Gad Saad The Parasitic Mind | How Bad Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

Doctor Saad, are Jews the most persecuted, if you could call it race in history?

You're asking me to comment about whether I think that's true or not. I think that it's certainly the most eternal form of hatred. There is endless forms of bigotry that don't involve the Jews. So certainly there isn't a monopoly of hatred specifically on the Jews. But in terms of historical, you know, ubiquity, then it would probably be that yes, Jews have been probably the most persecuted people on earth.

And why do you think that is?

So there are many different viable and veridical explanations. I've offered one that is rooted in, you know, my background in behavioral science and psychology. There is a bias called the self serving bias in psychology whereby the way you attribute failures and successes in your life. So for example, most people have the following attributional style. I attribute successes internally and I attribute failures externally. So I did very well on the exam because I'm a smart guy and I studied hard. It's internal. Or if I did poorly on the exam, I did very poorly on the exam because of that Jew bastard, Professor Saad. Right. And so now for most people other than clinically depressed people, that's a pretty healthy way to go through life because it kind of gives you that rosy lens to protect your ego. Now imagine if I can have a mechanism by which I can attribute all failures externally, as I just explained, and I've got the perfect culprit. It's the Jew. So why am I not successful? Because the Jews control Hollywood. That's why I never made it as a whole Hollywood star. Why am I not doing well financially? Because the Jews control banking. Why am I not doing well in academia? That's because the Jews control academia. Why is there a problem in immigration in England with Muhammads raping our daughters? It's because it's the Jews who let in the Muhammads into England. So it becomes a beautifully elegant and parsimonious way for me to be able to explain all of my failures, both personal failures and collective failures on one culprit. Now you might your next question could be, but why specifically the Jew? Why not blame it on someone else? Well, it's because for reasons which we can also get into, Jews historically are a very successful minority in many, many cultures. This is what my friend Yale Professor Amy Chua calls market dominant minorities, of which it's not only the Jews that are an example of, you know, Armenians can be that in many cultures. The Lebanese can be that you could have in Malaysia and in Indonesia, you've got Chinese that are very small in percentage but yet control much of commerce. And so if I am part of a Jewish community in societies where I am a minuscule minority and yet I wield incredible influence in that society, then it doesn't take a fancy evolutionary behavioral scientist to explain why I could turn to that minuscule minority and say, those are the assholes. So that would be a psychological explanation for why you have Jew hatred throughout history.

So I'd love to now flick the switch and thank you for being so open about that. I want to know what successful minority Jewish people know about money so I can get rich like them. Because I look at success in a very different way. I don't look at it and go, it's their fault I failed. I look at them and go, I can learn from them and maybe pick up some tips. So Jewish people of the minorities must be very good with money. It's no accident, surely.

So, I mean, there is an explanation for why Jewish people are successful which then manifests itself in many places, one of which is money. And so I'll give the more general explanation using a personal anecdote. And this is actually a story that I recount in one of my books, in the Parasitic Mind. So I always was very good at two things, and I was only interested in becoming one of those two things, a soccer player and a professor. So you could have gone to me when I was 10 and I would have told you, I'm going to become a professor and I'm going to become a professional soccer player. For various reasons which I've recounted elsewhere, including in the Parasitic Mind. My soccer career didn't flourish as much as I would have liked it to. I did reach a high level, but not nearly as high as I would have wanted to, injuries and so on. And so I quickly then embarked on my academic career, got my first degree. And me telling you about my CV is relevant to the story. So I'm not just using this opportunity to tell you about my degrees. So my first degree was in mathematics and computer science at one of the leading universities, certainly in Canada, if not the world. My second degree was an MBA with a mini thesis in operations research, which is an applied mathematics field. And then I was going on to pursue my. My seg, my Ms. And my PhD. At one point I had been invited to University of California, Irvine. They had accepted me for my PhD. I ended up going elsewhere to Cornell. But because I was visiting UC Irvine, it happened to be where my one of my Brothers lived. He's about. Well, not about. He's 10 years older than me. At the time, he was a very successful entrepreneur and he was trying to convince me, since he lived very close to that university, he was trying to say, well, look, you already have an undergrad and mba. Why don't you come work with me, put on the proverbial suit, get a couple of years of experience, and then you could go back to pursue your PhD. He's my older brother, so I have to be respectful and listen to him. But I really was not interested in not pursuing my PhD because I already knew what my trajectory would be. Well, when my mother got got wind of the fact that my brother was trying to convince me to not pursue my PhD and I had returned to Montreal and I was visiting them at their house, she takes me in sort of very alarmed, agitated state to another room, says, I have to talk to you. I'm thinking, what's up? Say what's up, Mom? She goes, well, I'm hearing that you're thinking about quitting school. I said, well, before I could finish, she says, well, you know that then people are going to view you as somebody who dropped out of school. That's going to be very shameful. Now that answers your question. Having an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science and an mba, both of which were degrees from a top global university. If I stopped at that point, I would be conceived perceived as somebody who dropped out of school. So what's the secret to success? Is that the standards that are expected of you in a Jewish home are astoundingly high. Now, of course, I didn't pursue a PhD because, you know, Mommy thought it would be a cool thing to do, right? I mean, I knew of PhD before she knew what it meant to have a PhD, but it gives you the sense of what is expected of you, right? So there's the old joke of, you know, a Jewish mother is sitting at the inauguration of her son who is inauguration as President of the United States, and she turns to the person next to her and she says, you know, my other son is a doctor, right? So, meaning again that despite the fact that here is her son who is President of the United States, she is showing off about the fact that her other son is a doctor. So that is inbred within the fabric of your existence as a Jewish person. Learn, succeed, excel, do great things in life. That's the secret of Jewish success.

So two questions from that. One is that healthy? Because, you know, an overbearing parent can have drawbacks and two, is there a way we can create that accountability within ourselves and hold ourselves to the same high standard?

Yeah. Great, great questions. So the first one, first, in my latest book, in the Happiness Book, I have an entire chapter on something that Aristotle had already explained to us. The golden mean. The golden mean. Put in the parlance of today's language, too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good. Find the sweet spot. So in the case of Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, he was talking about, for example, a soldier. If the soldier is very cowardly, it's a bad thing. But if the, if the soldier is so courageous that he's taking unmitigated risks, well, he's going to die in three seconds. And that's also not good. The medium, the, the, the ideal, the optimal is somewhere in the middle. So to your question, that's the secret to life. You don't want her to be so overbearing that she stifles you. Her meaning, the prototypical Jewish mother. But you certainly want her to be more than everybody gets. A trophy. You're all perfect. You're all great. No, we. Oh, you got six A's and one A minus. Why the A minus? Why are you bringing shame to the family? Why wasn't your grade? So, so of course you don't want it to be so oppressive that, you know, you're afraid that you're going to be beaten if you come home with an A minus. But you have to find that temperance point, the second one. How do you teach people to have that mindset? Well, have the accurate attributional style that I spoke about earlier. Not all faults are due to the nasty outside world. Right. So, for example, if you are an entrepreneur who has failed in your last five endeavors, a good entrepreneur would say, well, of course there are vagaries that couldn't have been under my control, but are there any decision making processes that I'm making that perhaps could have contribute to these five failures? Well, the mere fact that you asked that question at least offers you the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. But if I come into the process a priory saying that by definition it could never be due to me, it must be that the customers are too stupid to have understood my brilliance. Well, I'm likely to fail again. So be humble in how you attribute successes and failures in your life.

So I want to come to the parasitic mind soon. And I know you're talking a lot at the moment on X about suicidal empathy. I'd like to talk about that. But first, should we fear Donald Trump as the president?

No, we shouldn't. I was honored to be invited to Mar a Lago last month for a mega event. Mega stands for Make Education Great Again. And, you know, given that he is, you know, orange Himmler and he's an existential threat, I'm happy to report that I made it into the den of evil and came out alive, despite the fact that I'm sure that his henchmen knew that I was Jewish. So apparently it's safe to be within a 10 meter radius of him and survive. So, no, you've got nothing to fear.

Were you ever against him being president?

Not even close. And that's not because I'm exhibiting hubris. And you can actually go back. My positions are publicly available. So, for example, before Donald Trump had won his first term, I had appeared on many shows, most famously on Sam Harris's show just before the election, I think it might have been in October 2016. And, you know, Sam had already gotten pretty agitated about the possibility of Donald Trump. And I was trying to explain, using principles from behavioral decision theory, how perfectly rational people could totally vote for Donald Trump. And I'll restate one of those here. So, for example, in decision making, one decision rule that people can use is what's called the lexicographic rule. So the lexicographic rule basically says, choose your most important attribute and choose the candidate that scores best on that attribute. So, for example, if I'm choosing between cars, and if I'm Greta Thunberg and I only care about green issues, then I will choose the car that has the best gas efficiency, because I'm going to use the lexicographic rule. Notice that if I apply that rule, I didn't look at the other 25 attributes that define cars. I only looked at looked at that singular attribute. Now, consumers use the lexicographic rule for many decisions. When I'm buying toothpaste, I don't care about which one gives me better cavity protection. I just pick the one that's most on sale. And therefore I'm using the lexicographic rule when choosing toothpaste. So now let's apply that for the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the time 2016. If all I care about is immigration policy, that's my lexicographic attribute. And if rightly or wrongly, although it turns out to be rightly, I think that Donald Trump would perform better on closing the borders than a perfectly rational human being would choose Donald Trump. And so I laid all that out with all of the fancy professorial things that you could imagine. And yet many people were still screaming a la Sam Harris. And so, yes, I never questioned the fact that he should be president, especially in light of the people whom he was going up against. There could have been a different world where you would have said, between Donald Trump and this other person, who do you prefer? And I would have chosen someone other than Donald Trump. But it was absolutely clear to me that given the zeitgeist, Donald Trump was unequivocally the better candidate.

So what is a parasitic mind?

Well, great question. So let me step back and get to that term. When I first began as a professor, so this is my 31st year as a professor. My goal. So the academic career that I was trying to trace for myself was to infuse evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology in the study of human behavior in general and consumer and economic behavior in particular. That's why I'm housed in a business school. Right. And so how do you apply biological principles to explain our consummatory nature? And as I began that career, I quickly saw that most of my colleagues were astonishingly imbecilic, whereby they actually thought that it was a terribly controversial idea. Get ready, Rob. I hope you're sitting down. That, you know, hormones affect human behavior. Holy shit. Who could have ever imagined that? Because they exist in the rarefied ivory tower, where you speak with a progressive lisp, where biology applies to lowly creatures like the mosquito, like the zebra, like your dog. But surely human beings are cultural animals. We transcend our biology. Right? And so that was my first exposure to sort of the, oh, Houston, we have a problem here. What? How could these otherwise educated, intelligent people be so hostile to what seems to me to be a profoundly obvious thing, which is, of course, our biology affects our behavior, and it doesn't stop affecting our behavior when we put on our consumer hat. So that was my first exposure to ideological rapture. And as my career progressed and as I explained in the parasitic mind, I first faced the first great war in my life was the Lebanese civil war. The second great war was the war on reason that I saw every day around me on university campuses. So then I thought to myself, okay, what could explain this kind of zombified rapture, Right? And so, because I'm an evolutionist, therefore I look at the behavior of other animals, I started looking for a framework that would help me understand this kind of zombified thinking. And so the field of parasitology is the study of interactions between parasites and their hosts in nature. Well, A parasite could, could be in many places in the host's body. So for example, a tapeworm parasitizes your intestinal tract. But I was looking for a parasite that would find its home in the host's brain, altering its behavior to suit the interest of the parasite. So once I found that, which is the field called neuroparasitology. Excuse me, I said, aha, I have my epiphany now. I will now argue that human beings could not only be parasitized by actual physical brain worms. There is a second class of brain worms which, which I called parasitic ideas or idea pathogens that can cause you to hold certain positions that are bafflingly removed from reality and hence zombify you. Right. So I'll give an analogy for the people who may not be familiar with my work. The wood cricket is an insect that abhors water. It wants no part of anything to do with water. When it is parasitized by a hairworm, it's a neuroparasite. The hair worm needs the wood cricket to jump into water so that it could complete its reproductive cycle. While the a parasitized wood cricket will merrily jump and commit suicide in the service of that hairworm. Right, because it's zombified. Right. That's what explains something like of course, 6 foot 4, 285 pound John with a 9 inch penis, could tomorrow call himself Linda, become a girl and is fully justified in sharing the bathroom with your 8 year old daughter. Only Neanderthal buffoons, baboons would say otherwise. You see the analogy between the wood cricket jumping into the water and, and this kind of position. And so that is how I then developed the idea of ideological neuroparasitic rapture and hence the parasitic mind.

And so you wrote the book, I believe, the parasitic mind, is that right?

Yes, in 2020 it came out.

And if you could just give us the short. What was the purpose of writing that book? What was your aim?

Right, so it was to. Well, first to explain all that I just did, how human minds that are supposed to be endowed with the capacity to could become so utterly removed from reason. Where do these idea pathogens come from? And regrettably, as I have repeatedly explained, they all were spawned on university campuses because it takes the unique insights of professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. And so I explain where those ideas come from. And then toward the end of the book, I offer a mind vaccine against those dreadful ideas. Now, what are those dreadful ideas? Postmodernism is the granddaddy of all idea pathogens. Because it purports that there are no objective truths other than the one objective truth, that there are no objective truths. Right? That's what allows me to then say, up is down, freedom is slavery, war is peace, 9 inch penis, men are women, and so on. Right? So postmodernism is the root idea pathogen from which all, excuse me, all of the other ones can flourish. Cultural relativism is another one. Who are we to judge the cultural practices of another culture if they like to cut off the clitorises of five year old girls? Don't be a bigot, Rob. Do not judge others for wanting to do that. Well, that makes me then impotent to be able to fight against these ideas in my society. Radical feminism is another idea pathogen. There are no innate sex differences between men and women. The only reason why Rob can bench fence more, can bench press more than Linda, is because his parents taught him to play rough and tumble, whereas they taught Linda to play soft and nurturing. There are no physiological, hormonal, morphological, anatomical, behavioral differences between men and women. So each of these idea pathogens start off with a noble cause, but then in the service of that noble cause, if they have to murder and rape truth, so be it. And so what the book does is it traces the history of all this nonsense and then offers an inoculation against the nonsense.

And is that to some degree what a woke mind viruses?

Yes. So the woke mind virus is using the language of the Internet. Right? Woke mind virus is the parasitic ideas that I talk about in the parasitic mind. Right. So it is exactly that. Now many people have asked, but is the woke mind virus something that is unique to the current period? Is there something in the water today that made us susceptible to being parasitized? And the answer is yes and no. The, the ability for human minds or the capacity for human minds to be parasitized is not new to the current period. Right. So there was a time a couple of hundred years ago where, when we thought that our neighbors were witches, where we would throw them into. We would throw my neighbor Linda into water. And if she swam, then that proved that she was a witch. And then we would burn her at the stake. And if she sank and drowned, then, oops, I guess she wasn't a witch. Right? And that was a perfectly reasonable way to organize society. So that was a parasitic idea. There was a time when we thought that the black plague that killed, I think, one third of Europe, guess who was the cause of that? Yeah, you guessed it. Rob, it was the Jews. Right? So the capacity for human minds to be parasitized by insane ideas is part of the human architecture since time immemorial. What is unique to the current period are the specific idea pathogens that are infecting our minds. Right? So postmodernism didn't exist until 50, 60 years ago when a bunch of French bullshitters came up with some of this nonsense. Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and so on. Right? So. So the specific idea pathogens that lead to the woke mind virus are specific to today's era, but the capacity for the human bites to human minds to believe bullshit that has existed since the start of time.

So, Dr. Saad, you've got my mind racing on why this is and what we can do to, I guess, be in touch with reality. So something I've aspired to do for many years. I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years and trying to successfully balance having a successful business, being a successful person doing good and being commercial and balance all those. One of the things I've tried to seek out is what is objective reality as opposed to subjective fantasy. The challenge, because I think if you're objective about the reality of what's going on in your personal life and in business and on your balance sheet, and if you're a good person or not, you can improve because you can find your strengths and weaknesses. The problem with seeking objective reality is how can we be objective? Because we've. Everything is filtered through ourselves, therefore we are inherently defined as subjective. So we've almost got to negate self and subjectivity and our own ideologies to be able to seek reality. But is that not impossible?

Right. Wow. Big, big question. It depends in which domain. Right? So of course, to your point, and to my earlier point about attributional styles, we tend to have ego defensive strategies that tries to elevate how good we feel about ourselves. That may be removed from an objective assessment of how truly good we are. Right. So there's the old story of when you ask professors how well their, how good their work is, 90% of professors say it is better than average. Well, statistically, that can't be right. Well, that's because we all professors walk around thinking that they're much better teachers than they really are, much better researchers. And, and there is, there is an evolutionary reason for why we've got these rosy lenses. But when it comes to the pursuit of truth. Right. So I wake up every day as a professor and scientist with the epistemological understanding that there is a truth to be discovered. Now, science is humble in that we always say provisional truth, meaning that what we thought was true 300 years ago, we autocorrect and change in light of incoming evidence. So it's not a revealed truth in the way that you would have in religion. It is true because it's in my book, therefore it's true. Shut up. Don't test it. Right? That would be religious truths, right? But we do believe that there is such a thing as a truth to be discovered. So, for example, in mathematics, there are axiomatic truths, right, that. That we know are true. Within the contrived system of that mathematical, you know, axioms, there are truths. So here is a. Here's an axiomatic truth which, by the way, has been violated. If I prefer car A to car B, and I prefer car B to car C, then through transitivity, it must be that I prefer car A to car C. If I don't do that, I am being intransitive and therefore I'm being irrational. It is absolutely true that men are taller than women. That is a true statement. Even though your aunt Linda is taller than your Uncle Jethro. That doesn't invite the singular datum, does not invalidate what is true at the population level. So science could not exist if there weren't objective truths. By the way, this is the reason why depending on which discipline you are in, university will determine the extent to which you are inoculated against those parasitic ideas. No one is completely inoculated. But I'm housed at a business school. So the top two departments or schools that are least likely to be parasitized by this nonsense are the business school and the engineering school. Why? Because they are wedded to this thing. You ready? It's called reality, right? Because I can't build mathematical models of the economy using postmodernist mathematics. That wouldn't predict economic reality. I can't build bridges using postmodernist physics. There's just physics. Even the postmodernists, when they go to their bullshit academic conferences, have to get on a plane. And that plane adheres to this thing called physics, right? So even they're completely swimming in bullshit, wink, wink. They recognize that they are wedded to reality when they get on that plane. That plane, to then espouse all of their nonsense. So. So, yes, you're right. There are many domains in our lives that are inherently subjective and prone to bias. But there are many other domains. Certainly the pursuit of truth, where, if you come with the Premise that everything is relative, then you might as well not get out of bed.

Is Elon Musk a net positive or a net negative for humanity?

Astronomically net positive and almost no negative right now I can answer this. Both, just as a person who's in the public space, and I can see what Elon Musk is doing, or I can use the fact that I know him personally and have spent time with him. You know, Elon Musk his, his metric. And I mean, I'm not speaking for him because we had a chat, a public chat, where he said this himself. Elon Musk wakes up every day and says, what are some important problems that exist and how could I put my mind to solving those problems? That strikes me as something by which we should all be adhering to those pursuits, right? So, you know, his pecuniary success, meaning his monetary success, has come as an outcome of his other pursuits, right? Like he didn't wake up in the morning and say, I'd like to be the richest person in human history. He took a bunch of decisions. He obviously has a bright mind. He's obviously very entrepreneurial, he's very bold. He possesses all of the unique skills that would have made him aspire to be Elon Musk. And then he set out and did them. And it turns out that great success came to him because he's not a fence sitter, because he doesn't equivocate. By the way, one of the reasons I think that we have mutual respect for one another is because we share those traits, right? He does it in his own ecosystem, I do it in mine. But I've spent 31 years now living a very difficult life in academia because given the bizarro world we live in, all of the stuff that I espouse is extremely dangerous and corrosive. But like freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. And there is such a thing as male and female and biology does matter, right? The average 3 day old squirrel would understand that to be true. But it's apparently not clear in academia. But I stuck to my guns, I held out, I held the line. And then to those who take the great risks come great successes, Right? Right. So therefore, today I sit with a very different profile than most professors have had throughout human history. But I never set out right. I never set out with, I hope one day to be famous enough that Elon Musk notices me or that I could be well known enough that Rob Moore or Piers Morgan invite me on my show. I took certain decisions, I took certain stands, and then the right people pay attention to that. And so live your life with authenticity. And if you do, hopefully good things will happen.

Do we have true freedom of speech? And if we do, do we have Elon Musk to thank for that? In part.

I mean, we don't have complete freedom of speech. And I'm going to answer it in a way that might at first seem surprising. The biggest threat to freedom of speech, I mean, short of you living in North Korea or under isis, is not the institutional obstacles to freedom of speech, but the self inflicted restrictions. Should I say this or you know what, maybe I better temper that. Now, for better or worse, I don't suffer from that reflex. I never modulate a millimeter of what my heart and mind tells me to say, for better or worse, because based on my own code of personal conduct, if I modulate that, then I feel that I'm being fraudulent, that I'm not being fully truthful. I can't put my head on my pillow at the end of the night to sleep. If I say, oh, you know, I should have actually said really what I meant. No, I just come at you. Not because I'm mean, not because I'm impolite, because no metric is more important than being truthful. So we don't have full freedom of speech because we self regulate, unfortunately. Right. So the student who sits in class notwithstanding that, you tell them, please feel free to say whatever you want in this class. Even though I've given them full reign to say whatever they want, they may decide I better not say that I actually love Donald Trump because my group members will think I'm a bad person. So let me shut up. Well, therefore he doesn't have full freedom of speech because he's self regulating. What Elon Musk did with him purchasing Twitter, I mean literally, probably within a day or two of that announcements being made, I went publicly and said, and I even have a clip on my YouTube channel where I say this, I said that of all things that Elon Musk has done so far and of all things that he will ever do in the future, nothing will be remotely as important as him having purchased Twitter. And I think the, the reality proves that to be an accurate prediction because imagine the world we would be in if we weren't able to speak the way that we can on X today. It would be, it would be unthinkable. Wow.

Just recently, Dr. Sarda, and I'm sure you saw this, Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan and I respect what he's done in his field and as an entrepreneur. So I'm certainly not a hater. But, you know, I have had. I have put thousands of hours into that platform, honestly, putting content out every day for eight, 10 years, built up half a million followers the hard way. And I must have been shadow banned, de reached, slapped, demonetized, this, that, and the other a dozen times. And as it turns out, what I said was true. And then he comes out and it's like, oh, well, it was like something out in 1984, and the Biden administration made me do it. And we're getting rid of fact checkers, and we're all for not, you know, no censorship. And part of me thought, hallelujah, I support the right decision. And part of me thought, I knew it. And I'm still pissed off with you. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, forgive me, I didn't mean to interrupt you, because I got your question. I'm completely in agreement with you in that, on the one hand, you want to show grace to people who come around. You want the tent to be fully welcoming. You want to adhere to the adage, better late than never. So, yes, I agree with you. But I also share your incredible frustration, not only because he also. I mean, for probably eight years, I didn't have a single growth of my following on Facebook, right? So I could have millions of followers elsewhere. And even till today, I'm almost. By the way, I've been rejected, getting verified on Instagram many, many times. Right. Because no one's ever heard of me. Right. Whereas you can have 300 followers and you're verified immediately. I've tried several times. Not. Not because it's an ego boost to have the blue mark, but because I don't want other people to be, you know, mimicking my. My profile and so on. And it's been rejected. And now if you go on Instagram, I'm not verified, so I should. But I actually have even more disdain than you do towards Mark Zuckerberg. I was mentioning earlier that there's nothing more important than authenticity than truth. Right. I admire Elon Musk greatly because he exhibits all of those traits. Effort. I'm going to take my position, let the consequences be, whatever they may be. That's a man. The one who comes, Sally, come lately to the thing. You read. You read the room and you read that your bullshit is no longer going to be tolerated. Suddenly you go on Joe Rogan and give us that. That, to me, is the definition of what an invertebrate castrato looks like. Invertebrate no. Spine. Castrato? No. Balls. Right? So I'm going to be less diplomatic than you regarding Mark Zuckerberg. It doesn't take much courage to be the last person who comes around. It takes a lot of courage when everybody in the room says you're an asshole to stand up and say, I don't care. I know that I'm right and I'm going to defend those principles. That's why, by the way, in biology we have what's called a costly signal. And let me explain what that is. Incredibly powerful concept which I originally described in my evolutionary psychology work and then applied it to say, virtue signaling in the woke context. Everybody can put hashtag BLM or can put the Ukrainian flag, right? But that is not a costly signal. It doesn't take much cost to do this. On the other hand, if you speak out against Islam while you're living in Islamic societies, that's a costly signal, right? Now, where does the term costly signal come from in biology? Natural selection is the Darwinian mechanism that explains how animals, including humans, evolve traits that confer survival advantage. Right? So for example, we prefer the taste of fatty foods because we've evolved an environment of caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty. And therefore it makes sense that your ancestors and mine have evolved those gustatory preferences. Okay? So that's called natural selection. Sexual selection explains how we've evolved traits that do not confer survival advantage, but confer mating advantage. How? The peacock's tail could not have evolved through natural selection because it actually reduces its survivability. Having a big tail makes it more burdensome to take flight, makes it more conspicuous to predators. So it couldn't have evolved via the process, the calculus of survivability. Therefore, it must have evolved for another purpose. Well, life is a two step game. First, I've gotta survive. But I could survive all you want. If I don't extend my genes, it's for naught. Therefore, I have to survive and reproduce. Well, to reproduce I have to attract mates. Therefore I have to signal something that is uniquely desirable to the other sex. And that's called sexual selection. So why is the peacock's tail so burdensome? Because for it to be an honest signal, it has to be costly. Okay, Meaning that if the signal that the peacock emits is one that all the bullshitters can copy, then the peahen could not know who is the real genetically superior mate to the one who is only faking it. This is why I explained in my first book, in my 2007 book, the Evolutionary basis of consumption why certain rites of passage evolved to be very costly. So for example, so there is no rite of passage where I just have to do five sit ups and if I do, I get sexual access to all the beautiful girls in my tribe because every single moron, including the fat ones, can do five sit ups. But if you have to tie my feet to vine ropes that could break, put me up on a platform that's 80 to 100ft up, have me jump head first into the wind where if that vine rope does not hold me, my head will splatter. Boy. This, by the way, is a rite of passage in Vanuatu in the Pacific Islands. Now, the one who has the courage to do that gets the pretty girls because we will quickly find out if Rob is courageous or or Rob is a cowardly meat guy. That's going to be the costly signal. So all this to say Mark Zuckerberg did not engage in costly signaling.

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Elon Musk Engage in costly signaling every minute of every day. That's why he's a hero.

So one more main question and then we'll do A few quick fires. So what is suicidal empathy?

Yes, thank you for that question. So, in the parasitic mine, I'm arguing that our cognitive system, our thought processes, could be parasitized and hijacked. But of course, human beings are both a thinking and feeling animal, right? We also have evolved our emotional system. Our sense of jealousy exists for an evolutionary reason. Envy, pride, shame. Right? All. All our emotions exist because they helped us solve specific adaptive problems. Okay? So to complete the story of how human beings can be zombified by ideological rapture, I have to explain how both the cognitive system could be parasitized, hence the parasitic mind, and how the emotional system can be parasitized, hence suicidal empathy. So that's the big story. But what is specifically suicidal empathy? Remember earlier I mentioned that everything is within moderation, hence the inverted U shape. Too little, not good. Too much, not good. Somewhere in the middle, the Aristotelian golden mean. Well, there is nothing inherently bad about empathy. As a matter of fact, we've evolved our sense of empathy for very important evolutionary reasons. We are a social species. We need to put ourselves in each other's minds. This is called theory of mind. We. One of the ways I develop theory of mind is by having the reflex of being potentially empathetic to your plight, Rob. And that oils our sociality. So they are perfectly valid and evolutionarily important reasons why we should be empathetic. But when empathy misfires, when it's misregulated, when it is. When it targets the wrong targets, when it is hyperactive to the point of it becoming suicidal, that's called suicidal empathy. And let me draw an analogy. Ocd, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a debilitating psychiatric condition, but its roots are in an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism. So let me explain what that means. The fact that we scan the environment for environmental threats makes perfect evolutionary sense. So when I meet Rob, and I notice that Rob sneezed into his hand a second ago, and then he puts out his hand to shake my hand, I go, shit, he's going to infect me. So I will, quietly and politely, after I shake your hand, go to the bathroom and shake my hands so that hopefully I don't get your bronchitis, okay? So it makes perfect evolutionary sense for all of us to have developed the mechanisms of. Of checking the environment for threats. I check the back door to make sure it's locked. Here is where OCD comes in, that warning flag that makes me attend to your having sneezed into your hand. And then I go Wash my hands, the warning flag comes up, I tend to it and it goes down, and then I move on with my day. But if the warning flag is so hyperactive that I spend eight hours a day washing my hands and scolding hot water to the point that my skin is peeling off, that I can't get to work because I can't extricate myself from the infinite loop of my germ contamination fear, then it becomes maladaptive. So I take this principle and I argue that that's exactly what's happening with empathy. Within certain norms of reaction, empathy is perfectly evolutionarily adaptive, or once it misfires, by becoming not only hyperactive, but by targeting the wrong target. Yes, Guatemalan people deserve good things in their life, but they don't deserve it more than American vets who've lost their limbs fighting our war. I'm speaking if I were an American now, right? So yes, if I had infinite empathy, I would met it out to everybody in equal measure. But that's not the world that we live in. It has a fixed. Just like your car tank has a fixed amount of gas in it. Well, my empathy tank cannot be meted out indiscriminately to everyone, right? So when I care more about my rapist than I care about me, that's suicidal empathy. So let me give you an example of that. There is a guy in Norway, because in Norway they're incredibly empathetic, much, much more so than all of you Neanderthals. So in, in Norway a. And by the way, on his, on his bio, he says that he is an anti racist and male feminist ally. We already have a problem, okay? So he got sodomized by a noble Somali immigrant, okay? Now in Norway a typical rape is, you know, no McDonald's for you for three weeks. That's your punishment, okay? They're not exactly terribly judicious in their application of the penal code. So he got, I don't remember the exact details, it's all referenced in my forthcoming book. He got. He meaning the Somali immigrant got whatever, a three year sentence or something for sodomizing another man, raping him. But then when the sentence was over, he was going to be deported. The guy who was sodomized felt incredibly bad and incredibly guilty because now his sodomizer would not flourish maximally in Somalia and have all the opportunities that he would otherwise have in Norway. Well, when you are sodomized by someone and you stay up at night worrying that your sodomizer is now not going to lead the most maximally Flourishing life. That's called suicidal empathy.

Wow. And is there a. Has that proliferated out into society, hence why you're writing about it?

Oh, it's it. It pretty much explains every single insane public policy that has gripped the west into its death spiral. Right. I write something about, you know, the dangers of open door immigration. Some degenerate, lobotomized imbecile will write back to me, you're such a hypocrite. You're an immigrant. As is your buddy Elon Musk. Okay? So now imagine what kind of lack of cognitive ability that is. I'm called an immigrant. The people that I'm worried about are called immigrants. Therefore, we're all immigrants. We. So what are you complaining about? That is exactly like arguing, as I explained in Suicidal Empathy that Fido, your house cat is a feline. The wild lion in the savannah is a feline. You see, Rob, they're both called feline, therefore they're the same. This is why when I see a wild lion, he is indistinguishable for me than my house cat fell Fido. And I jump out of my safari truck so that I can cuddle with the male lion and oops, it turns out that he ate me. But I was eaten while being fully proud of the fact that I didn't discriminate between these two felines. That's the kind of lunacy that you're facing in the West. And that's why I'm gatsad. Wow. Right?

And on that note, let's do a quick fire round. Have you got beef with Lex Fridman?

Great question. I did. And to our earlier point of always having a open door of a tent whereby people can reconnect, we've kind of warmed up to each other and have even talked about the possibility of me doing his show the next time that I'm in Austin.

What was the beef? And why did you kiss and make up?

So the beef stemmed from the fact of, look, he's a. He's a very. He is a. He seems like a good person. He's a very kind person, but too much kindness directed to the wrong people doesn't make you noble. Right. And so I was getting pissed off by his positions about, you know, but if only there's more love in the Middle east, then, you know, let. Can't we just all love each other? I don't care about people's genitalia. I just care that you're human. Okay. I mean, in a very banal way. That's also Sweet and kind, but that's not the world we live in, right? I mean, so I was getting upset at what I was considering as an inauthentic shtick. So I went after him. And I mean, I don't call Pete. I mean, I didn't call him names, but I was satirizing his stuff, stuff as I can. It can be quite punchy and spicy. He didn't take well to it. And I get that. But the reality, the reason why we made up is because I don't like to have beefs, permanent beefs, with people. My, my, my general disposition is I'm a very warm guy. I'm a very affable guy. Now, I do come after you if I think you're raping truth, but I do it not because I'm a meanie, because the highest goal is to pursue truth. So that's why, by the way, I was conflicted with Sam Harris because I knew him personally. I didn't want to go after him. And for years I held bit my tongue until I could no longer take his insane Trump derangement syndrome. So I went after him. He ended up blocking me. Now, I think that had he been sufficiently mature and elegant, he would have said, you know what? Gad, you're probably raising some good points. Why don't I have you back on my show and let's iron it out. To Lex's credit, he did do that. He said, hey, you know, I'm always open. I'm like, you know what, I'm really sorry that, you know, if I came across as though I was being spicy with you, I would love to come on your show. Let's do it. And it's not as though I'm going on a show because I lack opportunities to be on big forums, right? It's because I don't want to hold beefs with people. And I think he's a genuinely good person. And the fact that he extended an open, you know, handshake and as I did, hey, it's in our past. Let's move forward.

Which of your stances has got you in the most trouble?

That is a fantastic question. And it's going to surprise you that it's not the ones that you would think of. So probably the biggest. So it depends what you mean by trouble. So, for example, death threats, then. Yes, it comes mostly from, you know, things related to Islam. But in terms of, you know, calls to have me fired from my professorship and all that, it's actually subsequent to an appearance I did on Joe Rogan. Last appearance, but the one before that, I had gone on the show to, well, just to chat with Joe, but also, you know, to talk about my, my last book on happiness and so on. And. And in our conversation, he had mentioned, oh, you know, I was just in Greece with the family. It was great, blah, blah. I said, oh, you know, we just came back from Portugal. We loved it. What Portuguese. Beautiful culture, beautiful people, beautiful. But I got to tell. This is me speaking. I got to tell you, I'm not a fan of that language. And so I made a joke about the language. And then I continued, you know, I mean, he's a comedian, I'm a funny guy, we're having fun. I said, oh, but by the way, Hebrew, which is one of the languages I speak, well, that's a violently ugly language. But nothing is as bad as the French Canadian accent. Well, that's just an affront to human dignity. Now, that is a joke in that. Well, first of all, I'm Francophone. I'm. I learned French before I did English. So it's not as though, you know, I'm being anti francophone. Anti. I live in Montreal. I speak French before I did English. The affront to human dignity is a running gag. If you just go on my X feed, if you don't love Lionel Messi, you're an affront to human dignity. If you think that U2 is a nice group, you're an affront to human dignity. Don't get me started on the Beatles. They're an affront to human dignity. It's a joke. It's part of the Gad charm. It's. I use bombastic language to make a point. Every moron could have understood this. Well, a French Canadian journalist, because they're very uptight about their language, wrote this big hit piece in the biggest newspaper in Quebec where he said, we opened our doors to this ingrate immigrant in 1975. Asshole, I've given you back more than you've given me. And we opened our doors and he's committing linguistic genocide on us. Yes, because I joked flippantly in a 1/2 period about the French Canadian accent. By the way, thousands of French Canadians wrote to me and said, I'm French Canadian. And I was cracking up laughing because I agree with what you said. Our accents sucks, okay? But many, many French Canadians thought that I was the definition of what a dangerous immigrant is. Not that I defend freedom of speech, not that I defend all of the foundational secular values of Quebec society. That didn't matter. I made a Joke about the French Canadian accent. There must have been many, many hundreds of letters sent to my university to get me fired. So lesson life lesson, Rob. Criticize Islam if you want. Criticize transgender. Never joke about the French Canadian accent. They don't mess around.

So what's a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told? Never on Joe Rogan, never on Piers Morgan, just on Disruptors.

I'm trying to think of one that I've never shared. Well, so I'm. It's. It's going to be very anticlimactic if, If I haven't shared it, that it's such a secret. Although I can't think of one. I'm not sure why I would share it here. And if it was some juicy thing, I would have probably shared. So I'm trying to think, could you, could you give me some prods that can help me? I. My life is an open book. Well, here's a secret. My. I'm. I'm a gay man because my wife, who's a biological female woman, identifies as a man, and therefore I'm in a same sex union. Is that, is that a good one? I'm being sarcastic, by the way.

Well, I think you just came out live.

Exactly. Now, I, I don't want to be dishonest. I do believe that I've previously come out as a gay man. So I'm not sure if it adheres to your goal that it would be the first time here. But let me reiterate. By virtue of being married to a transgender man who is a biological female with whom I've had children, I am a proud gay man in front of you.

Hallelujah.

Do you feel empowered?

Oh, yeah. Just the authenticity is just streaming through. Okay, so what's your biggest failure or regret?

Wow, that's a great one. Almost all of the ones that I have listed as regrets, because in the happiness book, I have a chapter on live your life so that at the end of your life, when you're sitting on the proverbial porch and looking back at your life, you hopefully have as few regrets as possible. And in the pursuit of writing that, I wanted to answer the question that you just asked me. And so I've. I. So at one point, I had a. I. I was chatting with Megan Kelly. Do you know who Megan Kelly is? Yeah. Yeah. And I was telling her, I mean, on air, you know, I wonder if I should have at times modulated a bit more my speech to my earlier point. Now, I knew that deep down I Didn't regret that, but, like. Because I know that, you know, there were professorships in Southern California where I wanted to end up, that I knew the people were very interested in bringing me. Oh, but, you know, he used that word on Twitter. And so I thought, you know, I wonder if I. If I would have played the game a bit more, you know, would that have led me to not be living in the frozen tundra for the last number of years? And then Megyn Kelly, to her credit, said something which, frankly, in the deep recess of my mind, I agreed to. And given my authenticity, I don't regret that I'm so authentic. She said, but had you not done those things, then we wouldn't be in love with the person that you are. You wouldn't have the form that you are had you gotten your soccer career. And that's probably my biggest regret, frankly, that I wasn't able to fully instantiate my talent. Soccer. Her answer was, then you wouldn't be who you are. So probably every four years, when the World cup comes and I see the magic of the World cup, and I think, my God, how metaphysical it would have been to be playing in a field with 100,000 people, you know, screaming when you make a beautiful pass. I regret that I'll never experience that, but Such is life.

Two more, Dr. Saad, if you don't mind. So I know you've written a book about happiness, and I've been trying to figure out happiness, maybe more deep or intellectually maybe the last 20 years. And a mentor of mine was sat in the back of a car as we were going to an event, and he was meditating, and I was finding it a bit weird. And he came out of his meditation and he looked at me and he said, rob, I gave up happiness years ago because it made me so damn depressed, right? And that really, you know, upside down, my thought about happiness, which was, you know, the pursuit of freedom and, you know, feeling good, whether it was elation or contentment or, you know, satisfaction. But I realized this is a theory I'd like to ask you about, is that I don't think happiness is the goal of life. I think it's an ideology that's very much of the left. It could be suicidal empathy, in fact, to think that the mission is happiness. And they. They. Johnny got sixth place, and we're all really happy. And I feel like my happiest moments have been right after the hardest moments, the hardest interviews, the hardest property projects we've developed, you know, the hardest challenge immediately afterwards, you get that sense of, I earned that, I beat that, and I feel good. What's your theory on happiness?

Yeah, that's a great question. So in the last chapter of my happiness book, I. I take a quote from Viktor Frankl, you know, the meaning of life, where he's saying, you don't seek success. I'm paraphrasing it. I don't have the exact quote from me, but it is an outcome of making the right decisions. And I said, well, just replace the word success with happiness. And there you have it. So I don't wake up in the morning and say, what are the willful things that I can do to be happy? Right? It's an outcome. Remember earlier I said, when I talked about Elon Musk, I said he never set out to become the richest man in history. He had a certain vision of how he wants to live his life, which is, I want to solve important problems. As a result of that objective, he got the downstream effects of also picking up money. I view happiness the same way. Now, about 50% of our individual differences in happiness stem from our genes. Now, that part you can't control. You're born with a sunny disposition, or you're born with a more dour disposition that you can't control. But the good news, Rob, is that if 50% of your happiness is inscribed in your genes, that means there's another 50% up for grabs. Now, I don't wake up and say, so what can I do to be happy? But I do know that there are certain predictors that if I adopt those mindsets or if I make those right decisions, it will statistically increase my chance of being happy. So, for example, I argue that the two top decisions that will either impart the most happiness or the most misery upon you are choosing the right spouse and choosing the right profession. And it's not terribly metaphysical and difficult to explain. If I wake up in the morning right next to someone and my reaction is either yes or, oh, not another one next to this one. Well, I'm on my way to either being very happy or being very unhappy. Now, after I leave that person, if I go to a job that gives me great purpose and meaning, to your point, the toughest interview you did, you came out, yeah, that was amazing. The toughest real estate project. If that gives me purpose and meaning, okay, great. And now I return home to that person that I really love. I've pretty much cracked the code of living a good life. Now, is it guaranteed that the person you choose will give you. No, that's why life is navigating through statistical probabilities. But there are things that I can do that augment the likelihood of finding the right spouse. So, for example, birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract. Those are two opposites maxims in terms of who you should choose your life. Well, the research is unequivocally clear that when it comes to long term success of a union, a marriage, birds of a feather flock together is much more operative now flocking on witch feathers. If we share values, if we share belief systems, if we shared worldviews, that is going to greatly increase the likelihood of us being happy. Why? Well, let's take an example. If I am a acerbic atheist, I think religion is complete bullshit, it's a poison. If my spouse is a committed Catholic who lives her life being closer to Christ, it doesn't take a fancy professor to say we're starting on the wrong footing. Yes, you'd like to think that love conquers all, but it doesn't. And so if you can find someone that shares your foundational values, you're certainly doing a good job. So, for example, I'm a very playful person. The fact that I could be with someone who appreciates my playfulness, who shares that birds of a feather flock together makes our union that much more enjoyable because she really is truly my best friend with whom I say she, I'm sorry, earlier I said that I'm gay, he is my best friend and therefore we could play together. Right? So to summarize the long winded answer that I gave you, don't pursue happiness willfully, rather pursue life with honesty, dignity and authenticity and the downstream effects as you'll wake up and you say life is good.

And the final question is, this show is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you?

It means going against the orthodoxy. It means that if 99 other people say this, it doesn't mean that you have to say so. If you've got compelling evidence that suggests otherwise, be a honey badger. A disruptor, in a sense has to be a honey badger. Let me explain to I don't know how much of your audience is British or not, but many people don't understand the reference of a honey badger. In the last chapter of the Parasitic Mind, I implore people to activate their inner honey badger. Why did I choose that animal? Because it has been ranked as the most ferocious and fiercest animal. Now that's a big title to have because there's a lot of fierce animals out there. It's the Size of a small to medium sized dog, 40 pounds. And yet it is so ferocious that six adult lions can come to it in the savanna and they see it and they go, oh, I don't want to mess with this guy. How does it do that? It is astoundingly self assured and ferocious. Right. So that the lions are thinking, okay, I can go after it and probably he's going to give me a good licking or I can go elsewhere. So it stands as though it's 6 foot 8, even though it's 5 foot 3, so to speak. Right. And therefore, when I tell people, activate your inner honey badger, I'm not imploring them to be physically violent. I'm saying, look, if you have a certain set of principles that you can fundamentally defend, don't cower away, be a disruptor, be a honey badger. Fight for what's right.

And where are you most active on social media? And which one of your books should we start with?

Thank you for that question. Probably by far the place where I've got the biggest reach and where I contribute the most is on X. So at Gadsa G A D S A D, that's the place. Of course, I host a show called the Sad truth, both on YouTube and on on podcast, so you can watch me there. In terms of the books, probably the one that has resonated the most with people so far has been the Parasitic Mind. So of course I recommend that. But each of my books, you know, is quite different. If you're very interested in, you know, evolutionary psychology and how an understanding of our biological heritage affects our human behavior, then you want to go into my earlier books. If you're interested in happiness, you want to go to my latest book. But probably the the kind of entry point to Gad Sad that most people are not familiar with is the Parasitic Mind because it was the most popular book I wrote.

So this has been fun, entertaining, enlightening. I've had a great time. Thank you for being on the show.

I reciprocate all those warm sentiments. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Cheers.

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