Episode 368： Jordan Peterson Emotional Interview with Patrick Bet-David
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
165.22464
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jordan Peterson joins us to talk about his 12 Rules for a Good Life and why they are so important. He also talks about how he came up with them, why they were so important to him, and why he decided to write a book about them.
Transcript
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30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put them up,
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reach the sky, touch the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for
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I'm Patrick Medebi, host of Ayutem, and today's guest we've had on the past before, and I
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brought him back, that's Jordan Peterson, except this setting is slightly different.
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It's in front of 8,000 people that we sit down and talk about some interesting topics
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that got emotional multiple times, some of it has to do with money, some of it has to
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do with politics, some of it has to do with family, but you will definitely be amazed by
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Before we get into it, obviously a lot of people know, because they've read about you or watched
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you in different places, 12 rules you have, your rule number one is stand up straight with
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your shoulders straight, number two is treat yourself like someone you're responsible for
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helping, three is befriend people who want the best for you, four is compare yourself
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to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today, do not let your children
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do anything that makes you dislike them, set your house in order before you criticize the
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world, pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient, tell the truth or at least don't
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lie, that's number eight, assume the person you're listening to know something you don't,
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be precise in your speech, do not bother children while they're skateboarding, and last but not
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least, pet a cat when you encounter one in the street. I heard somewhere you said it was 40 rules
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It was originally 42 and I'm working on another set of 12.
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So what was the cutoff, like what was number 13 that missed out, was it like a battle for number,
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I'm curious to know what number 13 was for you.
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Well, I tried to pick a set that would make a coherent narrative, and so it wasn't like
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the rules differed in quality particularly, I think they were all worth writing about, but
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when you write a book, you want it to have a certain internal consistency, and so I went for that.
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A couple of the rules that didn't make it were, be careful who you share good news with, that's
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a good one, because you want to share good news with people who are going to be genuinely
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happy for you, and that's one way that you can identify those people who are on your side.
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There was a corollary to that, which was be careful who you share bad news with, because
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that's equally tricky, you know, you want someone who will listen to you when you're
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having trouble and allow you your grief, especially if it's a consequence of something tragic and
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who won't try to one-up you, you know, because often when you're talking to people, they'll
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be thinking about what they have to say that's worse, and that's not helpful if you need a
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Make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.
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I talked a lot about, already, about the necessity of cleaning your room, which is, you know, in
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some sense a foolish piece of advice, because it seems so obvious, but it's not obvious at
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all, and you'll find if you try it, especially if you're in a household that's not very functional,
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that you'll encounter obstacles that you couldn't imagine existed while you're trying to,
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put your life in order, and you can take your surroundings beyond order and move towards beauty,
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and that's unbelievably useful, because, well, beauty calls people to their higher being,
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I would say, and to make friends with beauty is to introduce yourself very carefully to one
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of the mysteries of life that make it worth living, and so those are a few of the rules
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that didn't make the original cut, but that I'm still working on and still thinking about.
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I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next book that you come out with.
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So, you know, there's this saying, there's this saying that says, tough times produce strong
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men, strong men produce good times, good times produce weak men, weak men produce tough times.
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If that's the truth, which phase are we in today?
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Well, if you think about it historically, you have to say that we're in good times.
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I mean, that doesn't mean everything about the current times are good, and, of course,
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life is always tenuous and difficult, but it's 1919.
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If you go back 100 years ago, imagine what the last five years would have been like, right?
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You would have been, the entire world was encapsulated in a terrible war.
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The trench warfare was absolutely brutal, and that was a five-year period, and then that
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was followed by the Spanish influenza, which killed 120 million people, and, you know, so
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I'd rather be here now than there then by a substantial margin, and I think life is never
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easy, even under relatively positive conditions, but I would say that
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it's very difficult to make the case that we're not in good times, and I especially think that's
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The American working class, and maybe the Western working class in general, paid a very
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large price for enriching the rest of the world.
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You know, I mean, China's come up in a miraculous way in the last 40 years, South Korea, India,
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while the entire, all of Southeast Asia, and increasingly Africa too, because the fastest
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growing economies in the world are now in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that's produced a tremendous
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competition for working class people in the West, but speaking on a global level, there's
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never been a better time for the majority of people to be alive, and the future, although
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we're vulnerable and terrible things can always happen to us, it's hard to make a case that
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the future doesn't look comparatively positive.
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We're becoming extremely technologically sophisticated, and the world is changing at an incredibly
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rapid rate, and the only way we're going to be able to manage that in a positive way is
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if each of us, or as many of us as possible, are capable of making wise and careful and truthful
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decisions, and if we do that, then, you know, maybe things can continue to improve.
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The rate of absolute poverty in the world has fell by 50% between the year 2000 and the year 2012.
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You know, that's the fastest rate of economic improvement in the history of the world, and
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there's plenty of reason to be optimistic if you're inclined in that direction.
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I would say it's best to marry that with a healthy dose of attentive caution, because,
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well, as I said, things can go badly wrong, but I can't think of a time in the past that
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I would trade for now, despite all the problems that are also part and parcel of being alive
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So do you think these good times will produce weak men, or you don't buy that?
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You think in any times we're going to have weak, strong people being produced?
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Well, I think there is a certain danger in luxury.
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You know, we don't know how necessary a certain degree of privation is to motivation.
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You know, the typical first-generation immigrant story is someone arrives with nothing and is
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motivated fully to do whatever is necessary to make either themselves or their children a success.
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And that does seem to decline, that motivation does seem to decline somewhat over the following
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So, for example, Asian immigrants, their children outperform American children in school by a
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substantial margin, but that disappears by about three generations, that advantage.
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As the Asian immigrants become more Americanized, their proclivity to excel academically.
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So I come first generation, I'm more disciplined, my kid becomes less disciplined, my grandkids
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become less disciplined, and the one prior to that, you know, past that also gets less
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Yeah, well, like I said, I mean, and you probably face this to some degree because, you know,
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It's very difficult to provide your children with optimal privation in order to make them
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And you don't get people to stand up on their own two feet and to adopt responsibility if everything
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Oh, it's a real conundrum as you become successful because you're in a situation where if your
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children ask you for something, there's no formal reason for you to say no, you know, because you
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can provide whatever is being requested, but by doing that, you steal from them the opportunity
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to generate that for themselves, and that's, I suppose, one of the dangers of, well, it's
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What that does to people over the long run, I don't think we understand well yet because
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most people haven't been prosperous for very long, right?
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There's been plenty of privation to go around, and, of course, there still is in many, many
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parts of the world, including in the United States and in the West.
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Do you think we're getting softer and more sensitive?
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Do you think in general, especially America, because America's been successful now for
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quite some time, we're constantly growing, do you think we are becoming softer and more
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Well, I think there's a push in that direction.
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There certainly seems to be a technical push in that direction in the universities.
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Well, it's complicated, you know, my, like, generally when I try to assess something like
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that, there's a rule if you're a social scientist, and the first rule is, in some sense, to look
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at context before you look at personality, and I think there's been a lot of really radical
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changes in our society in the last 50 years, and we don't understand their consequences.
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The most radical change is probably the birth control pill, because it's provided women
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with voluntary control over the reproductive function, and that's equivalent to a major
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It's consequence is virtually incomprehensible.
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I mean, partly, one of the consequences is, is, you know, where you, where reliable birth
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control is provided to women, first of all, they immediately become educated, second, their
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economies tend to grow, and third, the birth rate falls below replacement.
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And then all three of those factors are monumental, you know, so, perhaps especially the third, the
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falling of the birth rate below replacement, which is the case in virtually every country
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softness, well, look, like, we don't know exactly what the optimal conditions are under which
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Most children now have older parents, right, because people aren't having children until
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they're in their 30s, and there's a big difference between having a parent who's in his or her 30s
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The 20-year-olds are still kind of like kids, and they're going to be more usefully neglectful,
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Well, look, one of the things we used to do with my daughter when she was very little was,
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you know, she was about a year and a half, is we'd have her in a room alone, and she would
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usually complain about that for a few minutes, and then she'd find a way to amuse herself,
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you know, she liked to take books out of shelves and put them back in, and, like, if you let
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her be, get through that initial bit of misery, then she would learn how to regulate herself,
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And so that's a good example of minor privation, having a positive influence, but, you know,
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children used to have multiple siblings, and siblings toughen you up, because there's tremendous
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competition in families among siblings, and they had younger parents who had fewer resources,
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and, you know, now parents are older, first of all, and second, they're more resource-rich,
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and so they're more likely to schedule their children to death, in some sense, to provide
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them with all the opportunities that they feel would be useful, and that's understandable,
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people, and plus, because they have fewer children, each child is, in some sense, more
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You know, not like if you have ten children, you don't love all of them, but, you know,
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there's ten of them, there's only so much excess attention that can go around, and they do
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a lot of socializing each other, rather than being socialized by parents, but if you only
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have one child, you know, you're going to devote all your resources to providing them with
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absolutely everything you can provide them with, and one of the dangers of that is that you'll
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overprotect them, and you'll provide them with too much, and we don't understand those dynamics, right?
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We don't understand how much you should stay hands-off your kids and let them go out there
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and make their own mistakes and find their own way, and that's, well, that's tricky, and we're
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ignorant about it, and so I think one of the consequences of that is that we do have
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a reasonable percentage of young people, maybe young adolescents, the kind that you hear about
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at university, who have been overprotected and overscheduled and under-challenged in some
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We extend that overprotection far longer than is helpful.
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You know, it's hard, though, because, as I said, when you have resources, you can use them
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to make your children's lives, let's say, easier, but the question is, like, do you really
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want to make the life of someone you love easier?
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And it's tough, because how do you, you know, the whole thing is when your kids go, kids'
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friends go and say, hey, I heard your mommy and daddy are rich.
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But was your underlying message you encouraging us?
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Because there's a lot of Latinos in the room here.
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Were you trying to encourage us to go out there and have 10 babies?
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You're talking, they will make 10 babies in a heartbeat if you say that.
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These are professionals that are making babies here.
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Well, you know, my wife and I had two kids, and we didn't start late compared to most of
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the people we knew, I think, I think our first child was born when my wife was 29.
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We certainly felt that we would have had more children if we would have started earlier.
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There's no doubt that, and this is a very important thing to know, you know, there's
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not that many things in your life that are of central importance.
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There's your friends, there's your family, your intimate partner, by family I mean your
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siblings and your parents, but then there's your children, there's your career, there's
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your educational trajectory, there's how you take care of yourself and protect yourself from
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temptation and what sort of useful things you do in the time that you're not working.
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But, you know, children are a third of life, something like that, maybe more.
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And so, I would certainly recommend that you don't miss it.
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It's complicated because, of course, now, in most situations, both parents have to work.
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But it's always been complicated to raise children.
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They're a long-term investment, but, yeah, right, which is why it's hard to even pay child
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care workers, right, because the payoff for having a child doesn't occur until two decades
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later, sometimes four decades later, but it's not something you want to miss, that's for
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sure, because it's, well, that's life, you know.
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There's, it's part of the human condition, and little children pay you back immensely if
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you have a good relationship with them, you know, if you're on their side, and encourage
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them, because they're an unconditional source of joy and love.
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You know, the other thing I noticed that you should, that you should all know is that
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as you get older, your family, the family you've produced, becomes more and more important.
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You know, so we teach young women in particular that the fundamental goal of their life is going
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career, and, you know, first of all, most people don't have careers, they have jobs, and those
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are very different things, but you're, you're not a very happy camper, so to speak, if you're
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45, and you have no one, and it doesn't go upwards after that, so don't miss it.
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Is, you know, we're going to have President Bush here speaking in the next two days.
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I don't know when he's speaking in the next two days, but he's speaking, I can't say, because
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Secret Service told me I can't give the specific time, everyone's trying to figure it out.
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But, you know, why is it that so many powerful political families send their kids off to boarding
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And I don't know, as a clinical psychologist, how much research, or how much of that are
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you, have you looked at with the link to boarding school teachers' independence, toughens them
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up a little bit, the whole opportunity to have your kids have a little bit more challenging
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Well, I don't think that there's any evidence that, there's not a lot of evidence that school
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quality per se is a determining factor in the outcome of educational processes.
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That actually seems to be a situation, I mean, there are exceptions, and I'm certainly not
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trying to say that every school is equal, but a tremendous amount of what determines whether
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or not a child is successful at school is their intelligence.
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I mean, you people all went to high school, to junior high school.
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I mean, you know that in a group of 30 kids, there's some kids that are so bright that they
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And there are other kids who just can't get it no matter how hard they try.
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And that's one of the really catastrophic and built-in inequalities in the world, generally
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in boarding schools, because wealth and intelligence tend to be correlated, which is also something
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You'd expect more intelligent people to be able to make more money, or you'd certainly at
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least expect less intelligent people to be able to make less money.
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The schools are generally of, the schools generally produce good outcomes, but it's
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For even, and this is true at higher levels of education, too, to a degree that people don't
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So, for example, at a university like Harvard, any of the Ivy Leagues, it's very, very difficult
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So, there's far more applicants than there are positions, and they use the SAT as one
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So, you have to have a very high SAT score, and then generally you have to be good at at
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least one or two other things to be considered.
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And a very large percentage, for example, of Harvard undergraduates, and there's only about
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4,000 of them, so it's a rather small school, were valedictorians of their class.
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They have very high SAT scores, and the SAT is a proxy for IQ.
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The people who administer the SAT don't like to admit that, but there's absolutely no doubt
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that it's the case, because any set of questions that assess general knowledge and problem-solving
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And so, part of the advantage of hiring an Ivy League graduate isn't the fact that they
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went to a high-quality school, it's the fact that it was impossible to get in.
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And so, the screening has been done for the employee, for the employer, by the admissions
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And the same thing is true of business schools, and the people who run business schools know
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that, is that the primary value that they offer, and again, this is not the case with
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every business school, is the fact that if you hire an MBA from their program, and it's
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a very selective program, then you have a very high probability of hiring someone who's intrinsically
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And that's a great predictor, those are great predictors of long-term success.
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So, and what would you expect in a society that's essentially meritocratic?
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It's pretty straightforward to think this through.
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Not only should people who are faster and smarter be more productive, especially if they're
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hard-working, but that's really what you'd want, isn't it?
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I mean, how the hell do you want to set up your society?
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You want to set up your society so that incompetent people who do nothing succeed?
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So, you know, and I should say, I should say that I'm very aware of the unfairness of a
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meritocratic society, of its intrinsic unfairness.
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I had someone write me the other day, he had listened to some of my lectures on IQ, and
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he sent me his IQ scores, and he was in the fifth percentile, which basically meant that
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95% of the people around him were faster cognitively than he was.
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And, you know, the letter had, it wasn't very grammatically correct, and it wasn't very
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And he said that he had a very difficult time finding a job and keeping one, that he was
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And that's a terrible thing, you know, because it's not as if it's his fault.
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A lot of what constitutes your innate cognitive ability or your cognitive ability is something
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that's really granted to you by fortune and fate.
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And, I mean, you can make someone stupider, but it's very difficult to make someone smarter,
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Sometimes people stack up at the bottom, and it's not easy to figure out how to deal
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with that, but because you need the people who are leading the cognitive revolutions to
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develop entrepreneurial enterprises and to run things properly and to invent the new things
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that we all use, and hopefully to raise the living standards of society in general.
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So, do you think, you said it's easier to make people stupider, that's what you said,
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Well, you can do that by depriving them of nutrition when they're children.
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I mean, one of the things we know, and this is from Bjorn Lomberg's work, which I would
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really recommend, Lomberg has put together a team of economists to rank order problems in
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the world by return on investment in solving them.
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So, you can imagine, you know, maybe there's a hundred problems that beset the world, from
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starvation to lack of water, to lack of sanitary facilities, to lack of education, to tyrannical
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governance, to, well, you can continue the list in your own imagination.
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What Lomberg did was consult very high-level economists who he put in teams to find out
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where you get the biggest return for your foreign policy dollar over, you know, a reasonable
00:26:12.820
And it's clearly the case that if you invest in early childhood nutrition, that pays off
00:26:19.580
And so, one of the ways that you can impair children's intelligence permanently is by ensuring
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that they don't have enough to eat when they're very young.
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And that's actually something that can be addressed very inexpensively, and it's to
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Do you think media makes us smarter or stupider?
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I think it makes some people smarter and some people stupider.
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See, you've got to kind of fragment, you've got to kind of fragment the people that you're
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It's like asking whether daycare is good for kids or not.
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And the answer is, if the daycare is better than your family, then daycare is good for
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You know, and I actually mean that technically, because the studies of early childhood daycare
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indicate that for some kids it's perfectly fine and for other kids it's not.
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It's good if your kid is extroverted and ready to play with other children and so forth.
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There's a lot of individual differences that have to be taken into account.
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Look, imagine that you're a little kid and, you know, your parents are neglectful and you're
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in your crib most of the time, but the television is on.
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Well, that's a hell of a lot better than just being in your crib, you know.
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Over the last century, on average, IQ levels have gone up by quite a substantial amount.
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And the reason for that seems to be that the very low end has been pushed up.
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And some of that's going to be a consequence of increased nutrition and some of it's going
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to be a consequence of the fact that television is a lot better than nothing.
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Now, whether television is better for you than, you know, a diet of high quality literature,
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Whether it's better for you than playing properly with your peers, engaging in pretend play and
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all the other things that you have to do to establish yourself as a competent child,
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But, generally speaking, I would say that the dispersion of the media technology we have
00:28:44.960
And the other thing that's worth thinking about too is that computers also make us more intelligent,
00:28:51.920
I would say, not because of the content, but because of the technology.
00:28:57.880
You know, you've got to be pretty damn organized and sharp to keep your phone and your computer
00:29:08.480
You know, and it actually annoys the hell out of me because, you know, I was sort of old
00:29:15.160
A lot of people my age aren't very good at using computers, and people who are older are
00:29:25.560
I made a decision when the computers started to become omnipresent, and so that would have
00:29:30.320
been about 1993, that I was going to spend a year, and that was the first year that I
00:29:35.660
was teaching in Boston, pretty much doing nothing but figuring out how Intel 486 has worked.
00:29:42.200
And it meant there was a lot of other things that I had to put on hold, but I did become
00:29:47.420
a competent computer user, and I'm pretty fast.
00:29:51.680
But, you know, my son, it's just annoying as hell to watch him on the computer and on
00:29:56.620
the phone, and my graduate students as well, because they're so much faster than me that
00:30:00.700
it's not even funny, and I'm not really accustomed to being slower than someone else in the room.
00:30:05.980
And so, you know, the other thing you see too is that, I mean, certainly I would say if
00:30:20.480
my son and my daughter are both competent technology users, my son in particular, although my daughter
00:30:27.540
has her shining spots too, especially for use of social media.
00:30:32.720
But, you know, if I had children now, the one thing I would bloody well make sure that
00:30:36.520
they knew was how to use a computer, how to program, man.
00:30:39.600
Because if you're smart and you can use a computer, you are so much smarter than you
00:30:44.140
are if you're just smart that it's not even funny.
00:30:46.680
You know, and you talk to people, you see this in Silicon Valley all the time, you talk to
00:30:50.920
people who are expert computer users, they are so bloody powerful, it is just beyond belief.
00:30:55.640
So, and that's going to do nothing but expand, right?
00:30:59.660
Because Moore's Law is not dead, and computers are doubling in power every 18 months.
00:31:05.060
And so, and who the hell knows where that's going to go?
00:31:08.540
So, your kids, they should know everything they possibly can about how to spin a computer
00:31:17.300
Is that one of the reasons why you love Twitter so much?
00:31:25.640
I have, I have pulled back from Twitter almost entirely in the last four months, and I can't
00:31:35.800
say that that's done me any psychological harm.
00:31:44.920
You know, the comments on Twitter are really kind of, they're such an odd way of communicating
00:31:49.300
because, let's say you tweet something out and it goes out to, oh, who knows, I think
00:31:54.280
I have a million Twitter followers, it's something like that, and I don't know how many of them
00:31:58.440
read what I tweet, but let's say 10,000 or something, it's just a guess.
00:32:09.840
You know, like if I just pointed to 50 people in the audience randomly and asked for an opinion
00:32:13.980
about something, I'd kind of get a good sample of what the audience thought.
00:32:17.820
But if I said, okay, who had an absolutely dreadful morning and is just as bitchy as can
00:32:26.040
Okay, so why don't all you people stand up, okay?
00:32:28.400
And then I'll ask the most miserable of you for your opinion.
00:32:41.020
You know, so it's a form of pseudo-information.
00:32:44.640
It's like you're communicating with people and you respond to it like you're communicating
00:32:48.940
with people because, well, you're accustomed to communicating with people and so that's
00:32:54.140
But you don't know what the hell's going on with the person who's commenting.
00:32:57.940
You don't know if they are even real, if they're hiding behind some false pseudonym
00:33:03.060
or if they're trolling or, or like I said, if they just had an absolutely miserable day
00:33:07.940
and need to, you know, throw a dart at someone to alleviate some of their stress.
00:33:13.160
So, and that's a problem with social media in general, all these new communication technologies
00:33:19.180
We, we really have no idea what they're doing to us.
00:33:24.480
I mean, they're really, really hard on young women in particular.
00:33:30.880
You know, when I was a teenager, I mean, I, I did, God, if I had to write a book about
00:33:37.040
the stupid things I did when I was a teenager, it'd be a very thick book.
00:33:40.720
And it'd be a worse book if there were photographs accompanying it.
00:33:46.880
And, you know, but, but I had this advantage that young people today don't have, which was,
00:33:52.940
well, when my day of stupidity was over, I could go home and it was not there.
00:34:03.320
There wasn't 20 of my friends communicating to me about, you know, what foolish thing I
00:34:09.800
And, and young people now, they're just followed by paparazzi, essentially, constantly.
00:34:20.240
And, and I've watched that with the young teenage daughters of many of my friends, because my
00:34:26.060
kids were a little too old for that to have actually have happened to them.
00:34:30.680
And we know that there is some relationship between the amount of time people use Facebook,
00:34:37.100
for example, and their mental health, which mean the more they use Facebook, the more
00:34:42.200
And it might be that the depression is driving the Facebook use, but the causal pathway seems
00:34:47.500
to be the other way around, which is, you know, it's just playing that unbelievably exposed
00:34:56.060
And these aren't trivial technologies, you know, I mean, they're shape, they're, they're
00:35:00.620
transforming the way we communicate with one another.
00:35:03.280
And that's, and they're, they're completely uncontrolled experiments.
00:35:06.800
We have no idea what the medium or long-term consequences are going to be.
00:35:11.080
And we'll never find out either, because of course, the communication landscape changes
00:35:15.780
so quickly that by the time you get adapted to one communication technology, another one
00:35:20.880
has come along that's even more confusing that you now have to master.
00:35:24.460
And so, well, that's why it's necessary for everyone to develop their own modicum of wisdom,
00:35:30.920
I believe, because I don't know how else we're going to be able to deal with this technological
00:35:36.840
transformation that's going to come across, is already coming across us like a tidal wave.
00:35:45.140
The people in Silicon Valley have plans that, well, that make you think that the whole place
00:35:51.480
should probably be bombed just for the safety of the rest of us, you know, because there's,
00:35:56.180
there's tremendous danger in that rapid acceleration of machine intelligence.
00:36:01.200
And we have no, we have absolutely no idea where that's headed.
00:36:13.700
So, hopefully we can, we can control it with our wisdom.
00:36:18.180
And that's pretty much up to each of you to put your lives together so you can make good decisions.
00:36:32.840
This is, maybe the audience here can process it any way they want.
00:36:35.840
You know, we started a company based on a vision of capitalism.
00:36:40.240
And I promised myself I'm going to be talking about this for the rest of my life on me coming
00:36:44.120
here from Iran and understanding how this system works and why so many immigrants come here.
00:36:48.240
So, I said, for the rest of our careers, we're going to be talking about this.
00:36:55.720
I think the second largest population in this room is probably African American.
00:37:02.640
And then it's going to be, I can't let out my Filipino community that we have here as well.
00:37:09.300
And then we've got a handful of Middle Easterns here as well.
00:37:17.300
I actually don't have a clue what he's going to say, but I'm very curious.
00:37:20.960
I don't have a clue what I'm going to say either.
00:37:22.700
But for me, over the years, I like to ask birthdays, when are your birthdays?
00:37:31.540
I said, boom, is there any kind of correlation between these nine?
00:37:39.820
And then the next thing I do when I start asking people questions is if they like math
00:37:46.420
So one time we're sitting there, we're having a debate politically about capitalism and economy
00:37:53.940
And this one person was absolutely against capitalism, okay?
00:37:57.760
It's like, oh my gosh, this whole capitalism stuff.
00:37:59.860
It's, you know, who cares about the money and who cares about this?
00:38:12.300
Do you think some of us are born with liberal wiring and some of us are born with conservative
00:38:23.640
So I've got three kids and they're all different.
00:38:25.180
From day one, they've all been different, right?
00:38:27.920
And then there's a 20% in the middle that's kind of trying to figure out, let me see which
00:38:35.660
Because it seems like some people, no matter what you say, they're just not going to change.
00:38:39.400
And there's no way in the world if 45%, whatever the numbers, are Democrats and 45% are Republicans,
00:38:45.200
let's just say you put that number there, you can't say both sides are idiots.
00:38:48.400
Because one side says the other side are idiots, the other side says the other side are idiots.
00:38:54.720
Yeah, well, they're both right some of the time.
00:38:58.180
But do you think some of the belief system that we have politically, liberal or conservative,
00:39:07.080
Oh, I think the evidence for that is very clear.
00:39:09.800
Well, okay, so there have been good personality studies done for, I would say, about 30 years.
00:39:19.460
And the reason for that is that we figured out a personality model about 30 years ago that's
00:39:31.640
And it required a fair bit of computational power to derive.
00:39:35.600
And basically, the way that it was derived was that thousands of people were asked hundreds
00:39:42.620
And then computers could figure out how the answers grouped.
00:39:47.660
So if you were likely to say yes to question A and also to question J, maybe that was a tendency
00:39:57.500
And so you could assume that there was something similar about question A and J.
00:40:03.340
And it turns out that questions about personality sort into five groups.
00:40:07.440
And there's some argument about exactly the right number, but it doesn't matter.
00:40:17.820
But whatever, we've got a pretty good overall descriptive structure, like the periodic table
00:40:28.760
And if you're an extrovert, man, it's like you want to be where the action is.
00:40:33.340
You're telling jokes, and you're setting up social occasions, and you smile a lot, and
00:40:37.860
you talk a lot, and you want people around you all the time.
00:40:40.780
And a tremendous amount of that is influenced genetically.
00:40:43.520
And you can tell that if you have children, because your children are like that from like
00:40:52.920
But, you know, he was a flirt when he was nine months old.
00:40:57.940
My wife used to pack him along on her back on one of those little...
00:41:02.140
And I would do the same thing on one of those little, you know, those little baby carriers.
00:41:06.440
And I can remember one time we were on a cruise ship, just taking a small cruise from Maine
00:41:13.600
And we got on the boat, and we were wandering through a group of people.
00:41:18.760
And it was like being with a rock star, because he was sitting in the back of the little baby
00:41:24.160
holder, smiling away, you know, like flirting like mad, and waving at everyone.
00:41:33.120
So people differ in extroversion, and that's positive emotion.
00:41:36.300
They differ in neuroticism, and that's negative emotion.
00:41:39.260
Some people are much more sensitive to depression and grief and anxiety.
00:41:45.120
Some people are agreeable rather than disagreeable.
00:41:48.120
And agreeable people are very empathic and self-sacrificing.
00:41:52.140
And the empathic part is good, because, you know, it's useful to be empathic, especially
00:41:56.660
if you're caring for people who are in real trouble.
00:42:01.440
That can make you resentful and also decrease the probability that you're going to be successful
00:42:10.220
So those of you who are agreeable and have a hard time standing up for yourself and fighting,
00:42:15.140
you know, you'll fight for other people, but not for yourself, it's a very good skill
00:42:18.380
to develop that ability to watch your resentment and see what you need and then make a case
00:42:30.960
And they differ in creativity, which is openness.
00:42:38.140
Now, you can move that with the environment, you know, but, you know, you have a character.
00:42:50.100
And lower in conscientiousness, especially orderliness.
00:42:54.540
And that seems to be because they believe, or their, let's say, their niche is an informational
00:43:05.160
They believe that the free flow of information is worth the risk.
00:43:10.540
So that'd be the free flow of people across borders, the free flow of ideas across borders,
00:43:21.500
Now, the conservatives are low in openness and high in conscientiousness, especially orderliness,
00:43:29.000
They think, well, yeah, there's danger in too much openness.
00:43:35.080
There's danger in borders that are too permeable.
00:43:41.880
And everyone can end up not knowing which way is up.
00:43:44.360
And the thing is, is that both of those attitudes are correct.
00:43:51.180
Because sometimes, you know, sometimes things are changing so fast that everybody's knocked
00:44:11.340
And sometimes things are so rigid that there isn't any new water flowing.
00:44:20.540
You see that in corporations very often, where they get ossified, you know, and there's no
00:44:27.320
You know, the average Fortune 500 company only lasts, I think now it's only 24 years.
00:44:31.880
And the duration of their occupation of the top Fortune 500 space is getting shorter and
00:44:40.400
You need liberals because now and then the right thing to do is to come up with something
00:44:46.880
And you need conservatives because now and then the right thing to do is to do what
00:44:51.740
And the reason you need political dialogue is so that the liberals and the conservatives
00:44:55.200
can continue to argue about which of those solutions is appropriate right now.
00:45:09.900
That's a unifying message that you're not hearing.
00:45:12.560
Today, it's not a unifying message that we need each other.
00:45:15.160
Today, it's more we're smart, you're dumb, and you have no clue what you're talking about.
00:45:18.980
And you're trying to take advantage of it versus, hey, we need to kind of process this
00:45:26.780
So, you know, Silicon Valley tends to be liberal.
00:45:31.180
And the reason for that is that there's a tremendous number of entrepreneurs there.
00:45:34.540
And entrepreneurs tend to be high in openness and lower in conscientiousness.
00:45:39.060
But they're also willing to break rules, you know, which you kind of have to do often.
00:45:46.780
Well, you know, it's tricky when you're trying to establish something new.
00:45:50.340
Because look at a company like Uber, you know, they had to bend the rules to be successful.
00:45:55.420
And those companies that have rented those scooters out and put them on the streets everywhere,
00:46:00.120
you know, they just kind of went ahead and did it.
00:46:02.300
It's not something an orderly person would do, because they'd ask for permission.
00:46:05.700
Whereas the people who started these scooter rental companies just said, well, what'll
00:46:13.200
But, you know, you have to have a rule-breaking proclivity in order to manage that.
00:46:18.900
But the thing is, if you're an entrepreneur, you need conservative people.
00:46:24.300
Because once you've figured out how to do something, and then you want to run it algorithmically,
00:46:30.260
you know, you want to run it by the rules, well, then it's the conservative types that
00:46:33.940
are going to be really good at doing that and making sure that the I's are dotted and
00:46:36.900
the T's are crossed and show up for work on time and have stable marriages and be reliable.
00:46:42.460
And their problem is it's easy for them to get stuck in a rut.
00:46:45.540
But, so, so, this is also rule nine, which is, you know, attend to the person you're listening
00:46:54.920
It's like, I really find it interesting to talk to people whose political opinions differ
00:46:59.340
And for me, that's mostly meant talking to really strong conservatives.
00:47:04.640
Because I would say, temperamentally, I tilt in the liberal direction, although being a social
00:47:09.600
scientist has made me more conservative, it's very interesting to talk to people who don't
00:47:16.300
share your political views if you listen to them.
00:47:19.100
Because they'll tell you all sorts of things about why they think that you just don't understand.
00:47:29.060
And the whole point of free speech, as far as I can tell, the deep point of free speech
00:47:34.240
is that, you know, it's all as if we're riding on the back of a giant snake.
00:47:40.680
And we're trying to figure out how to stay in the center so that we don't fall off the
00:47:45.800
And sometimes it's time for a bit of a tilt to the left.
00:47:49.300
And sometimes it's time for a bit of a tilt to the right.
00:47:52.000
And the only way you can tell when that time is, is by having a discussion about it.
00:47:58.180
And so it's the discussion that keeps the, that keeps us centered.
00:48:02.720
It's not the fact that the conservatives are right or that the liberals are right.
00:48:13.760
So, is there, is there such a thing, because, so I sit there and I listen to somebody.
00:48:24.900
And Wayne Hughes had Bill Clinton's campaign manager and Wayne Hughes had George Bush's
00:48:47.100
Because if what you're saying is, it's opinions, listen to both opinions and see what makes sense
00:48:52.960
and what doesn't make sense, versus, is there something that I can look for that gets my argument
00:48:58.260
and point to say, you know what, this is the accurate 100% truth.
00:49:05.000
I don't need a liberal, conservative, libertarian, conservative, you know, whoever it is to tell me,
00:49:11.380
Is there that as well to look at arguments and say, this is the truth based on this?
00:49:15.520
Or are we having to still be a little bit nimble to see what both arguments are?
00:49:21.340
One is, I think there are times when you can establish truths.
00:49:26.480
This is one of the reasons I like Bjorn Lomberg's work.
00:49:29.260
He wrote a book called How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place.
00:49:33.900
And what he did was put together these 10 teams of economists, and he had them rank order
00:49:39.280
the problems in terms of return on investment, and then he averaged across their estimates
00:49:46.560
You know, that's not a bad application of the search for objective truth in the political
00:49:56.860
Because the economists he gathered represented a variety of different political beliefs.
00:50:01.980
And so, I think there are times when there are objective facts that present themselves
00:50:09.780
But most of the time, political discussion is more, it's more like marital negotiation.
00:50:21.960
Like, let's say you have a plan, and you implement the plan, and the plan turns out the way that
00:50:31.280
Okay, that plan, flawed, no doubt that it was, imperfect, no doubt that it was, was accurate
00:50:41.160
enough so that when you implemented it, it justified its own structure.
00:50:44.920
And that's a lot of the way we judge truth in the world, right?
00:50:48.040
Is you think you're right if you do something and it works.
00:50:51.340
And that doesn't mean you're 100% right, and it doesn't mean it's going to work forever.
00:50:55.040
But because you're ignorant and because your knowledge is limited, that's kind of what
00:51:02.060
And then another form is, well, can we agree in a negotiated manner?
00:51:08.880
Like, we kind of hope that if we're trying to solve a problem that we can talk until we
00:51:13.800
come up with the least bad alternative that both of us can live with.
00:51:23.160
So, let's just say your idea is better than my idea, but I'm better at convincing you than
00:51:27.280
That doesn't mean the best idea is being implemented, right?
00:51:30.680
There's lots of times when the best idea doesn't win.
00:51:33.480
You know, but that's partly why the fact that we're constrained by the world is helpful.
00:51:39.840
Like, what I'm trying to say is like, so I want to know, is there a formula to get
00:51:45.000
to the truth so that I can say, this is where I stand on this position?
00:51:48.800
Or is it all about a lot of going back and forth and discord until I'm kind of like, okay,
00:52:01.420
I think 100% truths are very difficult to come by.
00:52:05.280
I mean, I've been trying to identify 100% truths, the 100% truths, let's say, that sit
00:52:14.460
And one of the things that I believe to be true is that the idea that the individual is
00:52:19.220
properly sovereign, I believe, is as true as any idea that human beings have ever come
00:52:29.760
But the more complex the situation, the harder it is to extract out something approximating
00:52:39.060
And so then so much of it depends on negotiation and discussion and agreement.
00:52:45.760
Now, there are ways of addressing that as well.
00:52:49.780
You know, one of the reasons that the United States works so nicely compared to many other
00:52:56.060
countries is that, well, you have a plethora of states, and each of those states, in some
00:53:04.020
And all of the sub-structures of those states are experiments.
00:53:08.300
And, you know, because you have so many experiments going on, which is also one of the advantages
00:53:12.900
of an open society, is you can kind of observe and see with all these solutions being generated
00:53:22.400
And so one of the ways that you come up with truth from the political level is essentially
00:53:29.580
You know, if you really want to solve a complicated problem, maybe you try to solve it a hundred
00:53:36.720
And look, this happens to entrepreneurs all the time, too.
00:53:39.560
You know, like most entrepreneurs, this is something to know, well, most entrepreneurs,
00:53:43.480
most creative people fail at producing their creative product and monetizing it, right?
00:53:51.880
So your default position, if you're a creative person, is you're going to fail.
00:53:56.640
And so, and that's because it's hard to come up with something new, and it's hard to present
00:54:03.060
it to the market at the right time, and it's hard to market it.
00:54:07.280
Like, those things are really, really difficult.
00:54:09.120
And so what successful entrepreneurs do is they just keep doing it over and over and
00:54:15.280
And eventually, if they're fortunate, one of their ideas happens to hit the right place
00:54:26.480
You know, you're creating all these little enterprises that are sort of alive.
00:54:32.120
And even if your idea is good, that doesn't mean it will be successful.
00:54:36.100
There's so many things that have to be taken into account.
00:54:38.340
So this is partly why persistence, and that's part of conscientiousness, is so useful.
00:54:48.260
And that would probably mean try something different rather than the same thing.
00:54:53.020
But persistence is helpful because it enables you to run many, many experiments.
00:54:57.720
And you need to know that the baseline is failure.
00:55:00.980
You know, it's important because otherwise you'll blame that on yourself.
00:55:04.380
You know, and some of that's useful because there's probably some things that you could
00:55:10.000
But it's very difficult to go from zero to one.
00:55:13.680
You know, if you're starting out as a salesperson, for example, the hardest sale is the first
00:55:19.380
And then, you know, they get easier with each additional customer.
00:55:24.580
Last question before we wrap up is, so say I see somebody in the room here, hypothetically,
00:55:30.820
and I say, oh my gosh, I would love to, you know, have that kind of a life.
00:55:39.740
I'm so, oh my gosh, what if one day I can be that person?
00:55:43.740
How do I go from there to actually wanting to live it and become a reality versus not allowing
00:55:54.160
Kind of like, you know, Cain wanted to be Abel, but he couldn't.
00:56:02.180
Well, the first thing I think you need to understand is that these people that you're
00:56:07.060
comparing yourself to, you don't really know very well.
00:56:11.280
You know, and what that means is that you see their shiny outside, but you don't see
00:56:27.920
You know, maybe you're in California, see someone speeding down the road in a...
00:56:32.160
in a convertible Porsche and you think, oh man, what a lucky bastard.
00:56:35.420
And the truth of the matter is that he's thinking about wrapping his expensive sports
00:56:40.940
car around the next cement pillar that he comes close to.
00:56:47.680
And even people who are comparatively fortunate have hard lives.
00:56:51.720
And so the ideal that you're observing that makes you jealous and resentful is in large part
00:57:15.040
I know a fair number of extremely wealthy people and most of them, most of the people I happen
00:57:21.060
to know are people who've made their money themselves.
00:57:24.280
And I tell you, man, they have a burden of responsibility that would crush me, would crush
00:57:32.280
And they're just working flat out like 90 hours a week.
00:57:38.440
And they have thousands of people depending on them.
00:57:40.980
And, you know, they have their money and they have their status.
00:57:46.160
But don't be thinking that there isn't a price to be paid for that.
00:57:56.960
Now, there are wealthy, what would you call, playboy types, I suppose, who live out the
00:58:13.960
And you have to be careful of what you're jealous of because you don't really know what
00:58:18.720
And then the other thing that's kind of useful is to, well, to understand that you're different
00:58:28.120
When you're 17 or 16 or something like that, comparing yourself to other people makes a
00:58:32.720
certain amount of sense because 16 and 17-year-olds, they're kind of the same, you know, which
00:58:37.560
is why when you go off to university, you can make friends so quickly.
00:58:44.300
It takes me like 15 years to make a friend now, you know.
00:58:48.040
As opposed to the two months that it took when I was 17.
00:58:55.820
And you shouldn't be comparing yourself to them because they're not like you, you know.
00:59:22.900
And this is why one of the rules, I think it's rule four, is compare yourself to who you
00:59:29.380
were yesterday and not to who someone else is today.
00:59:32.880
And see, that's a game you can win because you could be a little better today than you
00:59:43.660
And, you know, no doubt there are some things that you could improve.
00:59:46.680
You know, if you sit and meditate for any length of time about what you're not doing optimally,
00:59:57.380
You could be watching YouTube less unless they're my videos, in which case you could
01:00:23.660
But, like, comparing yourself to who you are now, that's a game you can win.
01:00:30.020
And, like, I've seen this be effective in many, many cases.
01:00:33.020
In my clinical practice, for example, it's like you take stock of where you are.
01:00:36.940
You know what your advantages are and what your disadvantages are.
01:00:39.600
And then you start with a little humility on the path of incremental improvement.
01:00:45.360
And, you know, incremental improvement compounds.
01:00:51.100
And then it's, you see, because trajectory, in some sense, is more important than position
01:00:57.460
I mean, if you're starving to death, and Dale, that's not the situation that I'm describing.
01:01:03.820
But, you know, if you've got the bare necessities of life, and so you're not surrounded by absolute
01:01:10.520
privation, what you really want is to see that you're on an uphill path, you know, something
01:01:20.320
And you can improve half a percent a day, or a quarter of a percent a day, and you think,
01:01:26.480
It's like, it's a hundred percent, if it's a quarter of a percent a day, it's a hundred
01:01:32.600
And that doesn't count compounding, you know, which means it's actually going to happen a
01:01:40.880
It's not just applicable to the most talented person or the least talented.
01:01:44.800
No, I think that the possibility that you can make yourself slightly better on a continual
01:01:51.580
basis is, I think that's something that's accessible to everyone.
01:01:55.260
I think that's equivalent to leading a virtuous life.
01:01:58.340
And, you know, I talked about the terrible catastrophe in some sense of differences in
01:02:04.540
intelligence and differences in conscientiousness and so forth, and the downside of the meritocracy.
01:02:11.080
But there is something to be said for virtue and truth, you know, and that is one thing,
01:02:16.400
another thing that I've noticed about people who've been phenomenally successful is that they
01:02:20.920
really do, they really do everything they can to live a truthful life.
01:02:26.060
And that, you can get a bloody long ways by being honest.
01:02:33.920
One of the things I want, he's talking about, you never know what people are going through.
01:02:39.180
So, myself, Marvin, and Jordan were speaking backstage.
01:02:42.840
And, you know, he's been not as active recently as possible with media because of what your
01:02:49.020
personal life, what your wife is going through health-wise.
01:02:54.060
He has so much respect for someone like Jordan Peterson to still keep his commitment.
01:03:03.180
And, by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
01:03:10.660
And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
01:03:18.600
And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.