Valuetainment - Episode 368： Jordan Peterson Emotional Interview with Patrick Bet-David

00:00:00.000 30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put them up,

00:00:09.020 reach the sky, touch the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for

00:00:16.080 the underdog.

00:00:17.300 I'm Patrick Medebi, host of Ayutem, and today's guest we've had on the past before, and I

00:00:20.640 brought him back, that's Jordan Peterson, except this setting is slightly different.

00:00:23.800 It's in front of 8,000 people that we sit down and talk about some interesting topics

00:00:29.180 that got emotional multiple times, some of it has to do with money, some of it has to

00:00:33.740 do with politics, some of it has to do with family, but you will definitely be amazed by

00:00:38.000 Jordan Peterson's answers in today's sit down.

00:00:40.740 Before we get into it, obviously a lot of people know, because they've read about you or watched

00:00:44.840 you in different places, 12 rules you have, your rule number one is stand up straight with

00:00:49.720 your shoulders straight, number two is treat yourself like someone you're responsible for

00:00:53.980 helping, three is befriend people who want the best for you, four is compare yourself 0.94

00:00:58.840 to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today, do not let your children

00:01:04.360 do anything that makes you dislike them, set your house in order before you criticize the

00:01:09.900 world, pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient, tell the truth or at least don't

00:01:16.400 lie, that's number eight, assume the person you're listening to know something you don't,

00:01:20.640 be precise in your speech, do not bother children while they're skateboarding, and last but not

00:01:27.660 least, pet a cat when you encounter one in the street. I heard somewhere you said it was 40 rules

00:01:34.820 and you narrowed it down to 12.

00:01:36.920 It was originally 42 and I'm working on another set of 12.

00:01:40.600 So what was the cutoff, like what was number 13 that missed out, was it like a battle for number,

00:01:44.620 I'm curious to know what number 13 was for you.

00:01:46.540 Well, I tried to pick a set that would make a coherent narrative, and so it wasn't like

00:01:53.780 the rules differed in quality particularly, I think they were all worth writing about, but

00:01:59.180 when you write a book, you want it to have a certain internal consistency, and so I went for that.

00:02:04.900 A couple of the rules that didn't make it were, be careful who you share good news with, that's

00:02:14.740 a good one, because you want to share good news with people who are going to be genuinely

00:02:18.660 happy for you, and that's one way that you can identify those people who are on your side.

00:02:25.660 Wow.

00:02:27.680 That's powerful.

00:02:28.560 There was a corollary to that, which was be careful who you share bad news with, because

00:02:34.680 that's equally tricky, you know, you want someone who will listen to you when you're

00:02:40.620 having trouble and allow you your grief, especially if it's a consequence of something tragic and

00:02:47.660 who won't try to one-up you, you know, because often when you're talking to people, they'll

00:02:52.420 be thinking about what they have to say that's worse, and that's not helpful if you need a

00:02:58.220 listening ear.

00:03:00.440 Make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.

00:03:03.960 That's what I'm writing about now.

00:03:07.040 I talked a lot about, already, about the necessity of cleaning your room, which is, you know, in

00:03:13.100 some sense a foolish piece of advice, because it seems so obvious, but it's not obvious at

00:03:17.780 all, and you'll find if you try it, especially if you're in a household that's not very functional,

00:03:22.820 that you'll encounter obstacles that you couldn't imagine existed while you're trying to,

00:03:28.200 put your life in order, and you can take your surroundings beyond order and move towards beauty,

00:03:36.540 and that's unbelievably useful, because, well, beauty calls people to their higher being,

00:03:42.760 I would say, and to make friends with beauty is to introduce yourself very carefully to one

00:03:51.940 of the mysteries of life that make it worth living, and so those are a few of the rules

00:03:57.000 that didn't make the original cut, but that I'm still working on and still thinking about.

00:04:02.820 I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next book that you come out with.

00:04:05.560 Those were very interesting rules.

00:04:06.860 Appreciate you for sharing it with us.

00:04:08.060 Thank you for sharing it with us.

00:04:08.980 So, you know, there's this saying, there's this saying that says, tough times produce strong

00:04:16.900 men, strong men produce good times, good times produce weak men, weak men produce tough times.

00:04:25.700 Yes.

00:04:26.280 If that's the truth, which phase are we in today?

00:04:29.460 Well, if you think about it historically, you have to say that we're in good times.

00:04:39.060 I mean, that doesn't mean everything about the current times are good, and, of course,

00:04:43.940 life is always tenuous and difficult, but it's 1919.

00:04:49.060 If you go back 100 years ago, imagine what the last five years would have been like, right?

00:04:54.320 You would have been, the entire world was encapsulated in a terrible war.

00:04:58.480 The trench warfare was absolutely brutal, and that was a five-year period, and then that

00:05:02.780 was followed by the Spanish influenza, which killed 120 million people, and, you know, so

00:05:08.540 I'd rather be here now than there then by a substantial margin, and I think life is never

00:05:15.800 easy, even under relatively positive conditions, but I would say that

00:05:22.180 it's very difficult to make the case that we're not in good times, and I especially think that's

00:05:28.500 true if you look at the world globally.

00:05:32.800 The American working class, and maybe the Western working class in general, paid a very

00:05:37.780 large price for enriching the rest of the world.

00:05:42.880 You know, I mean, China's come up in a miraculous way in the last 40 years, South Korea, India,

00:05:48.260 while the entire, all of Southeast Asia, and increasingly Africa too, because the fastest

00:05:53.480 growing economies in the world are now in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that's produced a tremendous

00:05:58.140 competition for working class people in the West, but speaking on a global level, there's

00:06:05.020 never been a better time for the majority of people to be alive, and the future, although

00:06:12.600 we're vulnerable and terrible things can always happen to us, it's hard to make a case that

00:06:18.800 the future doesn't look comparatively positive.

00:06:22.480 We're becoming extremely technologically sophisticated, and the world is changing at an incredibly

00:06:29.900 rapid rate, and the only way we're going to be able to manage that in a positive way is

00:06:33.940 if each of us, or as many of us as possible, are capable of making wise and careful and truthful

00:06:41.180 decisions, and if we do that, then, you know, maybe things can continue to improve.

00:06:47.680 The rate of absolute poverty in the world has fell by 50% between the year 2000 and the year 2012.

00:06:55.620 You know, that's the fastest rate of economic improvement in the history of the world, and

00:06:59.760 there's plenty of reason to be optimistic if you're inclined in that direction.

00:07:07.840 I would say it's best to marry that with a healthy dose of attentive caution, because,

00:07:16.020 well, as I said, things can go badly wrong, but I can't think of a time in the past that

00:07:23.660 I would trade for now, despite all the problems that are also part and parcel of being alive

00:07:28.900 now.

00:07:29.760 So do you think these good times will produce weak men, or you don't buy that?

00:07:34.060 You think in any times we're going to have weak, strong people being produced?

00:07:37.040 Well, I think there is a certain danger in luxury.

00:07:42.940 You know, we don't know how necessary a certain degree of privation is to motivation.

00:07:51.040 You know, the typical first-generation immigrant story is someone arrives with nothing and is 1.00

00:07:58.400 motivated fully to do whatever is necessary to make either themselves or their children a success.

00:08:06.100 And that does seem to decline, that motivation does seem to decline somewhat over the following

00:08:13.020 generations.

00:08:14.520 So, for example, Asian immigrants, their children outperform American children in school by a

00:08:21.780 substantial margin, but that disappears by about three generations, that advantage.

00:08:26.920 Wow, that disappears in three generations.

00:08:28.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:29.280 As the Asian immigrants become more Americanized, their proclivity to excel academically.

00:08:37.640 You guys understand that concept?

00:08:40.760 Powerful.

00:08:41.260 So I come first generation, I'm more disciplined, my kid becomes less disciplined, my grandkids

00:08:46.140 become less disciplined, and the one prior to that, you know, past that also gets less

00:08:50.000 disciplined.

00:08:50.420 Yeah, well, like I said, I mean, and you probably face this to some degree because, you know,

00:08:55.720 you have a lot of resources at your command.

00:08:58.180 It's very difficult to provide your children with optimal privation in order to make them

00:09:06.120 stand on their own two feet, you know.

00:09:09.620 And you don't get people to stand up on their own two feet and to adopt responsibility if everything

00:09:17.140 is given to them, and that's a real conundrum.

00:09:21.280 Oh, it's a real conundrum as you become successful because you're in a situation where if your

00:09:36.240 children ask you for something, there's no formal reason for you to say no, you know, because you

00:09:43.380 can provide whatever is being requested, but by doing that, you steal from them the opportunity

00:09:51.440 to generate that for themselves, and that's, I suppose, one of the dangers of, well, it's

00:09:59.140 one of the dangers of prosperity.

00:10:01.420 What that does to people over the long run, I don't think we understand well yet because

00:10:06.440 most people haven't been prosperous for very long, right?

00:10:10.000 There's been plenty of privation to go around, and, of course, there still is in many, many

00:10:14.720 parts of the world, including in the United States and in the West.

00:10:18.240 Do you think we're getting softer and more sensitive?

00:10:20.740 Do you think in general, especially America, because America's been successful now for

00:10:24.620 quite some time, we're constantly growing, do you think we are becoming softer and more

00:10:29.160 sensitive?

00:10:30.300 Well, I think there's a push in that direction.

00:10:32.960 There certainly seems to be a technical push in that direction in the universities.

00:10:37.600 Why?

00:10:37.780 Well, it's complicated, you know, my, like, generally when I try to assess something like

00:10:46.100 that, there's a rule if you're a social scientist, and the first rule is, in some sense, to look

00:10:51.540 at context before you look at personality, and I think there's been a lot of really radical

00:10:57.000 changes in our society in the last 50 years, and we don't understand their consequences.

00:11:01.960 The most radical change is probably the birth control pill, because it's provided women 1.00

00:11:09.120 with voluntary control over the reproductive function, and that's equivalent to a major

00:11:15.480 biological mutation, right?

00:11:17.300 It's consequence is virtually incomprehensible.

00:11:23.020 I mean, partly, one of the consequences is, is, you know, where you, where reliable birth

00:11:28.140 control is provided to women, first of all, they immediately become educated, second, their

00:11:33.800 economies tend to grow, and third, the birth rate falls below replacement.

00:11:38.680 And then all three of those factors are monumental, you know, so, perhaps especially the third, the

00:11:46.280 falling of the birth rate below replacement, which is the case in virtually every country

00:11:51.160 in the Western world except the United States.

00:11:53.100 softness, well, look, like, we don't know exactly what the optimal conditions are under which

00:12:04.480 you toughen up, let's say.

00:12:09.140 Most children now have older parents, right, because people aren't having children until

00:12:14.480 they're in their 30s, and there's a big difference between having a parent who's in his or her 30s

00:12:19.740 and having a parent who's in his or her 20s.

00:12:22.800 Yep.

00:12:23.200 The 20-year-olds are still kind of like kids, and they're going to be more usefully neglectful,

00:12:29.560 I would say.

00:12:31.020 Well, look, one of the things we used to do with my daughter when she was very little was,

00:12:37.520 you know, she was about a year and a half, is we'd have her in a room alone, and she would 0.95

00:12:42.840 usually complain about that for a few minutes, and then she'd find a way to amuse herself,

00:12:47.880 you know, she liked to take books out of shelves and put them back in, and, like, if you let 1.00

00:12:52.980 her be, get through that initial bit of misery, then she would learn how to regulate herself,

00:12:59.320 and she got very good at that.

00:13:02.480 And so that's a good example of minor privation, having a positive influence, but, you know,

00:13:09.360 children used to have multiple siblings, and siblings toughen you up, because there's tremendous

00:13:14.960 competition in families among siblings, and they had younger parents who had fewer resources,

00:13:19.620 and, you know, now parents are older, first of all, and second, they're more resource-rich,

00:13:27.480 and so they're more likely to schedule their children to death, in some sense, to provide

00:13:32.620 them with all the opportunities that they feel would be useful, and that's understandable,

00:13:37.820 people, and plus, because they have fewer children, each child is, in some sense, more

00:13:42.480 precious.

00:13:43.640 You know, not like if you have ten children, you don't love all of them, but, you know,

00:13:47.100 there's ten of them, there's only so much excess attention that can go around, and they do

00:13:53.180 a lot of socializing each other, rather than being socialized by parents, but if you only

00:13:59.060 have one child, you know, you're going to devote all your resources to providing them with

00:14:03.600 absolutely everything you can provide them with, and one of the dangers of that is that you'll

00:14:07.940 overprotect them, and you'll provide them with too much, and we don't understand those dynamics, right?

00:14:13.700 We don't understand how much you should stay hands-off your kids and let them go out there

00:14:20.520 and make their own mistakes and find their own way, and that's, well, that's tricky, and we're

00:14:27.980 ignorant about it, and so I think one of the consequences of that is that we do have

00:14:32.020 a reasonable percentage of young people, maybe young adolescents, the kind that you hear about 0.95

00:14:39.440 at university, who have been overprotected and overscheduled and under-challenged in some

00:14:47.300 sense.

00:14:47.760 We extend that overprotection far longer than is helpful.

00:14:53.440 You know, it's hard, though, because, as I said, when you have resources, you can use them

00:14:58.920 to make your children's lives, let's say, easier, but the question is, like, do you really

00:15:04.320 want to make the life of someone you love easier?

00:15:07.900 And that's an incredibly difficult question.

00:15:11.800 And it's tough, because how do you, you know, the whole thing is when your kids go, kids'

00:15:16.160 friends go and say, hey, I heard your mommy and daddy are rich.

00:15:18.300 Why isn't your mom buying you this car?

00:15:19.720 Why isn't your dad buying you this car?

00:15:20.960 But was your underlying message you encouraging us?

00:15:25.460 Because there's a lot of Latinos in the room here. 0.83

00:15:27.040 Were you trying to encourage us to go out there and have 10 babies?

00:15:29.480 Is that what you're trying to say?

00:15:31.980 You're talking, they will make 10 babies in a heartbeat if you say that.

00:15:35.500 These are professionals that are making babies here.

00:15:39.020 Well, you know, my wife and I had two kids, and we didn't start late compared to most of

00:15:47.360 the people we knew, I think, I think our first child was born when my wife was 29.

00:15:54.380 We certainly felt that we would have had more children if we would have started earlier.

00:15:59.760 There's no doubt that, and this is a very important thing to know, you know, there's

00:16:03.760 not that many things in your life that are of central importance.

00:16:10.140 There's half a dozen, I would say.

00:16:12.240 There's your friends, there's your family, your intimate partner, by family I mean your

00:16:21.900 siblings and your parents, but then there's your children, there's your career, there's

00:16:25.780 your educational trajectory, there's how you take care of yourself and protect yourself from

00:16:30.920 temptation and what sort of useful things you do in the time that you're not working.

00:16:35.740 But, you know, children are a third of life, something like that, maybe more.

00:16:39.860 And so, I would certainly recommend that you don't miss it.

00:16:45.580 It's complicated because, of course, now, in most situations, both parents have to work.

00:16:51.800 But it's always been complicated to raise children.

00:16:55.680 They're a long-term investment, but, yeah, right, which is why it's hard to even pay child

00:17:02.560 care workers, right, because the payoff for having a child doesn't occur until two decades 0.94

00:17:07.780 later, sometimes four decades later, but it's not something you want to miss, that's for

00:17:16.520 sure, because it's, well, that's life, you know.

00:17:21.980 There's, it's part of the human condition, and little children pay you back immensely if

00:17:36.740 you have a good relationship with them, you know, if you're on their side, and encourage

00:17:43.800 them, because they're an unconditional source of joy and love.

00:17:54.800 Powerful.

00:17:55.600 You know, the other thing I noticed that you should, that you should all know is that

00:18:13.380 as you get older, your family, the family you've produced, becomes more and more important.

00:18:27.280 You know, so we teach young women in particular that the fundamental goal of their life is going 0.96

00:18:34.060 to be their career.

00:18:34.900 career, and, you know, first of all, most people don't have careers, they have jobs, and those

00:18:40.520 are very different things, but you're, you're not a very happy camper, so to speak, if you're

00:18:47.740 45, and you have no one, and it doesn't go upwards after that, so don't miss it.

00:18:58.280 So, Jordan, follow up to that.

00:18:59.860 I got a question for you.

00:19:01.200 Very good point.

00:19:02.400 Follow up to that with you.

00:19:03.520 Is, you know, we're going to have President Bush here speaking in the next two days.

00:19:10.160 I don't know when he's speaking in the next two days, but he's speaking, I can't say, because

00:19:13.900 Secret Service told me I can't give the specific time, everyone's trying to figure it out.

00:19:17.360 I almost gave you the time, huh?

00:19:18.620 Some of you guys are waiting for that.

00:19:20.600 But, you know, why is it that so many powerful political families send their kids off to boarding

00:19:30.120 school?

00:19:30.460 And I don't know, as a clinical psychologist, how much research, or how much of that are

00:19:34.900 you, have you looked at with the link to boarding school teachers' independence, toughens them

00:19:40.640 up a little bit, the whole opportunity to have your kids have a little bit more challenging

00:19:44.380 times for them to go through?

00:19:46.060 What are your thoughts on boarding school?

00:19:47.420 Well, I don't think that there's any evidence that, there's not a lot of evidence that school

00:19:54.280 quality per se is a determining factor in the outcome of educational processes.

00:20:01.240 That actually seems to be a situation, I mean, there are exceptions, and I'm certainly not

00:20:05.480 trying to say that every school is equal, but a tremendous amount of what determines whether

00:20:10.880 or not a child is successful at school is their intelligence.

00:20:14.920 I mean, you people all went to high school, to junior high school.

00:20:18.260 I mean, you know that in a group of 30 kids, there's some kids that are so bright that they

00:20:23.120 figure everything out in the first 15 seconds.

00:20:25.740 And there are other kids who just can't get it no matter how hard they try.

00:20:30.280 And that's one of the really catastrophic and built-in inequalities in the world, generally

00:20:39.140 in boarding schools, because wealth and intelligence tend to be correlated, which is also something

00:20:46.420 you'd expect, right?

00:20:47.420 You'd expect more intelligent people to be able to make more money, or you'd certainly at

00:20:53.060 least expect less intelligent people to be able to make less money.

00:20:57.620 The schools are generally of, the schools generally produce good outcomes, but it's

00:21:02.880 not obvious that it's because of the schools.

00:21:05.880 For even, and this is true at higher levels of education, too, to a degree that people don't

00:21:10.120 really realize.

00:21:10.920 So, for example, at a university like Harvard, any of the Ivy Leagues, it's very, very difficult

00:21:18.280 to get in, right?

00:21:20.460 So, there's far more applicants than there are positions, and they use the SAT as one

00:21:27.960 of the entry criteria.

00:21:30.020 So, you have to have a very high SAT score, and then generally you have to be good at at

00:21:34.560 least one or two other things to be considered.

00:21:37.800 And a very large percentage, for example, of Harvard undergraduates, and there's only about

00:21:41.420 4,000 of them, so it's a rather small school, were valedictorians of their class.

00:21:47.840 They have very high SAT scores, and the SAT is a proxy for IQ.

00:21:53.020 The people who administer the SAT don't like to admit that, but there's absolutely no doubt

00:21:57.200 that it's the case, because any set of questions that assess general knowledge and problem-solving

00:22:05.400 ability, you can derive an IQ score from.

00:22:08.680 And so, part of the advantage of hiring an Ivy League graduate isn't the fact that they

00:22:13.900 went to a high-quality school, it's the fact that it was impossible to get in.

00:22:18.220 And so, the screening has been done for the employee, for the employer, by the admissions

00:22:24.920 process at the school.

00:22:27.100 And the same thing is true of business schools, and the people who run business schools know

00:22:31.540 that, is that the primary value that they offer, and again, this is not the case with

00:22:37.440 every business school, is the fact that if you hire an MBA from their program, and it's

00:22:42.780 a very selective program, then you have a very high probability of hiring someone who's intrinsically

00:22:48.100 intelligent and conscientious.

00:22:51.020 And that's a great predictor, those are great predictors of long-term success.

00:22:56.140 So, and what would you expect in a society that's essentially meritocratic?

00:23:01.400 It's pretty straightforward to think this through.

00:23:04.780 Not only should people who are faster and smarter be more productive, especially if they're

00:23:12.140 hard-working, but that's really what you'd want, isn't it?

00:23:15.300 I mean, how the hell do you want to set up your society?

00:23:17.840 You want to set up your society so that incompetent people who do nothing succeed?

00:23:22.920 That, first of all, that can't happen.

00:23:27.160 So, you know, and I should say, I should say that I'm very aware of the unfairness of a

00:23:39.360 meritocratic society, of its intrinsic unfairness.

00:23:42.660 So, let me give you an example.

00:23:43.960 I had someone write me the other day, he had listened to some of my lectures on IQ, and

00:23:52.680 he sent me his IQ scores, and he was in the fifth percentile, which basically meant that

00:23:59.820 95% of the people around him were faster cognitively than he was.

00:24:07.140 And, you know, the letter had, it wasn't very grammatically correct, and it wasn't very

00:24:12.480 well written, although it was very sad.

00:24:14.920 And he said that he had a very difficult time finding a job and keeping one, that he was

00:24:19.940 constantly frustrated and unnerved.

00:24:24.000 And that's a terrible thing, you know, because it's not as if it's his fault.

00:24:30.780 A lot of what constitutes your innate cognitive ability or your cognitive ability is something

00:24:37.320 that's really granted to you by fortune and fate. 0.97

00:24:41.060 And, I mean, you can make someone stupider, but it's very difficult to make someone smarter, 0.97

00:24:46.640 although hard work definitely is a plus. 0.97

00:24:48.620 Sometimes people stack up at the bottom, and it's not easy to figure out how to deal

00:24:52.840 with that, but because you need the people who are leading the cognitive revolutions to

00:25:00.280 develop entrepreneurial enterprises and to run things properly and to invent the new things

00:25:05.360 that we all use, and hopefully to raise the living standards of society in general. 0.91

00:25:09.560 So, do you think, you said it's easier to make people stupider, that's what you said, 0.98

00:25:19.080 it's easier to make people stupider? 0.99

00:25:20.820 Oh, definitely. 0.99

00:25:21.700 Well, you can do that by depriving them of nutrition when they're children.

00:25:26.420 I mean, one of the things we know, and this is from Bjorn Lomberg's work, which I would

00:25:31.600 really recommend, Lomberg has put together a team of economists to rank order problems in

00:25:37.600 the world by return on investment in solving them.

00:25:41.900 So, you can imagine, you know, maybe there's a hundred problems that beset the world, from

00:25:45.900 starvation to lack of water, to lack of sanitary facilities, to lack of education, to tyrannical

00:25:52.560 governance, to, well, you can continue the list in your own imagination.

00:25:58.000 What Lomberg did was consult very high-level economists who he put in teams to find out

00:26:04.180 where you get the biggest return for your foreign policy dollar over, you know, a reasonable

00:26:11.760 stretch of time.

00:26:12.820 And it's clearly the case that if you invest in early childhood nutrition, that pays off

00:26:17.340 at about 250 to 1.

00:26:19.580 And so, one of the ways that you can impair children's intelligence permanently is by ensuring

00:26:25.100 that they don't have enough to eat when they're very young.

00:26:27.600 And that's actually something that can be addressed very inexpensively, and it's to

00:26:31.600 everyone's benefit.

00:26:33.540 So, that's one way you can make people...

00:26:36.420 Oh, yes.

00:26:36.960 So, let me ask you this. 0.99

00:26:38.020 Do you think media makes us smarter or stupider? 1.00

00:26:43.460 I think it makes some people smarter and some people stupider. 1.00

00:26:47.080 I mean, well, look at television. 0.98

00:26:48.880 See, you've got to kind of fragment, you've got to kind of fragment the people that you're

00:26:53.760 talking about into different groups, you know.

00:26:55.740 It's like asking whether daycare is good for kids or not.

00:26:59.120 And the answer is, if the daycare is better than your family, then daycare is good for

00:27:04.620 you.

00:27:08.520 You know, and I actually mean that technically, because the studies of early childhood daycare

00:27:14.540 indicate that for some kids it's perfectly fine and for other kids it's not.

00:27:20.500 It's good if your kid is extroverted and ready to play with other children and so forth.

00:27:25.500 There's a lot of individual differences that have to be taken into account.

00:27:30.000 So, media in general.

00:27:35.060 Look, imagine that you're a little kid and, you know, your parents are neglectful and you're

00:27:39.520 in your crib most of the time, but the television is on.

00:27:42.160 Well, that's a hell of a lot better than just being in your crib, you know.

00:27:47.460 And so, it is pretty clear too.

00:27:49.800 Over the last century, on average, IQ levels have gone up by quite a substantial amount.

00:27:55.420 And the reason for that seems to be that the very low end has been pushed up.

00:28:01.340 And some of that's going to be a consequence of increased nutrition and some of it's going

00:28:05.200 to be a consequence of the fact that television is a lot better than nothing.

00:28:09.460 Like, infinitely better.

00:28:12.340 Now, whether television is better for you than, you know, a diet of high quality literature,

00:28:18.700 that's a whole different question.

00:28:20.720 Whether it's better for you than playing properly with your peers, engaging in pretend play and

00:28:26.760 all the other things that you have to do to establish yourself as a competent child,

00:28:30.840 that's also another question.

00:28:33.500 But, generally speaking, I would say that the dispersion of the media technology we have

00:28:42.740 has made us far more intelligent.

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

00:29:03.340 working.

00:29:04.120 These are high-maintenance gadgets.

00:29:08.480 You know, and it actually annoys the hell out of me because, you know, I was sort of old

00:29:13.360 enough so that computers came along.

00:29:15.160 A lot of people my age aren't very good at using computers, and people who are older are

00:29:24.040 even worse.

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

00:31:13.980 on their finger like a basketball player.

00:31:16.860 So...

00:31:17.300 Is that one of the reasons why you love Twitter so much?

00:31:19.800 Well, Twitter, yeah.

00:31:23.400 Yeah.

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.

00:31:42.700 I've quit reading the comments.

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.

00:32:04.680 Who, who comments?

00:32:06.380 It's not like it's a random sample.

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. 0.90

00:32:17.820 But if I said, okay, who had an absolutely dreadful morning and is just as bitchy as can 1.00

00:32:24.200 possibly be imagined?

00:32:26.040 Okay, so why don't all you people stand up, okay? 0.64

00:32:28.400 And then I'll ask the most miserable of you for your opinion.

00:32:33.320 That's kind of what Twitter's like.

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

00:32:53.480 how you respond.

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

00:33:18.340 that we've evolved.

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.

00:33:28.820 Facebook and, I mean, you think about it.

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 0.98

00:33:37.040 the stupid things I did when I was a teenager, it'd be a very thick book. 0.98

00:33:40.720 And it'd be a worse book if there were photographs accompanying it. 0.99

00:33:46.880 And, you know, but, but I had this advantage that young people today don't have, which was, 0.95

00:33:52.940 well, when my day of stupidity was over, I could go home and it was not there. 0.99

00:33:59.780 You know, like it wasn't on Twitter. 1.00

00:34:01.780 It wasn't on Facebook. 0.89

00:34:03.320 There wasn't 20 of my friends communicating to me about, you know, what foolish thing I 0.64

00:34:08.440 did at the party the night before.

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.

00:34:29.260 But God, it's miserable.

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

00:34:41.000 depressed they are.

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

00:34:53.820 social game.

00:34:54.940 That's hard on people.

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.

00:35:42.960 And, you know, you ain't seen nothing yet.

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.

00:36:06.400 So, and maybe it'll be great.

00:36:07.900 It's possible that it'll be great.

00:36:09.800 But power cuts both ways.

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.

00:36:28.800 So, let me, let me ask you this question.

00:36:31.000 This is more for myself.

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.

00:36:50.400 And we're multicultural.

00:36:51.320 We've got a lot of different nationalities.

00:36:53.440 And that's 54% Latino.

00:36:55.720 I think the second largest population in this room is probably African American.

00:36:59.880 And then it's going to be Caucasian. 0.97

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.

00:37:12.040 A few hundred Middle Easterns.

00:37:13.460 But here's my question for you.

00:37:15.600 By the way, I want everybody to hear.

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?

00:37:30.060 To me, just, and I've stored in my mind.

00:37:31.540 I said, boom, is there any kind of correlation between these nine?

00:37:34.280 And it's not even horoscope.

00:37:35.340 It's just purely a date to me.

00:37:36.480 It's not like, oh, you're Libra, you're this.

00:37:38.000 I go through dates, right?

00:37:39.820 And then the next thing I do when I start asking people questions is if they like math

00:37:43.880 or they don't like math.

00:37:46.420 So one time we're sitting there, we're having a debate politically about capitalism and economy

00:37:51.720 and how money works and all this other stuff.

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?

00:38:02.460 And I said, let me ask you a question.

00:38:03.400 Were you somebody that liked math growing up?

00:38:07.780 I hated math.

00:38:09.480 I said, interesting.

00:38:10.460 Okay, very interesting that you hated math.

00:38:12.300 Do you think some of us are born with liberal wiring and some of us are born with conservative

00:38:21.260 wiring?

00:38:22.180 So it's 40-40.

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?

00:38:27.200 40-40.

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

00:38:31.520 argument makes more sense.

00:38:32.960 Okay, this makes sense.

00:38:33.760 Okay, cool.

00:38:34.600 I think this makes sense.

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, 1.00

00:38:45.200 let's just say you put that number there, you can't say both sides are idiots. 1.00

00:38:48.400 Because one side says the other side are idiots, the other side says the other side are idiots. 1.00

00:38:51.740 It's just, you can't sit there and think that. 1.00

00:38:53.620 It just doesn't make any sense.

00:38:54.720 Yeah, well, they're both right some of the time.

00:38:56.760 Right, so 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,

00:39:03.600 we're born with?

00:39:05.080 Oh, yes.

00:39:05.660 You do think that?

00:39:07.080 Oh, I think the evidence for that is very clear.

00:39:08.120 Tell us more.

00:39:09.060 Tell us why you say that.

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

00:39:27.980 stable cross-culturally.

00:39:29.360 And it was mostly derived statistically.

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

00:39:41.280 and hundreds of questions.

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

00:39:56.120 across a large group of people.

00:39:57.500 And so you could assume that there was something similar about question A and J.

00:40:00.880 and you could sort the questions into groups.

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.

00:40:13.740 It's somewhere between five and seven.

00:40:15.400 And you can break the five down into ten.

00:40:17.820 But whatever, we've got a pretty good overall descriptive structure, like the periodic table

00:40:26.720 of the elements for personality.

00:40:28.760 And if you're an extrovert, man, it's like you want to be where the action is.

00:40:32.120 You want to be where the party 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

00:40:47.740 day one.

00:40:48.040 No doubt about it, yeah.

00:40:49.440 My son's quite extroverted.

00:40:51.460 Well, my daughter is as well.

00:40:52.920 But, you know, he was a flirt when he was nine months old. 0.93

00:40:55.500 It was ridiculous. 0.98

00:40:56.680 Well, it was ridiculous. 0.96

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. 1.00

00:41:06.440 And I can remember one time we were on a cruise ship, just taking a small cruise from Maine

00:41:11.900 to Nova Scotia.

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.

00:41:29.360 And that was there right at nine months.

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.

00:41:42.960 Their threshold for threat is a lot lower.

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.

00:41:59.080 But the self-sacrificing isn't so good.

00:42:01.440 That can make you resentful and also decrease the probability that you're going to be successful

00:42:07.740 in your salary negotiations and so forth.

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

00:42:25.660 for it.

00:42:26.100 It's a hard thing to learn.

00:42:27.380 People differ in conscientiousness.

00:42:29.240 That's orderliness and industrious.

00:42:30.960 And they differ in creativity, which is openness.

00:42:33.660 And so, and a lot of that's genetic.

00:42:37.100 It's there to begin with.

00:42:38.140 Now, you can move that with the environment, you know, but, you know, you have a character.

00:42:43.340 It's there.

00:42:45.440 Liberals are higher in openness.

00:42:48.860 That's trait creativity.

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

00:43:04.600 niche.

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,

00:43:15.200 the free flow of concepts across categories.

00:43:19.060 They'd rather that the borders were permeable.

00:43:21.500 Now, the conservatives are low in openness and high in conscientiousness, especially orderliness,

00:43:27.420 and they take the opposite tack.

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.

00:43:37.700 Things can change too fast.

00:43:39.260 Entire societies can become destabilized.

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.

00:43:49.520 It depends on the time.

00:43:51.180 Because sometimes, you know, sometimes things are changing so fast that everybody's knocked

00:44:08.540 off their feet.

00:44:10.020 And things are falling apart.

00:44:11.340 And sometimes things are so rigid that there isn't any new water flowing.

00:44:18.780 And everything's ground to a halt.

00:44:20.540 You see that in corporations very often, where they get ossified, you know, and there's no

00:44:25.460 new ideas.

00:44:26.120 And then they collapse.

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

00:44:38.980 shorter every year.

00:44:40.400 You need liberals because now and then the right thing to do is to come up with something

00:44:45.920 new.

00:44:46.880 And you need conservatives because now and then the right thing to do is to do what

00:44:50.300 everybody's always done.

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.

00:45:00.340 That's powerful, Jordan.

00:45:07.460 And that's a unifying message, by the way.

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. 1.00

00:45:15.160 Today, it's more we're smart, you're dumb, and you have no clue what you're talking about. 0.99

00:45:18.980 And you're trying to take advantage of it versus, hey, we need to kind of process this 1.00

00:45:22.140 thing together.

00:45:22.160 No, it's really a bad idea.

00:45:23.580 You know, like, it's a really bad idea.

00:45:25.480 Because here's another example.

00:45:26.780 So, you know, Silicon Valley tends to be liberal.

00:45:29.940 Everyone knows that.

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.

00:45:38.120 So, they're creative.

00:45:39.060 But they're also willing to break rules, you know, which you kind of have to do often.

00:45:43.680 Hopefully not to a criminal extent.

00:45:45.480 But you have to...

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

00:46:09.460 happen if we put them everywhere?

00:46:11.240 And the answer was, that seemed to work.

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 0.98

00:46:36.900 the T's are crossed and show up for work on time and have stable marriages and be reliable. 0.69

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

00:46:52.520 to as if they might know something you don't.

00:46:54.920 It's like, I really find it interesting to talk to people whose political opinions differ

00:46:58.700 from mine.

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.

00:47:23.540 And it's not that they're wrong.

00:47:26.020 It's that sometimes they're wrong.

00:47:27.980 And sometimes they're right.

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.

00:47:38.080 And it's twisting and turning all the time.

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

00:47:44.600 sides, you know.

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.

00:48:06.120 They're both necessary, annoying as that is.

00:48:09.880 So let me ask you this.

00:48:11.720 Let me ask you this.

00:48:12.780 To follow up on that.

00:48:13.760 So, is there, is there such a thing, because, so I sit there and I listen to somebody.

00:48:22.820 I was at Wayne Hughes' house.

00:48:24.900 And Wayne Hughes had Bill Clinton's campaign manager and Wayne Hughes had George Bush's

00:48:29.500 campaign manager, right?

00:48:30.880 And it's only 40 of us.

00:48:31.880 And this is like 10 years ago.

00:48:33.160 And they're both debating on their argument.

00:48:35.480 Both very convincing, okay?

00:48:37.460 They're both very convincing and persuasive.

00:48:39.680 So, is there such a thing as 100% truth?

00:48:44.920 Or is truth always adapting?

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.

00:49:01.780 I'm going to solve it based on this.

00:49:03.140 Because in math, three times three is nine.

00:49:05.000 I don't need a liberal, conservative, libertarian, conservative, you know, whoever it is to tell me,

00:49:09.480 right?

00:49:09.700 Three times three is math.

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?

00:49:19.040 Well, I would say two things about that.

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

00:49:44.400 and came up with a final list.

00:49:46.560 You know, that's not a bad application of the search for objective truth in the political

00:49:52.680 and social domain.

00:49:53.640 So, and it's relatively apolitical, right?

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

00:50:08.800 in the political sphere.

00:50:09.780 But most of the time, political discussion is more, it's more like marital negotiation.

00:50:15.560 You know, and it's right.

00:50:17.400 It's right when it works in the world.

00:50:20.940 That would be the first thing.

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

00:50:27.040 you expected it to.

00:50:28.160 It's a pragmatic definition of truth.

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. 0.98

00:50:55.040 But because you're ignorant and because your knowledge is limited, that's kind of what 0.99

00:50:58.880 you've got. 0.99

00:51:00.040 And so, that's one form of truth.

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.

00:51:17.580 But is that, that's not the truth, though.

00:51:18.920 We're compromising, right?

00:51:20.060 Maybe your idea is better than my idea.

00:51:21.920 I'm not, you know what I'm saying?

00:51:23.160 So, let's just say your idea is better than my idea, but I'm better at convincing you than

00:51:26.440 you are convincing me.

00:51:27.280 That doesn't mean the best idea is being implemented, right?

00:51:29.260 Oh, that happens all the time.

00:51:30.680 There's lots of times when the best idea doesn't win.

00:51:33.060 Right.

00:51:33.480 You know, but that's partly why the fact that we're constrained by the world is helpful.

00:51:37.660 I mean, what you want to do in politics.

00:51:39.160 But you know what I'm saying?

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,

00:51:54.000 I kind of relate to this.

00:51:56.000 100% truth versus 70%, 80%?

00:52:00.020 You know what I'm asking?

00:52:01.420 I think 100% truths are very difficult to come by.

00:52:04.440 That's where I'm going with that.

00:52:05.280 I mean, I've been trying to identify 100% truths, the 100% truths, let's say, that sit

00:52:12.820 at the bottom of our societies.

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

00:52:25.000 up with.

00:52:25.460 I think that that idea works.

00:52:28.140 Not everyone would agree with that.

00:52:29.760 But the more complex the situation, the harder it is to extract out something approximating

00:52:37.120 an objective truth.

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

00:53:02.200 sense, is an experiment.

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

00:53:19.160 which ones seem to be efficient and effective.

00:53:22.400 And so one of the ways that you come up with truth from the political level is essentially

00:53:27.780 through a Darwinian process.

00:53:29.580 You know, if you really want to solve a complicated problem, maybe you try to solve it a hundred

00:53:33.360 ways.

00:53:34.520 And then you take the best solution.

00:53:36.300 Got it.

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

00:54:13.600 over and over and over and over and over.

00:54:15.280 And eventually, if they're fortunate, one of their ideas happens to hit the right place

00:54:21.680 at the right time.

00:54:23.120 And so that's also Darwinian in some sense.

00:54:26.480 You know, you're creating all these little enterprises that are sort of alive.

00:54:30.220 They're run by people, after all.

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.

00:54:43.100 It's like, you know, what do they say?

00:54:45.140 If at first you fail, then try, try again.

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

00:55:08.880 improve about yourself.

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

00:55:18.400 customer.

00:55:19.380 And then, you know, they get easier with each additional customer.

00:55:21.960 So last question for you before we wrap up.

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.

00:55:34.940 I'd love to make that kind of money, right?

00:55:37.220 And I compare myself to them, right?

00:55:39.740 I'm so, oh my gosh, what if one day I can be that person?

00:55:41.820 What if one day I can have that life, right?

00:55:43.740 How do I go from there to actually wanting to live it and become a reality versus not allowing

00:55:50.540 envy and resentment pin me against them?

00:55:54.160 Kind of like, you know, Cain wanted to be Abel, but he couldn't.

00:55:57.140 So he goes and, you know, kills Abel.

00:56:00.040 How do you manage that?

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

00:56:17.520 the reality of their life.

00:56:19.640 And so what you're...

00:56:27.920 You know, maybe you're in California, see someone speeding down the road in a... 0.99

00:56:32.160 in a convertible Porsche and you think, oh man, what a lucky bastard. 0.85

00:56:35.420 And the truth of the matter is that he's thinking about wrapping his expensive sports 0.94

00:56:40.940 car around the next cement pillar that he comes close to.

00:56:44.340 You know, you can't tell.

00:56:45.760 And people have hard lives.

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

00:57:00.660 an illusion that's created by your own mind.

00:57:03.980 And I...

00:57:04.900 You know, I can give you just one example.

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

00:57:31.320 the typical person.

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.

00:57:44.460 And that's not nothing.

00:57:46.160 But don't be thinking that there isn't a price to be paid for that.

00:57:49.720 You know, they don't see their families.

00:57:51.080 They're often divorced.

00:57:52.100 They don't see their children grow up.

00:57:53.520 And they don't have time off.

00:57:56.960 Now, there are wealthy, what would you call, playboy types, I suppose, who live out the 0.99

00:58:07.260 dreams of wealth of a foolish 14-year-old. 0.97

00:58:11.620 But they're not that common. 0.95

00:58:13.960 And you have to be careful of what you're jealous of because you don't really know what

00:58:17.580 it is.

00:58:18.720 And then the other thing that's kind of useful is to, well, to understand that you're different

00:58:24.580 from everyone else.

00:58:25.660 And this is especially true as you get older.

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.

00:58:40.900 It's like, I'm just about 60.

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.

00:58:53.320 You're quite different from other people.

00:58:55.820 And you shouldn't be comparing yourself to them because they're not like you, you know.

00:59:00.900 They don't have your family.

00:59:02.780 They don't have your temperament.

00:59:04.140 They don't have your troubles.

00:59:05.760 They don't have your abilities.

00:59:07.840 The only person that...

00:59:08.820 The only person that has those is you.

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

00:59:38.240 were yesterday.

00:59:39.560 And that's a good thing.

00:59:41.460 You're a little better.

00:59:42.460 That's a good thing.

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,

00:59:53.580 answers will spring to mind.

00:59:55.200 You know, you could be getting up earlier.

00:59:57.380 You could be watching YouTube less unless they're my videos, in which case you could

01:00:02.900 be watching them more.

01:00:08.300 Anyways, can't believe I said that, actually.

01:00:12.180 I actually can't believe I said that.

01:00:13.980 That's the entrepreneur side of you.

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.

01:00:48.780 And so you can get a long ways.

01:00:51.100 And then it's, you see, because trajectory, in some sense, is more important than position

01:00:55.800 for human beings.

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

01:01:15.280 that's got the right slope.

01:01:17.080 And you can start anywhere on that path.

01:01:20.320 And you can improve half a percent a day, or a quarter of a percent a day, and you think,

01:01:25.480 well, that's not very much.

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

01:01:31.060 percent in four years.

01:01:32.600 And that doesn't count compounding, you know, which means it's actually going to happen a

01:01:37.000 lot faster.

01:01:38.140 And that's duplicatable.

01:01:39.060 Anybody can do that.

01:01:40.180 Anybody can do that.

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.

01:02:30.100 It's really something.

01:02:31.300 And so.

01:02:32.400 You know what?

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.

01:02:51.720 And he still kept his commitment to come out.

01:02:54.060 He has so much respect for someone like Jordan Peterson to still keep his commitment.

01:02:57.780 And that's tough to do.

01:02:58.820 It's your wife.

01:02:59.520 So, let's make some noise for Jordan Peterson.

01:03:01.820 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

01:03:03.180 And, by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.

01:03:07.760 Give us a five-star.

01:03:09.180 Write a review if you haven't already.

01:03:10.660 And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,

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01:03:16.700 Just search my name, Patrick MidDavid.

01:03:18.600 And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.

01:03:23.600 With that being said, have a great day today.

01:03:25.340 Take care, everybody.

01:03:26.040 Bye-bye.

01:03:29.520 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - September 18, 2019

Episode 368： Jordan Peterson Emotional Interview with Patrick Bet-David

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