Psychedelics, Consciousness, and AI | Richard Dawkins | EP 256

The novelty response is twofold—both anxiety (which freezes you because something novel might be dangerous) and exploratory curiosity (which is mediated by dopamine)—representing two simultaneous emotional disinhibitions rather than a single response.

“And the novelty response, this is part of the reason I got interested in mystical experience the novelty response is twofold. It's not just anxiety. It's also exploratory curiosity. And that's because when there's something novel well, you have to be careful because God only knows what it might be. Like it might be the thing that kills you. It might be nothing. So, anxiety freezes you but the hypothalamus, which is sits right on top of the spinal cord and is the highest integrating center of the instinctual responses of the motor system. It's way precortical. It's divided into two parts and one part of it governs the dopaminergic system that that mediates incentive reward, so all positive emotion, but more importantly active exploration.”

Schizophrenia involves the misfiring of the intuition system: latent inhibition is stripped away from normally suppressed perceptions, magnifying emotional significance of random stimuli, leading people to misinterpret this magnification as external meaning (ideas of reference, religious delusions).

“Schizophrenia is characterized by the misfiring of that intuition system. So, for example, here part partly what happens to people who have um like ideas of reference. They'll be watching television. And the latent inhibition will get stripped away from their perception of the voices. And so now the voices become magnified in significance. And to account for the magnification of emotional significance, they start thinking the television has a special message for me. It's like the receipt receipt of a religious revelation”

Chomsky's theory of universal grammar suggests underlying biological commonalities in language structure across separated peoples, meaning alphabetic invention by distinct cultures reflects an underlying linguistic principle rather than arbitrary cultural choice.

“And Foucault, of course, is a radical social constructionist except when he isn't now and then, right? And and I'm not being smart about that. The Order of Things is quite a careful book. But Chomsky was laying out a more archetypal argument in some sense. And Chomsky thinks that there is something like an underlying language grammar. And so, the fact that an alphabetic structure might be discovered by two separate peoples would be partly a reflective of an underlying biological commonality.”

The proposition that consciousness is implicit in matter is nonsensical as stated, and there's no need to posit consciousness as metaphysically fundamental when matter can give rise to consciousness through sufficient complexity.

“Do you think that the proposition that consciousness is implicit in matter is a useful and non-nonsensical statement? I think it's nonsensical. I don't think that's what Roger says. No I no I It isn't. Yeah. No it isn't. He he didn't say that. No. Um but I suppose it depends to some degree on what you mean by implicit right? But obviously matter can give rise to consciousness. With sufficient complexity. Yes. But not I mean you people are saying like every you know consciousness even in stones and that sort of thing.”

Roger Penrose does not argue that consciousness is implicit in matter, but rather that consciousness stands outside the domain of algorithmic computation due to Gödel's theorem—a different and more specific claim about non-computability.

“My brother-in-law is probably the world's foremost computer chip designer. Okay. And he's currently designing a chip that he thinks will have the computational power of a human brain... But there's a man named Rudolf Otto who wrote a book called Oh, I can't remember the name of the book, but it's not Varieties of Religious Experience because that's James. William James. Anyways, he described the primordial act of perception as numinous mysterium tremendum.”

P-hacking (running repeated statistical tests until a significant correlation appears) is both bad science and bad ethics, representing a failure of the commitment to truth that should govern scientific practice.

“psychology is rife with what they call P-hacking where you just run repeated correlations until you find one that's Yeah. Oh, that that's bad science. Yes. Um But it's also bad but it's bad ethics. It's like, well, why not? Look, why not do that if it advances your career?”

Bill C-16 in Canada mandated compelled pronoun use, which Peterson opposed not primarily on grounds of transgender politics but as a principled stand against state-mandated compelled speech, citing the American Supreme Court's 1942 declaration of compelled voluntary speech as unconstitutional and noting that no common law jurisdiction in history compelled speech for any reason.

“when I when all this first exploded around me I had released a couple of YouTube videos. Three of them I think decrying a bill C-16 that was passed by the Canadian Parliament which mandated pronoun use. And for me it had nothing to do with the transgender issue or maybe it did peripherally as a political issue, you know? And and maybe as a psychological issue because the transgender issue is very complicated if you're a psychopathologist. But for me it was just compelled speech.”

Lacan's use of mathematical symbolism and psychoanalytic terminology is fraudulent and incomprehensible, representing pseudo-intellectual obscurantism; by contrast, Jung's work, though complex, is understandable and maps clearly onto evolutionary biology.

“Lacan is a fraud as far as I'm concerned. you say that. Well, I've tried to read Lacan and I cannot make heads or tails of him. And it may be because I'm stupid. It's not. But I don't think so. Now, people have accused Jung of the same sort of mysticism that Lacan engages in, but I can understand Jung. I don't think he's a mystic at all. What Jung was doing is very complicated and it maps very nicely onto evolutionary biology.”

A pattern appearing independently in two geographically separated cultures (like identical symbols in Scandinavia and Amazonia) would be less improbable if the symbol represents something biologically constrained or pharmacologically produced than if it requires cultural diffusion, but equally probable if both cultures independently discovered a symbol matching an archetypal pattern.

“there's a level at which it's the same, right? Cuz they are alphabetic and they are the use of written forms to represent sounds. if that's a sensible thing to have and it... It is. It's such a good idea that it wouldn't be improbable that two tribes would have the same idea. That's true. But well, but it gets complicated, too. Well, it gets complicated in the context of this argument because one of the debates that Foucault had that was famous was a debate with Chomsky.”

A physician facing a patient with incurable cancer must decide whether truth (the diagnosis) or utility (patient comfort) takes priority, and Dawkins argues the patient would prefer to know the truth even if painful, representing a commitment to truth over comfort.

“As a doctor, you you have a patient who has incurable cancer and you have to decide whether to tell that patient the truth or not... colleagues might say, well, he's better off not telling him. He's better not not knowing. So the truth in this case is not beneficial. And what would you What would you Would you want to know? That's irrelevant. No, no. I would I would I would You would want to know. I would want to know.”

Humans have evolved a perceptual proclivity to map sexual relationships onto natural phenomena, and to some degree to animate things and perceive them as alive, and these perceptual biases may legitimately bias scientific reasoning in ways worth studying rather than dismissing.

“There are we do have a proclivity to map sexual relationship onto the world. And the degree for obvious reasons, because we have to perceive sexual relationship at a very deep level. We do have a tendency to animate things or to perceive them as if they're animated. And the degree to which those a priori perceptual proclivities might bias what would otherwise be objective thinking is open for valid discussion.”

Latent inhibition is the normal inhibitory effect of memory of regularities on current perception—most of what we see is memory rather than novel percepts, and this inhibition suppresses the novelty response, which Sokolov identified as the orienting reflex.

“there's also a phenomenon called latent inhibition, which is the inhibiting effect of the memory of the regularities on your current perception. Yeah. And so when you look at the world, mostly what you see is memory. And that that's been tracked in the visual system. So, you know, there are these visual primitives like line detection. Yeah. But if you look at the layers of the visual system and you look at the bottom layer where the retinal cells first make contact with the visual cortex there are more top-down inputs from the cortex into that low level than there are retinal inputs. So, even at the level of initial detection most of what you see is memory.”

Realists can acknowledge that objective facts exist independently of perception while also acknowledging that human knowledge of truth is incomplete and we can never be certain of anything—these positions are compatible, not contradictory.

“It may be that uh uh our knowledge of truth is is incomplete and and um we can never be sure of anything, but that doesn't mean there isn't truth out there. Well, truth is a slippery concept because it can be used very many ways and I'm not trying to I believe me, I'm not trying to bandy words about. I do not believe that the Newtonian conception of truth and the evolutionary conception of truth are commensurate.”

North American universities have experienced an explosion in administrative staffing acting as a parasitic load over the last 40 years, with universities eating up 70 cents of every dollar of American federal student aid, while faculty numbers have not grown commensurate with student numbers, leading to administrative takeover.

“you know, we have to go along with them. Okay. Well, so then what happened? You know what happened. I don't know if it happened here at Oxford, but in North American universities, the administrative load, like a parasite load, and I did I think the biological metaphor is exactly apt, by the way, exploded over the last 40 years. Universities have eaten up 70 cents of every dollar that the American federal government pumped into student aid. It's almost all gone into the hands of administrators. The faculty numbers haven't grown in a commensurate manner with the student numbers and so the administration took over.”

Anxiety emerges when the nervous system detects deviations from its internal model of the environment (entropy), and this is mediated by the hippocampus, which moves information from short-term attention to long-term memory while analyzing and inhibiting the orienting response.

“anxiety signifies the emergence of entropy. That's what it does. So, you can map anxiety right down to well, you can write map it right down to the to the level of entropy. Yes. So, so anyways, Gray also mapped the emotions neuropharmacologically and neurophysiologically onto the orienting reflex. And then he identified the brain areas. So, the hippocampus the hippocampus is extremely metabolically active. It's extremely expensive to operate psychophysiologically. It's very susceptible to oxygen deprivation and brain damage. The hippocampus moves information from short-term attention to long-term memory and it's crucially involved in the the analysis and inhibition of that orienting response.”

Amanita muscaria (red mushrooms with white dots) was likely used by ancient Scandinavians, who were familiar with psychedelic experiences, and these mushrooms have the interesting property that reindeer are attracted to them, which may explain the Santa Claus imagery and flying reindeer mythology.

“the ancient Scandinavians either used Amanita muscaria, those are red mushrooms with the white dots that you see in fairy tales all the time, same color as Santa Claus and and his flying reindeer, huh? And reindeer like Amanita muscaria mushrooms, by the way. So, and so do flies even, weirdly enough.”

Religious epistemology cross-culturally demonstrates a bipartite structure: a material substrate of latent potential and a forming process acting on that substrate, which looks like an intuitive apprehension of the relationship between consciousness and the rise of complexity in living forms.

“when I look at the at religious epistemology cross-culturally I see a bipartite structure at the bottom of the hypothesizing. There's an idea that there's a material substrate that consists of a kind of latent potential that might be one way of looking at it and that there's the action of a forming process on top of that. And it looks to me like it's something like what would you call it? An intuitive apprehension of the relationship between consciousness and the rise to complexity of living forms.”

A low-resolution representation can be an unbiased model of a system through compression: like a thumbnail photograph of a wall remains an unbiased random sample of the wall's color space despite reduced resolution, and internal biological representations similarly use low-resolution compression that preserves information while eliminating redundancy.

“if you make a thumbnail, this is a good way of thinking about it, I think. A computer thumbnail is a good model of uh essentially a two-dimensional slice of the world, right? So, it's a a low-resolution image. And if it's an The interesting thing about a low-resolution image is that it's an unbiased sample of the color space of the of the image, right? It's not doesn't have any theological bent. Part of the reason it's an accurate representation is, and this has to do with that idea of redundancy that you developed in your paper.”

Rudolf Otto described the primordial act of perception as 'mysterium tremendum'—combining positive and negative emotion—which Peterson interprets as perception before latent inhibition engages, and psychedelics strip away latent inhibition to reproduce this pre-inhibitory state of dual emotional arousal.

“And there's a man named Rudolf Otto who wrote a book called Oh, I can't remember the name of the book, but it's not Varieties of Religious Experience because that's James. William James. Anyways, he described the primordial act of perception as numinous mysterium tremendum. And it's a combination of positive and negative emotion. And I thought that's that's pre latent inhibition perception. Psychedelics disinhibit latent inhibition of perception. And that's why they produce a mystical experience.”

The world tree symbol represents an intuitive proto-scientific apprehension of the multi-scale structure of reality—the idea that consciousness can zoom from the smallest possible scale of apprehension to the most cosmic scale, spanning dust particles to cosmos.

“Well, the world tree is a vision of the microcosm to the macrocosm. The tree is used as a metaphor for that. It's a proto-scientific idea, intuition of the idea that there's a there's a kind of dimension that constitutes zooming in on things right to the smallest possible level of apprehension, and zooming out to the most general level of apprehension. Dust particles to cosmos, let's say.”

Evolutionary biologists are partly responsible for postmodern critiques because they've provided ammunition: the argument that organisms (especially males) climb hierarchies of power to gain status and reproductive access, suggesting all human categorization and behavior is contaminated by will-to-power motivations.

“I would say that the evolutionary biologists are in part responsible for that weirdly enough. I'm not trying to throw stones, you know. I'm like to think of myself to the degree that I can manage it as an evolutionary psychologist. I accept the tenants of evolutionary biology. I don't think you can understand anything about biology without doing that. But here's the argument from the biological perspective we ratchet ourselves up hierarchies of power to attain positions of status particularly as males to give us preferential access to mating resources. And that contaminates everything we do.”

When administrations composed of the same types of people as faculty implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, they replicated the same pattern of micro-retreats and ideological compliance they had previously engaged in when opposed, leading to systematic institutional capture.

“because they were composed of the same sort of people that the faculty were who did all these micro retreats when the diversity, equity, and inclusivity people started to invade the administration, they just did the same thing. And so, here we are.”

False pattern recognition—projecting a pattern onto reality that isn't actually present—is a genuine cognitive problem and represents how thought can go astray, but this is inseparable from how thought works creatively, since thought involves both revelation (patterns emerging from imagination) and dialogue (testing patterns against reality).

“So, it's the apperception or perhaps the projection of a pattern onto a background, let's say, an underlying reality that actually isn't characterized by that pattern. But But that's actually part of the dilemma of thought though, too, isn't it? Because like I think thought is usefully parceled out into a revelatory element and a dialogical element. And so, the revelatory element is well, you're sitting there and thoughts enter the theater of your imagination. And so, it's an ins- in a sense phenomenologically, like they sort of spring up from the void.”

Peterson coached clients and faculty to prepare strategically before confronting institutional or workplace pressure—by getting CV updated, addressing educational gaps, going through interviews to practice, and ensuring job alternatives were available—before they could credibly resist.

“if someone needed to stand up in the workplace to a bullying boss say or to an ideological cadre which was very frequently the case in the corporate world we'd get their CV or resume in order and make sure it was polished up and if they had any educational faults that needed to be rectified to make them marketable, we'd address that and then they'd apply for different jobs and they'd go on a few interviews so they were ready”

Some postmodern feminist theorists (like Katherine Hayles' interpretation of a feminist scholar's view) attribute inadequacies in scientific understanding of fluid mechanics to masculine bias regarding female anatomy, arguing that science's inability to solve turbulence reflects patriarchal conceptual frameworks, which is an extreme example of false pattern recognition.

“The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics and indeed the inability of science to deal with the turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have have openings that lack that Sorry, that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. From this perspective, it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence.”

Peterson and Dawkins have different thinking styles: Dawkins is more interested in ideas and uses precise language to make clear logical distinctions, while Peterson thinks in a more loosely associational manner with aesthetic and symbolic resonances.

“It seems to me you keep wandering from one subject to another without sticking to to one at a time... It's it's probably a some difference in our thinking style, you know, I think well one of the... Would you say you're more interested in ideas or aesthetics? Ideas. Okay, that's what I would have guessed. Yes. I'm probably more somewhat more interested in aesthetics, although it's close.”

The postmodernist critique correctly identifies that there is an indefinite number of interpretations of any system, but the postmodernist solution (that all interpretations are equally valid expressions of power relations) is deeply flawed and should be rejected.

“I'm not hostile to the postmodernist claim that there's that there's a terrible problem that arises when you understand that there's an indefinite number of interpretations of things. They got that right. But what I'm really hostile to is the answer.”

Canada has passed laws allowing human rights commissions to act as quasi-judicial inquisition systems that have been taken over by 'woke' ideological activists, as exemplified by a Vancouver restaurant owner being fined $35,000 and forced into mandatory sensitivity training despite apparent attempts to comply with an employee's demands.

“I know the I know the United States doesn't. We've also had this in Canada this proliferation of these so-called human rights commissions which are like a quasi-judicial inquisition system that have been taken over completely by the woke types and so there was a restaurant in Vancouver quite recently where the man who owned it although he seemed to have done backflips to satisfy this angry hypothetically transgender individual he'd employed, he was fined something like $35,000 and forced to take this you know, these mandatory sensitivity training programs.”

When debating with Sam Harris, Peterson found that asking genuine questions rather than trying to win arguments produced better discussions and allowed him to understand Harris's actual positions (particularly his concern with totalitarian dogmatism and fundamental evil) rather than creating straw men.

“I made some mistakes dealing with Sam. Because I had a point I wanted to make, you know? And it was I suppose the point of this pragmatism in some sense in its relationship to evolutionary biology. And so I was trying to sort of win the argument. And I have found as a consequence let's say of a baptism by fire that that's not a good way to approach. Like one of the things I really wanted to do with you, I hope we managed this today was to ask you questions and find out more about what you thought like in a real genuine manner... The last time I talked to Sam, all I did was ask him questions. And we have by far the best discussion we've ever had.”

The truth encoded in the human biological form is only adequate as a model for approximately 90 years (the human lifespan), not across deeper time scales—suggesting truth is scale-dependent and relative to the lifespan of the system that embodies it.

“like say there's truth in the human form. Well, speak metaphorically. But biologically that truth only suffices for like 90 years. Right? We're good enough We're good enough as a model.”

Peterson gave a specific example of a micro retreat: when University of Toronto administration proposed doubling the size of fourth-year seminars without additional faculty hiring, faculty should have simply refused but instead accepted, setting a precedent for further institutional degradation.

“I'm sitting in a faculty meeting at the University of Toronto. And the administration announces that they're going to increase the size of our fourth-year seminars by factor of two. We don't have enough faculty. We actually don't have enough money to hire more faculty. Well, that's because you spent all the money on administrators over the last 20 years and here's the data that pertain to that, but that's beside the point. So, would it be okay if you just, you know, had twice as many people in your fourth-year seminar?”

Religious architecture like cathedrals incorporates tree-like structures and uses light through stained glass to replicate sunlight through trees, suggesting humans have maintained this symbolic connection across millennia due to evolutionary familiarity with trees (60+ million years of primate arboreal ancestry).

“You know, you hear these psychologists talk about the African veldt as our like uber environment, you know, that we're adapted to. It's like, well, kind of depends on your time frame. You know, that's 5 million years. Trees, that's like 50 million years. So, the notion of the tree, that's that's in there. And all of our cathedrals have a tree-like architecture, and that the light through the stained glass windows, that's sunlight through the glass. There are trees all over the world.”

Dawkins cares first and foremost about scientific truth, particularly the scientific question of whether there is supernatural creative intelligence in the universe, which he regards as the most important possible scientific question (even though it may not be answerable by scientific means).

“I care first and foremost about scientific truth. And so to me it is an it is a scientific question whether there is a supernatural power creative power intelligence in the universe. I think that's a very fascinating question. I think that if that were true it would be the most important scientific truth if there is.”

Foucault's 'The Order of Things' is worth reading for scholars of modeling and neurophysiology of anxiety, and Foucault makes reference to the grounding of human conceptual structures in an underlying imagination, suggesting a biological foundation underlying social construction.

“I've read a lot of Foucault. And I'm rereading The Order of Things. And The Order of Things, I would say if if you're writing a book about modeling as well as reading the neurophysiology of anxiety, The Order of Things is very much worth reading.”

Peterson's ability to speak out against ideological enforcement was enabled by having three independent sources of income—a clinical practice, a company generating revenue, and his university position—which insulated him from career consequences.

“by the time I said something I had three sources of independent income. So I had a clinical practice and I had a company that was generating a certain amount of money and I had my university position. And so I didn't think that you know, I was fairly well insulated I thought because when I said I wouldn't do this, I meant there is no bloody way you are going to make me do this no matter what you do.”