Gad Saad

There's a sweet spot in the middle.

I argue empathy follows exactly that rule.

Too little of it, you're a psychopath.

Too much of it, if it's hyperactive,

If it is invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, you end up with suicidal empathy.

So I call them in the book, I call them blank slate felons, because if you remember the term blank slate.

So in the parasitic mind, I talk about social constructivism.

Everything is a social construction.

It's the tabula rasa premise.

We're born with empty minds, with no individual differences in our potentiality, and it's only our unique life trajectories and our unique patterns of socialization that end up making us who we become, which in a small sense, that's true.

My life experience and yours is an indelible part of who we are as individuals.

But there are individual differences.

People are born with different proclivities eventually of committing crimes or of being NBA players or of being the next Einstein.

It's a very hopeful message, though, to start with the blank slate premise.

Yeah, it's just not accurate.

Exactly.

Because if you and I are both parents, I would love to subscribe to the idea that if only I knew the exact schedule of reinforcement of my how to ensure that my child becomes the next Lionel Messi or...

or the next Albert Einstein, he too can become that.

That's a lot more hopeful than thinking, you know what, I don't think my son has the morphological features that are ever gonna make him to be the next NBA star.

He's too short, he doesn't have the right athletic tools.