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

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00:01:42.000 hi everyone welcome to the october version of the q a

00:01:51.240 hopefully all my technology will work it's amazing that it ever does good so let me catch

00:02:00.500 you up to date on some news first that would be fun as far as i'm concerned so the first thing i

00:02:06.060 want to do is share something with you and that's this so i got this in the mail yesterday from

00:02:13.420 penguin uk from an editor nick skidmore who i've been working with for several months

00:02:18.260 and so this is the 50th anniversary version of alexander solzhenitsyn's gulag archipelago in

00:02:27.420 its abridged form one volume abridged form which he approved um it's also published on the centenary

00:02:35.480 centenary of his birth and i was invited to write a foreword to it which i completed and which

00:02:42.480 seemed to meet with the satisfaction of the editors and also solzhenitsyn's family um it's about

00:02:48.420 500 pages long which is much shorter than the original book which was about 1800 pages

00:02:55.820 and uh solzhenitsyn approved the abridgment i think i might have said that so it's a remarkable piece of

00:03:01.960 literature and history and arguably the most influential historical document of the 20th

00:03:10.360 century you could make that case and so it was really unbelievably it was an unbelievable privilege

00:03:16.640 to be asked to write the foreword and i hope that i did a credible job we'll see about that it's on sale

00:03:22.960 now i've also prepared a youtube video for it where i've read the foreword and some of the content of

00:03:28.860 the book to provide people with an introduction and i'm hoping that this will be something

00:03:33.120 approximating a literary event so i invite you to pick up the book if you'd like to and uh and prepare

00:03:40.900 to be shocked to your core i suppose is the proper way of thinking about it so there you go so that's

00:03:50.220 that next thing i was in new york the other day um yesterday literally finalizing what i hope is a

00:03:58.480 deal for my second book and perhaps books after that but certainly for the second book which is

00:04:03.720 tentatively entitled 12 more rules for life there you go um originally there were 42 rules and

00:04:14.180 i haven't used them all up so there's plenty of reason for

00:04:22.840 continuing as far as i'm concerned and i've written a fair bit of it and it seems to be going well and

00:04:29.500 i'm hoping that i can do a better job of the second book that's the goal and that's what i discussed

00:04:34.880 with the editorial team is that i want the next book to be substantially better than the last one was

00:04:42.160 hopefully i can manage that so that's well and good as well i'm hoping that i'd have that book done by

00:04:48.720 um next september something approximating that maybe for publication the following january now i've got a

00:04:55.300 year after that if i need it depending on what happens this year but that's the plan and then i'm going to

00:05:01.940 tell you a little bit about what's happening with me over the next i suppose year really i might as well

00:05:11.340 tell you that maybe you're you'd be interested in knowing so the first thing is is that tonight

00:05:15.800 i'm going with tammy my wife who's been traveling me with me this whole time we've finished 85 cities

00:05:22.360 in the tour so far and they've gone really well i would say so we've spoken to about 250 000 people

00:05:28.600 i've been traveling with dave rubin of the rubin report and that's been entertaining he's very

00:05:32.640 comical and has been a good adjunct to add a bit of levity and also a certain degree of seriousness

00:05:38.480 so that's good so on sunday i'm speaking in dublin and on the 23rd that's tuesday on oslo i'll just go

00:05:46.660 through the cities you can look up the dates at jordanppeterson.com forward slash events if you want

00:05:51.720 manchester oxford glasgow edinburgh amsterdam cambridge helsinki stockholm copenhagen birmingham

00:05:59.660 oslo stockholm and helsinki so that ends november 11th then i'm off with tammy to spain and portugal

00:06:06.180 to talk to book publishers there and then i'm going to speak to the trilateral commission

00:06:10.780 in slovenia in lubianca and then we're going to hawaii i have a talk in hawaii and that's at the

00:06:18.760 end of november then to new york maybe i'm going to talk to dr oz again that's not finalized but it

00:06:24.360 seems probable then i'm going to washington to talk to some people there and then to florida for

00:06:29.820 a bit of a break from canadian winter even though i won't have experienced any of that so far this

00:06:34.720 year and i have a speaking engagement there as well and then in january possibly i'll be in

00:06:42.560 california we've applied for a tech incubator in california to further the development of our

00:06:50.940 educational software which is already at the prototype stage i don't know for sure that will

00:06:56.680 be accepted into the incubator and i don't know for sure if we are accepted if that that's the route

00:07:01.920 we're going to take because there are other options we're also working with a private school

00:07:06.960 consortium to test the software as we develop it because when you're developing a product this is

00:07:13.220 a good thing to know if you ever do build something you want to build the product test it with your

00:07:17.460 potential customers build it again because you've made all sorts of mistakes test it with your

00:07:21.360 customers and so on so and then after that i'm going to australia and new zealand probably to talk

00:07:28.600 in about a dozen places there and then back to europe in march and april and then i'm going to

00:07:33.380 write non-stop i hope from may to september and then with any luck i'm going to start the biblical

00:07:38.640 series again with exodus and so that's that that's the plan so um it's exciting and daunting

00:07:46.980 and all of those things so um now you're up to date and hopefully that was interesting i really am

00:07:55.440 thrilled about this this is really something man it's really something so um and i'm i'm

00:08:02.840 the solzhenitsyn family was happy with the forward so that was really

00:08:07.320 positive and hopefully it'll bring a whole new audience to the book that would be a good thing

00:08:16.260 this is not something that we should ever forget ever okay so let's say let's go to some questions

00:08:24.960 here any advice for a young counselor soon to finish his degree what do you wish you knew as a

00:08:32.860 young therapist well let's start with advice um well one thing i would say is you could go to my

00:08:39.480 book list and read the books that are there there's at on my website there is a list of recommended

00:08:46.220 books fiction uh non-fiction and the non-fiction is categorized in different ways there's a

00:08:51.300 psychotherapy section i would say read those books that's that would be helpful those people

00:08:57.220 jung freud rogers i think there's something by adler henry ellenbergé some of the existentialists

00:09:04.900 from the 1950s um a lot of neuroscientist types very very smart people very very useful to know what

00:09:12.640 they had to say so um then the next thing i would suggest and you've heard this from me before

00:09:19.760 perhaps is that it's almost impossible to overestimate the degree to which merely listening

00:09:28.560 is helpful if you're a counselor lots of people have no one to listen to have no one that will

00:09:34.560 listen to them and that's a real problem because people actually think by talking and so for many

00:09:39.860 people who are isolated they have no one to talk to so that means they don't think and that means that

00:09:45.080 their their thoughts aren't straight and organized and you might think well why does that matter but

00:09:53.000 the reason it matters is because the best analogy i would say to to thoughts is the best way of

00:10:02.600 conceptualizing the structure of your thoughts is to consider it in the same manner that you might

00:10:08.080 consider a map and your map should be organized and things should be in the right place because

00:10:14.100 otherwise when you use the map to navigate in the world you don't end up where you want to be and you

00:10:19.520 run into things that you don't want to encounter and so it's actually extraordinarily necessary to

00:10:24.680 get your thoughts in order since they help you simulate the world before you act in it and so

00:10:30.560 don't underestimate how important it is just to listen and then you think let's think about listening

00:10:36.180 too so someone comes to you and they and they come to you because they have a problem now you don't know

00:10:40.600 what their problem is and neither do they all you know is that they have enough of a problem to come and

00:10:45.280 talk to you so then they might have a problem because really terrible things have happened to

00:10:50.220 them and anyone with any sense would have a problem and so then they have problems in lives

00:10:55.160 in life say or they have existential problems not really psychological problems even though it might

00:11:00.180 be psychologically demanding to adapt to the real problems you want to listen and you want to find

00:11:07.080 out well what exactly is the problem space and how much of that is practical and how much of it is

00:11:13.300 psychological so the first issue is you don't know what the problem is and you want to ask a lot of

00:11:19.500 questions to find out what it is and and and also what it isn't because often people will come in and

00:11:25.540 they're upset and they don't exactly know why they're upset and they might be upset about a whole bunch of

00:11:31.080 things and it isn't until after they talk through all the things they might be upset about that they find out

00:11:36.960 what they're upset about and what they're not so another reason to listen especially at the stage of problem

00:11:42.840 formulation is to help people decide what their problems aren't well then the next thing you have

00:11:47.720 to do to listen is like okay well now we we know what the problem is well what would your client

00:11:55.800 view as a potential solution so assuming that this could be made better in some manner what would

00:12:03.260 better look like so you need to develop co-develop a philosophy of what's better and so that's a goal or an aim

00:12:10.800 and it's almost like a personalized definition of mental health but it might be better to think

00:12:15.180 about it as a personalized definition of um of a good life and so uh that's the next thing you have

00:12:22.760 to listen about and then the last thing you have to listen about and negotiate as well is okay well now

00:12:27.160 we know what your problem is and we know hypothetically what the destination is with regards to solving that

00:12:33.740 problem is what are the strategies that are necessary to implement in order to make that positive

00:12:40.500 outcome occur and then that's something that you negotiate by listening every week it's like okay

00:12:45.240 well here's the goal what steps could we take that you would implement that would move you towards

00:12:51.560 that goal can you take those steps in the world will you do that this week and then watch whether or not

00:12:57.340 you do it and come back and report and also tell me and yourself whether or not implementing that actually

00:13:03.160 worked and then we can come back and we can have a discussion about whether you did it or not and if you

00:13:08.560 didn't then how we could modify that and if you did how we could continue and expand it and if you did

00:13:13.360 do it whether it worked and if it if it and what unexpected things occurred and what if any implications

00:13:19.740 there are for understanding your problem and for your goal and so you know you you need it's a map

00:13:27.020 you have a starting point you have to figure out what that is you have a destination point the desired

00:13:32.240 future you have to figure out what that is you have to implement and design strategies that will move the

00:13:37.300 person forward and then you have to test all those strategies very strategic thinking very practical

00:13:42.060 thinking and so um that's that's an outline of how to do effective psychotherapy i would say

00:13:50.680 effective careful psychotherapy another bit of advice is people often who are young counselors are

00:13:57.160 afraid and don't know how they can not take their clients problems home and i've got a couple of

00:14:03.820 things to say about that the first is they're not your problems and it's very important to remember

00:14:10.520 that it's partly you don't want to steal your clients problems i mean you might think well if i

00:14:16.340 could take my clients problems on myself and lift the burden from them well wouldn't that be better

00:14:21.480 and the answer is well no because someone's problems are not that distinguishable from their life

00:14:27.820 and what you're there to do is facilitate their ability to learn to grapple successfully with the

00:14:34.800 existential vagaries of their own existence and you don't want to leap in there and steal it like

00:14:40.160 let's say you give a spectacular piece of advice and you're going to give advice now and then but it's

00:14:44.920 it's not that advisable then let's say you advise someone to solve a problem in a certain way and they

00:14:50.140 go do it and the problem's solved it's like well the problems disappeared but they didn't learn how to

00:14:56.320 generate the solution to the problem and so they're in worse shape with future problems and

00:15:00.740 it's your victory in some sense instead of theirs and so you don't want to you don't want to steal

00:15:07.140 from your client's destiny and so and that also frees you up to some degree because it also means that

00:15:13.740 you're not morally obligated to take on those problems and carry them home and the other thing is

00:15:18.700 is that it doesn't do your client any good for their problems to sink you you have a moral obligation

00:15:26.220 an ethical obligation a professional obligation to remain sufficiently detached from the situation

00:15:32.100 so that your head is clear and you remain healthy and and your practice remains viable for the long run

00:15:39.180 and so don't forget to protect yourself it's very very important let let your clients sort out their

00:15:46.160 lives you're there to help you're there as a sounding board you're there as a strategic

00:15:49.600 and you're there to offer strategic advice you're there to shed light on the symptomatology

00:15:55.000 and to lay out potential uh strategies for treatment all of that and so um

00:16:00.720 and that's good enough you don't take on any more than that so okay

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00:18:58.020 procrastination and instant gratification rule me nothing seems to motivate me nothing seems to

00:19:11.520 motivate me what do i do well i'm going to give you some practical advice um i would say you need a plan

00:19:21.020 like you need a plan and not just a plan you need a reason to implement the plan you need both of those

00:19:27.660 so something motivates you you already said instant gratification motivates you so you'll do things

00:19:34.540 for instant gratification now look instant gratification is a particular form of reward

00:19:40.380 it's called incentive reward and it's mediated by dopaminergic circuitry the same circuitry that

00:19:45.380 mediates reward as a consequence of using drugs like cocaine or any of the drugs that people abuse

00:19:50.800 and so there are certain short-term activities that are pleasurable enough so they produce a

00:19:56.680 an intrinsic they intrinsically produce a dopamine kick and a lot of that's instantaneous gratification

00:20:02.780 like say eating when you're hungry at least the taste and flavor of the food because there's also a

00:20:07.800 satiation element that comes along with food and so there's those those pleasures that speak for

00:20:12.560 themselves when you're looking at the long run things that are rewards that are delayed don't produce

00:20:20.000 as much of a um a dopamine kick so they're not as immediately gratifying and they're not as gripping

00:20:26.160 in the present and the way that you have to overcome that is to generate a vision of it's really it's not

00:20:32.780 a it's not a plan or a strategy it's a philosophical vision that that that that justifies your life in some

00:20:39.680 way that you deeply believe it has to be that and it can't be trivial because otherwise procrastination and

00:20:45.380 instant gratification are going to rule you so we developed this program called the future authoring

00:20:52.480 program and it's part of the self-authoring suite and i'll run through it very rapidly because

00:20:56.500 even if you don't use that program although you could because that's what it's designed for and i

00:21:01.760 think it makes it easier it outlines what's necessary in order to overcome the problem that

00:21:06.460 you're describing so the first question you might ask yourself is well what would you need to gain

00:21:12.240 and you have to have a real dialogue with yourself to understand this you have to take yourself warts

00:21:16.220 and all you're useless procrastinating instant gratification seeking self and you have to sit

00:21:23.220 down and say all right you know you're talking to your inner badly behaved six-year-old it's like okay

00:21:29.520 what is it that you would have to have in order to commit to something in the long run what what kind of

00:21:36.400 vision of the future would would justify sacrifices for you and you might say well you don't know it's like okay

00:21:44.080 fine that's why you have to break it down so let me ask you some questions so you might think well here's some

00:21:49.540 things that people need in their life because your life is not going to be solid grounded gratifying

00:21:56.420 acceptable meaningful relevant and uh devoid of earth-shaking anxiety without

00:22:05.060 managing some of these things most people need an intimate relationship

00:22:09.860 a long-term intimate relationship because otherwise they get lonesome and bored and crazy

00:22:16.180 um crazy in a different way than you get if you have a long-term relationship

00:22:20.240 worse crazy um they need friends they need family so that could be your your birth family your parents

00:22:28.660 your extended family your siblings but also children so you need to know well where does

00:22:35.380 that fit in your life what's your vision for that do you want to get along with your parents you want

00:22:38.700 to get along with your siblings do you have a strategy for that do you want to have kids at some

00:22:42.540 point do you want to build yourself a family okay you need a job or a career now a career is intrinsically

00:22:49.880 meaningful and and and and usually very demanding in terms of commitment and hours whereas a job at least

00:22:56.700 can be engaging and worthwhile um it's usually more time limited maybe you have more freedom outside

00:23:01.980 of it but you need a job because you need something to do and you need some some routine and you need

00:23:07.280 some financial support and if you can have a career and that's what you want so much the better

00:23:10.960 but at least at least you could have a trade something worthwhile not that a trade can't be a

00:23:16.500 career and believe me i've got nothing against trades um you need to take care of yourself mentally

00:23:22.040 and physically like how do you want to present yourself in the world no you you want to be

00:23:27.240 healthy mentally and physically so that you're like a light among men let's put it that way that would

00:23:33.060 be a good goal um how are you going to handle the temptations of drugs and alcohol and whatever

00:23:38.320 procrastination and instant gratification are tilting you in the wrong direction

00:23:42.060 so those are you know seven things that you might consider sit down here's the question

00:23:49.440 you're taking care of yourself like you're someone you care about you can design a future that would

00:23:54.620 be good for you if you were taking care of yourself right for 20 minutes you can have what you want

00:23:59.840 it's three years down the road you can have whatever you want but you have to aim for it and work

00:24:04.540 for it and you have to specify it what is it what do you want what would make your life worthwhile

00:24:09.840 what would be good enough so that instant gratification would be an obstacle instead of a means for

00:24:15.240 proceeding like i can give you an example to some degree you know when i was kid in my early 20s i did

00:24:21.280 i i did quite a bit of drinking and partying i came from a hard drinking background up in northern

00:24:26.720 alberta and um you know i was out three times a week even when i was in graduate school and i was

00:24:32.640 beginning to write seriously scientific papers and also the work that became maps of meaning and

00:24:37.400 eventually 12 rules for life and it came to the point where i couldn't do both i couldn't go out and

00:24:43.240 be that social and have that much instinct instant gratifying fun and be in good enough shape so that

00:24:51.060 if i was editing something complex i was making it better instead of worse and i was really interested

00:24:55.580 in what i was doing i was learning a lot about the brain i was learning a lot about alcohol and drug abuse

00:24:59.600 i was laying out the platform for the relationship between narrative and neuroscience and it was really

00:25:06.380 engrossing and engaging but it was hard and it was long-term you know it was a long-term plan

00:25:11.380 i had to make a choice it was either continue the fun which was fun i really enjoyed it or

00:25:18.160 do this thing that i really believed was more worthwhile and it it was more worthwhile to do

00:25:25.220 the more worthwhile thing which is why i stopped with the instant gratification like a lot of

00:25:29.580 stopping and this is true for most people especially young men who tend to drink a fair bit and carouse

00:25:34.900 around a lot most young men stop that sort of thing at least to some degree around 25 or 26 and the

00:25:42.260 reason they do that is because they pick up other responsibilities they get a real job that has some

00:25:46.560 future and they get a relationship that's permanent they have a family and they decide well that's more

00:25:50.920 important than the procrastination and the instant gratification okay so make yourself a damn plan make it

00:25:58.960 into a strategy you could use the future authoring program if you like i would highly recommend that

00:26:03.300 do it badly you might be intimidated by it you know i don't know how to plan it's like yeah we know you

00:26:09.340 don't know how to plan make a bad plan it's better than the one you've got so so do it badly and then try

00:26:16.280 and modify it as as needs be and see if that works you need a philosophy cody that's the thing you know

00:26:23.140 you're you're living a shallow life and so short-term avoidance that's procrastination you'll do that

00:26:30.380 because you don't think it's important enough you don't think that the negative consequences of not

00:26:35.900 doing what you should do are severe enough you're not afraid enough of it the other thing you do in

00:26:39.600 the future authoring program by the way is write about just exactly what kind of hell you'd be likely

00:26:44.900 to descend into three to five years in the future if you let your bad habits procrastination and instant

00:26:50.820 gratification let's say rule you and and take you out of the game completely because you also need

00:26:56.380 to be terrified as well as hopeful about what you might do if you got your act together you need to

00:27:01.460 be terrified about what you where you might end up if you kept being like lazy and useless you know

00:27:07.080 and shallow and that none of that's good so you need to be deeper and you need to look deeper you

00:27:13.100 need to nietzsche said he who has a why can bear any how and you need a why and the why is something

00:27:20.320 like well imagine you could have the life imagine you could have a life that would be worth giving

00:27:25.260 up some of the instant gratification for even in principle what would that look like so all right

00:27:32.260 all right what do you think the feminine hero journey is do you believe females have their own

00:27:38.260 archetypal story to follow well yes they certainly do i think the first of all they have the hero story

00:27:43.980 like men do but i think i think the the classic hero story if imagine it this way the classic hero

00:27:52.160 story is the archetypal male story with with the feminine lurking in the background because like men

00:27:58.700 are adventurous heroes all things considered fundamentally but they're also very maternal like

00:28:05.180 men take care of children families for very long periods of time so as far as um if you think about

00:28:12.300 this from a purely biological perspective human males are very maternal so both males and females have

00:28:19.140 an aspect to them that's archetypally masculine and archetypally feminine and i would say in the

00:28:25.880 typical male the archetypally masculine dominates with the archetypally feminine in the background and in

00:28:31.660 the typical female it's the reverse and so although there might be some variation in that you know you

00:28:38.000 you get the relatively rare female who's more archetypally male in their orientation to the

00:28:44.840 world and you get the relatively rare male who is more archetypally female feminine so the dragon the

00:28:53.360 conflict with the dragon is the archetypal male story go out confront the dragon get the gold bring it back

00:28:58.340 to the community rescue the virgin uh uh ennoble the community why make yourself wise as a consequence of

00:29:07.080 the adventure and develop your character that's a great story um the archetypal feminine narrative at least

00:29:14.280 to some degree is beauty and the beast which is to encounter the monstrous masculine and to tame and

00:29:23.060 civilize it so that they're so that a joint relationship can be established that's part and

00:29:29.260 parcel of the development of long-term intimacy and that would be partly for the purposes of intimacy

00:29:36.780 which is particularly important to people say who are high in agreeableness and women are higher in

00:29:42.720 agreeableness but also as the platform for um for raising children successfully now you get a male

00:29:51.460 variant of that which is one of the male variants of of the same story that uh eric neumann in

00:29:57.340 particular talked about he was a union commentator he wrote a book called origins and history of

00:30:01.820 consciousness which i would highly recommend that's on my list of recommended readings and another one

00:30:05.940 called the great mother another brilliant book uh neumann talked about something called the

00:30:10.940 crystallization of the anima from the great mother archetype and so you might say that that men who've been

00:30:16.680 dominated by women a young boy who's been dominated by his mother for example or a man for

00:30:21.680 for who who for some reason is dominated and intimidated by the idea of the rejecting feminine

00:30:30.260 and if you're interested in that idea you could watch a documentary called crumb you'll see exactly what

00:30:36.520 i mean by dominated by the archetypal rejecting feminine i've never seen a better example of it that that

00:30:43.460 than than what's laid out in that documentary crumb it's a brilliant documentary so the female is a

00:30:50.180 hostile judge and very critical of men the feminine speaking archetypally and so the man has to steal

00:30:56.220 himself to face that rejection to develop his character just like uh bill murray does in groundhog day

00:31:03.660 exactly the same story and then free the individual woman with whom he has a relationship

00:31:10.000 from the archetypal judgmental feminine so that's like the male version of beauty and the beast

00:31:16.660 and so then and and the female version obviously the hero archetype is the fact that women do

00:31:21.940 have a heroic role to play in the world as well because they confront the unknown just like men do

00:31:28.100 and garner um wisdom knowledge riches as a consequence but the way i look at it is that well

00:31:36.600 for females the feminine archetype is at the forefront and the masculine at the background and

00:31:41.740 and it's reversed for men so that's that's how it looks to me so you caught some twitter flack for

00:31:50.580 your comment on brett kavanaugh care to address your comment and the blowback well i addressed the comment

00:31:56.240 because i wrote a blog post and so that was probably the right way not only to address it but that would

00:32:02.520 have been the right way to handle it to begin with so i'll address it sure i'll address it and i'll

00:32:08.260 address the blowback as well look

00:32:10.480 just because you have an idea doesn't mean that it's the only idea

00:32:19.300 and just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's right

00:32:24.560 and so like it's weird for me in some sense to engage in public discourse especially politically

00:32:31.300 because you see i've been in i've been a researcher for a very long period of time and so most of the

00:32:37.160 people that i've talked to about serious ideas most of them many of them have been researchers

00:32:44.260 graduate students for example and when you're talking about a problem whatever it might be if

00:32:50.620 you're research oriented what you do is kind of what you do if you're a therapist the way i laid

00:32:56.460 out advice for a young therapist earlier it's like okay well what does everybody think the problem is

00:33:03.740 and so you you assume that you don't know it's like okay well we have big discussion about what

00:33:08.640 everybody thinks the problem is well what do you think the real problem is like what's the real

00:33:13.380 problem with the kavanaugh situation well one might be well kavanaugh was accused of sexual

00:33:19.640 impropriety when he was a high school student and because of that he's not his suitability for the

00:33:25.800 supreme court is in question maybe that's the problem yeah maybe and maybe that's not the problem

00:33:31.660 who the hell knows what the problem is so here's a bunch of possibilities um we haven't had a reasonable

00:33:39.020 discussion about what constitutes an acceptable uh statute of limitations with regards to accusations of

00:33:46.680 misbehavior between individuals it's like well can you accuse someone reasonably five years later

00:33:53.740 10 years later 15 years later 40 years later like is there a limit do you is there a more do you have

00:34:00.920 a moral obligation if you're going to accuse someone or even seek justice to do that within

00:34:06.900 a reasonable period of time who knows we we don't so that's a problem um what exactly are the rules

00:34:14.780 that govern the conduct of men and women when they're young when they're drinking are we going

00:34:21.080 to have that conversation no we're not going to have that conversation either because no one wants

00:34:25.360 to think of that through and they especially don't want to think it through with regards to the

00:34:29.740 complicating additional feature of alcohol think about alcohol is the reason that people drink

00:34:35.440 is so that they can act stupidly and have fun now the problem with acting stupidly and having fun when

00:34:43.860 you're sober is that it makes you anxious and so you don't do it but alcohol especially for people

00:34:49.940 for whom alcohol is a good drug ramps up the excitement of impulsivity and quells the anxiety

00:34:56.200 and so people always drink often drink because they want to go out and be stupid and have fun and look

00:35:01.440 i understand that there's something to be said for stupid fun but it's but one of the things that

00:35:05.880 also needs to be said about it is it's bloody well dangerous and so we don't want to have that

00:35:10.680 conversation we don't have that conversation on campuses we talk about the rape crisis nobody talks

00:35:15.280 about the alcohol sexual assault crisis if men and women didn't drink together there'd be virtually no

00:35:21.840 sexual assault and in fact if people didn't drink at all there'd be almost no violent crime because

00:35:27.300 alcohol contributes to violent crime in a manner that you can hardly imagine but 50% of people who

00:35:32.460 are murdered are drunk and about 50% of the people who do the murdering are drunk and that's probably

00:35:37.440 an underestimate because the stats aren't kept that well and it also depends on how you define drunk

00:35:43.060 so that could also be a problem um well the liberals left types let's call them the left-leaning progressive

00:35:50.480 types don't want a conservative on the supreme court the left-leaning types aren't happy that

00:35:55.640 trump won the election um the conservatives want to rush our candidate onto the supreme court come

00:36:01.200 hell or high water because of the november election um then there's another problem well

00:36:06.000 is this about kavanaugh at all or is this about rowe and wade and about abortion well who knows right

00:36:11.840 it's about all those things so it's an unbelievably complicated god-awful situation

00:36:16.020 and so eric weinstein and brett weinstein were tweeting about this and it was late at night and eric said

00:36:22.740 as far as i can tell either way this is not going to end well and i thought oh he said is there an

00:36:30.220 alternative is there a way out of that and i thought oh that's an interesting question what might be a way

00:36:34.680 out of that and i thought well kavanaugh is in a rough position because he can't withdraw obviously

00:36:40.580 and perhaps shouldn't um without his reputation being shattered and if he doesn't get nominated same

00:36:46.840 thing his life is basically over so but on the other hand he's tangled up in a scandal that's of

00:36:54.900 sufficient murk and mud so that it isn't self-evident that he can serve as a supreme court justice

00:37:02.820 without having every single one of his decisions especially in contentious cases produce a tremendous

00:37:09.520 amount of social upheaval over the next two or three decades and it isn't obvious that that's a great

00:37:15.980 move forward now it might be fine i mean there's been um controversy around other supreme court justice

00:37:24.000 nominations and that seems to have basically sorted itself out and i already said just because you're

00:37:29.720 thinking something through doesn't mean you're right it's a it's a it's a simulation so i thought

00:37:35.340 well if i was in kavanaugh's position and i felt that my um candidacy had been compromised

00:37:42.160 perhaps through no fault of my own i am not saying anything about his innocence or guilt but that my

00:37:49.120 candidacy had been compromised by this interminable and ugly scandal and that meant that my tenure on the

00:37:57.380 supreme court might be marked by culturally divisive controversy in the long run maybe it would be better

00:38:04.600 for me to be nominated to say look it's too murky it's too muddy and i don't think the country is best served

00:38:12.700 by my accepting the nomination then the conservatives can nominate another um candidate get their person

00:38:19.680 on the supreme court so there's no necessary loss there and perhaps we could move forward with a minimum

00:38:25.060 relative minimum of divisiveness now look in my blog i laid out all the reasons why that isn't a good idea

00:38:34.860 like here maybe if you just give me five seconds i can read some of them because i tried to make a

00:38:40.220 steel man case for why my idea wasn't a good one my idea about him withdrawing so just give me one second

00:38:48.160 and i'll read all the potential objections just so that you know that i've thought them through

00:38:52.920 um so perhaps the democrat opposition would mount a similar campaign against my putative successor

00:39:00.640 well that's certainly possible i said well that would provide virtually unassailable evidence for

00:39:05.680 the purely manipulative and political motivation of the accusers forcing them to duplicate their strategy

00:39:11.560 a second time that would help reveal the machinations for what they were in a manner that would be

00:39:16.280 virtually undeniable perhaps time is of the essence and there'd be no way to place another candidate of

00:39:22.300 conservative leaning on the bench before the november elections as they say however act in haste repent

00:39:28.460 in leisure okay and then other other um arguments against my position here they are oh yes if kavanaugh

00:39:39.860 withdrew after being nominated here's what might happen it would be read as an admission of guilt on his part

00:39:46.180 it would embolden those who would use reputation destruction as a political maneuver it would

00:39:50.640 weaken the generally and vitally important idea of the presumption of innocence it would indicate

00:39:55.500 weakness on the part of the republicans at a key moment prior to the november elections it would

00:40:00.200 mean that an innocent man has been successfully pilloried by a mob it would validate the use of

00:40:05.600 allegations of past behavior well past any reasonable expiry date as a weapon it would destroy the

00:40:11.520 republican opportunity to choose a supreme court justice hand the democrats an unearned victory

00:40:16.780 embitter a large percentage of the conservative base who would regard the withdrawal as a betrayal

00:40:21.440 and last and perhaps least violate my own personal adage for what that's worth of don't apologize if you

00:40:29.260 haven't done anything wrong okay so i understand the weaknesses of that position um i was putting it

00:40:35.620 forward as a potential third alternative now look it's perfectly reasonable to put things to out

00:40:41.240 to put things forward as alternatives that's thinking now having said that i made some mistakes

00:40:49.620 okay so the first mistake was don't tweet complicated ideas in 140 characters about contentious issues

00:41:00.540 in the midst of a controversy at two in the morning right bad idea and so one of the consequences of this

00:41:07.480 for me is that i've withdrawn quite a lot over the last three weeks from twitter it's twitter is a very

00:41:12.480 dangerous platform and so i'm taking a break from it while i'm re-evaluating its utility and so i i because

00:41:19.660 i talked to my son about this before and other members of my family and we had agreed that i wasn't

00:41:25.140 going to post anything on twitter that should be made into a blog but the problem with twitter is that

00:41:31.160 it or the problem with me who knows where the problem is is that twitter invites and facilitates

00:41:38.120 impulsive responding and so i'm not convinced that it's necessarily a good platform for me i

00:41:45.840 of all the places that i tend to get into trouble twitter is sort of at the top of the list now i laid out

00:41:53.120 in my blog why i still use it i feel some moral obligation to the almost a million people who follow me

00:41:59.020 on twitter for example and there's an addictive quality to it too you know i'm following a lot

00:42:03.640 of these people in the intellectual dark web and seeing what they're up to and trying to keep an eye

00:42:07.520 on the cultural climate let's say and it's not easy to figure out for me as it sure is the case for

00:42:13.800 all of you exactly how much you should be exposed to such things and how much you should protect

00:42:18.300 yourself i mean a case could certainly be made that i should stay the hell off twitter and do nothing

00:42:22.720 but write for the next year because it's not like i have any shortage of things to write about

00:42:26.440 so i'm trying to sort that out so um that's my explanation and um and it could easily be that

00:42:36.080 as i said it could easily be that the idea that i put forward wasn't the best idea you know who knows

00:42:45.880 what the best idea is maybe the best idea was for kavanaugh to do exactly what he did

00:42:49.560 who knows so and more you know good luck to him and to the supreme court i hope it all stabilizes

00:42:56.500 that would be lovely and it has happened before and so maybe it will again so all right i took the

00:43:03.040 understand myself test and have a question okay so the understand myself test at understand myself.com

00:43:09.780 for all of the those of you who don't know is a personality test it's based on the big five

00:43:13.880 extraversion neuroticism agreeableness conscientiousness openness it breaks each of them

00:43:18.760 down into two fundamental aspects that have been empirically validated and so you can take that

00:43:23.720 test i put a code in the description of this video i think the code is october you can use that code for

00:43:30.580 self-authoring and for understand myself and there's a 20 discount for that so if you want to do that

00:43:35.620 only takes about 15 minutes to do the understand myself test by the way the self-authoring program

00:43:41.140 that requires more effort you have to do that over a number of days but you can do it badly as i said

00:43:46.420 and you need a plan man you need to know where you are that's the autobiographical part and you need

00:43:51.340 a plan for the future so it's worth it even though it's hard it it's not as hard as stumbling through

00:43:57.060 your life blindly okay i took the understand myself test and have a question should i take the results as

00:44:05.220 is and live trying to cope with them or can i try to change them to some degree all right so the first

00:44:11.820 thing is i would say well take the results as they are to some degree now it depends look you got to be

00:44:19.220 careful because if you take a personality test like this and you're depressed so you know the future

00:44:26.800 looks really bleak to you the present looks bleak when you look into the past almost everything looks

00:44:31.120 negative you know you're not taking any pleasure in things you feel bad perhaps even worse in the

00:44:36.820 morning you you're you're you can't see any light in your life you're very self-critical perhaps you're

00:44:43.500 depressed then if you're depressed your personality scores are going to look um they're going to be

00:44:49.960 skewed as a consequence of that and so they might be more negative because of the mindset that you have

00:44:55.500 when you take the test then they truly are so i'm assuming with this answer that you're not depressed

00:45:01.220 so um should i take the results as is and live trying to cope with them well one thing is

00:45:07.280 you should at least give yourself some credit it's like you're a particular way so let's say you're low

00:45:15.020 in openness just for the sake of argument let's say you're low in openness and moderately high in

00:45:18.820 conscientiousness you're a more conservative person you're probably going to be happier if you take a

00:45:24.640 more conservative path in life you're going you're not if you're low in openness you're not that

00:45:29.320 creative you're not going to be interested in aesthetics you're not going to be interested even

00:45:33.660 in ideas to that greater degree it's not your area of fascination you're more practical and concrete

00:45:39.340 and perhaps and and also less flighty and less prone to to creative error there's advantages too you

00:45:46.600 know because most creative people um are fonts of ideas that won't work and that will occupy a

00:45:54.240 tremendous amount of counterproductive time in their implementation that's the downside to

00:45:59.440 creativity false positives um if you're disagreeable well then you're going to try to work somewhere

00:46:05.440 where competent competitiveness is useful if you're um high in neuroticism then you're probably going to

00:46:11.820 have to find a job where the stress levels aren't too high if you're introverted you want to find a

00:46:15.840 place where you can work and spend a fair bit of time by yourself you know you want to match

00:46:20.880 your environment to your personality that's adaptation to some degree now if you're really

00:46:27.020 high in neuroticism for example and you're too anxious and then there are things that you can do

00:46:32.240 about that you know that that's something you might want to you if it's really out of hand say

00:46:37.640 if you're 98th percentile or above something like that and it's also making you suffer because you're too

00:46:42.560 anxious and too risk averse and too volatile you might want to consider something like counseling to

00:46:48.880 see if you can get your anxiety levels down or to learn to meditate or to learn to control your

00:46:53.720 breathing or or or or or or to talk to someone to see if there's some physiological reason for that

00:46:59.860 now you can change but like if you're introverted you can develop social skills but you kind of have to

00:47:06.260 do them one at a time you know because it's not something that comes naturally to you and it might not

00:47:10.960 be something that you developed as a child you have to consciously plan a social strategy so you might

00:47:16.740 say well i'm introverted i should go out with someone for lunch once a week i should see friends

00:47:22.460 twice a week right you should you need to make a plan for social interactions and if you're extroverted

00:47:28.240 and you can't stand being alone well then you might practice being alone a little bit so that you can

00:47:32.160 learn how to spend some quality time on yourself and not be so dependent on the company of others

00:47:37.240 if you're an agreeable person too agreeable then you'll need to figure out what it is that you want

00:47:44.140 what you're resentful about and what you need to negotiate about on your own behalf and if you're

00:47:49.440 really disagreeable then you might want to think hard about consciously deciding that once a week

00:47:55.180 or so you're going to try to do something for someone else and there's a research literature on

00:48:00.780 that actually uh it indicates quite clearly that if you consciously plan to do something altruistic on

00:48:08.220 a regular basis it does seem to improve overall well-being and i think that's particularly

00:48:12.600 important for disagreeable people because they don't do that naturally it doesn't come to them

00:48:17.480 naturally so i think that you the the general advice is find an environment where your temperament

00:48:26.320 works and then the more specific advice is well having said that it doesn't hurt to expand your

00:48:32.320 temperament if you're introverted you should be able to do what extroverted people do and if you're

00:48:36.980 extroverted you should be able to spend time alone you should develop those as skills

00:48:40.420 if you're an agreeable person you should learn how to negotiate for yourself in a tough-minded manner

00:48:46.040 and if you're disagreeable you should learn to take other people into consideration more

00:48:50.380 if you're unconscientious wouldn't hurt to have a schedule like a google calendar to start working

00:48:56.420 on that because low conscientiousness is going to interfere with your long-term success and if

00:49:01.980 you're hyper conscientious well you might need to learn to relax a little bit and to make that a

00:49:07.300 priority so and if you're high in openness well i i don't have a quick answer for what you do if

00:49:14.720 you're high in openness oh i do i guess i do to some degree try to focus on one thing to some degree

00:49:22.060 on one thing and get good at that because when you're open you're flying out all over the place

00:49:27.420 laterally and you can easily become a dilettante so one of the things you have to do if you're high

00:49:31.360 in openness is develop true expertise in at least one place you can even pick it somewhat arbitrarily

00:49:37.820 given that you're interested in everything commit to something if you're low in openness and a little

00:49:43.040 closed off compared to what you should be a little narrow-minded let's say and conventional

00:49:47.220 um maybe you should read a book a week join a book club that's a good thing to do um

00:49:53.400 that's a that's a good start join a book club um and and and and open yourself up a little bit go see

00:50:02.800 a movie now and then as well that would also be helpful you know and and that'll widen you out a

00:50:08.720 bit and that's important you know it's important for your career and all that sort of thing you want

00:50:12.580 to you know your temperament puts you in a certain place in the distribution and it isn't so much that

00:50:18.520 you want to move the place is that you want to move the variability so that you can be what you

00:50:25.160 need to be when the situation demands it and that doesn't mean to blow in the wind it means to be

00:50:29.480 adaptable instead of constrained tightly by your biological predisposition and you can learn that

00:50:34.760 it's painstaking it it requires a lot of effort but you can learn it so

00:50:39.240 my daughter's school is now teaching gender as a social construct

00:50:46.720 four sexes avoids naming boys and girls

00:50:50.080 what do we do leaving is not an option

00:50:53.200 well i guess the first question is

00:51:06.080 i'll i'll just take you at your word that leaving is not an option it certainly might not be an option

00:51:11.420 um i would say

00:51:14.860 your best bet and this is a casual piece of advice because i don't know your particular situation

00:51:23.220 is to find out how many parents there are around who are also not happy about this and then start to

00:51:33.100 strategize i mean look to some degree what people just define as gender is a social construct so

00:51:43.580 let's look at it this way so there are things that make men men and that make women women that are

00:51:51.660 universal across cultures so let's say except for tiny variations um external genitalia

00:52:01.100 so but then there are things that do vary across culture with regards to whether they're regarded

00:52:07.260 as masculine or feminine male or female and those are more learned so let's say that external genitalia

00:52:13.980 is not a social construct it's not learned if we can't agree on that then we're not going to be able to

00:52:18.940 have a discussion at all so but there are some things about male behavior and some things about

00:52:23.660 female behavior that are culture specific and learned and so to that degree gender is a social

00:52:28.620 construct so so you know you have to give the devil his due but the problem isn't teaching that gender

00:52:37.900 is a social construct the problem is teaching that gender is only a social construct and that's just

00:52:43.740 wrong it's absolutely wrong as soon as someone's doing that then you know that you're dealing with an

00:52:48.140 ideologue and the research evidence on that for example is crystal clear apart from the fact that

00:52:54.140 there are morphological differences between men and women which are quite obvious you can name a

00:52:59.660 variety of them men have wider jaws they have larger teeth they can bite harder they have thicker skulls

00:53:06.380 as women certainly can attest to from a psychological perspective they are more powerful in the upper body

00:53:11.900 they can punch a lot harder they can throw more naturally um they're they're uh they they tend to

00:53:19.420 weigh more they tend to be taller that's sexual dimorphism human beings are relatively sexually dimorphic

00:53:25.660 as far as primates and other mammals go um they there's difference in in obviously uh waist to hip ratio

00:53:35.180 women's elbows are a different angle they have finer bones women have a subcutaneous layer

00:53:39.900 a layer of body fat that men don't have um women are a little bit more pain resistant um

00:53:47.260 make more pain tolerant they're also uh they also have very high levels of stamina um women tend to be

00:53:54.380 have a little edge in verbal ability men tend to have a little edge in spatial ability um and then there

00:54:00.220 are apart from the straight physiological differences there are psychological differences there's a variety of

00:54:07.020 them um women are more enthusiastic men are more assertive that's extroversion women are higher in

00:54:14.860 withdrawal and in volatility that's on the neuroticism front women are more agreeable and more polite

00:54:21.580 that's on the agreeableness front men are more industrious slightly and women are more orderly

00:54:27.100 that's on the conscientious front and women are higher in openness proper and men are higher in interest in

00:54:33.900 ideas and that's on the openness front and those differences aren't huge there's more overlap between

00:54:40.380 the genders the sexes than there are than there is lack of overlap but the differences magnify at the

00:54:45.980 extremes and they also maximize in societies that are egalitarian and then the biggest difference between

00:54:54.540 men and women that we know of psychologically is that men are more prone to be interested in things

00:54:59.820 and women are more prone to be interested in people and that's actually quite a large difference

00:55:03.900 by psychological standards and there isn't any evidence that that is socially constructed the

00:55:09.980 counter evidence is that as you make societies more egalitarian those differences actually get bigger

00:55:14.860 rather than smaller and even the london times three weeks ago wrote an editorial describing and not

00:55:20.300 yet another study that demonstrated that so that's like six and they're huge scale studies

00:55:26.140 pointing out that this the fact that the differences between men and women get bigger in more egalitarian

00:55:31.740 societies is now one of the most well-established findings in all of the social sciences thus

00:55:37.660 demonstrating for example that poor james demore was correct despite the fact that google fired him

00:55:43.980 for being accurate in his analysis of the scientific literature okay so you've got the facts on your side

00:55:52.140 problem is is you don't know what to do well there's only one of you that's not a good number if you're

00:55:56.620 going to mount a campaign you annoyed about this well write down exactly what you're annoyed about

00:56:03.500 what bothers you about this okay what would you like to have happen because you need to know what the

00:56:10.220 problem is and you need to know what this solution is then you have to start thinking about strategy and

00:56:15.580 one strategy is you need some allies you need some people on your side now if this is bothering you

00:56:21.900 the probability that it's bothering most people is very high because it's very rare especially with

00:56:27.340 something like this i mean i would say and i think the data support this is that the overwhelming

00:56:35.340 majority of people do not believe that gender is a social construct that there are four sexes and

00:56:41.420 that avoiding naming boys and girls is a good idea so you've got unless you're in a very progressive

00:56:47.580 place in which case that's its own problem you got to find some people who would be willing to go to

00:56:54.620 bat with you and then you have to find it's a political struggle it's a bit of a war it's like okay

00:57:00.540 who's pushing this who's the ringleaders for this you know it's it's certainly possible that most of

00:57:06.300 the teachers don't want to do this either but they're afraid to say anything so i would say

00:57:11.340 this is probably a two-year campaign and you have to decide if this is something that you want to put

00:57:16.700 your time and effort into and if you do you have to conduct it like a like a war you know without the

00:57:22.140 violence obviously but but that's the right metaphor it's like what's the set of problems

00:57:28.300 who's causing them what do you want to have happen as a concert as an alternative how are you going to

00:57:33.820 tackle this you're going to talk to your to your local public authorities school authorities you're

00:57:38.460 going to talk to the local politicians you know talk to the principal are you going to face down

00:57:42.460 the teachers are you going to do that with more than one of you are you going to have your arguments

00:57:46.220 in order you know and and then on a more personal front what are you going to do with your daughter

00:57:52.860 how are you going to educate her let's say you decide not to take this on on the political or public

00:57:57.420 front then you have to have a conversation with her and find out what she thinks you know

00:58:02.140 because she'll be doubtful and dubious about all of this so a lot of that should be asking her

00:58:06.940 questions you know so yeah that's the best i can do with that would you consider adding a list of

00:58:15.820 recommended movies to your website yes i've thought about that also a recommended list of books for

00:58:23.740 for young people um it's on the hypothetical list of things to do um but i haven't done it yet so

00:58:34.620 and it i don't think that it's likely to make it up the priority list for a while because i'm

00:58:39.260 pretty booked out for the next who knows how long a while um can i understand myself or other big five

00:58:47.180 tests be retaken after some time eg one to two years and be fairly accurate i asked because i believe

00:58:52.380 i have changed well you might have changed i mean look first of all people do change as they mature

00:58:58.540 personality is relatively stable across time but relatively stable doesn't mean completely stable

00:59:05.020 it means that you know if you were extremely extroverted the probability that in five years

00:59:10.700 you're going to be extremely introverted is very low but if you were extremely extroverted

00:59:17.420 it's conceivable that you know in one or two years you'll be uh moderately extroverted you can move

00:59:25.420 and some of that's some of that's situational uh some of its learning some of its maturation so

00:59:32.540 one of the most reliable findings in the personality literature is that as people get older

00:59:37.420 they get more conscientious more agreeable and more emotionally stable less neurotic and that

00:59:45.420 those three traits clump to make a super trait called we called it stability so people get more

00:59:51.580 stable as they get older you know and i've seen people learn to be more conscientious that's for sure

00:59:57.260 that happens that happens i think whenever you take people who are who are young and sort of flighty and

01:00:04.060 put them through a rigorous apprenticeship program you know where they discipline themselves and i've

01:00:09.740 seen people become certainly become less lower in neuroticism and less agreeable for that matter

01:00:16.860 so so yes you can take them sure take it again two years later and and and see you know the other

01:00:23.900 thing you can do if you're really curious about your personality is have some other people take the

01:00:28.940 personality test about you because you know some things about your personality and they're accurate

01:00:34.940 to some degree self-report has some degree of accuracy but then you can get information from other people

01:00:41.100 as well and so that's another way of determining um you know of helping of helping get an accurate

01:00:47.100 picture of who you are so um you can change drum the more dramatic to change the more effort is required

01:00:55.740 that's a good way of thinking about it so um we know for example that you can change iq with

01:01:01.900 shift in socioeconomic status so imagine that you have identical twins separated at birth

01:01:07.260 and you know you put one twin into a relatively well-off family and one twin into a relatively poor

01:01:12.860 family and let's assume that being rich has some advantages with regards to intellectual development

01:01:18.060 you need a three standard if i remember correctly you need a three standard deviation might be four but

01:01:24.140 you need a three or four standard deviation move upward in socioeconomic status to produce a one

01:01:30.540 standard deviation increase in iq so you have to move from something like the fifth percentile

01:01:37.340 i might have the stats a bit wrong because i'm trying to do this on the fly you have to move from the

01:01:43.180 bottom fifth percentile to the top fifth percentile in wealth to move from average intelligence to 85th percentile in

01:01:52.700 intelligence so you can change as a consequence of the situation but the bigger the change the more

01:01:59.580 costly and that could be costly in terms of resources or effort so would you like doing a podcast with

01:02:07.420 elon musk let's start an initiative for this yes i would like to do a podcast with elon musk i know people

01:02:14.220 who know him but we've never met um yes i'm sure that would be ridiculously fun so if you want to start an

01:02:21.020 initiative for that you go right ahead and who knows maybe it'll bear fruit um i am going to be

01:02:26.780 concentrating more on my podcast in a few months i'm contracting with a professional company to

01:02:32.860 develop it so that it well for a variety of reasons so that it moves higher up on the priority list

01:02:38.300 so i have a better studio um so that i have some staff to help me uh schedule interviews there's lots

01:02:45.100 of people i want to talk to authors and scientists and politicians and and and so i'm quite excited

01:02:51.180 about that so so and i would love to talk to elon musk so um i'm sure that would be ridiculously fun i

01:02:57.740 would i would love to find out i'd like to ask him about his thought process and also i'm really curious

01:03:06.140 about how in the world he manages to do multiple impossible things because doing one impossible thing

01:03:12.300 is impossible but doing like five impossible things is the product of five impossibilities and

01:03:18.620 that just seems like hyper impossible but he's managed it you know i mean think about it think

01:03:23.340 about what he did he built an electric car which is like hard and then he built a rocket and then he

01:03:29.420 blasted the car into space on his rocket like that that's not that's not real that doesn't happen

01:03:36.940 but it did happen and he did it and so i would really i would love to talk to him i think that

01:03:43.020 would be extremely extremely interesting how do you fight a monster without becoming one yourself

01:03:49.980 you don't

01:03:53.020 you become a monster by fighting with a monster but it's actually a good thing to become a monster

01:03:59.420 you see the difference is and really this is the answer to your question

01:04:02.940 you can stay naive and that's not good because you're vulnerable and you're not useful if you're

01:04:12.300 naive so that's a bad situation so let's say well instead of being naive you decide you're going to

01:04:18.940 go confront the monster okay well the problem with that is that you become the monster all right so how

01:04:26.300 do you deal with that and the answer is to do it voluntarily to do it voluntarily because if you

01:04:32.780 develop your monstrousness voluntarily then perhaps you can bring it under civilized control

01:04:41.340 right you can integrate those those that capacity for mayhem and destruction that you develop within

01:04:49.340 yourself you can integrate that within a comprehensive and properly directed practical philosophy

01:04:57.580 and so that means that you're disciplined you know like a warrior isn't a monster

01:05:03.980 so you have to you have to align you have to discipline your monstrosity and you do that by developing it

01:05:12.620 voluntarily look you see this sort of thing happening all the time in classic hero stories like if you look at

01:05:17.980 the story of the hobbit for example like um bilbo i think bilbo is the hobbit right frodo's the next one let

01:05:27.340 me just look that up yeah okay it's bilbo good that's what i thought now bilbo when he starts when this hobbit

01:05:42.060 starts the book bilbo lives in this little protected area so it's like it's like the castle that the buddha

01:05:49.020 grows up in all the bad things are outside of it and the reason for that actually is because the kingdom

01:05:55.100 is guarded by these descendants of great kings the striders who the hobbits have some contempt for because

01:06:01.260 they kind of look like tramps aragorn is one of them so the descendants of great kings patrol the borders

01:06:07.260 and keep the naive inhabitants of the shire safe and they're naive and they go about their day-to-day

01:06:12.860 work and nothing really threatens them and there's no monsters around and because they don't have any

01:06:16.700 real challenges and because they're peaceful in their wealth and security they think they're good

01:06:22.300 but they're not they're just naive and undisciplined and relatively weak and so they're not prepared for

01:06:28.220 anything when all hell breaks loose they're they're they're like they're like they're like bait they're

01:06:34.460 like prey you know so and of course the wizard um gandalf knows this now despite the fact that

01:06:42.300 the shire folk are rather small and a bit comical and tremendously naive they do have a latent ability

01:06:48.860 for courage and and and forthrightness and gandalf can really see this in the one hobbit bilbo and so he

01:06:56.220 tells bilbo that darkness is brewing on the outs in the outlands outside of protected territory

01:07:04.380 absolutely classic mythological representation it's the same in the lion king where um um mustafa

01:07:10.620 tells simba that his kingdom is everything that the light falls on and that he's not to journey outside

01:07:15.660 of that domain right that's out in the elephant graveyard and death and all of that that's outside

01:07:20.300 of the shire let's say it's outside of paradise it's outside of the walled city it's outside of your

01:07:25.660 domain of knowledge well that's where that's where that's where malevolence and chaos brews now you

01:07:34.620 see that again in in the lion king because that's where scar and the hyenas go off to to conspire and

01:07:40.460 turn into what are essentially jack booted nazis before they take over the the pride land same idea

01:07:47.980 okay well so what happens to bilbo when he goes off to confront the dragon

01:07:53.180 um he has to become a thief right which is very it's very it's very strange ethically because

01:08:02.220 well bilbo wasn't a thief and you think well it's better to be to not be a thief than to be a thief

01:08:07.820 and the answer to that it's very hard answer very complicated answer and it's not one to be dealt with

01:08:14.620 lightly

01:08:19.180 it's not it's not good to be moral if the reason that you're moral is because you cannot be otherwise

01:08:27.420 that's the naivety issue right so naivety is not morality and if you're terrified to be a thief and

01:08:34.300 you have no skill at it and you're not a thief that doesn't mean you're good now if you could be the best

01:08:40.540 thief in the world man you were one sneaky character and and and fast on your feet and a

01:08:45.740 real strategic thinker and capable of breaking rules when necessary and scaling walls and climbing houses

01:08:51.500 and infiltrating parties and plotting for the long run and then you decided not to do it well then

01:08:57.660 then that's a whole different story then you're a moral animal right so you need that capacity for

01:09:03.580 criminality you need the capacity for criminality you need the capacity of evil and you need to have

01:09:08.540 mastered that and that's what makes you good and so well that's what happens in the hobbit is that

01:09:13.980 bilbo has to develop his dark side his shadow and he does that you know and and well he's a thief in

01:09:21.660 a variety of ways he ends up stealing the ring which is really interesting and of course that that bleeds

01:09:26.620 into uh the lord of the rings so and and the and but you know the look he doesn't get away scot-free

01:09:33.660 from developing his dark side like he's touched by evil from then on in he's got the ring problem and

01:09:38.380 that's a big one that thing that might possess him because he's got too close to it it's like harry

01:09:42.780 parter potter and his scar and the fact that he has a bit of voldemort in him it's exactly the same

01:09:47.260 idea or the strange affinity that the joker insists upon in joker and batman um um when when bilbo comes

01:09:56.380 back to the shire like he's never one of the hobbits again he's always an outsider he's got a glimmer of

01:10:02.300 magic and danger about him and that makes people respect him but they also they also think that

01:10:07.260 he's unconventional in an unacceptable way and you know kind of make a wide berth around him because

01:10:13.900 now he's contaminated with with evil and the unknown even though that makes him a much better character

01:10:19.580 all things considered and a real fighter in the battle between good and evil and the person who's

01:10:24.060 gone out and confronted the dragon and got the treasure all of that so well the pathway to from

01:10:30.700 naivety to the full development of character is associated with the development in the union

01:10:36.300 sense of the shadow and that's that capacity for mayhem and malevolence that needs to be brought under

01:10:40.780 control so yes it's it's it's it's complicated um and and that doesn't mean that you're justified in

01:10:51.500 going out and breaking rules because you think that you're building your character you know it's not that

01:10:55.660 simple if you look at um if you look at stories like harry potter you know all of harry's crew breaks

01:11:04.780 rules but they only break a rule when not breaking it would break a higher order rule and that's still

01:11:12.780 morally ambivalent right because the best pathway forward is to violate no conventions to do the right

01:11:20.380 thing and violate new conventions no no conventions but now and then you're in a terrible situation where

01:11:27.260 you can you can do a small bad thing or a large bad thing or you can allow a large bad thing to happen

01:11:34.220 by by by not by by failing to break a rule that often happens in harry potter so then you're in in

01:11:43.500 trouble and part of being wise and oriented towards the good is to know when breaking a rule is the right

01:11:49.580 thing to do even though you shouldn't break rules so canada has legalized marijuana what are your thoughts

01:12:03.740 it's about time that's my thoughts i think that once a certain number of people break a law

01:12:10.940 then it's not reasonable to have the law that's part of it um it isn't obvious to me that

01:12:19.580 it was irrational in some sense to have for marijuana to be illegal especially given that

01:12:28.540 alcohol is legal because alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana i'm more or less

01:12:33.340 libertarian on this front it's like smoke your damn pot and try not to act like too much of a moron

01:12:39.900 when you're stoned that's what it looks like to me so and and i kind of feel that way across the

01:12:45.980 spectrum of consciousness altering substances it's like you you i think that the danger of restricting

01:12:54.780 people's freedoms unnecessarily is more dangerous than the danger of not restricting them and so

01:13:02.060 you're entitled to go to hell in a handbasket in your own manner um and hopefully but i do think that if

01:13:09.420 you're going to engage or indulge in your favorite drug of abuse that you should be as little amount

01:13:16.620 of annoying to everyone around you as you possibly can be then i would also say with regards to drug

01:13:24.220 trade in general is that here's a bunch of consequences of the war on drugs a lot of them

01:13:31.100 unexpected first of all terrible incarceration rate especially in the united states that's not so good

01:13:37.180 second is the dumping of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into the hands of like

01:13:41.820 serious criminals and the destabilization of much of central america as a consequence tremendous

01:13:47.020 violence as a consequence and then the enriching of people who are these are seriously uh committed

01:13:53.500 dangerous criminals and to give them that much power is a bad idea so maybe the government has to

01:13:59.260 tax and regulate like it does with cigarettes and it does with alcohol and to some degree it does with

01:14:04.140 gambling um then the next issue is uh one of the consequences now of the the the classification of

01:14:16.620 certain drugs as illegal is that the chemists are faster than the legislators and so what they do is

01:14:23.660 they keep making variants of addictive drugs and now instead of a dozen drugs of abuse which is what we

01:14:29.260 had say 20 years ago we have like 300 and some of them are way more addictive than the original drugs

01:14:36.940 and so it isn't it doesn't look like good policy to me and i know that places like portugal for example

01:14:44.780 have decriminalized every drug of abuse and it doesn't look like it's been a catastrophe so

01:14:52.540 well we'll see right we legalized marijuana yesterday there's no the streets aren't full of

01:14:59.340 stone people bumping into walls nothing's changed i hope it works i hope that the government regulates

01:15:06.380 it properly that they derive tax revenue from it and that um people use pot a little and that people

01:15:14.780 use alcohol a little less that would be good because alcohol is a very dangerous drug so okay

01:15:22.300 so i'm going to go for eight more minutes i have to stop comparatively early today because

01:15:28.060 i have to pack and then i have to go to dublin and so just to warn you all so

01:15:52.300 do you have any advice on how to vet a potential marriage partner during the dating relationship phase

01:16:15.820 god that's a hard question okay so while i can tell you what i've observed as a consequence of

01:16:26.540 watching you know all the married people successful and unsuccessful who i know but

01:16:32.060 also watching all my clients and giving this a fair bit of thought um

01:16:36.140 here here's some of what's necessary for a successful marriage

01:16:50.460 you have to trust the person that doesn't mean they can't make mistakes because you're going to make

01:16:56.700 mistakes and so are they but fundamentally you have to trust them and what that means is that you have to

01:17:03.180 trust that if things go wrong if they make a mistake they'll do what was necessary

01:17:09.660 in conjunction with you to set it right you have to be able to negotiate with the person

01:17:15.420 and those two things are tied very very close together so if you you guys have to be able to

01:17:20.860 have a conversation about what it is that you want to do come to a conclusion

01:17:26.220 moderate your differences move forward and have that work you have to be able to fight and make up

01:17:36.060 both of those if you can't fight with your potential marriage partner then you're not

01:17:43.980 communicating because there's just no bloody way that you're going to get along there's no way you're

01:17:49.340 going to agree on everything that's just not going to happen so you you have to be honest with one

01:17:55.820 another enough to have some conflict but then you have to be able to make up that's a huge deal man

01:18:00.860 because well then you get to have conflict and solve problems and make up so trust negotiation

01:18:08.940 uh conflict resolution the next thing i would say is what's it's kind of nice if you're attracted to

01:18:15.260 each other you know if there's a strong sexual attraction there it isn't obvious to me that

01:18:20.300 that's something that can be conjured up if it doesn't exist i haven't seen that happen successfully

01:18:26.380 it's that seems to depend on factors that aren't really under voluntary control you know i mean

01:18:33.580 obviously people can modify themselves to some degree to be more or less attractive staying in physical

01:18:39.020 shape and and and that sort of thing dressing nicely and and and having a certain amount of sex

01:18:45.420 appeal and charisma and provocativeness that's all there but that's that's all well and good and it's

01:18:51.180 important but i do believe that that spark that's outside of voluntary control is a necessary

01:18:57.180 precondition for a long lasting relationship i do believe though that if it's there you still have

01:19:03.180 to work very hard to maintain it as hard in your marriage as you would when you're dating and you

01:19:08.300 need to know that um then i it's also helpful if you actually like the person you know if they're

01:19:14.860 your friend that you actually like to go do things with them sort of independent of the romantic element

01:19:20.300 you know if they're you don't need to want to do everything together but you should have some things

01:19:26.140 that you like to do in common so some similarity and personality is useful the personality scale is

01:19:33.260 useful for that like look here here it's really hard for an extreme extrovert and an extreme introvert

01:19:39.580 to live together because the extreme extrovert wants to be with people all the time and the extreme

01:19:43.980 introvert is immediately exhausted by that and it's neither of those things are precisely under voluntary

01:19:52.300 control um it's really hard for someone super agreeable and super disagreeable to get along together

01:19:59.260 because the agreeable person isn't going to be able to stand up very well to the disagreeable

01:20:04.860 person and the disagreeable person is going to think that the agreeable person is a pushover

01:20:10.300 that's rough it's very hard for someone high in openness and someone very low in openness to be

01:20:15.740 together because the open person is like fascinated by ideas and really interested in aesthetics and

01:20:20.140 art and philosophy and poetry and all of that and the person who's low in openness it's like they're

01:20:24.940 colorblind to that it's not in their realm of involuntary interest um conscientiousness the same thing if

01:20:34.860 if you if you're a very conscientious person very diligent nose to the grindstone um industrious and

01:20:41.340 orderly and your partner can while away the time with no problem whatsoever and doesn't mind a mess and

01:20:48.860 disorder then that's the the conscientious person is going to think that the

01:20:55.020 unconscious person is useless and the unconscious person is going to think that the conscientious person

01:21:01.100 is an uptight tyrant and that's very very hard to overcome it's it's like a fatal flaw so those

01:21:08.380 extreme personality differences across more than one or two traits is is going to make your relationship

01:21:13.500 extraordinarily difficult so the only place where that might be different is that you know you

01:21:20.860 probably don't want to both be high in neuroticism so like if one of you is high in neuroticism and the

01:21:27.260 other isn't that's kind of a nice balance because one of you will be a little alert to threat and the

01:21:33.740 other one will calm the one who's alert to threat down if you're both low in neuroticism well then that's

01:21:39.100 not going to be too much of a problem although you might be a little bit less risk averse than you

01:21:43.900 should be but mostly you want a fair bit of similarity in terms of personality then i guess

01:21:48.940 the other thing is is that well do you have something like a shared vision of the future you

01:21:54.060 know like uh how are you going to mediate the uh inevitable conflict between whose career takes priority

01:22:03.820 and and what about kids do you both want kids and if you do want kids when do you want them

01:22:08.860 and how many do you want and what's your sense about who's responsible for what when with regards

01:22:14.940 to the kids and the same when you're running a household it's like do you have some sense of

01:22:19.660 do you have enough shared beliefs so that running a household together is something that is with a

01:22:25.500 peaceful household and a productive household is within the realm of possibility so um there that's

01:22:32.700 that's that's what it looks like to me so um that's a lot of things so you said you act as if god exists

01:22:43.500 do you also act as if the devil exists man i think i probably act even more as if the devil exists because

01:22:49.660 it's a lot in some sense it's a lot more easy for me and i think it is for most people i'm it's easy it's

01:22:56.460 easier for me to believe in the reality of malevolence and evil and to be terrified about that getting a

01:23:02.620 grip on me than it is to be optimistic and naive about the possibility of transcendent good like it

01:23:11.100 it's just that that it it's not that i am skeptical about the reality of transcendent good i mean

01:23:16.860 fundamentally i believe that good is more powerful than evil i do believe that but there's something

01:23:23.420 palpable about evil that is and that's also undeniable it's like well you can debate about

01:23:29.260 whether or not heaven exists you know and you can even be skeptical but you can't debate about

01:23:33.900 whether the gulag archipelago exists and you can't debate about auschwitz and you can't debate about

01:23:39.260 the fact that people's proclivity towards blindness and malevolence produced those horrors and the horrors

01:23:45.820 that people often encounter in their day-to-day world and in their relationships so it's very easy for

01:23:50.940 someone like me to be a believer in evil and to try to turn away from that and so and but but through

01:24:00.220 deep contemplation you know i've come to the conclusion that the ability of human beings to

01:24:06.140 turn away from evil and to pursue good is more powerful than malevolence itself but that's more of

01:24:13.420 it's funny that's more of a that fills me with with hope and and and awe i i guess is the right word

01:24:25.580 when i can bring it to mind and think that we we can in fact defeat malevolence but sort of on a

01:24:32.700 moment to moment basis the malevolence is so palpable and so real that it's a more powerful

01:24:45.420 it's a more powerful motivator for for avoidance i don't mean avoidance of responsibility i mean

01:24:51.180 avoidance of walking down that path and i think that's probably in keeping with the cycle well-known

01:24:56.460 psychological doctrine that people are more loss averse than they are gain sensitive you know so

01:25:02.460 a loss of x it upsets you more to lose five dollars than it does make you happy to gain five dollars

01:25:10.140 that's that's a well-known psychological fact and it's because we're more sensitive to punishment and

01:25:16.780 negative emotion and that's because well you can die in agony but you can only be so happy

01:25:23.180 so yes i certainly act as if the devil exists i would say and i think i probably believed in the

01:25:31.180 devil so to speak speaking metaphorically before i believed in god speaking metaphorically i became

01:25:38.860 convinced of the reality of evil and that really and not only that not only convinced of the reality of

01:25:45.900 evil but also convinced that everyone was destined to play their part in that including me and that

01:25:52.860 it would be better if i played the least part in that as possible you know and that sort of brings us

01:25:57.740 back to this book you know as solzhenitsyn said the line that divides good from evil runs down

01:26:06.380 the heart of every individual right it's an internal thing

01:26:10.620 not a it's not between states it's not between groups it's between elements of our psyche

01:26:17.500 and our individual responsibility is to work to ameliorate suffering and to constrain malevolence

01:26:25.980 and to start with ourselves and so that's a good place to end so thank you all very much

01:26:35.260 for your continued support for paying attention to this q a for everything that you've offered to me

01:26:43.420 over the last few years it's been an absolutely overwhelming experience for example to go out and do

01:26:49.180 these lectures they're unbelievably positive experiences to see all these thousands of people come out

01:26:54.940 to engage in a serious discussion about vision and strategy and responsibility and individual

01:27:02.780 sovereignty and the the possibility that we could all aim together acting individually towards

01:27:14.140 at least a less hellish future that's really something so um that's good guys so

01:27:25.100 so till next time till november and i'll put out this video on the solzhenitsyn preface i'll put that out

01:27:34.380 before november 1st that'll probably be next on the next on the list and so it's off to europe and uh

01:27:43.420 we'll talk to you all soon thanks very much bye for now

01:27:51.740 so

01:28:01.020 so

01:28:03.020 so

01:28:12.300 so

01:28:14.300 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 06, 2018

October 2018 Q & A

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