Gad Saad on joining the battle of ideas

That's a concern that I often receive from people. They write to me, "Hey, professor. I really want to get engaged. But... I'm not some fancy professor. I don't have a large audience." And I tell them, "Look. It's trench warfare. Right? It's house-to-house. It's trench-to-trench. Some of us have big platforms. Great, we use that. But you don't have to have a big platform to contribute to the battle of ideas. Your professor says something that is insane, challenge them politely. Someone says something on Facebook that you disagree with, engage them politely. You hear something happening at the pub that you think you might weigh in on? Don't refrain from doing so.  And usually there's a couple of reasons why people refrain from doing so.

"Well, if I weigh in, I might lose their friendship." Well, guess what? If their friendship is not sufficiently anti-fragile - to use my friend's Nassim Taleb's point... if our friendship is not sufficiently anti-fragile that it could withstand the stressors of us disagreeing about some important point, then you know what? Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.  I don't need friends like that.  I prefer to have two really good friends that I can have deep meaningly conversations with than a bunch of cowardly castrated morons who are going to be completely triggered because I say something that is contrary to them.

~ Gad Saad, "How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense," 41:15 mark, Stansberry Investor Hour, October 8, 2020