 Hello, and welcome to Wrecked, the Michael Reckman-Wald podcast. My guest today is an intellectual giant. He's the godfather of anti-wokeness and a hero of liberty. Dr. Gad Sad is professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal, and the former holder of Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences in Darwinian consumption. Dr. Sad has received the Faculty of Commerce's Distinguished Teaching Award in June of 2000 and was listed as one of the hot professors of Concordia University in 2001 and 2002. I'm assuming that the hot designation was based at least partly on his stunningly good looks. Sad was appointed newsmaker of the week of Concordia University for five consecutive years from 2011 through 2015. Professor Sad has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology and marketing and consumer behavior. His works include the consuming instinct, what juicy burgers, ferraris, pornography, and gift giving reveal about human nature, the evolutionary basis of consumption, evolutionary psychology in the business sciences, along with scientific papers, some 75-plus, many at the intersection of evolutionary psychology and a broad range of disciplines, including consumer behavior, marketing, advertising, psychology, medicine, and economics. His psychology today blog, Homo Consumericus, and the YouTube channel, The Sad Truth, have garnered over 7.2 million and 30.4 million total views, respectively, as of when that was written, probably more now. His podcast, The Sad Truth, with Dr. Sad is available on all leading podcast platforms and has yielded 7-plus million downloads since June of 2020. Dr. Sad is a leading public intellectual who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, and common sense. His fourth book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, was released in October of 2020. It has since become an international bestseller. His fifth book, The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life, was released yesterday. I would like to also add that Gad is part of a thriving and growing email list of dissident professors and scholars, of which I am also a member. This list includes Janice Fiamengo, Philip Salzman, and Jordan Peterson, among many others. The list continues to grow as the academic casualties of wokeness mount. Gad Sad is also the person who has taught me the meaning of aposemitism. I'm wearing a pink shirt in honor of this discovery. Gad is a fun-loving guy, so we're likely to have some fun here today. Hello, Gad. Welcome to Wrecked. How are you? Oh, hi, Michael. What a lovely introduction. I think it's the first time that I've been introduced with the use of aposomatic in it. So thank you for being original. Okay, great. I know you're really busy these days with your new book having just come out. So thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. And so I just want to jump right in here. As you know, this podcast is hosted by the Mises Institute, and I know you're very familiar with Mises' work named after Ludwig von Mises, the great classical liberal. The Mises Institute, as you know, is a pro-free market and pro-private property think-tank. So I'd like to ask you, what can evolutionary psychology tell us about the free market? That is, what is the relationship between what I guess you call market selection and voluntary exchange? Wow, what a good first substantive question to lead us off. You're not hitting me with an easy sort of thing to swing at. Look, individual differences is something that psychologists study, right? The fact that we recognize that we're not all the same. And so the idea of capitalism precisely recognizes that different people have different talents, and the market will assort us, depending on our abilities and our drive and so on, whereas competing socioeconomic and political systems, such as, say, communism, are antithetical to human nature. So in that sense, they are anti-Darwinian, they are anti-evolutionary psychology. E. L. Wilson, the very famous evolutionary biologist who recently passed away, who was an entomologist. He studied social ants. He said, when he was asked about communism and socialism, he said, you know, great idea of wrong species, right? Because he recognized that communism works well for a species that has all members of the group that are equal other than the queen. But humans are not social ants. Some of us are taller, shorter, harder-working, less harder-working, ambitious or not, and so on. So, of course, freedom, the idea of freedom, the idea of personal heterogeneity is a fundamental feature of our human nature. And so therefore, free markets certainly substantiate our individuality. Yes, that's perfect. Beautiful. And, you know, that's funny that you mentioned E. L. Wilson, because I reference him in my second question to you here. Evolutionary psychology, while I'm a very big fan of it, is considered anathema in many academic circles. I'm reminded of how Wilson was treated on college campuses. Your own work reminds me of his classic book, Consilience, by the way. How has your work been received, other than the many, many thousands of citations that you've gotten? How has it gone over, in general, in terms of these other disciplines and how their professors and students treat you? Thank you for that fantastic question. I love that you referenced E. L. Wilson's book, Consilience, which I only wish more people would read, because the concept of Consilience, as his book explains, is about unity of knowledge. So physics is more conciliant than sociology, not because physicists are inherently smarter than sociologists, but because physicists create a coherent, conciliant tree of knowledge. Right? For example, in chemistry, you don't have people who are for the periodic table or against the periodic table. We agree on that core knowledge, and we move on. Whereas in sociology or in the social sciences, you can't even agree whether, you know, there is such a thing as male or female and what constitutes male or female. So we're going to have a very quick bifurcation in our understanding of reality if we can agree on such fundamentals, which then segues into the primary question, which is how has my work been received? It depends, Michael, on whether those who are evaluating my work come from the natural sciences or the social sciences. So without too much generalizing, but I think it's a fair generalization, if someone is well entrenched within biological-based thinking, then they will read my work and say, oh, this is fantastic. Of course it makes sense that we can't understand economic decision making and consumer decision making without understanding the biological mechanisms that drive such choices. On the other hand, the social scientists, my colleagues in the business school have historically been very, very hostile toward my work. Now the good news is that science is autocorrective. So if you are dogged, if you are assiduous in building evidence in support of your positions, they will eventually come around. It might take a long time. So I do have many, many examples of people who, you know, this is not my 30th year as a professor. So I've seen the progression in terms of people accepting my work. So many of the people who, you know, five years out from my PhD used to think that my stuff was complete nonsense. Really mean consumers are biological beings. That's insane. Now are the ones who are inviting me to their university and saying, oh, it will be an honor to host you. So hang in there. If evidence is on your side, you will win the argument. Yeah. And you use this phrase or this term, biophobia, to refer to this kind of disdain or kind of a problem with the biological basis of our being. That's a very problematic idea and it's just unbelievable. Everything has to be socially constructed and culturally constructed and linguistically constructed or else it's being, it's called reductionist and so forth. So that's all very good that you're doing this kind of work and I've done it for so long. I think it's fantastic. Thank you. Now I just want to ask you, when you use this term mind parasites, are you using this term metaphorically or do you mean this quite literally? I guess what I'm asking is for you to remind us of what the term meme means and how memes arise and spread. Yeah, beautiful. So the term meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 classic book, The Selfish Gene, which I highly recommend for everybody to read if you haven't done so already. The idea behind the meme is that humans are inherently both a biological and cultural animal. So in the same way that genes propagate, memes propagate. What's a meme? Well, a meme is any packet that could be transmitted from one brain to another. It could be a jingle that I'm singing. You hear me singing it. You start singing it. Well, there's been a memetic transfer. It could be you reading my book and therefore my ideas become memetic and get transferred to your brain. So the mind parasite is a somewhat different concept because a meme itself, its valence could be positive, could be neutral, or it could be negative. But parasitic has a nefarious connotation to it. And so as an evolutionist, of course, I'm well versed in studying how other animals behave to then draw links to humans. So if I want to understand economic decision making for humans, I could also study how other primates engage in distribution of resources, let's say. That's called comparative psychology because you're comparing human behavior to other species. So I started, as I was trying to write my last book, The Parasitic Mind, I wanted to have a framework that was grounded in the animal kingdom. And so that's how I fell on the field of parasitology, the study of parasites. But neuroparasitology, Michael, is neuroparasite. So for example, toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that can infect many animals, including human brains. But the most popular example is discussed, when the toxoplasma gondii infects the brain of a mouse, the mouse loses its innate fear of cats, and it actually becomes sexually attracted to the smell of the cat's urine, which is not a very good sexual attraction to the whole. Now neuroparasites, what they're doing is that they are altering the neuronal circuitry of the host to suit the reproductive interest of the parasite. So then I had, aha, I had the framework, which I could then use to argue that humans can not only be parasitized by actual mind parasites, physical brain parasites, they could also be parasitized by ideological parasites, therefore postmodernism, as I know you're a big expert and you were in the humanities, so you know about these parasites. So postmodernism, social constructivism, biophobia, cultural relativism, militant feminism, are all these packets of ideological parasitic pathogens that alter my capacity to adhere to reason, logic and common sense. And so that's why I titled the book, The Parasitic Mind. Yes, that's great. And how is it evidenced that these things debilitate reason and that they infringe on the capacity to think properly? How do we know that? Well, I mean, I can give you an academic explanation, but it's probably more vivid to just give you examples, okay? So there was a famous case of a, I think it was a Norwegian man who had been raped by a Somali refugee, a man who was raped by another man. And when after serving a ridiculously minimal sentence, and then the Somali was going to be deported, the Norwegian man was incredibly sad and blubbering and crying that he felt guilty that now the Somali guy was going to be returned to Somalia, right? That doesn't seem as though it fits with our evolved emotional system. Most people, if they're going to be raped, are probably not going to be filled with empathy toward their rapists. But if I am somehow convinced by a cocktail of ideological parasites that I am evil, the West is evil, one of the ways by which I could demonstrate that I'm progressive is to engage in orgiastic self-loathing, well then, guess what? I do feel really bad for the guy who sodomized me and I am guilt-ridden that he's going to lead a difficult life in Somalia. So that's one example of countless. May I give you one more that's very powerful? Yeah, absolutely. So this next example I actually discuss in a bit of detail in the parasitic mind. So there was a doctoral student at, I think it was Hebrew University. She was a Jewish student who wanted, she's super progressive, therefore the Israelis are evil, genocidal, maniacs and poor Palestinians and so on. And so she wanted, as part of her, I think doctoral dissertation, she wanted to demonstrate that there was rampant rape of Palestinian women by the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. So then she conducted the necessary research and to her utter dismay, found out that there wasn't a single documented case of rape by an IDF soldier on Palestinian women. Now did that cause her to revise her upriary hypothesis or her position? No. She actually then argued, Michael, are you ready? You're sitting down. She actually argued that, look how much Israelis are othering the Palestinians and that they find them so grotesque that they're not even worthy of rape. So let's step back. This is not that satire. This is a real doctoral student who I think won an award for that paper if I'm not mistaken. If she found that they had been rapists, then the Israelis are evil. If she finds that there wasn't a single case of rape, then the Israelis are vile racists. So all roads lead to bigotry. That shows you what happened when you have a parasitized mind. Yes. So it's something that overwrites what? It overwrites the evolutionarily transmitted responses that one would normally have to circumstances. I would take it. Exactly. And it renders you blind to incoming evidence, right? An honest interlocutor basically says, I'm going to take a position. But if Michael comes along and gives me a deluge of evidence that suggests that I was wrong, then I'm going to say, hey, I guess I was wrong and thank you for showing me the way, Michael. But if you are fully parasitized, then you are perpetually walking la, la, la, la, la. I don't want to hear it. You can show me. Could ever sway me away from my position. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that's what happens. I mean, it's just a stunning ledger domain that they pull off when you confront them with evidence. They'll even say, as in the case of your own family members you mentioned in your book, they'll switch sides just to prove you wrong. Do you want me to mention that story? Because it's a... Do you want me to explain it or do you want to move on? You can mention it. Sure. I think you're talking about the one with the ancient Greeks, correct? Yeah, that's right. You said they weren't Christian, yeah, because they existed before Christianity. Right. So this family member says to me in passing, oh, those ancient Greeks, those Christians, they were so anti-Semitic. And so I said, well, I'm sorry, I don't mean to correct you or contradict you, but those ancient Greeks were not Christian. Well, of course they're Christian. What do you mean? I said, well, no, as a matter of fact, the way you mark the era is by saying BC before Christ, before Carmen era. You're literally marking it by virtue of them not being Christian. So when that person then finds out that there is no way that they could win the argument, they look at me in an ultimate mind F thing, right? It's an epistemological mind F, if I don't want to use swear on your show. And that person looks at me and says, right, so I was right. I said that they were not Christian and you said that they were, right? Now that person knows that they're lying. That person knows that I know that they're lying, but yet is so proud in their in their unwillingness to concede that they play that mind game. Yeah, incredible. You know, so I guess I just throw this out there. I think we know the answer. But what do you say to these people who still suggest after this cultural revolution has utterly ravaged the social body that wokeness is just some blue-haired kids on campus and merely part of a relatively unimportant culture or worse? Yeah, that's a great question because that's exactly the type of response that I used to get. And I think you can probably attest to this because you too were an early person warning from top of the mountain about this nonsense. That's precisely the answer that I would get, which is, oh, come on. Sure, that blue-haired person is there, but that's just some esoteric person in the humanities. Why are you exaggerating the seriousness? And the answer that I would give then, and I'm sure that you agree, is that, yes, those ideas might start off in an esoteric humanities department, but eventually those ideas get into every nook and cranny of society. They define our HR departments. They become the prime minister of Canada. So you certainly can't argue that it's just some esoteric campus lunacy nonsense. Right. Ideas have consequences. If you inculcate these ideas with students for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, they become our leaders and then we suffer the consequences. Yeah, absolutely. And they're everywhere. And now it's in corporate America. It's in every sector of society. And it's become completely, it's completely revolutionized the whole culture. So we'll get talk later about what we do about that. And I think your recent book, your forthcoming or recently published book will hopefully address that and we can talk about that. But you wrote in the parasitic mind that freedom of speech, quote, is the source from which all our freedoms flow. I would agree with that. And but I would also ask you in the context of this particular podcast to talk about the relationship between free speech, freedom of speech, which is, I think, primary and the free market. What is the connection there? Well, I mean, let's think about advertising, right? Advertising, you always assume that for the free market to operate properly, the consumers must be properly informed and there so that they can make the optimal choices using sort of the classical economics parlance in order for a consumer to maximize their utility. They need to be fully informed. The only way that I can be fully informed if there is a complete free flowing exchange of information, right? So when a consumer of a prospective consumer of vaccines, right, I want to decide through body autonomy, if we believe in that concept, which we should, that I have the right to decide based on all available and relevant evidence for or against whether it should apply to me. If now someone comes along and says, no, you're not allowed to see on YouTube a physician who is questioning the efficacy of the vaccine. Then I'm not living in a free market. At least the free market, the exchange of information. So, of course, these ideas go hand in hand with one another. I would also add that, and I'm not sure if you were going to go there, but for me, freedom of speech is a deontological principle. And so this is something I've been constantly harping on because it really explains many of the confusion that people have. There are two ethical systems, Michael. There is what's called deontological ethics. Those are absolute truths. So for example, if I were to say it is never OK to lie, that's a deontological statement, a consequentialist statement would be, well, it's OK to lie if it is to spare someone's feelings. Now, when it comes for, say, the following, if your spouse asks you, do I look fat in those genes? And if you wish to remain married, then you might want to put on your consequentialist hat and say, no, you ever looked more beautiful. So for many, many things, we should all be consequentialist ethicists. On the other hand, when it comes to certain foundational principles that that are at the root in defining our Western values, those are non-negotiable. Those are deontological principles. So I never want to hear I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe in presumption of innocence, but not for Brett Kavanaugh. No, you either believe in presumption of innocence or you don't. There is no but. And so, yes, free exchange of ideas. By the way, to demonstrate how committed I am to this, the ontological principle of freedom of speech, I am Jewish who went through the Lebanese Civil War and I support the right of Holocaust deniers to spew their nonsense, not because I agree with them, not because I think they're saying good things. But in a free society, I have to have thick enough skin to even withstand the most grotesque falsehoods and nothing could be more offensive than Holocaust deniers. And yet I support their right to be. There you go. I mean, that's a deontological position. And you have no pushback from my audience on deontology because this is very, you know, the market principles that the Mises Institute espouses has is deontological. It's not consequentialist. So now, this kind of relates because you've written that the general idea that we must weigh our freedom of speech against the right of others not to be offended is not a right. There is no such right. And I remember in a classroom before I left NYU, I told students, there is no right not to be offended. Several students, mostly women, objected. So where did they get this idea that there's a right not to be offended and how did this spread? Well, you're right. Well, I think it comes from a conflation between the highest ideal being truth and reason or feelings, right? So yeah, so if for exactly, right? So so if the objective function that I'm trying to maximize is to minimize hurt feelings, then there are all sorts of things that I should never say on campus. On the other hand, if the objective function that I'm trying to maximize is the dogged pursuit of truth, then that dogged pursuit must be pursued irrespective of who might be heard by that story. Now, let's take it in a concrete sense. If I am a physician and you come to me and you're 50 pounds overweight, what does the Hippocratic oath tell me that I should do? Should it be that I say, hey, you need to lose weight because there are endless downstream negative effects to being heavy? Or should I be saying, hey, weight is a social construct. You're healthy at any weight. People will love you at any weight. Well, guess what, Michael? As you know, the fat acceptance movement, the body positivity movement is the latter, which basically says once you medicalize obesity, you are hurting people feelings. And so no, as a physician, I am guided by the deontological principle of always telling the patient the truth. Being heavy has many downstream effects. And if your feelings are hurt, so be it. Yeah, absolutely. You chronicle cases of deplatforming on university campuses. I just want to point this out. You missed one big one, and that is when I had a class canceled by Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, when I invited my Louis Annoplas to speak to a 14, a whole class of 14 students. He actually canceled my class, called NYU, and had the class shut down. The mayor of New York was that close to work before you left, or was it many years ago before I left? It precipitated my leaving, because what it did is brought NYU back to the table, because they thought, I thought, well, you know, they're going to back to the negotiating table. If they're going to, they thought maybe if he's going to have my Louis Annoplas, who knows who he'll invite next. So let's offer some money, you know, and get this over with. So that's basically what happened. Well, have you, if I may ask you, I know you're asking me questions, but if you don't mind me turning the table. Now, having been out of NYU for a few years, do you have any sense of regret? Or is there a complete thousand pounds off your back? That's a great question. Okay, so I miss certain things about teaching. And even academic research, I still write consistently. But the whole, you know, academic enterprise is so corrupt and destroyed and brought into the core that I don't really miss it. And frankly, I'm doing better as a free markets intellectual than I did as a NYU professor. NYU was in the middle of New York, which was one of the most expensive cities on earth. They, you know, they didn't pay that well. It wasn't that great of a job and we come down to it because of the cost of living and, and so forth. So I made a market choice. And I think I made the right one. More power to you, sir. Yeah. Let's talk about social media a little bit, if we might. I've argued that the Google, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, their, their state apparatus has given that, especially in the case of Facebook and Google, their startup funding actually came from the state. And given that as the Twitter files and the recent Missouri versus Biden case have shown us, they regularly collude with the government. What do you reply to those who say, but these are private companies. They can censor whatever, whoever they want. Well, I specifically address that position in the parasitic mind and never even if it weren't that they received the startup funding from the government, which you stated, even if they had been fully private, that still would not be a compelling argument to me because freedom of speech is, is part of the ethos of a culture, right? So, so, so the fact that you're a private company doesn't imply that you can violate certain deontological principles on which the entire society is built, right? I mean, I don't know if this is a good analogy, but I can't murder someone within the private property of my private company and then argue, hey, but that, that's private territory. So, so that deontological argument of murder is illegal doesn't apply in my company. I'm not sure if that's a perfect analogy, but you get the point. So the idea that look, look, all of these social media companies as I state briefly in the parasitic mind have more collective power on us than all dictators throughout history put together. They decide what we see, what we can say, what we can't say. So to argue that they're just private, innocent, you know, what, what do they call it? They're not publishers, but they're what, what is the, what is the distinction? They're not publishers, they're just forums or, they're forums, right? Nonsense, right? I mean, even someone like me who is so doggedly free speech and I say this, I don't know if I, if it was pragmatic of me to do this or whether I should be ashamed for having done so, but I've admitted it on previous shows and I'll admit it here. I remember when Matt Ridley, I don't know if you remember him, you know who that is. He's an evolutionary biologist. He was in the House of Lords. He wrote a book recently with a co-author. Her name escapes me, which was one of the early books arguing for the lab leak theory for the COVID virus, right? And he had been on my show a few times. He even was someone who was one of the endorsers of the parasitic mind. So his people had reached out to me and said, this was during the COVID era. And his people said, hey, they would, they would love to come on your show and discuss the book. And I said to them, I guess, frankly, I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of, but I said to them, look, I'd be happy to host you on my show because you know I have hosted every single person who, whom no one else wanted to host. So I'm certainly not afraid to do so. But pragmatically speaking, this is what's going to happen. Our chat is going to disappear. And I'm going to get, at the very least, a strike against my channel. At the very worst, my channel will be removed. So does it pragmatically make sense for me to host you when we already know it's going to be for not, it's going to be a waste. But just the fact that I had to engage in that calculus in the 21st century as a professor really shows you how bad the zeitgeist is. Yeah, it does. It shows you how bad. That's why I wrote the book Google Archipelago because that's basically what we're dealing with. Exactly. You mentioned in the book, you know, and you have a very large social media footprint. But there are people that confuse the right of speech, free speech, with a compulsion to listen to speech. As if, and suggest that as if blocking a Twitter user as a free speech absolutist makes you somehow a hypocrite. What do you say to these people? Oh, it, it, you can't, this, this upsets me to no end, right? Because someone is insulting me, goading me for, you know, five straight days. And I'm staying calm and cool. And then finally, I just say I've had enough and I block them. Then they go to some other burner account and they say, look what a fraud and hypocrite Gatsat is. He's a free speech absolutist, yet he, he, you know, he violates my freedom of speech. I mean, it is at the level of intellect of a antiquated toaster to be so idiotic, right? I mean, do you not see that I have a right to walk away from you? That doesn't violate your right to free speech, but you're right. It's a common theme that comes up every time I block someone. It's insane. And it really, it really goes to the point of like these leftists who suggest, you know, they're being injured by speech, but no one told them they had to attend to it at all. No one told them that they had to go. No one said they had to subject themselves to anything. So it's really, it's insane. Let's go to some things about the Academy a little bit more. This, this idea of other ways of knowing, which must drive you as a scientist completely crazy. I studied this nonsense in the field of science studies so-called really a misnomer, if there ever was one. And speaking of the Mises Institute, Ludwig von Mises, whom you cited in your book, argued that, you know, he coined the term rather polylogism to refer to this folly. That is, he captured this notion that knowledge claims, this claim rather, that knowledge is based on the, is veridical based on the idea, identity of the knowledge claimant. This is absolutely rampant today, this polylogism. And you see it, by the way, racial. So there is a black mind, there's a white mind, but you also see it in say Marxism, there is a proletariat mind and there's a bourgeois mind, right? So it's exactly to that point. Depending on the identity of the person, either processing the information or promulgating the information, you get different truth claims. That's insane. Then what is science? Exactly. I mean, this is, so really, this is an ultimate subjectivism, right? I mean, this, this, this, and then it really comes down to an epistemic nihilism, because you can't really have any claims that are true when it's utterly based on the subject rather than the object of knowledge. This just completely invalidates objective knowledge. Exactly right. And I call it, so you can certainly call it epistemological nihilism. I think you called it, which I've also used the term nihilism. I call it actually intellectual terrorism, right? And I draw the analogy here between, you know, the the 9-11 hijackers flew planes onto buildings. Well, postmodernists fly planes of bulls onto buildings, right? And they are edifices of reason, right? Because it's exactly what you said. How could I wake up in the morning as a scientist and say that there are truths and regularities in the world that I can try to uncover if I think that it's all completely shackled by subjectivity, right? Now, it's important, though, to remind people that science operates in provisional truths, meaning that which we thought was true 300 years ago, we do have the epistemological humility to say, oh, well, that was no longer true. We now have a new truth position. But we do operate under the premise that you and I can agree on some truths. Take, for example, my first degree was in mathematics and computer science, right? Well, mathematics is defined by the fact that there are axiomatic truths, right? And I remember in, I think it was 2016 or 2017, Michael, using one of my satirical clips, I introduced satirically the new field of social justice mathematics, where I basically argued we shouldn't use marginalizing words like irrational numbers because that marginalizes mental health. And I just did a whole bunch of stuff. And I had many mathematicians write to me and say they just sit and watch this and crack up laughing. Well, guess what? That which was satirical six, seven years ago, is now reality in many of these science studies both fields. Yeah, absolutely. This has become reality. So you were very prescient there and you know, speaking of postmodernism and science studies, which I think is probably perhaps the most pernicious manifestation of postmodern theory, brings me to the socal hoax which you've written about and I've written about as well. And for the benefit of those who may not know about the socal hoax I'll briefly recap it. So this NYU physicist named Alan Sokel submitted a parody to social text, a respected critical theory and cultural studies periodical. The article he wrote entitled transgressing the boundaries towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity. I can almost not read this without laughing. The article suggested that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct and that one could understand quantum mechanics with postmodern theory. Sokel satirically criticized his fellow scientists because they accepted quote, the dogma imposed by the long post enlightenment hegemony over the western intellectual outlet outlook that there exists an external world whose properties are independent of any human being and indeed of humanity as whole as a whole. In quantum gravity he wrote the space-time manifold ceases to exist as an objective physical reality and quote, existence itself becomes problematized and relativized. So littered with jargon and excessive citations to postmodern theorists and signaling this radical relativism and extreme subjectivism and skepticism with every turn of phrase. Sokel's essay mimic science studies so successfully that social text ran the piece. And then of course Sokel revealed the hoax in lingua franqua and interestingly Andrew Ross who was one of the editors of Sokel hoax of the social text I mean he suggested that earlier he had said science studies would never deny the reality of gravity but then he ended up publishing a paper that just did just that. It's one of the greatest examples of reading crow in academic history I think. I was going to say that when the hoax was revealed you would think that the postmodernist would be filled with shame because they've been no. They only had to double down and say well this doesn't prove anything. I extracted relevant meaning from it. It's subjective so that demonstrates how you could never adhere to the paparian falsification principle right? There's no way for me to offer you exactly I can't falsify your position and therefore you're operating in the realm of non-science. Absolutely yeah so yeah Stanley Fish I'm sure you're a fan. He came to the defense of course he knew nothing about either science or so-called science studies yet he rushed to condemn this as an unethical exercise as if there was nothing unethical about postmodern science studies to begin with which completely transgresses the boundaries of rationality and evidence entirely so yeah. I agree just one quick point and we can move on as you fit. Do you think Michael and I'm trying to think I may have asked you that question but you had kindly come on my show many years ago but in any case even if we did it's worth repeating to this new audience do you think that the originators of postmodernism or the big gurus Michel Foucault Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida do you think in the deep recesses of their mind they knew they were full of it or do you think they actually believed their nonsense? Well one anecdote sort of gives you some idea they knew what they were up to in some sense. Derrida when he sat on the tarmac having landed in the United States he turned to his co-editor in in deconstruction I forget his name right now he was also a Nazi sympathizer by the way he said to his co-editor of deconstruction we are about to infect this culture with a virus which goes right to your book so they knew I actually found out about that quote after I had written the book and I was so upset that I didn't know about that quote prior to finishing the book if you had a red springtime for snowflakes you'd have known there you go alright yeah so I'm just going to mention some of the viruses now and see just take a quick take on each one of them social constructivism social constructivism is the idea that we are born empty slates we are born with equal potentiality and it's only the unique life trajectories whether it be socialization or culture or any other form of learning mommy hug me enough or didn't hug me enough that then determines the person that I become right nothing is based on any biological imperatives that's social constructivism now I argue that I can understand if I'm going to be charitable I can understand why people could be infected with that idea pathogen because at its root it's a very hopeful message right because it basically says hey parents any of your children could be the next Michael Jordan or Albert Einstein if only you can find the right schedule of reinforcement to use this canary in turn then they could be the next leanel messy I want to believe that I don't want to believe that my child is born with a lesser proclivity of being the next NBA star so I just have to find out how to hug him or not hug him and then he'll be the next Michael Jordan so at its root each of these idea pathogens is rooted in a hopeful message to the detriment of the truth yes it's interesting they kind of vampirized on very significant principles and then twist them and turn them I wrote that you know under the social constructivist idea you could take a tomato and if you gave it the right cultural and environmental conditions it could turn into Herman Melville so second and third weighed feminism right so early instantiation of feminism let's say forget about the burning your second wave stuff but equity feminism is an idea that I think any reasonable person could agree with so there should be no institutional legal reason why men and women are not equal under the law so by that you know optic then we're all equity feminists right the problem with then radical feminists is that they say in the pursuit of that noble goal let's promulgate the idea that men and women are indistinguishable from each other because that allows us to eradicate the status quo more easily so in the service of a noble goal if I have to murder and rape truth so be it it's a consequentialist effort yes so that I think the difference between you know a rational feminism and an insane feminism yes social justice here we come well there are many manifestations of social justice for example identity politics would be a sub variant of the right so for example don't say anything against someone who is Muslim because my god those folks are mistrodden right it would be wrong for you to further marginalize them so let me give you a powerful anecdote that speaks to that so I remember once on my personal facebook page I had posted a clip of an Iraqi astronomer who was saying you know by the grace of God the Quran was correct in saying that the earth is flat and so on whatever so I posted this clip to demonstrate what happens to even a scientist when in this case they are parasitized by religious dogma so a fellow scientist who is an evolutionist wrote back to me not to say my god I can't believe that an Iraqi astronomer would take this position at the earth is flat she chastised me for shining the light on that why are you making fun of this poor Muslim guy aren't they victims enough so she wasn't offended by the bullshit he was promulgating she was offended that I was shining a light on the bullshit that he was promulgating that's part of the ethos of social justice yes absolutely also it's a kind of race to the bottom right so because it's an inversion of the hierarchy so you got a race to the bottom because when the totem pole flipped upside down you're at the top so the race goes downhill everybody is trying to gain victim status and to usurp the victim status of others so what's the ultimate danger of these mind parasites you've touched on it of course truth is of course a casualty well I mean look our prefrontal cortex makes us unique in the animal kingdom right the ability to reason and part of being able to reason properly is for you and I to have a shared space where we understand a common meaning we know what male is we know what female I recently put up a tweet where I said 117 billion people who have existed in the homo sapiens line since we've had homo sapiens 117 billion all 117 billion until 13 minutes ago exactly knew what male or female was but now we no longer know that so what could be more dangerous than to take a sexually reproducing species defined by two phenotypes and to say no no no there is no such thing it's the end of reason it's the end of logic it's the end of common sense and so I don't need to say any other negative downstream consequences once I once I can't get a sitting supreme court justice when asked in a confirmation hearing tell me what is a woman and you answer I am not a biologist I'm not equipped to answer that questionmorally in a bad spot absolutely so I mean I think that the the casualties are truth reason freedom human dignity dignity too yes human dignity so let's turn now finally to your new book which was very much anticipated the sad truth about happiness so how did you move from writing about these negative mind parasites to treating happiness where how did you get from dystopia to sort of a recipe for an improved social condition and personal you know personal fulfillment yes thank you for that great question I actually addressed that that the excellent question in the first chapter so it comes really from my having noticed a constant reality that would that I would face in my social media engagement so what would happen is someone would write to me and say how was it that you're able to always be smiling and you always seem to be playful and you do all this satirical stuff when you're handling such serious you know dystopian as you said things what's your secret professor so that's one one source that led me to write about the second source is when I realized that often so I've operated historically Michael in what's called prescriptive world meaning as an as a behavioral scientist I seek to describe human behavior without offering some optimal prescriptive right the self-help guru offers a prescription of how you should live but then I started seeing that whenever I would post some prescriptive action oh here is the way that I think you could lose a lot of weight having myself lost tons of weight during COVID whenever I would post some prescriptive unsolicited advice that would be some of the content that would most move people right they say oh my god you know that that one tweet that you wrote got me off my couch I've not lost 32 pounds they would send me before and after photos and so I said well you know what I'd never thought about writing a book on happiness but I certainly seem to have the ear of many people I seem to have the trust of many people I truly am a happy person now part of my happiness is is the luck of what's inscribed in my genes about 50 percent of your happiness comes from your genes but that means that another 50 percent is within your own doing and so I said you know what let me take a crack at as you said I've done the book on dystopia on mind parasites let me complete the story by talking about positive mindsets good decisions that we could make that could hopefully increase our likelihood to be happy and hence that led to my happiness book excellent yeah I often get this you know I've been diagnosing and analyzing the wickedness and the pernicious elements that people will say but what do we do about it and you know you you know you come to be you got to be the answer man too not just the the diagnostician you got to be the the prescribed prescriber of the of the alternative and I think that's great that you're actually following up on that and you know before you go on sorry just one quick interjection forgive me I have found so I've only started recently all of my you know media tour for the latest book and there is actually something quite liberating and positive what while I of course as we've been doing for the show I I love talking about all those parasitic stuff because they really are affecting our society and so I'll never waiver from speaking about these but there's something so uplifting about the valence of the current book which is it's all positive it it has no political aisle it's a universal theme that philosophers have been talking about for thousands of years and so it excites me to not only have to talk about all the dystopian things but to talk about hopeful things absolutely excellent yeah I can't wait to read it um so you know but there is something to the title I take it you do use your surname and play on the word sad there's got to be something meaningful about that what is what is the sad truth about happiness in the sense of you know well okay you're right that sad is a play on sad s ad whereas my name is s a ad but sad if i pronounce it in arabic it's sad it has a guttural sound it refers to happiness and felicity so even my name in arabic it's as if I was predestined to to write this book and so take all that together and you come up with that that's very interesting what a what a conjunction there uh so uh you know you not to bring up bad I've noted that when you're asked about this you know you you you display some discomfort because what you went through as a child is really horrific it's incredible that you emerge from that and it you live through the lebanese civil war you're almost killed uh it was very very seriously dangerous and horrific uh thing that you uh experiences that you must have had how does this impact your views in terms of both the mind parasites and the pursuit of happiness oh what an amazing question so let me address first the mind parasites what the lebanese civil war taught me is that a society that is organized along tribal lines hence that's what identity politics does is not the way that you want to organize society so the idea that progressives in in the west are trying to view everything through the prism of your you know tribal identity it is just not what what makes the west's great historically classical liberalism is individual dignity over tribal i present myself to the world as gatsat first before i'm lebanese jew or anything else right judge me on the quality of my thoughts on the on my qualities on my faults that's how you should judge me so that's what so that and that's why i discussed in in chapter one of the parasitic mind my personal history because it allows me to understand what real victimology is what identity politics do to society and so on in terms of the happiness book it actually has a profound effect on my level of happiness because i'm able to situate anything that i'm going through in the in light of what could have been had i not miraculously gotten out of lebanon so i'll give you an example i actually mentioned this just recently on another show when i was starting my media tour now and i'm also going to be traveling a lot you know i felt a bit of apprehension oh my god i'm overwhelmed i've got so i'm gotten back to back shows non-stop traveling everywhere and then i stopped for a second i thought to are you really got sad whining to yourself and complaining because a bunch of really interesting people are going to give you their platform to discuss ideas and you have a book coming next week you're whining remember the snipers in lebanon remember what was going to happen to you and you face this in 73 000 ways so that life tragic life experience of my childhood allows me to always call up that experience whenever i am mired in in self uh you know whining right because i could always contextualize whatever it is that's bothering me compared to real issues that i should be worried about and i'll tell you if i may to speak to that question to i tell two anecdotes at the end of the sad truth about happiness that really speak to that that question so one so i'll start with story one david mccallum is someone that probably few people have heard of but he is one of the most powerful guests i've ever had on my show and i've had a lot of incredible people on my show david mccallum was arrested when he was 17 for murder and he spent the next 29 years in prison before he was exonerated when he was on my show and we were chatting i looked at him and i and you could go watch this chat on on my channel i looked at him i said you know david i think you must be the reincarnation of buddha because the way that you handle what happened to you with such grace without any vengefulness without any hatred you must be a much better man than i am because i would want to burn the world down and then he gave me an answer that speaks to to gratitude and contextualizing your plight and light of others he said you know i have a sister who has been bedridden with cerebral palsy for much of her life and yet she finds a way to smile so probably whatever i went through doesn't compare to her plight right so that's story one story two is a gentleman who i met when i was a professor at university california ervine at the time he was pursuing his phd studying the homeless community in in that area and he had immersed himself in the homeless community akin to how an anthropologist immerses himself in an ecosystem and then incredibly a few years later he became homeless even though he came from a wealthy persian family so then i tracked him down and found a 2011 story which i cite in in my forth come in my the happiness book where he was asked are you are you happy are you upset and he said why would i be unhappy i have a past to go to the newport beach gym so i could keep my body healthy i have a library card that allows me to go to the newport beach public library and immerse myself in thinking i'm a moral good person i have no reason to be unhappy he was living out of his car so once you can you use the the the trick of contextualizing your plight in light of worse things than that quickly serves as an infusion of happiness so to summarize my tragic childhood has actually made me a happier person paradox amazing that's a paradox that's amazing so i take it that's one of the steps to happiness you talk about some common steps contextualizing must be one of them exactly right trying to live your life so that at the end of your life you have minimal regrets is another one right pursuing what Aristotle already knew and Buddha which Buddha called it the middle way Aristotle Aristotle called it the golden mean i call it the inverted u-curve which is too little of something is not good too much of something is not good the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle so in one of the chapters i demonstrate that through a bewildering number of phenomena that inverted u-curve works and you basically your trick to a good life is to always find where that sweet spot is so let let me give you one example perfectionism right if you're not the least bit perfectionist then your work will suffer because you have you have no attention to details if you are as i am on the wrong side of being too perfectionist then when i receive the galley proofs of the book i spend four thousand years reading every single because god forbid a comma is out of place well that's suboptimal because i could have spent that time doing something more productive if one comma is missed that's okay the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle and i demonstrate in that chapter that at all kinds of levels that curve holds and so find the sweet spot in another chapter i argue that you should really immerse yourself in play the chapter is titled life as a playground and i basically argue that even the most austere serious pursuits should be viewed as manifestations of play as a scientist i'm engaging in the highest form of play cerebral play i'm looking for puzzles in nature which variable connects with which other variable i'm engaging in play even during the lebanese civil war i couldn't help but instantiate my love for play very quick story my parents used to tell me if you play outside don't pass this particular physical line because then that opens you up to the eyesight of the snipers who would blow your brain apart so i knew that there was a literal physical line that as i was playing with my cousin i should never cross i i cite a story of play that children developed during the holocaust so what could be more dire and tragic than the holocaust yet people what life is beautiful the academy award movie winning movie was about how a father was trying to protect his son in the concentration caps by turning the whole thing into a form of make belief play and so i i go through these various chapters showing that there are certain mindsets that we could adopt all other things equal that are going to increase our proclivity to happiness wow that's just that's fantastic i can't wait to get a hold of this uh and i'm sure that people will really appreciate what you're doing here um i can't i can't uh i can't congratulate you enough on all of your accomplishments they've been quite incredible i'm jealous not really because i know that it doesn't make me happy uh and uh and uh i i had a couple other questions but i think that you've probably already you've already answered them in the course of this discussion did you have anything else you want to add to this discussion before we close it out or oh i just wanted to thank you uh for you know giving me the opportunity to speak to you i'm delighted to hear that you are not suffering from any looming regrets regarding your decision to leave nyu i'm i'm glad that you're feeling fulfilled and uh i hope that we can continue chatting in the future keep doing what you're doing you are a true honey badger one of the original academic honey badgers and so keep flourishing michael and it's a privilege and honor to know you now same same to you god thanks so much for coming on i really appreciate it you're listening to rekt with michael rektinwald find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts and get more content like this on mises.org