AD Harris/Murray/Peterson Discussion: London

Peterson's position that we have stringent limitations on rationality is true, but it does not follow that we should abandon rationality or accept unfalsifiable religious claims; rather, we can use better tools including science, psychology, and philosophy to convey ethical principles without superstition.

“Well, that's also why I think we have these stringent limitations on rationality Sam is that we can't solve the problem through calculation well, no, but we Increasingly can and and even where it's best Summarized not by capital what one thing I'll grant you is that it's not always best conveyed or rendered indelible and actionable by being given a nature paper or you know a saw an abstract from from a paper in the literature and being told This is the way you want to behave to maximize your well-being It may best be conveyed by certain stories, right or certain books that are that are in the philosophy section of the bookstore not the science section”

Our culture is being held hostage by certain products of literature (the Bible, Quran) that we need to break the spell of, and if we cannot do this in the West with all our resources, what hope is there for the Middle East or Sub-Saharan Africa?

“we're in this perverse circumstance of Being held hostage by certain products of literature and We need to break the spell and if and if we're finding it this hard to break What do we think is gonna happen in the Middle East or in the sub-saharan Africa?”

While Harris and others have attacked religious jihadists and fundamentalists, Murray notes that one might also note that many of the values Western societies cherish (freedom of speech, rule of law, democratic institutions) are at least nominally tied to Judeo-Christian traditions and cannot be casually discarded.

“what you've said is that so much of what is good in our Western developed societies? is The very least maintained by mayn't maintaining so-called Judeo-christian values or the or the remnants of our past religiosity and that you know there is a baby in the bath water that can be difficult to discern and We can to empty the tub all at once because and this is very much of because there's a zero-sum Contest with the the religious enthusiasm. We see coming from the Muslim world”

Human beings have been elevated above chimpanzees over the last 7 million years largely because of female sexual selectivity for males who demonstrated competence, hierarchical status, and embodied virtue—a process that has gendered the 'spirit of the father' into evolutionary reality.

“human beings Separated from chimpanzees over the course of the last 7 million years at least in large part because of human female sexual selectivity so it was the spirit of Femininity collectively that helped elevate us to the degree that we have been elevated above our chimpanzee Co ancestor But here's in something interesting to contemplate What is it precisely that makes men what makes men desirable to women and so I have a bit of a hypothesis about that So here's what men do They get together in productive groups and the orient themselves toward a certain task and they produce a hierarchy around that task because whenever you implement a task you produce a hierarchy and They vote up the most Competent men to the top of the hierarchy and then the women select the competent men from the top of the hierarchy But the vote that determines who the competent men are that are more likely to reproduce as a consequence of male Evaluation of men and that's occurred over millennia And so there's a spirit of the father that's embedded in the patriarchal hierarchy that acts as the primary selection mechanism”

The brain is organized such that when encountering something unknowable or unknown, it drapes that unknown in fantasy as a first approximation to truth, then refines that fantasy through iterative critical analysis, as demonstrated by literature on right and left hemisphere functions.

“how your brain is organized As far as I can tell that when you and and it isn't just me. I actually it's it's there's a very large What would you call it research literature? Outlining the relative functions of the right and left hemisphere and it certainly appears to be the case that when we encounter something. Absolutely unknowable or unknown What we do is drape that unknown thing in fantasy as a first pass approximation to the truth and then refine that fantasy as a consequence of Iterative critical analysis”

The notion that certain books might have been revealed by the creator of the universe—that they have a status unlike any other human book—should not comfort believers because we live in societies shattered by this claim, with competing revealed books creating irreconcilable divisions.

“the world we're living in now is one in which we have whole societies Shattered over this notion that some books weren't written by human beings, right? There's a different class of book, right? there's a different shelf in the library where the the products of almost certainly merely human brains are Venerated for all time and and considered uneditable and unag nora Bulai by the majority of human beings”

No Abrahamic religion is the best conceivable framework for generating democracy or anything else we value like science; secular frameworks are superior.

“there's no Abrahamic religion That is the best conceivable womb of democracy or anything else We like science”

When a doctrine demolishes the literary and fictional substructure of society and leaves nothing behind, an ethos must be provided because something will rush in to fill the void—and historically that something has been nihilism and totalitarian bloodshed, as Nietzsche warned.

“when when when when your doctrine demolishes the That's called it the literary or fictional sub structure and leaves nothing behind an F Oh an ethos needs to be provided because something will rush in to fill the void and it's certainly the case and this is what Nietzsche warned about even though he was a strident anti-christian and it's also what Dostoevsky first saw he said if we knock out The logos from the substructure of Western society and we need to believe that it was Christianity's emphasis on truth that destroyed Christianity which was an extremely an interesting criticism, you know The Christian adhere the elevators to truth to such a degree that it actually resulted in the demolition of its own dogmatic sub structure, but be that as it may Nietzsche's prognostication was that if we allowed God to die and perhaps there were reasons for that that the consequence would be that would we would be awash in both nihilism and Totalitarian bloodshed and that is what happened in the 20th century”

If one reads the Bible carefully, examining every page for evidence of omniscience or superiority to what Shakespeare could have written, one finds none—the Bible is not demonstrably wiser than other great literature.

“one thing we know is that when you read the Bible you can turn every page of that book and You will not find evidence of omniscience. You will not find anything in there that Someone as smart as Shakespeare or actually a little bit dumber could have written”

The fact that rationalist ethos doesn't have motivational push is a fatal flaw, whereas religious traditions like Marcus Aurelius, stoicism, and religious traditions have music, art, and architecture that supports the ethos.

“I think the fact that the rationalist ethos doesn't have Motivational push is actually a fatal flaw. They don't every week to read marcus aurelius Yeah, and they don't Like there's no music that goes along with it. There's no art that goes along with it there's no architecture that goes along with it like Weifare, but to be fair to the present most music and most art and most architecture yes is no longer religious”

No one claims that Marcus Aurelius's Meditations were revealed by God, which is a crucial difference that explains much unnecessary suffering in the world.

“But the book but but no one's claiming that about the meditations and that's a crucial difference. It's a difference that that explains so much unnecessary suffering in our world”

Enlightenment values and rationality never went very wide or very deep, and we are currently discovering this painful realization as we look globally and find Enlightenment roots have not penetrated even domestically.

“we may be living in an era when we are discovering that the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment values never went very wide and didn't go terribly deep and this is a very painful realization to make But not only do we go all around the world and discover that we find that at home The roots turn out not to have gone very deep in even this society”

Religion should be placed among bad ideas worth retiring because it makes the same sorts of unfalsifiable claims as astrology, and both convince believers to hold superstitious worldviews that can cause harm.

“religion? emphatically gets placed on the side of bad and old and and worth retiring ideas or ideas worth retiring”

Wealth inequality is reaching unsustainable levels, with some wealthy individuals acting as though no level of inequality is alarming, treating it as a law of nature rather than a policy choice—a situation that resembles a libertarian religion.

“we're living with this problem and we encounter this more and more when you talk you know in Silicon Valley as you and I occasionally do and I'm sure you do as well where you meet people who are fantastically wealthy who seem Uncannily detached at the by the detach at the fact that the there's this growing chasm between Them and those they know and the rest of humanity and then and you one who begins to wonder what level of wealth inequality Will everyone find alarming and some people are acting as though there is no level that is alarming that there's the kind of a law of nature that this thing can grow it just Impossibly to the point where we have trillionaire is walking around and you know in driving in their motor caves and it's kind of as sort of the libertarian religion one occasionally runs into”

Lack of belief in an afterlife and focus on the preciousness of the present moment leads to greater depth rather than to superficiality, which Harris demonstrated by noting that kissing his daughter goodnight has more poignancy because he might never see them again.

“the atheism the lack of belief the lack of faith in an afterlife for instance the lack of the lack of belief in the notion That you get everything you want or may get everything you want after you die And helps Lalit's leads to greater depth rather than to Superficiality here. It's like when I kiss my daughter's goodnight Right. It is with the understanding that I May never see them again right It's not with the assumption that if the roof caves in where we'll all be reunited in heaven”

The fact that something has lasted for a very long time is not a good reason to believe it (as a basis for belief), but it does make the fact that it's lasted a mystery that suggests there's something worth understanding beyond casual political or economic circumstances.

“It's actually it's not a terrible reason though because the fact that something has lasted for that length of time at least Makes the fact that it's lasted a mystery and you can't just attribute that to casual politicking or economic circumstances”

People with post-traumatic stress disorder can recover through engagement with language that treats good and evil as metaphysical realities, not merely psychological phenomena, suggesting limits to rationalist discourse.

“I've had many people especially Ex-soldiers come to my lectures who have post-traumatic stress disorder and they say that listening to my lectures especially the ones on good evil and tragedy there's a particularly sure that I suppose you might be you might think about as devoted to people at post-traumatic stress disorder and that the language of good and evil that I lay out in those lectures is Actually what allows them to recover from the post-traumatic stress disorder”

If you examine the emergence of astrology within Christianity and find that Christianity incorporated astrological symbolism, this does not make astrology more credible but rather shows how Christianity absorbed and reinterpreted existing superstitions.

“We could be in that world. What we are we were very close to being in our in that world to some degree because the astrological endeavor in the judeo-christian landscape expanded to incorporate Christianity and there's an entire astrology of Christianity including representation Yes, but my point is is that we recognize that the literal claims of astrology the the mechanism by which astrologers think it works is intellectually bankrupt”

Harris's principle of being 'motivated by love and guided by reason' is simply a restatement of the Judeo-Christian ethic at its core, suggesting Peterson and Harris agree more than Peterson realizes.

“that's a recapitulation of the judeo-christian ethic which is be guarded by love and up and use logos to serve that that you gotta Regenerate the fine print on reason. Oh, yeah clever didn't say reason I said logos cuz that's the that's something that's deeper there There's the Jesus smuggling. Yes, exactly. Well, yes. Yes, definitely”

The cosmos served as the externalizable ground for the human imaginative drama, allowing us to derive orienting fictions about how to position ourselves in life through the observation of celestial regularities.

“the cosmos was the place that the human imaginative drama was Externalized and draped itself out into the world as something that was essentially observable so that we could derive great orienting fictions from the observation of our imagination”

Christianity's emphasis on truth to such a degree led to the demolition of its own dogmatic substructure—an ironic self-destruction where faith in truth destroyed faith itself.

“we need to believe that it was Christianity's emphasis on truth that destroyed Christianity which was an extremely an interesting criticism, you know The Christian adhere the elevators to truth to such a degree that it actually resulted in the demolition of its own dogmatic sub structure”

Peterson had a visionary experience involving a dialogue with his father, then with ancestral spirits, then with God—a genuinely profound experience that raises questions about the relationship between poetic/spiritual experience and metaphysical reality.

“I had a vision at one point That and the vision had to do with a dialogue that I was having with my father and you know You have a father right and when you're a little kid you act out your father when you pretend to be a father and what you're doing when you're acting out your father isn't imitating your father because you don't Duplicate precisely the actions that your father ever took in his life what you do is you you watch your father across multiple contexts and you abstract out something like a spirit of the Father and then when you're a child you implement that spirit of the father in your pretend play and you come to embody that Deeply so the notion is that people can abstract out something like a spirit of the Father and that that's part of our min Pneumatic tendency, which is a very powerful human cognitive tendency and in this vision I first started to talk with my father and I would say more with the spirit of my father because he wasn't actually there and I would say it was the wisest part of him and then that sort of transformed into a discussion that I had with a series of ancestral spirits and then that transformed itself into a vision of God himself with whom I had a conversation and this was a visionary experience”

When looking at a cathedral dome with Christ as creator of the cosmos, what is visible is the elevation of a particular ideal—the Logos or Word made flesh, embodied as the highest principle—to which humans should be subordinate.

“And I'm trying to look at that from a psychological and even a biological perspective and what I see is the elevation of a particular image that represents an ideal and so the the the Christ that's Represented on the on the on the dome of a cathedral is something that's projected up into celestial space So it's it's an ideal to which you are supposed to be Subordinate or that you're supposed to embody and the ideal is the ideal of the logos Technically speaking the logos the word made flesh, which is not only the word free speech for lack of a better term but also the embodiment of that elevated to the highest principle”

The optimal solution for oneself requires recognizing you are not isolated but multiple selves across time—you now, you tomorrow, you next week, you in a year—and calculating what benefits all these future iterations while discounting for unpredictability.

“What's the optimal solution for you? Well, okay. Well, first of all, there isn't just you now There's you now and you tomorrow and you next week and you in a year you in five years So there's you and the you that propagates across time. So one of the implications Of that is that you can't do anything That's really good for the you now. That isn't very good for you a week from now, right? so that means you have to imagine yourself as multiple individuals across multiple timeframes and Then you have to figure out what's good for all those individuals across all those time frames although you Discount the future to some degree because of its unpredictability”

There are three categories of human goods: factual claims validated by reason and empirical engagement; fiction and flights of fancy that are pleasing but not factual; and rare cases of useful fictions—falsehoods that are more adaptive than truth.

“we have what we think is factual and Methods by which we derive facts and I would put rationality there and an empirical engagement with with reality then we have other good things in life like Fiction and and flights of fancy that are pleasing for one reason or another and could be generative toward the first category, but then we also have I know I would acknowledge we've spoken about this before Useful fictions and cases I would you know, hope rare cases where where fiction is more adaptive or more useful than the truth”

Because calculating optimal ethics across multiple selves and relationships is extraordinarily difficult and perhaps technically impossible, humans have observed themselves solving this problem exceptionally well and encoded the solutions in narrative—great stories that encapsulate wisdom about ethical living.

“Because that's an incredibly in in difficult rational calculation and perhaps an impossible one. Technically speaking But for certainly very difficult that's what that what has happened in part as our as our great narratives havoc have emerged across time is that We have observed ourself attempting to solve that multiple identity multiple time frame problem and we've told stories about people who do that exceptionally well, And then we've whittled out those stories and we've produced these powerful narratives that encapsulate the ethic that does in fact reflect that wisdom”

Peterson is concerned about nihilism and the void left by religion's collapse, while Harris is less worried about this void, believing that when false certainties are removed, meaningful goods naturally fill the space.

“your Fundamental terror, is that of fundamentalism? although you also state in the moral landscape that you understand that the perils of nihilism and I would say my fundamental terror, is that of nihilism even though I'm Susceptance ative to the catastrophes of fundamentalism, but I don't think you do address the problem of the void sufficiently”

An ancient idea about dealing with the void is to confront it voluntarily, leap into it, and discover a beast within—the father lying dead—whom you must reanimate and bring to the surface.

“there's an ancient idea a Very ancient idea that when you face the void what you do is confront it and leap into it and What you discover at the bottom is a beast and inside that beast you discover your father Lying dead and then you reanimate your father and you bring him back to the surface and that's the means of dealing with the void Right and so in his in essence in some sense, that's just what you said you said that if we accept accept that again”

We can make true and false claims about literature through careful analysis, and this is a different and more rigorous game than what most religious believers think is on offer.

“you can make true and and false claims or more and less plausible claims about literature But that's what I'm trying to do or it takes more its effects on you. But again, But this is a very different game than what most religious people think is on offer”

Harris hates unnecessary suffering and captures by thoughts of past and future, which makes human life monotonous and petty, whereas religion advertises itself as a corrective to this condition.

“I hate Unnecessary suffering and especially my capacity for it and I see so much of my time Conscious time moment a moment devoted to This experience that should be familiar to all of you which is it to be captured by thoughts of the past or the future which are Which almost by definition have a Mediocrity so Transcendent that it's just a it it is what makes human life just Pure monotony and pettiness”

The fundamental metaphysical principle underlying Christian doctrine is that truthful speech generates habitable order from chaotic potential—this is the Logos principle encoded in Genesis.

“at the beginning of Genesis for example there's a proposition that it's truthful speech that generates habitable order from chaotic potential that seems to me to be the fundamental Narrative and I do believe there's something dead accurate and real about that because we do generate the world as a consequence of our communicative Effort”

We can rank the contributions of literature and establish a hierarchy of human wisdom without assuming revelation or metaphysical truth; there is a hierarchy of wisdom within human discourse.

“how do you? Quantitatively rank the contributions of literature without assuming that there's a hierarchy of Revelation you although this a hierarchy of wisdom. Sure There's a heart a hierarchy of human wisdom I will grant you that every day of the week”

Greek mythology lives on in a benign way in mythology classes in schools, not instilling fear of Hades in children or requiring belief in the literal truth of the myths.

“It lives on in a way that is benign. It lives on in a way where You learn about them in mythology class in school, right? You you don't have it. You don't have a fear of Hades drummed into you as a child by your parent”

The question of which revelatory axioms are valid cannot be resolved merely through community dialogue without also specifying a higher-level principle of evaluation, because different communities disagree on what counts as revelation.

“part of your argument is and Invalidly so is how in the world do we determine which revelatory? Axioms are worthy of respect and of maintenance and fair enough salmon, maybe none. Well, maybe a revelatory Maybe that's not it is just a matter of K conscious agents like ourselves having better and better conversations Well that well, it is certainly partly that it is certainly partly that but let me again revelation The I in my book is nothing other than the record of past conversations so you've either got Iron Age conversations shaping your worldview or you have conversations like these shaping your or you have both You could have both but then you have a dialogue with the past.”

Stoicism could be the guiding philosophy of the West instead of Judaism or Christianity, offering virtue, wisdom, and no superstitious downsides.

“stoicism could be the quote religion or the guiding philosophy of the West it could it would be a much better one than Judaism or Christianity and and as have not virtue aliy none of the downside”

Anthropologists and secular scientists often cannot understand revelation because they do not believe anyone really believes it, whereas religious people understand that others can commit absolutely to revealed texts.

“I so meet secular scientist types, you know Anthropologists say who? Are so far from knowing what it's like to believe in revelation That they don't believe anyone else does right. So when you tell them that members of Isis really believe that if you die in the right circumstances You get 72 virgins and you're you're in you know surrounded by rivers of milk and honey and all the rest If you go into the ivory tower You meet people who don't believe that anyone believes that stuff But if you go into a megachurch, they know people believe that's not because they believe their own dogmas, right?”

Harris's mechanism—placing rationality above all outside of truth—is difficult to reconcile with his stated allowances for the utility of spiritual experience and the necessity of poetic imagination, because it remains unclear how these fit under the rubric of pure rationality.

“your mechanism the mechanism that you put forth above all outside of truth is Rationality and it isn't clear to me if you're willing to allow the utility of spiritual experience which you do and and and if you're willing to make What would you say allowances for the necessity of the poetic imagination? exactly how it is that that is also Encapsulated under the rubric of pure rationality”

Douglas Murray coined the term 'Jesus smuggling' by analogy to a discussion with Eric Weinstein about intelligent design discussions where one must remain vigilant to prevent supernatural explanations from being inserted when rational discussion becomes uncomfortable.

“I said to you then that I used the analogy of water And Eric Weinstein recently described to me as Jesus smuggling But it was a consequence of a discussion about biologists. What do you do if you're discussing? design intelligent design You can be okay as long as your own Bandwidth on this on the issue as long as your own depth of knowledge on the issue is very considerable. You can be okay discussing that biology with somebody even a fundamentalist Christian So long as you can follow every step of the way But the fear will always be at the moment. You're not looking they're gonna smuggle Jesus in”

Harris has tried to develop a secular ethos by studying religious traditions, and he's attempting to address the void by proposing that truth-telling and love-motivated action generate habitable order from chaos, derived partly from religious tradition analysis.

“part of the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing is to try to address the void Let's say and I suspect that many of you are actually here because you would like to have the void addressed and so the way it looks to me is something like this and this is what I've derived in part from my studies of Religious tradition so I could say that at the beginning of Genesis for example there's a proposition that it's truthful speech that generates habitable order from chaotic potential”

A transcendent ethic—one that places responsibility on individuals to minimize suffering—is a factual statement about the proper way of being, whereas Peterson views it as an axiomatic statement of faith.

“I think there's something to be said at a more sophisticated level I would say for the idea that you have an obligation to a Transcendent ethic now you make that claim in the moral landscape you lay out a transcendent ethic in my estimation that's one that puts the onus of the of responsibility on the individual to act in a way that at minimum minimizes suffering and so and you think of that as a statement of fact that that's The proper way of being and I think about it as an axiomatic statement of faith, and that's one of our differences”

The Bible is a mystery because we do not understand the processes by which it was constructed, collectively edited over centuries, or why it lasted and achieved such impact, despite these processes being partly political and human.

“the Bible for example is a mystery because we don't really understand the processes by which it was constructed and we don't understand the processes by which we all agreed collectively over several thousand years to Organize the book the way it Is organized or to edit it the way that it's edited or the and to keep what's in it and to and to discard what's not in it and why it's Lasted and why it's had such a huge impact”

Harris believes the poetic and fictional domain should be supplanted by the rational domain, whereas Peterson argues we need both domains in proper balance, mirroring the right and left hemispheres.

“Sam believes that what should happen Is that the the poetic and fictional domain should be some planted by the rational domain? Well, let me just close the loop there it's not quite I think we we need poetry and fiction and then there's there's more to engage in with reality than being a Scientist in a white lab coat”

Writers can legitimately describe themselves as conduits of inspiration and higher wisdom, with Shakespeare among those who might have said something similar, making the question of the Bible's uniqueness a matter of degree rather than kind.

“if you talk to creative people Yes, they say they often describe themselves as something approximating a conduit through which higher wisdom is pouring again You're dodging shakes that Shakespeare could say that and yeah, and any writer can say that”

Harris engaged in a debate with a conservative rabbi who explicitly did not believe in a God who can hear prayers, raising the question of what it means to be a conservative rabbi without belief in God.

“I have literally sat on stage Debating what I thought was a religious rabbi who was a conservative rabbi And when I asked when I said something that assumed that he believed in a God who could hear prayers He threw up his hands and he said what makes you think I believe in a God who can hear prayers?”

Even a totalitarian leader who believes nothing is radically dependent on the restraint and cooperation of those around them, and the fact that totalitarian regimes persist at all is mysterious, as it would only take 50 people acting in unison to kill the tyrant.

“you are radically dependent on everyone else, but the Tip of a hierarchy doesn't believe that sometimes they believe what they quote whatever the hell they want But I'm saying if you if you're going to believe something that's compatible with with rationality globally, and has the least conceivable downside I would put in that place not a superstitious attachment to a notion of an invisible friend or Punisher Who's above you? I would put in its place They totally defensible and and palpably true fact that we that even you could be the king of the event of the world and you are dependent on Everyone around you to eat to not be murdered by them. I mean like you are like you are You are I mean, it's it's amazing. It's amazing how precarious even a a totalitarian regime is I mean the amazing thing is that that these last at all because in many cases it would just take 50 people to act in unison to kill the tyrant”

Peterson hates the part of himself that could be satisfied as an Auschwitz prison guard, and recognizes that overcoming unredeemed evil in oneself requires understanding how to deal with the void and totalitarianism through analyzing religious traditions.

“That I spent a lot of time over the last thirty years Trying to understand The part of me that could be deeply satisfied as an ostrich prison guard and I would say that That part is something that's worthy of hate and I think the best way to overcome it is to Recognize it in yourself and to do everything possible to constrain it and that's what's given me an Overwhelming horror both of the nihilistic void and the catastrophes of totalitarianism”

Revelation (understood as the record of past conversations) can take two forms: Iron Age conversations shaping worldview, or conversations like the present one, suggesting both the past and present contribute to wisdom.

“Maybe a revelatory Axioms are worthy of respect and of maintenance and fair enough salmon, maybe none. Well, maybe a revelatory Maybe that's not it is just a matter of K conscious agents like ourselves having better and better conversations Well that well, it is certainly partly that it is certainly partly that but let me again revelation The I in my book is nothing other than the record of past conversations so you've either got Iron Age conversations shaping your worldview or you have conversations like these shaping your or you have both”

A segment of Jordan Peterson's audience is using his ideas to justify remaining in traditional Christianity without engaging in rigorous rational critique from first principles, effectively adopting a shard of the cross without the intellectual scaffolding.

“I actually know the people the people who were clapping are doing that I hear from those people on a daily basis right so that the segment of Jordan's audience that is that is Very happy to be told they can stay on the riverbanks of their traditional Christianity for the most part and they don't have to get into the stream of totally monitor and rigorous rational thinking about everything from first principles right that there's something that that the Iron Age Scribes got right and it's right for all time those are those are the applause I'm hearing”

The story of Cain and Abel is so profound that it appears virtually impossible for a human mind to have written it, suggesting either transcendent insight or a vast collection of human minds working over millennia.

“It's virtually impossible to write something like Cain and Abel. It's a paragraph in shame You're saying the Shakespeare the Shakespeare of the two 3,000 years ago couldn't have written Genesis He couldn't have written to Cain and Abel not intends it”