Welcome to the Michaela Peterson podcast. This episode is featuring my dear old. Dad Jordan Pederson because this is an episode with my dad. I thought it'd be appropriate to bring up a few things one. Absolutely huge thing his book beyond order 12 more rules for life came out yesterday, March 2nd. It's available below or at Jordan me Peterson.com or on Amazon or wherever you buy books unless they decided to not sell it for political reasons, but most places have it because
They like money. Anyway, the book is fantastic. In my opinion. I actually like it better than the first book.
My humble opinion this episode is brought to you by self authoring self authoring was developed by my dad over the last 30 years with help from two other phds at Mcgill and Harvard. It has passed authoring allowing you to write out your past great for trying to work through trauma. Although I recommend writing about trauma at minimum a year after it's gone. So you don't re-traumatize yourself. It has present offering which helps you write out your present and identify flaws that you can work on figuring out an improving.
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Jordan Peterson, welcome to my podcast.
Thanks Mick. It's good to have you here.
Thank you. It's good to be here
too. I thought it would be fun because you've been out of the public eye for a very long time.
My electronic avatars are still out there working away.
This is true. This is very true. But I thought a good way of kind of bringing you back. When an easy way would to be a to do AQ a kind of type thing. Yeah, so
Okay with that. Yep, cool. So I asked my audience on Instagram. They're handy Bunch what kind of questions and I was overloaded with questions and there seems to be like a couple of categories, but I'm going to start with like some of the common ones that people asked. Okay. So let's start. Well, first of all the main question was how are you doing?
I'm alive.
You look alive.
Yeah, how am I doing? I'm functioning at about 20% I would say which is a lot better than 1% Yeah, but it's not
good. And then the last podcast we did.
You were in worse shape could be okay. Okay, we're not going to dwell on that brings. Let's do some questions. These are these are fun ones advice. What advice do you have for a young man in his 20s?
It's a pretty nonspecific question make a plan. Look at what you're interested in get disciplined about something allow for the possibility that you have something important to contribute to the world and that the world would be a lesser place without that contribution. Don't be afraid of taking on responsibility you're so
It's where you find what sustains you in your life. You can take on too much responsibility. You have to be cautious in that regard, but that's a less common problem than not taking on enough. A lot of the things that people regard as traps are actually the means to their life, you know often young people are afraid of commitment for example in the context of a romantic relationship and because they feel that that's going to interfere with their pursuit of something more valuable, but that's just not the case is you're not going
Find something more valuable in your life than a committed relationship with someone that you love that sustains itself across time and that in all likelihood produces children that's life. And there may be people for whom avoiding. That is the better route. But those people are very rare and you need a real reason to assume that you're one of those people and hopefully for you you're not, you know, I've had a very good career a very meaningful.
painful career in multiple dimensions and it's still being the case for me that the most important part of my life has been my intimate relationship with my wife and my and my family
So don't be afraid of that or be afraid of it, but don't let that stop you from from pursuing
it. What about like how how much do people have to kind of data around to find somebody though? Because it does take a bit of exploration to find somebody or compatible with so what's a reasonable amount of exploration and like by what age should people have figured it out? Because I mean there's always the grass looks Greener. So at some point maybe you should just settle down but what are your thoughts on that?
Well life isn't very long. And so you don't get to evaluate that many relationships. You probably only have a five to ten year period to do that something like that. And then the reason you only have that amount of time is because it gets more and more difficult as you get older rather than easier partly because people your age are increasingly in relationships, so I would say get at it don't don't overestimate the degree to which you have to find someone versus.
Create the relationship, you know, there's many cultures and I'm not I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily a desirable alternative. There are many cultures that are arranged marriages and those arranged marriages frequently work. It's not obvious that they work less frequently than relationships or marriages that are predicated on romantic attraction.
Which has its own pitfalls?
Is that no matter who you find? There are going to be full of flaws like you are and so a lot of it is something you create. I think you want to find someone you can trust and someone that you're attracted to and perhaps someone who shares the same ambitions.
as you do or at least has Ambitions that are compatible with yours and then
Well, then pretty much all of it. After that is what you create rather than what you find
is part of the reason that arranged relationships are arranged marriages work is part of it because there's a societal pressure to not get divorced and because it's somebody your parents have chosen there might be an expectation that you're supposed to uphold. Of course.
I mean, that's partly why marriage is in the west work to our marriages and cultures where the primary impetus for the marriages romantic or sexual.
Traction part of the reason those marriages works is because work is because of social pressure it it's very difficult to sustain a relationship across time and you need all sorts of social institutions as well as conceptual schemes operating to help ensure that that's the case because life is so difficult. You're going to go through periods of time where your relationship is extraordinarily difficult, but there's no escaping that and if the pressure to stay together
isn't there the relationship might fragment prematurely and then Not only would you have your problems you'd also not have any relationships and that's not helpful. So you go through thick and thin together and it can be very thin. The thin times can be very thin but that the collective Judgment of the human race so far has been that long-term monogamous relationships are the best that you can manage and that's true cross culturally with there are exceptions polygamy is
Is relatively common nowhere near as common as monogamy, but there are exceptions made for polygamy. But the problem with polygamous societies is that they tend to be more violent, especially the young men and women tend to be more violent because there are more Shout Out Of The Mating Game and that makes them very
frustrated. Oh that makes sense. So it'd be mostly yeah that makes sense. That makes me pissed off too. Why is this? Why is this guy over here have seven wives he'd be better.
Better off dead.
Yes. Yes, and I might be the one to help them along with that. Yeah, I mean that's part of what monogamy does is stabilize societies. And that means that fewer stable in stable societies fewer people died. And so all things considered our species has decided that that's a good trade-off
life's too hard. I try to do I try to do it by myself for a while.
It was hot. Like I my problem I might have needed some time to be by myself to learn what it was like to be by myself. It's possible that I made a terrible mistake, which or both?
Well you even when you were by yourself though, you had friends and you had
family.
Yeah, but it is like life's easier if you can find somebody Who You're compatible with you and like a little bit compatible.
Yes. Well, it's also something there's something to be said about sharing your experiences with someone. They're more real then and
Your past and your present and your future all more real if you have someone who shares them with
you. So advise for I said I advise for a mid-20s man, but that's more advice for just young people in general is a big. Well the best advice that you
can really give to people who are young is that unless you have very good reason not to you should do what all people have always done. And so what does that mean? I when I see my clinical clients, although I'm not practicing.
Practicing anymore when I saw my clinical clients, I would evaluate their lives across a number of Dimensions did were they immersed in the network of friendships? Did they have a family that could be their family of birth, but also the family that they've produced their own husband or wife and children if they were of an age where that was appropriate did they have a career or at least a job and was their job productive and
Matched well with their abilities and their Ambitions were they educated to the extent that their intelligence and curiosity might demand where they in reasonable physical and mental health independent of those other areas. All of those things need to be established and you don't want to question them so much that you don't establish them you might think of yourself as a rebel and someone who's particularly unique and it's all
it's also possible that you are unique in one or more ways. But but fundamentally speaking if you don't do what everyone else does then the probability that you're abdicating your responsibility and that you will miss out on something important is extremely high. So, you know our culture virtually every movie that's made for children. Now, you see this coming out of the Disney Studios constantly always concentrates on the special child who's got abilities that no other child has and is
Being crushed by Society into being you know, unpleasantly normal and and and there is a fair bit of crushing that goes along with being socialized because part of being socialized is to become like everyone else but you don't want to underestimate the benefit of that. It's it's very very difficult to tread your own path and you're only going to be able to do that in a limited number of areas.
You blow apart the social routines. You'll find yourself out there in a domain of chaos that will overwhelm you and that's not pleasant. You do not want that
you talked about socializing and I had a few parents reach out and I haven't actually thought about this but you talk about how kids have to be socialized by the age of 4, or they're basically screwed and right now is true
more true with some kids than others. So, okay. There's a minority of children who are quite aggressive by temperament at the age of two.
And if they're not socialized out of that higher than average level of aggression by the age of 4, there isn't any evidence that that can be rectified later. Now that may have implications for other elements of socialization as well. It's certainly the case that you want your children to be acceptable to their peers by the time they're three and four because peers do most of the
socialization here. Here's the problem right now though. Like I mean take Toronto for existence.
Everyone's in lockdown. You're not even allowed to go to elementary school right now. Yeah, I have I had a couple parents reach out there like we've heard about socializing our kid is so like they're alone at home. So other than the fact that I personally think lockdowns are ridiculous. What do people do right now if they're missing out on those developmental like two to four years like are there are things you could recommend they do other things their parents could do with them. Perhaps that
He can play with them and ensure that the children have time to play and you can be a reasonable replacement for a play partner for your child. Not entirely but most parents know how to play with your kids and it's very very important for children to play. So if your children don't have other children to play with then you play with them they need to play. Okay, so and remember too that children are very resilient. So I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they're going to be permanently damaged by
This period of relative deprivation especially if they have parents who care for them and who are doing what they can to keep them on the proper track. So to speak during this terrible
pandemic plus everyone's gonna be a little stunted after last couple years. Yeah. Hopefully we're all equally stunted come out a little dizzy. Well, I could you feel behind in your development. Yeah me too about two years behind so right hopefully, okay.
That's good advice focus on.
Like take seriously the part of your life because you hear you hear some people and they say especially to men the 20s your 20s is for learning going to University getting a job getting experience. You can focus on relationships later. Like I've heard a lot of men's I don't know if you'd call them like men's rights activist or what online say like you push the relationship off because you can do that later.
Well, I think they're men have more freedom to do that than women do because
The biological clock ticks more urgently for women and I think it is the case that men become more attractive through their 20s rather than less All Things Considered because they become more competent. And so I think and if you look cross-culturally again women tend to find men who are about four years older than them optimally attractive all other things held equal mean there's lots of things.
Things that each gender finds attractive or unattractive about the other so I'm not trying to say that age is the only consideration but men tend to prefer younger partners and women tend to prefer older partners and the Gap seems to be three to four years and that does seem to be stable cross-culturally and so men do have that additional time and they can use that additional time to make themselves more attractive and they basically do that by making themselves more probably more competent and more generous. I would say
That's a good combination competent in generous. So and and women are appreciative of that and the fundamental reason they're appreciative of that. I believe is because women bear the primary responsibility for Early Child Care certainly during pregnancy, obviously, and then I would say for at least the first year afterwards when breastfeeding is and and when the child is so dependent and and so tied to the mother primarily because of breastfeeding but not only because of that
that women need to find a partner to help them redress that imbalance and that's reasonable. So they look to men for the kind of competence in generosity that allows
For the possibility of infant care taking during that extraordinarily dependent
time.
And you've all she bags. Ideally
that would be a market for that kind of competence possibly
the first time Andre got me a jiangshi bag and I pronounced it Givenchy. Oh, yeah. Yeah that did that decrease your attractiveness in his eyes. I don't think he knows the difference. Luckily, but the store clerk didn't say anything. They didn't even blink. Uh-huh. They're like, of course this
way. Okay about that as
Cutler I don't think the camera will catch it but I definitely turned a more healthy shade color. Uh-huh.
How do I should also tell people that the the scientific research the academic research that I found most credible with regards to male-female differences has been derived from biology and evolutionary psychology David buses work particularly. And so there's all sorts of academic.
Pemex schools that purport to describe gender or sex similarities and differences but the more biologically oriented fields and modes of analysis produce the most reliable results as far as I'm concerned. So you may disagree with that. For example, if you're one of the people who believe that gender roles and sex rules are entirely socially constructed then you're going to be unhappy with my biological. Just
great.
but General
well be that as it may it's clearly the case that sex and gender roles are socialized to a large degree, but there's a big difference between a large degree and entirely and I think you're a fool if you don't
Pay attention to the role of biology, which is not to say that the biological interpretation is necessarily free from all bias. But the scientific method is pretty good at eradicating bias across time.
It's also not to say that you're you're if you're a woman that you're going to be a girly woman like I'm not a girly like I am in some aspects curly, but I'm also very career-oriented and I'm very disagreeable and I have male personality traits, right? So like it's not like just because there are differences doesn't mean you have to be
In this Army category versus like
there are more similarities between men and women across the dimensions of Personality. For example, then there are differences. So on average women and men are more the same than they are different that means the curves the distributions of the traits overlap to a large degree, but that doesn't mean that the differences are trivial. There was a new study published this week, which I tweeted showing yet. Once again that as cultures become more egalitarian.
Aryan in their social policies that occupational choice
Differences between the Sexes increase rather than decrease and that's actually a consequence of not of differences in interest that aren't immense. They're on the order of one standard deviation, which is a large difference All Things Considered but still allows for retention of the truth that there was more similarity between men and women than difference. The thing is is that a lot of activity occurs at the extremes and so even minor differences.
Can produce very in base rates can produce very different very great differences in social outcome. For example, men are more aggressive than women more physically violent. Let's say and that's about half a standard deviation in different something like that. And so you might say that the average man.
The average man would be more aggressive than something between 65 and 80 percent of women something like that. But what that translates into a massive difference in incarceration rates because the only people get incarcerated are the most aggressive individuals and almost all the most aggressive individuals are men
and make sense. I did
not make sense, but people don't like it and it causes a tremendous amount of
controversy. Well, that's because it's
Slightly more complicated than an elevator pitch and anything that's more complicated than an elevator pitch.
Well, it's also because it's somewhat contradictory, you know, it's not easy to understand how at one level of analysis things can be essentially the same and add another level of analysis. They can be markedly different but you have to accept a couple of presuppositions and for example with regards to occupational Choice. It's a very it's a minority of people who become engineers now Engineers tend to be interested in things rather than people
oh and more men than women women men on average are more interested in things than women on average and the the difference. It's actually the largest same sex difference. That's known measurable sex difference. The known is that's known is interest in people versus interest in things, but it's large enough so that it produces a tremendous difference in the rates of women, for example, even mathematically gifted women who end up in engineering or physics for that matter.
So it's into seems somewhat independent of ability, which is also quite interesting.
Yeah, that's true. I did I put up a post today and I remembered going to a class that you taught where you mentioned and I looked up to study and it was every 16. I don't know why they did 16 IQ points. There's slightly above
this boat is standard deviation is approximately
every 16 IQ points. A woman goes up from a hundred. She's forty percent less likely to get married and every
16 IQ points a man goes up from a hundred. He's 35 percent more likely to get married and I didn't I couldn't remember the exact statistics and I wanted to post it. So I Googled it and but that's hard to argue with I did and it's like I remember hearing that I was sitting in on one of your classes because I don't know why maybe it was summertime or something or I wasn't going
to probably a punishment I arranged for
you it probably was but because I think I had classes at the time. I don't anyway, I was there and I remember hearing that and being like
This is bad. This is bad news.
Yeah, well, it might be that I don't know and this is pure speculation, but I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that pursuing a career and a family is more difficult for women than it is for men. And again, I think that's because of the differential commitment during pregnancy and for the first couple of years and so it might be that more intelligent women.
Have a harder time because they're more interested perhaps in in a broad range of they have a broader range of interests and perhaps of abilities. It's less obvious to them how to reconcile that with the more traditional.
Maternal role and I don't know like in speculation
that seems like a pretty you're being careful there. That was pretty I think that was pretty on point. I've been talking to two people on my podcast about some really successful people who have kids and I've been saying like, how do you do it or how if it's a man? Like, how does your wife do it? How does she have businesses and have
kids surely there's another reason to which I should point out is that
women tend to prefer men at or above their position in the and social hierarchy and you can think of that as a hierarchy of power which I think is inappropriate or you could think about it as a hierarchy of competence and so a high IQ woman is going to want a man whose IQ is as high as hers or higher whereas a man men aren't like that they'll marry across and down the the competence hierarchy and so what
That means is that as a woman becomes more competent which would include intellectually competent her pool of eligible mates from her perspective shrinks. There's just fewer men like that. So if you're a woman with an IQ of a hundred and forty-five the only men you're going to be interested in and obviously these are over generalizations, but all other things being equal our men with an IQ of a hundred and forty five and above and that's like one percent of the population so
and they might Frank's they might like the
a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty IQ woman with big boobs. That's 23.
Well, they'll I don't know, you know, you could you could you could give men credit and say that they're willing to take care of someone and that's
Indexed by their preference for women who are at or below them in the competence hierarchy. However, you define that or you could say that they don't like to be threatened in their domain of competence by their partner. They don't like feeling insecure and inferior and perhaps both of those are true and perhaps neither of them and something else entirely is true,
but
That makes sense. I think both could be true to a degree. I mean if you end up being smarter than your as a woman, I think if you end up being smarter than your significant other and you're challenging them all the time than it does take away from the kind of dominance aspect that you that you find attractive in a relationship. So that makes it difficult to us and that they probably find attractive in the relationship as well being the dominant guy and if you're constantly being like well, here's why you're dumb then that's not going to go. Well, I
think it's also we
don't underestimate the degree to which men are also intimidated by women, who are
Outstanding across multiple Dimensions. So men are certainly intimidated by women who are very physically attractive. So then if you take a woman who is very intelligent and very physically attractive then she's going to be a very intimidating Target and fewer men in all likelihood are going to approach her.
so
Okay, what about so we kind of did advice for young people in their 20s? I would say do you have any specific?
Well, the other thing I might advise that this is more I said make a plan. Yeah, I've developed a program with my colleagues at self authoring.com and there's a program there called the future authoring program and it helps.
It's designed to help people make a plan for their life across multiple dimensions and
to work their me.
It's worked for many people there. I'm not saying that you should go out and buy it, but it's there and you are saying that
it works really well and it's not very expensive. It's like 25 know it's hard work though. Yeah, and what kind of his
hard work is stumbling blindly through your life and failing
continually. It is hard though. You have to write out like it gets you to focus on your problems. It makes you think about a plan. It's kind of like doing homework.
Like if you're really if you want something that's pleasing really quickly. It's going to be tricky but it definitely helps you organize your brain and try and make a future plan. Especially if you're one of those people are super open and everything seems like a good idea who I could go in this direction be a lawyer. I could be an astronaut. That was me. I could be a makeup artist. That sounds great. Hmm. Maybe I want to maybe want to do physics. Oh, no, I'm not smart enough for that. Okay, let's do a like
I like the family aspect but let's do a 180 two questions one. What are your thoughts on Biden being in power? But more importantly there are a lot of conservatives out there that were very pro-trump and I think a lot of them don't know what to do now and they don't know whether to feel
Angry or lost or if they start supporting Biden that they're you know that they're doing something wrong. So I guess first question is do you have recommendations for conservatives now, but what they should do now that they don't have a conservative
leadership. Well, the only recommendation I would have and I don't have any particular I wouldn't claim any particularly.
Brilliant ability in this area. Let's say
You'll get your chance again. I mean one of the things you can be sure of in a Democratic Society is that power flips back and forth between people of difficult different political persuasion and I think all things considered it might be best to have some faith in that process. Now, you might say that your faith has been badly shaken by the events of the last four years and I think people feel that across the political spectrum and that's a very bad thing, but I have more faith in the institutions all things.
Eddard get your house in order that that's my advice generally to people rather than concentrating. If you're a conservative rather than concentrating on what the Democrats have done wrong or the people on the left you might concentrate on what your crowd and you are doing wrong and try to stop doing that and hope that that works. I don't know. I'm not saying that will necessarily work, but I don't know a better
alternative. I have a good alternative potentially. Okay, so if everything goes completely
Completely sideways even more than now. I think that we could just make a fund and get a whole bunch of people in it and take a whole bunch of money and buy an island and just move there
and who do you mean by
we I can head it because you'll get a lot of
flack. Well all the people on the island continent lie, we could do a cam. Yeah, and we'd immediately fragment into warring
groups. We'd also need a lot of like Lambs. Yeah and how
Is and that'd be most of the islands. Yeah, it would definitely I'd get a tribe right away. But like all I invited those people and they were not like I thought they were so they're off the island. There's always that option though if things go completely sideways. Yeah, they're a little bit side.
Well, they're a little sideways but everybody is very stressed by the lockdown and the pandemic and so I'm hoping across time that that cooler heads will prevail so that means we should each try to cool our heads. I would say
How do you feel about you talked like in in 2016 2017 2017 2018. I guess you talked about like the importance of free speech and things have gone sideways way more since then everyone was running around in 2018 thinking things were going badly and then boom but how do you feel about the tech like kind of the I guess the power that certain tech companies have right now social media.
Media companies I should say.
Well, I'm ambivalent about it in many ways. I mean, I don't think it's a good thing that our society is now organized so that private companies that that control
and allow for a tremendous amount of our interpersonal communication have the power or have been forced into the position where their policing speech now, maybe that's inevitable. When you produce a new Communications technology obvious. It's obvious that that can go dreadfully wrong. I wish I had a simple solution to it. I have a social media platform. I own some of it think spot and it's not there aren't
Inch of people using it and no doubt. We're going to run into policing problems and it isn't obvious to me how those can be solved. They're solved by people trying to be by people at the individual level attempting to be as reasonable as they possibly can even in their online discourse, but there's going to be people who are unreasonable on purpose and people who are unreasonable by accident and it's not obvious how that can be dealt with or where the line should be drawn. So
people who are unreasonable who are running things.
Well, the the Free Speech proponents can say well if you're a private company, you don't have the obligation to host the opinions of people with whom you do not agree. And you know, I have some sympathy for that perspective if I wouldn't like it if my social media platforms were forced to open themselves up to just anyone's opinion, you know.
I wish I had a simple solution for it with thanks, but we had promised that we wouldn't take down any contributions that weren't that didn't violate or appear to violate American law.
That's a reasonable restriction since is as long as you assume that the law is reasonable, but I don't have any words of wisdom. Other than that. It's frightening to see what's happening. It's disturbing to see what's happening.
with d platforming and and so forth,
but
But what's the solution?
That's right. What's the
solution? Yeah, and it's funny you hear like when Trump got kicked off of Twitter and everything else and conservatives were generally up in arms about that because they're like that's terrifying which I agree it's scary, but then there's this antifa group got kicked off of Twitter and they're like, yeah, they should have been kicked off a long time ago not to compare Trump to antifa necessarily.
Those are the same people saying well private companies should be able to do whatever they want, which I agree with.
Well, they're not necessarily the same people. That's the other thing. That's so strange about social media is that you can get groups of people who are hypothetically Allied by their political beliefs saying opposite things at the same time. But even if you're United with other people by your political belief all the people within that Union are still extraordinarily diverse and are going to have all sorts of diverse opinions.
So is it ever
Acceptable to cancel somebody is there like is there a line or you said American
law?
Well, it's always the case that these things have to be thought through in their specific instantiations and I'm often parodied for my answers to questions like this, but it depends on what do you exactly mean by counsel? Like it's clearly the case that there have been instances where people have been fired or blocked off social media without
perhaps with that without sufficient provocation
so but it's the same question again at what point?
does misbehavior mount to the
Mount to the degree that something that intervention has to occur and we don't know how to answer that. We don't know how to regulate these new technologies. They're too complicated and sophisticated. They're beyond Us in some ways mean Twitter for example seems to promote irritable responses and impulsive responses. And that's probably in part because of its strict character limit you have to react in a with with short bursts of
There's no Nuance. Well, the the room for nuance is limited and you could your anger systems can produce short outbursts short verbal outbursts. And so it's unexpected consequence of that strange limitation in communication. Perhaps that Twitter tends to be an impulsive Forum. We just don't understand enough about human psychology to predict that sort of thing much less police it we have no idea what
Effects on personality like what's the effect on personality of being forced to communicate in in bursts of less than 280 characters. No one knows the answer to that. Maybe maybe that brings your disagreeable aspect out to the Forefront in a way that a longer post just wouldn't that seems, you know, maybe compassion takes 500 words in Anger 500 characters and anger takes a hundred and eighty no one knows.
That seems logical
well anger is an impulsive response and impulsive immediate response. And so it's likely adapted to shorter time frames.
I've thought about it a lot because I'm generally I'm generally of the opinion just like leave let people have the most Freedom they can don't impose rules, right but social media was tricky because it's a private company and I wouldn't want my company to have random rules.
Put on it by the government right more than that's already happening. But I think these social media Giants are so big that they can't be treated as a private company anymore. I think maybe once you have a certain maybe it's that what to have a certain number of users. There are guidelines that I don't know who would even make these that's that's part of the issue, but maybe the guidelines are the law and that it just switches over to that because Twitter like everybody's on Twitter. Everybody's on Facebook.
It's the government at some point right
on point a public company becomes a utility infrastructure utility infrastructure. And at that point it seems to emerge in some ways beyond the merely private domain. I don't think something like that's the case but exactly when that happens and you know people have used the example of telephone companies though, for example, everybody uses the telephone but nobody police's the content now with a phone I mean,
Old phone when you were just speaking with someone you couldn't influence a million people with one adherence. So the phone was one-on-one and it's danger was constrained at least in part by that but now a single utterance on
You know what major influencers part can be broadcast to a couple of million people multiple times a day. I do think that at some point private companies provide services that are so ubiquitous that they become public necessities and that yeah rules need to govern
but that's what I think too. I don't know who would make the rules
because I also don't think the government's would make the two governments governments would make the rules. And the reason for that is we don't have a
Mechanism than that. Yeah, but I mean maybe
the old rules you don't want whoever is in power to suddenly dictate all the social media companies that could easily be
disaster. Well they do if you don't have a better option, right? We don't have a better decision making alternative for large-scale public decisions than government that stair now won't well, yes and
no, there's always the commune. Well, the government
has its role in private Enterprise has its role and they balance each other to some degree.
And so
absolutely balanced at the moment things are like not good right now. I know you can be optimistic and things but I just I'm going to make a video about this but like I told you yesterday I just found out that it's mandated that you give birth in a mask. Even if you've been vaccinated inter- Can you see that ever going away? No, like I don't think things are very good right now. Maybe things will magically get better when everyone's vaccinated and the death rate plummets.
I suspect that will improve things a lot.
But I don't think that we should make the mistake of assuming that our current surreal reality is what we're going to experience for the long run.
But even in even in places in Asia after they got hit with stars masks became a fashion staple. They just warm they just wear masks.
I don't I certainly have no specific ability to see where this is headed. Nobody does and we don't know how effective the vaccines will be or how the virus will mutate. I'm optimistic about the vaccines. I think they'll bring
Ring them under bring the epidemic under control quite rapidly. So God, I hope so
and like I said, there's always the Communist option right things go completely sideways.
Okay. Yes. Well people tried that a lot in the 60s and it never did work. I
wasn't around in the 60s. I don't remember that. Plus there were a lot of psychedelics involved in that right people were a little see you naked like maybe
they'd probably be a lot of that involved in any common. You were part of to
ya there.
Probably okay to do a 180. I don't think we've talked about this before but what are your thoughts on this is philosophical Free Will versus not having any free will do you even care about journalism determinism? Yeah.
Well, it's not an either or proposition you're free in some regards and determined in others and the farther out you look in the future as far as I can see the farther out. You look in the future the more your behavior is is is
Free will like and the closer it is to the present the more your behavior is determined. So for example, oh, I like that if you make a ballistic movement, so if I move my hand rapidly from here to here and stop it, I I diss inhibit that movement and its ballistic once the movement starts. I have no free will once I've initiated the movement. I can't react fast enough to stop my hand. I have to pre-plan that using unconscious mechanisms beforehand and then allow the
To run and so as you move towards an action you become increasingly determined so that I wrote a paper on that years ago a student of mine was the first author a good enough theory of free will I believe it was called you can look that paper up on the lawn
line. I'll link it. Yeah, I'll link it and show
notes. I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember the name of the first author. He's a professor now, I believe it in a university in British Columbia.
Yeah, it may come to me soon a good enough theory of Free Will and we
attended the guys are with a J. Don't remember. Okay, I know that's not that useful. Anyway, you attempted to
yeah. Well we treat each other as if we have free will and societies that are predicated on the assumption that we have free will seem to be functional societies. And when we observe our own behavior, we treat ourselves like we have free will and we reward and punish ourselves as if we have free will and so I'm
I'm not willing to dispense with that presumption given its high degree of functionality, even though it's not easy to understand how it might be the case. I think it may be that we have free will because we're actually too complex to be determined simple systems act in a determinant manner, but once they exceed a certain level of complexity, I don't think that that's the case anymore. I don't know how to understand that
though. I like that you can kind of
Aimed where you're going and then you have tons of options, right? Especially if you're looking at career we are or who you're going to marry maybe or family or you know, big things career particularly so you can aim, but then each action you take kind of leads to a limited number of actions or maybe just one
realistically. Well it better because otherwise you wouldn't be able to act you actually want to constrain your field of choices until you hit a determined point because then you act the obvious choice or
Or even the inevitable choice. I mean obviously when you put your hand on a stove you don't have any choice about whether you jerk It Off.
And and so that's that's a place where you're determined in your response. There's we Flex there's determinism out of reflex of level and a lot of your behavior is Chained reflexes, but that doesn't mean that you don't decide where to aim those chained reflexes.
I I've never really been I asked the question because I got interested in it for a second but I've always kind of avoided that conversation because I thought honestly what difference does it make say everything is determined and
And you could track where you're going if you had enough information right? Does that mean that you're going to be a crappy person if nothing if everything you do is determined right? Because people I find that the problem with it is people can make the excuse. Well if it's out of my control and I have no self will then it's not my fault kind of
thing. Well, I'm people do make that argument and sometimes validly so you can sustain forms of brain damage that clearly impaired your ability to make moral choices. So if
With our prefrontal
damage, then you often become impulsive and make make choices that that are immoral perhaps even by your own judgment before you have the damage so you can be unfortunate and end up in a very determined condition and courts do take that into account frequently.
It looks like someone who's healthy and and functioning optimally has a high degree of Free Will and someone who's ill and is constrained has is is not as free and their actions. It's reasonable to take that into
account. Yeah, that's depressing. But definitely true. You're very limited a limited number of things you can do if you're sick or even how you can think right for sure if you're really sick.
Yes. Well, it's almost
The definition of sickness apart from the pain and the anxiety that it produces but those are limitations as
well.
What's the difference between so you're coming out with a book? When is the publishing date March
2nd, Beyond order 12 more rules for
life. So what's the difference between Beyond order and your first 12 rules for
life? Well, the first one has a white cover and the second one has a black cover.
That's that's old. I'm sold.
Well the first as the title indicates the first book was 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos and the second book is beyond order 12 more rules for life.
I divided up a set of rules that I had written for a website called Korra into two categories and the categories essentially were rules that pertain to how you to the situation where too much uncertainty and Chaos ruled and and alternative these the situation where too much constraint in order rained and those are two fundamental conditions of existence. You can be swamped by chaos, or you can be
Over constrained by structure and Order and so the first book was about how to deal with an excess of uncertainty. Let's say in the second book is oriented more towards how you deal with an excess of constraint and I would say also if you thought about it politically in some sense, the first book would be more conservative in its orientation and the second book more liberal because conservatives tend to be more temperamental e
What upset? Let's say by uncertainty and chaos and Liberals are more temperamental be upset by.
The excesses of the patriarchal structure, let's say I don't think that necessarily would come as a surprise to anyone. But each of those situations can get out of
hand. Do you think that's still true? I was talking to Andre the other day about you know, I definitely used to identify it. I was always kind of libertarian was like damn I like that. I like those people but probably more liberal and then and now I'm certainly more on the conservative side even though
I'm not I even though that word doesn't make sense to me. Right like if I'm talking about psychedelics, how can I be a conservative like that doesn't make sense. So do you think nowadays conservatives are still the people who are less
open? I think your question might be more where did the Libertarians fit did they fit on the liberal side of the conservative side? And you might be making the case that the Libertarians have now shifted towards the conservative side. Okay. I don't know.
If that's if it's changed the personality predictors of liberalism and conservatism, and I don't know if the underlying political order has
shipped would be interesting to figure out because do you do you have the personality indicators for liberals versus true? Liberals are hired
Liberals are higher in
openness. But that was from
where 10 years ago 15 years
ago. I might be something like that. I'm curious aspect.
It's mean I suspected still the same, but I don't know
for sure then how can like it feels to me just from looking at the
Political spectrum and maybe this is wrong. And this is the view I get but it feels to me that it's the liberal people who are putting rules and in now,
well, I think that it may be that something shifts in political belief near the extremes. I mean, it's not like I don't I certainly believe there are left-wing totalitarians. That's true. But the rules rules that apply at the extremes might not be the same rules that apply in the middle.
And made so and then the question is how should the middle deal with the extremes and I actually think that that's the question that bothers us politically right. Now. How did the Liberals control the radical left Wingers? And how did the conservatives moderate conservatives control the radical right Wingers now, I've been more concerned as an academic with the actions of the radical left Wingers because they've produced more of what I see is a threat to free academic.
Inquiry how that's playing out on the broader. Social sphere isn't self-evident to me. Like it's fairly self-evident. Well, perhaps it is
I think so, but I'm a disagreeable human being didn't we pot didn't you and I under told me that you guys passed a playground the other day that said play inclusive lie on
it. Yeah,
that sounds like 1984. But yeah now in realize I
wasn't very happy with the signage.
Yeah. Wow.
You're welcome in the Psychedelic. Call me and
