YouSaid · the spoken record

Jordan Peterson

lines on the record

214

first

2022-08-19

most recent

2022-08-19

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “So, I don't know what these people are thinking. And then I think, okay, what are they thinking? Well, the Deloitte people are thinking, aren't we smart? And shouldn't we be hired by our corporate employers? It's like, okay.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Take an industry You knock it back. I fiat by thirty percent. Now it runs on like a three percent profit margin. Now you're going to kill thirty percent of it. How are you not going to bring the whole thing down, the whole farming ecosystem down? How are you not going to impoverish the transport systems? How are you not going to demolish the grocery stores? You can't take something like that and pare it back by fiat by 30% and not kill it. I can't see how you can do that. I mean look what we did with the COVID lockdowns. We broke the supply chains. Have you tried buying something lately? And aren't the Chinese threatening Taiwan at the moment? What are we going to do without chips?”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Dutch do in some sense they had a famine at the end of World War II, and part of the reason the Dutch farmers are so unbelievably efficient and productive is that the Dutch swore at the end of World War II that that was not going to happen again. And then they had to scrape land out of the ocean because Holland, that's quite a country. It shouldn't even exist. The fact that it's the world's number two exporter, you know that it's the world's number two exporter of agricultural products. Holland. It's like I don't think it's as big as Massachusetts. It's this little tiny place. It shouldn't even exist. And they want to put here's the plan. Let's put 30% of the farmers out of business. Well, the broader ecosystem of agricultural production in Holland is 6% of their GDP. Now, these centralizing politicians think, tell me if I'm stupid about this.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Governments destabilize And then they appropriate the food from the farmers. Then the farmers don't have any money. Then they can't grow crops. And I think, yeah, that's exactly what they do. That's exactly what would happen. And so Jawn told me 1.2 billion. And then Bjorn Lomberg said the same thing. I didn't even ask him. He just made it as an offhand comment.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “And so, and then I think further, it's like, well, okay, Deloitte consultants, have you actually modeled the world? Or is this a big advertising shtick designed to attract your corporate clients with the demonstration that you're so intelligent that you can actually model the entire ecosystem of the world, including the economic system, and predict it 100 years forward? And isn't there a bit of a moral hazard in making a claim like that? Just like just a trifle, especially when So I talk to Bjorn Lomberg and myself. Estimates of starvation this coming year, 150 million people will suffer food insecurity, food insecurity. Food insecurity. That's the bloody buzzword. Famine. Well, Michael Jawn thought one point two billion and then that'll spiral because he said what happens in a famine is that the governments go nuts crazy.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “A lot of poor people are going to have to die so that a lot more poor people don't die in the future. It's like, okay, hold on a sec. Which of those two things am I supposed to regard with certainty? The hypothetical poor people that you're going to hypothetically save 100 years from now or the actual poor people that you are actually going to kill in the next 10 years? Well, I'm going to cast my lot with the actual poor people that you're actually going to kill.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Navian flu comes in and the birds die from the bottom up. That happens in every epidemic. You die from the bottom up. Okay. So they say when the aristocracy catches a cold, the working class dies of pneumonia. All right. So now we're going to make people poorer. Who? Well, we know who we make poor when we make people poorer. We make those who are barely hanging on. Poorer. And what does that mean? It means they die. And so what the Deloitte consultants are basically saying is, well, you know, it's kind of unfortunate. But according to our models,”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Stress a hierarchy like that, a social hierarchy. So there's birds in an environment and an avian flu comes in. And then you look at the birds in the social hierarchy and the low-ranking birds have the worst nests, so they're most exposed to wind and rain and sun. And farthest from food supplies and most exposed to predators. And so those birds are stressed, which is what happens to you at the bottom of a hierarchy. You're more stressed because your life is more uncertain. You're more stressed. Your immunological function is compromised because of that. You're sacrificing the future for the present.”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “We're going to go through a difficult period of privation because if we don't accept limits to growth, there's going to be a catastrophe 50 years in the future or thereabouts. And so to avert that catastrophe, we are going to make people poorer now. How much poorer? Well, not a lot compared to how much richer they're going to be, but definitely, and they say this in their own models, definitely poorer, definitely poorer, than they would be if we just left them the hell alone. And so then I think, okay. Horror, eh? Who? Well, let's look at it biologically. You've got a hierarchy, right, of stability and security. That's a hierarchy, or one type”

   2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “three hundred thousand employees Major League Consultants They just produced a report in May. I wrote an article for it in the telegraph which I'm going to release this week on my YouTube channel said well If we get the climate problem under control economically, because that's where the models are now being generated on the economic front. So now we have to model the environment, that's climate, and we have to model the economy, and then we have to model their joint interaction, and then we have to predict 100 years into the future, and then we have to put a dollar value on that, and then we have to claim that we can do that, which we can't. And then this is our conclusion.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Everything. And then these models, because people have gone after me because I don't buy the climate models. Well, I think about the climate models as extended into the economic models because the climate model is Well, there's going to be a certain degree of heating, let's say, by 2100. It's like, okay, some of that might be human-generated, some of it's a consequence of warming after the ice age. This has happened before. But fair enough, let's take your presumption. Although there are multiple presumptions, and any error in your model multiplies as time extends, but to have it your way, okay, now we're going to extend the climate model, so to speak, into the economic model. So I just did an analysis of a paper by Deloitte. Third biggest company in the US.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Do more with less, and we've got this. And I think. Yes, to that idea, and I think about it in a In a fundamental way. It's like, I trust Lomburg, I trust Tupi, I trust Matt Ridley. They thought about these things deeply. They're not just saying, oh, the environment doesn't matter whatever the environment is. The environment. I don't even know what that is. That's everything, the environment. I'm concerned about the environment. Which is how is that different than saying, I'm worried about everything? How are those statements different semantically?”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “You're willing to use compulsion to harness other people to fight the dragon for you. So now not only are you terrified, you're a terrified tyrant. So then I would say, well, then you're not the Moses that we need to lead us out of this particular Exodus. And maybe that's a neurological explanation. It's like, if you're so afraid of what you're facing, that you're terrified into paralysis and nihilism, and that you're willing to use tyrannical compulsion to get your way, you are not the right leader for the time. So then I like someone like Bjorn Lomburg or Matt Ridley, or Marion Tupi, and they say, well, look, we've got our environmental problems, and maybe there's you could make a case that there's a Malthusian element in some situations, but fundamentally the human race is that we learn very fast and faster all the time.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Is the apocalypse looming on the environmental front? Yes or no? I'll just leave that aside for the time being. I think you can make a case both ways for a bunch of different reasons. And it's not a trivial concern. And we've overfished the oceans terribly. And there are environmental issues that are looming large. Whether climate change is the cardinal one or not is a whole different question, but we won't get into that. That's not the issue. You're clamoring about a dragon. Okay. Why should I listen to you? Well, let's see how you're reacting to the dragon. First of all, you're scared stiff and in a state of panic. That might indicate you're not the man for the job. Second”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Here, I'll tell you why it's the wrong idea, I think. So imagine that there's an emergency dragon. There's a dragon. Someone comes and says, there's a dragon. I'm the guy to deal with it. That's what the environmentalists say, the radical types who push limits to growth. Then I look at them and I think, okay. Is that dragon real or not? One question well”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “You couldn't make a claim that's more opposite to the truth. And the claim that there are too many people on the planet is an antitrust. So, you know, people say, well, you have to accept limits to growth, and et cetera. It's like, I have to accept the limits that you're going to impose on me because you're frightened of the future. That's your theory, is it? Okay.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Of the mind and Starlink. It's like go Elon, as far as I'm concerned. And then, you know, he puts his finger on things so oddly. The problem is underpopulation. It's like, I think so too. I think it's a terrible problem that we're the West, for example, is no longer at replacement with regard to birth rate. It means we've abandoned the virgin and the child in a most fundamental sense. It's a bloody catastrophe. And Musk, he sees it. clear as can be. It's like, well, and where everyone else is running around going, oh, there's too many people. It's like, nope, got that not only. See, I've learned that there are falsehoods and lies and there are antitrusts. And an antitrust is something that's so preposterous that you couldn't.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Like one tenth the price of NASA rockets, and then he shot his car out into space. That's pretty hard, and then he's building this boring company more or less as a what would you call it? It's sort of, it's this whimsical joke in some sense, but it's not a joke. He's amazing.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Well, it isn't obvious to me that I'm in any position to evaluate Elon Musk. Like, I would like to talk to him and find out what he's up to and why. But, I mean, he's an impossible person. What he's done is impossible, all of it. It's like he built an electric car that works. Now, does it work completely and will it replace gas cars or should it? I don't know. But if we're going to build electric cars, he seems to be the best at that. Buy a lot, and he more or less did that people carp about him, but he more or less did that by himself. I know he's very good at distributing responsibility and all of that, but he's the spearhead. And then that was pretty hard. And then he built a rocket.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Well, that's what did Nietzsche say? Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity. Who the hell knows what Musk is up to? I mean, obviously he's building rockets. Now he's motivated because he wants to build a platform for life on Mars. Is that a good idea? Am I to say He's building the rockets, man, but I'd like to ask him about it.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Struck with admiration. What I make them, and I was thinking I always think of that as a primary. Well, it's like, do you find this comedian funny? It's like, well, I laugh at him. You know what I mean? It's not propositional again. And so there are things I would like to ask Mr. Musk about. Mars venture. I don't know what he's up to there. It strikes me as absurd in the most fundamental sense because I think, well, it'd be easier just to build an outpost in the Antarctica or in the desert.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “You know, I was ready to die a year ago. And not casually. I had people I loved So, no, I'm not very worried about me, but I am very worried about making a mistake. Elon Musk talk about that a couple of months ago. It was really a striking moment. Someone asked him about death, and he said just offhand, and then went on with the conversation. He said, it'd be a relief. And then he went on with the conversation. And I thought Well, you know, he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders. I'm sure that part of them thinks. Be easier just if this wasn't here at all. Now he said it offhand, but it was a telling moment in my estimation.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “The Think it's one of the things that made me peculiar when I was in graduate school, you know, I thought about, I had the thought of death in my mind all the time. And I noticed that many of the people that I was with, these were people I admired. That wasn't part of their character, but it was definitely part of mine. I'd wake up every morning. Happened for years think time's short, get at it, time's short, get at it. There's things to do. And so that was always still there, and still there with, I would say, and it's unbearable in some sense.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Swords, the flaming swords. It's like so I said the whole story of Christ was prefigured in that image. It's like the story of Christ psychologically is radical acceptance of the worst possible tragedy. That's what it means. That's what the crucifix means. Psychologically. It's like gaze upon that which you are most afraid of. But that story doesn't end there because in the story Christ goes through death into hell. So death isn't enough. The abyss of innocent death is not sufficient to produce redemption. It has to be a voluntary journey to hell. And maybe that's true for everyone. That's like there is an old more terrifying idea than that by definition. And so then, well, do you gaze upon that? Who knows? Who knows?”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I also say knowing that he's absolutely right, but if you gaze into the abyss long enough, you see the light, not the darkness.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Anger as a motivating energy to help me overcome the resistance to doing this. But then that makes me more harsh and judgmental in my tone when I'm reading such things, for example, on YouTube than might be optimal. Now, I've had debates about with people about that because I have friends who say, no, if you're calling out the environmentalist globalists who are harassing the Dutch farmers, then a little anger is just the ticket. But then others say, well, you know, you don't want to be too harsh because you alienate people who would otherwise listen to you. It's like, that's a hard bell balance to get right.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “You're a little too harsh there and you're alienating people unnecessarily there and you should have done some more background work there. And I think the responsibility attendant upon that increases as your influence increases. And as your influence increases, then that becomes a lot of responsibility So, you know, and then maybe have an off day. And, well, here's an example. I've been writing some columns lately about things that perturb me. Like the forthcoming famine, for example. And it's hard to take those problems on. It's difficult to take those problems on in a serious manner and it's frightening. And it would be easier just to go up to the cottage with my wife and go out on the lake and watch the sunset. And so I'm tempted to draw on.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “No doubt, in some regard, I mean it's very difficult thing to avoid, you know, because Things change around you. People are much more likely to do what you ask, for example, right? And so that's a danger because one of the things that keeps you dying properly is that people push back against you optimally. This is why so many celebrities spiral out of control, especially the tyrannical types that say run countries. Everyone around them stops saying, yeah, you're deviating a little bit there. They laugh at all their jokes. They open all their doors. They always want something from them. The red carpets always rolled out. It's like, well, you think, wouldn't that be lovely? It's, well, not if the red carpet is rolled out to you while you're on your way to perdition. That's not a good deal. You just get there more efficiently. And so one of the things that I've tried to learn to manage is to have people around me all the time who are critics and who are saying yeah I could have done that better.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Productivity on the biological front and the culling of that, right? Life is a real balance between growth and death. And so what would happen if you got that balance right? Well, we kind of know, right? Because if you live your life properly, so to speak, and you're humble enough to let your stupidity die before it takes you out, you will live longer. That's just a fact. But then, what's the ultimate extension of that? And the answer is we don't know. We have no idea.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Inviting the judgment because maybe you can die a little bit instead of dying completely. I think it's Alfred North Whitehead. We can let our ideas die instead of us. We can have these partial personalities that we can burn off and we can let them go before they become tyrannical pharaohs and we lose everything. And so, yeah, there's this optimal bite of death. And who knows what it would mean to optimize that? Like what if it was possible that if you died enough all the time, that you could continue to live? And the thing is we already know that biologically because if you don't die properly all the time, well, it's cancerous outgrowths and it's a very fine balance between.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Well, it depends on how much of the thing is chaff. You know, this is why you can't touch the Ark of the Covenant, for example. And this is why people can have very bad psychedelic trips. It's like if you're 95% deadwood and you get too close to the flame. The 5% that's left might not be able to make it”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, and this is a whole new kind of monster. And maybe it's already here. Yes, and you notice how many of those things you can no longer turn off. What is it with you engineers and your inability to put off switches on things now? Like, I have to hold this for five seconds for it to shut off, or I can't figure it. I just want to shut it off. Click off.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Yeah, right. And thing people are very, very clear logical thinkers and they're very outcome oriented and practical. And that's all good. That makes the machinery and keeps it functioning. But there's a human side of the equation. And you get the extreme thing people and you think, yeah, well, what about the human here? When we're talking about, we've been talking about the necessity of having a technological enterprise embedded in an ethic, and you can ignore that, like most of the time, right? You can ignore the overall ethic in some sense when you're toying around with your toys. But when you're building an artificial intelligence, it's like, well, That's not a toy”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Birth control pill cool. It's like or transistor cool. Yeah. Well, the other thing too, and this is a weird problem in some sense, the robotics engineer types, they're thing people, right? I mean, the big classes of interest are interest in things versus interest in people.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Well, then, and we know, you know, the Frankenstein story comes out of that instantly. And that's a good story for the current times. It's like you're playing around with making a new life. You bloody well better make sure you have your arrows pointed up.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “What matters? There's a definition that's a very weird definition. But the notion that we have, you know, that if you're a reductionist, a materialist reductionist, that you can reduce the complexity of what is to your assumptions about the nature of matter. That's not a scientific process.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “See, the problem with that argument is that it already presumes a materialist, a reductionist materialist, objective view of what constitutes nature. But if you're a scientist, you're going to think, well, in the final analysis, I don't know what nature is. I certainly don't know its origin or destination point. I don't know its teleology. I'm really ignorant about nature. And so when I say it's nothing but nature, I shouldn't mean it's nothing but what I understand nature to be. So I could say, will we have a fully reductionist account of cognitive processes? And the answer to that is yes. But by the time we do that, our understanding of matter will have transformed so much that what we think of as reductionists now won't look anything like what we think of reductionism now. Matter isn't dead dust. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what it is. Matter is...”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Do you believe in a transcendent reality? Say, okay, now let's say you buy the argument I just made on the natural front and you say, yeah, yeah, that's just nature. That's not God. And then I'd say, well, what makes you think you know what nature is?”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Logos in it. It is definitely that. Yeah, it's the direction, let's say the directionality of science, that's a narrative direction, not a scientific direction. And then the question is, what is the narrative? Well, it posits a transcendent reality. It posits that the transcendent reality is corrective. It posits that our knowledge structure should be regarded with humility. It posits that you should bow down in the face of the transcendent evidence. And you have to take a vow. You know this as a scientist. You have to take a vow to follow that path if you're going to be a real scientist. It's like the truth, no matter what. And that means you pause it the truth as a redemptive force. Well, what does redemptive mean? Well, why bother with science? Well, so people don't starve, so people can move about more effectively. So life can be more abundant, right? So it's all ensconced within an underlying ethic. So the reason I was saying that while we were talking about belief in God, it's like, this is a very complicated topic.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “You assume that freedom in the most fundamental sense, it's like, well, freedom from want, freedom from disease, freedom from ignorance, right? That it informs you.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “And that contact with that transcendent reality is redemptive in the most fundamental sense, because if it wasn't, well, why would you bother making contact with it? You're going to make everything worse or better.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Because you're a scientist, you think, well, even though that's my description of the world and that's what I believe Something beyond what I believe. And that's the object. And so I'm going to throw my theory against the object and see where it'll break. And then I'm going to use the evidence of the break as a source of new information to revitalize my theory. So as a scientist, you have to posit the existence of the ontological transcendent before you can move forward at all. But more. You have to posit that contact with the Annoying though it is because it upsets your Apple cart is exactly what will in fact set you free. So then you accept the proposition that there is a transcendent reality.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Certainly, and so then you think okay, well, we killed the transcendent. Well, what does that mean for science? Well, it frees it up because all that nonsense about a deity is just the idiot superstition that stops the scientific process from moving forward. That's basically the new atheist claim, something like that. It's like, wait a second. Believe in the transcendent if you're a scientist Answer Well, not only do you believe in it, you believe in it more than anything else. Because if you're a scientist, you believe in what objects to your theory more than you believe in your theory. Now, we've got to think that through very carefully. So your theory describes the world, and as far as you're concerned, your description of the world is the world.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Postmodernist types going back way before Derrida and Foucault, maybe back to Nietzsche, who I admire greatly, by the way, says, God is dead. Like, okay, but Nietzsche said God is dead and we have killed him and we'll not find enough water to wash away all the blood, so that was Nietzsche. He's no fool.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Well, there you go Yes, well, there you go. And there's no, that worship, that celebration and proclivity to imitate is worship. That's what worship means most fundamentally. Now, imagine you took... The set of all admirable people. You extracted out AI learning. You extracted out the central features of what constitutes admirable. And then you did that repeatedly until you purified it to what was most admirable. As good as you're going to get in terms of a representation of God. And you might say, well, I don't believe in that. It's like, well, what do you mean? Not a set of propositional facts, it's not a scientific theory about the structure of the objective world. And then I could say something about that too, because I've been thinking about this a lot, especially since talking to Richard Dawkins. It's like, okay.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “It's an animating principle, yeah. It's a meta, it's a pattern. And you might say, well, what's the pattern? Okay, well, I can tell you that to some degree. Imagine that like your grip by beauty, you're gripped by admiration. And you can just notice this. This isn't propositional. You have to notice it. It's like, oh. Turns out I admire that person. So what does that mean? Well, it means I would like to be like him or her. What admiration means. It means there's something about the way they are that compels imitation, another instinct, or inspires respect or awe even. Okay, what is that that grips you? Well, I don't know. Well, let's say, okay, fine, but it grips you, and you want to be like that kids hero worship, for example. So do adults for that matter, unless they become entirely cynical.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “It's not just ignorant, it's also sinful, right? So because there's not knowing and then there's wanting to know or refusing to know. And so you might say, well, could you extract God from a description of the objective world? Is God just the ultimate unity of the natural reality? And I would say, well, in a sense, there's some truth in that, but not exactly because God in the highest sense is the spirit that you must emulate in order to thrive. How's that for a biological definition? Spirit is a pattern. The spirit that you must emulate in order to thrive.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Better because otherwise there's no communicating about it, right? It has to be something that can be brought down to earth.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Have it your way. You cannot move forward into the unforeseen horizon of the future except on faith. And you might say, well, have no faith. It's like, well, good luck with the future then because what are you then nihilistic and hopeless and anxiety ridden? And if not, well, something's guiding you forward, it's faith in something, or multiple things, which just makes you a polytheist, which I wouldn't recommend.”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Oh definitely. Yeah, yeah, I got a good analysis of the statue of David, Michelangelo says. You could be far more than you are. That's what that statue says. Cathedral, you know, down, we went down into the understructure of it. And there were three floors of bones from the plague. And there they all are. And then that cathedral's on top of it. It's no joke to go visit a place like that. Oh, it rattles you to the core. And our religious systems have become propositionally dubious. But there's no arguing with the architecture, although modern architects like to, with their sterility and their giant middle fingers erected everywhere. But beauty is A terrible pointer to God, and you know a secular person will say, Well, I don't believe in God. It's like,”

    2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source