I've, uh, I mean humorously but truthfully referred to as the DIE religion, diversity, inclusion, and equity, right? So I reorganized the, the letters so that it's DIE, because it's literally the death of meritocracy. It's the death of common sense, right? Now, in universities, my universities and every other university, it's now being run by the DIE czar- czars, right? So professorships are granted not based on the merit of your CV, but it is based on whether you have the right identity markers. One of which, since we're talking about gender gap and so on, one of which is, you know, some professorships, you are officially not allowed to apply unless you are a woman or you self-identify as a woman. That's not satire. This is literally true. Don't apply, right? It's... Well, first of all, you wonder, how is that not illegal? But now here's the, here's the little rub. 100 years ago, we had institutional, you know, sexism whereby women were denied equal access to education, in which case that was wrong and we've corrected it. Now today, here is the data that I'd like to report to your viewers in the US. If you take five races, so Black, white, Hispanic, uh, you know, uh, Native American, I can't remember the fifth one. So across five races and four levels of education, so in the US you have what's called an associate's degree, which is half a bachelor's, then you have a bachelor's degree, then you have master's, then you have doctoral. So you have five races by four educational levels. So there are 20 cells. Guess how many of the cells do women outnumber men? You follow the question? So there are 20 cells.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
You get?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
How many of those cells... Okay, let's do it the other way, actually. How many of the cells do men outnumber women?
- CWChris Williamson
I just, I had my answer ready.
- GSGad Saad
(coughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Now you, you, you flipped it on its head. Um, I would say that women will outnumber men... I, I think women outnumber men in, in the 20 cells.
- GSGad Saad
You're exactly correct. I guess maybe I set it up in such a way that you were gonna go this way. Now, if it were that we need programs to protect women in university, it should be what it was 100 years ago, which is if we took this exact same data matrix, 20 out of the 20 cells, it would be men outnumbering women, and we need to redress that. Well, today, not 100 years ago, across every race and every educational level, women outnumber men. So what is the logical conclusion of what we should do? We need more programs to protect women, because bruh, misogyny.
Episode duration: 1:07:03
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