Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 1, 2022 - Epoch Times

09:00

[🎬PREVIEW] Gad Saad: Why Rational People Fall for ‘Parasitic’ Ideas

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	What I call idea pathogens, these dreadful ideas that just like an actual physical pathogen can cause us harm, idea pathogens parasitize our minds, leading us to quietly go into the abyss of infinite lunacy.
	And so that's why I really like to use the parasitological framework in explaining how these ideas can become so sticky.
	Well, you know, so I want to jump in.
	I think this is the time to talk about your Sam Harris commentary.
	But, you know, this applies, you know, what you're just describing, you know, applies to so many areas.
	And this is one of the reasons why I found your book so compelling.
	In a nutshell, right?
	Sam Harris, for those of you that might not be aware, I'm just speaking to the audience briefly.
	Sam Harris is a remarkably rational individual.
	He's known this way.
	He's talked very eruditely on numerous topics, including, for example, wokeism.
	I think in that trigonometry episode, he calls it a woke apocalypse, actually.
	So he sees it as a big threat to society.
	And at the same time, on this one area, notably former President Trump, he seems to have some pretty extreme views, right?
	And this is where your commentary comes in.
	Right.
	Well, thanks for that nice setup.
	Look, what the Sam Harris story demonstrates, and I'll get into the details of it, is that supremely intelligent and rational people are not inoculated from As a matter of fact, as I explain in the book, all of the idea pathogens that have parasitized the West originally stem from the university ecosystem.
	It takes professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas.
	So the fact that you are educated doesn't mean that you've properly administered the mind vaccine against all of these idea pathogens.
	So now let's drill down on Sam Harris.
	And by the way, not that I need to preface this with what I'm about to say, My commentary is not meant as a personal attack on Sam's.
	Sam and I used to be friends.
	I've been on his show.
	We've been to dinner together.
	But he encapsulates, he instantiates an exemplar of this kind of parasitic thinking.
	So what is it?
	In Chapter 2 of The Parasitic Mind, I talk about the distinction between thinking and feeling.
	And in it, I basically say that it's a false dichotomy.
	It's not that humans are thinking animals or feeling animals.
	We're both thinking.
	We've evolved to trigger both systems.
	The challenge is to know when to trigger which system.
	So, for example, if I'm taking a shortcut in a dark alley and I see four young men loitering, I will have an emotional response, which is perfectly adaptive.
	My heart rate will go up.
	My blood pressure will go up.
	I might start perspiring.
	I start maybe hyperventilating.
	All of those emotional mechanisms are perfectly adaptive in that context.
	On the other hand, if I were trying to do well on a calculus exam, triggering my emotional system is not going to help me much.
	I need to trigger my cognitive system.
	So now let's link it to Sam Harris et al., all the other hysterical intelligentsia folks.
	When it came to Donald Trump, What should have been triggered is your cognitive system.
	What are the policies of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama that you either agree or disagree with?
	When we're choosing a president or a prime minister, we should be triggering our cognitive system.
	On the other hand, when you look at all of the reasons that people use to justify why noble prophet Barack Obama is so beautiful and why Donald Trump is such an existential threat, It's only based on emotional responses, right?
	It's, he disgusts me.
	He's grotesque.
	He's cantankerous.
	He speaks like an eighth grader from Queens.
	So all of the things that I am reviling in Donald Trump have nothing to do with his views on monetary policy or immigration policy.
	They only have to do with the fact that he serves, I'm speaking now as Sam Harris and the ivory tower folks, He is an aesthetic injury to me.
	He is a rejection of what makes me part of the anointed Malibu class.
	If such a grotesque gauche monster could ascend to the highest echelons of power, then how can I take my ivory tower degree seriously, right?
	And I want to draw here, I'm going to use a prop, Jan.
	Assume for a second that this memory stick It's the cork of a wine bottle.
	You're going to see in a second why it's relevant.
	There's an Arabic expression, which I'll mention in Arabic.
	It says, to get drunk by the cork of the wine bottle.
	So what does that mean?
	Look, now I'm getting drunk at how mellifluous the voice of Barack Obama is.
	He is so lanky and he's got such a radiant smile.
	Well, I haven't said that I agree with his Substantive policies, but I've simply used peripheral cosmetic cues to say why I love him so much.
	Now, let me whiff the cork of Donald Trump.
	He's disgusting.
	He has a disgusting odor.
	He's a grotesque monster.
	So again, what's happening is...
	I am of such weak cognitive constituency that I don't need to bother about justifying cognitively why I hate Donald Trump.
	I just do because he's disgusting.
	So the first problem with the parasitic thinking of Sam Harris, thinking in quotes, is that he is succumbing to the triggering of the wrong system, the emotional system rather than the cognitive system.
	The second excruciatingly important thing that he is violating is It's a distinction that I talk about in the book between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.
	Deontological ethics are absolute statements of truth.
	So, for example, if I say to you, Jan, it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement.
	If I were to say it's okay to lie when your spouse asks you, do I look fat in those jeans?
	In this case, I put on my consequentialist hat.
	I say that I'd like to remain married.
	I say that I don't want to hurt the feelings of my spouse.
	And therefore, I say, no, beautiful, you've never looked as beautiful and lovely as you do today.
	Now, most of us, as we navigate through life, will put on our consequentialist hats for many different things.
	But when it comes to non-violable, fundamental principles on which Western society is built, those should be deontological.
	Meaning, When it comes to, for example, presumption of innocence, that cannot be a consequentialist bent.
	You never violate presumption of innocence, and yet Sam Harris and all his friends When it came to Brett Kavanaugh, for example, said, well, it doesn't matter if we don't really have proof that he's guilty or not of, you know, being a gang rapist going up and down the eastern seaboard.
	You know, there is enough there to say, since this is just an interview, that we can presume that he is guilty.
	No, you don't.
	When Sam Harris said, well, I'm applauding the fact that Jack Dorsey finally removed the orange Himmler from Twitter and Because, yes, freedom of speech is important, but not for an ogre like Donald Trump.
	You're violating a deontological principle.
	When he said on the Trigonometry podcast, which he shouldn't have said out loud, but luckily for us he did, he said, sure, the media should be honest in fully reporting all stories, but when it comes to reporting Hunter Biden's laptop story, It was perfectly okay for them to suppress that because otherwise Donald Trump could have won and that wouldn't have been good.
	So in each of those instances, you're taking a deontological principle and you're violating it for consequentialist goals.
	That's morally grotesque.
	Let me give you two examples of deontological principles that are truly vivid.
	Number one, I'm Jewish.
	I escaped execution in Lebanon.
	And yet I support the right of Holocaust deniers to spew their most grotesque, offensive statements.
	There is nothing more offensive than someone denying the most historically documented event where you had industrial-scaled genocide of an entire people.
	Nothing could be more offensive.

▲