The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 2018 Q & A

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:57.420 Hello.

00:01:26.100 So, you've lined up a very large number of questions today.

00:01:33.600 So, a couple of things.

00:01:37.960 First of all, I have a number of YouTube videos and podcasts lined up.

00:01:46.580 One with Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now.

00:01:52.000 One with Warren Farrell, who wrote a very interesting book called The Boy Crisis,

00:01:57.420 and also a previous book called Why Men Earn More.

00:02:00.260 One with an animator named Nina Paley.

00:02:04.620 One with a young guy named Charlie Kirk, who has organized a large number of campus youth groups,

00:02:14.900 more on the conservative end of things, and associated with free will.

00:02:18.000 So, all those will be coming out in the next month and a half, I would say.

00:02:22.020 And so, thank you for your continued support.

00:02:25.040 It makes all of this possible.

00:02:27.420 And I'm also going on tour.

00:02:30.800 I presume some of you know that.

00:02:32.860 If you go to JordanBPeterson.com and you look up events, you can see where.

00:02:37.040 There's about 40 cities listed so far.

00:02:39.100 Most of them are in the U.S. and a couple in Europe, Iceland, the U.K.

00:02:45.700 But we're announcing, we're going to announce 10 Canadian cities here in the next week as well.

00:02:51.620 So, that's all what's going to be happening with me in the next two months.

00:02:57.440 So, I'll be on the road with my wife that whole time.

00:03:00.880 Sometimes in a plane, you know, just commercial travel.

00:03:04.820 Sometimes in a motorhome, depending on where we're going and how.

00:03:08.860 So, I'm looking forward to seeing you if you come out to the events.

00:03:12.200 I've been enjoying them quite a bit.

00:03:14.260 It's good to be able to talk to so many people.

00:03:17.540 So, 12 Rules for Life has sold about a million copies now.

00:03:22.260 So, that's really quite something.

00:03:23.820 And I think we've sold foreign rights in 43 countries.

00:03:27.360 So, it'll come out in not quite that many languages, but just about over the next year and a half.

00:03:33.820 Something like that.

00:03:35.540 So, all right.

00:03:36.760 So, let's get at it here.

00:03:38.200 Hopefully, I can warm up and get my brain going and answer some questions.

00:03:42.140 The first one, 343 people have voted this one up.

00:03:46.840 Could you please discuss free will and Sam Harris' and others' ideas of its non-existence?

00:03:53.080 Well, that's a good complicated question to kick things off.

00:03:55.520 So, I want to tell you a little bit about how to conceptualize free will, I think, first.

00:04:00.620 Because it's obvious that we don't have infinite free will.

00:04:04.520 Our choices are constrained in all sorts of ways.

00:04:08.540 And I think part of the reason that there's a continual discussion about free will in the philosophical literature is because

00:04:17.640 just conceptualizing the issue properly is extraordinarily difficult.

00:04:23.280 So, I like to think about it, at least in part, the way that you think about a game.

00:04:29.000 You know, if you're playing a game, obviously the game has rules.

00:04:32.420 So, if it's a chess game or a basketball game, then there are things that you can do and things that you can't do.

00:04:38.420 And so, it's a closed world in some sense.

00:04:44.520 But the fact that there are things you can't do when you play a game also seem to open up a universe of possibilities for things that you can do.

00:04:53.220 So, chess obviously constrains you to a board and to a certain number of men and to a certain pattern of rules.

00:04:59.840 But the strange thing is, is that when you put in those rules, because rules sound like limits.

00:05:04.820 They sound always like things you can't do.

00:05:07.120 But when you set up a constrained world like that and you lay out a system of rules, what you do is open up an infinity of, a near infinity of possibilities.

00:05:16.920 Same with music.

00:05:18.080 You know, music has rules, obviously.

00:05:20.380 And if you follow the rules, then you can make an infinite variety of music.

00:05:24.600 And so, there's a very interesting dynamic that's hard to understand between constraint and possibility.

00:05:33.560 And there's a deep idea that's associated with that that I read in some Jewish commentary on the biblical stories that I read a long time ago.

00:05:43.220 Talking about the relationship between God and man.

00:05:45.800 And the idea was that God, imagine a being with the classical attributes of God, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

00:05:57.600 What does a being like that lack?

00:06:00.080 And obviously, the answer is nothing, right?

00:06:02.200 Because, by definition, those three traits provide for absence of limitation.

00:06:08.980 But then that's exactly what's lacking, is limitation.

00:06:11.260 And there's some strange connection between limitation, and I was saying, say, limitation, that's rule-governed, as I mentioned before, and the opening up of possibility.

00:06:23.400 So, that isn't necessarily the case that, now, determinism and limitation aren't exactly the same thing, but they're analogous, and they need to be discussed together.

00:06:32.180 Okay, so now, so that's the first thing, is that whatever our free choice is, it isn't limited.

00:06:36.960 It's limited. It's deeply limited.

00:06:40.840 Now, here's another thing.

00:06:42.440 If I take my arm, and I go like this.

00:06:45.900 You see, I'll do that again.

00:06:47.860 Now, you see, there's a movement like that, and then my hands stop just before my other hand.

00:06:53.880 Now, it takes a certain amount of time for the neural messages to go from my brain to my arm and back, and the time it takes my hand to go like this and stop is actually shorter than the time it takes a message to get to my brain and back.

00:07:09.120 So, what that means is that when I plan this movement, which is called a ballistic movement, it's called a ballistic movement because it's like a bullet.

00:07:17.620 Once you let it go, it's gone.

00:07:19.140 There's no calling it back.

00:07:20.540 I've actually organized the neurological and muscular sequences that enable that action before it's implemented.

00:07:27.540 I set all that up, and then it's released, and the whole thing cascades.

00:07:31.860 And so, once the action has been released, let's say, then I don't really have any free will because I can't stop it.

00:07:40.480 Now, so you think about that.

00:07:42.680 It looks like there's a temporal gradient with regards to free will is that as you look out into the future, perhaps the farther out you look into the future, the farther down the road, let's say, the more free your choices are.

00:07:56.960 But the closer they get to implementation, the more they become deterministic, governed by standard causal processes.

00:08:03.860 And there's some transition point where they change from being what we would describe as choice, that we haven't got to free choice yet, but at least to choice.

00:08:13.040 There's some transition point between that and ballistic movement.

00:08:16.200 Here's another way of thinking about it.

00:08:17.540 Like we know, for example, that people who are expert at playing the piano look ahead of where they're playing, and they're doing the same thing.

00:08:26.720 They're watching the notes.

00:08:27.800 They're seeing where they're going, and then they're disinhibiting the automated structures that enable them to play what they've practiced so thoroughly.

00:08:36.720 They're disinhibiting those structures, and then they go automatically.

00:08:40.440 And then what happens if you make a mistake is that consciousness notes the error and then unpacks the motor sequences that have been practiced.

00:08:48.820 And then you repractice them and sequence them again until they become automatic and deterministic.

00:08:54.020 So there's choice in that you're reading ahead, but there's no choice in that once you've read ahead and disinhibited the actions, then they run ballistically.

00:09:02.700 And then you can think about the same thing that's happening when you're driving in a car.

00:09:06.120 You don't look right in front of you when you're driving a car because whatever is right in front of you, if you're going 40 miles an hour or whatever, you've already run over.

00:09:15.040 You look a quarter of a mile down the road, and that gives you the opportunity to see what's coming and to set up a sequence of increasingly automated movements that culminate in whatever it is that you're doing while you're driving.

00:09:28.660 And so there's a gradation from choice to determinism, a temporal gradation.

00:09:33.320 And I don't often see that addressed when people talk about free will.

00:09:39.040 Now, Sam's issue with free will is that if you get someone to do something like lift their finger and you scan their brains using a variety of techniques while they're doing that,

00:09:51.300 what you'll see is that there's an action potential that emerge.

00:09:55.240 And you ask them to voluntarily move their fingers.

00:09:57.140 So they're doing it, let's say, by free choice.

00:10:00.220 There's an action potential that you can read off the brain that occurs before the person either moves their finger or, let's say, decides to move their finger.

00:10:09.900 And that occurs quite a bit before the feeling of voluntarism or that voluntary act.

00:10:15.540 And so that's been read by Benjamin Libet, who did the experiments, as indication that even the feeling of voluntary choice is determined.

00:10:24.800 But I don't think that that's a very useful way of addressing the issue because the issue of when you lift your finger up, again, is it requires pre-programming to disinhibit.

00:10:38.560 Like, you know how to do this, right?

00:10:40.180 You don't have to learn to do that.

00:10:41.700 So you have a little automated circuit that does this sort of thing.

00:10:44.280 All these finger movements and everything, you can see babies practicing them.

00:10:47.880 And they develop automated circuitry that tends to be posterior left hemisphere in order to run those automated processes out.

00:10:56.200 And what you're basically doing when you decide to do something that's a routine that you've already practiced or made out of subroutines that you've already practiced is disinhibiting them.

00:11:05.920 And the degree to which you might regard that as free exactly is unclear, as are the temporal limitations.

00:11:12.840 So I don't think that Libet's experiments demonstrate conclusively that there's no such thing as free will, even though there are action potentials that indicate that there is brain activity signaling even the onset of a voluntary choice early.

00:11:30.440 Now, another thing that we might look at in relationship to that is, yeah, so we can look at it phenomenologically.

00:11:39.520 And we could also look at it in relationship to how people treat one another.

00:11:44.560 So phenomenologically, it seems clear that we have free choice.

00:11:48.940 And it isn't obvious to me why we have consciousness if free choice isn't real.

00:11:53.220 Because consciousness looks to me like a mechanism that deals with potential before it's transformed into actuality, let's say.

00:12:00.380 And I think consciousness is also the faculty, so to speak, or a manifestation of the faculty that enables us to pre-program deterministic actions.

00:12:11.440 So again, let's think about someone playing the piano.

00:12:13.820 They're practicing.

00:12:14.900 You know, after you repeat and you repeat your finger movements if you're playing the piano, any complex motor skill is like that.

00:12:21.140 You have to repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, and you're using consciousness to program it, to sequence the motor movements, and to pay attention to them.

00:12:29.520 That all seems voluntary, and it involves the activation of a tremendous amount of your brain.

00:12:34.520 Because if you're doing something new, a lot of your brain is activated.

00:12:37.680 And then as you practice it, the amount of brain that's activated decreases.

00:12:43.460 It shifts from right to left, and then it shifts from frontal to posterior, and a smaller and smaller area.

00:12:50.620 So what's happening is that consciousness is creating little machines in the back of your head that do things in an automated manner.

00:12:58.360 And the consciousness looks like consciousness appears and feels, that would be the phenomenological end, as if it's doing that voluntarily.

00:13:11.680 And it is associated with a different pattern of brain activity.

00:13:14.640 And so, okay, so there's that.

00:13:17.580 There's the phenomenological reality of voluntary choice and effort as well, because conscious programming of that sort is also effortful.

00:13:25.620 It doesn't seem to run deterministically like a clock does.

00:13:28.300 And then, finally, there's also, and I don't know what you think about this with regards to evidence, but what constitutes evidence is not always that easy to determine, even in the scientific domain.

00:13:41.560 So, think about how we think about ourselves and other people, and how we treat ourselves and other people.

00:13:48.120 So, you can imagine that you're like a clock running down, and that's like a deterministic model.

00:13:54.060 But people aren't clocks.

00:13:55.220 We're dissipative structures.

00:13:56.460 A clock is something that runs downhill.

00:13:59.160 But human beings, you can look up dissipative structure.

00:14:02.780 I think that was an idea that was first formulated by the physicist Schrodinger.

00:14:06.840 We're not clocks by any stretch of the imagination, and we take energy in, and we disperse energy, and we're anti-entropic in a temporary sense.

00:14:22.200 So, that makes us, and life is as well.

00:14:24.800 Schrodinger wrote about that in a book called What is Life?

00:14:26.860 And we don't, what we seem to do, this is how it looks to me, we don't contend with the present, and we're not driven by the past.

00:14:38.440 Instead, what we see in front of us is a landscape of possibility.

00:14:43.340 And in my wilder moments, I think that's associated with the physical idea of multiple universes.

00:14:48.600 But that's in my wilder moments.

00:14:50.620 It's just a speculation.

00:14:52.100 And so, what we see in front of us is an array of potential universes.

00:14:56.100 And those are the universes that we could bring about as a consequence of our actions.

00:15:01.020 And we make choices to the right or the left.

00:15:03.980 There's a lot of mythological speculation about that sort of idea, too, in an ethical sense.

00:15:08.540 Because we decide what sort of reality that we want to bring into being.

00:15:12.780 And so, we encounter potential like God did at the beginning of time when he made order out of chaos.

00:15:20.420 Chaos is this chaotic potential.

00:15:21.940 We confront chaotic potential with our consciousness, and we cast that into reality.

00:15:27.240 And that, now then you think, well, is that really the case?

00:15:31.880 Well, that's hard to say, because there are limits to our knowledge about consciousness and about reality.

00:15:37.240 But if you treat yourself like you're a free moral agent with choice and that you can determine the course of your life,

00:15:44.420 then you seem to get along better with yourself and to be less anxious and to be more productive.

00:15:49.540 And if you treat other people like that, that they're free agents that are making voluntary choices about how reality is going to come into being,

00:15:56.440 and you reward them when they do it properly, and you punish them or otherwise discipline them when they don't, when they do it badly,

00:16:04.500 then your relationships with them seem to work.

00:16:07.660 And then if we predicate our society on the presupposition that each individual human being is capable of doing just that,

00:16:15.880 then we seem to have extremely functional societies.

00:16:18.480 And so, and this is something that Sam Harris has been taken to task for many times,

00:16:23.400 is if you dispense with the idea of free will, how is it you organize your relationship to yourself,

00:16:30.060 your interactions with your family, and your relationships with the broader social community?

00:16:34.820 It's a very complicated issue.

00:16:36.760 So, I believe strongly that we have free will, that we're responsible for our choices.

00:16:43.920 Those choices are constrained in many, many ways.

00:16:46.680 I think there's a gradient of free will from free out into the future to increasingly constrained as the present manifests itself,

00:16:56.260 to deterministic in the moment, in the moment of action.

00:17:00.920 We might think that we enter the realm of deterministic causality at the moment of action, something like that.

00:17:07.060 That's how it looks to me.

00:17:09.040 So, well, so at this rate, we're going to answer about five questions.

00:17:13.600 But that was a very, very hard one.

00:17:15.140 So, anyways, I hope that's helpful.

00:17:18.380 Maelstrom, who is apparently chaos, given the name, asks me, am I chaos or am I order?

00:17:24.660 Well, that's a good question.

00:17:25.920 I would say a lot of the time I'm chaos.

00:17:28.360 But I do everything I can to put things in order.

00:17:31.920 But I'm going to answer that in a deeper way, I would say.

00:17:35.720 Because, first of all, everything and everyone is chaos and order at the same time.

00:17:41.680 And I don't mean that in a trite sense.

00:17:43.600 I mean it in a technical sense, which is order, technically speaking, in my way of viewing the world,

00:17:49.580 is order is that domain you inhabit when what you're doing produces the results that you want to have happen.

00:17:55.640 But that's a pragmatic perspective from a philosophical perspective.

00:17:59.880 It's derived, at least in part, or is analogous to the pragmatism of people like C.S. Peirce and William James,

00:18:09.400 the early American pragmatists.

00:18:12.220 And there's a great book on all that, if you're interested, called The Metaphysical Club.

00:18:19.800 So, order is where you are when what you're doing is producing the results that you intended.

00:18:25.380 And that validates what you're doing, by the way.

00:18:27.320 That's a pragmatic form of truth.

00:18:28.980 Your theory is accurate when, if you enact it, then the results that you intend emerge.

00:18:34.580 That's the definition of truth from a pragmatic perspective.

00:18:37.300 It's a very powerful definition.

00:18:39.260 And it's very much associated with the Darwinian notion of truth.

00:18:42.220 So, that's worth looking into.

00:18:45.940 Now, obviously, there are times when you implement a plan and a world conception that goes along with that plan.

00:18:54.320 And what you wanted didn't happen.

00:18:57.620 And so then, the domain of chaos comes up.

00:19:00.420 The domain of the unpredictable and unexpected.

00:19:02.560 And you have to contend with it.

00:19:03.620 And sometimes, when you are acting, you do perverse things and things that surprise you.

00:19:10.700 And then, things don't work out well for you.

00:19:14.240 Or maybe you get a surprise.

00:19:15.680 And maybe, sometimes, that might even be positive.

00:19:18.020 And that's because the chaos within you has manifested itself.

00:19:21.120 And you've done something that exceeds the bounds of your understanding.

00:19:24.480 And, you know, that can happen to people so badly that they develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:19:31.340 Sometimes, soldiers, especially naive young soldiers, will go on a battlefield and watch themselves do something they can't imagine they're capable of doing.

00:19:38.800 And then, they have permanent post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:19:41.160 So, there's a chaos within that can manifest itself, that can disrupt whatever order you are.

00:19:47.640 And you know that in minor ways, because everybody's always running around doing things that aren't good for them, that they know they shouldn't do, and that they can't control.

00:19:55.680 And so, there's a chaotic and an orderly aspect to everything.

00:19:59.300 To the individual, to the family, to the social world, to the natural world.

00:20:03.560 It's chaos and order at every level of analysis simultaneously, which is why the Taoists think of the world as made out of yin and yang, which is essentially analogous to the idea of order and chaos.

00:20:15.640 And now, but then there's another element, too.

00:20:18.680 So, you're order and you're chaos.

00:20:20.760 And the place that you live, the environment, is order and chaos as well.

00:20:25.520 But you're also the process that mediates between the two.

00:20:28.780 And what that means is, you're the force that confronts chaos and casts it into order.

00:20:33.460 We talked about that in the free will discussion.

00:20:35.600 That's the basis for the dragon myth, or at least part of it, the hero myth.

00:20:39.720 You're the force that confronts chaos and transforms it into habitable order.

00:20:43.780 And there's an idea that if you do that using truthful speech, it's probably the deepest idea in the Bible.

00:20:49.320 If you confront chaos and the unknown using truthful speech, then the order that you produce is good.

00:20:55.920 So, that also means that you're chaos and order and the process that intermediates between them.

00:21:02.940 And that's really the basis of the hero myth.

00:21:04.800 So, part of that is the hero story and the dragon myth.

00:21:08.320 Go out, confront the dragon, get the gold, bring it back, share it with the community.

00:21:12.640 And the dragon is a representation of that which dwells beyond the confines of the safe and habitable space, right?

00:21:19.940 It's an image of a predator.

00:21:21.560 That's part of what it is, although it's way more complicated than that.

00:21:24.260 And you're also the force that confronts order when it becomes too tyrannical and restructures it back to chaos and then restructures the chaos back into more beneficial order, which is what you do, for example, if you have an argument with someone that you settle, right?

00:21:40.540 Because the argument takes the orderly relation that you have with that person and then produces a chaotic interlude, which is all the pain that's associated with the argument.

00:21:51.060 And that's a dissolution into what Mircea Eliade called pre-cosmogonic chaos.

00:21:56.320 And out of that, a new order can emerge.

00:21:58.320 And so, the best way to construe yourself is not as chaos or as order, but as the process that mediates between them.

00:22:07.060 And that's the basis for the ethos of the West, is that the human being is best represented as the individual.

00:22:14.440 And the individual is that attentive and communicative entity that is continually capable of mediating properly between chaos and order.

00:22:23.420 Now, this is a deep idea.

00:22:26.040 You could read Maps of Meaning, if you would like.

00:22:29.160 The audio version of that is coming out June 12th, by the way.

00:22:32.400 And I will make a video detailing the relationship between Maps of Meaning and Twelve Rules of Life.

00:22:37.280 But you can construe yourself.

00:22:39.140 You should construe yourself as the process that mediates between chaos and order.

00:22:43.580 And you should aim to be the process that does that properly, using truthful communication, because that's how you keep the elements of existence properly balanced.

00:22:53.740 And you might say, yeah, but is that real?

00:22:56.380 Well, if you read Maps of Meaning, there's a section on neuropsychology that's also buttressed by a book written by Ian McGilchrist called The Master and His Emissary,

00:23:05.920 that lays out the relationship between the right and left hemisphere.

00:23:09.980 Now, it's quite strange that we have a right and left hemisphere.

00:23:13.200 It's almost as if we have two consciousnesses dwelling in our being.

00:23:19.800 And they're quite separable.

00:23:21.200 If you cut the corpus callosum that unites the two, then the two hemispheres will act independently to some degree.

00:23:26.520 You can communicate with each of them somewhat independently.

00:23:29.000 So they actually view the world quite differently.

00:23:31.440 And that hemispheric distinction is not only there in human beings, but also in animals, a long way down the phylogenetic chain.

00:23:37.460 Now, I made the claim, partly because I was reading a man named L. Conan Goldberg,

00:23:43.420 who was a student of Alexander Luria, the most brilliant neuropsychologist of the 20th century.

00:23:48.060 And Goldberg made the case that the left hemisphere is specialized for what's known, and the right hemisphere is specialized for anomaly.

00:24:00.060 And F.S. Ramachandran, who's a famous neurologist and MD in California, has also made a very similar claim based on his analysis of brain-damaged individuals.

00:24:10.360 But Goldberg's case was the left hemisphere is specialized for what you know how to do, and the right hemisphere is specialized for response to what's unknown.

00:24:18.440 And that maps on to this order-chaos dimension, right?

00:24:23.420 And the right hemisphere.

00:24:24.620 Now, McGilchrist, in his book, The Master and His Emissary, has pointed out quite clearly that the left hemisphere has a tyrannical tendency,

00:24:32.720 which Ramachandran also viewed in his brain-damaged patients, by the way,

00:24:37.280 and that the left hemisphere is always trying to impose its logical and restricted order on the world and to make the world fit into that.

00:24:45.500 Now, it has to do that. There's reasons for that.

00:24:48.320 Part of the reason is that if your theory you've worked on for 10 years makes one prediction error, you shouldn't throw the whole damn thing out.

00:24:55.000 You should doubt the prediction error, right?

00:24:57.420 Because you never know when your data is actually data or is just another kind of theory.

00:25:02.500 We can't get into that at the moment.

00:25:04.700 Now, McGilchrist makes a very strong case, and I think a more elaborated case than I made in Maps of Meaning,

00:25:12.220 but it's the same argument fundamentally, that the right hemisphere is concerned with reaction to anomaly.

00:25:19.340 And so what happens in some sense is something unexpected happens.

00:25:23.120 That's the domain of chaos, and that stops you in your tracks.

00:25:26.640 It freezes you, and that's a predator response, a prey response, actually.

00:25:30.200 You're frozen.

00:25:31.200 The unknown has manifested itself.

00:25:33.140 You're not in order anymore.

00:25:34.860 You don't know where you are, and you don't know what to do.

00:25:36.960 And you can't just shut down like a computer does.

00:25:39.740 You freeze instead.

00:25:41.300 And then what happens is that the ancient mechanisms that have helped our ancestors for tens of millions of years,

00:25:47.280 or perhaps longer than that, react to that which lurks beyond the confines of the unknown, kick in.

00:25:54.020 And you start, first of all, that's motoric, so you freeze, and then you cautiously start to explore.

00:25:58.800 And then it's imagistic.

00:26:00.320 You start making imaginal representations, metaphoric representations, dramatic representations of what might constitute the unknown.

00:26:08.420 And then those representations are practiced and implemented in the world,

00:26:12.560 and they become more and more fine-grained and automatized.

00:26:15.460 And as that happens, the locale that they're represented in, in the brain, shifts from right to left.

00:26:21.760 So the reason I'm telling you all this is because, you know, this is where the metaphysical and the physical unite.

00:26:29.540 And this is the sort of argument that I was trying to make to Sam Harris.

00:26:32.660 And hopefully we'll be able to continue doing that, because I'm going to meet him three times in the next few months.

00:26:36.820 It's that the yin-yang idea, the chaos order idea, is metaphorical in some sense.

00:26:43.360 To say that the world is made up of order and chaos doesn't sound like an empirical statement.

00:26:47.940 But strangely enough, the world to which our brains are adapted is actually the world of chaos and order.

00:26:55.280 You can think about it as unexplored and explored territory, too.

00:26:58.060 That's another, you know, take on it.

00:27:01.640 And so then you think from a Darwinian perspective, think about it this way.

00:27:05.360 From a Darwinian perspective, there's an axiomatic presupposition.

00:27:11.440 And that is, reality is that which selects, okay?

00:27:15.160 Reality is the force that selects over evolutionary time.

00:27:18.720 And so the force that selects over evolutionary time has selected for hemispheric specialization,

00:27:24.680 bilateral hemispheric specialization, which indicates that two different modes of looking at the world are necessary for survival, right?

00:27:32.300 So that's real.

00:27:33.180 And so the idea that the world is made out of chaos and order is perhaps the most real idea.

00:27:38.620 Now, here's something else cool that's associated with that.

00:27:41.920 And this is an antidote to nihilism.

00:27:44.260 I also think it's an antidote to, what would you call, ideological possession.

00:27:50.700 So, when you encounter something unknown, you orient towards it.

00:27:55.980 And that's an involuntary response.

00:27:57.820 You could even think about it as a deterministic response.

00:28:00.080 It's part of what orients you very rapidly towards predators so that they don't kill you before you have a chance to respond.

00:28:06.240 Okay, so you react because the anomalous thing is meaningful.

00:28:10.060 It's intrinsically meaningful.

00:28:11.340 And the reaction is, first, terror with perhaps an overlay of disgust, and second, curiosity.

00:28:18.060 And it's terror so that you freeze and remain paralyzed.

00:28:21.720 You turn to stone when you look at the basilisk or the snake or the gorgon.

00:28:25.440 You turn to stone.

00:28:26.280 You're paralyzed like a prey animal.

00:28:27.660 And that's so the predator can't see you, at least in part.

00:28:31.780 And there's other elements of the orienting reflex that are associated with predator avoidance.

00:28:35.820 And then, if nothing additionally terrible happens, you start to thaw out.

00:28:39.180 And you start to explore.

00:28:40.940 And you do that with image first.

00:28:42.800 And then practice the appropriate behaviors.

00:28:45.560 And then automate those.

00:28:46.900 Now, look.

00:28:47.920 Here's the thing that's cool.

00:28:49.980 So, that orienting reflex to the unknown is,

00:28:53.460 it's an admixture of threat, fear, and curiosity, incentive-reward.

00:29:00.600 So, negative emotion and positive emotion.

00:29:03.060 Now, and it's dose-dependent.

00:29:04.920 The larger the anomaly, which means the larger the map,

00:29:09.840 it blows out when it manifests itself.

00:29:12.240 Think of the difference between being irritated at your marital partner because they, you know,

00:29:18.220 oh, who knows, because they were late to pick you up for work

00:29:21.300 compared to how irritated you would be if you found out they were having an affair.

00:29:25.280 Difference in size of anomaly.

00:29:26.900 The first one disrupts a tiny little part of your space-time orientation.

00:29:32.160 And the second one demolishes your past, present, and future.

00:29:35.740 And the larger the disruption, the more negative emotion, obviously.

00:29:40.100 And so, there's this weird interplay between negative and positive emotion in the response to anomaly.

00:29:46.160 And, but it's deeply meaningful, even if it paralyzes you, even if it's terrifying, it's meaningful.

00:29:52.420 And then that transforms, perhaps, into intense curiosity and you start to explore.

00:29:56.580 Now, the phenomena of meaning is a manifestation of the complex orienting reflex.

00:30:03.640 And so, you're wired so that you're not just order and you're not just chaos.

00:30:08.720 You're order continually confronting chaos so that the order remains updated.

00:30:13.200 And you might say, well, how do you know how much chaos you should confront

00:30:17.520 in order to keep the order continually updated?

00:30:20.680 And the answer is meaning.

00:30:24.060 See, something is meaningful.

00:30:25.920 The reason that something is meaningful is because you're getting a deep instinctual signal

00:30:30.040 that you're encountering anomaly at a rate that doesn't exceed your capability

00:30:34.980 that's also the rate at which you can keep yourself updated optimally.

00:30:39.020 And so, meaning isn't epiphenomenal and it isn't some kind of delusion that rationality

00:30:45.820 can and should overcome to say, well, everything's meaningless.

00:30:49.000 It's like, no, it's not.

00:30:50.220 Meaning is the most fundamental instinct for adaptation.

00:30:53.380 And so, that's partly why in 12 Rules for Life, I said one of the rules, I think it's rule

00:30:58.240 seven, is do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

00:31:02.320 Because meaning is a really good guide to long-term adaptation.

00:31:05.320 And so, then, and the other thing about meaning, which is what happens when you get the balance

00:31:10.560 between chaos and order, right, is that meaning is the antidote to despair.

00:31:15.600 And so, if you, and there's all sorts of reasons in life to be desperate.

00:31:19.960 And so, if you immerse yourself in meaning, you can learn to do that.

00:31:23.380 You can learn to do that.

00:31:24.420 You can make that goal your highest goal.

00:31:26.360 And so, then the highest goal would be to be the sort of mythological hero, let's say,

00:31:31.580 to embody and incarnate and imitate the mythological hero, like the imitation of Christ,

00:31:37.620 which is what you're called to do if you happen to be Christian.

00:31:41.080 That means that you live in meaning.

00:31:43.160 And that meaning is the antidote to the suffering of life that would otherwise make you brutal

00:31:47.440 and vengeful and unhappy and miserable. 0.56

00:31:49.640 And like that young guy who just mowed down 12 people in Toronto.

00:31:55.040 These are real things.

00:31:56.740 You lose your sense of meaning.

00:31:58.140 You end up in hell.

00:31:59.460 And in hell, you do all sorts of terrible things.

00:32:02.500 These are dreadful realities.

00:32:05.220 And it isn't as if they're not grounded in the appropriate science.

00:32:09.280 So, anyways, that was also a very complicated question.

00:32:13.380 Being gay and in a long-term relationship, we are considering kids.

00:32:18.440 What are your thoughts about gay people raising children?

00:32:25.200 I think the devil's in the details, to tell you the truth.

00:32:28.260 If I was ever talking to any individuals about that, the question is, well, how would you raise them?

00:32:33.140 I mean, you have problems, right?

00:32:34.740 If you're both of the same sex, then you're going to have the problem of how to provide the proper model for, 0.76

00:32:41.300 you know, let's say you have a boy and a girl.

00:32:42.700 Well, we know this is indisputable.

00:32:47.060 And this is something I've talked to Warren Farrell about.

00:32:49.340 Kids in intact heterosexual families where the father is present do way better on multiple indices 0.60

00:32:56.560 than kids who are part of single-parent families.

00:33:00.920 Now, that doesn't mean that there are no single parents who do a good job, right?

00:33:04.920 That's not the same bloody claim.

00:33:06.840 Those are different claims.

00:33:07.900 But on average, not only do kids where fathers are present do better,

00:33:13.580 but societies or even local societies where there are more fathers present do better,

00:33:20.380 not only for the kids that they're fathering,

00:33:22.720 but the kids in the neighborhood where there are lots of intact families with fathers do better.

00:33:27.260 And so, I believe quite firmly that the nuclear family is the smallest viable human unit.

00:33:35.680 Father, mother, child.

00:33:37.920 Smallest viable unit.

00:33:39.620 And if you fragment it below that, then you end up paying.

00:33:42.220 Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't ways that you can operate in a smaller unit or a different unit effectively.

00:33:51.740 But you have to contend with the fact that it's necessary for kids to have models for both sexes.

00:33:59.880 And that means accepting that the sexes are different, even though there's a fair overlap between them,

00:34:05.420 accepting that they're different, and that both sexes play their role.

00:34:09.800 It looks like what fathers do.

00:34:11.240 And I talked to Warren Farrell a lot about this, and I'm going to release this video this month,

00:34:15.540 about what fathers do.

00:34:17.000 And a lot of what they do is rough-and-tumble play with the kids,

00:34:20.860 which kids really, really, really like.

00:34:22.760 And it's really important, as Jak Panksepp, a great affective neuroscientist, laid out in his studies on rats.

00:34:28.580 He discovered the play circuitry.

00:34:30.700 And fathers, this is something Farrell told me, which was extraordinarily interesting,

00:34:34.640 is that fathers used the joy of the possibility of play as a scaffold to help children learn to delay gratification.

00:34:42.560 So imagine a father spends a bunch of time playing with his kids, and they're having a great old time.

00:34:46.420 They're wrestling around and pushing each other's limits to find out where they are.

00:34:50.180 And learning the physiological dance that goes along with direct contact, direct exciting contact,

00:34:56.760 learning what hurts and what doesn't, and what constitutes fair play and what isn't,

00:35:00.900 and how everybody can play and still enjoy the game, and how excited you could get before it's too much,

00:35:05.460 and how much you should whine and how much you shouldn't, and when you can object to being hurt.

00:35:09.500 All of that at a deeply embodied level.

00:35:11.860 The kids love that.

00:35:13.220 They'll line up for that.

00:35:14.180 And Panksep demonstrated very clearly that rats will work to play, and that rats play fair,

00:35:20.340 and they learn to play fair because of iterated play bouts,

00:35:23.200 and that if you don't let juvenile male rats play, then their prefrontal cortexes don't develop,

00:35:29.020 and they get attention deficit disorder, or the equivalent in rats.

00:35:32.200 And then you can treat that with Ritalin.

00:35:33.740 And so this is all very vital material.

00:35:37.520 Now, if you're going to, if you're gay, let's say, there's two men or two women,

00:35:43.240 then you have the problem of what you're going to do for the contra-sexual target.

00:35:49.660 And you can say, well, it doesn't matter because there's no differences between men and women. 0.97

00:35:53.160 And you can gerrymander the damn question that way and avoid your moral responsibility. 0.97

00:35:57.320 Or you can face it squarely and say, look, you've decided to step outside of the cultural norm 0.99

00:36:02.620 and to organize a non-standard relationship, which puts a tremendous responsibility on you.

00:36:07.980 And then you have to figure out how you can provide for your children

00:36:10.580 what it is that they would get in the classic minimal human unit.

00:36:15.360 So, and more power to you.

00:36:16.800 I hope you can do a good job of it.

00:36:18.500 You know, I think there's room in the world for a diverse range of approaches

00:36:23.060 to complex life problems like having kids and finding a partner.

00:36:28.080 But that doesn't mean you get to bury your head in the sand about the absolute realities of life

00:36:32.700 and the fact that there are biological differences between men and women. 0.94

00:36:35.560 To deny that is reprehensible in my estimation.

00:36:40.100 And besides, the empirical data, the scientific data are crystal clear.

00:36:44.240 So, okay.

00:36:47.460 Carl Jung says that everything unconscious is projected into reality.

00:36:51.980 How do you know if you're perceiving reality accurately or are just projecting?

00:36:56.300 Great.

00:36:56.820 Yeah.

00:36:57.140 Well, that's partly why I'm a pragmatist.

00:36:59.340 Well, there's a bunch of ways.

00:37:01.740 There's a bunch of ways that you know.

00:37:04.440 Pain tells you. 1.00

00:37:06.780 If you make a mistake and you hurt yourself, well, then your stupid theory was wrong, right? 1.00

00:37:10.600 That's what the pain says. 1.00

00:37:11.820 Your stupid theory was wrong. 1.00

00:37:13.760 And that's a pragmatic. 1.00

00:37:14.840 You see, that's another indication of pragmatic theory of truth.

00:37:18.820 You lay out.

00:37:19.480 Look, when you look at the world, you look at the world with a set of presuppositions.

00:37:23.620 I outlined that in Chapter 10 in 12 Rules for Life called Be Precise in Your Speech.

00:37:29.780 It indicates that when you look at the world, you look at it through a value structure.

00:37:34.780 You can't help that because you're always aiming at something in the world and you're always aiming at something you want and you're trying to get it.

00:37:40.360 And so that means that you look at the world through a value structure.

00:37:43.460 Now, the question is whether or not that value structure is valid.

00:37:46.380 And that's a very complicated question.

00:37:48.880 Okay, so how do you know if it's valid?

00:37:50.820 Number one, you lay it out and you act it out.

00:37:54.140 You implement it perceptually and then you act it out.

00:37:56.800 And if you get what you wanted, what the theory predicted, that's another way of thinking about it.

00:38:01.560 But wanted is a better way of thinking about it.

00:38:03.440 Then the fact that that behavioral routine and perceptual structure produced the intended result validates it as a tool for obtaining that result.

00:38:12.840 And that's a form of truth.

00:38:15.060 Now, it might be the only form of truth, although I'm not convinced of that completely, but it might be.

00:38:20.040 It's a very complicated question. 1.00

00:38:21.520 Now, how do you know if your stupid theory is wrong? 1.00

00:38:24.900 Okay, A, it fails and you're hurt. 1.00

00:38:28.280 Pain tells you, pragmatically, your theory was wrong.

00:38:32.040 So that's why you should pay attention to your own pain because your suffering is indication that you still have things to learn.

00:38:37.600 And maybe the suffering of other people is also that.

00:38:40.060 Maybe something unexpected or unpredictable happens when you're laying out your plan and then the anomalous manifests itself, the unexpected or chaos, and then you get anxious.

00:38:50.760 Well, anxiety is an indication that your plan, your arrow didn't fly to its mark, so you aimed wrong.

00:38:57.040 And that might mean a small error, you know, maybe a tiny adjustment of your bow, or it might mean you just don't know what the hell you're doing at all and everything is lost.

00:39:05.400 And so anxiety tells you if your theory is wrong.

00:39:08.980 And then other people tell you that, and that's why you want to surround yourself with other people.

00:39:15.280 Because you distribute your cognitive resource, you distribute your problems to the cognitive resources of the social group.

00:39:26.400 That's what we do when we price things, right?

00:39:28.340 Everyone votes on the price of something because it's so difficult, because the price of something has to be established in relationship to the price of everything else, and that's always in flux.

00:39:37.020 And so it's a computationally impossible problem.

00:39:40.820 And so we outsource it to the market, which is the free cognitive decision of millions of people, and that's how we determine price. 0.97

00:39:48.760 And so one of the things you do to make sure that you're not any stupider than you have to be, blind, ignorant, biased, and all of that, is you surround yourself with other people. 0.99

00:39:57.420 And you try to treat them well enough so that they can tolerate you, and then every time that you do something stupid, because one of your theories is vague or incomplete or wrong or biased or you're willfully blind, then they slap you on the side of the head. 1.00

00:40:10.320 They ignore you because you're boring. 1.00

00:40:12.280 They don't laugh at your jokes because they're stupid. 1.00

00:40:14.260 They are irritated at your actions because you're not taking your own long-term interests or the interests of other people into account. 0.99

00:40:23.360 And so you have pain, you have anxiety, you have the reward of success, that's a positive indicator that your theory is okay, and then you have the reactions of everyone else.

00:40:33.780 And if you're clued in, you pay attention to all of those things, and you try to update your order, which is your perceptions, you try to update your order constantly as a consequence of being humble in the face of your errors,

00:40:47.780 which is why humility is the precondition for learning and why it's one of the highest moral virtues.

00:40:53.300 So, and perceiving reality accurately.

00:40:57.380 You don't really perceive reality, and you don't really perceive accurately.

00:41:01.860 You perceive small portions of reality, extraordinarily limited in space and time, and accurately means well enough so that when you do what you're doing, it works.

00:41:13.020 That's why I'm a pragmatist.

00:41:14.420 I mean, not only.

00:41:15.280 I mean, you know, I mean, there's lots of other philosophical streams that have influenced my thought.

00:41:20.680 Existentialism, phenomenology, to mention two others.

00:41:24.320 But the thing is, you can't perceive reality accurately because you don't know everything. 1.00

00:41:30.100 And you're full of biases, and you're ignorant as hell. 0.97

00:41:33.580 And so the best you can do is perceive small bits of reality well enough so that you can more or less get what you need in a relatively short period of time without screwing yourself up too badly in the medium to long term. 0.99

00:41:44.000 That's pretty much what you've got.

00:41:46.220 And that doesn't mean truth is impossible.

00:41:48.260 It just means that it's very, very complicated to decide what truth is.

00:41:51.960 Because the question is, what is truth for someone whose knowledge is limited?

00:41:57.100 Right? 0.81

00:41:58.040 Because obviously, because your knowledge is limited and you don't know everything, in some fundamental way, you're ignorant or wrong about everything.

00:42:06.220 But that doesn't help because you still have to act in the world.

00:42:08.740 So there are bounded truths.

00:42:10.540 There are bounded truths.

00:42:12.240 And so, all right.

00:42:14.080 If past experiences shape us, oh, no, I missed one, you cite a tired brain, foggy thinking, as the reason to stop answering questions or giving a talk.

00:42:25.700 How do you combat this while working or writing daily?

00:42:29.640 Well, I eat a big breakfast relatively soon on waking.

00:42:34.480 That really helps.

00:42:35.360 If any of you out there are anxious, and many of you no doubt are, there'll be a large number of you who are anxious and don't eat breakfast.

00:42:42.680 And there'll be a whole bunch of you out there who think, well, I don't eat breakfast.

00:42:45.200 It isn't necessary.

00:42:46.020 It's like, that's wrong.

00:42:47.260 It's necessary.

00:42:48.540 You've fasted all night.

00:42:49.720 If you load yourself cognitively or physiologically in the morning, your brain, stressed, will produce, will encourage your body to produce insulin.

00:42:58.980 It will take all the blood sugar out of your blood.

00:43:01.120 And then you're done for the day.

00:43:02.880 And then you'll be anxious.

00:43:03.900 And a lot of the rest of you, too, you'll find if you're anxious, try this.

00:43:08.040 It's a really, really interesting experiment.

00:43:11.980 The next time you're anxious, go eat something.

00:43:15.060 Eat some protein and fat would be best.

00:43:17.980 You could have cheese and crackers.

00:43:19.280 I'm not a big fan of carbohydrates, but whatever.

00:43:22.100 Eat whatever you're willing to eat, but make it solid.

00:43:24.780 Don't eat a peanut butter or don't eat like a chocolate bar or something sweet.

00:43:28.240 Eat something substantial, a piece of meat, a piece of cheese, some peanut butter, something like that.

00:43:32.980 And then wait 10 minutes and see if you're less anxious.

00:43:36.660 And try that for like two weeks.

00:43:38.120 Every time you get anxious, eat something.

00:43:39.640 Because then you can find out if your anxiousness, if your anxiety is linked to low blood sugar.

00:43:44.860 And it's very likely that it is, especially if you also get irritable and foggy in your thinking.

00:43:50.320 And so, and the best way to treat that, as far as I've been able to tell, and there's a decent literature on this, is to make sure that you eat a big breakfast.

00:43:58.200 And you might say, well, I'm not hungry in the morning.

00:44:00.360 It's like, who the hell cares if you're hungry?

00:44:02.100 I didn't say enjoy your breakfast.

00:44:04.480 I said eat it.

00:44:05.560 That's not the same thing.

00:44:07.420 You know, there's lots of things that you need to do that you don't enjoy to begin with.

00:44:10.680 You'll get hungry in six months and then you'll start to enjoy it.

00:44:13.440 So that's a massive difference.

00:44:14.960 I take small naps quite frequently.

00:44:17.300 If I'm wiped out, you know, I'll go have a nap for 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

00:44:21.840 And then that helps quite a lot.

00:44:24.360 I try to wake up fairly regular, on a fairly regular schedule.

00:44:30.120 That's another thing I would really recommend for people whose lives are in disarray and who are anxious.

00:44:34.740 Try to fix your wake time.

00:44:37.140 Sleep, going when you sleep, that's not so important.

00:44:39.660 So you can still, you know, stay up late and have fun and all that.

00:44:42.780 But getting up in the morning is really helpful.

00:44:45.960 So, you know, and you also have to figure out how much you can work or write.

00:44:52.140 I can't write for more than about max.

00:44:55.240 My sustainable maximum for writing is three hours a day.

00:44:58.180 And if I push it past that, then, especially if I'm editing, I make mistakes when I'm editing.

00:45:04.260 So that's counterproductive.

00:45:05.500 And I can't sustain it across time.

00:45:07.940 And so I don't really think you can do more than about three hours of extremely intense intellectual work a day.

00:45:14.200 Although if you have a nap, you can stretch that.

00:45:17.000 But I think at least I end up paying for it across time.

00:45:20.500 So nap, make sure you eat.

00:45:23.200 And make sure you eat protein and fat and not carbohydrates, because carbohydrates are basically poisonous.

00:45:33.020 That's about, that's about, and make sure that you get enough sleep.

00:45:35.780 So that's how I combat it and try to make myself hyper-efficient, which is also a really interesting thing to try.

00:45:43.020 You know, I was talking to my agents at CAA, Creative Artist Agency in LA, and I just hired a publicist, too, to help me manage media in a more intelligent manner.

00:45:52.160 And we're trying to think about our overarching philosophy, you know, and I first proposed to the CAA guys that our overarching philosophy would be something like, because you need an overarching philosophy under which you nest all your specific actions.

00:46:05.900 It was something like to educate as many people as possible in the shortest period of time, which seems like a really good goal.

00:46:12.120 Like, why the hell not do that?

00:46:13.480 But then we broadened that a little bit this week, which was to try to do as much good possible as efficiently as possible.

00:46:20.260 And that efficiency thing is really fun if you guys who are listening are out for a challenge.

00:46:24.420 Like, one of the things that you can, I think this heightens the meaning in your life, is to try to do difficult things, right?

00:46:30.640 Aim high.

00:46:31.740 Don't aim so damn high you can't manage it.

00:46:34.360 And make sure you break down your aims into reasonably attainable sub-goals, but you want to aim high.

00:46:40.260 And then you want to see how hyper-efficient you can get.

00:46:42.500 That's a great thing to do in your early 20s, is to see, okay, like, discipline yourself.

00:46:48.000 You think, okay, how much work can I do if I load myself right to the maximum?

00:46:52.420 How far can I work?

00:46:54.640 How hard can I work until I exhaust myself?

00:46:57.800 And then you back off, obviously, because the optimal amount of working, productive engagement, let's say, is that which is sustainable across decades.

00:47:06.700 So you have to learn that, but you don't learn that without stretching yourself to your limits to begin with.

00:47:11.740 And, you know, if your life isn't everything it could be, and if you're suffering from an excess of meaninglessness,

00:47:17.080 well, it means you're not oriented in the world of chaos and order properly.

00:47:20.780 It's like you could learn to discipline yourself.

00:47:23.640 Look, figure out what it is that you need to do and that you want to do, and then see how efficient you can get.

00:47:29.080 Because one of the things that's quite fun is to figure out, if you have a task, I always tell my graduate students this, if they're doing an experiment, too.

00:47:36.620 If you have a task that you have to do, it's really interesting to spend a few minutes, sometimes hours, depending on how long the task is,

00:47:44.200 see if you can figure out how to do it from five to ten times faster.

00:47:47.800 It means you'll have to rearrange the way you think about it, but you can often do it, and that's how extremely productive people get so hyper-efficient.

00:47:55.180 You know, sometimes it means you have to delegate, sometimes it means you have to bring other people aboard.

00:47:59.440 That's delegation as well, I suppose.

00:48:01.060 But there's a lot of preconceptions that you hold about who you are and who the world is that you could dispense with that would make you a way more efficient actor in the world.

00:48:10.820 And so, all right, so that's that.

00:48:14.820 If past experiences shape us from the moment of birth, how can an action be ever said to be the result of free will, rather than the accumulation of past influences?

00:48:23.000 Well, it is in large part the accumulation of past influences, because that's knowledge.

00:48:26.820 But I addressed that, I would say, already pretty thoroughly in my discussion of free will.

00:48:30.500 Your free will isn't absolute.

00:48:32.860 I mean, what, are you a genie?

00:48:34.240 Even a genie is constrained inside a lamp, you know, so there's no action without constraint.

00:48:40.020 There's no action without limitation.

00:48:42.020 So, it's just not conceptualized well.

00:48:45.220 And all of your choices are constrained, not least by the fact that you have to keep yourself alive.

00:48:49.900 So, just because there are limitations that emerge, say, as a consequence of the accumulation of past influences,

00:48:56.940 doesn't mean that you aren't, that you don't still have a massive domain of freedom.

00:49:01.660 So, what is your opinion of attachment-based therapy?

00:49:06.360 And do you think that therapy is at risk of encouraging people to wallow in self-pity?

00:49:10.740 I'm not going to talk about attachment-based therapy, because I don't know enough about it to provide an intelligent critique.

00:49:15.820 But I can answer the second part of the question.

00:49:18.500 Do I think that therapy risks encouraging people to wallow in self-pity?

00:49:21.860 Not if it's done by a competent therapist.

00:49:24.940 If your therapist is encouraging you to wallow in self-pity, then it's time to get the hell out of there.

00:49:30.100 You've got a therapist who thinks that they're supposed to offer you a safe space.

00:49:33.660 That's not helpful.

00:49:35.280 Look, what do you do as a therapist?

00:49:38.600 You act as a strategic counselor.

00:49:40.920 So, let's imagine someone comes to see me.

00:49:42.700 So, there's two big mysteries, right?

00:49:45.880 What's wrong, and what would look better?

00:49:49.080 What's wrong, and what would a cure look like?

00:49:51.820 And I don't know.

00:49:53.280 And so, if you're a therapist, the first thing you want to do is figure out that you don't know what's wrong with this person,

00:49:57.840 and probably neither do they, and you also don't know what's right for them.

00:50:01.460 And so, then you start talking to the person to try to solve that problem.

00:50:04.400 It's like, okay, you've come to see me because something isn't right in your life.

00:50:08.400 What is it?

00:50:09.200 And so, then the person has to talk and talk and talk, and you have to ask them questions to find out,

00:50:13.940 because, you know, maybe they're depressed, maybe they're anxious, maybe they came from a terrible family,

00:50:18.780 maybe they're really hard on themselves, and things are actually going better than they think.

00:50:23.080 Like, you have no idea what's wrong with them. 1.00

00:50:25.120 You're ignorant. 1.00

00:50:26.000 You're ignorant, and so are they. 1.00

00:50:27.400 And so, you say, look, you can tell me anything. 1.00

00:50:30.760 Try to tell the truth, because otherwise we're just not going to get anywhere,

00:50:33.720 because we're trying to deal with reality here.

00:50:35.880 So, tell me the truth. 0.99

00:50:37.280 I'm not going to be judgmental in any stupid sense. 0.96

00:50:40.300 I'm going to judge like mad, because I want to help you do things right. 0.98

00:50:43.800 So, I'm going to be judging like mad, but I'm not going to throw you out,

00:50:47.060 because of the things you say.

00:50:48.360 You're going to have to wander all over weird territory to explain your problem,

00:50:53.000 because you don't even know what it is.

00:50:54.440 So, you have to listen a lot.

00:50:56.280 The first thing you want to figure out is, okay, what's wrong here?

00:50:58.960 And the person will tell you a hundred things that might be wrong,

00:51:03.000 and that they're quite painful to listen to often.

00:51:05.500 You know, they'll tell you about their past and their present.

00:51:07.300 I don't mean painful in that it's not engaging, or that it's not worthwhile.

00:51:13.260 I mean, people's lives have a lot of pain in them, so it's painful to partake in that.

00:51:17.320 And so, they'll tell you like a hundred things that might be wrong.

00:51:20.620 And then you do an analysis with them, and you think, well, okay,

00:51:24.360 how many of those things really probably aren't a problem?

00:51:27.340 The first thing that happens is, if you let a person talk about,

00:51:30.540 let's say they tell you about a hundred problems.

00:51:33.400 The first thing you find out is that 90 of them aren't real problems.

00:51:36.900 And the person just figures that out as they talk them through.

00:51:40.280 So, they say, well, that's linked to this, and maybe that's not really a problem.

00:51:43.120 That's not as bad as I thought it was.

00:51:44.600 And we can probably ignore that.

00:51:45.940 It's like they have a handful of cards that aren't organized,

00:51:50.240 and they don't know what to do with them.

00:51:52.200 There's too many cards.

00:51:53.380 And so, you say, look, lay your cards on the table, all of them.

00:51:57.060 And this is also what you do when you're listening to someone you're intimate with,

00:51:59.980 and they're trying to solve a problem.

00:52:01.300 And you have to be patient to do this, because they're all upset about something, right?

00:52:04.940 And you don't know what it is.

00:52:06.040 And maybe they're upset about you, and maybe they're upset about themselves,

00:52:08.900 and they're not handling it very well.

00:52:10.440 And they're impulsive and volatile and hard on you.

00:52:13.880 And you say, all right, Christ, I'm going to listen to you. 1.00

00:52:16.440 It's like, what's your stupid problem? 1.00

00:52:18.280 And then they lay out their problem, right? 1.00

00:52:20.160 The problem space. 0.99

00:52:21.540 And you have to listen and not jump in there too quickly with a damn solution, 0.99

00:52:25.640 because what the hell do you know? 0.97

00:52:27.120 So, you listen to them, lay out the problem space.

00:52:29.160 They lay their cards on the table.

00:52:31.000 Then you say, well, we don't have to pay attention to this,

00:52:33.200 and we don't have to pay attention to this,

00:52:34.660 and we don't have to pay attention to this.

00:52:35.980 And that's the cutting the Dragon of Chaos down to size.

00:52:39.100 That's what it is.

00:52:40.080 You look at the Dragon of Chaos, and it starts to shrink.

00:52:43.220 Okay, so, and that's because by looking at it,

00:52:46.440 you indicate to the Dragon that you're bigger than you thought you were,

00:52:50.740 and that you're bigger than it thought you were.

00:52:53.080 And that's very, very useful.

00:52:54.360 So, anyways, you lay out your cards, and then you start to organize them.

00:52:57.660 It's like, well, actually, I only have 10 problems.

00:52:59.560 All right, so, then you think, well, how can we break those problems down

00:53:02.960 into manageable sub-problems, and how can you go about addressing them?

00:53:06.000 That can be very complicated.

00:53:07.540 I hate my job.

00:53:08.840 Well, do you have an alternative?

00:53:10.460 No.

00:53:11.280 Well, why not?

00:53:12.040 Well, I don't have a resume.

00:53:13.200 I hate being interviewed.

00:53:14.500 I'm afraid to make a resume.

00:53:16.160 I loused up my education.

00:53:18.460 I don't have any options.

00:53:19.900 It's like, yeah, that's a lot of problems, man.

00:53:22.200 And that's, you know, those are strategic problems.

00:53:24.380 So, then you have to figure out how to help the person strategize,

00:53:27.880 and then implement the strategies.

00:53:29.940 And so, the next step is, okay, now we know your problems.

00:53:33.060 If you could have a solution, like, that would be the opposite of the problem.

00:53:38.140 What might a solution look like?

00:53:40.560 Same issue.

00:53:41.660 It's like, well, there's lots of solutions.

00:53:43.260 I don't know what to do with my life.

00:53:44.540 I don't know what job to have.

00:53:45.720 I don't know what person to establish a long-term intimate relationship with.

00:53:51.960 I don't know what I would like to do with my family.

00:53:53.960 I don't know how to use my time outside of work.

00:53:56.180 I don't know how to resist temptation, like drug and alcohol abuse.

00:53:59.760 I don't know how to take care of myself mentally and physically.

00:54:04.200 All these complicated problems.

00:54:05.920 It's like, okay, let's sketch out a potential solution.

00:54:08.120 If you could have what you wanted, so that would be a cure, what would that look like?

00:54:13.500 We formalize this, by the way, in the future authoring process.

00:54:16.340 So, if you do the future authoring program, which is part of the self-authoring suite,

00:54:19.980 it will guide you through doing this.

00:54:21.920 It's unbelievably useful to do that, because you're not going to hit what you don't aim at.

00:54:27.120 So, then you have the person lay out, okay, well, where are we headed?

00:54:31.040 It's a map.

00:54:31.940 Now, we know where we are, and it's a problem.

00:54:34.180 Now, we have to figure out where we're headed.

00:54:36.400 And then, finally, once we figure out where we're headed, we have to figure out how to get there.

00:54:41.460 We have to make the map.

00:54:42.840 It's got a beginning place.

00:54:44.000 It's got an end place.

00:54:45.120 Now, we have to map out the terrain.

00:54:47.000 So, like, well, I didn't finish my degree, or maybe I didn't go to college, or maybe I didn't finish high school.

00:54:52.740 It's like, well, do you need a different job?

00:54:54.640 Yes.

00:54:55.060 Do you need a high school diploma to get that?

00:54:57.480 Yes.

00:54:58.140 What steps do you have to take to get a high school diploma?

00:55:03.080 Maybe you have to start with one course, right?

00:55:05.780 Okay, where do you find a course?

00:55:07.060 You go look it up online.

00:55:08.440 What things make you afraid to go back to school?

00:55:11.360 Which of those things are stopping you?

00:55:12.900 How are you going to overcome those fears?

00:55:14.520 So, you take the large-scale vision, which is the place you're headed to in the future, that's the cure, and then you break it down into the strategic elements that are necessary to be implemented on a day-to-day basis.

00:55:26.060 And you do that so that they're difficult, but attainable.

00:55:30.200 And then the person, if they're not difficult, then they're not worth attaining, obviously.

00:55:35.420 Obviously, you're not pushing yourself, and you want the person not only to develop in the direction they're supposed to develop, but you want to get them better at developing.

00:55:42.280 So, you want to push them, just like you do with kids or yourself, if you have any sense.

00:55:46.700 And so, you break it down into small, implementable, daily processes, and then you review those with your client.

00:55:56.940 None of that's wallowing in self-pity, man.

00:55:58.920 Quite the contrary.

00:56:00.180 Quite the contrary.

00:56:01.600 So, psychotherapy is get your story together.

00:56:05.880 Who are you?

00:56:06.820 Where are you going?

00:56:07.900 Where are you going?

00:56:09.020 What's your strategy?

00:56:10.620 How are you going to learn to overcome the frightening and unexpected things that are going to pop up at you when you implement that strategy?

00:56:17.840 So, and those can be, some of those things can be the natural world.

00:56:20.680 I'm afraid of death.

00:56:21.880 I'm afraid of illness.

00:56:23.420 I'm afraid of insanity.

00:56:24.960 And some of those can be the social world.

00:56:26.620 I'm afraid of my boss.

00:56:27.620 I'm afraid of my wife.

00:56:28.660 I'm afraid of my friends.

00:56:30.260 I'm afraid of being humiliated.

00:56:32.140 I'm afraid that people won't like me.

00:56:33.680 Those are the two big classes of fears, right?

00:56:36.100 Fear of the great mother, nature.

00:56:38.160 Fear of the great father, culture.

00:56:40.100 And if you're really afraid, you get to have both those fears at the same time.

00:56:43.620 So, there's nothing about that that's wallowing in self-pity.

00:56:46.440 Quite the contrary.

00:56:47.720 It's a bad therapist that does that.

00:56:49.800 They're not there to make, to feel sorry for you.

00:56:52.120 They are there to be on the side of the part of you that's aiming up and to encourage you and to allow you to have a space where you can lay out your thoughts using your free speech.

00:57:03.680 To think where you can lay out your thoughts about what's wrong with you and how that might be set right.

00:57:09.340 It's nothing to do with wallowing in self-pity.

00:57:11.300 I don't want to calculate high-resolution utopia for myself only to have it squandered by fortune.

00:57:18.580 How do I ensure the meaning I experience is self-determined?

00:57:22.100 Well, you can't because there's an arbitrary element to existence.

00:57:26.520 So, it is going to be squandered to some degree by fortune.

00:57:30.300 But that's not the point.

00:57:31.760 What are you going to do?

00:57:32.460 Just sit back on your laurels and wait for things to roll over you?

00:57:35.280 So, what you do, look, the hero myth basically says, go out there, confront the dragon, get the gold, share it with the community, and live properly.

00:57:47.420 Or it says, the alternative is, face the tyrant, enter the desert as a consequence because everything falls apart, recast structure, find the promised land.

00:57:59.100 Those are the two elements to the hero myth.

00:58:00.780 And you might, and that's divine.

00:58:02.900 It's the closest thing to divine that we know.

00:58:05.240 You might say, well, what happens if you follow the divine path?

00:58:09.520 And the answer might be, well, everything turns out perfectly because God is on your side.

00:58:14.060 It's like, no, that isn't what happens because things don't turn out perfectly.

00:58:18.680 It's your best bet.

00:58:20.460 It's your best strategy, right?

00:58:23.120 That's the thing.

00:58:24.740 And, you know, dragons wouldn't be dragons if they couldn't eat you.

00:58:28.700 And so, but that's okay.

00:58:30.940 That's okay.

00:58:31.600 And this is something I found so useful about the biblical stories, especially about the Abrahamic stories, which I didn't know that well until I lectured about them last year.

00:58:39.200 You know, God calls people to the adventure of their lives.

00:58:42.500 And so, you could say, in part, God is that force within you which calls you to the adventure of your life.

00:58:48.120 And it says, get away from your family, get away from your blind and unconscious comfort, and get the hell out there in the world.

00:58:54.760 Well, God calls Abraham out from his fathers, where he stayed far too long, and from his kin, where it's secure. 1.00

00:59:00.240 And, like, the first thing he encounters is a famine, and then he encounters a tyranny inhabited by people who want to steal his wife.

00:59:07.000 It's like, you think, well, Abraham should have just stayed in bed and ignored God, obviously.

00:59:12.600 Well, that isn't how it is.

00:59:14.000 It's like we're built for struggle, us human beings.

00:59:17.420 You're not after the bubbles of bliss that Dostoevsky described in Notes from Underground.

00:59:23.720 We're built to contend with the world.

00:59:25.400 We're built to contend with reality.

00:59:27.240 You want a challenge.

00:59:28.580 And the best way that you can take on a challenge, because a challenge fortifies you.

00:59:32.680 So, you don't want to be secure.

00:59:33.940 You want to be strong.

00:59:35.100 And you get strong by taking on optimal challenges.

00:59:37.860 And so, you lay out your destiny in the world, and you take the slings and arrows of fate.

00:59:42.000 And you make yourself stronger while you're doing so.

00:59:43.840 And you might fail, and fortune might do you in.

00:59:47.120 But it's your best bet.

00:59:48.920 And, you know, people have also, people have extracted unbelievable successes out of catastrophic failures.

00:59:56.480 And so, and I'm not saying that in a naive way.

00:59:59.340 I know perfectly well what happens to people, you know.

01:00:01.820 You're doing fine in life, and then you get cancer.

01:00:04.020 And then six months later, you're dead.

01:00:06.060 And all the heroism in the world isn't going to save you at that point.

01:00:09.080 But that's not the point.

01:00:11.240 That's not the point.

01:00:12.600 Life is bounded by mortality.

01:00:14.460 But that doesn't mean that you don't get out there and contend.

01:00:17.160 And you develop by contending.

01:00:19.020 And you minimize the net amount of suffering in the world.

01:00:22.080 And that's something, man.

01:00:23.300 That's something to do.

01:00:24.200 So, it beats laying in your basement and getting bitter, and then doing the terrible things that bitter people do.

01:00:31.200 So, you can't ensure that the meaning you experience is self-determined.

01:00:36.220 But you can play your role to the best of your ability.

01:00:40.440 And that will be good enough.

01:00:42.400 And that will be good enough.

01:00:44.360 That meaning, the meaning that you'll find in that, I believe, is sufficient to be sustaining.

01:00:52.540 And perhaps even sustaining through the flood.

01:00:54.400 So, it isn't that you can avoid catastrophe.

01:00:57.900 It's that you can prepare yourself to deal with it honorably when it arrives.

01:01:02.360 That's what you've got.

01:01:03.420 I have very high orderliness and low industriousness.

01:01:12.900 I have very high orderliness, 90th percentile, low industriousness, 23rd percentile.

01:01:18.060 What can I do to remedy this and get a higher industriousness?

01:01:20.500 Okay, first of all, that's not that low.

01:01:23.780 Okay, we've got to think about percentiles here for a minute.

01:01:26.220 Because they're not percentages.

01:01:27.480 They're different.

01:01:28.480 So, if you're at the 23rd percentile and there were four people in a room,

01:01:31.620 you'd be the least industrious of four of them.

01:01:33.740 And that kind of puts you in the average range.

01:01:35.860 It's not that big a deal.

01:01:38.380 There's problems with it.

01:01:39.440 We'll get to that.

01:01:40.400 Although, maybe you're high in openness, too.

01:01:42.940 Anyways, I won't get into that.

01:01:45.620 Low would be 5th percentile, because that makes you 1 in 20.

01:01:49.440 Or 2nd percentile, because that makes you 1 in 50.

01:01:52.540 It's kind of interesting to visualize a fairly large high school class

01:01:56.480 and then to think of yourself as situated in there.

01:01:58.540 If you're the least industrious person out of 50,

01:02:01.620 that's going to be a problem.

01:02:03.100 You better be smart or have some other things going for you,

01:02:05.520 because you're going to have a hard time being diligent enough to be successful.

01:02:09.840 Okay, having said that,

01:02:12.220 and maybe first percentile makes you 1 in 100,

01:02:15.620 and 0.1 percentile makes you 1 in 1,000.

01:02:18.740 So, you've got to think about percentiles properly.

01:02:22.080 So, having said that,

01:02:23.420 let's say you're not very high in industriousness.

01:02:25.160 What should you do? 0.99

01:02:25.940 A, make a damn plan. 1.00

01:02:28.880 Okay, you need a plan for your life. 0.99

01:02:30.900 And I would say use the Future Authoring Program,

01:02:33.360 because that will help you make a plan.

01:02:35.060 Or make a plan on your own, that's fine.

01:02:36.660 Or make a plan because you talk to someone.

01:02:38.580 But, you know, we put the Future Authoring Program together

01:02:41.280 to help people develop a vision of where they could be,

01:02:44.660 a counter vision to scare the hell out of them

01:02:46.980 by helping them think through how catastrophic things could become 1.00

01:02:50.320 if they let all their stupidities get the upper hand. 0.99

01:02:53.100 And then a second part of the program that helps you make a strategy. 0.98

01:02:56.540 And we know the Future Authoring Program helps people,

01:02:59.200 young men in particular,

01:03:00.620 who are doing worse, by the way, in academic situations.

01:03:03.140 It increases the probability that they will stay in college and university

01:03:06.840 by between 25 and 50 percent. 1.00

01:03:09.180 So, make a damn plan. 1.00

01:03:10.880 And make one you want. 1.00

01:03:12.060 Like, don't make a plan that is what you should do,

01:03:15.340 even though it will be what you should do.

01:03:17.080 Make a plan that outlines a future

01:03:19.580 so that you could sit back and say,

01:03:21.540 look, if I had that future,

01:03:23.860 then all the horrible things that are going to happen to me

01:03:26.220 are going to be worthwhile.

01:03:28.120 That's what you want.

01:03:29.720 So, you want to think,

01:03:30.320 this game is worth playing despite its tragedy.

01:03:33.380 That's what you've got in life.

01:03:35.280 Enough meaning to serve as an antidote to tragedy.

01:03:38.900 All right, now.

01:03:39.880 And then you generate a strategy.

01:03:41.500 And then the other thing you should do

01:03:42.800 if you're not very industrious is discipline yourself.

01:03:46.640 And so, what do you do with that?

01:03:47.860 Eat three times a day at regular mealtimes.

01:03:52.020 That's a good thing to practice

01:03:53.240 because that starts to put some stability into your life.

01:03:56.540 Get up at the same time.

01:03:58.180 I would highly recommend all those young people out there

01:04:00.720 who are listening.

01:04:01.340 Like, you want to get a jump on life?

01:04:03.080 Get the hell out of bed in the morning.

01:04:04.920 You know, as I've got older,

01:04:06.500 I've got up earlier and earlier.

01:04:07.660 Now, that's partly because you don't need as much sleep.

01:04:09.700 But it's also partly because I've got more and more disciplined.

01:04:11.880 Like, get up early in the morning and get your things done.

01:04:16.100 Man, learn to get up at six in the morning

01:04:18.040 and you'll be one deadly creature,

01:04:19.800 especially if you can get to work. 0.99

01:04:21.180 You'll have half your damn day done 1.00

01:04:23.400 by the time other people haul their sorry asses out of bed. 0.99

01:04:25.980 And so that's a massive, massive advantage. 0.97

01:04:29.300 Look, Will Ferrell, Warren Ferrell, not the comedian,

01:04:32.900 Warren Ferrell, the author,

01:04:34.460 he outlined data in Why Men Earn More,

01:04:37.520 which is a book I would recommend, by the way,

01:04:39.680 showing that if you work 13% longer hours,

01:04:42.220 you make 40% more money.

01:04:44.360 It's non-linear.

01:04:45.500 So you think, why is that?

01:04:46.760 Well, imagine you had 10 employees

01:04:48.140 and one of them works an extra 10%.

01:04:50.620 It's not much.

01:04:52.340 Well, how often is that person going to be promoted?

01:04:56.360 Assuming you have a clue as a boss.

01:04:58.680 It's like, you're going to look at the 10 people

01:05:00.100 and you're going to think,

01:05:00.560 oh, that guy's always here like 45 minutes early.

01:05:03.260 It's like, why don't we give him the promotion?

01:05:05.520 Obviously.

01:05:06.580 Right?

01:05:06.820 So these small edges that you can manage like that,

01:05:11.120 work an extra 10% or extra 13%,

01:05:13.440 have non-proportional payoffs.

01:05:15.680 That's part of the Pareto distribution.

01:05:18.180 So get your sleep cycle organized

01:05:22.520 so you get up in the morning.

01:05:23.660 Learn how to do it.

01:05:24.620 No excuses.

01:05:25.680 I'm too tired in the morning.

01:05:26.980 I don't like mornings.

01:05:28.140 Who cares?

01:05:29.280 That's not relevant.

01:05:30.400 It's like discipline yourself so you can manage it.

01:05:33.400 Schedule your meals

01:05:34.320 because that's a good disciplinary routine.

01:05:37.220 And then learn to use a calendar like Google Calendar.

01:05:39.900 Most of you, many of you out there,

01:05:41.420 do not use a calendar.

01:05:42.820 Okay, a calendar is not a prison

01:05:44.340 and it's not a tyrant.

01:05:46.000 Not if you use it properly.

01:05:48.040 A calendar keeps anxiety at bay.

01:05:50.420 It makes sure that you do what you need to do,

01:05:53.140 which is important

01:05:53.840 because otherwise you fall behind.

01:05:55.080 But if you use it properly,

01:05:56.340 it also helps you plan what you want to do.

01:05:59.160 So I could say, 1.00

01:05:59.800 well, lay out your damn calendar 0.99

01:06:01.060 and design the days you would like to have. 1.00

01:06:05.320 That's what your calendar is for.

01:06:07.120 So you can put in all sorts of things in there

01:06:08.680 you want to do

01:06:09.480 and that would be good for you.

01:06:10.860 And that's a really good way to start being more industrious.

01:06:15.840 Make a plan.

01:06:17.220 You need a plan for three years.

01:06:19.620 You need a plan for the next year.

01:06:21.540 You need a plan for the next six months.

01:06:23.340 You need a plan for the next three months.

01:06:25.280 You need a plan for the week.

01:06:27.120 You need a plan for the day.

01:06:28.760 You need a plan for the hour.

01:06:30.660 All of that.

01:06:31.640 All of that.

01:06:32.260 I make lists constantly of what I have to do.

01:06:34.880 And they're like daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

01:06:37.660 Right now I can't look out more than about six months,

01:06:40.500 you know,

01:06:40.700 because my life is too complicated and chaotic.

01:06:42.660 But you need a vision of who you could be,

01:06:46.280 what character you could have.

01:06:47.720 Three to five years out,

01:06:48.740 you can't go much farther than that

01:06:50.660 because life is too unpredictable, I think,

01:06:53.280 to make vision that's longer term than that

01:06:56.500 subject to...

01:07:00.620 There's too much chance associated with it

01:07:02.840 to spend a lot of time on.

01:07:04.000 Maybe you can stretch it to five years

01:07:05.460 and in rare cases you can have a 10-year goal,

01:07:08.440 but it has to be pretty low resolution.

01:07:10.140 But you want plans at all those levels of resolution.

01:07:14.180 Going online without ExpressVPN

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01:07:17.520 to the safety demonstration on a flight.

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01:08:49.400 E-X-P-R-E-S 1.00

01:09:19.400 Hello.

01:09:26.380 So, you've lined up

01:09:29.360 a very large number of questions today.

01:09:32.960 So, a couple of things.

01:09:35.600 First of all,

01:09:37.260 I have a number of

01:09:39.000 YouTube videos and podcasts lined up.

01:09:44.240 One with Steven Pinker,

01:09:47.380 author of Enlightenment Now,

01:09:49.400 one with Warren Farrell

01:09:51.220 who wrote a very interesting book

01:09:52.620 called

01:09:53.060 The Boy Crisis

01:09:54.940 and also a previous book

01:09:56.220 called

01:09:56.480 Why Men Earn More. 0.99

01:09:59.060 One with an animator

01:10:00.520 named Nina Paley.

01:10:04.500 One with a young guy

01:10:06.400 named Charlie Kirk

01:10:07.340 who has organized

01:10:08.740 a large number of

01:10:10.680 campus youth groups

01:10:12.560 more on the conservative end of things

01:10:14.180 and associated with free will.

01:10:15.660 So, all those will be coming out

01:10:17.240 in the next month and a half,

01:10:19.200 I would say.

01:10:19.820 And so, thank you for your continued support.

01:10:22.560 It makes all of this possible.

01:10:23.920 And I'm also going on tour.

01:10:28.140 I presume some of you know that.

01:10:30.580 If you go to

01:10:30.960 JordanBPeterson.com

01:10:32.500 and you look up events,

01:10:33.500 you can see where.

01:10:34.740 There's about 40 cities listed so far.

01:10:37.240 Most of them are in the U.S.

01:10:38.860 and a couple in Europe.

01:10:40.700 Iceland, the U.K.

01:10:42.220 But we're announcing,

01:10:44.600 we're going to announce

01:10:45.360 10 Canadian cities here

01:10:46.780 in the next week as well.

01:10:49.440 So, that's all

01:10:50.900 what's going to be happening

01:10:52.040 with me

01:10:52.920 in the next two months.

01:10:55.080 So, I'll be on the road

01:10:56.020 with my wife

01:10:56.960 that whole time.

01:10:58.520 Sometimes in a plane,

01:11:00.060 you know,

01:11:00.340 just commercial travel.

01:11:02.460 Sometimes in a motorhome

01:11:03.980 depending on where we're going

01:11:05.460 and how.

01:11:06.520 So, I'm looking forward

01:11:07.820 to seeing you

01:11:08.360 if you come out to the events.

01:11:09.860 I've been enjoying them

01:11:10.960 quite a bit.

01:11:11.460 And it's good to be able

01:11:13.000 to talk to so many people.

01:11:15.220 So, 12 Rules for Life

01:11:17.620 has sold about

01:11:18.540 a million copies now.

01:11:19.960 So, that's really

01:11:20.760 quite something.

01:11:21.480 And I think we've sold

01:11:22.280 foreign rights

01:11:22.920 in 43 countries.

01:11:25.380 So, it'll come out

01:11:26.280 in not quite that many languages

01:11:28.440 but just about

01:11:29.320 over the next year and a half.

01:11:31.480 Something like that.

01:11:33.180 So, all right.

01:11:34.420 So, let's get at it here.

01:11:35.860 Hopefully, I can warm up

01:11:36.760 and get my brain going

01:11:37.680 and answer some questions.

01:11:39.720 The first one,

01:11:40.560 343 people

01:11:42.500 have voted this one up.

01:11:44.520 Could you please

01:11:45.400 discuss free will

01:11:46.480 and Sam Harris's

01:11:47.940 and others' ideas

01:11:49.000 of its non-existence?

01:11:50.740 Well, that's a good

01:11:51.320 complicated question

01:11:52.260 to kick things off.

01:11:53.280 So, I want to tell you

01:11:54.680 a little bit about

01:11:55.400 how to conceptualize

01:11:56.980 free will, I think,

01:11:57.900 first.

01:11:58.200 because it's obvious

01:11:59.000 because it's obvious

01:11:59.020 that we don't have

01:11:59.940 infinite free will.

01:12:02.160 Our choices are constrained

01:12:05.020 in all sorts of ways.

01:12:06.200 And I think part of the reason

01:12:07.440 that there's a continual discussion

01:12:10.620 about free will

01:12:11.360 in the philosophical literature

01:12:14.580 is because

01:12:15.300 just conceptualizing

01:12:18.540 the issue properly

01:12:19.760 is extraordinarily difficult.

01:12:20.940 So, I like to think about it

01:12:22.780 at least in part

01:12:24.220 the way that you think

01:12:25.300 about a game.

01:12:26.660 You know,

01:12:27.100 if you're playing a game,

01:12:28.620 obviously,

01:12:29.100 the game has rules.

01:12:30.100 So, if it's a chess game

01:12:31.180 or a basketball game,

01:12:32.620 then there are things

01:12:33.840 that you can do

01:12:34.480 and things that you can't do.

01:12:37.080 And so, it's a closed world

01:12:41.360 in some sense.

01:12:42.760 But the fact that there are things

01:12:44.640 you can't do

01:12:45.340 when you play a game

01:12:46.220 also seem to open up

01:12:47.820 a universe of possibilities

01:12:49.000 for things that you can do.

01:12:50.900 So, chess obviously

01:12:52.640 constrains you to a board

01:12:54.120 and to a certain number of men

01:12:55.860 and to a certain pattern of rules.

01:12:57.860 But the strange thing is

01:12:59.000 is that when you put in those rules,

01:13:01.100 because rules sound like limits.

01:13:02.480 They sound always like things

01:13:03.700 you can't do.

01:13:04.380 But when you set up

01:13:05.940 a constrained world like that

01:13:07.400 and you lay out a system of rules,

01:13:10.100 what you do is open up

01:13:11.100 an infinity of,

01:13:12.300 a near infinity of possibilities.

01:13:14.600 Same with music.

01:13:15.760 You know, music has rules, obviously.

01:13:18.040 And if you follow the rules,

01:13:19.740 then you can make

01:13:20.380 an infinite variety of music.

01:13:23.100 And so,

01:13:24.600 there's a very interesting dynamic

01:13:27.540 that's hard to understand

01:13:28.640 between constraint and possibility.

01:13:31.200 And there's a deep idea

01:13:32.480 that's associated with that

01:13:33.620 that I read in some Jewish commentary

01:13:35.600 on the biblical stories

01:13:37.220 that I read a long time ago,

01:13:40.180 talking about the relationship

01:13:42.240 between God and man.

01:13:43.580 And the idea was that God,

01:13:46.960 imagine a being

01:13:48.320 with the classical attributes of God,

01:13:50.640 omniscience, omnipotence,

01:13:51.900 and omnipresence,

01:13:53.060 all-seeing, all-knowing,

01:13:54.300 and all-powerful.

01:13:55.280 What does a being like that lack?

01:13:58.000 And obviously,

01:13:58.640 the answer is nothing, right?

01:13:59.860 Because,

01:14:00.900 by definition,

01:14:02.260 those three traits

01:14:03.220 provide for absence of limitation.

01:14:06.660 But then that's exactly

01:14:07.580 what's lacking,

01:14:08.340 is limitation.

01:14:09.460 And there's some strange

01:14:10.600 connection between limitation,

01:14:13.080 and I was saying,

01:14:14.100 say, limitation,

01:14:15.760 that's rule-governed,

01:14:17.160 as I mentioned before,

01:14:18.140 and the opening up

01:14:19.400 of possibility.

01:14:21.080 So,

01:14:22.080 that isn't necessarily the case

01:14:23.480 that,

01:14:24.000 now,

01:14:24.260 determinism and limitation

01:14:25.900 aren't exactly the same thing,

01:14:27.240 but they're analogous,

01:14:28.060 and they need to be discussed together.

01:14:29.840 Okay, so now,

01:14:30.760 so that's the first thing,

01:14:31.860 is that whatever our free choice is,

01:14:33.860 it isn't limited.

01:14:35.420 It's,

01:14:36.100 or it's limited.

01:14:37.240 It's deeply limited.

01:14:38.500 Now,

01:14:38.940 here's another thing.

01:14:40.040 If I take my arm,

01:14:41.640 and I go like this,

01:14:43.580 you see,

01:14:44.040 I'll do that again.

01:14:45.500 Now,

01:14:46.020 you see,

01:14:46.400 there's a movement like that,

01:14:48.240 and then my hands stop

01:14:49.460 just before my,

01:14:50.520 my other hand.

01:14:52.020 Now,

01:14:52.860 it takes a certain amount of time

01:14:54.620 for the neural messages

01:14:55.700 to go from my brain

01:14:56.940 to my arm and back.

01:14:58.760 And,

01:14:59.480 the time it takes my hand

01:15:00.860 to go like this,

01:15:02.120 and stop,

01:15:03.040 is actually shorter

01:15:04.160 than the time it takes

01:15:05.080 a message to get to my brain

01:15:06.340 and back.

01:15:07.120 So,

01:15:07.380 what that means is that

01:15:08.260 when I,

01:15:09.300 when I plan this movement,

01:15:11.200 which is called a ballistic movement,

01:15:13.000 it's called a ballistic movement,

01:15:14.140 because it's like a bullet.

01:15:15.280 Once you let it go,

01:15:16.280 it's gone.

01:15:16.800 There's no calling it back.

01:15:18.240 I've actually organized

01:15:19.780 the neurological

01:15:20.340 and muscular sequences

01:15:21.800 that enable that action

01:15:23.220 before it's implemented.

01:15:25.180 I set all that up,

01:15:26.340 and then it's released,

01:15:27.700 and the whole thing cascades.

01:15:29.620 And so,

01:15:30.780 once the action

01:15:32.900 has been released,

01:15:33.920 let's say,

01:15:34.720 then I don't really have

01:15:35.820 any free will

01:15:36.460 because I can't stop it.

01:15:38.120 Now,

01:15:38.600 so,

01:15:38.940 so,

01:15:39.520 you think about that.

01:15:40.340 It looks like there's

01:15:40.880 a temporal gradient

01:15:41.920 with regards to free will,

01:15:43.180 is that as you

01:15:44.440 look out into the future,

01:15:46.640 perhaps the farther out

01:15:47.940 you look into the future,

01:15:49.960 the farther down the road,

01:15:51.600 let's say,

01:15:52.780 the more free your choices are,

01:15:54.700 but the closer they get

01:15:55.620 to implementation,

01:15:56.600 the more they become

01:15:57.380 deterministic,

01:15:58.820 governed by standard

01:16:00.600 causal processes,

01:16:01.520 and there's some transition point

01:16:03.140 where they change from

01:16:04.760 being what we would describe

01:16:07.000 as choice,

01:16:07.800 that we haven't got

01:16:08.560 to free choice yet,

01:16:09.360 but at least to choice,

01:16:10.740 there's some transition point

01:16:11.900 between that

01:16:12.460 and ballistic movement.

01:16:13.780 Here's another way

01:16:14.480 of thinking about it.

01:16:15.240 Like,

01:16:15.400 we know,

01:16:15.780 for example,

01:16:16.220 that people who are

01:16:17.240 expert at playing the piano

01:16:18.420 look ahead

01:16:20.100 of where they're playing,

01:16:21.880 and they're doing

01:16:23.680 the same thing.

01:16:24.380 They're watching the notes,

01:16:25.420 they're seeing

01:16:25.900 where they're going,

01:16:27.440 but,

01:16:27.960 and then they're

01:16:28.540 disinhibiting

01:16:29.380 the automated structures

01:16:30.960 that enable them

01:16:31.780 to play

01:16:32.220 what they've practiced

01:16:33.460 so thoroughly.

01:16:34.200 They're disinhibiting

01:16:35.420 those structures,

01:16:36.500 and then they go

01:16:37.520 automatically,

01:16:38.400 and then what happens

01:16:39.260 if you make a mistake

01:16:40.120 is that consciousness

01:16:41.380 notes the error

01:16:42.400 and then unpacks

01:16:43.940 the motor sequences

01:16:45.500 that have been practiced,

01:16:46.680 and then you repractice them

01:16:48.000 and sequence them again

01:16:48.980 until they become automatic

01:16:50.140 and deterministic.

01:16:51.540 So,

01:16:52.280 there's choice

01:16:53.020 in that you're

01:16:53.700 reading ahead,

01:16:54.800 but there's no choice

01:16:55.860 in that once you've

01:16:56.960 read ahead

01:16:57.320 and disinhibited the actions,

01:16:58.780 then they run ballistically,

01:17:00.300 and then you can think

01:17:01.300 about the same thing

01:17:02.060 that's happening

01:17:02.600 when you're driving

01:17:03.280 in a car.

01:17:03.800 You don't look

01:17:04.920 right in front of you

01:17:05.940 when you're driving a car

01:17:07.120 because whatever

01:17:08.140 is right in front of you,

01:17:09.300 if you're going

01:17:09.660 40 miles an hour,

01:17:10.660 whatever,

01:17:11.100 you've already run over.

01:17:12.700 You look a quarter

01:17:13.820 of a mile down the road,

01:17:15.120 and that gives you

01:17:16.000 the opportunity

01:17:16.600 to see what's coming

01:17:17.960 and to set up

01:17:19.720 a sequence of

01:17:20.600 increasingly automated

01:17:21.880 movements

01:17:22.360 that culminate

01:17:23.540 in whatever it is

01:17:24.300 that you're doing

01:17:24.840 while you're driving.

01:17:26.320 And so,

01:17:26.780 there's a gradation

01:17:27.620 from choice

01:17:28.520 to determinism,

01:17:29.960 a temporal gradation,

01:17:31.480 and I don't often

01:17:33.140 see that addressed

01:17:34.260 when people talk

01:17:34.980 about free will.

01:17:36.620 Now,

01:17:36.960 Sam's issue

01:17:37.580 with free will

01:17:38.240 is that

01:17:38.600 if you get someone

01:17:39.700 to do something

01:17:41.440 like lift their finger

01:17:43.560 and you scan their brains

01:17:46.540 using a variety

01:17:47.300 of techniques

01:17:47.900 while they're doing that,

01:17:49.020 what you'll see

01:17:49.600 is that there's

01:17:50.740 an action potential

01:17:51.920 that emerge,

01:17:52.880 and you ask them

01:17:53.480 to voluntarily

01:17:54.000 move their fingers,

01:17:54.880 so they're doing it,

01:17:55.780 let's say,

01:17:56.200 by free choice.

01:17:56.920 there's an action potential

01:17:59.260 that you can read

01:18:00.800 off the brain

01:18:01.440 that occurs

01:18:01.980 before the person

01:18:03.500 either moves their finger

01:18:05.120 or, let's say,

01:18:06.040 decides to move their finger,

01:18:07.740 and that occurs

01:18:08.740 quite a bit

01:18:09.580 before the feeling

01:18:10.900 of voluntarism

01:18:11.740 or that voluntary act,

01:18:13.140 and so that's been read

01:18:14.420 by Benjamin Libet

01:18:15.720 who did the experiments

01:18:16.780 as indication

01:18:19.040 that even the feeling

01:18:20.860 of voluntary choice

01:18:21.840 is determined,

01:18:22.480 but I don't think

01:18:24.220 that that's a very

01:18:25.020 useful way

01:18:26.400 of addressing the issue

01:18:28.160 because the issue

01:18:30.800 of when you lift

01:18:31.760 your finger up,

01:18:32.860 again,

01:18:33.180 is it requires

01:18:34.660 pre-programming

01:18:35.520 to disinhibit,

01:18:36.220 like you know

01:18:36.620 how to do this,

01:18:37.340 right?

01:18:37.840 You don't have to learn

01:18:38.840 to do that,

01:18:39.360 so you have a little

01:18:39.860 automated circuit

01:18:40.860 that does this sort of thing,

01:18:42.080 all these finger movements

01:18:43.120 and everything,

01:18:43.720 you can see babies

01:18:44.440 practicing them,

01:18:45.360 and they develop

01:18:46.060 automated circuitry

01:18:47.200 that tends to be

01:18:47.940 posterior left hemisphere

01:18:49.560 in order to run

01:18:51.400 those automated processes out,

01:18:53.640 and what you're basically

01:18:54.600 doing when you decide

01:18:55.680 to do something

01:18:56.640 that's a routine

01:18:58.080 that you've already practiced

01:18:59.240 or made out of subroutines

01:19:00.760 that you've already practiced

01:19:01.660 is disinhibiting them,

01:19:03.420 and the degree

01:19:05.160 to which you might regard

01:19:06.380 that as free exactly

01:19:07.880 is unclear,

01:19:09.060 as are the temporal limitations,

01:19:10.500 so I don't think

01:19:11.820 that Libet's experiments

01:19:13.040 demonstrate conclusively

01:19:14.900 that there's no such thing

01:19:15.940 as free will,

01:19:16.620 even though there are

01:19:17.380 action potentials

01:19:18.820 that indicate

01:19:19.660 that there is brain activity

01:19:21.020 signaling even the onset

01:19:22.600 of a voluntary choice,

01:19:24.320 voluntary choice early.

01:19:28.100 Now, another thing

01:19:30.200 that we might look at

01:19:31.380 in relationship to that

01:19:32.540 is, yeah,

01:19:34.940 so we can look at it

01:19:36.480 phenomenologically,

01:19:37.360 and we can also look at it

01:19:38.540 in relationship

01:19:40.520 to how people

01:19:41.280 treat one another,

01:19:42.180 so phenomenologically,

01:19:44.440 it seems clear

01:19:45.360 that we have free choice,

01:19:46.440 and it isn't obvious to me

01:19:47.940 why we have consciousness

01:19:49.080 if free choice isn't real,

01:19:50.980 because consciousness

01:19:51.700 looks to me

01:19:52.400 like a mechanism

01:19:53.280 that deals with potential

01:19:55.260 before it's transformed

01:19:56.440 into actuality,

01:19:57.640 let's say,

01:19:58.540 and I think consciousness

01:19:59.980 is also

01:20:00.800 the faculty,

01:20:03.080 so to speak,

01:20:03.720 or a manifestation

01:20:04.540 of the faculty

01:20:05.520 that enables us

01:20:06.820 to pre-program

01:20:07.600 deterministic actions,

01:20:09.060 so again,

01:20:09.560 let's think about

01:20:10.140 someone playing the piano,

01:20:11.260 they're practicing,

01:20:12.560 you know,

01:20:12.800 after you repeat,

01:20:13.600 and you repeat

01:20:14.260 your finger movements

01:20:16.220 if you're playing the piano,

01:20:17.140 any complex motor skill

01:20:18.360 is like that,

01:20:18.860 you have to repeat it,

01:20:19.700 repeat it,

01:20:20.160 repeat it,

01:20:20.600 and you're using consciousness

01:20:22.680 to program it,

01:20:24.140 to sequence the motor movements,

01:20:25.820 and to pay attention to them,

01:20:27.160 that all seems voluntary,

01:20:28.580 and it involves

01:20:29.600 the activation

01:20:30.460 of a tremendous amount

01:20:31.460 of your brain,

01:20:32.200 because if you're doing

01:20:32.720 something new,

01:20:33.720 a lot of your brain

01:20:34.560 is activated,

01:20:35.320 and then as you practice it,

01:20:37.340 the amount of brain

01:20:38.380 that's activated

01:20:39.080 decreases,

01:20:41.100 it shifts from right

01:20:42.060 to left,

01:20:43.100 and then it shifts

01:20:43.960 from frontal

01:20:44.680 to posterior,

01:20:46.400 and a smaller

01:20:47.500 and smaller area,

01:20:48.400 so what's happening

01:20:49.040 is that consciousness

01:20:49.840 is creating little machines

01:20:51.800 in the back of your head

01:20:52.960 that do things

01:20:54.040 in an automated manner,

01:20:55.880 and

01:20:56.020 the

01:21:00.940 consciousness

01:21:03.460 looks like

01:21:04.180 consciousness appears

01:21:05.520 and feels,

01:21:06.300 that would be

01:21:06.620 the phenomenological end,

01:21:07.780 as if it's doing

01:21:08.440 that voluntarily,

01:21:09.340 and it is associated

01:21:10.520 with a different pattern

01:21:11.400 of brain activity,

01:21:13.020 and so,

01:21:14.180 okay,

01:21:14.620 so there's that,

01:21:15.220 there's the phenomenological

01:21:16.620 reality of

01:21:18.100 voluntary choice,

01:21:19.600 and effort as well,

01:21:20.600 because conscious programming

01:21:21.760 of that sort

01:21:22.320 is also effortful,

01:21:23.260 it doesn't seem to run

01:21:24.120 deterministically

01:21:24.900 like a clock does,

01:21:26.440 and then,

01:21:27.220 finally,

01:21:28.660 there's also,

01:21:29.760 and I don't know

01:21:30.320 what you think about this

01:21:31.420 with regards to evidence,

01:21:33.880 but what constitutes evidence

01:21:35.780 is not always that easy

01:21:36.800 to determine,

01:21:37.480 even in the scientific domain,

01:21:38.960 so,

01:21:40.780 think about how we think

01:21:42.480 about ourselves

01:21:43.300 and other people,

01:21:44.200 and how we treat ourselves

01:21:45.140 and other people,

01:21:46.940 you can imagine

01:21:48.000 that you're like a clock

01:21:49.020 running down,

01:21:50.040 and that's like a

01:21:50.700 deterministic model,

01:21:51.700 but people aren't clocks,

01:21:52.880 we're dissipative structures,

01:21:54.120 a clock is something

01:21:54.920 that runs downhill,

01:21:56.820 but human beings,

01:21:58.540 you can look up

01:21:59.460 dissipative structure,

01:22:00.420 I think that was an idea

01:22:01.320 that was first

01:22:02.080 formulated by the

01:22:03.460 physicist Schrodinger,

01:22:04.500 we're not clocks

01:22:09.800 by any stretch

01:22:10.520 of the imagination,

01:22:11.240 and we take energy in

01:22:13.560 and we disperse energy,

01:22:15.540 and we're anti-entropic

01:22:17.940 in a temporary sense,

01:22:19.820 so that makes us,

01:22:20.640 and life is as well,

01:22:22.460 Schrodinger wrote about that

01:22:23.360 in a book called

01:22:23.940 What is Life,

01:22:25.400 and we don't,

01:22:28.540 what we seem to do,

01:22:29.920 this is how it looks to me,

01:22:31.060 we don't contend

01:22:33.620 with the present,

01:22:34.380 and we're not driven

01:22:34.960 by the past,

01:22:36.040 instead what we see

01:22:37.160 in front of us

01:22:37.760 is a landscape

01:22:39.120 of possibility,

01:22:40.980 and in my wilder moments

01:22:42.720 I think that's associated

01:22:43.880 with the physical idea

01:22:44.980 of multiple universes,

01:22:46.260 but that's in my wilder moments,

01:22:48.280 it's just a speculation,

01:22:50.040 and so what we see

01:22:50.840 in front of us

01:22:51.380 is an array

01:22:52.420 of potential universes,

01:22:54.320 and those are the universes

01:22:55.480 that we could bring about

01:22:56.400 as a consequence

01:22:57.040 of our actions,

01:22:58.500 and we make choices

01:23:00.080 to the right or the left,

01:23:01.620 there's a lot of

01:23:02.380 mythological speculation

01:23:03.380 about that sort of idea too,

01:23:05.020 in an ethical sense,

01:23:06.200 because we decide

01:23:07.500 what sort of reality

01:23:08.560 that we want to bring

01:23:09.540 into being,

01:23:10.240 and so we encounter potential

01:23:11.800 like God did

01:23:13.220 at the beginning of time

01:23:15.020 when he made order

01:23:17.140 out of chaos,

01:23:18.080 chaos is this chaotic potential,

01:23:19.720 we confront chaotic potential

01:23:21.040 with our consciousness,

01:23:22.220 and we cast that

01:23:23.280 into reality,

01:23:24.840 and that,

01:23:26.340 now then you think,

01:23:27.140 well,

01:23:27.520 is that really the case?

01:23:29.640 Well,

01:23:30.800 that's hard to say,

01:23:31.920 because there are limits

01:23:32.740 to our knowledge

01:23:33.380 about consciousness

01:23:34.060 and about reality,

01:23:35.040 but if you treat yourself

01:23:36.980 like you're a free moral agent

01:23:38.620 with choice,

01:23:39.460 and that you can determine

01:23:40.420 the course of your life,

01:23:42.340 then you seem to get along

01:23:43.740 better with yourself,

01:23:44.860 and to be less anxious,

01:23:45.840 and to be more productive,

01:23:47.120 and if you treat other people

01:23:48.740 like that,

01:23:49.420 that they're free agents

01:23:50.340 that are making voluntary choices

01:23:51.820 about how reality

01:23:52.780 is going to come into being,

01:23:54.220 and you reward them

01:23:55.220 when they do it properly,

01:23:56.200 and you punish them

01:23:57.780 or otherwise discipline them

01:24:00.180 when they don't,

01:24:00.980 when they do it badly,

01:24:02.180 then your relationships

01:24:03.940 with them seem to work,

01:24:05.300 and then if we predicate

01:24:07.560 our society

01:24:08.360 on the presupposition

01:24:09.960 that each individual human being

01:24:11.540 is capable of doing just that,

01:24:13.540 then we seem to have

01:24:14.580 extremely functional societies,

01:24:16.680 and so,

01:24:17.400 and this is something

01:24:18.100 that Sam Harris

01:24:19.140 has been taken to task

01:24:20.220 for many times,

01:24:21.100 is if you dispense

01:24:22.320 with the idea

01:24:22.880 of free will,

01:24:24.320 how is it you organize

01:24:25.560 your relationship

01:24:26.680 to yourself,

01:24:27.700 your interactions

01:24:28.680 with your family,

01:24:29.580 and your relationships

01:24:30.340 with the broader

01:24:31.140 social community,

01:24:32.420 it's a very complicated issue,

01:24:34.200 so,

01:24:35.140 I believe

01:24:36.700 strongly

01:24:37.900 that we have free will,

01:24:39.720 that we're responsible

01:24:40.440 for our choices,

01:24:41.480 those choices

01:24:42.180 are constrained

01:24:43.100 in many, many ways,

01:24:44.580 I think there's a gradient

01:24:46.140 of free will

01:24:47.400 from free

01:24:48.860 out into the future

01:24:50.240 to increasingly constrained

01:24:51.760 as the present

01:24:52.540 manifests itself

01:24:53.800 to deterministic

01:24:54.820 in the moment,

01:24:55.880 in the moment of action,

01:24:58.580 we might think

01:24:59.920 that we enter

01:25:00.420 the realm

01:25:00.800 of deterministic causality

01:25:02.380 at the moment of action,

01:25:03.700 something like that,

01:25:04.600 that's how it looks to me,

01:25:06.660 so,

01:25:07.700 well,

01:25:08.200 so,

01:25:08.820 at this rate,

01:25:09.540 we're going to answer

01:25:10.040 about five questions,

01:25:11.260 but that was a very,

01:25:12.240 very hard one,

01:25:12.920 so,

01:25:13.280 anyways,

01:25:13.680 I hope that's helpful,

01:25:15.720 Maelstrom,

01:25:16.580 who is apparently chaos,

01:25:18.060 given the name,

01:25:18.920 asks me,

01:25:19.520 am I chaos

01:25:20.160 or am I order?

01:25:22.340 Well,

01:25:22.620 that's a good question,

01:25:23.540 I would say,

01:25:24.280 a lot of the time,

01:25:25.220 I'm chaos,

01:25:26.020 but I do everything I can

01:25:27.300 to put things in order,

01:25:29.080 but I'm going to answer

01:25:31.420 that in a deeper way,

01:25:32.780 I would say,

01:25:33.460 because,

01:25:34.420 first of all,

01:25:35.360 everything and everyone

01:25:36.560 is chaos and order

01:25:37.720 at the same time,

01:25:39.080 and I don't mean that

01:25:40.260 in a trite sense,

01:25:41.260 I mean it in a technical sense,

01:25:42.760 which is,

01:25:43.560 order,

01:25:44.440 technically speaking,

01:25:45.540 in my way of viewing the world,

01:25:47.140 is,

01:25:47.600 order is that domain

01:25:48.740 you inhabit

01:25:49.360 when what you're doing

01:25:50.800 produces the results

01:25:51.840 that you want

01:25:52.620 to have happen,

01:25:53.500 that's a pragmatic perspective,

01:25:55.580 from a philosophical perspective,

01:25:57.380 it's derived,

01:25:58.180 at least in part,

01:25:58.860 or is analogous

01:25:59.540 to the pragmatism

01:26:00.800 of people like,

01:26:02.000 C.S. Peirce

01:26:05.260 and William James,

01:26:07.080 the early American pragmatists,

01:26:11.500 and there's a great book

01:26:13.320 on all that,

01:26:14.080 if you're interested,

01:26:14.740 called The Metaphysical Club.

01:26:17.540 So,

01:26:18.980 order is where you are

01:26:20.140 when what you're doing

01:26:21.000 is producing the results

01:26:22.140 that you intended,

01:26:23.040 and that validates

01:26:23.920 what you're doing,

01:26:24.560 by the way,

01:26:24.980 that's a pragmatic form of truth,

01:26:26.640 your theory is accurate

01:26:27.680 when,

01:26:28.760 if you enact it,

01:26:30.060 then the results

01:26:30.780 that you intend emerge.

01:26:32.240 That's the definition of truth

01:26:33.760 from a pragmatic perspective.

01:26:35.100 It's a very powerful definition,

01:26:36.800 and it's very much associated

01:26:38.140 with the Darwinian notion of truth.

01:26:40.320 So,

01:26:40.860 that's worth,

01:26:41.440 that's worth looking into.

01:26:43.600 Now,

01:26:44.300 obviously,

01:26:45.540 there are times

01:26:47.080 when you implement a plan

01:26:48.920 and a world conception

01:26:50.460 that goes along with that plan,

01:26:51.960 and what you wanted

01:26:53.620 didn't happen,

01:26:55.220 and so then,

01:26:56.480 the domain of chaos comes up,

01:26:58.060 the domain of the unpredictable

01:26:59.260 and unexpected,

01:26:59.940 and you have to contend with it,

01:27:01.340 and sometimes,

01:27:02.240 when you are acting,

01:27:04.480 you do perverse things,

01:27:06.160 and things that surprise you,

01:27:08.780 and then things don't work out

01:27:10.720 well for you,

01:27:11.820 or maybe you get a surprise,

01:27:13.340 and maybe sometimes

01:27:14.240 that might even be positive,

01:27:15.660 and that's because

01:27:16.280 the chaos within you

01:27:17.320 has manifested itself,

01:27:18.700 and you've done something

01:27:19.760 that exceeds the bounds

01:27:21.200 of your understanding,

01:27:22.620 and, you know,

01:27:23.380 that can happen to people

01:27:24.420 so badly

01:27:25.040 that they develop

01:27:25.700 post-traumatic stress disorder.

01:27:28.500 Sometimes soldiers,

01:27:30.560 especially naive young soldiers,

01:27:32.020 will go on a battlefield

01:27:32.880 and watch themselves

01:27:33.820 do something they can't imagine

01:27:35.160 they're capable of doing,

01:27:36.360 and then they have

01:27:37.080 permanent post-traumatic stress disorder.

01:27:39.020 So there's a chaos within

01:27:40.840 that can manifest itself,

01:27:42.220 that can disrupt

01:27:43.080 whatever order you are,

01:27:45.260 and you know that

01:27:46.080 in minor ways,

01:27:46.760 because everybody's always

01:27:47.640 running around doing

01:27:48.460 things that aren't good for them,

01:27:50.320 that they know they shouldn't do,

01:27:51.500 and that they can't control,

01:27:52.660 and so there's a chaotic

01:27:55.040 and an orderly aspect

01:27:56.100 to everything,

01:27:56.960 to the individual,

01:27:58.400 to the family,

01:27:59.440 to the social world,

01:28:00.320 to the natural world.

01:28:01.500 It's chaos and order

01:28:02.840 at every level of analysis

01:28:04.100 simultaneously,

01:28:04.760 which is why the Taoists

01:28:06.180 think of the world

01:28:06.960 as made out of yin and yang,

01:28:08.280 which is essentially

01:28:09.040 analogous to the idea

01:28:11.680 of order and chaos.

01:28:13.300 And now,

01:28:14.400 but then there's

01:28:15.020 another element too,

01:28:16.360 so your order

01:28:17.120 and your chaos,

01:28:18.420 and the place that you live,

01:28:20.340 the environment,

01:28:21.020 is order and chaos as well.

01:28:23.100 But you're also the process

01:28:24.900 that mediates between the two.

01:28:26.980 And what that means is

01:28:28.060 you're the force

01:28:28.700 that confronts chaos

01:28:29.660 and casts it into order.

01:28:31.120 We talked about that

01:28:31.920 in the free will discussion.

01:28:33.260 That's the basis

01:28:34.300 for the dragon myth,

01:28:35.460 or at least part of it,

01:28:36.340 the hero myth.

01:28:37.380 You're the force

01:28:38.040 that confronts chaos

01:28:38.960 and transforms it

01:28:40.080 into habitable order.

01:28:41.440 And there's an idea

01:28:42.200 that if you do that

01:28:43.100 using truthful speech,

01:28:44.520 it's probably the deepest idea

01:28:45.980 in the Bible.

01:28:47.020 If you confront chaos

01:28:48.820 and the unknown

01:28:49.580 using truthful speech,

01:28:51.200 then the order

01:28:51.880 that you produce

01:28:52.740 is good.

01:28:54.340 So that also means

01:28:56.020 that your chaos and order

01:28:57.540 and the process

01:28:58.400 that intermediates

01:28:59.520 between them.

01:29:00.400 And that's really

01:29:01.120 the basis of the hero myth.

01:29:02.440 So part of that is

01:29:03.300 the hero story

01:29:04.780 and the dragon myth

01:29:05.700 go out,

01:29:06.520 confront the dragon,

01:29:07.320 get the gold,

01:29:07.980 bring it back,

01:29:08.720 share it with the community.

01:29:10.200 And the dragon

01:29:11.080 is a representation

01:29:11.880 of that which dwells

01:29:13.520 beyond the confines

01:29:15.020 of the safe

01:29:16.220 inhabitable space,

01:29:17.420 right?

01:29:17.580 It's an image

01:29:18.280 of a predator.

01:29:19.220 That's part of what it is,

01:29:20.260 although it's way more

01:29:20.960 complicated than that.

01:29:22.660 And you're also the force

01:29:23.940 that confronts order

01:29:24.960 when it becomes

01:29:25.620 too tyrannical

01:29:26.560 and restructures it

01:29:28.760 back to chaos

01:29:29.900 and then restructures

01:29:30.940 the chaos back

01:29:31.820 into more beneficial order,

01:29:33.280 which is what you do,

01:29:34.360 for example,

01:29:34.820 if you have an argument

01:29:36.180 with someone

01:29:36.700 that you settle,

01:29:38.020 right?

01:29:38.240 Because the argument

01:29:38.800 takes the orderly

01:29:40.720 relation that you have

01:29:42.980 with that person

01:29:43.600 and then produces

01:29:44.360 a chaotic interlude,

01:29:45.840 which is all the pain

01:29:46.640 that's associated

01:29:47.320 with the argument.

01:29:48.620 And that's a dissolution

01:29:49.680 into what Mercea Eliade

01:29:51.760 called pre-cosmogonic chaos.

01:29:53.960 And out of that,

01:29:54.840 a new order can emerge.

01:29:56.780 And so the best way

01:29:58.080 to construe yourself

01:29:59.020 is not as chaos

01:30:00.200 or as order,

01:30:01.360 but as the process

01:30:02.440 that mediates between them.

01:30:04.620 And that's the basis

01:30:06.140 for the ethos of the West

01:30:07.640 is that the human being

01:30:08.740 is best represented

01:30:10.520 as the individual

01:30:11.700 and the individual

01:30:12.900 is that attentive

01:30:14.380 and communicative entity

01:30:15.800 that is continually capable

01:30:17.700 of mediating properly

01:30:19.920 between chaos and order.

01:30:21.380 Now, this is a deep idea.

01:30:23.700 You could read Maps of Meaning

01:30:25.360 if you would like.

01:30:26.860 The audio version of that

01:30:28.080 is coming out June 12th,

01:30:29.400 by the way.

01:30:30.060 And I will make a video

01:30:31.080 detailing the relationship

01:30:32.220 between Maps of Meaning

01:30:33.280 and 12 Rules of Life.

01:30:35.040 But you can construe yourself,

01:30:36.800 you should construe yourself

01:30:38.200 as the process

01:30:39.420 that mediates

01:30:40.100 between chaos and order.

01:30:41.700 And you should aim

01:30:42.700 to be the process

01:30:43.760 that does that properly

01:30:44.960 using truthful communication

01:30:47.080 because that's how you keep

01:30:48.660 the elements of existence

01:30:50.220 properly balanced.

01:30:51.400 And you might say,

01:30:52.260 yeah, but is that real?

01:30:54.060 Well, if you read Maps of Meaning,

01:30:56.780 there's a section

01:30:57.440 on neuropsychology

01:30:58.440 that's also buttressed

01:30:59.540 by a book

01:31:00.120 written by Ian McGilchrist

01:31:01.980 called The Master

01:31:02.720 and His Emissary

01:31:03.500 that lays out

01:31:04.340 the relationship

01:31:05.440 between the right

01:31:06.160 and left hemisphere.

01:31:07.640 Now, it's quite strange

01:31:08.940 that we have a right

01:31:10.000 and left hemisphere.

01:31:11.100 It's almost as if

01:31:12.100 we have two consciousnesses

01:31:13.480 dwelling in our being.

01:31:17.460 And they're quite separable.

01:31:18.860 If you cut the corpus callosum

01:31:20.180 that unites the two,

01:31:21.220 then the two hemispheres

01:31:22.440 will act independently

01:31:23.440 to some degree.

01:31:24.180 You can communicate

01:31:24.800 with each of them

01:31:25.480 somewhat independently.

01:31:26.660 So they actually view

01:31:27.380 the world quite differently.

01:31:29.080 And that hemispheric distinction

01:31:30.880 is not only there

01:31:31.700 in human beings,

01:31:32.500 but also in animals

01:31:33.400 a long way down

01:31:34.040 the phylogenetic chain.

01:31:35.540 Now, I made the claim

01:31:36.860 partly because I was reading

01:31:38.260 a man named

01:31:39.240 L. Conan Goldberg

01:31:40.960 who was a student

01:31:41.780 of Alexander Luria,

01:31:43.180 the most brilliant

01:31:43.960 neuropsychologist

01:31:44.720 of the 20th century.

01:31:46.400 And Goldberg made the case

01:31:48.320 that the left hemisphere

01:31:51.360 is specialized

01:31:52.000 for what's known

01:31:55.140 and the right hemisphere

01:31:56.440 is specialized

01:31:57.040 for anomaly.

01:31:57.960 And Fies Ramachandran,

01:31:59.360 who's a famous neurologist,

01:32:01.100 an MD in California,

01:32:03.200 has also made

01:32:03.860 a very similar claim

01:32:04.760 based on his analysis

01:32:05.780 of brain-damaged individuals.

01:32:08.040 But Goldberg's case was

01:32:09.380 the left hemisphere

01:32:10.500 is specialized

01:32:11.080 for what you know

01:32:11.940 how to do

01:32:12.480 and the right hemisphere

01:32:13.920 is specialized

01:32:14.480 for response

01:32:15.240 to what's unknown.

01:32:16.360 And that maps on

01:32:17.380 to this order-chaos dimension.

01:32:20.720 Right?

01:32:21.120 And the right hemisphere,

01:32:22.260 now, McGilchrist

01:32:24.420 in his book

01:32:24.960 The Master and His Emissary

01:32:26.120 has pointed out

01:32:26.780 quite clearly

01:32:27.360 that the left hemisphere

01:32:28.380 has a tyrannical tendency

01:32:29.820 which Ramachandran

01:32:31.320 also viewed

01:32:32.060 in his brain-damaged patients,

01:32:34.440 by the way,

01:32:34.960 and that the left hemisphere

01:32:36.420 is always trying

01:32:37.200 to impose

01:32:37.880 its logical

01:32:39.520 and restricted order

01:32:40.640 on the world

01:32:41.260 and to make the world

01:32:42.160 fit into that.

01:32:43.320 Now, it has to do that.

01:32:44.340 There's reasons for that.

01:32:45.960 Part of the reason

01:32:46.800 is that if your theory

01:32:48.500 you've worked on

01:32:49.080 for 10 years

01:32:49.700 makes one prediction error,

01:32:50.840 you shouldn't throw 0.96

01:32:51.360 the whole damn thing out. 0.98

01:32:52.660 You should doubt 0.99

01:32:53.340 the prediction error.

01:32:54.920 Right?

01:32:55.100 Because you never know

01:32:55.780 when your data

01:32:56.540 is actually data

01:32:57.500 or it's just

01:32:58.360 another kind of theory.

01:33:00.160 We can't get into that

01:33:01.180 at the moment.

01:33:02.360 Now,

01:33:03.260 McGilchrist

01:33:04.920 makes a very strong case

01:33:06.180 and I think

01:33:07.540 a more elaborated case

01:33:08.700 than I made

01:33:09.220 in Maps of Meaning

01:33:09.880 but it's the same argument

01:33:10.980 fundamentally

01:33:11.560 that the right hemisphere

01:33:12.960 is concerned

01:33:15.200 with reaction

01:33:15.900 to anomaly

01:33:16.760 and so

01:33:17.240 what happens

01:33:18.240 in some sense

01:33:18.920 is something unexpected

01:33:20.240 happens.

01:33:20.820 That's the domain

01:33:21.420 of chaos

01:33:21.980 and that stops you

01:33:23.620 in your tracks.

01:33:24.320 It freezes you

01:33:24.940 and that's a predator response

01:33:26.300 or prey response actually.

01:33:27.920 You're frozen.

01:33:28.880 The unknown

01:33:29.340 has manifested itself.

01:33:30.900 You're not in order anymore.

01:33:32.620 You don't know

01:33:33.180 where you are

01:33:33.640 and you don't know

01:33:34.140 what to do

01:33:34.620 and you can't just

01:33:35.800 shut down

01:33:36.300 like a computer does.

01:33:37.300 You freeze instead

01:33:38.340 and then what happens

01:33:39.700 is that

01:33:40.120 the ancient mechanisms

01:33:41.560 that have helped

01:33:42.480 our ancestors

01:33:43.220 for tens of millions

01:33:44.320 of years

01:33:44.820 or perhaps longer

01:33:45.900 than that

01:33:46.320 react to

01:33:47.440 that which lurks

01:33:48.700 beyond the confines

01:33:49.860 of the unknown

01:33:50.540 kick in

01:33:51.240 and you start

01:33:52.240 first of all

01:33:52.820 that's motoric

01:33:53.620 so you freeze

01:33:54.380 and then you cautiously

01:33:55.500 start to explore

01:33:56.480 and then it's imagistic.

01:33:58.000 You start making

01:33:58.600 imaginal representations

01:34:00.180 metaphoric representations

01:34:02.240 dramatic representations

01:34:03.500 of what might constitute

01:34:04.900 the unknown

01:34:05.540 and then

01:34:06.580 those representations

01:34:07.720 are practiced

01:34:08.720 and implemented

01:34:09.640 in the world

01:34:10.220 and they become

01:34:10.800 more and more

01:34:11.340 fine-grained

01:34:12.100 and automatized

01:34:13.120 and as that happens

01:34:14.360 the locale

01:34:15.580 that they're represented

01:34:16.560 in in the brain

01:34:17.260 shifts from right to left.

01:34:19.420 So

01:34:19.600 so

01:34:20.980 so the reason

01:34:21.640 I'm telling you

01:34:22.220 all this

01:34:22.560 is because

01:34:23.000 you know

01:34:24.380 this is where

01:34:25.020 the metaphysical

01:34:25.760 and the physical

01:34:26.480 unite

01:34:27.100 and this is the sort

01:34:27.900 of argument

01:34:28.260 that I was trying

01:34:28.860 to make to Sam Harris

01:34:30.100 and hopefully

01:34:30.800 we'll be able

01:34:31.320 to continue doing that

01:34:32.200 because I'm going

01:34:32.760 to meet him

01:34:33.120 three times

01:34:33.620 in the next few months

01:34:34.500 so that

01:34:35.220 the yin-yang idea 0.85

01:34:38.240 the chaos order idea

01:34:39.360 is metaphorical

01:34:40.220 in some sense

01:34:40.920 to say that the world

01:34:41.840 is made up of order

01:34:42.760 and chaos

01:34:43.240 doesn't sound

01:34:43.920 like an empirical statement

01:34:45.060 but strangely enough

01:34:46.840 the world

01:34:48.040 to which our brains

01:34:49.300 are adapted

01:34:50.260 is actually

01:34:51.400 the world

01:34:51.880 of chaos and order

01:34:52.820 you can think about it

01:34:53.660 as unexplored

01:34:54.400 and explored territory

01:34:55.340 too

01:34:55.640 that's another

01:34:56.200 that's another

01:34:56.960 you know

01:34:57.500 take on it

01:34:58.800 and so

01:34:59.660 then you think

01:35:00.680 from a Darwinian perspective

01:35:01.960 think about it this way

01:35:03.040 from a Darwinian perspective

01:35:05.060 there's an

01:35:05.860 there's an

01:35:06.580 axiomatic presupposition

01:35:08.660 and that is

01:35:09.600 reality is that

01:35:10.860 which selects

01:35:12.380 reality is the force

01:35:13.960 that selects

01:35:14.740 over evolutionary time

01:35:15.940 and so

01:35:17.000 the force that selects

01:35:18.380 over evolutionary time

01:35:19.640 has selected

01:35:20.300 for hemispheric specialization

01:35:21.980 bilateral hemispheric specialization

01:35:24.140 which indicates

01:35:25.220 that two different modes

01:35:26.300 of looking at the world

01:35:27.200 are necessary

01:35:28.180 for survival

01:35:29.560 right

01:35:29.940 so that's real

01:35:30.840 and so the idea

01:35:32.020 that the world

01:35:32.620 is made out of chaos

01:35:33.460 and order

01:35:33.880 is perhaps

01:35:34.620 the most real idea

01:35:35.940 now

01:35:36.460 here's something else

01:35:37.640 cool that's associated

01:35:38.700 with that

01:35:39.240 and this is

01:35:40.120 an antidote

01:35:40.920 to nihilism

01:35:41.680 I also think

01:35:42.560 it's an antidote

01:35:43.280 to

01:35:43.560 to

01:35:44.300 what would you call

01:35:45.360 ideological

01:35:46.700 ideological possession

01:35:48.540 so

01:35:49.340 when you

01:35:50.960 encounter something unknown

01:35:52.480 you orient towards it

01:35:53.600 and that's an involuntary response

01:35:55.380 you could even think about it

01:35:56.320 as a deterministic response

01:35:57.640 it's part of

01:35:58.320 what orients you

01:35:59.660 very rapidly

01:36:00.380 towards predators

01:36:01.220 so that they don't kill you

01:36:02.420 before you have a chance

01:36:03.280 to respond

01:36:03.900 okay

01:36:04.660 so

01:36:04.920 you react

01:36:05.780 because the anomalous thing

01:36:07.100 is meaningful

01:36:07.740 it's intrinsically meaningful

01:36:09.000 and the reaction

01:36:10.060 is first

01:36:10.720 terror

01:36:11.460 with perhaps

01:36:12.320 an overlay of disgust

01:36:13.580 and second

01:36:14.580 curiosity

01:36:15.320 and it's terror

01:36:16.440 so that you freeze

01:36:17.500 and remain paralyzed

01:36:19.180 you turn to stone

01:36:20.320 when you look at the basilisk

01:36:21.640 or the snake

01:36:22.280 or the gorgon

01:36:22.960 you turn to stone

01:36:23.840 you're paralyzed

01:36:24.380 like a prey animal

01:36:25.340 and that's so the prey

01:36:26.480 predator can't see you

01:36:28.000 at least in part

01:36:29.040 and there's other elements

01:36:30.280 of the orienting reflex

01:36:31.240 that are associated

01:36:32.020 with predator avoidance

01:36:33.140 and then if nothing

01:36:34.140 additionally terrible happens

01:36:35.400 you start to thaw out

01:36:36.620 and you start to explore

01:36:38.480 and you do that

01:36:39.040 with image first

01:36:39.980 and then practice

01:36:41.880 the appropriate behaviors

01:36:43.020 and then automate those

01:36:44.500 now look

01:36:45.260 here's the thing

01:36:46.200 that's cool

01:36:46.740 so

01:36:47.940 that orienting reflex

01:36:49.560 to the unknown

01:36:50.360 is

01:36:51.120 it's an admixture 0.71

01:36:53.300 of threat

01:36:54.240 fear

01:36:55.200 and curiosity

01:36:57.000 incentive reward

01:36:58.140 so negative emotion

01:36:59.280 and positive emotion

01:37:00.220 now

01:37:00.920 and it's dose dependent

01:37:02.460 the larger the anomaly

01:37:04.120 which means the larger

01:37:05.680 the map

01:37:06.940 it blows out

01:37:08.440 when it manifests itself

01:37:09.780 think of the difference

01:37:10.660 between being irritated

01:37:12.220 at your marital partner

01:37:14.400 because they

01:37:15.100 you know

01:37:15.740 oh who knows

01:37:16.860 because they were late

01:37:17.840 to pick you up for work

01:37:18.960 compared to how irritated

01:37:20.320 you would be

01:37:20.920 if you found out

01:37:21.580 they were having an affair

01:37:22.540 difference in size

01:37:23.900 of anomaly

01:37:24.420 the first one

01:37:25.180 disrupts a tiny little

01:37:26.620 part of your space time

01:37:28.480 orientation

01:37:29.400 and the second one

01:37:30.720 demolishes your past

01:37:32.060 present and future

01:37:32.980 and the larger

01:37:34.200 the disruption

01:37:34.860 the more negative emotion

01:37:36.100 obviously

01:37:37.300 and

01:37:38.080 so

01:37:38.740 so

01:37:39.400 there's this

01:37:40.120 weird interplay

01:37:41.000 between negative

01:37:41.660 and positive emotion

01:37:42.560 in the response

01:37:43.280 to anomaly

01:37:43.840 and

01:37:44.780 but it's deeply meaningful

01:37:46.300 even if it's

01:37:47.020 even if it paralyzes you

01:37:48.360 even if it's terrifying

01:37:49.280 it's meaningful

01:37:49.900 and then that transforms

01:37:51.120 perhaps into intense

01:37:52.200 curiosity

01:37:52.720 and you start to explore

01:37:53.840 now

01:37:54.480 the phenomena

01:37:56.080 of meaning

01:37:56.880 is a

01:37:57.840 manifestation

01:37:58.940 of the complex

01:37:59.980 orienting reflex

01:38:00.900 and so you're wired

01:38:02.280 so that

01:38:02.800 you're not just order

01:38:04.300 and you're not just chaos

01:38:06.240 you're order

01:38:07.080 continually confronting chaos

01:38:09.260 so that the order

01:38:10.000 remains updated

01:38:10.860 and

01:38:11.880 you might say

01:38:12.600 well how do you know

01:38:13.360 how much chaos

01:38:14.220 you should confront

01:38:15.180 in order to keep the order

01:38:16.540 continually updated

01:38:17.820 and the answer is

01:38:19.580 meaning

01:38:20.760 see

01:38:22.200 something is meaningful

01:38:23.380 the reason that something

01:38:24.460 is meaningful

01:38:25.000 is because you're getting

01:38:25.900 a deep instinctual signal

01:38:27.700 that you're encountering

01:38:29.580 anomaly

01:38:30.160 at a rate

01:38:31.100 that doesn't exceed

01:38:31.860 your capability

01:38:32.620 that's also the rate

01:38:34.220 at which you can keep

01:38:34.940 yourself updated

01:38:35.780 optimally

01:38:36.700 and so

01:38:37.960 meaning isn't

01:38:38.860 epiphenomenal

01:38:39.700 and it isn't

01:38:40.800 it isn't some kind

01:38:41.980 of delusion

01:38:42.560 that rationality

01:38:43.480 can and should overcome

01:38:44.900 to say

01:38:45.420 well everything's meaningless

01:38:46.540 it's like

01:38:46.960 no it's not

01:38:47.580 meaning is the most

01:38:48.660 fundamental instinct

01:38:49.520 for adaptation

01:38:50.260 and so that's partly

01:38:51.760 why in 12 rules for life

01:38:53.060 I said

01:38:53.540 one of the rules

01:38:54.480 I think it's rule 7

01:38:56.680 is do what is meaningful

01:38:58.400 not what is expedient

01:38:59.740 because meaning

01:39:00.740 is a really good guide

01:39:01.980 to long-term adaptation

01:39:02.980 and so then

01:39:04.220 and the other thing

01:39:05.160 about meaning

01:39:05.820 which is what happens

01:39:07.360 when you get the balance

01:39:08.220 between chaos and order

01:39:09.300 right

01:39:09.500 is that meaning

01:39:10.220 is the antidote

01:39:11.620 to despair

01:39:12.420 and so

01:39:13.620 if you

01:39:14.600 and there's all sorts

01:39:15.720 of reasons in life

01:39:16.520 to be desperate

01:39:17.200 and so if you

01:39:18.260 immerse yourself

01:39:19.260 in meaning

01:39:19.780 you can learn to do that

01:39:20.960 you can learn to do that

01:39:22.020 you can make that goal

01:39:23.200 your highest goal

01:39:24.020 and so then

01:39:24.600 the highest goal

01:39:25.220 would be

01:39:25.660 to be the sort of

01:39:27.420 mythological hero

01:39:28.620 let's say

01:39:29.140 to embody

01:39:30.020 and incarnate

01:39:32.100 and imitate

01:39:32.720 the mythological hero

01:39:33.940 like the imitation of Christ

01:39:35.180 which is

01:39:35.620 what you're called to do

01:39:36.860 if you happen to be Christian

01:39:38.140 that means that

01:39:39.680 you live in meaning

01:39:40.680 and that meaning

01:39:41.400 is the antidote

01:39:42.180 to the suffering of life

01:39:43.260 that would otherwise

01:39:43.860 make you brutal

01:39:45.120 and vengeful 0.79

01:39:45.900 and unhappy 0.93

01:39:46.660 and miserable 0.60

01:39:47.300 and like that 0.97

01:39:48.280 that young guy

01:39:49.420 who just

01:39:49.900 mowed down 12 people

01:39:51.480 in Toronto

01:39:52.400 these are real things

01:39:54.100 you lose your sense of meaning

01:39:55.680 you end up in hell

01:39:56.660 and in hell 0.96

01:39:57.760 you do all sorts 0.55

01:39:58.720 of terrible things

01:39:59.640 these are

01:40:00.520 these are

01:40:01.020 dreadful realities

01:40:02.400 and it isn't

01:40:03.600 as if they're not

01:40:04.400 grounded in the

01:40:05.200 appropriate science

01:40:06.200 so

01:40:07.100 anyways

01:40:08.620 that was also

01:40:09.560 a very complicated question

01:40:11.100 being gay

01:40:13.020 and in a long-term

01:40:13.840 relationship

01:40:14.400 we are considering kids

01:40:15.760 what are your thoughts

01:40:16.740 about gay people

01:40:17.600 raising children 1.00

01:40:18.400 I think the devil's

01:40:24.140 in the details

01:40:24.800 to tell you the truth

01:40:25.760 when if I was ever

01:40:26.720 talking to any individuals

01:40:27.780 about that

01:40:28.380 that's

01:40:28.740 the question is

01:40:29.560 well how would you

01:40:30.140 raise them

01:40:30.620 I mean you have

01:40:31.280 problems right

01:40:32.140 if you're

01:40:33.100 both of the same sex

01:40:34.920 then you're going to

01:40:35.740 have the problem

01:40:36.340 of how to

01:40:36.960 provide the proper

01:40:38.020 model for

01:40:38.740 you know

01:40:39.140 let's say you have

01:40:39.680 a boy and a girl

01:40:40.380 we know

01:40:43.200 this is indisputable

01:40:44.580 and this is something

01:40:45.220 I've talked to

01:40:45.780 Warren Farrell about

01:40:46.500 kids in intact

01:40:48.340 heterosexual families

01:40:49.580 where the father is

01:40:50.420 present

01:40:50.780 do way better

01:40:52.000 on multiple indices

01:40:54.220 than kids who are

01:40:55.760 are part of

01:40:56.940 single parent families

01:40:58.020 now that doesn't mean

01:40:59.460 that there are no

01:41:00.100 single parents

01:41:00.820 who do a good job

01:41:01.800 right

01:41:02.500 that's not the same

01:41:03.460 bloody claim

01:41:04.220 those are different

01:41:05.120 claims

01:41:05.580 but on average

01:41:07.640 kid not only do kids

01:41:09.420 where fathers are present

01:41:10.660 do better

01:41:11.120 but societies

01:41:12.020 or even

01:41:13.220 even local societies

01:41:14.740 where there are more

01:41:15.980 fathers present

01:41:17.020 do better

01:41:17.860 not only for the kids

01:41:19.340 that they're fathering

01:41:20.300 but the kids in the

01:41:21.540 neighborhood

01:41:21.900 where there are lots

01:41:22.640 of intact families

01:41:23.860 with fathers

01:41:24.440 do better

01:41:24.940 and so

01:41:25.960 I believe

01:41:26.940 quite firmly

01:41:27.660 that the nuclear

01:41:28.820 family is the

01:41:29.620 smallest

01:41:30.140 viable

01:41:31.160 human unit

01:41:32.660 father

01:41:33.960 mother

01:41:34.420 child

01:41:35.180 smallest

01:41:36.140 viable unit

01:41:36.960 and if you

01:41:37.820 fragment it below

01:41:38.560 that

01:41:38.880 then you end up

01:41:39.580 paying

01:41:39.900 now

01:41:40.880 that doesn't mean

01:41:42.560 that there aren't

01:41:44.000 ways that you can

01:41:44.980 operate in a smaller

01:41:47.120 unit or a different

01:41:48.220 unit effectively

01:41:49.400 but you have to

01:41:50.340 contend with the fact

01:41:51.660 that it's necessary

01:41:53.240 for kids to have

01:41:56.080 models for both

01:41:57.040 sexes

01:41:57.540 and that means

01:41:58.880 accepting that the

01:42:00.340 sexes are different

01:42:01.200 even though there's a

01:42:01.940 fair overlap between

01:42:02.800 them

01:42:02.980 accepting that they're

01:42:03.700 different

01:42:03.980 and that both

01:42:05.100 sexes play their 0.64

01:42:06.840 role

01:42:07.180 it looks like what

01:42:08.240 fathers do

01:42:08.860 and I talked to

01:42:09.480 Warren Farrell a lot

01:42:10.360 about this

01:42:10.840 and I'm going to

01:42:11.260 release this video

01:42:12.020 this month

01:42:12.960 about what fathers

01:42:14.400 do

01:42:14.620 and a lot of

01:42:15.120 what they do

01:42:15.640 is rough and

01:42:17.460 tumble play with

01:42:18.120 the kids

01:42:18.480 which kids really

01:42:19.340 really really like

01:42:20.420 and it's really

01:42:21.360 important as

01:42:22.140 Yach Panksepp

01:42:23.020 a great affective

01:42:24.060 neuroscientist laid

01:42:24.960 out in his studies

01:42:25.720 on rats

01:42:26.240 he discovered the

01:42:27.000 play circuitry

01:42:27.760 and fathers

01:42:28.940 this is something

01:42:29.960 Farrell told me

01:42:30.760 which was

01:42:31.100 extraordinarily

01:42:31.640 interesting

01:42:32.200 is that fathers

01:42:32.920 used the joy

01:42:34.060 of the possibility

01:42:35.500 of play

01:42:36.160 as a scaffold

01:42:37.360 to help children

01:42:38.680 learn to delay

01:42:39.360 gratification

01:42:40.060 so imagine a

01:42:40.840 father spends a

01:42:41.520 bunch of time

01:42:41.920 playing with his

01:42:42.540 kids and they're

01:42:43.080 having a great

01:42:43.560 old time

01:42:44.000 they're wrestling

01:42:44.480 around and pushing

01:42:45.540 each other's limits

01:42:46.600 to find out where

01:42:47.460 they are

01:42:47.840 and learning the

01:42:49.380 physiological dance

01:42:50.600 that goes along

01:42:51.740 with direct contact

01:42:52.980 direct exciting

01:42:53.860 contact

01:42:54.380 learning what hurts

01:42:55.420 and what doesn't

01:42:56.100 and what constitutes

01:42:57.300 fair play and what

01:42:58.180 isn't and how

01:42:59.040 everybody can play

01:42:59.820 and still enjoy the

01:43:00.700 game and how

01:43:01.180 excited you could

01:43:01.940 get before it's

01:43:02.620 too much and how

01:43:03.620 much you should

01:43:04.200 whine and how

01:43:04.840 much you shouldn't

01:43:05.560 and when you can

01:43:06.160 object to being

01:43:06.860 hurt all of that

01:43:07.740 at a deeply

01:43:08.480 embodied level

01:43:09.220 kids love that

01:43:10.620 they'll line up

01:43:11.540 for that

01:43:11.840 and Panksepp

01:43:12.760 demonstrated very

01:43:13.680 clearly that rats

01:43:14.640 will work to play

01:43:15.700 and that rats play 0.99

01:43:17.520 fair and they learn

01:43:18.380 to play fair because

01:43:19.280 of iterated play

01:43:20.260 bouts and that

01:43:21.540 if you don't let

01:43:22.720 juvenile male rats

01:43:23.840 play then their

01:43:24.900 prefrontal cortexes

01:43:26.020 don't develop and

01:43:26.760 they get attention

01:43:27.400 deficit disorder

01:43:28.320 or the equivalent

01:43:29.080 in rats and then

01:43:30.220 you can treat that

01:43:30.860 with Ritalin

01:43:31.400 and so this is all

01:43:33.620 very vital material

01:43:35.200 now if you're going

01:43:36.080 to if you if 0.99

01:43:37.420 you're gay let's 0.99

01:43:38.900 say there's two 0.99

01:43:39.700 two men or two

01:43:40.500 women then you 1.00

01:43:41.400 have the problem

01:43:42.140 of what you're

01:43:42.700 going to do for

01:43:44.420 the contra sexual

01:43:45.960 target and you

01:43:47.580 can say well it

01:43:48.240 doesn't matter

01:43:48.740 because there's no

01:43:49.400 differences between

01:43:50.200 men and women and

01:43:50.960 you can gerrymander 1.00

01:43:51.840 the damn question 1.00

01:43:52.640 that way and avoid 1.00

01:43:53.760 your moral

01:43:54.320 responsibility or

01:43:55.620 you can face it

01:43:56.320 squarely and say

01:43:57.060 look you've decided

01:43:57.940 to step outside of

01:43:59.520 the cultural norm and

01:44:00.520 to organize a

01:44:01.300 non-standard

01:44:01.880 relationship which

01:44:02.880 puts a tremendous

01:44:03.600 responsibility on

01:44:04.940 you and then you

01:44:06.120 have to figure out

01:44:06.780 how you can provide

01:44:07.580 for your children

01:44:08.240 what it is that

01:44:09.220 they would get in

01:44:10.300 the classic minimal

01:44:11.580 human unit so and

01:44:13.600 more power to you

01:44:14.400 I hope you can do

01:44:15.080 a good job of it

01:44:15.880 you know I think

01:44:16.980 there's room in the

01:44:17.680 world for for a

01:44:19.040 diverse range of

01:44:20.220 approaches to

01:44:21.460 complex life problems

01:44:23.020 like like having

01:44:24.060 kids and finding a

01:44:25.120 partner but that

01:44:26.380 doesn't mean you get

01:44:27.020 to bury your head

01:44:27.700 in the sand about

01:44:28.460 the absolute realities

01:44:29.880 of life and the

01:44:30.740 fact that there are

01:44:31.340 biological differences

01:44:32.320 between men and

01:44:33.040 women to deny that 1.00

01:44:34.200 is is reprehensible

01:44:35.820 in my estimation

01:44:37.120 and besides the

01:44:38.540 empirical data the

01:44:39.400 scientific data are

01:44:40.320 crystal clear so

01:44:41.920 and so okay

01:44:43.600 Carl Jung says that

01:44:47.140 everything unconscious

01:44:48.180 is projected into

01:44:49.240 reality how do you

01:44:50.100 know if you're

01:44:50.600 perceiving reality

01:44:51.380 accurately or are

01:44:52.840 just projecting

01:44:53.560 great yeah well

01:44:54.920 that's partly why

01:44:55.860 I'm a pragmatist

01:44:56.740 well there's a bunch

01:44:57.680 of ways there's a

01:44:59.880 bunch of ways that

01:45:00.600 you know pain tells

01:45:02.920 you if you make a

01:45:05.220 mistake and you

01:45:05.760 hurt yourself well 1.00

01:45:06.520 then your stupid 1.00

01:45:07.140 theory was wrong 1.00

01:45:07.980 right that's what

01:45:08.620 the pain says your 1.00

01:45:09.720 stupid theory was 1.00

01:45:10.640 wrong and that's a 1.00

01:45:11.820 pragmatic you see

01:45:12.680 that's another

01:45:13.240 indication of

01:45:14.760 pragmatic theory of

01:45:15.840 truth you lay out

01:45:17.160 look when you look

01:45:18.480 at the world you

01:45:19.060 look at the world

01:45:19.820 with a set of

01:45:20.600 presuppositions I

01:45:21.500 outlined that in

01:45:22.260 chapter 10 in in

01:45:23.780 rules in 12 rules

01:45:24.860 for life called be

01:45:25.980 precise in your

01:45:26.640 speech it indicates

01:45:28.440 that when you look

01:45:29.900 at the world you

01:45:30.780 look at it through

01:45:31.360 a value structure

01:45:32.180 you can't help

01:45:33.040 that because you're

01:45:33.660 always aiming at

01:45:34.300 something in the

01:45:34.840 world and you're

01:45:35.300 always aiming at

01:45:35.880 something you want

01:45:36.640 and you're trying

01:45:37.320 to get it and so

01:45:38.200 that means that you

01:45:38.900 look at the world

01:45:39.840 through a value

01:45:40.420 structure now the

01:45:41.420 question is whether

01:45:42.420 or not that value

01:45:43.160 structure is valid

01:45:44.040 and that's a very

01:45:45.340 complicated question

01:45:46.360 okay so how do you

01:45:47.340 know if it's valid

01:45:48.080 number one you lay

01:45:49.680 it out and you act

01:45:51.180 it out you you

01:45:52.160 implement it

01:45:52.880 perceptually and then

01:45:53.700 you act it out

01:45:54.340 and if you get what

01:45:55.620 you wanted what the

01:45:57.160 theory predicted

01:45:57.820 that's another way

01:45:58.520 of thinking about

01:45:59.080 it but wanted is a

01:46:00.020 better way of

01:46:00.460 thinking about it

01:46:01.100 then the fact that

01:46:02.740 that behavioral

01:46:03.440 routine and

01:46:04.320 perceptual structure

01:46:05.340 produced the

01:46:06.140 intended result

01:46:06.880 validates it as a

01:46:08.820 tool for obtaining

01:46:09.720 that result and

01:46:10.700 that's a form of

01:46:11.420 truth now it might

01:46:13.720 be the only form of

01:46:14.620 truth although I'm

01:46:15.300 not convinced of

01:46:16.260 that completely but

01:46:17.020 it might be it's a

01:46:18.040 very complicated

01:46:18.700 question now how

01:46:20.140 do you know if 1.00

01:46:20.720 your stupid theory 1.00

01:46:21.580 is wrong okay a 1.00

01:46:23.540 it fails and you're

01:46:25.240 hurt pain tells you

01:46:26.880 pragmatically your

01:46:28.520 theory was wrong so

01:46:29.900 that's why you should

01:46:30.600 pay attention to your

01:46:31.460 own pain because

01:46:32.260 your suffering is

01:46:33.000 indication that you

01:46:33.820 still have things to

01:46:34.680 learn and maybe the

01:46:35.820 suffering of other

01:46:36.680 people is also that

01:46:37.740 maybe something

01:46:39.520 unexpected or

01:46:40.400 unpredictable happens

01:46:41.360 when you're laying

01:46:41.960 out your plan and

01:46:42.880 then the anomalous

01:46:44.100 manifests itself the

01:46:45.420 unexpected or chaos

01:46:46.560 and then you get

01:46:47.200 anxious well anxiety

01:46:49.100 is an indication that

01:46:50.120 your plan your arrow

01:46:51.500 didn't fly to its mark

01:46:52.880 so you aimed wrong and

01:46:54.960 that might mean a

01:46:55.660 small error you know

01:46:57.120 maybe a tiny adjustment

01:46:58.500 of your bow or it

01:46:59.400 might mean you just

01:47:00.400 don't know what the

01:47:00.980 hell you're doing at 0.61

01:47:01.660 all and everything is

01:47:02.520 lost and so anxiety

01:47:04.260 tells you if your theory

01:47:06.000 is wrong and then and

01:47:08.860 then other people tell

01:47:09.780 you that and that's why

01:47:10.640 you want to surround

01:47:11.240 yourself with other

01:47:11.980 people because you

01:47:14.020 distribute your

01:47:15.060 cognitive resource you

01:47:17.120 you you distribute your

01:47:20.580 problems to the

01:47:21.900 cognitive resources of

01:47:23.220 the social group that's

01:47:24.260 what we do when we

01:47:24.980 price things right

01:47:25.960 everyone votes on the

01:47:26.920 price of something

01:47:27.600 because it's so

01:47:28.220 difficult because the

01:47:29.400 price of something has

01:47:30.220 to be established in

01:47:31.080 relationship to the

01:47:32.220 price of everything

01:47:32.880 else and that's always

01:47:34.080 in flux and so it's

01:47:35.740 computationally impossible

01:47:37.620 problem and so we

01:47:38.860 outsource it to the

01:47:40.000 market which is the

01:47:41.400 free cognitive decision

01:47:42.900 of millions of people

01:47:44.440 and that's how we

01:47:45.260 determine price and so

01:47:46.680 one of the things you

01:47:47.480 do to make sure that 0.99

01:47:48.840 you're not any stupider 1.00

01:47:49.700 than you have to be 1.00

01:47:50.580 blind ignorant biased and 1.00

01:47:52.520 all of that is you 1.00

01:47:53.680 surround yourself with

01:47:54.540 other people and you

01:47:55.700 try to treat them well

01:47:56.500 enough so that they can

01:47:57.340 tolerate you and then

01:47:58.540 every time that you do 1.00

01:47:59.660 something stupid because 1.00

01:48:00.720 one of your theories is 1.00

01:48:01.840 it is vague or

01:48:03.240 incomplete or wrong or

01:48:04.360 biased or you're

01:48:05.220 willfully blind then 0.87

01:48:06.280 they slap you on the 0.97

01:48:07.120 side of the head they 0.97

01:48:08.260 ignore you because you're

01:48:09.380 boring they don't laugh 0.98

01:48:10.520 at your jokes because 1.00

01:48:11.300 they're stupid they they 1.00

01:48:13.140 they are irritated at 1.00

01:48:14.940 your actions because

01:48:15.800 you're not taking your

01:48:17.120 own long-term interests or

01:48:18.440 the interests of other

01:48:19.200 people into account and so

01:48:21.340 you have pain you have

01:48:22.840 anxiety you have the

01:48:24.380 reward of success that

01:48:26.560 that's that's a positive

01:48:27.620 indicator that your

01:48:28.460 theory is okay and then

01:48:29.660 you have the reactions of

01:48:30.780 everyone else and if

01:48:32.340 you're clued in you pay

01:48:34.400 attention to all of those

01:48:35.420 things and you try to

01:48:36.600 update your your order

01:48:38.800 which is your perceptions

01:48:40.340 you try to update your

01:48:41.600 order constantly as a

01:48:42.620 consequence of being humble

01:48:44.280 in the face of your

01:48:45.120 errors which is why

01:48:46.100 humility is the

01:48:47.000 preconditioner for learning

01:48:48.100 and why it's one of the

01:48:48.980 highest moral virtues so

01:48:51.100 and perceiving reality

01:48:54.200 accurately you don't

01:48:55.560 really perceive reality

01:48:57.060 and you don't really

01:48:58.600 perceive accurately you

01:49:00.020 perceive small portions of

01:49:02.040 reality extraordinarily

01:49:03.480 limited in space and time

01:49:04.980 and accurately means well

01:49:07.700 enough so that when you do

01:49:08.780 what you're doing it works

01:49:09.880 that's why I'm a

01:49:11.320 pragmatist I mean not only I

01:49:12.960 mean you know I mean

01:49:13.900 there's lots of other

01:49:14.900 philosophical streams that

01:49:16.860 have influenced my thought

01:49:17.880 existentialism phenomenal

01:49:19.240 phenomenology to mention

01:49:20.660 to others but the thing

01:49:24.340 is you can't perceive

01:49:25.420 reality accurately because

01:49:26.760 you don't know everything

01:49:27.740 so and you're full of 0.52

01:49:28.700 biases and and you're 1.00

01:49:29.960 ignorant as hell and so 1.00

01:49:31.440 the best you can do is 1.00

01:49:32.360 perceive small bits of

01:49:33.480 reality well enough so that

01:49:34.640 you can more or less get

01:49:35.520 what you need in a

01:49:37.060 relatively short period of 0.98

01:49:38.160 time without screwing

01:49:39.060 yourself up too badly in

01:49:40.360 the medium to long term

01:49:41.360 that's pretty much what

01:49:42.740 you've got and and that

01:49:44.280 doesn't mean truth is

01:49:45.200 impossible it just means

01:49:46.420 that it's very very

01:49:47.700 complicated to decide what

01:49:49.040 truth is and because the

01:49:51.100 question is what is truth

01:49:52.280 for someone whose

01:49:53.000 knowledge is limited right

01:49:55.060 because obviously because

01:49:56.900 your knowledge is limited

01:49:57.760 and you don't know

01:49:58.460 everything say in some

01:50:00.260 fundamental way you're 0.96

01:50:01.900 ignorant or wrong about 0.89

01:50:03.160 everything but that 1.00

01:50:04.320 doesn't help because you

01:50:05.080 still have to act in the

01:50:06.080 world so there are bounded

01:50:07.240 truths there are bounded

01:50:08.720 truths and so all right if

01:50:13.520 past experiences shape us oh no I

01:50:16.100 missed one you cite a tired

01:50:18.560 brain foggy thinking as the

01:50:20.820 reason to stop answering

01:50:21.900 questions or giving a talk

01:50:23.180 how do you combat this while

01:50:24.720 working or writing daily

01:50:26.060 well I eat a big breakfast

01:50:30.320 relatively soon on waking that

01:50:32.460 really helps if any of you out

01:50:34.000 there are anxious and many of

01:50:35.740 you no doubt are there'll be a

01:50:37.860 large number of you who are

01:50:39.000 anxious and don't eat

01:50:39.840 breakfast and there'll be a

01:50:40.720 whole bunch of you out there

01:50:41.600 who think well I don't eat

01:50:42.440 breakfast it isn't necessary it's

01:50:43.740 like that's wrong it's

01:50:45.240 necessary you fasted all night

01:50:47.280 if you load yourself

01:50:48.700 cognitively or physiologically in

01:50:50.520 the morning your brain

01:50:51.880 stressed will produce will

01:50:54.620 encourage your body to produce

01:50:56.000 insulin it will take all the

01:50:57.460 blood sugar out of your blood and

01:50:59.060 then you're done for the day and

01:51:00.740 then you'll be anxious and another

01:51:02.560 lot of the rest of you too you'll

01:51:04.140 find if you're anxious try this

01:51:05.640 it's really really interesting

01:51:07.020 experiment the next time you're

01:51:10.640 anxious go eat something eat like

01:51:13.360 eat some protein and fat would be

01:51:15.240 best you could have cheese and

01:51:16.440 crackers I'm not a big fan of

01:51:17.860 carbohydrates but whatever eat

01:51:20.140 whatever you're willing to eat but

01:51:21.620 make it solid don't eat a peanut

01:51:23.000 butter or don't eat a like a

01:51:24.260 chocolate bar or something sweet

01:51:25.580 eat something substantial a piece of

01:51:27.520 meat a piece of cheese some peanut

01:51:29.300 butter something like that and then

01:51:31.520 wait 10 minutes and see if you're

01:51:33.300 less anxious and try that for like

01:51:35.160 two weeks every time you get

01:51:36.400 anxious eat something because then

01:51:38.460 you can find out if your anxiousness

01:51:40.380 if your anxiety is linked to low

01:51:42.060 blood sugar and it's very likely that

01:51:43.760 it is especially if you also get

01:51:45.280 irritable and foggy in your

01:51:46.920 thinking and so and the best way to

01:51:50.580 treat that as far as I've been able to

01:51:52.220 tell and there's a decent literature on

01:51:53.640 this is to make sure that you eat a

01:51:55.320 big breakfast and you might say well

01:51:56.880 I'm not hungry in the morning it's

01:51:58.080 like who the hell cares if you're 0.68

01:51:59.340 hungry I didn't say enjoy your

01:52:01.180 breakfast I said eat it that's not

01:52:03.640 the same thing you know there's lots

01:52:06.020 of things that you need to do that

01:52:07.180 you don't enjoy to begin with you'll

01:52:08.520 get hungry in six months and then

01:52:09.820 you'll start to enjoy it so that's a

01:52:11.920 massive difference I take small naps

01:52:14.000 quite frequently if I'm wiped out you

01:52:16.800 know I'll go have a nap for 10 minutes

01:52:18.420 or 15 minutes and then that helps quite

01:52:20.980 a lot I try to wake up fairly regular

01:52:25.980 on a fairly regular schedule that's

01:52:27.980 another thing I would really recommend

01:52:29.180 for people whose lives are in disarray

01:52:31.300 and who are anxious try to fix your

01:52:33.820 wake time sleep going when you sleep

01:52:35.840 that's not so important so you can

01:52:37.880 still you know stay up late and have

01:52:39.700 fun and all that but getting up in the

01:52:41.480 morning is really helpful so you know

01:52:46.340 and you you also have to figure out how

01:52:48.020 much you can work or write I can't write

01:52:50.540 for more than about max my sustainable

01:52:53.780 maximum for writing is three hours a day

01:52:55.580 and if I push it past that then

01:52:58.220 especially if I'm editing I I make

01:53:00.860 mistakes when I'm editing so that's

01:53:02.420 counterproductive and I can't sustain it

01:53:04.580 across time and so I don't really think

01:53:07.700 you can do more than about three hours

01:53:09.260 of extremely intense intellectual work a

01:53:11.580 day although if you have a nap you can

01:53:14.000 stretch that but I think at least I end

01:53:16.220 up paying for it across time so nap make

01:53:20.220 sure you eat and make sure you eat

01:53:22.820 protein and fat and not carbohydrates

01:53:24.680 because carbohydrates are basically

01:53:26.060 poisonous that's about that's about and

01:53:32.000 make sure that you get enough sleep so

01:53:33.860 that's that's how I combat it and try to

01:53:36.560 make myself hyper-efficient which is

01:53:38.360 also a really interesting thing to try

01:53:39.980 you know I was talking to my agents at

01:53:42.740 CAA creative artists agency in LA and I

01:53:45.320 just hired a publicist to to help me

01:53:47.300 manage media in a more intelligent

01:53:49.240 manner and we're trying to think about

01:53:51.080 our overarching philosophy you know and I

01:53:53.420 first proposed to the CAA guys that our

01:53:56.420 overarching philosophy would be something

01:53:58.160 like because you need an overarching

01:53:59.900 philosophy under which you nest all your

01:54:02.420 specific actions it was something like

01:54:04.040 to educate as many people as possible in

01:54:06.860 the shortest period of time which seems

01:54:08.660 like a really good goal like why the

01:54:10.100 hell not do that but then we broaden that 0.97

01:54:12.380 a little bit this week which was to try to

01:54:14.420 do as much good possible as efficiently as

01:54:16.880 possible and that efficiency thing is

01:54:18.980 really fun if you guys who are listening

01:54:20.920 are out for a challenge like one of the

01:54:22.880 things that you can I think this heightens the

01:54:24.860 meaning in your life is to try to do

01:54:26.480 difficult things right aim high don't aim

01:54:30.020 so damn high you can't manage it and make

01:54:32.240 sure you break down your aims into 0.94

01:54:34.160 reasonably attainable sub goals but you

01:54:36.860 want to aim high and then you want to see

01:54:38.660 how hyper-efficient you can get that's a

01:54:40.760 great thing to do in your early 20s is to

01:54:43.220 see okay like discipline yourself you think

01:54:45.860 okay how much work can I do if I load

01:54:47.780 myself right to the maximum how far do I

01:54:51.140 how far can I work how hard can I work

01:54:53.180 until I exhaust myself and then you back

01:54:56.020 off obviously because the optimal amount

01:54:58.340 of working productive engagement let's

01:55:00.980 say is that which is sustainable across

01:55:03.680 decades so you have to you have to learn

01:55:05.660 that but you don't learn that without

01:55:07.100 stretching yourself to your limits to

01:55:08.840 begin with and you know if your life

01:55:10.700 isn't everything it could be and if

01:55:12.520 you're suffering from an excess of

01:55:13.940 meaninglessness well it means you're not

01:55:15.860 oriented in the world of chaos and order

01:55:17.840 properly it's like you could learn to

01:55:19.280 discipline yourself look figure out what

01:55:22.340 figure out what it is that you need to do

01:55:24.140 and that you want to do and then see how

01:55:25.760 efficient you can get because one of the

01:55:27.780 things that's quite fun is to figure out

01:55:29.420 if you have a task I always tell my

01:55:31.220 graduate students this if they're doing

01:55:32.840 an experiment too if you have a task that

01:55:35.360 you have to do it's really interesting to

01:55:37.460 spend a few minutes sometimes hours

01:55:39.980 depending on how long the task is see if

01:55:42.080 you can figure out how to do it from from

01:55:43.940 five to ten times faster it means you'll

01:55:46.580 have to rearrange the way you think about

01:55:48.020 it but you can often do it and that's how

01:55:50.000 extremely productive people get so

01:55:51.620 hyper-efficient you know sometimes it

01:55:53.420 means you have to delegate it means

01:55:54.800 sometimes it means you have to bring

01:55:56.000 other people aboard that's delegation as

01:55:57.920 well I suppose but there's a lot of

01:56:00.680 preconceptions that you hold about who

01:56:02.360 you are and who the world is that you

01:56:04.280 could dispense with that would make you a

01:56:05.960 way more efficient actor in the world and

01:56:07.940 so all right so there that's that if

01:56:12.800 past experiences shape us from the moment of

01:56:14.840 birth how can an action be ever said to be

01:56:16.700 the result of free will rather than the

01:56:18.800 accumulation of past influences well it

01:56:20.960 is in large part the accumulation of

01:56:22.640 past influences because that's knowledge

01:56:24.260 but I address that I would say already

01:56:26.060 pretty thoroughly in my discussion of

01:56:27.680 free will your free will isn't absolute I

01:56:30.320 mean what are you a genie even a genie is

01:56:32.720 constrained inside a lamp you know so

01:56:35.180 there's there's no action without

01:56:36.860 constraint there's no action without

01:56:38.360 limitation so it's it's it's just not

01:56:41.360 conceptualized well and all of your

01:56:43.580 choices are constrained not least by the

01:56:45.620 fact that you have to keep yourself

01:56:46.940 alive so even just because there are

01:56:50.360 limitations that emerge say as a

01:56:52.160 consequence of the accumulation of past

01:56:54.020 influences doesn't mean that you aren't

01:56:55.700 that you don't still have a massive

01:56:57.740 domain of freedom so what is your

01:57:01.520 opinion of attachment based therapy and

01:57:04.040 do you think that therapy is at risk of

01:57:06.020 encouraging people to wallow in self-pity

01:57:08.000 I'm not going to talk about attachment

01:57:10.160 based therapy because I don't know enough

01:57:11.420 about it to provide an intelligent critique

01:57:13.220 but I can answer the second part of the

01:57:15.320 question do I think that therapy risks

01:57:17.540 encouraging people to wallow in self-pity

01:57:19.400 not if it's done by a competent

01:57:21.200 therapist if you're a therapist is

01:57:24.140 encouraging you to wallow in self-pity

01:57:25.880 then it's time to get the hell out of

01:57:27.320 there you've got a therapist who thinks

01:57:29.120 that they're supposed to offer you a safe

01:57:30.620 space that's not helpful look what do you

01:57:34.040 do as a therapist you act as a strategic

01:57:37.940 counselor so let's imagine someone comes

01:57:39.800 to see me so there's two big mysteries

01:57:41.900 right what's wrong and what what would

01:57:45.460 look better what's wrong and how what

01:57:48.240 would a cure look like and I don't know

01:57:50.380 and so if you're a therapist the first

01:57:52.380 thing you want to do is figure out that

01:57:53.720 you don't know what's wrong with this

01:57:55.080 person and probably neither do they and

01:57:57.240 you also don't know what's right for

01:57:58.700 them and so then you start talking to

01:58:00.460 the person to try to solve that problem

01:58:02.020 it's like okay you've come to see me

01:58:03.520 because something isn't right in your

01:58:04.920 life what is it and so then the person

01:58:08.300 has to talk and talk and talk and you

01:58:09.860 have to ask them questions to find out

01:58:11.540 because you know maybe they're depressed

01:58:13.460 maybe they're anxious maybe they came

01:58:14.940 from a terrible family maybe they're

01:58:17.360 really hard on themselves and things are

01:58:18.940 actually going better than they think

01:58:20.480 like you have no idea what's wrong with 1.00

01:58:22.580 them you're ignorant you're ignorant and 1.00

01:58:24.480 so are they and so you say look you can 1.00

01:58:27.200 tell me anything as long try to tell the

01:58:29.320 truth because otherwise we're just not

01:58:30.660 going to get anywhere because we're

01:58:31.640 trying to deal with reality here so tell

01:58:33.920 me the truth I'm not going to be 0.98

01:58:35.880 judgmental in any stupid sense I'm 0.99

01:58:38.100 going to judge like mad because I want 0.99

01:58:39.680 to help you do things right so I'm

01:58:41.680 going to be I'm going to be judging

01:58:42.900 like mad but I'm not going to throw

01:58:44.080 you out because of the things you say

01:58:46.020 you're going to have to wander all over

01:58:47.840 weird territory to explain your problem

01:58:50.540 because you don't even know what it is

01:58:51.840 so you have to listen a lot the first

01:58:54.260 thing you want to figure out is okay

01:58:55.360 what's wrong here and the person will

01:58:57.580 tell you a hundred things that might be

01:58:59.920 wrong and that there's quite painful to

01:59:02.000 listen to often you know they'll tell

01:59:03.740 you about their past and their present I

01:59:05.220 don't mean painful in that it's not

01:59:07.920 engaging or that it's not worthwhile I

01:59:10.980 mean people's lives have a lot of pain

01:59:12.980 in them so it's painful to partake in

01:59:14.760 that so they'll tell you like a hundred

01:59:16.820 things that might be wrong and then you

01:59:18.800 do an analysis with them and you think

01:59:20.560 well okay how many of those things

01:59:23.400 really probably aren't a problem the

01:59:25.260 first thing that happens is if you let a

01:59:27.020 person talk about let's say they tell

01:59:28.980 you about a hundred problems the first

01:59:31.640 thing you find out is that 90 of them

01:59:33.380 aren't real problems and the person

01:59:35.300 just figures that out as they talk them

01:59:37.280 through so they say well that's linked

01:59:39.020 to this and maybe that's not really a

01:59:40.480 problem that's not as bad as I thought

01:59:41.880 it was and we can probably ignore that

01:59:43.600 it's like they have a handful of cards

01:59:46.400 that aren't organized and they don't

01:59:49.140 know what to do with them there's too

01:59:50.120 many cards and so you say look lay your

01:59:53.220 cards on the table all of them this is

01:59:55.060 also what you do when you're listening

01:59:56.360 to someone you're intimate with and

01:59:57.840 they're trying to solve a problem and

01:59:59.040 you have to be patient to do this

02:00:00.320 because they're all upset about

02:00:01.500 something right and you don't know

02:00:03.120 what it is and maybe they're upset

02:00:04.400 about you and maybe they're upset

02:00:05.780 about themselves and and they're not

02:00:07.220 handling it very well and they're

02:00:08.640 impulsive and and volatile and hard on

02:00:11.360 you and you say all right Christ I'm

02:00:12.880 going to listen to you it's like what's 1.00

02:00:14.600 your stupid problem and then they lay 1.00

02:00:16.720 out their problem right the problem 1.00

02:00:18.280 space and you have to listen and not 0.99

02:00:20.720 jump in there too quickly with a damn 0.99

02:00:22.780 solution because what the hell do you 0.99

02:00:24.160 know so you listen to them lay out the

02:00:26.140 problem space they lay their cards on

02:00:27.720 the table then you say well we don't

02:00:29.640 have to pay attention to this we don't

02:00:31.140 have to pay attention to this we don't

02:00:32.520 have to pay attention to this and that's

02:00:33.900 the cutting the dragon of chaos down to

02:00:36.060 size that's what it is you look at the

02:00:38.280 dragon of chaos and it starts to shrink

02:00:39.900 okay so and that's because by looking at

02:00:43.800 it you indicate to the dragon that you're

02:00:46.140 bigger than you thought you were and

02:00:48.480 that you're bigger than it thought you

02:00:50.100 were and that's very very useful so

02:00:51.900 anyways you lay out your cards and then

02:00:53.400 you start to organize them it's like

02:00:55.440 well actually I only have ten problems

02:00:57.160 all right so then you think well how

02:00:59.160 can we break those problems down into

02:01:00.780 manageable sub problems and how can you

02:01:02.520 go about addressing them that can be

02:01:04.020 very complicated I hate my job well do

02:01:06.900 you have an alternative no well why not

02:01:09.360 well I don't have a resume I hate being

02:01:11.400 interviewed I'm afraid to make a resume I

02:01:13.500 I lost up my education I don't have any

02:01:16.860 options it's like yeah that's a lot of

02:01:18.780 problems man and that's you know those

02:01:20.820 are strategic problems so then you have

02:01:22.560 to figure out how to help the person

02:01:24.240 strategize and then implement the

02:01:26.580 strategies and so the next step is okay

02:01:28.980 now we know your problems if you could

02:01:31.320 have a solution like that would be the

02:01:34.500 opposite of the problem what might a

02:01:36.420 solution look like same issue it's like

02:01:39.480 well there's lots of solutions I don't

02:01:41.060 know what to do with my life I don't

02:01:42.300 know what job to have I don't know what

02:01:43.800 person to establish a long-term

02:01:48.240 intimate relationship with I don't know

02:01:50.040 what I would like to do with my family I

02:01:51.660 don't know how to use my time outside of

02:01:53.340 work I don't know how to resist temptation

02:01:55.800 like drug and alcohol abuse I don't

02:01:57.720 know I don't know how to take care of

02:02:00.060 myself mentally and physically all these

02:02:02.360 complicated problems it's like okay

02:02:04.080 let's sketch out a potential solution if

02:02:05.940 you could have what you wanted so that

02:02:08.220 would be a cure what would that look like

02:02:10.740 we formalize this by the way in the

02:02:12.800 future authoring process so if you do the

02:02:14.800 future authoring program which is part of

02:02:16.500 the self authoring suite it will guide you

02:02:18.500 through doing this it's unbelievably

02:02:20.720 useful to do that because you're not

02:02:22.340 going to hit what you don't aim at so so

02:02:25.520 then you you have the person lay out

02:02:27.260 okay well where are we headed it's a map

02:02:29.120 now we know where we are and it's a

02:02:31.160 problem now we have to figure out where

02:02:32.840 we're headed and so and then finally once

02:02:35.960 we figure out where we're headed we have

02:02:37.700 to figure out how to get there we have to

02:02:39.380 make the map it's got a beginning place

02:02:41.300 it's got an end place now we have to map

02:02:43.580 map out the terrain so like well I didn't

02:02:46.760 finish my degree or maybe I didn't go to

02:02:48.620 college or maybe I didn't finish high

02:02:50.000 school it's like well do you need a

02:02:51.440 different job yes do you need a high

02:02:53.420 school diploma to get that yes what

02:02:56.120 steps do you have to take to get a high

02:02:58.440 school diploma maybe you have to start

02:03:01.680 with one course right okay where do you

02:03:04.020 find a course you go look it up online

02:03:05.480 what things make you afraid to go back to

02:03:08.580 school which of those things are stopping

02:03:10.400 you how are you going to overcome those

02:03:11.780 fears so you take the large-scale vision

02:03:14.300 which is the place you're headed to in

02:03:16.040 the future that's the cure and then you

02:03:17.900 break it down into the strategic elements

02:03:20.020 that are necessary to be implemented on a

02:03:22.520 day-to-day basis and you do that so that

02:03:24.900 they're difficult but attainable and then

02:03:28.300 the person if they're not difficult then

02:03:30.020 they're not worth attaining obviously

02:03:31.880 obviously you're not pushing yourself and

02:03:34.720 you want the person not only to develop in

02:03:36.440 the direction they're supposed to

02:03:37.460 develop but you want to get them better at

02:03:39.380 developing so you want to push them just

02:03:41.300 like you do with kids or yourself if you

02:03:42.940 have any sense and so you break it down

02:03:46.160 into small implementable daily processes

02:03:51.080 and then you review those with your with

02:03:53.540 your client none of that's wallowing in

02:03:55.640 self-pity man quite the contrary quite the

02:03:58.140 contrary so so psychotherapy is get your

02:04:02.840 story together who are you where you're

02:04:04.800 going where are you going what's your

02:04:07.140 strategy how are you going to learn to

02:04:09.480 overcome the frightening and unexpected

02:04:10.860 things that are going to pop up at you

02:04:13.020 when you implement that strategy so and

02:04:15.720 those can be some of those things can be

02:04:17.160 the natural world I'm afraid of death I'm

02:04:19.560 afraid of illness I'm afraid of insanity and

02:04:22.320 some of those can be the social world I'm

02:04:24.300 afraid of my boss I'm afraid of my wife I'm

02:04:26.340 afraid of my friends I'm afraid of being

02:04:28.620 humiliated I'm afraid that people won't

02:04:30.720 like me those are the two big classes of

02:04:33.000 fears right fear of the Great Mother nature

02:04:35.340 fear of the Great Father culture and if

02:04:37.980 you're really afraid you get to have both

02:04:39.420 those fears at the same time so there's

02:04:41.760 nothing about that that's wallowing in

02:04:43.320 self-pity quite the contrary it's a bad

02:04:45.900 therapist that does that they're not

02:04:47.700 there to make to feel sorry for you they

02:04:49.920 are there to be on the side of the part

02:04:53.400 of you that's aiming up and to encourage

02:04:56.220 you and to allow you to have a space where

02:04:58.260 you can lay out your thoughts using your

02:05:00.360 free speech to think where you can lay

02:05:02.880 out your thoughts about what's wrong

02:05:04.200 with you and how that might be set right

02:05:06.180 it's nothing to do with wallowing in

02:05:08.400 self-pity I don't want to calculate

02:05:12.060 high-resolution utopia for myself only

02:05:14.340 to have it squandered by fortune how do I

02:05:16.800 ensure the meaning I experience is

02:05:18.300 self-determined well you can't because

02:05:21.840 there's an arbitrary element to existence so

02:05:24.360 it is going to be squandered to some

02:05:26.580 degree by fortune but that's that's not

02:05:28.920 the point what are you going to do just

02:05:30.240 sit back on your laurels and wait for

02:05:31.860 things to roll over you so what you do

02:05:33.960 look the hero myth basically says hmm go

02:05:38.520 out there confront the dragon get the

02:05:40.560 gold share it with the community and and

02:05:43.200 and and live properly or it says the

02:05:46.140 alternative is face the tyrant hmm enter

02:05:50.820 the desert as a consequence because

02:05:52.560 everything falls apart recast structure

02:05:55.140 find the promised land those are the two

02:05:57.360 elements to the hero myth and you might

02:05:59.280 and that's divine it's the closest thing

02:06:01.500 to divine that we know you might say

02:06:03.440 well what happens if you follow the

02:06:05.900 divine path and the answer might be well

02:06:08.600 everything turns out perfectly because

02:06:10.680 God is on your side it's like no that

02:06:13.900 isn't what happens because things don't

02:06:15.420 turn out perfectly it's your best bet it's

02:06:18.420 your best strategy right that's the thing

02:06:21.720 and you know dragons wouldn't be dragons if

02:06:24.660 they couldn't eat you and so but that's

02:06:28.020 okay that's okay and this is something I

02:06:30.080 found so useful about the biblical stories

02:06:32.320 especially about the Abrahamic stories

02:06:34.020 which I didn't know that well till I

02:06:35.300 lectured about them last year you know

02:06:37.120 God calls people to the adventure of

02:06:39.660 their lives and so you could say in part

02:06:41.340 God is that force within you which calls

02:06:44.160 you to the adventure of your life and it

02:06:46.020 says get away from your family get away

02:06:47.980 from your blind and unconscious comfort

02:06:50.420 and get the hell out there in the world 0.62

02:06:52.060 well God calls Abraham out from his 0.84

02:06:54.420 fathers where he stayed far too long and

02:06:56.300 from his kin where it's secure and like

02:06:58.240 the first thing he encounters is a famine

02:07:00.060 and then he encounters a tyranny inhabited

02:07:02.260 by people who want to steal his wife

02:07:04.040 it's like you think well Abraham should 0.95

02:07:06.800 have just stayed in bed and ignored God

02:07:08.900 obviously well that isn't how it is it's

02:07:11.880 like we're built for struggle us human

02:07:14.040 beings you're not after the bubbles of

02:07:17.980 bliss that Dostoevsky described in in

02:07:20.340 notes from underground we're built to

02:07:22.040 contend with the world we're built to

02:07:23.500 contend with reality you want a

02:07:25.300 challenge and the best way that you can

02:07:27.460 take on a challenge because the

02:07:29.100 challenge fortifies you so you don't

02:07:30.880 want to be secure you want to be strong

02:07:32.440 and you get strong by taking on optimal

02:07:34.460 challenges and so you lay out your

02:07:36.620 destiny in the world and you take the

02:07:38.220 slings and arrows of fate and you make

02:07:40.100 yourself stronger while you're doing so

02:07:41.500 and you might fail and fortune might do

02:07:43.960 you in but it's your best bet and you

02:07:46.800 know people have also people that have

02:07:49.920 extracted unbelievable successes out of

02:07:52.520 catastrophic failures and so and I'm not

02:07:55.280 saying that in a naive way I know

02:07:57.240 perfectly well what happens to people

02:07:58.840 you know you're doing fine in life and

02:08:00.680 then you get cancer and then six months

02:08:02.460 later you're dead and all the heroism in

02:08:04.820 the world isn't going to save you at that

02:08:06.280 point but that's not the point that's not

02:08:09.420 the point life is bounded by mortality

02:08:11.780 but that doesn't mean that you don't

02:08:13.500 get out there and contend and you

02:08:15.140 develop by contending and you minimize

02:08:17.380 the net amount of suffering in the

02:08:19.160 world and that's something man that's

02:08:21.240 something to do so it's it's it beats

02:08:24.120 laying in your basement and getting

02:08:25.920 bitter and then doing the terrible

02:08:27.600 things that bitter people do so you

02:08:30.840 can't ensure that the meaning you

02:08:32.620 experience is self-determined but you

02:08:34.260 can play your role to the best of your

02:08:37.180 ability and that will be good enough

02:08:39.360 and that will be good enough that

02:08:42.200 meaning the meaning that you all find

02:08:45.040 in then in that I believe is sufficient

02:08:49.080 to be sustaining and perhaps even

02:08:50.860 sustaining through the flood so it isn't

02:08:54.140 that you can avoid catastrophe it's that

02:08:55.800 you can prepare yourself to deal with it

02:08:58.260 honorably when it arrives that's what

02:09:00.540 you've got

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02:11:25.080 I have very high orderliness and low

02:11:35.520 industriousness 23rd I have very high

02:11:38.080 orderliness 90th percentile low

02:11:39.840 industriousness 23rd percentile what can I

02:11:42.720 do to remedy this and get a higher

02:11:44.020 industriousness okay first of all that's

02:11:46.440 not that low okay we got to think about

02:11:49.200 percentiles here for a minute because

02:11:50.540 they're not percentages they're different

02:11:52.200 so if you're at the 23rd percentile and

02:11:54.720 there were four people in a room you'd be

02:11:56.160 the least industrious of four of them and

02:11:58.100 that kind of puts you in the average

02:11:59.540 range it's not that big a deal

02:12:01.320 there's problems with it we'll get to

02:12:04.060 that although you may maybe you're high

02:12:05.760 in openness too anyways I won't get into

02:12:08.140 that low would be fifth percentile because

02:12:12.440 that makes you one in 20 or second

02:12:14.600 percentile because that makes you one in 50

02:12:16.500 it's kind of interesting to visualize a

02:12:19.060 fairly large high school class and then to

02:12:21.080 think of yourself as situated in there

02:12:22.760 if you're the least industrious person out

02:12:25.100 of 50 that's going to be a problem you

02:12:27.380 better be smart or have some other things

02:12:29.060 going for you because you're going to have a

02:12:30.880 hard time being diligent enough to be

02:12:32.860 successful okay having said that so and

02:12:37.160 maybe first percentile makes you one in a

02:12:39.500 hundred and 0.1 percentile makes you one

02:12:42.320 hundred and a thousand so you got to think

02:12:43.580 about percentiles properly so having

02:12:47.120 said that let's say you're not very high

02:12:48.500 in industriousness what should you do a 0.97

02:12:50.540 make a damn plan okay you need a plan for 0.96

02:12:54.260 your life and I would say use the future 0.99

02:12:56.600 authoring program because that will help

02:12:58.580 you make a plan or make a plan on your

02:13:00.080 own that's fine or make a plan because

02:13:01.820 you talk to someone but you know we put

02:13:03.920 the future authoring program together to

02:13:05.600 help people develop a vision of where they

02:13:08.100 could be a counter vision to scare the

02:13:10.400 hell out of them by helping them think

02:13:12.380 through how catastrophic things could 1.00

02:13:14.180 become if they let all their stupidities 1.00

02:13:15.800 get the upper hand and then a second 1.00

02:13:18.560 part of the program that helps you make a

02:13:19.880 strategy and we know the future authoring

02:13:22.100 program helps people young men in

02:13:23.840 particular who are doing worse by the

02:13:26.000 way in academic situations it increases

02:13:27.980 the probability that they will stay in

02:13:29.540 college and university by between 25 and 0.99

02:13:32.420 50 percent so make a damn plan and make 0.98

02:13:35.360 one you want like don't make a plan that is 0.99

02:13:38.300 what you should do even though it will be

02:13:40.400 what you should do make a plan that

02:13:42.620 outlines a future so that you could sit

02:13:44.780 back and say look if I had that future

02:13:47.900 then all the horrible things that are

02:13:49.580 going to happen to me are going to be

02:13:50.960 worthwhile that's what you want do you

02:13:54.020 want to think this game is worth playing

02:13:55.700 despite its tragedy that's what you've

02:13:58.280 got in life enough meaning to serve as an

02:14:01.460 antidote to tragedy all right now and then

02:14:04.400 you generate a strategy and then the other

02:14:06.260 thing you should do if you're not very

02:14:07.580 industrious industrious is discipline

02:14:09.980 yourself and so what do you do with

02:14:11.780 that eat three times a day at regular

02:14:15.320 mealtimes that's a good thing to

02:14:16.980 practice because that starts to put some

02:14:19.220 stability into your life get up at the

02:14:21.440 same time I would highly recommend all

02:14:23.720 those young people out there who are

02:14:25.040 listening like you want to get a jump on

02:14:26.760 life get the hell out of bed in the 0.67

02:14:28.340 morning you know as I've got older I've

02:14:30.740 got up earlier and earlier now that's

02:14:32.100 partly because you don't need as much

02:14:33.540 sleep but it's also partly because I've

02:14:34.980 got more and more disciplined like get

02:14:37.620 up early in the morning and get your

02:14:39.180 things done man learn to get up at six

02:14:41.820 in the morning and you'll be one deadly

02:14:43.320 creature especially if you can get to 0.99

02:14:45.000 work you'll have half your damn day done 0.99

02:14:47.520 by the time other people haul their 0.99

02:14:48.900 sorry asses out of bed and so that's a 0.97

02:14:51.300 massive massive advantage look Will 0.97

02:14:54.120 Farrell Warren Farrell not the comedian

02:14:56.740 Warren Farrell the author he outlined data

02:15:00.120 in why men earn more which is a book I

02:15:02.280 would recommend by the way showing that

02:15:04.320 if you work 13% longer hours you make

02:15:06.660 40% more money it's nonlinear so you

02:15:09.900 think why is that well imagine you had

02:15:11.580 10 employees and one of them works an

02:15:13.800 extra 10% it's not much well how often is

02:15:17.760 that person going to be promoted assuming

02:15:20.940 you have a clue as a boss it's like you're

02:15:23.280 gonna look at the 10 people you're gonna

02:15:24.540 think oh that guy's always here like 45

02:15:26.620 minutes early it's like why don't we give

02:15:28.140 him the promotion obviously right so these

02:15:31.260 tie these small edges that you can manage

02:15:33.720 like that work an extra 10% extra 13% have

02:15:38.040 non-proportional payoffs that's part of

02:15:40.260 the Pareto distribution so get get your

02:15:45.300 sleep cycle organized so you get up in the

02:15:47.520 morning learn how to do it no excuses I'm

02:15:49.760 too tired in the morning I don't like

02:15:51.720 mornings who cares that's not relevant it's

02:15:54.600 like discipline yourself so you can manage

02:15:56.400 it schedule your meals because that's a

02:15:59.220 good disciplinary routine and then learn

02:16:01.980 to use a calendar like Google Calendar

02:16:03.960 most of you many of you out there do not

02:16:05.820 use a calendar okay a calendar is not a

02:16:08.160 prison and it's not a tyrant not if you

02:16:10.680 use it properly a calendar keeps anxiety

02:16:13.740 at bay it makes sure that you do what you

02:16:16.260 need to do which is important because

02:16:18.180 otherwise you fall behind but if you use it

02:16:19.920 properly though it's also helps you plan

02:16:22.440 what you want to do so I could say well lay out 0.99

02:16:24.280 your damn calendar and design the days you 0.99

02:16:28.360 would like to have that's what your 1.00

02:16:30.060 calendar is for so you can put in all

02:16:32.020 sorts of things in there you want to do

02:16:33.520 and that would be good for you and that's

02:16:35.680 a really good really good way to start

02:16:38.440 being more industrious make a plan you

02:16:41.480 need a plan for three years you need a

02:16:44.320 plan for the next year you need a plan

02:16:46.240 for the next six months you need a plan

02:16:48.100 for the next three months you need a plan

02:16:50.140 for the week you need a plan for the day

02:16:52.540 you need a plan for the hour all of that

02:16:55.420 all of that I make lists constantly of

02:16:57.940 what I have to do and they're like daily

02:17:00.160 weekly monthly yearly right now I can't

02:17:02.620 look out more than about six months you

02:17:04.720 know because my life is too complicated and

02:17:06.400 chaotic but but you need a vision of who

02:17:09.700 you could be what character you could have

02:17:11.560 three to five years out you can't go much

02:17:14.080 farther than that because life is too

02:17:15.700 unpredictable I think to make vision

02:17:19.000 that's longer term than that subject to

02:17:22.720 there's too much chance associated with

02:17:26.860 it to spend a lot of time on maybe you

02:17:28.420 can stretch it to five years and in rare

02:17:30.100 cases you can have a ten-year goal but

02:17:32.700 it has to be pretty low resolution but

02:17:35.020 you want plans at all those levels of

02:17:36.700 resolution you want to write the things

02:17:38.380 down and what because what are you going

02:17:40.600 to do you going to stumble around and get

02:17:42.100 get what you need you're going to stumble

02:17:43.980 around and be useful to other people

02:17:45.580 and it's useful to be useful to other

02:17:47.620 people you know they want to work with

02:17:49.480 you then they want to do things with you

02:17:51.320 they want to have you around they trust

02:17:52.960 you they open up opportunities for you

02:17:54.720 and if you stumble around like you're

02:17:56.620 blind you're not going to get anywhere 1.00

02:17:57.940 and then you're going to suffer and then

02:17:59.580 you're going to be bitter and then

02:18:00.760 you're going to be cruel so that's a

02:18:02.740 that's hell that's a bad outcome so

02:18:05.600 unless you want that don't aim for it

02:18:07.380 and or aim for the opposite because

02:18:09.860 that's how you get out of it so

02:18:11.560 physical attractiveness is extensively

02:18:15.480 studied in departments of psychology

02:18:16.980 how big of a determinant of success is

02:18:19.260 it apart from IQ or any of the other

02:18:20.940 big five traits

02:18:21.800 that's tough one because physical

02:18:27.340 attractiveness is a very complex trait

02:18:29.320 it's also for example it's a marker of

02:18:32.080 health and of course health is a mark

02:18:34.920 is a prerequisite for success so I you

02:18:39.220 can't take attractiveness as a unitary

02:18:41.300 dimension and measure it sufficiently

02:18:44.140 accurately wait I should back up on that

02:18:47.140 no one that I know of has taken physical

02:18:50.880 attractiveness as a unitary concept

02:18:53.140 measured it accurately and then pitted it

02:18:56.140 against IQ and the big five to see if it

02:18:59.420 to what degree it adds incremental validity

02:19:01.960 to the prediction of long-term success but

02:19:05.040 physical but and so I can't give you a

02:19:07.380 technical answer you know I can say well

02:19:09.380 in a complex job over the long run IQ

02:19:12.040 accounts for maybe 20 percent of the

02:19:13.740 variance in success leaving 80 percent

02:19:15.840 there for random events and and the big

02:19:19.960 five traits and connection networks and and

02:19:21.960 family background and all those other

02:19:24.240 things gender perhaps that all the other

02:19:26.880 things that determine success physical it we

02:19:29.820 know that physical it that people who are

02:19:31.620 physically attractive though are given

02:19:33.240 the benefit of doubt by other people

02:19:35.280 they they benefit from the positive halo

02:19:38.280 effect and the positive halo effect is

02:19:40.020 the propensity of people to assume good

02:19:42.900 things about someone if there is one

02:19:44.580 outstanding thing about them that's

02:19:46.440 easily evident that's good and so if

02:19:48.960 you're if you're if you stand up

02:19:51.240 straight with your shoulders back so

02:19:52.980 that's rule 1 in 12 rules for life then

02:19:55.020 people are going to see you as more

02:19:56.240 attractive if you're symmetrical you're

02:19:58.080 more attractive if you're thin but not too

02:20:00.860 thin you're more attractive well and then

02:20:04.880 there's like good skin and good teeth

02:20:06.620 and good hair and and all of those

02:20:08.300 things and proper proportions and youth

02:20:10.040 and there's a whole slew of things that

02:20:11.840 that that feed into that if you are

02:20:14.240 characterized by a plethora of those

02:20:16.280 features then people are also going to

02:20:17.840 assume that you're more competent and

02:20:19.280 more and more more worth having around

02:20:23.540 let's say but the problem is is that you

02:20:25.820 are so separating out the attractiveness

02:20:29.360 from the things the attractiveness are is

02:20:31.760 correlated with is very hard that's why

02:20:33.380 you have to do multivariate analysis

02:20:35.540 that's multi variable analysis in any

02:20:38.900 complex social science because a lot of

02:20:40.700 these traits overlap so but you know you

02:20:44.240 can you can there's there's some some

02:20:46.460 things you can do about that postural

02:20:48.120 adjustment is helpful to work out with

02:20:50.780 weights that's extraordinarily helpful that

02:20:52.540 that increases improves your posture and

02:20:54.940 makes you more confident and and and and

02:20:57.880 and you can dress reasonably well and

02:21:02.260 intelligently and all of those things to

02:21:05.200 to help yourself capitalize on whatever

02:21:07.660 attractiveness you can muster so what is

02:21:15.640 your view on psychological egoism if we're

02:21:17.620 all ultimately acting out of self-interest

02:21:19.620 then does altruism have any merit I don't

02:21:22.320 think the questions well posed and that's

02:21:24.940 it's one of those questions that leads into a

02:21:26.860 philosophical dead end because it's not

02:21:29.240 well posed there isn't any such thing as

02:21:32.080 self-interest it's not the right way to

02:21:34.660 think about it because you're not alone and

02:21:38.220 so this is why I like Piaget John Piaget

02:21:40.540 because he thought about this intelligently

02:21:42.160 look first of all whose self-interest do you

02:21:46.760 mean do you mean your immediate self

02:21:48.640 interest in the next second so that would

02:21:50.180 be impulsive pleasure we're all acting

02:21:51.740 for for the gaining of impulsive pleasure

02:21:53.960 and to hell with everything else well 1.00

02:21:55.620 obviously that's a stupid way to behave 1.00

02:21:57.720 because and everyone knows that because 1.00

02:21:59.680 you can do impulsive short-term gratifying

02:22:03.200 things like snort cocaine now and you can

02:22:05.860 keep doing that and it'll pay off real real

02:22:08.420 well in the extremely short term and

02:22:10.960 they'll just augur you into the ground in 0.60

02:22:13.520 the medium to long term so if you're

02:22:16.220 acting in your own self-interest

02:22:17.780 let's take that apart over what period

02:22:21.680 of time your self-interest in the next

02:22:24.800 second your self-interest in the next

02:22:27.480 hour like if you're impulsive and you

02:22:29.680 want to gratify an impulse you're

02:22:30.920 obviously acting in your self-interest in

02:22:33.200 the next second or the next two seconds or

02:22:35.580 the next minute but you know you'll pay

02:22:37.260 for that maybe you punch someone or you

02:22:39.920 slap someone because you're so angry and

02:22:41.420 they you know they knock you for a loop

02:22:43.000 open and then they charge you with a salt

02:22:45.460 you know so well it was great in your

02:22:48.460 self-interest in the second but like

02:22:50.140 future remember that simpsons episode

02:22:53.340 homer drank a quart of mayonnaise and

02:22:55.640 and vodka when and marge and all his kids

02:22:58.500 were telling him not to and he said well

02:22:59.980 that's a problem for future homer i sure

02:23:02.140 don't envy that guy it's like which is one

02:23:04.520 of the best simpsons lines ever i think

02:23:06.260 and well that's it exactly it's like well

02:23:08.260 there isn't just you there's there's now

02:23:10.940 you and there's tonight you and there's

02:23:13.940 tomorrow morning you that's the one that'll

02:23:15.780 have the hangover by the way and there's

02:23:17.660 next week you and next month you and next

02:23:19.680 year you and old you and so if you're

02:23:22.100 going to act in your self-interest you

02:23:23.540 have to take that collective of yous across

02:23:26.460 time into account when you make your

02:23:28.700 decision and now here's the cool thing

02:23:30.980 about that so then let's say well that

02:23:32.520 would be acting in your self-interest

02:23:34.060 writ large right across time spans but

02:23:36.840 the thing is future you and someone else

02:23:40.380 that you have to live with right now

02:23:41.860 that's not you are pretty much the same

02:23:43.960 people and so if you're going to act in

02:23:46.260 your self-interest and you have other

02:23:47.560 people around you then you also want to

02:23:49.280 act in their self-interest because

02:23:50.660 otherwise they won't like you they won't

02:23:52.520 cooperate with you and they won't

02:23:54.300 compete with you in a reasonable manner

02:23:56.120 and so that's going to be a catastrophe

02:23:57.880 and so you want to act out what's good for

02:24:01.100 you now and what's good for you next

02:24:03.240 month and next year and you want to do

02:24:05.740 that in a way that's good for you and

02:24:07.320 your family and your community right now

02:24:09.640 next week and next year and you're going

02:24:11.740 to take all those things into account at

02:24:13.840 the same time that's an equilibrated game

02:24:16.400 from a Piagetian perspective and it was

02:24:18.960 his idea that that constituted the basis

02:24:20.960 for proper moral judgment and it's a

02:24:22.800 brilliant idea it's a brilliant idea and

02:24:25.920 so that's your true self-interest there's

02:24:28.220 no difference between your interest in

02:24:30.080 the interest of others not in any

02:24:31.760 fundamental sense even your enemies

02:24:33.820 which is why you're enjoying to treat

02:24:36.320 your enemy as if he was yourself because

02:24:38.980 he is you know when you think well you

02:24:41.080 should wish well you should wish your

02:24:42.540 enemies well well why well it isn't that

02:24:46.580 you hope they get a bigger house than you

02:24:48.400 it's that let's say you're you're being

02:24:50.560 pursued and tormented by someone who's

02:24:52.400 truly reprehensible that person is they

02:24:54.920 have a miserable life man in all

02:24:56.740 likelihood let's say they're truly 1.00

02:24:57.980 malevolent you know they live in hell

02:25:00.320 and what you might hope for them is that

02:25:03.020 they could figure out how to get out of

02:25:04.460 there because it's not good for them and

02:25:05.760 it's not good for anyone else think well

02:25:07.840 even your enemies it's like wouldn't it

02:25:09.600 be good if they could get their act

02:25:10.820 together and stop being so unnecessarily

02:25:13.720 malevolent and that's in your self-interest

02:25:16.760 so the idea that your self-interest is

02:25:19.140 somehow opposed to other people's or that

02:25:21.200 if you maximize your self-interest you're

02:25:23.000 not operating in the best interests of

02:25:26.360 other people is predicated on a poor

02:25:28.640 idea of what constitutes your self-interest

02:25:30.680 because you're not separate in any real

02:25:32.480 sense from other people you may be not

02:25:34.520 separate from everything in some real

02:25:36.500 sense you know I mean Jung Jung in his

02:25:40.160 book Mysterium Conjunctionis he had this

02:25:42.380 idea I'm going to go through it real

02:25:43.640 quick it's a complicated idea that this is

02:25:46.940 how you put yourself together the first

02:25:49.040 thing you do is you you join your

02:25:50.660 emotions and your and your rationality so

02:25:53.000 that so that your mind and your emotions

02:25:56.780 are one thing he called that the first

02:25:58.340 conjunction so that your motivations and

02:26:03.020 your emotions and the way that you think

02:26:04.460 about the world are all acting in the

02:26:05.840 same direction okay so that's the first

02:26:08.000 conjunction and you get your act together

02:26:09.320 that way so that would mean incorporation

02:26:12.020 of aggression and sexuality from a 0.81

02:26:13.760 Freudian perspective those parts of you

02:26:15.420 that are difficult to integrate come to be

02:26:17.500 integrated into one thing so you can use

02:26:20.640 your anger when you need to and you have

02:26:22.740 your sexuality under control it doesn't 0.84

02:26:24.720 have you but you know how to use it and

02:26:26.760 it's a power for you and and you're

02:26:31.080 properly assertive in all of those things

02:26:32.760 and so you build yourself into one

02:26:34.920 psychological unit and then you embody

02:26:36.600 that so that's the second conjunction the

02:26:38.400 second conjunction is take your mind

02:26:41.160 emotion motivation unity and act it out act it out in the world so that there's no

02:26:47.980 distinction between you and what you do

02:26:50.080 between you and the way you think about

02:26:52.120 the world and your philosophy and how you

02:26:53.800 act that makes you a second kind of unity and

02:26:56.440 then the final conjunction which is the

02:26:58.600 most difficult one is to stop thinking that

02:27:01.000 the world is different than you are this is 0.74

02:27:03.640 why I ask people to clean up the rooms it's

02:27:05.800 like your room is you it's you and so you go in

02:27:10.360 there and you clean up your room you're

02:27:11.500 cleaning you up to the same way you're

02:27:13.540 developing discipline you're putting yourself

02:27:15.080 in order you're developing a vision of the future you're figuring out how to

02:27:19.520 dress you're figuring out how to take care of your things you're interacting

02:27:23.720 with the micro cosmos that you have in front of you and learning how to balance

02:27:27.140 chaos and order there's no difference between you and what's around you and

02:27:31.100 that's a very difficult thing to understand and so you want to act in a

02:27:34.940 way that's good for you but good for everything else at the same time and

02:27:37.940 that's that's a high moral virtue and that's so there isn't there that's the

02:27:47.780 right way of thinking about the relationship between psychological

02:27:50.960 egoism and altruism it's like if you're as you move towards a broader

02:27:57.080 conceptualization of things you start to understand that there is no selfish self

02:28:02.720 in there is no selfish self interest it isn't how life works like if you're

02:28:08.840 married to someone for example and you're stuck with them for the next 50 0.57

02:28:12.140 years it's like you can't win an argument with them you can make peace

02:28:17.480 because they're you man they're you there are a huge part of your experience

02:28:22.920 you have to treat that person as if they are you and then it's not it isn't

02:28:27.980 like well I'm gonna treat you well because you're me it's because people don't

02:28:31.040 treat themselves very well often it's way more complicated than that you just

02:28:35.840 you don't want to defeat your wife man because then you live with a defeated 1.00

02:28:39.800 wife and if you think she isn't gonna take revenge on you then you're you're 0.99

02:28:43.100 not very bright so you want to listen to what she has to say and you want to

02:28:47.600 listen to her problems and you want to help her solve them because she's you and

02:28:51.440 you want to do the same with your kids and then you want to do the same with the

02:28:54.680 people around you if you can do it so and so the whole idea of like well we're

02:29:00.740 basically wired to be selfish well we are when we're not very wise and we act

02:29:05.660 impulsively but as your view of the world broadens you start to understand

02:29:11.180 that this is why in in the Buddhist philosophy you know Buddha attained

02:29:15.500 Nirvana so that meant he could stay in union with the gods so to speak he he

02:29:19.880 attained the highest form of subjective experience what might be but which might

02:29:25.400 be something like total immersion in in bliss and meaning but he rejected it

02:29:29.840 because he went back into the world to help other people attain Nirvana or at

02:29:34.940 least to move towards it because he realized that there was no individual

02:29:38.720 redemption without the redemption of all and you if you don't understand that

02:29:43.400 then you're just not very wise and so you're trying to be a force for good in

02:29:47.720 the world and that doesn't mean just good for you that's just it's just blind

02:29:52.400 because there isn't any isolated you that isn't how things are that is now

02:29:57.680 realities lays itself out so what is your current thinking on Orthodox

02:30:03.500 Christianity the Orthodox Christians like me I don't know why but I think I have

02:30:09.500 some idea I guess I've got a lot of letters from religious people a lot of lot

02:30:13.880 from from Muslims from Jews from Orthodox Jews in particular strangely enough from

02:30:20.640 Christian monk monks but a lot from Orthodox Christians and I think the

02:30:26.160 reason for that as far as I can tell is that the Orthodox look at Christianity

02:30:31.140 from a slightly different angle than the Protestants and the Catholics and I'm not

02:30:35.380 putting down the Protestants and the Catholics they have a perspective a reason 1.00

02:30:38.680 for their viewpoint but what's happened in the West I think and this is a

02:30:43.560 dreadful oversimplification so please forgive me is that the West has viewed

02:30:49.340 Christianity more as a set of beliefs that are analogous in some sense to a

02:30:55.340 cognitive theory of the world so to be a Christian in the West you have to accept

02:31:00.680 that Christ died for your sins and that you're redeemed so you have to accept

02:31:04.560 Christ you as your Redeemer and that really means to state that you believe a

02:31:10.040 set of propositions about Christ that he was the Son of God and that his death and

02:31:15.800 resurrection his sacrifice redeemed mankind and that and then you partake in

02:31:20.540 that redemption by laying out that that accordance with a set of facts let's say

02:31:25.800 I don't I understand why that's how it's worked out but I think there's a big risk

02:31:31.800 in that and I don't think the Orthodox fell into that to the same degree their idea

02:31:36.800 more and this is there in Protestantism and Catholicism too it's there it but

02:31:42.800 it's it's given more secondary more implicit emphasis and I think that's a

02:31:46.800 problem especially in the modern world the Orthodox would say as near as I can 0.99

02:31:51.800 tell that you should pick up your damn cross and stumble up the hill that's your 0.98

02:31:55.800 job right and the cross is the X where everyone is located you're right at the 0.99

02:31:59.800 center of reality you're suffering and dying and being reborn all the time at the

02:32:04.800 center of reality as you transform and you have to accept that and embrace it

02:32:08.800 you have to and that's very very hard thing to do because it means to embrace

02:32:12.800 all your flaws and the flaws of reality and the tragedy of existence and your

02:32:16.800 death and the sum total of human evil all of that unbelievably demanding

02:32:23.800 requirement but you do what you can to do that and then not only do you pick up

02:32:27.800 your cross so to speak but you stumble uphill towards the city of God do you

02:32:32.800 stumble up towards what's good and that's your destiny and that's where

02:32:37.800 meaning is to be had and the Orthodox lay that out quite well that's your goal is

02:32:42.800 the imitation of Christ and Christ is the logos this is the Christian story

02:32:46.800 Christ is the logos that God uses at the beginning of time to transform 0.57

02:32:50.800 pre-cosmogonic chaos into habitable order truthful speech so that's the thing

02:32:55.800 you're you're the fact that you're capable of uttering truthful speech is an

02:33:00.800 indication that you've shouldered your cross and are stumbling uphill a very

02:33:04.800 coherent theory and the Orthodox I think have done a very good job of keeping

02:33:08.800 that idea at the forefront of their of their belief and so that's what I think

02:33:14.800 about Orthodox Christianity do I have any thoughts on the Myers-Briggs

02:33:17.800 personality test yes it's old it isn't psychometrically valid it wasn't derived by

02:33:23.800 factor analytic techniques it should be replaced by the big five or the big five

02:33:27.800 aspect scale which you can use if you go to understand myself dot com we put it

02:33:31.800 online for people to use and to generate a personality report Myers and Briggs

02:33:37.800 attempted to make a questionnaire predicated on union presuppositions and

02:33:41.800 perhaps they did a fine job for the 1930s but that was a long time ago and there

02:33:44.800 weren't any powerful computational devices of the kind that were necessary to sort

02:33:49.800 out the structure of personality properly which we've managed to do since

02:33:53.800 about 1960 onward so now the Myers-Briggs is a perfectly useful tool if what you

02:33:59.800 want to do is get people to talk about the fact that there are individual

02:34:02.800 differences in personality and corporations love it because no one gets

02:34:06.800 offended by it because everyone wins but if you want a personality test that

02:34:10.800 actually tells you who you are that's valid and reliable then you use the big five and

02:34:13.800 and that's that and so I would say the Myers-Briggs should be relegated to the dust 1.00

02:34:21.800 bins of the past because it's a defunct and archaic instrument and it's no longer

02:34:25.800 properly valid and so that's that

02:34:31.800 how can women who waited too long to have children find meaning in their lives once 1.00

02:34:43.800 they realize their mistake how can we cope with the regret

02:34:49.800 Jesus that's a hard question

02:34:53.800 well you know there are other avenues to meaning right I mean that's that's the

02:35:01.800 first thing to realize is that there are there's intimate relationship there's

02:35:06.800 familial relationships that aren't in accordance with children there's other

02:35:11.800 people that you can serve there are other children that you can serve so what

02:35:15.800 you have to do because intimate relationships are so important and I'm

02:35:20.800 including that close familial I'm not talking about sexual relationships I'm

02:35:24.800 talking about very close social relationships the thing about having

02:35:27.800 children if you're lucky is that you have a relationship there of a depth that

02:35:32.800 you don't get anywhere else with the possible exception of your parents and

02:35:36.800 siblings and your partner but there's something about the child relationship

02:35:40.800 that's even more fundamental because the thing about having a child is that if

02:35:45.800 you have any sense as soon as you have a child you are no longer the most

02:35:48.800 important person right you're no longer the person that you have primary

02:35:52.800 responsibility for it's now your child and that produces a psychological

02:35:55.800 transformation and it produces a relationship of a depth that can't be

02:35:59.800 easily duplicated elsewhere but it's not like that's the only thing that there

02:36:02.800 is to do in life you know there there are other relationships and I would say

02:36:08.800 what you do is you foster them to the degree that that's possible and maybe you

02:36:12.800 can find other kids to serve you know there's always the possibility of

02:36:15.800 volunteering for hospitals or or or or working in places where children need

02:36:20.800 service so that's a possibility as well and so you've you know there are there

02:36:26.800 are a variety of sources of meaning in people's lives and they're not unlimited

02:36:31.800 you know there's career there's education there's what you do that's

02:36:34.800 meaningful meaningfully engages you outside of work there's your social

02:36:37.800 relations your friends and so forth and so maybe you have five legs to stand on and

02:36:42.800 you missed one because you didn't have kids or maybe you missed two because kids

02:36:46.800 are a big deal but that doesn't mean the rest of them aren't accessible to you and

02:36:50.800 so you optimize your functioning along the dimensions that are left to you and

02:36:54.800 then I would also say maybe you try to forgive yourself a little bit you know

02:36:59.800 like it's very difficult to go through life without without regrets without making

02:37:05.800 mistakes you know and you can't beat yourself to death for it because then

02:37:08.800 everyone would beat themselves to death all the time and so you think well

02:37:13.800 that's that's I'm I'm too soon old and too late wise to use an old cliche and

02:37:21.800 you think well that's the lot of mankind we learn things too late often and 1.00

02:37:25.800 that's too bad and you forgive yourself because you're stupid and you don't know 1.00

02:37:29.800 what you're doing and you're unwise just like everyone else and maybe you're 1.00

02:37:32.800 somewhat capable of learning if you're careful and then you go out and you try to

02:37:36.800 foster relations and do good in the world to the degree that you can outside of the

02:37:41.800 necessity of of children and maybe you have nephews nieces and you can lavish

02:37:46.800 some attention on them and and find your substitute where you can but I would say

02:37:51.800 to forgive yourself is a big part of that it's like people make mistakes man big

02:37:55.800 mistakes and the people that I've watched through life that have been successful

02:37:59.800 it's not like they didn't make mistakes because everyone makes mistakes and they do

02:38:03.800 things they regret and they miss opportunities and it's a bloody catastrophe

02:38:07.800 but they treat themselves with some degree of mercy along with the justice it's

02:38:12.800 like yeah well I screwed up there and I'm gonna try to learn and I'm not gonna do it

02:38:16.800 again but I'm not gonna beat myself to death so that I can't get up again and so

02:38:21.800 you do what you can to forgive yourself you know it's a confusing time to live in in

02:38:25.800 many ways because we have the birth control pill now and that means

02:38:29.800 reproduction has now become voluntary well when's a good time to reproduce well

02:38:34.800 never because who would ever think about doing that it's so ridiculously

02:38:40.800 irrational and complicated and the burden of responsibility is so insanely high

02:38:44.800 and you're never secure enough to to have the proper place to bring children

02:38:48.800 into the world and you have to get your career going in your and your intimate relationship

02:38:54.800 and maybe you have some struggle doing that and one day you wake up and it's a

02:38:57.800 bit late it's like yeah well you're a product of your time and one of the prices

02:39:04.800 that we're going to pay for having birth control for having reliable

02:39:09.800 contraception is that some people are going to make the wrong decision with regards

02:39:14.800 to having children and then you view yourself as a product of your time and

02:39:18.800 that's a catastrophe you know because to be a product of your time is in some ways a

02:39:22.800 catastrophe so but there's other things to do in life and and auguring yourself

02:39:29.800 into the ground with regret and and and and self recrimination is not useful

02:39:36.800 right I mean you have to learn your lesson you have to take your lumps all of that

02:39:40.800 um but have some mercy you know that's it

02:39:49.800 you have said that the only moral absolute is always to tell the truth

02:39:52.800 what if you have Anne Frank in the attic and the Gestapo at your on your doorstep

02:39:56.800 then I would say that there has been a lot of lies that have got you to that point

02:40:00.800 so you may be in a situation where you're damned if you turn right and you're damned if you turn left

02:40:06.800 and what that means is you made a lot of mistakes along the way

02:40:10.800 you know so if the totalitarians are knocking at your door if the totalitarians are knocking on everyone's door

02:40:15.800 that means everyone should have spoke up a lot sooner

02:40:18.800 and then they wouldn't end up in a situation where the Gestapo was at the door

02:40:22.800 and Anne Frank was in the out is it was in the attic

02:40:26.800 so you're now and then you end up in a situation where you've made so many mistakes that all you've got is hell around you

02:40:32.800 and that was certainly the case in Amsterdam Sayre and in in when the Nazis came in

02:40:38.800 I mean the Dutch are an admirable people and I know they were invaded by the Nazis and that was a terrible thing

02:40:43.800 but many many many many many people made many terrible moral errors for all of that to occur

02:40:49.800 and you have to be awake and do everything you can to make sure your society doesn't this is the answer

02:40:54.800 you be awake and you make sure everything your society does doesn't lead to the point where the Gestapo is at your doorstep

02:41:01.800 and you have Anne Frank in the attic it's a little late to be thinking then I would say

02:41:06.800 why have confidence in an opinion when it could be wrong well partly because it could be right you know and that's why it's better to think about opinions as tools 1.00

02:41:23.800 you know or maybe just dispense with opinions altogether because who cares about your stupid opinion 0.93

02:41:29.800 but what you want is tools to work in the world and you think well I have a tool and it might work 0.97

02:41:34.800 so like let's say that you're going in to negotiate with someone while your your toolkit is your conceptual

02:41:39.800 the conceptual structure and the habits that you have that enable you to construe the situation and to conduct the negotiation

02:41:45.800 well you have to have confidence that your that your toolkit is appropriate or you wouldn't go out there and test it

02:41:52.800 and you say well I might be wrong it's like yeah but you're not going to learn if you're wrong

02:41:55.800 unless you go out there and test it so you have to have provisional

02:41:59.800 look let's say that you're

02:42:03.800 well let's say that you're using a hammer to hammer in a nail

02:42:07.800 and you think well am I going to hit the nail

02:42:11.800 well you aim at the nail and you hit it

02:42:13.800 and you watch and if you didn't hit it quite right then you aim a little different you know

02:42:16.800 so you have enough confidence to swing the hammer

02:42:19.800 but that doesn't mean you're not paying attention to the outcome

02:42:21.800 so you want to have confidence

02:42:23.800 and maybe this is the best answer

02:42:25.800 you don't want to have confidence in the opinion exactly

02:42:28.800 you want to have you want to believe in the necessity of moving forward in the world

02:42:32.800 with your limited toolkit

02:42:34.800 and also

02:42:38.800 you want to make the

02:42:40.800 the vow let's say that as you implement your tools in the world

02:42:44.800 that you're going to pay attention to what happens

02:42:46.800 and you're going to modify them as

02:42:48.800 necessary as you move along

02:42:50.800 that's the adoption of the hero myth again

02:42:52.800 because that's you know let's say your opinion is a little screwy

02:42:55.800 and so you lay it out in the world and you get responses that aren't positive

02:42:59.800 it's like you think oh okay well that didn't work out quite right

02:43:02.800 I'll go retool my opinion

02:43:04.800 and so you move out into the world not as a collection of opinions

02:43:08.800 but as a collection of tools

02:43:11.800 and as the process that can recast those tools

02:43:16.800 and then you think well it's not so much that I have confidence in my opinions

02:43:21.800 I have I know that they're necessary to express them

02:43:24.800 because sometimes they work and if they don't work then I can learn

02:43:28.800 and that's and that's the recipe for forthright action in the world

02:43:33.800 our daughter ended her life at 24 due to depression

02:43:38.800 if someone is determined to end their life

02:43:40.800 how can one change their mind

02:43:41.800 oh well first of all that's I'm very sorry about that

02:43:44.800 that's a terrible thing

02:43:47.800 look

02:43:51.800 I had this friend

02:43:54.800 her

02:43:57.800 sorry

02:44:05.800 there's been a lot of depression in our family

02:44:12.800 so it's a question that cuts close to the bone

02:44:17.800 anyways

02:44:21.800 I had this friend

02:44:23.800 a friend of my parents and her granddaughter committed suicide

02:44:27.800 you know

02:44:28.800 she was just beating herself up about that

02:44:31.800 what could have I done

02:44:33.800 what could have I done differently

02:44:34.800 this is the problem with suicide

02:44:35.800 it leaves everybody behind

02:44:36.800 thinking

02:44:37.800 oh my god

02:44:38.800 what could have I done

02:44:39.800 I could have treated the person better

02:44:40.800 I could have listened

02:44:41.800 I could have been there

02:44:42.800 it's like

02:44:43.800 and she was just beating herself up about this

02:44:45.800 really feeling that she wasn't a useful person

02:44:48.800 that she'd failed as a grandmother

02:44:50.800 she's a really good person you know

02:44:52.800 and so I went for a walk with her and I said

02:44:54.800 she's married and she likes her husband

02:44:56.800 and he's a really good guy

02:44:58.800 and I said

02:44:59.800 um

02:45:00.800 look

02:45:01.800 you're

02:45:02.800 you're blaming yourself for the

02:45:04.800 for your granddaughter's suicide

02:45:06.800 it's like

02:45:07.800 are you blaming your husband

02:45:08.800 are you

02:45:09.800 sitting him down and 1.00

02:45:10.800 telling him what a useless 1.00

02:45:11.800 bastard he was as a grandfather 1.00

02:45:13.800 because his granddaughter 1.00

02:45:14.800 committed suicide

02:45:15.800 and how he failed completely

02:45:17.800 she said

02:45:18.800 no I'd never do that

02:45:19.800 so I said

02:45:20.800 well

02:45:23.800 don't do it to yourself

02:45:24.800 you know

02:45:27.800 people

02:45:28.800 depression is a terrible thing

02:45:30.800 and many many many things cause it

02:45:33.800 and we don't understand

02:45:35.800 we understand some of them

02:45:37.800 but lots of them we don't understand at all

02:45:38.800 you know

02:45:39.800 sometimes people get depressed

02:45:40.800 because they're really sick

02:45:41.800 we know that depression can be an inflammatory disease

02:45:45.800 it might be associated with autoimmune dysfunction

02:45:47.800 there's lots of reasons that people get depressed

02:45:50.800 and depressed people can go places that are so dark

02:45:53.800 you just cannot imagine it

02:45:55.800 and

02:45:56.800 it isn't necessarily the case that you can always rescue someone

02:45:59.800 you know

02:46:00.800 and

02:46:01.800 but

02:46:02.800 but drowning yourself in the aftermath of a suicide is not helpful

02:46:05.800 so

02:46:06.800 there's a there's a good room for self-forgiveness there

02:46:08.800 you know

02:46:09.800 I mean

02:46:10.800 maybe you did some things you shouldn't have done that were reprehensible

02:46:13.800 and all of that

02:46:14.800 but you don't want to beat yourself up

02:46:16.800 remember the presumption of innocence right

02:46:18.800 innocent until proven guilty

02:46:20.800 and you have to apply that to yourself

02:46:22.800 I don't think

02:46:24.800 I think there are times when people are so depressed that there isn't anything that anyone can do

02:46:29.800 you know

02:46:30.800 and the depressed person thinks

02:46:31.800 and this is probably the worst part of it

02:46:33.800 the depressed person thinks

02:46:37.800 everywhere I look it's nothing but catastrophe

02:46:42.800 and

02:46:44.800 there's no I can't see any way out of it

02:46:47.800 I can't see any path forward whatsoever

02:46:49.800 and then they think as well

02:46:51.800 and maybe it's the combination of these two thoughts that that really make people suicidal

02:46:55.800 it's like it's hopeless

02:46:57.800 it isn't going to get any better

02:46:59.800 no matter where I turn there's no escape

02:47:01.800 the suffering is unbearable

02:47:03.800 and

02:47:04.800 I'm absolutely no use whatsoever to anyone

02:47:06.800 it would be better for everyone

02:47:08.800 if I was just gone

02:47:09.800 because I'm going

02:47:10.800 if I'm not so much of a burden now that it's going to destroy their life

02:47:14.800 then I'm going to be that much of a burden in the future

02:47:18.800 and so try to imagine what that's like for people but it's dreadful

02:47:23.800 and there's lots of ways you get there

02:47:26.800 and so you can listen to people

02:47:30.800 you can desperately encourage them to seek the help they need

02:47:34.800 you know like I've I've seen antidepressants work miracles on very very many people

02:47:38.800 now they don't work for everyone and they're not a panacea

02:47:41.800 but you know they have side effects and all of that

02:47:44.800 but one of the side effects of untreated depression

02:47:47.800 is that you kill yourself and there is no recovery from that 0.95

02:47:50.800 and the probability is actually rather high

02:47:54.800 so you can go to war with them about antidepressants

02:47:58.800 if the person can't get out of their depression

02:48:00.800 and they're and they're suicidal 0.54

02:48:01.800 it's like what do they have to lose

02:48:03.800 one month on antidepressants

02:48:05.800 they'll know

02:48:06.800 well they might have to experiment longer

02:48:08.800 because it would depend on

02:48:09.800 you know some people respond better to some classes of antidepressants than the others

02:48:13.800 it's worth having a war with someone

02:48:16.800 if they're in dire straits and they won't do everything they can to get better

02:48:21.800 ECT works electroconvulsive therapy works for intractable depression

02:48:25.800 it's a terrible thing to contemplate

02:48:27.800 but the modern versions of ECT aren't

02:48:29.800 one flew over the cuckoo's nest

02:48:31.800 and again it's like there's no coming back from death

02:48:35.800 so look it isn't clear you can't rescue everyone

02:48:40.800 people get sick and they die

02:48:43.800 and sometimes the way they die looks like it's depression

02:48:47.800 depression is a multifaceted phenomena

02:48:50.800 you can be there for them

02:48:52.800 you can listen

02:48:53.800 you can watch

02:48:54.800 you can intervene

02:48:56.800 you can try to understand

02:48:58.800 you can hold them accountable

02:49:00.800 you can do all of those things

02:49:01.800 but that

02:49:03.800 but everyone has their own destiny you know

02:49:05.800 and you're not

02:49:07.800 omnipotent

02:49:09.800 and so sometimes a catastrophe occurs

02:49:12.800 like your daughters

02:49:13.800 and

02:49:15.800 then

02:49:17.800 and then you should try to drag the least amount of misery forward that you can

02:49:22.800 once you recover from your grief

02:49:28.800 Recover from your grief

02:49:30.800 Yeah

02:49:34.800 I'm gonna answer one more question

02:49:39.800 Due to a recent incident my company is making me undergo implicit bias training

02:49:43.800 How should I come to terms with my possible firing when I refuse?

02:49:50.800 Look

02:49:53.800 There's no sense in burning yourself at the stake

02:49:56.800 You know if you're gonna take a principled stance on something at work

02:50:01.800 and you're gonna refuse

02:50:03.800 you have to get your

02:50:05.800 tools in order

02:50:06.800 you have to get your quiver full of arrows

02:50:09.800 you know

02:50:10.800 what the hell good is it gonna be for you just to get fired?

02:50:13.800 Maybe you have a family that depends on you

02:50:15.800 that's not helpful

02:50:16.800 that doesn't mean I think you should be weak because you have a family

02:50:19.800 you should be stronger

02:50:21.800 I would say

02:50:22.800 is your resume in order?

02:50:23.800 is your CV in order?

02:50:24.800 is it updated?

02:50:26.800 Have you sent out other job applications?

02:50:28.800 are you prepared?

02:50:29.800 do you have a lateral move?

02:50:31.800 like this is a war not a battle

02:50:33.800 and you don't want to lose

02:50:35.800 and so

02:50:36.800 set yourself up and then make your case

02:50:38.800 and when you make your case don't apologize

02:50:40.800 but don't do it carelessly

02:50:42.800 you know

02:50:44.800 you need a lateral move

02:50:45.800 because otherwise you're too exposed

02:50:48.800 so

02:50:50.800 and if you're gonna refuse

02:50:52.800 have your arguments at hand

02:50:56.800 you know

02:50:57.800 have them in writing

02:50:58.800 make sure that you share them with the appropriate people

02:51:01.800 don't make unnecessary enemies

02:51:03.800 and do yourself the least amount of harm possible

02:51:08.800 the least amount of harm possible

02:51:09.800 now look

02:51:11.800 having said that

02:51:12.800 you know

02:51:13.800 so you're going to

02:51:14.800 you know

02:51:15.800 you're gonna pay

02:51:17.800 you're either gonna pay

02:51:18.800 and you're gonna go do a

02:51:19.800 implicit bias training

02:51:21.800 and you're gonna sell a bit of your soul to do that

02:51:23.800 or you're gonna pay because you're going to

02:51:25.800 refuse

02:51:26.800 and you're gonna take that price

02:51:27.800 so you've got price to pay both ways

02:51:29.800 if you're gonna refuse

02:51:30.800 do it intelligently

02:51:32.800 do it programmatically

02:51:34.800 do it philosophically

02:51:35.800 do it strategically

02:51:37.800 right 1.00

02:51:38.800 stupid martyrdom is just stupid martyrdom 1.00

02:51:39.800 it's not helpful 1.00

02:51:41.800 so

02:51:42.800 there may be people you need to talk to

02:51:43.800 there may need to be more than one of you

02:51:46.800 you know

02:51:47.800 so

02:51:48.800 you may need to make contact with the press

02:51:50.800 like

02:51:51.800 you got to be strategic about this

02:51:52.800 you got to be intelligent about it

02:51:53.800 you don't want to just light yourself and fire

02:51:55.800 and out of protest

02:51:57.800 because maybe they'll just be a pile of ashes 1.00

02:51:59.800 that people sweep up and go on with their idiocy 1.00

02:52:02.800 so 1.00

02:52:06.800 alright

02:52:07.800 everyone

02:52:10.800 nice talking with you all

02:52:11.800 thank you for the questions

02:52:14.800 come and see me if you want

02:52:15.800 if you go to Jordan Peterson

02:52:17.800 jordanbpeterson.com

02:52:18.800 you can see the upcoming events

02:52:21.800 they've gone

02:52:22.800 they've been going real well

02:52:23.800 I'll talk about my book

02:52:24.800 and about

02:52:25.800 all the other things that I'm thinking about

02:52:26.800 or not all of them

02:52:27.800 but some of the other things that I'm thinking about

02:52:29.800 I try to make every talk different

02:52:32.800 even though you know

02:52:33.800 the outline is the same

02:52:34.800 because I'm talking about my book

02:52:39.800 I guess that's about it

02:52:40.800 thank you for all the patreon support

02:52:42.800 I know it's been a little while since this last Q&A

02:52:45.800 that's life I guess at the moment

02:52:48.800 and I'll try to do one within the next month

02:52:52.800 I'm on the road a lot

02:52:53.800 I'll probably do it with my laptop

02:52:55.800 so

02:52:57.800 what should I say in closing

02:52:59.800 get your act together

02:53:01.800 as much as you can

02:53:02.800 there's things to do in the world

02:53:04.800 and it would be good if everyone was out there doing them

02:53:06.800 we'll see how we could beat this old globe back into some reasonable shape

02:53:09.800 or into better shape than it's ever been

02:53:12.800 that would be a lovely thing to do

02:53:14.800 so

02:53:16.800 goodbye for now

02:53:17.800 thank you

02:53:47.800 thank you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 08, 2018

April 2018 Q & A

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