at some point I think you have to take them at their own words Robert Reich says we should arrest Elon Musk Brazil Outlaws Twitter KLA Harrison Tim Waltz in their past who said they do not believe in free speech and now in the pages of the New York Times they ask is the Constitution dangerous it's the will Kane Show streaming live at Fox news.com on the Fox News YouTube channel the Fox news Facebook page right now comment streaming in on Facebook on YouTube Jump in to the will Cane show hit subscribe at Apple Spotify or on YouTube he is the author of The parasitic mind he is Professor Gad sad he's a friend here of the will Kane Show and these are some of our deepest conversations and I love having him here what's up Professor hey how you doing so good to be with you it's good to be with you um you know you often are very active on X you're also what I would say is one of the people who are in the influencer circle of Elon Musk what do you think now that people are a in America calling for the arrest of Elon mus that's Robert Reich I believe he was labor secretary under Clinton um and we're watching Brazil basically Outlaw X yeah it's unbelievable look and uh I've talked about the distinction between deontological and consequentialist ethics so let me break it down to you for you because it'll be relevant to your question theological ethics are absolute statements so for example if I say it is never okay to lie that would be a deontological statement if I say it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings then that would be a consequentialist statement now for many things we're all consequentialism that makes perfect sense but when it comes to foundational values that Define the West those things have to be deontological so you can't say I believe in freedom of speech but not for Elon Musk or Donald Trump I believe in presumption of innocence but not for Brett Kavanaugh I believe in journalistic Integrity but not when it came to Hunter Biden's laptop once you apply a consequentialist ethics ethic to an theological position you get the kinds of problems that we're seeing today so the interesting thing in part about what you had to say is we are all consequentialist to some point and if we're all being honest and we look in the mirror it is it is difficult to be principled meaning we all can give voice to principles but living according to principle is very difficult that's the challenge of life to be a moral person um when you hear and I'm going to read two of these Abigail shrier has this up in the the free P um they've Revisited now these are quotes from like uh this is going to be 2020 I believe for KLA Harris where she openly advocated for shutting down X and she did it on multiple occasions I think it was two or three different occasions I think once from a debate stage once was CNN's Jake Tapper um she openly called for for shutting down X and in Tim Waltz famous statement now his is from 2022 was that Free Speech does not cover misinformation and disinformation when you hear something like that from the two people running for president vice president the question I think is what do they believe and what would they do right so are they consequentialists I guess everybody is like they don't believe in a principle against Free Speech they just want to apply it when it's in their favor and not apply it when it's in their disfavor so I guess the question would be what would it yeah no I got you uh Sor interrupt you that's right they're being consequentialist so what would they be in an Administration when it comes to free speech well look uh I am Jewish I grew up in very difficult circumstances in the Middle East we faced execution my parents were kidnapped by fat so you know we we we've seen it all in terms of actual victimhood and yet I support the right of Holocaust deniers to spew the the worst of offensive and insulting speeches right what could be more offensive and what could be more misinformation than to deny a historically documented event whereby 6 million people were you know extinguished on an industrial scale level but in a free Society you have to tolerate imbeciles racists falsehood spreaders and so on so that's how you walk to walk and talk to talk right if I a Jewish person with my personal history I'm willing to tolerate Holocaust deniers then Tim Waltz and kamla Harris don't have much of a ethical position to stand on but again the reason why they do that is because they must find some consequentialist calculus to explain why they need to shut you down right don't say that uh Co is lab leak because that's misinformation don't say whatever that uh that the hunter by the laptop was real because then that would allow Donald Trump to ascend for a second term one person's truth is another person's misinformation so for example can men menstruate or only women menstruate which is the disinformation position right so again uh there is no such thing as Forbidden Knowledge and science precisely because as long as you adhere to the scientific method all bets are off you pursue Truth unencumbered by a consequential ethos so I think what uh these two are doing is exactly what Orwell warned us against maybe it's even worse than what Orwell thought well if anybody questioned his intellect just I've been walking around the world saying menstrate and he just taught us very clearly it's menstruate that there's a you not men straight just a hick from Texas also we have this information like the whole thing like what would they do well they've done it like they did it in the Biden Administration we know what they did to suppress Free Speech it wasn't just calls to arrest El musk or whatever it may be and one of the big leaders I was just trying to look this up so I had this name while I was talking to you his name is um Rob flarity Rob flarity um was one of the people who was integral to the whole disinformation campaign in the Biden Administration punishing identifying you know limiting Free Speech you okay well you know Rob flarity uh he's one of the guys for example officials I'm I'm reading from Abigail Shen the free pest who reportedly pressured Facebook into censorship um with the then director of Biden's digital strategy Rob flarity and who is Rob flairty now well he is the Deputy campaign manager for KLA Harris it's not as though this was a moment in time with covid a moment in time with 2020 election skepticism this is someone who has benefited been promoted in in a leadership position for the person now running for president kamla Harris right I mean we we know what kamla Harr thinks about the espousing of positions that are unpopular according to her calculus right you saw the clip that's been going around recently where she said you know you can't allow people to just spew whatever they want without any controls or oversight I mean uttering those words should be enough to disqualify you as president of the United States but yet again because we now are so inundated with this consequentialist ethos people don't even bat an eye I mean what could be more dangerous than to say things like there has to be oversight over what people say uh there has to be equality in the outcomes as you said in your wonderful monologue that's exactly what Marxism is by the way let me give you a great quote which I don't think I've ever mentioned to you in our previous conversations EO Wilson the famous evolutionary biologist from Harvard who recently passed away he studied social ants now in Social ant species there's only one reproductive Queen and then all of the other ants are exactly equal whether they are worker ants or soldier ants right so ant Society is communistic so when he was asked Professor Wilson what do you think about socialism communism his answer was great idea wrong species human beings are not communistic in their innate human nature some of us are taller shorter harder working less hardworking so to impose an end result of equality of outcomes on human beings is to literally be anti-human nature so not only is it called Marxism it defies evolutionary principles it's very dangerous and I hope that my uh neighbors to the South make the right decision on November 5th um talking to Professor Gad sad here by the way the author of The parasitic mind you got a new book I believe that you're working on right um B suicidal empathy and if I can just mention because I I want to promote my latest affiliation I just accepted a visiting professorship and Global ambassadorship in your country at Northwood University the free enterprise University so I'm very excited to be spending a year there oh that's oh yeah awesome cool well and you also did a paper you've already you've already done one paper on suicidal empathy it's up for your subscribers I saw on your ex now I'm fascinated by this idea of suicidal empathy and I was looking at some of the things you've had to say about it all I really know so far is those two words just opposed against each other empathy and suicide however um you know something I've always I've all I don't I don't know what who can claim they've discovered any idea for themselves but like one of the things one of the pieces of wisdom I feel like I've acquired with some age uh Professor is that I've learned through children and through myself your your greatest strength is your greatest weakness in that trait whatever that trait may be that makes you special is also that trait that is your your downfall and so it's like management of that trait is your life's Mission so when I was thinking about suicid empathy um uh Ray Delio um big thinker he tweeted this out something similar he said like attributes people have individual attributes whether or not they are um a strength or a weakness depends upon their application and obviously application is circumstantial and I just started thinking about that when it comes to you and the idea of empathy empathy is treated as a virtue but modern society has made it abundantly clear how empathy can be a vice yes so let me explain this in a couple of ways but thank you for the for the leadup uh just a small correction on my subscriber exclusive content I shared a paper by someone else on someone else on empathy not my own it was part of the research I'm doing for my book on suicidal empathy but but but thank you for that plug uh so in the in the sad truth about happiness my last book my happiness book i t talk about the inverted you being the most universal law of nature inverted you basically means too little of something is not good too much of something is not good it's exactly what Aristotle called the golden mean right he argued look if you are a cowardly Soldier that's not good if you are incredibly reckless in your risk-taking you're going to die and you're going to be a useless Marr that's not good everything happens in The Sweet Spot everything in moderation as the ancient Greek said right so that exactly applies to your point about personality traits perfectionism for example if you're not in the least bit perfectionist your work will suffer because you won't have attention to detail you won't be conscientious if you're too perfectionist as I am you'll end up checking your Galley proofs 45,000 times God forbid there might be one comma out of place and that's counterproductive what if there is a comma out of place you could have spent your time doing something else again it's in the sweet spot so now let's come to empathy empathy is Noble as a virtue because we're a social species therefore we have to have theory of mind we have to put ourselves in the mind of another we have to put ourselves in the shoes of another and therefore our emotional system has evolved because it confers upon us certain evolutionary advantages but it has to be invoked within certain functional ranges right so take for example OCD and I'll come back to empathy empathy in a second OCD is the misfiring of an otherwise adaptive process and let me explain what I mean by that it is perfectly adaptive for us to scan the world for environmental threats I check the back door to make sure that it's locked but I only check it once I wash my hands when I come home once to make sure that if I shook hands with anybody who had a virus I don't get contaminated what happens with OCD that adaptive mechanism misfires right as soon as the warning flag goes up and you tend to it it goes back up again so I spend eight hours washing my hands and scolding hot water and my skin is falling off that's germ contamination OCD I keep checking the back door for four hours even though one time would have been enough so now let's apply that mechanism to empathy it doesn't make sense that you be so suicidally empathetic so that as a means of demonstrating how virtuous you are you literally kill your Society right so so if you target your empathy to the wrong person Guatemalans who come in illegally are more worthy of our empathy than our own American vets the homeless people who are defecating and fornicating in the uh children Sparks are more valuable than the children who should be able to play in those Sparks void of that stimulus right and so what the book is about is what starts off as a noble emotion becomes quite dysfunctional when it's disregulated so that's the purpose that's the point of the book but is that real empathy cuz like when I see that I I I I I totally agree with you know the moderate mean or whatever is is too much of any one thing is is is bad uh moderation is the key but I also question well not that's real empathy so you you talked about it in terms of like you're projecting virtue but if it's about you and your image or even your self-image and that's the reason you're adopting a position and by the way that's usually the extent of the commitment uh adopting a position it rarely is accompanied by action although some people are empathetic and employ that in in their life but if it's about you adopting a position and you are doing it as part of your self- projection is that even really empathy yeah that's a great question so in my first book ever this one an academic book The evolutionary basis of consumption I talk about altruism and how why altruism has evolved and I argue that the Jewish philosopher myones nearly 1,000 years ago talked about eight levels of altruistic piety the highest level to your point is when the altruist and the beneficiary of the altruistic act don't know one another because then they can't reap the social rewards of having committed that altruistic act so you're exactly right that even when we call something supposedly empathetic often times it's for empathy that is only serving as virtue signaling currency but nonetheless if you ask those people why are you holding those positions they'll say because all refugees are welcome because no human is illegal so we can debate as to whether they truly are feeling that empathy or whether it is for empathy to gain social currency but the reality is that it is a this functional application of empathy right there is no logical reason why you should allow entry into into your host Society of millions of people who don't share a single one of your foundational values right so for example in Germany and in Denmark and in Sweden and in France and in Britain certainly now in Canada it's coming for you in the US you have people that are coming from countries where there is orgiastic Jew hatred where for example in Pew survey research 95 to 99% of the surveyed people from those societies have endemic Jew hatred as part of their self-identity so then it's not going to be surprising that you have rampant anti-i anti-Semitism on campuses demography is Destiny and people shake their heads why do we have increased Jew hatred well import those values and there are Downstream effects right what one more philosophical question before I kind of go back to the application to maybe current events for politics so you know you talked about the hierarchy of altruism uh the different levels of altruism it kind of made me think does it matter though like if you do something good and you claim reward for it you claim you claim some social credibility for doing something good versus the guy who remains totally Anonymous and we do kind of internally know we all a little more respect to the person that we don't even know the presumption of anonymity out there but does it matter if they're both effectuating a good like they're doing something like and let's use Donald Trump because I think Donald Trump's a great example like if Donald Trump does something good he's probably going to tell you about it you know versus the guy who remains Anonymous does it matter if the outcome is the same yeah so again that's a great question I talk about this again in the in my first book ever The evolutionary basis of consumption I talk about philanthropy as a cost signal meaning that when we engage in philanthropic acts we typically engage in these acts because we want to have then advertised it's the willc oncology center it's rarely ever the XXX Anonymous oncology center right and incidentally to your point even when people supposedly engage in Anonymous altruistic acts believe me their Inner Circle the people who matter to them will know that they did this act right so even though will Kain may not know that I gave a 100 million dollars to cancer research I'll be sure to make to tell all of my billionaire friends what a wonderful guy I am and that's exactly why my manes a thousand years ago said that it is almost impossible to reach this highest level of Sedaka that's the Hebrew word of this kind of such pure piety because we're human beings we care about our social standing and one of the ways that I Ascend the social standing is to show what a good guy I am that's just part of human nature and either way and either way there's an oncology center so I'm not sure either way but I do think there's a distinction between that action and those that simply um adopt a position to project virtue of of empathy one one more okay we you and I are having this conversation and I know and I think probably a lot of listeners and viewers would would be able to pick up where you are although you are unpredictable you're not crackerjack box politics where a lot of your leanings might be and people certainly know where mine are um so we're having this conversation about consequentialism and we're doing it through a lot of the positions who which now have become championed positions of the left like free speech and we're going to come back in a minute to the Constitution um but Donald Trump is famously pragmatic okay is pragmatism not a more acceptable word for consequentialism so in other words um you know Donald Trump will make a deal he'll understand I now I'm not running on some hardcore pro-life position if I can't get elected Donald Trump will make pragmatic SLC consequentialist decisions so in that way I mean there you could say well and I think this is where you are going to go but on foundational values like free speech that's not the place to be consequential that's exactly it so let let's apply what you just mentioned to say Academia right so some people would say we absolutely should have an ethos of forbidden knowledge there are certain areas that you should never study because the consequences of finding out those things would be too hurtful or too dangerous right so don't do racial differences in IQ studies even though you may uh properly apply honestly apply the scientific method because if the results come out out in a way that are difficult for the politically correct narrative well then some group will be marginalized don't study sex differences or study sex differences as long as women are always shown to be superior on every task that's ever studied God forbid a million times men are shown to be superior on some task please make sure to hide that data in your file drawer because otherwise you're part of the patriarchy no Academia the pursuit of truth has to be unencumbered by consequentialist calculations because if we apply that then we should have never studied ballistics and physics because that led to the dropping of the atomic bomb so we absolutely need to cancel physics because there are simply too too many nefarious consequences of understanding physics by the way in in the parasitic mind many of the parasitic idea pathogens that I discuss stemmed from that reflex so for example social scientists have spent the last 100 years developing the disciplines of anthropology and sociology and economics without any biological underpinnings because some really imbecilic academics thought that biology is simply too dangerous to apply to The Human Condition eugenicists used it to justify their cause Hitler used it to justify hey there's a natural struggle between the races we're the Aryans sorry Jews you lost British social class applied social Darwinism to say hey we're the upper class if you die from tuberculosis in your squalor hey that's just darwinian so let's now create a worldview where biology ceases to matter for human behavior because at least we're being Noble or as Plato said the noble lie right no when it comes to the truth not a single millimeter is ever seated well but that's not the case case right like what you just described I would think we were at the apex of the moral truth we're at the Apex of all those things you just described we are not studying those those are off the map you do not learn more on those subjects today we are probably at the Apex of that ignorance exact by the way that's that's how I originally you know I I often say that writing the parasitic mind was really a 30-year Journey uh I mean starting from when I was in the Lebanese Civil War but I've been a Professor now for this is my 31st year when I was first trying to darwinizing evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study economic decision-making consumer Behavior Personnel psychology all of my colleagues were like were what the hell is this biology doesn't apply to human behavior and I'm thinking how could it not apply to human behavior you think biology applies to every single species except one called homo and so that's when I first started realizing that Houston we have a problem right even very intelligent professors with many titles before and after their names could be completely lobotomized and that's it's interesting when you describe that that's actually a little bit of what's been discussed when it comes to artificial intelligence like you talked about physics and ballistics and leading to the atomic bomb there are people are saying this this AI thing is scary we got to stop we got to figure out a way for it not to continue as a field of study right uh I mean there are two sides to the AI story some say that you know the robots are going to kill us in 15 minutes once they're strong enough others say that's complete science fiction hype so I I I'm not going to weigh in on you know where who's right but it's the same reflex right it's basically saying don't pursue some truth because the consequences of that truth will simply be too harmful by the way you may or may not remember this and if you if your viewers haven't watched this they should the movie the name of the Rose in the mid 80s that came out with uh do you know it will do you know the movie that I'm talking about no name of the Rose never heard of name of the Rose the it's it's with Christian Slater and Shan connory Shan connory plays the uh a monk I think a Gregorian monk who this is in the Dark Ages all of these monks are dying from a poison and their tongues are blue and he's wondering how did how did they die from that and it turns out just so I can fast forward that the head monk had placed some Aristotle books dealing with humor in a forbidden library because he didn't want the monks to read any book on humor because humor is the work of the devil but what they were doing and so he he had laced the the bottom of the pages with a poison so that if a monk actually went in there and read The Forbidden books then he would be poisoned and get killed that's the reflex of Forbidden Knowledge I decide what you can read what you could think what you can say and that's why I quoted that book in the parasitic mind and that's exactly what kamla Harris is doing she is the head monk I love that I love that neogy KLA Harris is the head monk when you say I decide it's always who's I who is the allseeing all knowing all powerful decider of knowledge and yeah k Harris is putting herself in the position of of the head monk so that takes me to the final thing here I I'm I'm I'm not shocked and by the way maybe in the spirit of you should never put any information or knowledge off the table you should consider all perspective and all types of human thought I maybe I shouldn't criticize the New York Times for publishing this which is in um it's it's an opinion piece um I I don't know who this person is Jennifer calii salii I don't know who that is you may maybe she's in Academia uh she's a non-fiction book critic uh so maybe not quite as esteemed as a professor but the headline is the Constitution is sacred is it also dangerous and the subhead is one of the biggest threats to America's politics might be the country's founding document for something like I'd say a thousand words she goes on to talk about the Constitution it's shocking for me or well as somebody who did study the law and I know you're Canadian and the Constitution is uniquely American uh for me it is a sacred sacred document it is accumulation of I think centuries of knowledge um but the whole point of the Constitution is to thwart authoritarianism like it is it's a separation of power it's checks and balances it's certain rights are not subjected to democracy yes democracy meaning a protection of a minority and she spins this whole thing or Wellings Lang language to say yes it subverts democracy but in the protection of authoritarianism and to me well not we're talking about Free Speech or whatever increasingly this is the end game it's not the endgame maybe it's the final hurdle to the end game but the suspension of the Constitution indeed look uh in the paretic mind I have a quote which I'm sure you know what I'm talking about but I don't have it in front of me the the Reagan quote where he basically says that every generation you have to be assiduous in defending freedom because every generation there are new folks who are trying to to kill Freedom right and so therefore you can't assume that it's going to be the default value forever more that you're going to have the freedoms and Liberties that you take for granted to that point one of the reasons why some of the staunchest Defenders of the Constitution and to your point I'm Canadian yet frankly I should be granted American citizenship yesterday the reason why immigrants are some of the stonest Defenders of the Constitution and of the western tradition is because we've sampled from the buffet of societies out there and we know that the American Experience is a bleep in history it's an anomaly it's a miraculous anomaly but that's not the default value the default value is for uh head monk kamla to tell the rest of us how to dress when to talk when to eat what to put in our bodies that's the way societies have organized themselves since time immemorial so it breaks my heart to see someone like this woman I don't know who she is who has benefited from all those freedoms where people like me came and knocked on the door and said please let us and they're about to kill us and she doesn't appreciate what she's got what she has what a shame well the other thing the one of the thing I'll explore with you here that I find fascinating I'm sort of just freelancing this thought with you which is always dangerous but um the Constitution is absolutely a subversion of democracy when I say subversion that makes it seem like it's secretive it's not it's overt it is a it is a document that says these certain rights will not be subjected to to a majority vote and that's why it's a projection of minority so 51% can't decide to set aside freedom of speech it's not going to happen because of the United States Constitution in a pure democracy it is pure power you talked about um the singular head monk but it's also like tribal power and that's how a lot of societies work especially in third world countries it's like whoever is the majority power doesn't always mean by numbers because it often means by force they dictate the terms of society over the minity and it makes me wonder like that is sort of where you're pushing this either a you have the ultimate confidence that you will always be on the side of the 51% or you believe that somehow you'll be the one in power and in that pursuit of power ultimately is brute it's not it's not in a voting booth like it is like it gets violent it always does get violent and I just wonder if somebody like Jennifer salazi salai um do you think in a brute fight for power a violent fight for power your side will be the Victor because I'm not so confident that the side that asks for no guns gender fluidity legalization of drugs is the one wants to reduce this to a fight of brute violent power well EXA and listen this kind of parasitic thinking that you're describing in in this Jennifer lady is exactly why you have queers for Palestine right it I mean in what world does it make sense where if my I my most fundamental identity that I present to the world which is I'm queer in what world would you then place all of your chips on the place that would put you through a 100% effective gravitation based conversion method by lump logging you off the uh you know the the building as they do in Gaza for people who are queer versus Tel Aviv where you actually have one of the most queer friendly places I mean short of New York San Francisco and actually Montreal my home City Tel Aviv is probably right up there in the top five most queer friendly places and yet people say no no no I'm putting all my chips uh with the society that would you know throw me off rooftops that's the kind of unbelievably myopic parasitic thinking quote thinking that I rail against all day and but you know I don't want to end this on a pessimistic note but it seems to me that no some of these folks are so impenetrable to reason to you I I know that in your monologue you talked about using feelings rather than thought in in in choosing your president well I talk about this in the parasitic mind right most people want to deploy fast and Frugal juristic to make a decision right well my emotional system is much quicker it's autonomic right I love kamla Harris I hate Donald Trump thinking is so so hard right it's so effortful it's so cumbersome best to Simply use my emotional system and I keep warning people including my colleagues you're trained as psychologist use your brain which policies are more in line with your values they go no but she's so positive she's joyful she's fun I'm going with her we need a change they're impenetrable to reason yeah my only hope in that monologue talking about the people that ride along the surface you know who will ultimately make that emotional decision is um and I don't at this point it's hard to find the undecided emotional reaction to Donald Trump I think most people's emotional reaction has been defined to Donald Trump so it's it's shocking to me that wherever they are Pennsylvania you know Michigan Wisconsin um I guess we have to employ them to think I don't know I don't know how the emotions can be swayed at this point you have to figure out how to think before 63 days expires and we have election day I um I look forward to suicidal empathy I'm encouraged everyone check out parasitic mind and all his stuff he's on X gadad he's great Professor gadad love having you on the will Cane show thanks Professor thank you so much cheers all right take care uh really really smart guy really really but forget smart overvalued adjective wise thoughtful mind