Dr. Jordan Peterson joins the show to talk about his new book, "Beyond Order: 12 Rules for Life," and why he thinks we should have more personal rules. Plus, we talk about why he doesn't like being told what to do.
00:02:04.000But I'll tell you what it feels like today.
00:02:06.000Saying hello to an old friend who we have not seen.
00:02:09.000Now, full disclosure, I've spoken, of course, with our next guest behind the scenes, but a lot of you have been asking why hasn't he been here on the show.
00:02:17.000Well, look, we'll talk about that with him.
00:02:19.000Usually we've been doing guest segments.
00:02:20.000I think this one warrants long-form sit-down because, well, first off, you're not going to get him to answer a question in anything other than You know, a novella.
00:02:35.000We actually, I think this was the first show to really have him sort of stateside, because originally we wrote about him at livewithcrowder.com with the free speech laws from my homeland of Canada, and this guy really was.
00:02:47.000Look, I think some people may not appreciate, and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do this with him here because he'll get embarrassed, but the truth is, This man took a big risk and I want people to really appreciate.
00:03:02.000The limb he stepped out on, the reason you know who he is right now is not because of Joe Rogan and not because of this show, but he was a public enemy in Canada.
00:03:18.000But the whole reason he came to the forefront is because he was one of the few people in academia in a country where you are not allowed to go against groupthink.
00:03:29.000And he took a stand at great risk to himself, and so I think that warrants, as his first time back here, doing a long-form interview, talking about everything.
00:03:36.000The whole world is different, so I'm curious to see what he has to say, what's going on right now in his world, because we haven't spoken since the pandemic.
00:04:42.000Murray, I'm talking to you, and I'm looking forward to it.
00:04:46.000You know I'm well, if that's the case.
00:04:47.000I was going to say, yeah, I don't know, you must have had to rally for this.
00:04:52.000So let me do my very best to shoot that down.
00:04:54.000Do you think you're feeling so well because of all your... it wouldn't be because of all your rules now, would it, Professor?
00:05:00.000Oh, you can't have too many rules, man.
00:05:03.00024, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
00:05:05.000Isn't that kind of funny, though, that you, and I would say myself, a lot of people who've sort of had run-ins with big tech, you're sort of seen as an anti, certainly an anti-authoritarian figure, I just have a general problem with authority, full stop, but then you really are a big believer in rules and order.
00:05:25.000Is that more so personal rules and boundaries as opposed to something being enforced externally?
00:05:32.000Yeah, well, I'm not interested so much in what people should and shouldn't do in some rural sense.
00:05:38.000I'm more interested in trying to discover and discuss with people what principles we should live by, each of us as individuals, that would serve each of us and the collective best.
00:05:52.000And I can't see why you wouldn't want that.
00:05:55.000I mean, if you're bitter and cynical and resentful and you want things to go to hell, And I can understand that, and I understand how people get there, but I'm not really interested in stopping people from misbehaving because what they're doing is wrong.
00:06:09.000It's that I'm interested in investigating what are the principles that help you live a life that justifies itself, and even more than that, you know, if you're fortunate.
00:06:22.000And maybe it's because I'm not finger-wagging in some sense that people are willing to put up with the fact that I'm writing about rules.
00:06:38.000I mean, that's the only person who can abide by all the rules that are set is Jesus, and that was kind of the great irony of it.
00:06:44.000It's like, yeah, you guys can't do this, only I can.
00:06:47.000And then anyone else coming around... But let me ask you this, this is something, and this might be a bit of a smart-ass question, but, um, so you wrote the first book, and there's 12 rules.
00:06:54.000What point did you go, s***, and you realized that you missed 12?
00:07:00.000Oh, well, ha, I do have an answer for that.
00:08:37.000Well, I think that one was an antidote to chaos, and one was a warning about the danger of too much order.
00:08:45.000So that kind of covers the political landscape in some sense.
00:08:48.000Yeah, it definitely is. I wonder too, you just touched on something, if that's why you have more,
00:08:51.000you know, there's some people like yourself who have more staying power. And that's because,
00:08:55.000like you said, you're not, you are meeting your audience halfway. But then on the flip side,
00:08:59.000you have people who are just sort of, who are what I would consider trend chasers, right? They throw
00:09:02.000bombs, they look at the trend, they throw something in there, some red meat, get people riled up.
00:09:06.000But then once that trend goes away, they go away.
00:09:09.000And we've always said, look, if we're talking about subjects that don't interest people or don't matter to people on this show, we're not really serving our audience.
00:09:15.000But a perfect example might be last week, you know, the FBI, they were having to deal with the sex scandal of the Olympic gymnasts and not reporting this for 17 months and 40 more women having come forward being raped, you know.
00:09:26.000And I use that to segue into something that I've wanted to talk about regarding the difference between field agents and corruption in our intelligence agencies for a long time.
00:09:35.000But that just wasn't really an in, and how are you going to get people to go, long history of FBI and CIA corruption, and I'm not talking about insane false flag operations, I'm talking about things that have been determined in a court of law where people have already been tried and convicted that most people don't know about, but we said this is a perfect opportunity because now eyes are on the FBI's transgressions and kind of, you know, you feather it into what matters to people so that you buy yourself some leeway so that you can say, well, may I offer this up?
00:10:03.000And I noticed that you do that, and I think it's an important delineation between what people like you do, and certainly what I try and do, versus someone who's just, you know, Trump 2024.
00:10:13.000Well, I'm trying constantly to talk about things that I think are true in some sense, regardless of time and place.
00:10:20.000I mean, I'm not trying to make some claim that I've managed that, but look, the 12 Rules for Life, the first book, It hit the number 10 spot on the London Times bestseller list again this week.
00:11:46.000It's not a very good one, either, really.
00:11:48.000Well, it's a self-portrait, thank you, Professor.
00:11:52.000Yes, well, lots of people would agree with that.
00:11:54.000Yeah, well, look, not the least of all my life.
00:11:57.000Hey, speaking of things that you like and meeting people, we were just talking about this not long ago.
00:12:03.000One of your guilty pleasures, I hope I'm not outing you, I think people will be thrilled to hear this.
00:12:07.000It shouldn't be a surprise because you're Canadian, and I know you to have a sense of humor, but sometimes, you know, people see you as this more of a father figure.
00:12:46.000And it reminds me of FUBAR, which is a Canadian movie, and it's about the same sort of people, except in the West.
00:12:53.000It's even more deadly aimed at the sort of people that I grew up with and they were working class people and they they were smart and they were bonded to each other and they were witty and and Well, I'm trying to rationalize this.
00:14:03.000I might want to tell you – maybe let me turn you on to a show.
00:14:05.000It's not a Canadian show, but it's – you will see, you can just hear the Canadian accent.
00:14:10.000It's all shot in Vancouver, even though it's set in Seattle.
00:14:12.000It's called Louder Milk, and it's about a 12-step program.
00:14:15.000Ron Livingston heads up a 12-step sort of Alcoholics Anonymous program.
00:14:20.000Um, in Seattle, he's a former music critic, and I don't want to give it away, but I will say Brian Regan, who's just known not only as a comedian, but an ultra clean, kind of goofy dad-like comedian, but really well respected, deserves an Emmy.
00:14:36.000Yeah, there's three seasons, and I hope to God they make a fourth, but it is a really, really good show, and there is definitely a Canadian bent there, just because, you know, It absorbs.
00:15:32.000They don't know your same celebrities.
00:15:33.000And they are a part of an English country known as Canada.
00:15:37.000But you will have gone to Quebec and you won't know that it's Canada.
00:15:40.000And by the way, they have a nationally representative party whose only interest is to separate from Canada.
00:15:46.000I said, this is part of the political—and these were a conquered people who the English said, you know what, all right, we'll let you have this, and we go through the plains of Abraham.
00:15:53.000And I tell Americans, I go, you just don't know.
00:15:54.000That's why you say, okay, look, French folk, time for you to feather in Canada's English.
00:16:00.000And then you have the referendums to—it'd be like, it'd be like Texas separating because they wanted to just be Spanish.
00:21:25.000Well, I had surgery and then I gained 30 pounds in a week and a half.
00:21:31.000Now, I didn't know at that time that it was, I had a gallon and a half of fluid in my, well, for the Canadians out there, five and a half liters of fluid in my thoracic cavity.
00:21:40.000So I said, oh, I'm getting, I'm really gaining weight.
00:21:43.000I mean, I looked like I was, you know, looked like Macaulay Culkin after he found out he was allergic to bees and my girl.
00:21:58.000But at that point, once I had been drained, you know, surgically, I had already gotten into that rhythm, and I was kind of by myself after five days in the ICU to recover.
00:22:10.000You know, my wife will make the sides if we do a grill night, and then I'll make the meat.
00:22:14.000But at this point, my wife was across the country preparing to have twins, because we didn't foresee these complications, so I'm recovering by myself, and I'm grilling like a porterhouse, and I'm saying, I don't want to learn how to make the sides, that's my wife's thing.
00:24:40.000For me, it was different gaining the weight so quickly.
00:24:41.000I mean, I think this is something people realize psychologically, and I would imagine it happens to a varying degree, but long term, you know, right now we've sort of talked, I've talked about this on the show to kind of go back to something a little, a little more philosophical.
00:24:52.000You know, the fat pride movement, for example, and this sort of ties in obviously with as
00:24:57.000we're struggling with an international pandemic and the signal being as preventative, you
00:25:01.000know, comorbidity is an obesity, but we're not allowed to talk about it because we've
00:25:18.000But I felt like a very different person.
00:25:20.000And it was amazing how much it also affected my psyche.
00:25:23.000And I've got to imagine that even if that's happening over the course of a long period of time, sure, physiologically, you adjust more, you know, the connective tissue, but it's got to have an effect on your mental state.
00:25:33.000And like you've talked about even losing the weight.
00:25:36.000I mean, right now, this is right... Have we bound ourselves in such a knot to kind of go here with, to make COVID and the fat... And we need to delineate.
00:25:44.000People who are overweight and want to lose weight, and that's an entirely different situation than someone saying, you will declare me beautiful and healthy at the same time that we're told to follow science.
00:25:56.000Well, one of the things I've really been thinking about lately, and I'm going to write the next book that I'm going to write about this, I think, at least in part, is that It seems to me that if we don't have a delineated space, conceptually and socially, for the sacred and the religious, and that it's put in its proper relationship to the other things that we're concerned about, then what happens is not that we become pure rationalists, as people like Dawkins and Harris, for example, might hope, but that
00:26:33.000Much that should never be religious instantly becomes contaminated with it.
00:26:38.000And so, an issue like body size, relative obesity, starts to take on this intensely moral element.
00:26:49.000And the people who are pushing hard against shaming someone if they're fat, they have their point, but it shouldn't be a moral issue to begin with.
00:27:01.000If you're overweight, it's not because you're a bad person.
00:27:05.000There's all sorts of reasons that you might be overweight, and we should be able to have a discussion about that without it becoming moral, and we can't, and part of the reason for that is, well, we don't know what's sacred and what isn't, and we don't even know that some things have to be, and we certainly don't know what things should be, and so everything in our political landscape is becoming contaminated, as far as I can tell, with What are essentially religious concerns, and I mean that psychologically, not theologically.
00:27:37.000It also means that we're going to be more tempted to elevate our leaders, our political leaders, into spaces of treatment that should be reserved for the sacred, and that's not a good thing either.
00:27:51.000I mean, politicians are basically administrators, and that's the proper sense.
00:29:18.000And I had someone on this show, it's interesting that you bring up sort of discussing
00:29:23.000I don't remember who it was, and so please, if this person remembers, I don't want to miss giving them credit, or maybe they were quoting a philosopher, said, you know, the one thing that people sort of fail to realize about the monarchy is, unlike pure democracy, at least in the sense with the monarchy or royal family, they had some kind of attachment to To their legacy and wanting to be remembered fondly wanting to be remembered Well, because really there wouldn't be this capability of passing the buck that you voted for this.
00:29:52.000So some in some ways they were actually More beholden to some kind of at least self-governing Moral moral compass moral guidance code of ethics.
00:30:03.000He said that's one of the sort of the great attributes that people often Miss out on, I thought, very introspectively on the monarchy.
00:30:26.000I mean, this is really one of the original sins of the Bible.
00:30:29.000And one thing, going back to what you're talking about, sort of not keeping our sacred institutions separate, I see a lot, when I grew up, Not even noticing that we actually need a space for the sacred, and we need to figure out what that is.
00:30:42.000It isn't optional, and this is one of the problems I have with the atheist-rationalist types.
00:30:46.000The mistake they're making, I believe, is that they treat religion as if it's a set of propositions about the nature of reality, like a scientific theory.
00:30:56.000And religious people make a huge mistake because they react to the scientific criticisms also as if that's the case.
00:31:03.000But the religious is... This has nothing to do with an argument for or against the existence of God, by the way.
00:32:39.000I think you experience it when you look up at the night sky, if you're somewhere extraordinarily dark.
00:32:44.000And maybe it's a problem that modern people often don't have that experience now.
00:32:51.000So the argument I'm formulating, I suppose, like I said, this is part of the next book I'm planning to write, is that we need to have a really serious conversation about The psychological reality of the religious, and how it exists in relationship to, let's say, the political or the ideological.
00:33:09.000Because if that's all mangled together, incautiously...
00:33:12.000All sorts of things happen that we don't want to have happen.
00:33:16.000And that's the issue of rendering unto God what is God, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
00:33:20.000And that's also the idea that church and state need to be separated, not only politically and constitutionally, say, but also conceptually.
00:35:15.000Whereas now, I see it on the flip side, where especially in this sort of era of COVID, where, like you're talking about, in muddying the lines, sometimes science has tried to insert itself and almost replace religion.
00:35:28.000And people, not necessarily science itself, but people have tried to turn to science as a religion for, for example, things that are unexplainable sometimes.
00:35:37.000Well, the other problem that comes up there, as far as I can tell, and Sam Harris has tried to address this, although I don't think he's done it successfully, is that we're always faced with the problem of perception and action.
00:35:52.000We have to see the world, we have to hear the world, we have to interact with the world through our senses, and we have to act.
00:36:58.000And when I point out, for example, that there are things that call to you experientially that are outside of rationality, I would say to the atheists, well, why don't you look at the science of religious experience, let's say, or that domain, and try to account for that from within your particular perspective.
00:37:19.000If you criticize the religious people for not following the science, what are you going to do with this fact that human beings are wired, for example, Right.
00:37:28.000admire and to imitate that which they Which they find calls them to a greater self, right?
00:37:36.000That's the the instinct for imitation. And so what is it?
00:37:39.000We're imitating and and why do we imitate that particular value? And so that the whole that
00:37:46.000Well, that's a domain of unexplored mystery that has to be taken seriously
00:37:52.000This isn't a matter of mere rationality, by no means.
00:37:55.000And I think you make a great point about the hierarchy of values, and so you end up looking toward a messianic figure.
00:38:00.000I mean, this is kind of what was supposed to be beautiful to me about the scientific process.
00:38:06.000The science is the equivalent to—it is an equivalent to religion, just like Scientology in a certain way.
00:38:11.000They put science in the name, the science, especially if someone says that with Fauci pillow in their office, which Governor Whitmer did at
00:38:33.000No, no. If the consensus is the world is flat, but it's wrong, the science says that you're wrong.
00:38:38.000And now we're at this point where people don't even understand they're making these same religious judgments and saying, when we say trust the science, we're saying Fauci.
00:38:48.000What about when Fauci goes against the World Health Organization?
00:38:51.000What about when the World Health Organization doesn't actually correspond with the CDC?
00:38:55.000What about the fact that you have other scientists at the time, for example, who've come out and said Fauci was wrong while he was talking about the fact that if you lived in a home with a parent who had AIDS, you could catch it from a cereal box?
00:39:07.000You had all kinds of other scientists who are more qualified who said, this is not the guy.
00:39:11.000And people, in not understanding that they've made this value judgment, have said, no, no, I've decided he's the guy.
00:39:18.000And this is a real problem right now because You know, this kind of brings me, and I hope that this all makes sense, and you can just tell me if I'm stammering.
00:39:27.000I've always had my litmus test for a conspiracy theory, when you have to kind of dismiss it, right?
00:39:31.000You can't go through every conspiracy that someone brings up.
00:39:53.000And fair enough, but it does point to some mechanism for the establishment of value.
00:39:57.000So if you're trying to figure out what's important, what isn't, well, one way you can do that is to see what people in general think, and that might be a reasonable thing to do.
00:40:06.000But, as you pointed out, that's not part of the scientific process.
00:40:13.000And now I guess my point that I was going to, sort of, in where we live, the domain, you know, big tech, this sort of sphere where we One point we're really grateful that there weren't gatekeepers the conspiracy now when we say hold on a second We're talking about Fauci the CDC and scientific guidelines that fly in the face of other scientific guidelines the they and this conspiracy is really only about five heads of organizations people have decided about five you're talking about five companies in
00:40:39.000in about two or three international governing bodies who determine what is allowed to be spoken,
00:40:44.000regardless of your scientific qualifications, for it to be considered proper or misinformation.
00:40:49.000And by the way, they can change that a week from now, and they have, we've documented at least
00:40:54.00020-something times. That, to me, is religious dogma.
00:40:58.000I talked to John Anderson last week. He was the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
00:41:04.000a variety of years ago, a number of years ago.
00:41:06.000He was Finance Minister when they ran something like five consecutive budget surpluses nationally.
00:41:14.000That's a hell of an accomplishment for a Western democracy man.
00:41:19.000And we were talking about what was happening in Australia underneath this, as a consequence of the COVID pandemic and various other causes.
00:41:30.000His point, essentially, too, was that, well, because politicians, in some sense, are abdicating their responsibility, we're forcing medical people to make what are essentially political decisions.
00:41:40.000And so, just as much of the dialogue that, much of the problems that beset us politically are a consequence of the bleeding over of religious concerns into the political domain, we now have bleeding over of the scientific concerns into the political domain, because politicians are using these experts as proxies for their own particular, for pushing forward their own particular ideological positions.
00:42:03.000And that's a very dangerous misuse of science.
00:42:05.000And so you see that in the climate change discussion too, where The insistence is, well, here's the problem, and this is the magnitude of the problem, and it's a moral issue, and you have to accept that, or you're not a good person, or you're ignorant, or you're malevolent, you're a bad person, fundamentally.
00:42:22.000But part of the reason that that insistence is there is because there's a pack of solutions at hand in that person's imagination that are usually ideological in nature, and if the first proposition is true, then That the imposition of that particular set of solutions is a fait accompli, and so not examining that is extraordinarily dangerous, because if you have that ideological set of solutions, then you're going to be extraordinarily tempted to co-opt the force of the scientific endeavor as a justification for your political ambitions.
00:42:58.000It's very difficult for people to separate those sorts of things out.
00:43:01.000Like, I believe, personally, I believe this, is that It's very, very probable to me that massive solutions to the climate change problem
00:43:16.000Global-scale solutions, even national-scale solutions, are going to cause far more trouble than the problem itself will cause.
00:43:27.000I mean, I learned that again when I was 20 years old and I went to the Cancun Climate Summit and I watched Ted Turner propose China's one-child policy to thunderous applause.
00:44:09.000For example, Nancy Pelosi was a hypocrite when she went and had her air vortex blown out.
00:44:13.000It's not that she's a hypocrite, it's that she doesn't believe about COVID,
00:44:16.000what she tells her constituents, or she wouldn't be going out in public
00:44:19.000and putting her head into a particle accelerator.
00:44:23.000So the issue there is I had seen the hypocrisy, it was kind of funny.
00:44:26.000They all really were all a bunch of climate scientists finding an excuse to vacation in Cancun.
00:44:31.000This is when it was still the CODA protocol.
00:44:33.000And then it hit me when about as bad of a policy as you can think of, right?
00:44:38.000Almost a policy that would be considered a strawman if you were to say to an environmental, almost paganist, which is what I would determine some of these people to be now who worship at the Altar of Gaia, if you were to say, well, how far does it go?
00:44:51.000They would have said, oh, okay, strawman, red herring, and rightfully so!
00:44:55.000I would think many of them would have agreed with it in their heart of hearts.
00:44:58.000It's like, yeah, you know goddamn well there's too many people on this planet.
00:45:02.000It's like they have to go somewhere or other.
00:45:03.000We're a cancer on the surface of the planet.
00:45:05.000Well, I guess I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and then hearing Ted Turner say it, and I thought, that's as extreme as it gets, and that's not a problem.
00:45:14.000I'm out with any... I'm not on board with any... I'm not going to feign being a centrist here, because this guy wants to... Okay, so why did you think that was a bad idea?
00:45:27.000Well, that comes from a fundamental worldview, where I don't believe that basically our role here is to be subservient to the planet.
00:45:35.000Our role here is to go forth and subdue the planet.
00:45:38.000And that we were created in the image of God, and not the wildebeest, not the beast of the field, nor the fish of the sea.
00:45:44.000I think we need to be good stewards of the planet.
00:45:46.000But the minute you start getting into the territory of eliminating human life for the betterment of the planet, to me, that's a pagan religion diametrically opposed to not only, obviously, the Christian worldview, but a pro-human worldview.
00:46:29.000And are you so sure that your motives for positing that Have nothing to do with anything but your saint-like devotion to the long-term well-being of the entire planet?
00:46:43.000And how come you're not sure that maybe you're not a bit bitter and maybe you just don't like people that much because life is hard and you've suffered a lot and you're angry and this is a bit of revenge?
00:46:54.000And like, if you don't think you have motivations like that, then I don't think you've thought very much because If you put someone in a vice president and make them suffer, they're going to produce all sorts of bitter ideas.
00:47:19.000I don't work for NOAA, even though they get their predictions wrong every single year.
00:47:22.000But my point is, I don't hold myself out to be an expert.
00:47:25.000However, I can say it doesn't pass a sniff test when I read the entire 16-page Green New Deal and it says, And social justice and equity in there.
00:47:40.000You just added everything into this bill.
00:47:44.000I don't have to say, hey, here are my scientific qualifications to say, I don't believe that AOC or the UN have a shot in fixing it, getting China to play in line.
00:47:55.000When you look at the policy proposals, Way, way down the trail.
00:48:06.000So let's try and be better and not throw our sh** out the window, you know, when we're... Well, you have to be a pretty damn incautious scientist to posit that the science necessarily elicits a given policy approach, because One of the things you learn as a practicing scientist is that you set up your experiment to test the micro details of your pet theory and it's highly probable that
00:48:30.000The experimental results will turn out some other way than you predicted, even when you're trying to predict small things.
00:48:36.000And so, to say we can go from the science to the policy as if there's no intervening mystery, and as if, as a scientist, you're 100% certain that the imposition of your policy is only going to produce the results you intended and nothing else, none of that's science.
00:48:53.000A scientist with any sense would never, ever make a claim like that, having learned through painful laboratory experience that everything will go wrong with your stupid theory that you can possibly imagine, and then a whole bunch more, too.
00:49:05.000So there isn't a direct line from the science to the policy.
00:49:09.000When anyone ever tells you that, They're not speaking as a scientist, except perhaps in, you know, extraordinarily limited cases.
00:49:17.000Moving from what the situation is to what we should do about it to bring a given future into being, that's an unbelievably difficult proposition.
00:49:27.000And science can only solve that in micro-domains.
00:49:33.000And so that's the problem with saying, well, you know, the science is settled.
00:49:36.000It's like, yeah, why are you telling me that?
00:49:39.000Like, why is it so important for you that I believe that?
00:49:43.000Oh, well, it's because I need to do these things.
00:50:02.000Those aren't scientific questions, as far as I can tell.
00:50:06.000I think we all see sort of the art world mirrored in science a little bit, and this goes right to sort of what you were talking about and how this is happening in real time.
00:50:13.000If we want to know what will happen with the climate proposals long term, take a long-term version of what's been accelerated with COVID and the radical changes in proposals.
00:50:22.000We didn't take that first step, at least not in a multitude of ways.
00:53:13.000I've been very, very sick through most of this, so I haven't had a chance to think it through as much as I might have wanted to.
00:53:19.000And I've been criticized for that, too, for, you know, not adding my voice to the general clamor.
00:53:24.000I mean, I spoke again with, well, the leader of a new political party in Canada, Maxime Bernier, after I spoke with John Anderson about the COVID issue.
00:53:36.000My sense is that with the proper policy move, essentially, I think, is something like Well, we've got the vaccines.
00:53:59.000And if you don't, if you're not vaccinated and you have your reasons for that, well, then we'll still do what we can to make sure the systems are in place to take care of you if you get sick, but It's time to get back to normal and I think an approach like that would actually convince a lot more people to get vaccinated because when you push and you push and you force and you mandate then
00:54:22.000All you do is increase the skepticism, radically increase the skepticism of those who are skeptical of pushing and forcing and shoving and mandating.
00:54:31.000And I just see that, I see all of that mandate, all of that force as a admission of the failure of policy.
00:54:40.000Well, you didn't convince as many people as you think you should have that the vaccine was a good idea.
00:55:38.000That is proof positive that the argument they presented was that someone not being vaccinated didn't affect them.
00:55:43.000And I don't even want to get into the whole main, anyway, people know where I line up on that, but I will say this.
00:55:47.000Well, you see weird, you see very weird things happening in Australia right now.
00:55:51.000And so, for example, there, and I hope I've got this right, but the police, they're using an app that Works on your cell phone, which so conveniently happens to know where you are, which perhaps turns out to not be such a good thing.
00:56:07.000And maybe you have to send the police a photograph of yourself with something in the background that proves you are in fact right there.
00:56:14.000It's like, okay, are you so sure that that app isn't more dangerous than the virus?
00:56:33.000It's like, yeah, and Tinder was just a dating app, too.
00:56:36.000But it completely transformed the psychological dynamics of Human sexual interactions.
00:56:43.000Now whether that's how permanent that is, is a whole different question.
00:56:47.000But we're faced with these radical technologies every day and we don't even notice how revolutionary they are.
00:56:52.000Like this app, this is quite something that you have to send, that the technology is already there to establish a system that makes it the case that you have to take a photograph of yourself and send it to the police so they know where you are so that you can go and do your business.
00:57:09.000Are you sure that's not more dangerous than the virus?
00:57:12.000Yeah, and uh... Because it isn't obvious to me!
00:57:15.000No, it's not obvious, and I would take that one step back, you know, because I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist when I said, uh, red lights, uh, red light cameras are unconstitutional.
00:57:23.000Because a red light camera can't, it's not a human being, it doesn't present context, these things can be faulty, and you don't have the right to monitor me at any point at any intersection.
00:57:32.000So, I think... Worse than that, worse than that, are you so sure that establishing the precedent that enables a machine To find someone and elicit the force of the state is a good precedent.
00:58:06.000It's terrifying to think of, and I would say this, what scared me most is not just policy, not that, I've always believed that civil rights, certainly the government would see them as Riddle.
00:58:17.000What struck me the most, and then we'll go to Mug Club only a little bit here because we've been going along on YouTube and I want to show a clip of you sort of talking about authoritarian regimes and their relation with infectious diseases, which may be a little difficult on YouTube.
00:58:32.000We never know what they'll think about that.
00:59:09.000Well, you also want to ask yourself, are you so sure you want to set up policy that rewards that kind of behavior?
00:59:16.000Because you think, well, it's for a good reason.
00:59:17.000It's like, yeah, well, you train, people do what they practice.
00:59:23.000And they practice what you incentivize.
00:59:25.000Are you sure you want to incentivize that?
00:59:28.000And so, I mean, we have these liberties, in some sense, to distribute decision-making power so that cataclysmic errors aren't made in the name of doing the best thing.
00:59:40.000And so... So I think, well, I think the vaccines are there, I'm vaccinated for what it's worth, and I'm not stating that as some badge of moral superiority, but I'm still I, it seems to me that the right policy move is, here's the vaccines, they're available, we're opening up, take your chances, and away we go, and let's get back to our free life.
01:00:06.000Now the problem is, what's scary, is the fact that you just said something entirely reasonable, and I go, yeah, that sounds, and I don't even necessarily know that I agree, I think that I would take it more extreme, you know, being the right-wing extremist, I would say they had no authority to do any of this in the first place, and take it a step further, but the point is, Either one of our views could result in this being removed because the policies, and this goes to the First Amendment, right?
01:00:26.000It doesn't just involve the government.
01:00:27.000Now you have people who meet with the federal government, who meet with international governing bodies.
01:00:31.000I mean, it's not, again, it's not a conspiracy to say, Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Wojcicki, Jack Dorsey, that these people are in a meeting, a closed-room meeting, and come out with agreed-upon terms of what you're allowed to say.
01:00:54.000That's what scares me, not a new disease or even the next pandemic.
01:00:57.000What scares me more is my fellow countrymen.
01:01:00.000Well, the next pandemic worries me, too, because now we've established a precedent, which is if the health risk is severe enough, Then your civil liberties are optional.
01:01:27.000And it's not that good for the planet.
01:01:30.000And so just what makes you think that you should be doing that exactly?
01:01:36.000Like the safety issue, the impact issue, It's very disturbing to me to see those issues being hijacked for what are essentially political purposes.
01:02:08.000There's nothing that embodies individual freedom more than a 550 horsepower internal combustion engine sports car in the hands of a young man.
01:02:39.000And that's why I've always encouraged people to take proper shooting lessons and just go understand what it is to respect the power of anything mechanical, whether it be an automobile or be a Be a gun.
01:02:52.000And with our kids too, I will have my kids shooting very, very young just to make sure they respect it.
01:02:57.000Because I tell you what, I knew, I think I was 20 years old when I first fired a firearm, I said, you know what?
01:03:02.000Had I never shot a gun, I don't know that if I walked into the magical closet of mystery and stumbled across a gun, let's say a friend's father's gun, that I would have respected it.
01:03:12.000But I know if I would have shot this gun when I was a kid, I absolutely would have.
01:03:36.000Actually, no wait, that was the upgrade.
01:03:38.000It was an old Aerostar, which was shittier.
01:03:41.000Okay, we're gonna go to a mug clip because I want to show a clip talking about authoritarian regimes and infectious diseases, but the book, the new one if people don't have it, as I say new because you haven't been here in a while, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life.
01:03:54.000There might be some bonus rules in there because he likes them.
01:03:57.000Where can people get it there, Professor?