Transcription
Hi everybody, this is Gatsad. As you know, if you follow any of my work, I'm someone who is fully steeped in academia. That's all I ever wanted to do was to be a professor and a soccer player. And so, of course, uh education is central to my life's mission. Uh, of course, I think that everyone should study as far and as long as they possibly can. Uh, in the book on happiness I discuss uh the case, two cases, where people decided to go on and study very late in life. One example is of a gentleman who uh decided to pursue his undergrad well into his 60s, then his masters into his 70s and I think 80s, and then completed his PhD in his early 90s. This is someone who uh graduated with his PhD at Concordia University, my home university.
And then the other, the other gentleman who's been on my show, uh Memphis Steiner, if I remember correctly, his name, uh he was a medical doctor who picked up a PhD in 1967 in biochemistry, I believe, while training to be a hematologist. But his first love was always physics. So once he retired from medicine, he went back, studied physics, and finished his second PhD, having already been a PhD and an MD, uh in physics at 89, and he came on my show.
So what I'm about to say is certainly not in any way an indictment on formal education and the pursuit of a PhD and so on. Of course, uh I support that and uh you know, knowledge requires people to be highly educated. But I I'm saying all this in the context of having listened, while driving to Ottawa with my family, two days ago. I was listening to maybe the first 45 minutes of the chat between Dave Smith, whom I recently became familiar with, and uh Douglas Murray, who's been on my show in the past and is coming back, I think on April 21st.
And the first, I guess the the time that I was listening, they hadn't really gotten into any content; they were really addressing the matter that, you know, Douglas picked up about, you know, why is it that you've got all these, you know, comedians and, you know, podcast guys speaking about things that they know very little about. And I I understand the reflex, and of course I'm a big uh supporter and appreciator of Douglas Murray's work. Uh, he's doing fantastic work in defending western values and defending Israel against the barbarians who are trying to eradicate all Jews. So obviously I'm a fan of his work. Uh, but I thought that the the manner by which he handled the, you know, "you don't have the credentials to speak about this," I understand the reflex. Yes, it is true that, you know, Joe Rogan invites people uh where they're able to air out ludicrous ideas. Uh, but my more general point was, look, free speech absolutism is is about, you know, uh being able to handle the fact that people are going to be falsehood spreaders, imbeciles, liars, bigots, and so on. Uh, but I understand the reflex. What's the point of using your huge forum to allow people to air out complete nonsense? But I thought it would have been probably better if he just said, "Here are 10 things that you guys espoused and let me address how each of them is complete nonsense," rather than saying, you know, "we need historians to talk about these positions or people who have the right credentials." I think that's that's the wrong reflex to have. I think it's much better to judge people based on the ideas that they espouse.
And earlier today, I put up a a post on my uh X feed where I said, look, in Boolean algebra, you can test or establish whether a statement is true or false. It's it's binary uh system uh based on a aomatic truths, based on aomatic properties, right? And that Boolean algebra statement uh is true or false irrespective of whomever writes it down and whomever reads it. And so by a similar analogical reasoning, uh a statement is true or false whether it's a plumber who said it or an eminent historian or a fancy professor. As a matter of fact, as I have explained repeatedly and certainly in the parasitic mind, all of the parasitic ideas that I discuss in the parasitic mind stem from professors, and in in in channeling the spirit of Orwell, Uh it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. So one has to be careful about saying, you know, "comedians can't say something," or "who are they to say something," uh whereas we should let the experts speak. It was the experts who said that holding a rally with hundreds of 100,000 BLM supporters would not be a danger in terms of CO spread. So I I really do understand the the sentiment that uh uh Douglas was intimating. Uh, but I do think that ju just stick to the that those guys are spouting. Critique those, attack those without any appeals to credentialism.
And as a matter of fact, here I prepared a list. I knew some of these, but a few others I had to look up. Hey, do you know uh the most famous biologist in history? His name is Charles Darwin. Doesn't have a PhD; as a matter of fact, doesn't have a biology degree. He's the most important biologist of all time, the creator of the theory of evolution. Hey, do you know uh Isaac Newton? Doesn't have a PhD; doesn't one of the biggest physicists and mathematicians in the history of the world. Let's go on. JBS Haldane. JBS Haldane is someone that I have quoted in in the last chapter of the consuming instinct, my 2011 book. I have a a an amazing quote by JBS Haldane, uh who is a geneticist, an evolutionary geneticist. Guess what? He doesn't have a science degree; he doesn't have a PhD; his only degree was in classics. Let's go on. Michael Faraday, you know Faraday today in physics, doesn't have a degree. John Maynard Smith, one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory, doesn't have a PhD. Blaise Pascal, if you like, the earliest uh proponent of what we now call game theory and a great philosopher and mathematician was homeschooled. Let's go on. Freeman Dyson, the American physicist, doesn't have a PhD.
Again, I'm not I'm not uh denigrating the pursuit of the highest possible degree that one can attain in university, which is a PhD, right? Uh I'm certainly not suggesting that uh there's no value to that. Of course, there is. I would recommend that anybody pursue education as far as they can take it. If you can pursue a PhD for no other reason than the intrinsic beauty of pursuing knowledge, do it. But don't judge ideas based on who espouses the idea. Right? Martin Daly and Margot Wilson, the husband and wife team, two of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, are not evolutionary psychologists by by training. As a matter of fact, both of them did PhDs. I think one of them on hamsters and the other one on on some other primate species. Maybe it was Reese's monkeys. I can't remember. They're not evolutionary psychologists; they're the pioneers of evolutionary psychology. And on and on and on. People write to me, "Well, you're not an evolutionary biologist. Well, why do you why are you an evolutionary psychologist?" Right? Well, I trained, my doctoral dissertation was in psychology of decisionmaking. My doctoral supervisor got his PhD in psychology at the University of Michigan. All of my training is in psychology, but I trained at the Johnson School of Graduate Management. Oh, but you can't talk about psychology and so on and so forth. So, I can't talk about Islam. I'm not a theologian from Al Ahar University in Egypt, and on and on. So usually the people who seek to delegitimize you because they say you don't hold, you I can't talk about the veracity of climate science, uh climate alarmism. I don't have a PhD in climatology. No, I have all the degrees that a human being could ever have. But don't judge me based on that; judge me on whether the arguments that I make are stand the the rigor of all that the scientific method can throw at my ideas, and then we'll know if my ideas are worthy of keeping or not. And so again, all of those guys that go on Joe Rogan that are buffoons, they are buffoons because the stuff that they are espousing is buffoonish. It's not because they are not trained in that which they are espousing nonsense about. Have a good day everybody. Cheers.