Joe Rogan Experience #1139 - Jordan Peterson

five four three two one hello Jordan Peterson hello mr. Rogan hey very spiffy today thank you sir if this is a new look for you you've been rocking these a lot of these big gigantic what do you call those things those concerts you guys are doing what are you with speeches well lectures discussions as I think of them as yeah yes I'm discussing I mean you might think it's kind of perverse to be discussing with a three thousand person audience but it's not because if you pay attention to the audience they're constantly and the individuals in the audience they're constantly providing feedback so it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned feedback in applause laughter sometimes they shout things out too or a shuffling shuffling yeah well really what you want if you're on track if you're where you should be then it's dead silent and everyone's focused and listening and so if that's not happening I mean you know there can be laughter or that kind of thing but generally speaking you don't want to hear noise from the audience so if you're if you're onner if you're pursuing a complicated topic and you're paying attention and I'm always looking at individual people in the audience you know when the first few rows because that's all I can see because of the lights I'm trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk and you know there's people gesture with their face and they gesture with their eyes and they shake their head and they nod and there's lots of things to pick up and if you're not speaking with notes you can really pay attention to the audience and then you know if you're in the dialog and that's where everyone wants to be yeah it's an interesting thing you're doing because you have experience in doing that with lectures and colleges and universities but now it's the general public and people just pay to see it and you fill up these huge gigantic theaters I mean I've seen some of the places that you guys are doing it you and Sam just got done doing one in Vancouver and huge places antutu that's right yeah back-to-back and yeah so it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days and you know we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A but we asked the audience Brett Weinstein who was moderating ask the audience if they wanted to go to QA or continue the discussion and you know that the response from the crowd was definitely continued the discussion and so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night and again it was the audience is along for the ride mm-hmm you know and they were good discussions as far as I'm concerned you know it was kind of marketed as a take down in some sense Harris versus Peterson right but the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone along for the ride you know for the journey so to speak yeah well you guys had two podcasts that you did over the phone so this these were the first meetings that you guys had in person yeah it was the first time I'd met Sam he said the first one that you two had was marred by this discussion about what is truth yeah and it was a Lex a strange sort of you got stuck you guys got kind of stuck in that first conversation but I felt like the second one was much better yes you mean both of you kind of recognized there were some errors made in the first podcast yeah we ordered in on a definition and yeah let it go and so that wasn't so good yeah and I wasn't in tip-top shape for that first discussion well over for the second one for that matter mmm but they've been getting each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better so as far as I'm concerned and I think he feels the same way and I mean we're chart we're trying to sort something out that's really really difficult and it's the relationship between facts and values which is parallel to the relationship between say objective truth and a narrative or parallel to the distinction between scientific fact and religious truth all of those things sort of are layered on top of each other and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic and so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight it's been a central bone of contention among philosophers for well probably forever but certainly since the time of David Hume several hundred years well what are the more fascinating things is coming out of the realm of podcasting is these kind of discussions these long-form live discussions in front of enormous groups of people where you go over very complex issues it's a new thing I mean and it's it's something that's greatly received by the public which is really interesting I'm yeah you guys are selling out all over the place yeah well one one one I've really been trying to make sense of this a because I'm thinking well what the hell is going on why why am i selling out 3,000 person auditoriums and then and then but not just me obviously Sam is doing it and you're doing something on a larger scale but very similar with your long-form podcasts and and and then there's this whole rise of what Barry Weiss described is the intellectual dark web that's actually Eric Weinstein is coinage and so there's a group of us that would be sort of clumped together for reasons that aren't obvious but I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures another thing I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas I use the the stage let's say as a as a opportunity in real time to think and I've been thinking well if you're surfing you don't confuse yourself with the wave right that's that's a real mistake you might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave and I think this long-form discussion and the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that there's a technological revolution it's a deep one the technological revolution is online video and audio immediately accessible to everyone all over the world and so what that's done is it turn it's turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word so it's a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio and it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg Revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read but lots of people can listen and now it turns out so I mean you got a little bit of that with TV right and you got a little bit of it written with radio but there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent especially in TV where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky and six minutes if you were stellar to to elucidate a complicated argument so you can't do that everything gets compressed to it to a kind of oversimplified entertainment but now all of a sudden we have this forum for long-form discussion real long-form discussion and turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought right we can have these discussions publicly and there's a great hunger for it and I see this parallel so and this would be what would you call it supporting evidence for this hypothesis the same things happened in the entertainment world because you know TV made us think well we can handle the 20 minute sitcom or maybe we can handle it an hour and a half made-for-tv movie but then Netflix came along and HBO as well with the bandwidth restrictions gone and all of a sudden it turned out that no no we can handle 40 hour complex multi-layered narratives where the character shift where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature and there's a massive market for it and so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us and I think those of us who've been placed in this intellectual dark web group you know there's some things we have in common we more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate masters except peripherally and we've been operating in this long-form space and the technology has facilitated that and so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought and thank God for that I'm I'm struggling with I want to I don't want to use the word hate there seems to be a non acceptance or a resistance to the idea that anything of quality could come out of this group of people it's really interesting to me and I'm wondering why when I listen to you speak or Sam or Eric or any these people Ben or Dave and I hear very interesting points and I'm like why are people resisting that these are interesting points why are they resisting this and I think there's a lot of people that are beholden to mainstream organizations whether it's newspapers or magazines or television shows that feel trapped I think they feel trapped by this format that they're stuck in it's a very limiting format and it's a format that in my opinion is like I mean it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something it's it's dumb you know this this idea that you gonna go to commercials every 15 minutes and you know and in between you have 15 people arguing I mean I watched a panel on CNN once and I think we counted 10 people that we're trying to talk during this five-minute segment I'm like who what genius thought that it would be a good idea to get ten people struggling for air time barking over each other no one's saying anything that makes any sense because everybody's talking over and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous things and I'm seeing like some of the resistance to this when we spend I mean pretty far you know from Sam and I lean more left and Ben leans more right and you're what you would call a classic liberal and Eric's very difficult to define and Brett is fiercely progressive I mean these are Brett in particular is a very left-wing guy but this desire to label and to have this diminishing label is like all right or you know right-wing or fascist is it's very strange to me well there's a couple of things going on I think one of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out and then the other is that I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference I've been trying to think this through very carefully because you know free speech in some sense has become identified as a right-wing issue and I thought well how the hell did that happen and then I thought oh yes well if you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game there's actually no such thing as free speech because you're only the mouthpiece of your group whether you know it or not so you don't get to talk as Jill Rogen you get to talk is like Joe Rogan patriarchal white guy and that's it and your audiences aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual but they're an attempt on your part whether you know it or not to justify your position in the power hierarchy and so everything right now and this is where the technology and the death of the main stream media and and this and this political polarization all unite everything is turned into a political conversation in the in the mainstream media and media and it has to be cast as left versus right and if you're criticizing the left then all of a sudden you're right and right-wing and it has to be about politics it's like well it doesn't have to be a pulp politics it could be about philosophy it doesn't have to be cast in political terms and and then it's also subject to a form of well it's made more stupid than it has to be by these terrible bandwidth limitations like I mean I've been on mainstream TV talk shows and it's very strange experience because you're definitely content you know Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message right the medium shapes the dialogue and it doesn't in great and great in in a tremendous way powerful way you go on a TV talk show and maybe it's an hour long something like that and there's five guests and you've got your eight minutes something like that and you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining and intelligent and sort of glitzy and it puts that facade of momentary charisma on you and if you don't play that out you actually fail right because you can't start a long-form discussion when you've got six minutes and if you're trying to talk about something that's that's deep and difficult well you want to talk about it because you've got the access then and the opportunity but you've got your six minutes you can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy entertainer and so it cheapens everything and then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media television in particular dies the the quality people are starting to desert like rats leaving a sinking ship I guess they're good rats if they're quality people but and then the the there's evermore enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing portion of the remaining audience you know it's like one of the things that's happened so if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States they've declined by 50 percent in 25 years it's absolutely beyond comprehension it's so good this includes violent gun crime by the way and yet the reports of violence and media have gone up and up and up and I think well what's going on it's like well it's it's its clickbait it's the it's the equivalent of clickbait and then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion takes no real intellectual energy but it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media I think and I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so acute now some of it is genuine but some of it is some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation and the death throes of the smoke signals fundamentally what you're talking about when you're saying people especially radical leftist have to concede certain points whenever they discuss things that this is so true and so important because you see that play out over and over again there's very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important subjects or controversial subjects and whatever they are whether it's you know transgender rights or whatever whatever is in the news that's that's big and and and you know that it's very popular right now there's these these certain things that you're not allowed to deviate from and that that's an insanely restrictive perspective and it whose establishing these norms like who's a step question man yeah who is well I I blame I blame the universities in large part for this the activists disappear but that's only a partial answer because the universities are also responding to legislation like title 9 so and and so and so they've been driven into they explain title 9 for people title 9 title 9 originally was just a piece of legislation that that ensured that women would have equal access to sports events and so forth at the universities that's what it was designed for but it's become this umbrella legislation that pushes equality of outcome essentially across every possible dimension in the universities and it's been used as a weapon by the radical left but you know some of that's driven by legislative necessity with what's happening what the reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could well there's all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by too high tuition fees and also by state funding and they've produced an entire sub structure of activists and those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left and that's a that's a structure that involves there's buzzwords right diversity is one but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and sexual preference for example as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of ideon and they don't and there's no evidence that they do inclusivity I'm never even sure what that means equity which is a marker for our what would you call it it's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome which is an absolutely deadly doctrine I think of all the mistakes that the radical left are making and the moderate left for not calling them out on it the equity doctrine is at the top of the list and then there's other associated things like white privilege that's a good one and systemic bias and which is a it's an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a reasonable academic psychologist because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that lurks everywhere and the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim that's even the people who've made the test the implicit association test have admitted except for mahzarin banaji who's the chairman of the department of psychology at Harvard they've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used for the purposes they're been using for and there's also no evidence at all that these unconscious buying bias retraining seminars have any effect whatsoever that's positive it's all nonsense pushed by this ideological what fulmination zuv the radical left is there any benefit in having these conversations talking about implicit biases and recognizing that there's an extreme pushback against racism or sexism and all these different things and that even though these things these these these ideas that they're pushing might not be tested and proven the idea of putting it out there in the mainstream that there's a shift in consciousness in terms of like how people will or won't accept racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever else is being discussed that maybe it's far left but maybe it's moving the needle towards where it needs to I think that well that I think that happens I mean I certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right this is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures so so I'm going to lay out a couple of propositions so imagine that you have to move forward in the world you have to do things and the reason you have to do things is because well if you just sit there and don't do anything then you suffer and die so that isn't an option you have to move forward you have to move forward towards valued things so you have to have a value hierarchy it has to be hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another or you can't do anything right here you're to split with your choices so you have to do things you have to value you have to value some things more than others then you have to act out what you value in the social environment because you're a social creature and you're not going to do things alone then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment you inevitably produce a hierarchy and the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out some people are way better at it than others and it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law it doesn't matter as soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively there's a hierarchy okay so then what happens well the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid and and then it stops rewarding confidence and it starts rewarding criminality and power and so there's always the danger the hierarchy will become corrupt the right-wingers say we really need the hierarchies and we should abide by them that's sort of the motif of patriotism and and and and and and and positive group identity and the left wingers say yeah but wait a second there's a problem here a your hierarchy can get corrupt and might and be because some people are way better at it than others you're gonna produce a bunch of desert dispossessed people at the bottom and that's not only good not only not good for the dispossessed people it actually threatens the whole hierarchy so you have to be careful you have to attend to the widows and the children let's say the widows and the orphans okay and so now and then you now you can think about that as an eternal problem you can't do without hierarchies but and that's the right wing claim in some sense you can't do without hierarchies and they're valuable but they're also prone to corruption and they dispossessed people okay so now that's an internal problem the question is what do you do about it and the answer to that is there's no final answer to the problem so what you have to do is you have to have a left wing and you have to have a right wing and they have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether or not it's dispossessing to many people and then the problem with that is as that discussion can go too far because the right wingers can say hierarchy überall is right that that that we've the state is correct and everything's right and so that's the right-wing totalitarian types and the left can say we'll flatten everything so there's no inequality and so both the left and the right can go too far now the problem is we don't we know how to define I think one of the problems is we know how to define when the right goes too far I think we learned that after World War two I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority you get to be put in a box and put off the shelf right you're not in the dialog anymore it's obvious that the left can go too far even though they're necessary participants in the discussion but we don't know when - we don't know how to define when they've gone too far no and and and you might think well that's the moderate leftists problem it's their moral responsibility to dissociate themselves from the radicals just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to dissociate themselves from the Birch John Burton and Ku Klux Klan types that's a very important point but but the problem but it isn't just the moderate left's problem because even the people on the right don't know what to point to when they say no you've gone too far as a leftist now I've tried to it's complicated because I think it's it might be more than one policy I think the really deadly left this presumption is equality of outcome I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome you should be put in the box and put off the shelf that's the but but it isn't obvious why like that doesn't sound like you know white people overall it doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess of the right has it's right you're for equality of outcome why is that bad well it's bad because when you play it out in society and there's endless evidence for this it's an instantaneously murderous doctrine and I think it's because it shifts so quickly into a victim victimizer narrative I've had a great opportunity in the last month and a half I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago mm-hmm and so I've been writing that and one of the things Solzhenitsyn did which was one of the things he one of the things that made that book arguably the greatest work of nonfiction of the 20th century I mean it's in the top ten anyways was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away it wasn't that Lenin was a pretty good guy and then Stalin came in corrupted everything was like Lenin was not a pretty good guy the revolution got bloody really fast and what seemed to happen so imagine you started to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed right and you're gonna do something about the oppressors the problem is is that you can define people multiple ways this is the intersectionality problem and almost everybody can be defined in terms of their group identity in some way that makes them an oppressor so like if you're a black man well you could argue that you're oppressed because you're black but what about the fact that you're a man and so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's oppressed and the answer is as the revolution progresses if there's any dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor you end up dead and so that's part of the pathology of the Equality of oh me whether look you end up dead you end up rounded up you ended up being put into the oppressor camp right it's slowly there's only so far you can go with that right I mean you can't put all men in the oppressor camp there'll be no men left plays out what it is how it plays I wouldn't look for equality of outcome well it is how it played out in the soviet union in china i mean in the soviet union we don't know how many people died the the the reasonable estimates look like about 25 million that's dead that's not just that's not imprisoned that isn't families destroyed that's just dead and in my mouth was china it might have approximated a hundred million that's just internal repression and so what what seems to happen as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are oppressors and oppressed then you can go after the oppressed with moral virtue but the problem is is that there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor that the category just starts to expand like the Communists killed all the Socialists they killed all the religious people they killed most of the students that killed all the productive farmers and they killed the productive farmers because they owned land you know and maybe a little house and a few cows you know I mean to be a successful farmer in Russia that at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were rich right it just meant you weren't starving it's like they killed all those people because they were oppressors because they had more than someone else that's how they defined it in order to get the people to rally against it yes yes it said yes and and that and the definition kept slipping because well look look even now it's like well let's say we rally against the 1% you know and those would be the money owners let's say it's like okay who's in that group well everybody in North America is in that group worldwide yeah well who sets the parameters it's thirty four it's thirty four thousand dollars a year sets you in the one percent worldwide right right so does that make all of us oppressors basically everybody who lives above poverty in America is in the one percent of the world right right and also by historical standards yeah and so the problem is the problem with the oppressor oppressed narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly and there's no end to going after the right and you as soon as you make a definition you can move the boundaries and then the next person is the oppressor hmm and then you keep going well and you also see the interesting thing too is that and this is complicated so I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to to destroy members of the moderate left it's like there's the game part of the game is that's being played as far as I can tell the ideologically pathological game is I'm more virtuous than you now look if you're on the on the radical left and you say well you're more virtuous than a right winger it's like well who cares that's obvious because the right wingers are you know pathological so being more virtuous than them that's not much of an attainment but if I have my moderate leftist compatriot standing right beside me and he's pretty damn virtuous but I'm even more virtuous than him then that's a real that's a real attainment on my part it's a moral attainment with no effort on my part if I can figure out some way of classifying that previously virtuous person as an oppressor along some dimension then all of a sudden I get an increment my moral virtue and that happened all the time in these leftist revolutions run amok that was just a constant feature so it's not good it's not good why is it this is something that's always puzzled me why is it that the left is defined by there's like certain there's certain values and one of them is when you look at the right you you automatically think of racism potential racism at least dislike for gay people homophobia there's there's certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives and then there's certain qualities or is in that and these are social things and that I'm not quite sure I understand like why is it that the left is always associated in support of gay rights the left is always associated in support of you know of all races and all genders and I think it's the dispossessed issue again so imagine okay imagine that we make these hierarchies and they're hierarchies that are devoted towards a goal and that the sum total of all those hierarchies is something like the patriarchy even though I hate that word and so whether I should use it I don't like that word at all but but but that's we're speaking within the confines of that theory it's defining how you're using it what do you mean by the patriarchy well the patriarchy is is is the sum total of all Western hierarchies let's say it sorts the left it's the radical leftist vision of the sum total of all Western hierarchy it's always male well that's the theory is that it's male-dominated and you know what has a patriarchy ism yeah yes well and it's a funny thing because of course there's lots of elements there's lots of sub elements of the patriarchy that aren't male-dominated so pretty healthcare for example universities the education system in general there's lots of places where the these these sub elements are female dominated but so I don't know whether defined as the patriarchy I'm do not define healthcare oh it's a good question Jo I don't know what if if you have a sub-element of the patriarchy that's dominated by women is that still the patriarchy it's like the structures still intact it's still performing the same function well now the women are running it well is that the patriarchy and the answer to that is well we're all vague about what the definition is so we don't need to address that issue well here's the answers here's some clear ones right like major corporations the vast majority of CEOs are male yeah we think of that as part of the patriarchy yeah government you know never been a male never been a female president vast majority of Senators Congressmen etc male yeah so I guess we could say well the patriarchy is all those elements of hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men law enforcement military male mostly male right but it's a it's a peculiar definition right because it means you have to you have to fractionate the patriarchy into pieces you can't you you can no longer talk about it as a uniform structure if you're gonna take out all those pieces that are dominated by women say well that's not the patriarchy but the thing is is that the whole concept is so we all define that it's that it bag our description but so is you our though right I mean it's well that's that's the other thing that's the claim the other claim is that all hierarchies are predicated on power which is a claim that's absolutely appalling it's like plumbers they part of the hierarchy hierarchy you've got roaming bands of armed aggressive tyrannical plumbers coming to your door saying use our service or else that's not how it works you go look when you're going looking for a plumber you go look for a massage therapist you look or a surgeon for that matter or a lawyer you go look for the person who's most competent and one of the things the left can't tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are predicated in part even on competence which they clearly are the best predictors for success in Western hierarchies are intelligence and conscientiousness those are the best psychological predictors of success they only account for about a third of the variation in success maybe a third is probably about right so there's still lots of room for randomness and and even for systemic discrimination but the notion that our our systems aren't predicated in part on competence is clearly wrong now you asked a question about the left is like well why are the left always on the side of people who don't fit in let's say or don't fit so easily and I think that is a matter of the consequence of hierarchical structures is that so imagine in every hierarchy there are some people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy then imagine then imagine across all the hierarchies that there's a subset of people who are very likely to not do well in any of them so you might say well they're systemically discriminated against the left would be on their side because they're on the side even temperamental II of the people who are dispossessed and the thing about that is that it's it's valid look we need a we need a spokesperson politically for the dispossessed that's what the Democratic Party used to do when they worked for the working class is the working class needed a political voice it's like okay that's the Democrats well why did they need a political voice well to to keep the hierarchy from degenerating into rigid tyranny it's part of the political discussion but now the problem is is in the purpose is the problem with the left is that well what's the hierarchy it's a tyrannical patriarchy it's like no it's not it's partly corrupt like every system but it's less corrupt than most systems and there's a lot of elements of it that are devoted towards self-improvement self-monitoring you have to be a little nuanced and subtle about these sorts of things and you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and the leftist rhetoric has got so intense that the idea is and people believe this while the world is going to hell in a handbasket everything is getting worse in all possible ways and there's systemic racism everywhere and it's utterly unfair and it should be torn down and rebuilt it's like no it's actually functioning unbelievably well even though it still has its problems you know and there's a big difference between saying there's systemic racism everywhere and the reason that there isn't perfectly equal outcomes is because of prejudice and saying no no look the system is functioning now let's say at 75 percent it's doing alright it's got some problems including systemic prejudice which hopefully will work themselves out across time and which show every bit of evidence of doing so and so we don't need a radical solution you know and and one of the things I've started to do with my Twitter account is to tweet out good non naive news because one of the things that's happening in the world and there's been half a dozen books on this or more written in the last five years by credible people is that the distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and and free market economies etc out into the rest of the world is making the non-western world is making the non-western world rich really really really fast so between 2000 and 2012 the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half half it was the fastest period of economic development in human history we beat the UN we beat the optimistic UN target by three years staggering you know the the rates of child mortality in Africa are now lower than they were in Europe in 1950 the fastest-growing economies in the world are in sub-saharan Africa many you know millions of people millions of people a month are getting access to this incredible technology that's embodied in cell phones right people have access to fresh water like they've never had access before the child that the kids or kids are getting immunized at a rate that's that's unfair that's that's unprecedented and and yet we have this idea that's become rampant in the West that there's something ultimately corrupt about the patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled right down to its core and a lot of that's being taught by the activist disciplines and universities and I just don't get it it's not acceptable so they see these hierarchies and their proposal to level everything off and to take away the insane power at the very top is equality of outcome is unproven in terms of it's never been it's never been done successfully to a utopian right well I and I also don't even think you can do it in principle because if you accept the proposition that the propositions are laid out which is you have to pursue things of value and if you pursue things in a value in in a social space so you do it cooperatively and competitively you do it with other people then you're gonna produce differential outcome because people will be pretty good at it yes it's like okay you don't believe that it's like okay do you listen to random selections of music online or do you do what everyone else does you go for that 1/10 of 1% of songwriters and you'll it only listen to them you only listen to the one you only read the productions of 1/10 of 1% of writers you only listen to the podcasts of 1/10 of 1% of podcast broadcasters right when you watch sports on TV you only watch the athletic contributions of 1/10 of 1% of athletes so like where's the Equality exactly where's that in your life you people who are pushing for equality of outcome you manifest that in anything you do you don't you're unbelievably selective just like everyone else and the reason you're selective is because you there are things that are happening that need to have an or that are entertaining and interesting and you want the best in all of those realms that's how it works and there is a best that's the other thing that's so painful and that that actually is painful you know one here's a problem of dispossession a real problem one way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ and so IQ is normally distributed and if you have an IQ of less than 85 it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions that's about 10% of the population might even be higher than that okay so given that lack how are you going to compete and the answer is you're not because low IQ is a good predictor of poverty now they spiral because you know if you're if you if you're cognitively if you're on in the if you're if you're less cognitively gifted then and you have children they're gonna be in a less enriched environment these things spiral but you still have the essential problem that's the essential problem of the dispossessed it's like hierarchies or complex tools to attain necessary goals but they dispossessed people what do we do with the people that they dispossessed the answer is we don't know so we have to talk about it constantly to figure out how to solve it because it's an ongoing problem that transforms and that's the reason that political dialogue is necessary and then the danger is is that the political dialogue will polarize into the radical left no hierarchies whatsoever or the radical right our hierarchy is 100 percent right at all costs and so those are the we have the eternal problem and those are the two poles that we have to negotiate between it's interesting because the accusation has always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcome thing is sort of an infantile ization of the populace right and the best example of that is sports when you look at sports clearly the best people win right the the fastest runners win the race the the people that have the best strategy win the game the in fun in fact that's a weird word in fun tile is a shinai never get it right but of that is what we do with children where you get participation trophies and no one wins you know when my daughter was three years old she was in soccer and they didn't keep score but everyone knew everyone knew these kids scored and they didn't at the end of the game they didn't announce a winner there was no catalyst you can't have a soccer game without keeping score yes not a soccer game anymore it's something else but the score was kept of course he just wasn't discussed of course it was the strangest thing but this is to treat these little kids because they couldn't handle it you know you know she cried when the other team scored I'm like that's you it feels bad when they score so it feels good when you score it's very difficult to say that to a three-year-old right so are we going to run hills is she going to practice drills so that she feels that good feeling more and then there's a point where that becomes too far there's a point where you become an obsessive over winner right and this is the people that want to crush their enemies then you become Conan the Barbarian this is this is well our end of it is what the left is terrified of right yeah the idea of the left is the demure the soft the the the people that are kinder and gentler the idea of the right is the Conqueror the people that you know their work hard play hard go kick-ass go America that kind of and so these are the type of people that are going to be crueler they're gonna do what it takes to win and the the people that you would consider that would like equality of outcome are the people that are trying to slow that down does this make sense yes absolutely and I think that's how it lays itself out temperamentally it's psychological yeah this is the motivation for all this yes yes yes and it's well and the radical left is is compassion going mad although it's also envy let's not forget about that NZ well absolutely is one reason to stand up for the dispossessed is because you're empathetic you know and an empathy is not an automatic good this is something we make a big mistake about we think well I'm feeling sorry for you therefore I'm good it's like no I might be feeling too sorry for you I might not be demanding enough of you so and that's the terrible devouring mother you know from a psychoanalytic projection well everything you do dear is okay it's like no it's not right oh so so one of the things that Jean Piaget the developmental psychologists he was very interested in figuring out a way out of this and it's very much relevant to your concept your your talk about about athletics okay so so imagine this because I this is also something that points the way to a proper morality which was actually something that Jean Piaget was very concerned about he wanted to he wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science that's actually what drove him even though he was people don't know that he was arguably the world's greatest developmental psychologist so so here's the idea you know how you tell your kid to be a good sport you say don't it doesn't matter whether you want to lose it matters how you play the game okay so I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really really complicated it's like you tell your kid that and they look at you and they think well what do you mean by that aren't I supposed to try to win it's a soccer game I'm trying I'm supposed to win and you say well yeah you're supposed to win but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose it matters how you play the game you know that that's right but you don't know how to explain it to your kid you say well you want to be a good sport okay so imagine this this is how it works and this is crucially important so first of all life is not a game even a game is not a game because a game is most of the time a game is the beginning of a series of games so let's say that you're on a soccer team well there's winning the game but the game isn't the issue the game is the whole series of games so maybe the game is winning the championship and winning the championship and winning a game are not the same thing and the reason for that is well maybe if you want to win a game the best thing to do is to let your star player make all the moves but if you want to win a championship maybe the best thing is for your star player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members that's a different strategy and the reason it's different is because it iterates across time okay so I'll tell you a quick story so when my kid was playing hockey when he was about 12 or so he was in the championship game just at a local arena you know and it was really fun to watch the teams were pretty equal which is something that you want so that everybody can expand their skills while they're playing and it was like five seconds to to the end of the game and the other team made a break way and came down and the guy came down the ice the score it was a beautiful goal and it was 4-3 and that was the end of it right and all my kids team there is the kid who is the star and he was a pretty good hockey player he came off the ice and he was very annoyed about what had happened he smashed his stick on the cement and was complaining about the refereeing and acting as if he'd been robbed and his father came up and instead of saying get your act together kid that's no way to display yourself after a loss he said oh yeah man you were robbed that the referees didn't ref right and and you played the best and you should've won and I thought you absolute son of a bitch you're ruining your son and then the question is why cuz his son was the star and was trying to win why was he ruining his son well you're trying to train your son not to win the game you're trying to train your son to win the championship and so that's a series of games but then life isn't the championship life is a whole bunch of championships it's a whole sequence of them and so what you're actually trying to train your son to do is to be a contender in the entire series and the way you do that is by helping him develop his character and the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time and one way you do that if you're a kid is like well what do you want to do with your kid you don't want to teach him to win you want to teach him to play well with others and that's to be reciprocal so that means to try to win but also to pay attention to to developing the other people around him and not to put winning the game above everything at all times so then he's fun to play with and this is absolutely crucial you get you can you can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of 2 and the age of 4 if your kid is fun to play with then what happens kids line up to play with him and adults line up to teach him and if kids line up to play with him then they'll have friends his whole life and he'll be socialized and be invited to many games some of which he'll win all of which you'll be able to participate in and if he's fun to play with in adults we'll teach him things and then he wins at life and so when you say to your kid it doesn't matter whether you win or lose matters how you play the game what you're saying is don't forget kid that what you're trying to do here is to do well at life and you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life well you're in any specific game and you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game and there's a deep ethic in that and it's the ethic of reciprocity in games part of the reason that we're so obsessed with sports is because we like to see that dramatized you know like the person we really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins we don't like the narcissistic winners they're winners and that's a plus but if they're narcissistic they're not good team players they're only out for themselves then we think well you're a winner in the narrow sense but your character is suspect you're no role model even though you're a winner and it's because we're looking for something deeper we're looking for that the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games and that's a real thing that's a real ethic it's a fundamental ethic I think what you're pointing out that's very important is we're we're searching for the person who's got it all nailed someone who tries their hardest but is also honest enough about the circumstances to not cry foul when it's gone the other person's way yeah well that's part of resilience that's right like you're not gonna win it you're not going to you're not gonna score on every shot right it doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots doesn't mean you shouldn't try to to hit the goal but part of part of being able to continue to take shots is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that that in that instance you weren't on top it's more trivial in games than it is in fights and it's also the response is much more negative to the from the fans if you lose a fight and complain about it it is it's ruthless there because they understand that you've made a huge character error yeah so why do you think it's more important in fights than it is in games why do you think it is because the consequences are so grave because you recognize that the high is much higher and the lows are much lower to lose a basketball game sucks but it's nothing like losing a fight there's no comparison it's not even so what do you think it is the damages the fighter if he complains about losing why is that a mistake why do the fans respond so negatively to that because they know they know that you lost they know that you're complaining for no reason and you're not a hero they want you to be better than them they want you to be the person that has the courage to step into a cage or a ring or wherever you with whatever the format is you're competing and to do something that's extremely difficult and when you do that they hold you to a higher state right to lose with grace yes and when you fall especially if you were a champion that is one of the most disappointing things ever when champion complains right and and it is okay so response is horrific from the audience okay so that's a great example so let's imagine what does the person who loses something important with grace do and the answer is fairly straightforward accepts the defeat and thinks okay what what is it that I have left to improve that will decrease the possibility of a similar defeat in the future yes right soso so what he's doing is because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do but who's trying to expand their skills at all at all times yes and the attempt to expand their skills at all times is even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with because the trajectory is so important more important in particular to the audience it's extremely important the audience because you are the person who's competing you are expecting them to live out this life in a perfect way or in a much more powerful way than you're capable yes and so part of that is the skill because they put in the practice but part of that also is the willingness to push the skill farther into new domains of development with each action and that's really what people like to watch right they don't like to watch a perfect athletic performance they like to watch a perfect athletic performance that's pushed into the domain of new risk they want to see both at the same time you're really good at what you do and you're getting better okay so you lose a match which is not any indication that you're not good at what you do you might not be as good as the person who beat you but if you lose the match and then whine what you've done is sacrifice the higher order principle of constant improvement of your own skills yes because you should be analyzing the loss and saying the reason I lost insofar as it's relevant to this particular time and place is the insufficiencies I manifested that defeated me and I need to track those insufficiencies so that I can rectify them in the future and if I'm blaming it on you or the referees or the situation that I'm not taking responsibility and I'm not pushing myself forward and so then you also take the meaning out of it like one of the things I've been doing on my tour people are criticizing me to some degree for saying things to people that are obvious well first of all it's not like I didn't bloody well know they were obvious when I wrote those rulings you were the rules in my book for example stand up straight with your shoulders back you know treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping it's like I know perfectly well that those can be read as cliches the question is cliche let's say is something that's so true that it's that it's become that it's become it's widely accepted by everyone well but we don't know why it's true anymore and so it's this issue that the issue that we're talking about here or the issue of being a good sport we need to figure out why that's true and the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time and now that's the proper that's the proper moral attitude so when you see an athletic performance where someone is pushing themselves beyond what they are you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation it isn't the skill itself it's the extension of the skill when you see someone acting like a bad sport then they're sacrificing that and so they're sacrificing the higher for the lower and no one likes that in the fights it's got to be see the question is that's the thing I can't quite figure out is why that would be even exaggerated in a fight situation and you said it's because the stakes are so high yeah the consequences of victory or defeat they're just so much greater there's your your health is on the line it's one of the rare things that you do where your health is on the line your physical health right so there's more extreme victories and more game defeats and so the morality that's associated with defeat is more extreme exactly because there's more on the line and the way people treat the champions it's it's a it's a very different thing it's the the respect and adulation that a champion receives is it's the pinnacle of sports in terms of the the love from the audience when someone wins a great fight it's there's nothing like it and this is one of the reasons why these people are willing to put their health on the line because that high the high of victory and it's not just a victory it's a you know what what is that who was it who said the victory is really the victory over the lesser you it's a victory it's always the victory is over you've got to realize a guy like steep a Miocic who defends is heavyweight title this weekend in the UFC he is he's the heavyweight champion the world but he's not undefeated he lost in his career he's lost a couple of times and he you know as I'm sure he's lost wrestling matches and sparring sessions in the gym and all he's a product of improvement right he's a product of discipline and hard work and thinking and strategy and constantly improving upon his skills and so so in because of that he's the baddest man on the planet so my in my book rule for is this is 12 excuse me this is from 12 rules for life rule 4 is come carry yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today yes because you need to be you need to have a hierarchy of improvement you need to be aiming something for something and that means you're going to be lesser than people who've always already attained along that dimension yes and that can give rise to envy so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis and the answer is you should defeat your former self you should be constantly trying to do that and you're the right control for yourself to because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages and so if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you and it is the case and this is what we were talking about - with regards to the self improvement of the fighter is well if you're improving yourself then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self and then you might also ask well what is that lesser self and that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and and aggressive and vengeance seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life so it's very necessary to understand that this is why you know I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibilities like well personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day and it better in some way that you can actually manage and that's humility it's right like well I'm a flawed person and I've got all my problems could I be as good as person X it's like not the right question the right question is could you be slightly better tomorrow than you're currently flawed self and the answer to that is if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low then you could be better tomorrow than you are today because what you also have to do is you have to say well here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies and the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this and that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with plaque arts you know it's like well this is why I tell people to clean the room it's not going to brag to someone that you did that but someone is insufficient as you might be able to manage it and that means you actually are on the pathway to self improvement and you're transcending your former self and you might say well what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing and it's not acting according to a set of rules it's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are and what's so interesting about that is that the mean meaning in the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit so I've been laying that out in these discussions too because I said well the the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult very tragic and difficult for everyone and it's also tainted by malevolence because no matter how things are tragic and difficult but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be and so that's life and you need an antidote to that because that can embed or you constantcontact without just the tragedy but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence that makes it even worse especially if it's self induced okay so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful well what do you set against that doing something worthwhile by your own definition say you need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day because you've got something good to do well what's the best thing you can do transcend your current wretched and miserable self there's meaning to be found in that and real respond that's that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility one of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard it's tainted by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter you need a meaning to offset that where is the meaning to be found not in rights not an impulsive pleasure but in responsibility you take responsibility for yourself so you take care of yourself if you're good at it you can you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family if you're good at both of those then you have some excess left over to take care of your community those are heavy burdens you pick up the burdens you find that's meaningful the best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself and that's where the meaning is to be found and so that meaning is in the continual self transcendence that's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn you did you watch when we were Kings Elliott raesha yeah god that's an amazing amazing amazing movie right at the end of it so Ellie defeats Frasier basically by letting him defeat himself right because Frasier is angry and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't conduct the fight properly so he exhausts himself chasing Ellie and is basically just trained himself to take the damn blows right and to wear Frasier out that's his plan then right at the end of the movie he knocks Frasier down and it's pretty much the end of the fight but Frasier sort of struggles to his feet you know he's just getting up off the mat and Ally's got his hand pulled back to just nail him because he's completely laid open and he puts his glove down and turns away that's the end of the fight and Frasier said and and this is true as far as I know that that fight tamed him like Frasier had a big chip on his shoulder and it was a kind of a dreadful guy up till that fight and afterwards he was affable and he was he was civilized le civilized him and so but that gesture that Ellie made was that great gesture because he could have flattened him right and he had every reason to man he got he got he got taken apart Ali took punches like mad in that fight and then in the final analysis when he had Frazier down and he was struggling to his feet he just let him go man nobility of character right there something impressive to behold so when why are you defining people like when you're saying this why are you saying you're miserable wretched life because there's a lot of people that don't have miserable wretched lives that also just want to improve like why does it have to be the worst-case scenario in order to because it has to work it has to it has to work the theory has to work in the worst case scenario okay that's why so using the worst case scenario isn't because you think that that perhaps may alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario no no I don't think so because well you know what depends on how much time you have to outline the ideas but you know what what I because even if things are going really well for you now there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough you know you're gonna be ill family members going to be ill a dream is going to fall apart you're going to be you're going to be uncertain about your employment status like the the flood is coming right the apocalypse is coming it's always the case in life and you have to be prepared for it and the question is how to prepare for it and the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the diarist of circumstances that's the issue and so you outline and I mean I am pessimistic about this in my approach in some sense because when I'm talking to my audience isn't the same thing happens and happened in my book maps of meaning and in 12 rules for life I'm laying out the worst case scenario that's sort of like hell it's things are going really badly for you and that there's just chance associated with that sometimes and you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse it's like okay what have you got under those circumstances you've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire you've got that the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated which is to say well regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat like even if there were errors on the part of the referee this is no time to whine about it this is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future and that's the right attitude you know in the Old Testament one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is in the Old Testament the Jews keep getting walloped by God it's like they struggle up and make an empire and then they just get walloped and then it's all crushed in there and they're they're out of it for generations and then they struggle back up and make an empire and then they get demolished again and it happens over and over and over and the the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is we must have made a mistake it's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate it's never that the presupposition is if things aren't working out it's my fault and that's a hell of a presupposition and you might say well of course you know what's that that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression etc etc and and the and the vagaries of fate it's like it doesn't over underestimate it it's not the point the point is your best strategic position is how am i insufficient and how can I rectify that that's what you've got and the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough one of the things why do you see the that's another thing you keep saying aim low enough have a low enough bar why do you why do you mean that well let's say you've got a kid and you want the kid to improve you don't set them a bar that's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it you take a look at the kid and you think okay this kid's got this range of skill here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill but gives them a reasonable probability of success and so like I'm saying it tongue-in-cheek to some degree you know it's like but if you're but I'm doing it as an aid to humility it's like well I don't know how to start improving my life someone might say that and I would say well you're not aiming low enough there's something you could do that you are regarding is trivial that that you could do that you would do that would result in an actual improvement but it's not a big enough improvement for you so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity incremental steps yes and so this is also what is achieved through exercise it's one of the most important well what do you do when you go and lift weights you don't go on like if you haven't bench press before you don't put 400 pounds on the damn bar and drop the and drop the bar through your skull I know you think look when I started working out when I was a kid I was I was wait about a hundred and thirty pounds and I was six foot one so thin kid and I smoked a lot I wasn't in good shape I wasn't in good physical shape and I went to the gym and it was bloody embarrassing you know when people would come over and help me with the goddamn weights here's how you're supposed to use this you know it was humiliating and maybe I was pressing 65 pounds or something at that point you know but what am I gonna do I'm gonna lift up a hundred fifty pounds and injure myself right off the bat no I had to go in there and strip down and put my skinny goddamn self in front of the mirror and think son-of-a-bitch there's all these monsters in the gym who've been lifting weights for ten years and I'm struggling to get 50 pounds off the bar tough luck for me but I could lift 50 pounds and it wasn't fair very long until I could lift 75 and well you know how it goes but and I never injured myself when I was late lifting and the reason for that was I never pushed myself past where I knew I could go and I pushed myself a lot you know I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about three years in University I kind of had to quit because I was eating so goddamn much I couldn't stand it seething like six meals a day it was just taking up too much time but there's a humility in determining what it is that the wretched creature that you are can actually manage aim low and I don't mean don't aim and I don't mean don't aim up but you have to accept the fact that you can set yourself a goal that you can attain and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with because if you're not in very good shape the goal Yuuka day could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing and it beats the hell out of bitterness and it's way better than blaming someone else it's way less dangerous and you could do it and what's cool about it there's a statement in the New Testament it's called the Matthew principle and economists use it to describe how the economy in the world works to those who have everything more will be given from those who have nothing everything will be taken it's like what's very pessimistic in some sense because it means that as you start to fail you fail more and more rapidly but it also means that as you start to succeed you succeed more and more rapidly and so you take an incremental step and well now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52 point 5 pounds you think well what the hell is that it's like it's one step on a very long journey and so it's it and it starts to compound on you so a small step today means puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step for the next day and then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day and you do that for two or three years man you're starting to stride you know what I have so many people coming up to me now this is one of the things that's so insanely fun about this tour which is so positive it's it brings me to tears regularly it's mind boggling because people come up to me and this is happening wherever I go now and they say they're very polite when they come and talk to me you know and they're always apologetic for interrupting and so it's never it's never narcissistic and it's never annoying I'm really happy to see people and they come up to me and they say well I know you've heard this lots of times before but I've really I've really been putting my life together since I've been watching your lectures then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place too much alcohol too much drugs not getting along with her father not getting along with her mother not having a vision for the life being nihilistic playing too many video games you know like being suicidal that that happens a lot having post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes as a consequence of combat whatever little slice of hell they were occupying they say look I've been I've been listening to your lectures and I've been developing a vision for my life and I've been trying to take responsibility and I've been trying to tell the truth and things are way better and so that's absolutely perfect it's it's it's the right way forward as far as I'm concerned and those are people who they took stock of themselves they said I'm in a dark place and I'm a dark person and here's some things that this dark person in this dark place could do little things that they could actually do I'll clean up my damn room I'll make my bed I've had I don't know how many people have come and told me it's so strange they said well I started making my bed and that made all the difference it's like well yeah you decided a mop man and the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed and you think well that's nothing heroic it's like no but a man up is heroic that's something and then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room you know you're not superordinate to that you lower yourself so that you straighten up you you're grateful for what you have right in front of you and you take care of it you put it in order it's like all of a sudden things start to get better and so wonderful to be doing this tour because I see so that's what this tour has been about for me it's not political I never talked to people after the talks for example I talked to about 150 people tonight we never talked about anything political it's always this I wasn't doing very well I'm putting my life together I'm getting along better with my father I'm getting along better with my wife I'm getting along better with my kids I've got some meaning in my life thanks a lot it's way better it's like yes that's that's the right thing it's very beneficial for people and they need to hear that and there's there's something that comes along with that that's critical and what that is is an honest assessment of yourself an honesty that that type of honesty honesty with yourself it's very difficult for some people and they don't have the tools for and they haven't been explained how to do this why you sure why you should yeah one of the things that happens when you go through school you're told what to do you're never told how to think you never you're also told that you're okay the way you are that's self esteem yeah you're okay the way you are it's like no you're not and this is another thing that will you are and you're not right you're okay as a human look if you want to be a black belt in jujitsu and you just started your first class you're okay as you are you're a human but in the goal you're not okay that's a greater goal the incremental improvement is important you have to you have to honestly assess your position and move forward yeah well that's it your a position yeah its trajectory yes right and and when you say to someone you're okay because of your position that's not good enough because you have to say well wait a second you need a trajectory and maybe you're okay if you're okay in your position and your trajectory but you know the self-esteem movements and all of that will accept yourself the way you are it's like no because you need a trajectory and one of the things that that I think one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are now I say no no you could be way more than you are and they're relieved about that you see because if you're in a dark and terrible place and someone says you're okay the way you are then you don't know what to do about that is right no I'm not I'm having it all right having a terrible time and I'm hopeless you're okay the way you are well then what what that's it that's it that's where I am and what do you want to tell a young person you're seventeen you're okay the way you are it's like no you're not you got 60 years to be better and you could be way better you could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions and in pursuing that better that's where you'll find the meaning in your life and that will give you the antidote to the suffering the way I always describe it to people as there are disciplines that you can pursue and those disciplines are a vehicle for developing a human potential and if you get better at these things you can get better at anything and if you figure out what it takes to become better at whatever sport it is or whatever art it is or whatever you're pursuing the same principles you can apply to the way you treat people you can apply to the way you educate yourself you can apply to way you keep your body in shape all those things are connected that's why you have to import impose order people have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos you know because well there isn't anything technically wrong with chaos chaos is a place of great potential well the question is what's the proper what's the proper balance between chaos and order chaos potential and order well the answer is look when you're a kid you're all potential it's chaotic potential it can manifest itself in any number of ways and you maybe you don't want to give that up so you're like Peter Pan you want to be a kid forever because you don't want to give up the potential and you look out in the world and all you see are Captain Hook's you know who've lost a hand who were chased by death because that's the clock in the crocodile it's already got a taste of him terrified by death and he's a tyrant well I don't want to grow up to be that so I won't be disciplined at all well that's no good because the way the potential transforms itself into actuality is through discipline and so then you as you said this is the trick though you have to pick a path of discipline whether what path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue there could be a rule the rule could be the rule might not be follow this rule the rule might be you have to follow some rules so it's a matter rule and the meta rule is you have to discipline yourself and the issue is well how that's not really the relevant question you can pick a disciplinary path that's why I often tell my clients especially young people they say well I don't know what to do it's like that's okay nobody does go do something do the best thing that you can think of put the best plan you have into practice it's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans so you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start to implement it and then you you you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan and so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well one of the more difficult aspects of that is personal honesty like being honest with yourself being honest with yourself about what you're doing self-assessment it's very difficult for people they don't they're never there never taught it it's not something that's encouraged no one it's dismal maybe imagine you only got 100 you only have $100,000 to go buy a house and so you go buy it you go look at this house and it's like Jesus this house man it's like it needs a lot of work it's like well that's all you've got why are you gonna pretend that the house is OK the way it is we're gonna look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work you have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed and that's like that is harsh man but and then in order to do that properly someone has to have taught you it's look you aren't your problems well you are your most fundamentally that which if it confronts its problems can solve them and that's the hero myth in in a nutshell by the way the hero is the person who confronts horrible chaotic potential and tames it and make something of it right that's that that's the fundamental human story but the problem is is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it yeah and so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off that need to be dispensed with and that man especially at the beginning especially if you're screwed up that maybe like 95% of you just has to go up in flames and it's painful even some of that stuff that you have to burn off doesn't want to die and it'll scream in agony while you're burning it off it's not pleasant but if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems most fundamentally if you know you're the thing that if it faces the problems can transcend them then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are and you have to do that in small steps because most people don't have experience in transcending their problems so they really don't know what it even feels like it seems like an alien concept it seems like something other people can do but if you do it incrementally you can show yourself that you can do it I mean it's one of the reasons why they have belt systems and martial arts you start off slow oh my god I got a stripe on my white belt oh my god I'm a blue belt you feel improvement yeah and for some people it's the first real improvement marked absolute improvement in their life Yeah right well then that's an interesting thing too because right there you've got a bit of a measurement system we have this system set up online called the future authoring program and we've implemented it because we've tested it three times we implemented at Mohawk College in Canada and we had people write about their ideal future and also to put in measurement strategies it's like okay here's your ideal future here's how are you gonna break it into goals here's how you're going to mark progress towards those goals because you got to be playing a fair game with yourself right because when you make progress you want to reward yourself so you have to identify what the progress is and you have to reward it the consequence we had people write a future plan for only an hour when they came for their school orientation in the summer before going to it's a it's a community college and they dropped the dropout rate among you men by 50% and his yeah no kidding 50% yeah and what that meant was to me what that meant was just think about that what that means is that these kids have been educated for twelve years and no one had ever sat them down and said okay what the hell are you doing and why and how are you gonna get like where do you want to go why do you want to get there how are you gonna get there how are you gonna mark your progress they've never walked them through that exercise you walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they'll stay on track by 50% that's incredible well it's one of the things I've always complained about is that they know one people teach you facts they don't teach you how to approach life they don't teach you how to think they don't teach you how to confront why do the insecurities and different traps that your mind will set up for you yeah well that's what partly what's so fun about doing this lecture tour because that's exactly what I'm talking to people about one of the things I talk about is well why do you think why bother thinking it's like you think well that's obvious it's like no actually it's not so obvious it's like the issue that I discussed with my students at university a lot is well why write a good essay my bother what to get the grade it's like no that's not why and if you think that well that's better than not thinking that there's any reason for writing but it's a bad reason why write well writing is a form of thinking it's actually the most demanding form of thinking I would say there's other forms that are demanding so how do you write a good essay pick a topic that matters to you because if you're not writing about something that matters to you it's like you're not living something that's meaningful it's wrong you're not gonna write a good essay cuz you're wrong right to begin with it has to matter to you well why does it matter what what does it mean that it matters well it means that it's gonna affect how you make decisions in your life something that matters affects how you make decisions in your life well why does it matter how you make decisions in your life because if you make some stupid decisions you're going to increase the sum total of suffering a lot you're going to do stupid things to yourself you're going to do stupid things to other people and you're not going to be as good a person as you could be so not only will you do stupid and terrible things but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested so that's the lock so you write an essay so that you can think and you think so that you can live properly and so you're right damn carefully you make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use and you make sure the phrases that you put the words in or as solid as they can be and you make sure the sentences are well constructed and that they're organized into proper paragraphs and the paragraphs are sequenced and the content of the thing matters and you put your soul into it and you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write it's meaningfully engaging and this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audiences meaning is actually an instinct like you think okay so we already decided that incremental self-improvement is the proper route okay so how do you know when you're incrementally self improving properly and the answer is it's deeply engaging it's deeply meaningful and the reason for that is you're actually adapted neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental improvement that was a discovery conceptually by a guy named Vygotsky who is a rush of neuropsychologist who coined the term zone of proximal development you hear now and then people say they're in the zone that's the zone of proximal development and that's that place that you occupy when you're improving at the rate that's optimal to you and your sense of intrinsic meaning signifies that that's how your bloody brain is wired and so then you might say well what's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life and the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development because that's where the maximal meaning is and that actually does prepare you for life and so the question why I think is well you think before you act and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development and you do that to as an antidote to the catastrophe of life well that's the well that's the answer and the thing that's cool about that and then this is I think part of what I've been telling people that sort of novel is well where's the meaning the meaning is in responsibility you know because people avoid respond that's Peter Pan again avoid responsibility it's just a burden it's like no it's not it is a burden but voluntarily hoisted it's the place of maximal meaning and the more responsibility you take the more meaning you have and that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life and and everybody also knows this because just look it's so simple when are you sick of yourself well that's when you're being useless and and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community you're not even taking care of yourself well you can't sleep with a clean conscience unless your psychopathic if you're not taking care of yourself and then wind can use window are you not awake in the morning at 3:00 in the morning tearing yourself apart with the guilty conscience it's when you've done something useful at least for you you know and you can say oh well check one on my side you say okay so fine you adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with the clean conscience what happens if you'd opted full responsibility for yourself and then for your family lots of the people who are coming to talk to me say now I've been really trying to put my family together like I've made that a goal I'm trying to heal my family and bring it together and it's working so here's a story I love this story man it just killed me I was in LA at the orpheum you know it's rough downtown in LA it places around the Orpheum - and Tammy and I my wife um because she's traveling with me and is a big help by the way um we were wandering around downtown LA good morning after the talk and we're walking down the street and we're on streets we probably shouldn't have been on but any in any case cuz what the hell do we know being stupid Canadians and so we were walking down the street and this car pulled up beside us this kid hopped out it's good-looking Latino kid 20 21 something like that he jumped over and he said he's all excited he said are you dr. Peterson I said yeah he said I'm really really happy to meet you I've been watching your lectures for like a year and a half and I've been trying to put my life together and it's really working I'm really doing way better I really wanted to thank you and so it's lovely when you're walking down a kind of rough area and somebody pulls up beside you and they jump out of the car to tell you how much better their life is that's a pretty good morning and so but then that isn't all that happened mm-hmm he ran back to his car he said wait a minute wait a minute he went back to his car and he got out his dad and they came over together and his dad was just smiling away like a real smile you know and so was the kid and they had their arms around each other and they said look like we've really been working on our relationship for the last year and a half and it's going just great we want to thank you and their father said something like I'm really happy that you got my son back to me it's like yes that's what this bloody tour has been like it's great and everybody that's coming to these talks that's what they're trying to do you know I got 3,000 people in each audience and what they're trying to do is figure out how can I take maximal responsibility for my own life how can I imbue it with the meaning that helps me withstand tragedy and suffering how can I be a better person and wouldn't it be great if that was of optimal benefit to my family and the community you're getting very emotional about this well it's something Joe Jesus I've seen like a hundred and fifty thousand people in the last two months you know and this is what it's well you'll have a chance to talk to Ruben about this too this is what it's been like it's so positive I can't believe it and it's just one person after another saying like look I was I was having a rough time I'm really happy that I've been encountering what you've been talking about I've really been trying to put things together and it's really helping ya Ruben was pretty blown away by it we had a long conversation about it about he just feels like there's some crazy movement going on that something's changing in the world because of this this new avenue of learning and developing is opening up for these people well well and I've been thinking about that too because you know you like I said at the beginning if you're surfing you don't want to take responsibility for the wave and so you know I mean first of all a lot of what I've been telling people are things that I've gleaned from the clinical litter and this psychological literature it's not like I'm coming up with this of my own accord right I'm transmitting information that I've learned from very very wise people and so there's that but also we don't want to underestimate the utility of the technology right because we have this long-form technology now and it's enabling us to have this discussion and so we can get deeper into things publicly and socially then we were able to before and I see this I see this as a manifestation of that and and as and I'm hoping too that maybe maybe what's happening because we're gonna have a lot of adaptation to do in the next 20 years as things change so rapidly we can hardly comprehend it and hopefully the way we're going to be able to manage that is to think and hopefully these long form discussions will provide the political or provide the public forum for us to actually think to actually engage at a deep enough level so we'll be able to master the transformations and I think that's possible and him part of the reason that I wrote this book and well part of the reason that I'd be doing what I've been doing for the last thirty years because I really have believed since nineteen eighty five something like that that the way out of political polarization the way out of the excesses of the right and the left is through the individual I think the West got that right the fundamental unit of measurement is the individual and the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in this process of humble self-improvement I believe that's the case and that's where the meaning is and that's where the responsibility is and I think and I'm hoping that if enough people in the West and then and then the rest of the world for that matter but we're very polarized in the West right now if enough people take responsibility for getting their individual life's together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century I don't see another antidote for it it's not political it's ethical this is the message that I always hear from you and this is you as a friend this is the you that I understand but this is not how you're commonly represented you are the most misrepresented person I've ever met in my life I have never seen someone who has so much positive that gets ignored and where people are looking for any little thing that they could possibly misrepresent and switch up and change and I'm kind of stunned by it I mean I I'm really not sure what it is about you that's so polarizing with all these different people that are deciding that you are some sexist transphobic evil person that's this right-wing all right the figure you know even to the point where it's it's it's kind of humorous to me sometimes when I read some of these these takes on you what do you think that's from like what what is have you this is a new thing for you you mean this only been the last few years that you've gone from this relatively unknown professor in a university into Anto to being this worldwide figure where people you're obviously your message is resonating with people in a very huge way but the people that are opposing you they're vehemently opposed what do you think that is collectivist don't like me collectivists what do you mean by that people who think the probably proper unit of analysis in the world is a political and B group oriented the identity politics types don't like me at all and they have every reason not to because I'm not I'm not a fan of identity politics I think things that's why you're misrepresented but mentally there's other reasons I mean I came out against this bill in Canada bill C 16 that that hypothetically purported to do nothing else but to increase the the domain of Rights that were applied to transsexual people but there was a there was plenty more to that bill man let me tell you and I read the policy dot the policies that went along with it and it was a compelled speech bill and so I opposed it on the grounds that the politicians are not supposed to leap out of their proper domain and start to compel speech it's not the same as forbidding hate speech I'm I think hate speech should be left alone personally for all sorts of reasons but to compel the contents of speech is a whole new thing it's never been done before in the history of British common law English common law and it's actually the Supreme Court in the 1940s in the u.s. said that that was not to be allowed and so it was a major transgression and they said well we're doing it for all the right reasons it's like no no you don't get it you don't get to compel speech I don't care what your reasons are and why should I trust your damn reasons anyways what makes you so st. like so that you can violate this fundamental principle and I should assume that you're doing it for nothing but compassion and that you're wise enough to manage that properly it's like sorry no I read your policies I see what you're up to I don't like the collectivists I think they're unbelievably dangerous and I have reason to believe that so I think that when push comes to shove if your unit of analysis is the group and your worldview is one group and its power claims against all other groups that that that's not acceptable it's it's tribalism of the worst form and it lead to nothing but mayhem and desire and part of the reason you're doing it isn't because your compassion it's because you're envious and you don't want to take responsibility for your own life and I'm calling you on it and so you don't like me so I must be an alright figure I must be a Nazi saying your house needs a lot of work man there's a lot of rot in the in the floorboards the plumbing is leaking the water's coming in you're not you're not the sage and Saint you think you are there's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it do everything you honestly think that that's why people are responding to you in a negative way that they only have their own personal problems that they're avoiding it can't possibly be that you represent to them something that is either cruel or something that is not compassionate about people and their differences and their flaws and their their humanity because I think it's certainly the case that there the vision that's been generated of me is yeah that's but that's what I'm getting at oh yeah there's that too but why is layers say theirs well part of its the political polarization you know at the moment we're viewing almost everything that happens in the world through a political lens at least the journalists at least first of all first of all I gotta make this clear first of all I've been treated well by lots of journalists really well like the best journalists in Canada have been on my side since about two weeks after the bill c16 thing erupted and those would be the journalists that have an independent voice and that are that that have created their own following and they're in a number of different media places mostly in print okay and there's a there's a coalition of newspapers in Canada the post media group 200 newspapers they came out fully in support of my stance on on Bill c60 and so there's lots of times that I've been treated properly by journalists there's a small number of journalists very noisy and a small number of activists very well organized who've been on my case right from the beginning and those are people who are generally driven by a very radical leftist progressive agenda and I am not on their side I'm on their side as individuals I'm on their side as people who could struggle forward but the collectivist vision it deadly but you seem to be the poster boy for this very simple characterization like almost a caricature of what the the the alt-right figurehead is it's it's to me as a person who knows you it's very strange to watch this take place and then when they can find anything that you say that could without further explanation or definition be misconstrued as appealing to this definition of you like for instance when all this when this what I guess they call themselves in cells involuntary celibates when all this stuff went down this car drove his car into a group of people it's horrible tragedy one of the things that you talked about within cells is that and this was a part of the Rome what was it there's a New York Times timepiece yeah you you said one of the cures for this is enforced monogamy people decided and you know I had never heard that term before quite honestly and that was like what the does that mean it's a psychological term and what it means is enforced by culture that it is a good value monogamy yeah because polygamous societies tend to become ultra violent yeah and that's been known in the anthropological literature for a hundred years and and certainly leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it like she knew the journalists knew perfectly well what I meant by enforcement on me she was stupid it's a you use it as if everybody would understand it because you're an intellectual and because you're a professor in the it was also two minutes out of a two-day conversation you know it's like so if that socially just glanced oh well it's so fun that was funny in some sense because my sense is if you want a pillory someone you should attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had and the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to you know take nubile young women at the point of a gun under state enforcement and deliver them useless men it's like no one has ever believed that so Trinity sounds like yeah it's a really the optic of that that statement are very bad but the the question is why didn't why wasn't there follow-up questions and if there was follow-up questions to get you to define what you mean by enforcement not well there were they just didn't make it into the piece that's a real problem yeah it's a real problem that's a real problem because that's that that is it's so ridiculous because inaccurate definition of who you are one of the things I've said continually I'm and this is on record in multiple places it's like okay so you're a young man mm-hmm and all the women are rejecting you who's got the problem it's not all the women that's a bad road to go down if all the women are rejecting you it's you we both agree on this but why is enforce monogamy the solution for people that are involuntary celibates well it's the solution to them it's the solution to the relationship between men and women fundamentally is monogamous social norm men are unattractive if these were suggestion to them but if these men are unattractive to women I don't mean just physically unattractive mean women aren't seeking them as mates hmm they need to become men yes they certainly do so to this illusion that's the solution absolutely and we both agree on this yes what they need to do that in this society where monogamy is the social norm but isn't a social norm anyway well that was partly my point although to the degree that we deviate from that we tilt towards a more violent society I was making a very minor point I don't think they're related quite honestly I no I don't think that involuntary celibates I don't think that having enforced monogamy as a part of our cultural norm is gonna help those people it does how's it gonna help them well because what happens is if a polygamous society develops which is the alternative then a small minority of men get all the women that's what happened okay I could see that's the only point in which may fear Allah theoretical world where polygamous societies exist and mass and then you do have this problem with this a small group of man that are all the women but that's not what we're talking and also making the women unhappy right because the women don't have any access to a genuine intimate one-to-one relationship over any long period of time which doesn't work well nah it's the whole and what's best women want that right sure if you have children right but I still don't think that that is why these men are involuntary celibates and I don't think it's the solution to that I think the solution is that they need to become attractive yes that is the solution I don't think the two are related well the only I was making a minor point the minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have figured out that you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standards because it gives everyone a chance in some sense chance meaning it clears more more women will be available for one-on-one relationships rather than one guy who is some you know whatever for whatever reasons what you see well you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men so the man hypothetically have more sexual opportunity but that isn't what happens what happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity a fairly large minority of men don't the women are on how because they can't find a committed relationship it's bad for most of the men and the men who have all the sexual opportunity gets cynical but isn't this in some ways against your whole idea of equality of outcome because you're you're talking about equality of sexual outcome now if these men James that's the dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ass this is the this this is a guy who's succeeded at the highest level right well there's gonna be people like that sexually there's going to be people that are better at finding mates and that this is what they enjoy they enjoy having many mates enjoy being yes but but if this is what they enjoy if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoys dating multiple women why is that bad well the I think the fundamental reason it's bad is because it's bad in the long run for children it's bad for children if he chooses to have children fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned right and I think it's the answer look to give the journalist credit that is the point she was making you know apart from pillory me and and and and caricature in my perspective that was the point she was making well first of all I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies I've already said that you know the proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top right and that can destabilize the whole structure yes oh we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that but how did you possibly rectify that if one man is but like say if we've got one six foot five beautiful man who's got a perfect body and yet brilliant and he just wants to date a bunch of women yeah and all the rest of the people are five foot one and they're fat and they're lazy and like this guy's gonna if this is the competition he's going to win yep yep there's no way around this and yet even decide to have enforced monogamy where it becomes a popular thing that women are gonna be more drawn to him if he chooses to date them they might decide I would rather have him sometimes than never actually what does happen but what is wrong with that well what's wrong with it is that it destabilized the society and it's bad for children right you said that yeah but that's what if they don't want to have children but there's a lot of people that don't want to have children there's a lot of people that choose to go their entire life without having children there's men in their 30s some of my friends have vasectomies they don't want children mm-hmm so why why would that help in any way these involuntary celibates well I think you tilt the society so that it serves the interests of well that's a good question to you but you see my point I see your point no doubt about it you're almost having you're almost forcing and in an equality of outcome no that would not was her point to him to the degree that she had a point that was her point now and but I but it's not who doesn't run contrary to my opinions that the issue of outcome has to be addressed I already said there's needs to be a reason for the left and the right and then the problem with hierarchies is they can get too steep and destabilize everything that does happen that particularly happens in the sexual domain and there's plenty of anthropological evidence for that but you still might say well who cares because the men who are who are winning should be allowed to win and the women should be allowed to choose yes except that there's the problem of children and so society steps in on behalf of the children and you can say well lots of people don't want to have children yes and that's truer now than it used to be although many of those people end up having children anyways you know the guys who sit around all the time so that doesn't circumvent the problem but the issue here for me isn't the men or the women it's the children if we're trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximated an optimal environment is optimized and that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of the dolt is necessary I agree with you but I think that what we're talking about mirror's what we're talking about in sports it mirrors what we're talking about in business it's everything else there's going to be people that are better at all different aspects of life there's going to be people that are talented in terms of like getting women to like them yes that's true well that's why I also look you see this right women are high Pergamus which means they mate up in a crew they meet across a knop dominance hierarchies and so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy the probability that you're gonna have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high it's an unbelievably good predictor of that that hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion yes I'm certainly there's plenty of discussions that's a big one though it is the idea that it defines women's sexual choices by the fact that they want begger bigger better well someone who's more more successful and someone who's so higher on the social ladder than what they're accustomed to or what they yeah well what women do is like mate choice is a very difficult problem so how do you solve it well here's how women solve it throw the men in a ring let them compete at whatever they're competing at assume that the man who wins is the best man marry him yes it's a brilliant solution it's a market-oriented solution it's actually the solution that appears to have driven our evolutionary departure from chimpanzees it's a biological solution it's a logical solution which shall cost what is the cost well the cost is the cost is polygamy and so we rein that in with enforced monogamy and we do that in order to provide stable stable circumstances for children is polyamorous is a polyamorous society just as unattainable as this utopian Marxist yes yeah I think so because it looks like this is another point I was making that didn't get covered in the in in the article or the wrote about it somewhat extensively on my blog is that society's tilt towards monogamy across the world is human Universal now that doesn't mean that people don't have polygamists or polyamorous tendencies because they certainly do and it's certainly also the case that one of the women ways that women gerrymander this system is that like the number of women children who are in a say say you're married and you have children with your husband but you also have an affair so we have a child by another man that's more common than anyone suspected so part of the way we way that women solve the problem that you're just describing and I'm not saying anything for this or against this this is a purely factual biological claim is they pick a monogamous marriage and they cheat with high status guys now you know obviously in the confines of the marriage that's a terrible thing but that's a very uncomfortable subject though for women in particular uncomfortable subject for everyone right but it's a terrible subject they don't like the idea that this is a common thing that women choose a safe man that is willing to be monogamous with them and perhaps maybe they're above him in a social class or in sexually and then they'll cheat with someone who's it's common but it's not the norm right it's still the norm not to do that the norm is fidelity right but but there's plenty of exception this is enforced monogamy culture is the norm is this it's like okay so my son's getting married in in September and so so let's say he comes to me in a year and he says hey Dad guess what I've had three Affairs in the last year and they've all been successful I haven't got caught aren't ia good guy what am I gonna say to that no what the hell are you doing that's not what you're supposed to be doing that's enforced monogamy enforcement aagama meaning the around you try to guide them in a way that you think is gonna yes it's harmonious family yes it's built deep into the cultural norms and if that starts to destabilize then there's trouble and that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out look there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction it is the big problem and all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws like here's an example the gender pay gap okay there's no gender pay gap there's a mother gap there's other reasons too but women really take a hit when they become mothers okay that's unfair fair enough man what the hell are you gonna do about it's not just that though right and this is what also I'm starting to rub you here but this is what's one of the things that I wanted to bring up with our kind of lost track of it the misrepresentation of you mirrors the misrepresentation of the gender pay gap because it's a convenient misrepresentation that upon further inspection and understanding you realize there is no gender pay gap the gender pay gap when people discuss it that don't understand and I've had these conversations with really intelligent people that just listen to what's in the news or read some very quick article talking about this problem that we have and they assume that a man and a woman are working the same job but the woman is unfairly paid 79 cents to the man's dollar that's not the case it's not as close to the case of cases women choose different professions that don't pay as much they work less hours and they oftentimes get married and have children and because they have children they take paternity leave remark less money that we don't and they make less money because that so is about ten reasons or twenty reasons for the gender pay gap right one of them being motherhood but there's a whole slew of them but in every dangerous jobs men work outside men are more likely to move but it's never discussed it's that's guys don't like multivariate problems but it's not just that it's a it's a willful misrepresentation of a reality and I think he's mirrors this woeful misrepresentation of where you're where you stand and I think these are all tied in together with people want bad and good they want a one in a zero they want things to be very binary yeah they want them to be binary in the way they already understand it was every to fit their ideological lens and things are more complicated than that this is a complex discussion that you're not going to get in a five-minute segment on a talk show we're not gonna get this on a radio show you're not gonna get this in an article that gets edited by someone with the biased opinion yeah and this is the problem with mainstream media and this is the problem with ideas period Warren Farrell's book on he wrote a book called Warren Farrell is the guy whose most what would you call be most pilloried for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay gap he wrote a book called why men make more who D write it for his daughters why because he wanted to help provide it now obviously he was doing it for public consumption as well but one of the motivations was while men do make more well why and if women want to make more what could they learn from the men who make more how to make more and the answer is yes the question is whether or not they'll do it and the probably the probable answers most women won't because how much you make isn't the only hallmark of success in your life you know it's like it's one measure and it might be a measure that really competitive men compete for and they do and that's partly to provide access to X to to to increase mating opportunities because that's built into the structure something we never talk about either although we could so Warren wrote this to lay out all the reasons that men make more but it was so that his daughters at least in part so the discharges could figure out how to be socioeconomically successful it's like yeah but that's not the only hallmark how much socioeconomic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before they're three years old right well the answer to that shouldn't be none right because what makes look we already know this for for example once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at bay so that's kind of lower upper working class say something like even centrist working class keep the bill collectors at bay additional money doesn't improve your quality of life other things do so maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30 see the irrational man here's the irrational man maybe they drive the world but they're the irrational men more success is always better along this unit dimensional axis of achievement well Gordon Gekko greed is good well there's a tiny percentage of men who are hyper-competitive along those single axis of competition and maybe they drive most things they probably do but that doesn't make them right it also doesn't make them most people and it doesn't make them happy well happy is the whole different issue right that's what they're out of it because everyone is well you you are though in in pursuit of success it's implied that happiness goes with that success otherwise why the you doing it yeah well Dominus domination power charisma prestige well you apply it is success and Happiness or they're inexorably connected in our perception yeah well often a flawed equation you know like what happens look I worked in law firms with law firms for a very long period of time and I worked for lots of high-end women lots of them and they were like they were usually extremely attractive they were extremely intelligent they were extremely driven they were very very conscientious they varied in how agreeable they were some were disagreeable litigator types and some were more agreeable they often had a harder time in the law firms but the law firms lose all their women in the 30s they all bail out at partner level a lot of them well held Jesus it's it's yeah it's a good percentage it's a huge percentage and it isn't because the law firms don't want them the law firms want them because you can't find people like that they're really rare especially if there are also rain makers if they can bring in money so the law firms Bend themselves over backwards trying to keep the women they can't keep them why well the women decide that oh I'm working 18 hours a day flat out all the time seven days a week my husband makes a fair bit of money if I made half as much money as I made we'd still have plenty of money why am i working 18 hours a day well that's not the question the question is why would anyone work 18 hours a day that's the mystery and the answer is a small minority of men are driven to do that and so they'll do that no matter where you put these guys that's what they do yes okay but that does that mean it's correct I think there's something wrong with these women they hit 30 they've hit partner they've hit the pinnacle I mean they could keep going if they wanted to but they've accomplished their goal they've definitely shown ma'am their bloody well in the game and they wake up at 30 and they think oh wait a minute I want to have a relationship and also I want to have some time to put into that I'd like to have kids and I'd actually like to see my kids it's like that irrational this is another thing that you and I are in agreement on but when I see people talk about the way you discuss women they misrepresent what you're saying and paint you in what I think wilfully paint you they do it on purpose they paint you as a misogynist I don't understand why I don't understand if it is because they disagree with you on things so this is a convenient way to demonize your position by demonizing you as a human being but wow it's partly too because I've made the case that there are differences between men and women yes but like why that isn't a feminist case is beyond me it's like no they're exactly the same no they're not it's ridiculous it is and it's ridiculous it's confusing purposefully confuse it yeah and then thing is the data are in so look and people have accused me of pseudoscience you know which I really think is quite comical because the studies that I'm reporting aren't who's accused you of pseudos Oh God journalists journalists of all stripes especially when I talk about differences between men and women it's like oh that's pseudoscience it's like actually no it's not it's bloody mainstream science both biology and psychology but why do they like to do that well because it seems to be there's a reason that goes along with the radical leftist agenda that if there are that a world of equality of outcome could not be achieved and that's the desirable world if there are actually differences between people actual differences like that aren't just socio-culturally constructed so that you could gerrymander there's also something as well if you're really power-mad you want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable because then you can mold them in whatever image you want and if you say no they actually have a character right there's something built in then that interferes with the totalitarian regime but here's what's happened is like look we've got a good personality model we've had it for about forty years something like that the Big Five model five dimensions of personality and they were established statistically a theoretically by left-leaning psychologists okay and I'm not saying that they're ideologically contaminated but what I am saying is there's no evidence whatsoever that right-wing leaning psychologists produced the big five because there are no right leaning psychologists so enough for that that isn't why the big five came up okay so once you have a good personality model you can say okay well do men and women differ and the answer is yeah it turns out they do there's quite a few differences but the biggest ones are women are more agreeable so that's one of the traits agreeableness and it's the compassion politeness dimension and they're more prone to negative emotion anxiety and emotional pain and that mirrors a psychiatric literature that shows worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety just like men are more likely to be imprisoned for antisocial behavior which is the reflection of low agree oldest this is true worldwide okay so there's no evidence of any bias unless you say everything's biased everywhere in the world fine could be but we've also controlled for that so now there are personality differences between men and women now the first thing we might point out is they're not that big so if you draw a random woman and a random man out of the population and you had to bet on who is most aggressive least agreeable and you bet on the woman you'd be right forty percent of the time which is actually quite a lot you'd be right quite a lot but if you take the one in a hundred person who's most aggressive least agreeable there's an overwhelming probability that they'll be male because the the differences get more extreme athlete at the ends of the distribution people don't understand the statistics you can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically dissimilar outcomes if only the extra s'matter so like who are the most powerful physical fighters in the world men all of them what does that mean that there are no women who can beat a man in a fight no it also doesn't mean that there are there's plenty of women who are more aggressive than men but if you take the most aggressive physically powerful people they're all men all of them because they're like one in a thousand people or 1 in 10,000 people so you can have walloping differences at the extremes despite most similarity at the middle people don't understand that but then the next thing is ok well there are differences between men and women personality-wise apart from the biological ones are those caused by cultural differences hey turns out we can answer that how rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are does everyone agree yeah yeah the Scandinavians are at the top everyone agrees left right doesn't matter everyone agrees it's like okay so you stack up the cultures by how egalitarian their social policies are and then you look to see how big the differences are between men and women up that hierarchy of egalitarianism and if as the societies become more egalitarian the differences between men and women disappear then it's socio-cultural that isn't what happened what happened was is that as the societies got more egalitarian the differences between men and women got bigger not smaller it means the socio cultural construct people and I'm talking to you socio cultural construct people you're wrong you're wrong you make the societies more egalitarian men and women get more different who makes the argument in opposition to this although all the social constructionist all the radical left wingers and what are they uses fact they don't have facts but then they criticize the whole idea of facts then they go after the whole idea of science as a Western patriarchal construct what's their motivation the motivation is that if people are different than equality of outcome isn't is neither desirable nor achievable and why do they want equality of outcome why is this so that's a good question well part of it is part of it is actual compassion look round it's it's it's not good that some that people lose and it's certainly not good that some losers lose all the time who wants that you happy when you walk down the street and see homeless people it's like hey look the hierarchies working look at these homeless people no one's happy about that right right okay so the fact of failure within a hierarchy of value is painful and so to give the devil his due you give the left its dude just like you do the right it's like yeah it's painful that hierarchies produced dispossession bloody right okay what's the cure get rid of the hierarchy hey well wait a minute man you get rid of the hierarchy you get rid of the value structure you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving it's a catastrophe okay so there's there's the problem you have to have the hierarchy but then also it isn't just compassion on the left its envy it's like okay if I'm so if I'm standing for the dispossessed what makes me so sure that I'm not just standing against the successful and maybe that's because I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful and certainly it's highly probable if you look at what happened in the leftist societies that tried to pursue utopia and you don't read envy and resentment into that you're not you don't know the history because that's clearly the why else did they become murderous this is the question it's like it's clearly the case that the Soviet Union for example was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome as a primary motivation what happened 25 million people were killed why why what was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed or was it absolutely bitter resentment and hatred for anyone who had any shred of success whatsoever on any possible dimension of evaluation so this compassion for people that aren't doing well when utilized the wrong way or when approach the wrong way leads to attacking people that do well so the danger of compassion that's exactly well look what happens if you get beat you think oh look at how isn't it lovely that the mother grizzly bear takes care of her cubs yeah it's lovely man till you get between her and her cubs then it's not so damn lovely and that's the flip side of that affiliative agreeableness it's like if you if you're on my side you know if you're the infant who's sheltering under my wings it's like I'm I'm the absolute epitome of maternal love and care but if I've identified you as a predator you better look the hell out and that's playing out in our political landscape at a very very rapid rate that's the female side of totalitarianism as far as I can tell the feminine side of totalitarianism it's not just that it's not just that agreeableness motivates aggression because it certainly does it's also that it's that the envious and the resentful can use compassion as a as a camouflage for their true intent which is to tear down anyone who has more than them that's the why you notice like when there's discussions about the 1% we already talked about this well who's the 1% well it's it's I'm I'm I'm in and I'm in the in the park in New York demonstrating against Wall Street down with the 1% it's like wait a second you're in the 1% there are mr. protester no no you don't understand the rich are those who have more money than me yes right that's the definition who's rich someone who has more than me not me it's like well why why isn't the 1% North America why not because it's inconvenient that's an inconvenient fact so that's part of it but there's the the envy and resentment this is that the real pathological end of the full compassion that motivates the radical left it's like yeah you like the poor do you what makes you think you just don't hate the successful and that's a question it's like because you're not perfect man there's hatred in you and the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high so so look to your own look to your own viewpoint before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world just exactly what is that and it's worse like look in the Russian Revolution for example let's say just for the sake of argument that the first rung of revolutionaries were only driven by compassion maybe they were they all got killed they got killed by the people who came after and they weren't so interested in compassion at all they were interested in ferreting out everyone who had a modicum of success on any dimension and and doing them in and that happened in wave after bloody wave they killed all the successful farmers those were the kulaks they killed all of them round them all up killed him raped them stole other property sent the remnants to Siberia froze them to death ten years later six million Ukrainians died because they couldn't raise crops why do you think that people are so opposed to discussing these things or to challenging cultural norms because one of the things that I've seen especially in terms of the differences between men and women this this reaction to some of the things that you've said has been very it's very strange to me it's very strange that people aren't recognising that these are unbalanced approaches and that there's well some of it's just complicated Joe it's like well let's say there are differences between men and women just for the sake of argument the biggest differences seem to be an interest by the way and so what's going to happen is that if we let men and women sort themselves out there aren't going to be very many female engineers and tektites and there's going to be a lot of female nurses there's not going to be many male nurses and health care types there's not going to be very many male elementary school teachers but is this a gap well that's the question who knows do we know I don't know well the idea of having an equal society where gender inequality is completely knocked down gender pay gap is non-existent yeah well that's a problem because that's a vision wallet of alcohol it's also it's yeah the equality of outcome thing is a non-starter whether it's okay with like if men and women sort themselves into different occupations which looks highly probable I don't know if that's okay and then it's also were like okay compared to to what alternative right like you should every elementary school teacher be female should every psychologist be female because that's what's happening and the answer to that is well I don't know but but there's another answer which is well what do you propose as an alternative to free choice that isn't going to cause more trouble than free choice because I would say well okay let's say I'm a feminist for the sake of argument all right so I think well there are differences between men and women there are actual differences and so some of those are biological some of them are are strategic in some sense because women pay a bigger price for reproduction and so that's going to lead them to make different choices that's just rational based on by its rationality based on biological differences so it's like a second order biological difference there's differences in temperament and interest they're going it's going to lead them to make different choices is that a pro feminist stance or an anti feminist stance it's only anti-feminist if you assume everyone has to be exactly the same and the outcomes have to be exactly the same if the if your goal is no leave people the hell alone as much as possible let them make their own informed and free choices then you let the differences manifest themselves in the world and you take your you take your knocks because of that the problem with that is this narrative of equality the equality of outcome you so now and just a quality of human beings well that's looking at people as we're all equal what we're not it just some people are either different things were equal in terms of our rights or in terms of the way we should treat each other metaphysical e equal yes right but err every other dimension were radically unequal and there's pain in that that's the process the problem that's the problem is the pain in that is real the only thing that's worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality and I'm not being fast on about that it's like look I see the the IQ issues that is the killer one for me it's like look if you have an IQ of less than 83 you can't be inducted into the American military by law why because there isn't a damn thing you can do that isn't counterproductive despite the fact that the army wants you because they can't get enough manpower that's what they decided it's like okay so yo you're on the low end of the cognitive distribution what are you gonna do not much and it's gonna get worse is that good it's not good it's horrible do we know what to do about it no right and we can't have equality of outcome amongst people with lower than 83 IQs right no one's that no one's advocating for that no one's asking for that well people say well the IQ tests aren't valid it's like well yeah one of the conversations that you have that I found to be shocking and it started a trend of misquoting and misrepresenting you was you did an article an interview with Vice and yeah they use a snippet of one of the things you said and tried to pretend that you had made these very Curt statements and one of them like so he was annoying so I got kind of Curt and that was probably my fatigue error makeup is that the one you talked yes yes yes makeup and the way people dress you know and yeah what I was trying to draw first of all how was he annoying he knew everything he knew everything well it was just in his attitude you know it was he was calm bulging you he wanted he wanted this from the very beginning this was him mm-hmm arms crossed right right eyes up it's like like a I know more than you and B you're probably that reprehensible person that I've thought about an aside job to reveal he was signaling he's left-leaning he was deciding that you what you were doing was representing the patriarchy you were representing male-dominant structures that he was saying that are the they're not correct yeah was yeah but it wasn't even that it was left-leaning I've talked a reasonable left-leaning people it was built right into his attitude and so it made me a little test here than I might have been which was my strategic error and you know you asked earlier well why do I get pilloried with some regularity and some of it is probably my own inadequacy you know it's it's it's not it isn't that I've handled all the opportunities that I've had perfectly you know and I can get hot under the collar it's a mistake it's a mistake because the right approach in these situations is to use minimal necessary force and to allow myself to get irritated let's say even minorly when I'm faced with someone who's doing this is not productive doesn't work well and so I really need to keep that under control and when I do keep it under control it works better the makeup one was particularly annoying to me because I think it's a valid conversation it's an interesting conversation I said and they didn't put this in their initial cut I said I'm not saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace I said that explicitly well that was why people were so angry when they saw the full version of it I mean the full version was released someone leaked it right someone who felt like you were being misrepresented and that the editing was unjust decided to really kit and people were absolutely furious yeah well I think that I think the Vice people actually released it but other people took the full release and clipped it with the class release and showed how it was being misread was yeah but so okay so the the makeup thing it's like all right look here's the first of all I make a mistake sometimes in treating journalists like I would treat my graduate students so when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say well here's a problem its intellectual exercise a sexual sexual behave how do we regulate what are the norms around sexual behavior in the workplace so that's the question it's a question we don't know okay here's a bunch of possibilities possible rules right no flirting no hugging no eye contact for more than five seconds that's Netflix right no hugging that's amazing damn right they have no eye contact for more than five seconds that's holy no hugging that was that real it's real look what if you're having a conversation with a woman who's your boss and she's asking you questions about things can you look down every five seconds Christ is that reassess it's real it's real it's so bad that's such a terrible idea yes yeah it's a terrible idea but there's a lot of women that I'm friends with that I've never had any sexual interest at all and we look at each other say is what you say but you're a potential rapists manifestation yes right yes you get the whole picture so so if you have a discussion you say well look what are the rules governing sexual behavior in the workplace okay can you come to work in a negligee no how about boxers if you're a man no ok so there's some out a short skirt well that this is the thing that Devils in the bloody details right yeah it's like okay we you can't come to work naked you can't come to work in boxer shorts you can come to work in a suit okay so the line is somewhere between boxers and suit where exactly is the line exactly can a man wear shorts well you can't help why can a woman wear a dress the way that men in in professional organizations the way that men solved this problem was that everyone wore a uniform and a uniform makes you uniform that's why you wear it and the uniform is the suit and it's it's a derivation of a military of military garb and so the idea was what we want to get rid of excess diversity right right in clothing wear your damn suit then we know you're playing the game and we don't have to be distracted by what you're wearing okay so that's what man did okay so now women come into the workspace it's like hmm what do they do well there's business professional dress right and there's some rules around that but but what are the rules exactly exactly and I was thinking well we're worried about sexual misbehavior in the workplace you can't look at someone for more than five seconds you can't give them a hug okay what about makeup do we have a discussion about makeup oh well no we kind of a discussion about that it's like well this makeup sexual signaling it's like well if you're a if you're an evolutionary biologist the question is makeup sexual signaling that's not even a question it's like well obviously that's what it is that's why that conversation was frustrating because he was saying cuz they want to do it they want to wear it they want to look good well and maybe there's not even me well that's right right that's that's right what does that eat but let me think well everyone knows what that means what you all has to say that no he has to say that because in his tribe you have to communicate that way Oh women wear makeup because they want to look good but he's doing that because that's his take or because he's trying to rile you up what you're getting riled up right now both well as a journalist it's kind of his idea or his job to challenge you in some way and it the very least offered the devil's advocate opinion sure explain yourself better why shouldn't they wear makeup they just want to look good you need to explain yourself better why you saying he did it was like Oh dr. Peterson it's obvious what it means for them to look good like everyone knows that do you think I don't know it like perhaps like he was intellectually sparring with you and he was being aggressive about it I think he felt I think he felt that I think he felt that it was necessary to challenge me that that was his role as a journalist but fundamentally he was smug he thought he came out the entire conversation with an air of intellectual condescension it was built right into the discussion right from the beginning and he never dropped it it's like well I know what you're doing and I know what's up and I know how to take you apart and I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your original opinions oh god about an hour something like that how much did they use Oh in the clips hardly any of it I don't even know a couple of minutes so yeah yeah so your tendency to get riled up can be exploited yes of course and it's it's it's the problem of deviating from the doctrine of minimal necessary force like the best times the best interactions I've had with contentious journalists is where I've absolutely kept my cool you know but and like Kathy Newman yes exactly what you're saying is well that's what he was like yes like I know who you are and I know you're covering it up it's like yeah well it's these con DS concepts these are complex situations when you find men and women who are sexually attracted to each other and they're working in confined environments for long periods of time and they essentially spend more time with the people they work with and they do with their lovers and their wives their husbands and it's weird you know men and women interacting with each other and closed in boxes is weird Brenden offices closed in box they were all together and if they find each other attractive and they're interacting with each other socially especially if there's any interaction that deviates outside of the work discussion you also don't want them to find each other unattractive right looks like if you're taking someone up for dinner on a business dinner it's like even if it's guys going out together let's say it's not like they're working to find each other unattractive and I don't mean sexually there's you want to manifest yourself as why enjoy each other yes you do and you want to be charismatic and you want to be witty and all of those things and that's shades and especially when you when you add assuming a heterosexual environment you add a heterosexual component to that the borders become fuzzy and so I was talking about border conditions yes well we're gonna have a conversation about this let's talk about the border conditions oh no we can't do that it's like the discussion you guys wanted why do you continue and agree to have these conversations that are gonna be edited oh well that's a good question the Jim Jefferies one was another one yeah Jim's a friend of mine but I mean he gave you a good question and you actually gave a good answer you said actually I'm probably wrong about yeah yeah and you were talking about whether or not gay people should whether someone should be forced to bake a cake for cake for gay people yeah I said forced to probably not they said well what if they don't want to get baked a cake for black people yeah and he said well actually probably it probably should be forced to yeah well probably wrong yeah well I was probably wrong in everything I did and that in that part of the discussion because I hadn't thought that issue through enough to actually give a good answer he didn't expect that issue because this is not something you talk about commonly no and it's it's actually complicated right I mean obviously the whole I won't serve you because you're black thing is not good but then again you have you also have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with but that's complicated because it's a commercial circumstance and then if you're making a cake is that the same as serving or is that compelled speech it's like oh my god these are border cases that cause a lot of controversy I don't mean serving black people obviously that's not a border case but these cases that caused a lot of controversy is where two principles are at odds and it isn't exactly clear where to draw the line and I'm not happy with you know I'm not happy with my answer to that but I hadn't spent that like week it would take to think through the issue and really have a comprehensive perspective you didn't expect that to be a subject anyway no no what how long did you talk to Jim for oh I think about 45 minutes maybe an hour first Oh two minutes yeah well my daughter has told me and and my wife as well my son as well and these discussions we've been thinking about how to handle the media which is a very complicated question and one hypothesis being don't do interviews that will be edited and I've thought about that and and and and being thinking about it and that might be the right answer it might be the right answer going fooling it is right and well it could it could easily be although it's the only way you can't be misrepresented just all the problems that I've seen with you all of them come from you being edited yes I mean there's complex subjects that people would disagree with you on but when you look at complete mischaracterizations of your point these have been established because of editing yes well I guess the only counter-argument is this and I mean a lot of these a lot of these opportunities come I've had opportunities that are coming at me a rate at a rate that doesn't allow me to think them through as much as I could optimally but but then there's another thing which is it isn't necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers like that's what happened in the Kathy Newman interview no that could have gone really sideways like I was lucky there to some degree because she interviewed me for 40 minutes or whatever and something like that and then they did chop it down to seven minutes or three minutes and it was exactly what you'd expect and that is what I expected after away from the interview I thought oh my god they're just gonna chop this into reprehensible segments and pillory me but I walked away from it because there was 50 other things to do but then it was so funny because they did do that and then they put up the whole interview and the reason they put up the whole interview was because they thought the interview went fine it isn't that they knew that that was gonna cause commotion not at all not a bit not a bit and I know this is for a fact so they put up the whole interview and and then well what happened was what was actually happening revealed itself and that was very very effective now that having that happen meant that I had exposed myself to substantial stress and risk because that was stressful I mean first of all there was the interview second afterwards I thought oh my god I'm gonna get pilloried for that then they did release the cut then they released the whole thing then there was all this response to it and then then the the Newman people who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response said Oh Peterson has unleashed his army of trolls and poor Kathy had to go into hiding it's like there's no evidence of any credible threats they said they called in the police but you can do that without there being reason you can just say that which is what they said they played a victim narrative instantly although one thing Kathy Newman is not even though she might play it at the behest of her employers is a victim she's one of the most powerful people in Britain she's no victim so to play the victim card in a situation like that is absolutely reprehensible but that's what they did and then like a dozen newspapers did it and said well Peterson's trolls are attacking poor Kathy and I thought oh now I'm really screwed you don't own your fans well the other people that are interested in the things that you have to say that you have control over them like you can give them marching orders yes well and how many million how many million people do there have to be before they're not all trolls yeah cuz that was the real issue there it's like okay ten thousand people commented on the video trolls okay what about a hundred and fifty thousand well what about ten million well now if you look at the video which is about ten million plus all the clips it's like 50 million and the comments the pro the comments that are critical regards to Cathy Newman's conduct are running about fifty to one so that's all trolls is it I don't think so it's preposterous the narratives preposterous but you see that was that was a good example of taking the taking the risk and I'm not saying it's val justified and i think that it's very very stressful you know but you know you take the good you take the bad along with the good and maybe maybe it's time for me it might be time for me just to disappear to some degree altogether you know worried about being overexposed oh definitely I've been worried about that for a long time yeah and is there any benefit in that is it any benefit in more exposure are we talking about the same thing we were talking about earlier with regards to men working insane hours I mean have you is your message out enough that you don't have to do these ridiculous interviews made instantly maybe me now me well and I don't want to turn into a parody of myself and all of that I mean I think and I am trying to handle listen I've got people who are advising me we're trying to figure it out I think that this tour is a good thing yes and but that's that's very controlled I think well it's also completely unedited yes exactly it is in long-form conversations yes and I think that coming on your podcast and talking to Ruben on his shows and so forth I think that's good the the interaction with the journalists I'm certainly not taking anywhere near the number of opportunities that I have in front of me right we are trying to be very careful in picking and choosing but that doesn't always go well and it's like it could be that it could be that I shouldn't do anything that is edited at all that's certainly possible so well this is the problem you speak in these you speak in these long-form podcasts and interviews and you get a chance to extrapolate and unpack some pretty complicated issues and compare them to other complicated issues and try to find meaning and middle ground and and try to try to illuminate certain positions when you expose yourself to editing you you expose yourself to someone idea of what the narrative should be and how to frame your positions in it in and dishonest way yeah and you're seeing it time and time again when it exposes the problem with medium look I went to the Aspen ideas festival last week which is a whole story in and of itself but I was interviewed there by a journalist from the Atlantic Monthly and it was a relatively long form interview I think we talked for 40 minutes something like that and it's going to be edited now I trusted her I trust her now whether that'll be well how that will play out in the final edit I don't know because she won't be the only one making the decision right well the question is should have I done it well look it was the Aspen ideas festival it's a different audience it's left-leaning I thought well maybe I'll go talk to a left-leaning audience people are always criticizing me for not doing that I usually don't do it because I don't get invited but so I went and talked to them it's like and Barry Weiss interviewed me in front of the Aspen ideas festival and that was long-form uncut and put on the web and so maybe that was useful the Atlantic thing well it might be good we'll see it does expose me to the risk though because it'll be edited so and it was it wise to do it look I've been fortunate so far despite the fact that I've been taken out of context at times and fairly significant proportion of times but not the overwhelming majority of times the net consequence of all of that has been to engage more and more people in a complex dialogue as far as I can tell so that's the good that's the good it doesn't mean the strategy that I've implemented so far is the only strategy that will work into the future we can also clearly establish it you didn't planning this to happen this this whole thing that happened from you opposing that bill and then going to where you are how many years later now two years that's crazy yeah I mean you think about the transformation of your life and your your public image I mean it's unprecedented I don't I can't think of a single public intellectual that has gone from being a universal University professor to being essentially a household name I mean you get brought up with at least my circle of friends all the time and people that I run into all the time I can't tell you how many people have run into after comedy shows or in an airport that talked to me about you so this is a mainstream thing and yeah well so that cannot there's no precedent no well it's partly you know that's also part of the consequence of this technology he's like yes no like in 2013 I thought huh wonder what'll happen if I put my lectures up on YouTube it's like beware man and that's what I thought when I made Bill c16 videos I got up at like 2:00 in the morning I thought this is bloody well driving me crazy that damn University is going to force unconscious bias retraining which is not a validated process by any stretch of the imagination on its employees and I work for the University and I'm a psychologist so like what is the what's why they doing that why would they do that they'd do that to silence people that are protesting are they doing that because they want to enforce a certain type of behavior why do I think there's two reasons I think that there's some genuine concern for the dispossessed and then there's some hatred for the successful and some envy and some resentment it's like everything that people do it's calm you know but the pathology is well that that the HR types for example at the university think it's okay for them to retrain other people about their hypothetical views on the off chance that they might be racist and and forcing them to admit that they're racist by making them agree to participate in the training I don't think that and but for me that wasn't even the the issue although it was an issue the issue is we can't measure unconscious bias reliably and validly I'm a psychologist in a research psychologist I know the literature that's a misuse of it it's a misuse of it and the damn University was doing it they were hiring consultants who didn't know what the hell they were talking about let me ask you this if they are this is a universities yes this is a establishment for higher learning how can they possibly act on something when there's no clear evidence that it's real that it works that it's effective and they're doing it just to make people happy or just to make themselves happy or just to reinforce an idea that they want to be true that's the thing that's the thing it's part of for me it was part of the hegemony of the radical left it's like no no you're you're not going to do that at the University I work out without me telling people that there's no warrant for that from the psychological community so anyways I got up at 2:00 in the morning and made these videos I thought well let's see what happens if I make these videos it's like well this is back to the technology issue it's like I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on it you didn't know what YouTube was well you know what I no one knows what YouTube is how did the thing well look at what happened to you you have a million billion and a half downloads a year it's like you're definitely riding a giant wave like what have you predicted this 15 years ago no so so you know you're in the right place and the right time and you're a very interesting interviewer because well especially for long-form because you're very very curious but also very very tough like it's interesting watching you because if you don't understand something you will go after the person and you're not doing it in a vindictive way but you're quite a formidable interviewer and and I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful and like you're a lot smarter than anyone might think which is quite interesting so you're a weird combination because you know your persona doesn't shout intellectual but you're damn smart and you're tough as a bloody boot and you ask really provocative questions and not because you're provocative and so your personality in this long form seem to suit each other really well you're also really good at pursuing things you don't understand instead of assuming that you know what you're talking about so you take the listeners on a journey right it's an exploratory journey but fundamentally what's propelled you to superstardom in some sense is not just your ability which is non-trivial but the fact that you're on this giant technological wave and you're one of the first adopters and I'm in the same situation we're first adopters of a technology that's as revolutionary as the Gutenberg printing press and so that's all unfolding in real time it's like look at what's happening yeah well the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word that's never happened before in human history and we're on the cutting edge of that for better or worse that's a very good way to put it the spoken word is just power yeah and maybe even more so why is it so accessible to people that don't have the time to read well or stuck in traffic you know or or and here's another possibility maybe ten times as many people can listen to complex information as can read complex information in terms of their ability to process it sure could easily we don't know maybe it's maybe it's the same it's certainly easier to listen to a book on tape for me than it is to read a book yeah well so for us so the question is for how many people is that true and I would say it might be true for them for the majority of people and then people are doing hybrids you know so because you can sync your book with audible right so they'll read when they have the time but then when they have found time which is also a major component of this that that's the time when you're driving or the time when you're doing dishes is now all of a sudden you can educate yourself during that found time this is a big revolution and the band blowing out the bandwidth makes a huge difference because while we talked about that at the beginning looks like people are more intelligent than we thought and you and I are both and the rest of this intellectual dark web that's kind of what unites us say is everybody has an independent platform virtually everybody they have an idiosyncratic viewpoint they're interested in having discussions and pursuing for the furtherance of their knowledge even though they might have a priori ideological commit Sam doesn't I suppose I do and and Ben Shapiro certainly does but they're still interested in having the discussion but more importantly they're capitalizing on the long form and and the fact that that's possible is a reflection of this technological transformation and the technological transfer information might be utterly profound it looks like it and so that's you know I've been trying to sort this out because I keep thinking why the hell are these people coming to listen to what I'm saying it's like well I'm a guru you know I'm a sage it's something like that it's like don't be thinking that first think if there's situational determinants first take your damn personality out of it okay what's going on oh yes this is all fostered by YouTube and fostered by podcasts what's so new about that no bandwidth restrictions no barrier to entrance possibility of dialog because people cut up the YouTube videos into chunks and make their own comments on it it's a whole new communication technology also a lack of interference by executives and producers and all these different people that have their own bodies unmediated yes unmediated is giant yeah yeah well that's all part of the reason you're so popular too is like you just put this on like so you've got exactly the right balance of competent production because there's nothing excess about it like it's competent but no more than that I know that's by design but you also don't edit it it's like what you see is what you get it's like everyone's relieved by that we can make our own damn decisions no I think that's very important if you're gonna have a conversation with someone that's honest you you can't decide what to leave in and what to take out and it's just well that's partly also why I deal with the press the way I do yeah if I'm gonna have a full conversation it's like I'm willing to take the hits yeah and and I understand what you're saying but that's one of the reasons why it frustrates me so much is that I see what they're doing and I'm like what you're doing is ancient what you're doing is it's it's this is what people did twenty years ago thirty years ago for you can't really do that anymore you can't misrepresent people you used to be able to if you were in the press you could take people quote amount of context do whatever the you wanted put an article about them they couldn't do a goddamn thing about it it happened to me in nineteen it was like ninety-nine I did a I had a comedy CD that came out and this woman wrote an article about it and it just she just lied she lied about my perspective she lied about the bits she misquoted the bits she didn't just paraphrase them she changed what the bits were to make them you know misogynist or hateful or whatever it was and in doing so I that there was no recourse there was nothing that I could do about them like wow I'd never experienced that before I was like this is stunning and then I found out this person did that a lot and this is what she did and there's ultimate power that comes at being the person who has the pen being the person who has the typewriter and you you're the person who works for you know the Boston Globe or whatever the publication is that that is something that existed forever you know and that you had to be either a friend of the press you had to play ball you had you had a bend to their will you to do what they wanted you to do and they could misrepresent you and choose to paint you in any way they like and it's one of the reasons why I don't do anything anymore I don't do any interviews anymore I don't do anything I don't want to do anything yeah this I do enough man you want to know about me it there's a thousand podcasts there's more than a thousand there's I think there's there's 1,100 and there's a bunch of other ones three right let's just it doesn't make any sense yeah well that that's that that it may also be the position that I increasingly find myself in I think it's the right position because then the misrepresentations don't exist anymore so then the only problem is the dispute over the actual ideological conversations or the other the actual concept but you know the thing is you know you made a point there that's quite interesting it's like we are in a new media landscape so now if someone comes out as a as a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresents its exposed and so then the question is how much risk should use shoulder to expose the proclivity for media misrepresentation and the answer to that might be some now it might be moving you know maybe I've done enough of that I mean it would be easier for me in many ways if I just stopped doing it but but there's some utility and having it play out and so well so I'm trying to get I'm trying to only take those opportunities that appear to have more benefit than risk and when I defining benefit well the question is then what constitutes benefit and I guess what constitutes benefit is well that would further the attempts that I'm making to bring information to a vast number of people that could conceivably help them stabilize and improve their individual lives that's worth a certain amount of risk well it certainly increases your profile increases your profile and even if you know you have 60% of these people are gonna get a bad perception of you 40% of these people that never heard of you now we're going to understand who you are because they do further investigation yeah so there's some benefit in that but the negative I mean I get text messages from random people that I was friends with years ago let's say this Jordan Peterson is just such a lying sack of and he's this not only I don't even know who the you are and then second of all like why are you contacting me you know I'm saying hi you're saying he's a scam artist he's a fraud he's in it and I'm like wow and so they'll see an interview you know like the the Jim Jefferies clip which is a minute long or whatever it is or the Vice piece or the the initial Kathy Newman piece and they just form this determined position on you and then Reid hit pieces on you and then this is where they take their opinion this is where it's from it's and it's like these are the last gasps of a dying medium I really do I just I think too I don't I don't think that people appreciate it I think the people that are listening to this that do appreciate long-form conversations and with all warts and all all the ugliness and the mistakes and the critical errors and the the people that appreciate that they they they have a real hate for being lied to you know because it's it it changed when when you try never being treated as if they're stupid yes yeah which they aren't yeah that's both it's just it's it's deceptive when you when you added someone and take their words to context and change them around you're being deceptive the New York Times did that again this week they had some philosophy professor from Hong Kong University write a piece on me and he took they quoted me it was a sentence there's like the first phrase was in quotes and then there was some joining words and then the second phrase was in quotes and there was some joining words and then the third phrase was in quotes and the three quotes added up to a statement that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying how can they do that in the New York Times that seems to me to be something that should be the the I don't but they still I don't think they can do I think they're killing their brand so fast that they can't but it is so disturbing to me as a person who's been a fan of the New York Times forever I just don't understand how they could allow that to happen how could you allow your what what is the gold standard for journalism how could you allow it to become something that willfully misrepresents someone they never did to push an idea I never did put my book on the New York Times bestseller list it's quite comical how's that possible oh they have rules which they don't disclose but one of them apparently is well if the book is published and counted and distributed in the United States then it doesn't count even though they've had books like that on the New York Times bestseller list before and I think okay well is this bad or good it's like well it's bad because to the degree that I might want to be on the New York Times bestseller list although I haven't been losing any sleep over but you're selling I know how many books are selling yeah it's basically being the best-selling book in the world since January you know it's gone up and down to some degree but right it should be the number one New York Times bestseller so they they they have the reasons and but I look at that and I think oh well you can only do that ten times until you're done like because it's a fatal error you have the gold standard for measurement you're not measuring properly you're burning up your brand you think well we're the New York Times so we can burn up our brand it's like no you can't Newsweek is gone Time magazine is a shallow is a shell of its former self like the big things disappear and they disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid and so that's what's happening at the New York Times not with everyone there but with plenty of them and they'll die faster than people think but it's so confusing to me that it didn't used to be that yeah and now it is and are they just responding to this new world where you have to have clickbait journalism and you know some people are struggling to find people to actually buy physical newspapers which is well it's a different thing it's hard to say like because maybe see it's weird because you don't have to resort to clickbait because these long-form discussions are the antithesis of clickbait right are they struggling in terms of like how many people buy them safer oh absolutely every newspaper the newspapers in Canada went cap and hand to the federal government for subsidies about six months ago because they're dying so fast and so some of it is they're being supplanted by technology that's a huge part of it but as they are supplanted they get more desperate they publish more polarizing stories that works in the short term to garner more views but it alienates people from the brand and speeds their demise classic death spiral of a big of a big organization and that's going to clean things out like mad I mean I don't know where CNN is in the Cable News rankings now our cable show rankings but it keeps falling but it's falling in the rankings as cable itself disintegrates and dies why do you need cable TV right no one needs cable TV the only people who have cable TV are the people who haven't figured out yet that you can replace it entirely online for like 1/10 the price with with much less hassle but the art is people want a location they can go to to find out what's going on in the world and this is the one thing that they used to represent and you know I mean I don't think Fox News is any better I think you just have these ideological extremes left and right and I remember very clearly watching the election coverage before the election like we were leading up to the election I would go Fox News and then I go CNN I just would go back and forth with them on my cable yeah and I would just be laughing I'm like what is really happening in the world because I'm getting to different stories I'm getting Russia and I'm getting Hillary's emails this is I don't know what the is what what is happening I'm getting grabbing and I'm getting you know Benghazi yeah you know I'm this is what I'm getting and I don't understand like why this is obviously ideological this is well not just look it might be that as the technology is supplanted the ideological polarization increases as the thing dies right there struggling for anyone to pay attention and this is the way they have to do it to any shore and I think what's happening on the other side which is the side you occupy say is that a new technology that's long form that deals with many of those problems is emerging and it's going to emerge it's going to be victorious but in the me might already be victorious in the meantime little baby stuff still exists in the digital world yeah you know and then you're getting a lot of the articles that are written about you people are absorbing these articles not from a physical form you're getting it from from digital yeah well okay so then the sense is well do you have fundamental trust in the judgment of your fellow man let's say and my answer to that is yes because although I've been pilloried to a great degree by the radical types in the commentariat and in that classic journalists though comments with regards to me on YouTube are 50 to 1 in my favor and and that's even the case when the ideologues put up videos about me they're designed to discredit me and I've sold a million and a half books it's going to be published in 40 countries and thousands of people are coming to my lectures and so I would say the attempts to discredit me aren't working so and now I think that's because that even like even if you go to youtube you can see Jordan Peterson smashes leftist journalists you know as a clickbait thing someone's taken a two-minute clip from a video and they put it out and they're using that clickbait headlines to attract attention it's like it does attract attention and that probably even furthers polarization but I think that most people enough people that's the prayer enough people are going for the long form thorough discussion so that the sensible will will triumph that's what I'm hoping for the sensible will triumph no I agree and I think that is what's happened yeah I think that's why this fifty to one number exists is that there but the the number one in that 50 the 50 verses you know the 50 people that are actually understanding what's going on and agreeing with you versus the number one that are trying to willfully misrepresent you they still exist and they're loud you know they're and they're to be right and this is one of the things that people love to do they love to fight to be right instead of examining their position and wondering whether or not they are taking you out of context and misrepresenting your positions to the world willfully and doing so in order to paint a negative picture of you that does not accurately represent who you are what you stand for yes but by doing this virtue without any of the work they're also destroying their own credits this is what's devastating it's like the in they're trying to win they're killing themselves right well and that's a good that's a good motif for the entire conversation it's like try hard to hard to win you kill yourself you were talking last night when we were when we were over dinner you said that one of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his own position you're gonna get your abilities yes if you overestimate your abilities you you're you're in deep deep trouble because you're gonna get a wake-up call right and objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of development you have to be you have to be objectively assessing your strengths and weaknesses at every step of the way that's brava bravado right I'm I'm trying to prove how I'm so powerful I'm so powerful it's an ego shield and that's why I was saying that the ego is the enemy were talking about right so I get you know I want to get into this because this is a I think this is a fascinating thing with you personally that your diet you're on this carnivore dog yeah no okay so I want to preface that with something I am NOT a dietary expert so I'm not speaking as an uninformed citizen yes well this is anecdotal evidence from a human being it is dealt with autoimmune issues yes their whole life yes you have done this for how long now I've been on a pure carnivore diet for about two months and a pretty very very low carb greens only modified carnivore diet for about a year so in the year and-and-and-and a low-carb diet for two years so from the time that I've known you I've known you for what two and a half years now sometimes yeah yeah when I first met you you had much more weight on your body yeah you look different yeah and you were back then you were eating like the standard diet right like normal people yes pasta bread yeah chicken whatever yes right you shifted over to only meat and greens I saw you and like you look fantastic I'm like what are you doing you're like I changed my diet I only meat in green so I was like wow that's fascinating well I felt like okay what you're doing is cutting out refined sugars and all these different things that are problematic preservatives all the processed foods and you're having this extreme health benefit I was like wow that's really excellent you're showing great discipline then you decided to take it to another place and cut out the greens you know what was the motivation for cutting out the greens well all of the motivation for this has been my experience with my daughter because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease I just talked to her this what is it called well it's rich arthritis but it there's there's way more to it than that but the arthritis was the major set of symptoms she had 40 affected joints and she had to have her hip replaced and her ankle replaced when she was 15 and 16 and so she basically hobbled around on two broken legs for two years in extreme agony and that was just a tiny fraction of the whole set of problems I just talked to her this morning she's in Chicago looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced so that's next on the horizon but but apart from that she is doing so well now it is absolutely beyond comprehension so she's she's she's very trim she had a baby but she's very trimmed she's down to about 118 pounds she's about five foot six she's just glowing with health all of her autoimmune system symptoms are gone all of them and she was also seriously depressed like severely depressed way worse than you think she couldn't stay awake for more than about six hours without taking Ritalin and she was dying and hide a cousin my cousin's daughter she died when she was thirty from an associated autoimmune condition so there's a fair bit of this in our family it was bloody bleak I'll tell you and my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related you know and well we did notice that when Michaela was young if she ate oranges or strawberries that she'd get a rash like there were there were there and then when she developed arthritis if she ate oranges in particular that would definitely cause a flare it was the only thing we could see the problem is is that in order to identify a dietary component the response has to be pretty quick after you eat the thing like if it's two days later how the hell are you gonna figure that out a lot of these responses appear to be delayed for four days and last a month so good luck figuring that out anyways Mikayla noticed about three years ago no more than that now five years ago she was at Concordia University and struggling with her with her illness and and all the Association associated problems she noticed that around exam time she was starting to develop real skin problems and my cousin's daughter who I mentioned had really bad skin problems and wounds that wouldn't heal and that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her and she thought oh it must be stress and then she thought wait a second I really changed my diet when I'm studying all I do is eat bagels all I do is eat bread sandwiches she thought maybe it's the bread so she cut out gluten first and it had a remarkable effect like a really remarkable effect and then she went on a radical elimination diet all the way down to nothing but chicken and broccoli and then her symptoms started to drop off one by one like and and like one of the things that happened is she started to wake up in the morning she started to be able to stay awake all day when you're only staying awake for six hours with riddlin staying awake all day that's like having a life and so a whole bunch of things improved then her depression went away and I've had depression since I was 13 probably and very severe and I've treated at a variety of ways some of them quite successfully but it's been a constant battle and my father had it and his father had it and it's all just rife in my family and my wife has autoimmune problems and her niece a depression define it oh oh would you define it because that's a word that's a blanket term yeah well imagine imagine that you wake up and that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday you would feel that even though the times wrong yes yes just-just-just worse than that because well one of the things Mikayla told me was she thought well what's it like to be depressed imagine you have a dog and you really loved the dog and then the dog dies and then about three years ago our dog died and that was Mikayla's dog and she really liked that dog and she said that was bad but it's nowhere near as bad as being depressed and I asked her to at one point when she was about 15 or 16 I said look you've got a choice kid here's the choice you can either have depression or arthritis which one I'll take the arthritis after she'd lost two joints so it was no joke it's no joke man it there isn't any no I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say there's nothing worse because worse is a very deep hole right but it's bad yeah people prove you wrong right oh yes definitely worse worse is a deep hole anyways her depression went away all these symptoms went away and like radically so what changed her from chicken and broccoli to carnivore well she she kept experimenting and she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that too so this is why I wouldn't recommend that anybody does this casually because we don't understand much about it but the upshot was that well she kept she kept she kept experimenting and she started to add things back and take them away and sometimes when she added things the results were devastating she was like done for a month she eats the wrong thing done for a month all the symptoms came back the depression came back she thought that her whole dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long it was so extreme and it's like I took her two years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef and greens and then she figured out that she could only eat beef so greens themselves well look so what happened okay so two years ago she said dad you have tried this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me now I didn't have arthritis but I had a lot of the other symptoms and I thought oh Christ okay Mikayla I can try anything for a month she said try it for a month I thought okay whatever I can hang by my fingernails from the windowsill for a month it's like it's just not that big a deal and so I eliminated I went on really low carb diet okay so this is what happened I had gastric reflux disorder and I was snoring quite a lot I stopped snoring the first week I thought what the hell that's supposed to be associated with weight loss because I had gained some weight I weighed about 212 pounds and I'm I what six one and a half so that was my maximum weight I stopped snoring which was a great relief to tear me so that just quit and that's a big deal right because if you snore you have sleep apnea and then you don't sleep right it's like not a good thing okay next I started waking up in the mornings I'd never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life I always had to stumble to the shower and then maybe I could wake up took me an hour and I felt terrible and so all the sudden I woke up it was like oh look at that I'm awake in the morning and I'm clear-headed and things aren't gloomy and horrible it's like well he's not weird then I lost seven pounds the first month I thought seven pounds that's a lot in a month and I'd already gone for a whole year on a sugar-free diet I didn't lose any weight and I'd be the exercise a sugar free but did you cut out bread no no it was just no desserts no sugar no and I thought that might do it didn't make any difference at all seven pounds well then then I lost seven pounds the next month then I lost seven pounds the next month I lost seven pounds every month for seven months like I'd throw away all my clothes I went back to the same weight that I was when I was 26 and my psoriasis disappeared and I had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up and then the last thing that went away from me I was still having a bitch of a time with mood regulation and that sucked because when I changed my diet I didn't respond to antidepressants properly anymore they weren't working and so although I was getting better physically on a variety of ways like radical ways I was really having a bitch of a time regulating my mood and I was having sporadic really negative reactions to food when I ate something I shouldn't so that took about a year and half to clear up and I was still really anxious in the morning up to three months ago like horribly and then it would get better all day people said well you're under a lot of stress and I thought yeah yeah I've been under a lot of stress for like ten years it's like it's a lot but it wasn't any more stressful than helping my daughter deal with her illness that's for sure that no this is something different and she said to me quit eating greens and I thought oh really Jesus Mikayla I'm eating cucumbers lettuce broccoli and chicken and beef it's like I have to cut out the goddamn greens it's like try it for a month okay within a week I was 25% less anxious in the morning within two weeks 75% and I've been better every single day I'm better now probably than I've ever been in my life and I haven't been taking antidepressants for a whole year so I don't know what and I weigh 162 pounds like I have no I'm and I've actually gained musculature I've been doing some working out but not a lot and so I can sleep six hours a night no problem I wake up the morning I'm awake if I take a 15 minute nap that used to take me an hour to recover for that's gone here's the coolest thing I've had gum disease since I was 25 that's been serious enough to have I've had to have minor surgical interventions scraping and that sort of thing to keep it at bay it's go on I checked with my dentist before this last tour no inflammation and that's associated with heart disease by the way gum inflammation and gingivitis it's a good risk factor heart disease it means the systemic inflammation is gone and it's not supposed to happen you're not supposed to recover from gingivitis and my gums are in perfect shape it's like what the hell so here's what happened I lost 50 pounds it's like that's a lot right I'm nowhere near as hungry as I used to be my appetites probably formed by 70% I don't get blood sugar dysregulation problems I need way less sleep I get up in the morning and I'm fine I'm not anxious I'm not depressed I don't have psoriasis my legs were numb on the sides that's gone I'm certainly intellectually at my best at the moment which is a great relief especially doing this tour depression is gone I'm stronger I can swim better and my gum disease is gone it's like what the hell and you've done you've done no blood work so you don't know what your lipid lipid profile is or no I'll get that done again when I go back take any vitamins no no I eat beef and salt and water that's it and I never cheat ever not even a little bit no not soda no wine I drink club soda well that's still water well you know when you're down to that level no it's not Joe there's there's club soda Joe's really bubbly there's Perrier which is sort of bubbly there's flat water and there's hot water so that's crazy well we ate last night and I ate what you ate just we both had that giant tomahawk yeah I had wine though yeah I'm curious about this I'm very curious and I think you might try it but I eat a lot of vegetables yeah but I don't have any problems like health problems hey man like I'm not disclaimer number two I am not recommending this to anyone however I have had however I have had many many people come up to me on the tour and say look I've been following your daughter's blog and I've lost like a hundred pounds I think what you lost a hundred pounds see I lost 100 pounds in six months I talked to a woman yesterday she lost 15 pounds in one month she was 70 it's like this is all right here's a question why is everyone fat and stupid that's a question man because it's new is there something else it is it's new and it's not a sedentary lifestyle that that hypothesis doesn't seem to hold water there's something wrong with the way we're eating and the what's wrong is that we're eating way too many carbohydrates I think but they're never on a no x8 shift the elimination of most carbohydrates has made a big shift in my life and I do cheat occasionally with bread and occasionally with pasta I will I will go off with ice cream and things along those lines but most of the time I'm just eating meat and vegetables most of the time and then I have a cheat day like you know once a week like yeah especially if I go to dinner I'll have a little pasta and it doesn't seem to mess too bad but I do feel shitty after I do it it's like for simple mouth pleasure I'm allowing myself to feel tired after we're tired yeah that's a big one man yeah but like I out yeah like well really I can't no and it's so interesting to like I can't believe I can wake up in the morning okay that's never happened to me in my whole life and when I was a kid 13 12 I had a bitch of a time waking up in the morning it was just brutal I just thought that's how it was this is what I mean again I'm not a nutritionist either but what's fascinating to me is I haven't heard any negative stories about people doing this well I have a negative story okay okay one of the things that both Mikayla and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren't supposed to the reaction to eating what we weren't supposed to was absolutely catastrophic but it show what did you switch to what did you eat rather um well the worst response I think we're allergic to or allergic whatever the hell this is having an inflammatory response to something called sulfites and we had some apple cider that had sulfites in it and that was really not good like I was done for a month that was the first time I talked to Sam Harris you were done for a month oh yeah it took me out for a month it was awful real yeah yeah so I would sell oh and what so this is right before this whole truth conversation with Sam Harris at the Guthrie in the mud during during it was I think the day I talked to Sam was like the worst day of my life not because of talking to Sam but it was just physical Jesus I was so dead but I didn't want to not do it cider like what was his own fights in what was it doing there oh it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom and I seriously been overwhelming like there's no way I could have lived like that if that would have lasted for see Mikayla knew by that point that it would probably only last a month and I was like a month yeah my cider well I didn't sleep that that month I didn't sleep for 25 days I didn't sleep at all I didn't sleep at all for 25 days how is it possible that I'll tell you how it's possible you lay in bed frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours and then you get up oh my god oh yeah no and this is some cider from that's what we thought yeah I mean look again I don't know what the hell I'm talking about okay this is all a mystery to me the fact that my daughter was so sick see the one thing that I did know cuz I scoured the literature on arthritis when she was a kid the scientific literature and because we were interested in the dietary connection and the only thing I could find that was reliable was that if people with arthritis fasted their symptoms reliably went away and that's actually a well-documented finding but then if they started to eat again then there were symptoms came back and I thought well what the hell does it not matter what they eat they can't be reactive to everything it's like no but they can be reactive to almost everything and the difference between everything and almost everything that's a big difference and so Mikayla seems to be maybe me too and hammies on the same diet because she has autoimmune problems on her side of the family so Mikayla seemed to inherit all of them your skin looks better old Jesus Joe I'm waiting whatever here yeah yeah you you you look like more vibrant it's very strange thank you thank you welcome but the see my point is I you're saying that there's a there is problems with this diet but that doesn't seem to be a problem with a diet seems a problem with deviating from the diet your body becomes a custom with well one of the thighs Isis that we've been pursuing and there's some justification for this and the scientific literature is that the reason that you lay on layers of fat is because the fat acts as a buffer between you and the toxic things that you're eating because fat is actually an organ it has functions other than merely the storage of of calories and maybe when you strip out that protective layer then you're more sensitive to what you shouldn't be eating this is all speculative hypotheses right or maybe you sensitize yourself by removing it from your constant diet I don't bloody well know well I would think it would be much more likely that because you think about people who are alcoholics they develop a tolerance to alcohol you know you get off of that and then you have a drink and your tolerances are shot and then you immediately have a reverse reaction to the alcohol yeah same thing with marijuana yeah when people do it all the time you your body becomes tolerant well I think I think that the layering of fat on might be part of the tolerance mechanism hmm so it's not merely a matter of caloric intake it's a matter of of toxic telluric intake buffered by whatever it is that fat is doing as a neuro endocrine organ but again like I said I said I'm out of my depth here but you know the whole everyone's out of their depth the goddamn food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture not the Department of Health it wasn't predicated on any scientific studies whatsoever we should have we shouldn't be eating massive quantities of corn syrup we we way too many carbohydrates Michaela posted a paper the other day a doctor has successfully treated type 1 diabetes with a carnivore diet type 1 not type 2 so that's bloody impressive yeah it's it's very curious to me because you're talking about the one adverse reaction which is when you deviated from the diet yeah what I'm talking about is when I read people's accounts of trying this diet it's almost universally positive you know but again that's probably and it's the same with all these stories that I'm collecting as I'm touring and you know people lots of people have come up to me and said look I lost 45 pounds in the last three months I think yeah I think what's shocking to me I think well what do you make of that say well I can't believe it well who can oh I couldn't believe it fifty pounds it's like first of all I didn't know I had fifty pounds to lose you know I thought it was maybe 20 pounds heavier than I should have been there should have been 185 something like that I guess that's 25 to 30 pounds that was the maximum thought no no I lost I meant 162 and I was at 212 so what's that fifty fifty pounds it's a lot of weight Jesus I threw had to throw all my clothes away it's I can't believe it when I saw you last night I was like you're so slim like your your stomach is completely flat and it's and this is not a lean mean fighting yeah man and you're not a an exercise fanatic it's not like you're starving yourself it's not like you know and I'm not running 5 that's another thing I should say to people if you want to try a diet like this you eat enough meat and fat so you were not hungry okay you can't get hungry you're not eating enough if you're hungry and if you're hungry you're gonna cheat and it's gonna drive you stark raving mad the other thing that was really cool is like I really liked sweets like I've kind of lived on peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk not really but that was my go-to food you know both of which were terrible for me but after I stopped eating carbohydrates for a month the carbohydrate cravings went away you know last night when we were out for dinner somebody ordered bread pudding and I bloody love bread pudding with caramel and and and ice cream so it was sitting there and I could smell it like you know I thought I could go all fantastic mr. Fox on that bread pudding and just tear it down in about 15 seconds but it wasn't it wasn't as intense as a craving for a cigarette if you're Nick's ex-smoker it was like God be really nice to eat that but like my appetite declined by about 75% that's been permanent that's been so there's a perverse thing for you I eat way less and now I'm not as hungry okay how does that make sense well you're not eating way less you're eating way less thing yes you have 30 ounce steak last night yes yes I'm doing my best not to be hungry although it didn't look like I was 30 no no no there's a small 30 on the steak well I think it starts out 30 ounces before they cook it right loses a considerable right right very fatty right but that's the other thing too you you must have to get a lot of fat yeah well I eat fatty cuts of steak and yeah Michaela is buying fat directly from the butcher store and we cooked that up cut it into small pieces and fry it up till it's crispy Wow it's actually quite delicious it's not bread pudding with ice cream but it's not funny you mean Dino it's so ridiculous well I wanna I want your blood profile I want to find out what's going on with you because one of the big misconceptions when it comes to cholesterol and saturated fat and food is that if you eat dietary cholesterol that it affects your blood cholesterol levels it's not it's a super common misconception well those so the thing about clinical studies with diet are virtually impossible to conduct because you just can't you can't conduct a proper randomly distributed controlled experiment it's too hard so a lot of what we're trying to do is pull out information from correlations right you can't do it which is one of the real problems with correlating meat with cancer and diabetes and all these different diseases is because people are eating a bunch of with that oh yeah and they have different lifestyle profiles or like there's just endless numbers of confounding variables you only need one con founding variable that's that's relevant to screw up the study right you can't get that information with correlational studies we try because it's impossible to do the studies but how many people are incredulous when they're honey people wouldn't when they're hearing about this Oh everybody everybody well you or not but you know you're interested in this sort of thing but they should be incredulous like when people make absurd claims is like oh well I had 50 health problems and I stopped eating everything but meat and they went away it's like whoo sure it's like yeah well wasn't you dying so yeah and I see the results and I know it's an anecdote I bloody well understand that and I'm highly skeptical about all of this but I'm telling you so that's why I'm telling you what happened to me and what happened to my daughter and also what happened to my wife because she's Tammy was always in good shape and she's exercised a lot and she reduced to the to the pure carnivore died about a month ago she lost like 12 pounds she was already slim she's back to the same weight she was when she was 21 she's like 58 you know and she doesn't look 58 I can tell you that so it's really fascinating it's really fascinating because I just I as a person who studied diet for many years I would assume that you need phytonutrients I would assume do you need vitamins supplements like vitamin C for example turns out if you don't eat carbohydrates you don't need vitamin C ha who woulda guessed how does that work I don't I don't remember Michaela outlined a paper for me vitamin C is necessary for carbohydrate metabolism but if you don't if again remember everyone listening I am NOT an expert in this field right so but but I want you to get your blood tested because I think if be pretty funny if it was in good shape yeah it would be I mean I'd like to find out what your nutrient levels are and where they're coming yeah I mean what what I'm getting a little cramping in my toes from time to time so I'm not sure about potassium possibility that's a supplement it's very easy which is why I'm concerned but like and also minerals you know you know in certain minerals you're getting from vegetables that you're probably not getting yeah well this is all like look it seems not hard to supplement that stuff though colloidal minerals you know there's some mineral pills you could take plenty of well there are plants are people who basically lived on meat you know the any what did the mess I basically did yeah there some supplementation but not a lot yeah and apparently if you do a carnivore diet you're supposed to eat more organ meat and I do some of that but not a lot but I can tell you like I'm I mean well look I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't producing positive results yeah it's not like it's fun running for a while well it makes you a social pariah mm-hm like let's invite the Petersons over oh yeah they don't eat anything oh we have other friends that's like well that's how it works it's not malevolence right it's just if you're a pain no one invites you out so so I'm a social pain and an ideological pain and now I'm a nutritional pain because there's no friends how difficult is it when you're trying to get breakfast like what do you do when you oh well lots of times when we were traveling we cook so we'll usually stay in places where you can cook oh okay but most places you can get a steak mm-hmm and so that's mostly what we do I've been traveling in a Motorhome and so we've been cooking in the Motorhome and so not carry beef jerky with me which we make what so yeah it's crazy you make your own beef jerky well it's like we have a dehydrator and you just basically put salt on and throw in the dehydrator so that works pretty well you anticipate continuing this well forever Cod forevers a long time I'd like to be able to eat more things but I'm gonna experiment with that very very very very very cautiously I'm gonna add mushrooms next because maybe I could eat them well this is why I'm asking there positive benefits that a lot of people achieve and and experience when they switch to a vegan diet yeah one of the things it is is you get off of the standard American diet with lots of refined sugars and a lot of preservatives a little and then you find positive benefits Chris Kresser has gone into depth about this but then over time the nutritional bent deficiencies in that start to wear on your health yep and I'm wondering well it's certainly possible well certainly eventually this diet will kill me no life will well you're right biology will yes unless so it science intervened might be that for some people of Megan dieters or vegan diet is preferable to a standard American diet well for sure to a standard American diet but also there's so much biological variability yeah you know the things that bothers some people don't bother other people at all and that's that's something that we got to take into consideration yeah well that's why I don't want to universalize from my experience you know but but this is what's happened to me and this is what's happened to my wife and my daughter so and all of its being well with Michaela it's it's miraculous I cannot believe it the last time I saw it made me cry I've never seen her look like that she looks so good she's so healthy and all her other joints are not experiencing any problem and she's taking no immunomodulators at all no medication none and she was on him fro Jesus yes more medication than you can shake a stick at methotrexate which is basically they use it to treat cancer it's a it's a what's what's the cancer treating drugs called whatever I don't remember at the moment she was on Enbrel which really really helped but but later opened to bacterial infections so she always had pneumonia in the fall but envel really helped and then heavy doses of antidepressants and Ritalin and Jesus how long has she been on this carnivore diet oh god she's only been eating meat it's got to be at least six to eight months now Wow and does she get blood work done uh yep and her blood work I won't comment on that I don't know the details of her blood work I don't know to answer that hmm it's fascinating I'm curious I'm considering trying it for a while the problem is I eat so much game meat you know what there's a lot get some fat yeah that's the trick there try it for a month see what happens you what the hell a month you know just a month ya know a months not hard yeah interesting all right let's wrap this up all right three hours it's re 2:20 believe it or not hey crazy prison it's always a pleasure great see one thing I want to bring up ya for it how weird is this whole association to you cuz it's weird to me the IDW yeah oh I D WI yeah of course it's election darkweb it is it's like I've been trying to puzzle it out I mean I think what it is is a loose collection of early adopters of a revolutionary technology that's what it looks like to me and and it we found each other because we're all doing the same thing but it's also a bunch of people that are honest intellectually honest about their and and maybe don't even disagree even agree on folio definitely but honest about perceptions well and also I think interested in long-form discussion yeah right and and able to engage in it because otherwise we wouldn't be having the relative success that we're having in the in the in the milieu you know and it got a name and that's kind of interesting and that's Eric though yeah that's right that's Eric yes he loves it most interesting about I love to rib him yeah well it's got this funny conspiratorial element there that's sort of true and sort of mostly dramatic and was a mathematician he's always looking for patterns codes yeah yeah I don't know what to make of it I mean things get a name and then you think well why did that get named and well someone named it but yeah but the name stuck so it seemed our proposed is some degree and well what do we have in common most of us are entrepreneurial most of us have our own platform so we can speak independently most of us are interested in long-form philosophical discussions primarily not political but but bordering on political well just band's more political oh yes he's the most yeah but he's also very sophisticated political commentators so he borders on both the philosophical and the religious yes so and then we're we're we're all the newly new adopters of this new technology so that's enough to put us in a group and then well it turns out that we've all been talking to each other but part of the reason for that is while we're all doing the same thing on the net so it's not surprising that we're talking to each other so I always go for the simple explanations first you know it's not a movement exactly what it is it's the manifestation of a new technology and then well do we have anything in common that's worth discussing that would make this a viable group let's say and the answer to that is I don't know you know I've been touring with Ruben that's been good it's been good to have a comedian along and he's also a good interviewer he does the q and a's with me and it's nice to have some levity in the mix because of the conversations are the discussions with the audience are very serious although I can crack a joke and I can't tell a joke but if something funny occurs to be I can say it and sometimes it's funny so that's something you know and we've been we've been discussing a fair bit and I had good conversations with Shapiro and Harris for that matter so there is lots of interplay between us but I think that's more because we we inhabit the same technological space more than the same ideological space apart from the fact that we are actually interested in dialogue fundamentally so we'll see I mean I'm watching it with curiosity are you apprehensive do you think this is sure potential downsides so there's lots of downsides to it sure there's lots of downsides I mean first of all you know most of us are on an individual individualistic path I'm not come I'm not really much of a group guy you know so am I in this group it's like well I'm pleased to be associated with you guys that's for sure but I don't really know what it would mean or if it should mean anything or if it'll screw up what I'm doing or if it I don't know anything about it but mostly I'm curious it's like huh this is a group I thought this is the Rat Pack I thought what I walked into the restaurant of us because we were out last night was Ben Shapiro Sam Harris Eric Weinstein Dave Rubin Joe Rogan and me right and my wife Tammy and so we're all walking in there and I thought well this is kind of like being back in the 1950s I thought well I know maybe it isn't but that's what came to mind so I thought that's funny and it's it's it's kind of cool and it's interesting and it's edgy and all of that but I'm not I'm not taking it seriously I'm not also not you know I'm not taking it not seriously either but I'm just watching I'm watching everybody interact because it is a very motley crew of people it is so and they're very different and so but it was very much joy thank you okay so why did you think it was enjoyable it's good conversation I mean yeah everyone that was in that group has been on my podcast or I've been on theirs and you know it's a fun group of really honest interesting people that you Lear very peculiar people specially Eric yeah he's listening right now I'm with him I love that guy but no I mean they're all it's there everyone's different but everyone's also unique and they all bring a lot to the table and that's what's interesting about it you know think the weird collection yeah you know I I don't know what to think of it like when Eric called me up about the whole New York Times thing I'm like what are you talking about right like why did you do that what I do what what did you be part of the New York Times article I barely was I just answered a couple questions but there's a review you've got a picture yeah they didn't direct they didn't obsess they shouldn't taken a picture of me I was dressed like I was going onstage at the Comedy Store I didn't wear anything any differently they were trying to make a big deal of it I'm like look I don't have any time this you want to take a picture means is what I'm wearing yeah and and we we did it on the parking lot above the Comedy Store and started to rain I go we're done I got to go I got to go onstage I can't be soaking wet you know and and then go onstage and that was it you know it was just okay so your take on it is that it's well it's in turn is its interest yes well this is the this is probably another thing that unites that group of people everyone in that group of people is likely to get in trouble because they find you too many things interesting right and it's trade openness that's another thing that unites all of us yes yeah and so and you know curiosity killed the cat and so yeah but we're not cats true curiosity also built the pyramids it did it did it and it saved a lot of caps too let's end with that all right all right Jordan all right pleasure my friend chewy again see you always yeah yeah that's it folks see you soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 6,555,634

Rating: 4.8044701 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, podcast, JRE #1139, 1139, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, comedy, comedian, jokes, stand up, funny, mma, UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship, self authoring

Id: 9Xc7DN-noAc

Length: 200min 21sec (12021 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018

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[u/letienphat1]

just tuned in and the first thing i heard from JP "life is hard and tainted by malevolence and betrayal" classic

[u/is_not_funny]

This is the most intense I've seen Joe in a while.

[u/[deleted]]

Anybody got pics of jacked JP benching 75 lbs?

[u/super_salt]

Best part.

JP: "My mother says "'Everything you do dear is great." NO ITS NOT!!!!"

[u/Adramelech_12]

I shouldn't have watched this, now I'll have to deal with the thousands of "Jordan Peterson completely destroys whatever" videos that Youtube's algorithm loves to dump into my feed.

[u/runaway_truck]

Around 1:38:00, Joe talks about the 6'4 beautiful man competing with less attractive men. Joe says What's wrong with that? to the women who want the beautiful man some of the time, and I can't help thinking

Joe, you got married. You can answer this.

[u/TheseNthose]

Does JP play Quake?

[u/[deleted]]

I’m progressive as fuck but this actually ain’t too bad. I’d say he’s a bit too concerned with the sjw boogeyman but other than that his ideas are pretty sound. Man, I really just wish joe would have a serious liberal on who knows their shit though. One of the dudes from pod save America or Ben Rhodes would be fuckin awesome. They all have books out right now so it would make sense.