Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson in Vancouver 2018 (with Bret Weinstein moderating) — Second Night
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Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson - Vancouver - Second Night
Moderated by Bret Weinstein 06/24/2018
This is the second time Sam & Jordan appeared live together on stage. This event took place at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver BC Canada on June 24th 2018 in front of a sold out audience of 3000 people. The event was produced by Pangburn Philosophy.
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Harris and Peterson debate whether religious narratives and metaphorical truth frameworks offer necessary wisdom for navigating human flourishing, or whether empirically-grounded rationalism provides superior ethical grounding—finding partial convergence on the value of both stories and facts while remaining fundamentally divided on whether religious dogmatism is ultimately beneficial or corrosive to moral progress.
- Peterson argues that ancient religious traditions encode evolved wisdom about sacrifice, meaning, and virtue that cannot be easily extracted from facts alone, while Harris contends that narrative power and ethical insight do not require supernatural claims or religious authority
- Both agree that well-being matters and some lives are better than others, but disagree on whether a rational framework grounded in objective facts can replace the a priori structure that religious traditions provide
- The central tension: Harris sees dogmatism as an obstacle to updating moral understanding in response to new circumstances; Peterson sees it as a necessary stability mechanism that has withstood evolutionary test
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The concept of 'metaphorical truth' refers to claims that are literally false in a scientific sense but if you behave as if they were true, you come out ahead compared to behaving according to the fact that they are false—making them true in some sense other than purely literal.
“the idea of metaphorical truth which I think actually is the reconciliation between at least the points that you guys each started out with is the idea that there are concepts which are literally false that we can falsify in a scientific rational sense but that if you behave as if they were true you come out ahead of where you were if you behave according to the fact that they are false and so to call these things simply false is an error in effect the universe has left them true in some sense other than a purely literal one”
The concept of 'good versus evil' in Judeo-Christian thinking is not universal across all human moral frameworks—Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism conceptualize the fundamental moral problem as 'wisdom versus ignorance' rather than good versus evil.
“if you take the Buddhist framework and map it on to this this continuum you don't get good and evil you get essentially wisdom and ignorance”
Peterson argues that Euclidean geometry was taken as an intuition for 2,000 years before Riemann showed that space could be curved; this shows that even strong, universal intuitions can be overturned by discovery, not that intuitions are unreliable but that they are necessarily provisional.
“for what two thousand years people have been studying geometry and had a very well worked out set of mathematical intuitions with respect to Euclidean space you know flat geometry and then some brilliant guy you know Riemann might have been the first said well actually you can curve space you know I can bend this triangle and all of a sudden it has more than 180 degrees right that's an intuition that people tuned up pretty quickly but all of humanity was blind to it for the longest time right these are what I mean by intuition is it's the thing you're using to understand something that you you are not in a position to analyze”
Instantaneous emotional measures of well-being can be deceiving—cocaine use feels good in the moment but destroys the motivational structure needed for valuable activities, so moment-to-moment feeling is not a reliable guide to genuine well-being.
“it would make you feel very good and would cause you to take apart your own life because if we mean like cocaine right it would destroy the the motivational structure that gets you to do stumps stuff of value that that you're right so we can't use emotion well right moment emotion as an indicator right”
Peterson argues that human sacrifice as an archetypal motif represents the discovery that delaying gratification—giving up something of value now to gain something greater in the future—is how humans interface with the structure of existence; this evolved pattern was then codified into stories.
“so here's one way of thinking about it if you give up something of value now you can gain something of more value in the future okay so let's think about that idea for a minute so the first thing is that's a that's a hell of an idea that's delay delay that's right that's the discovery of the future as well and so you might say well the notion of sacrifice is exactly the same thing as the discovery of the future if we give up something we really value now we can make a pact with the structure of existence itself such that better things will happen to us in the future”
The genetic fallacy applies to valuing religious traditions—just because a belief structure evolved or has a long history does not mean it is good or should be venerated now, even if the utility of something is evidence of something in the past, it does not argue that it remains the best way of getting good things in the present.
“that is the genetic fallacy to care about that origin I mean there are two say that the that is the only path forward toward a notion of the future given where we've come from or that it's somehow necessary to venerate now or that it's good but we do venerate the idea of sacrifice now but I would say I would say we do it to to the detriment of our moral intuitions in the religious context”
Peterson argues that the a priori perceptual and cognitive structures that allow us to perceive the world contain dogmatic elements that are inescapable; we cannot view the world without some a priori framework, and you cannot 'just get rid of the dogma' because perception itself depends on such structure.
“you cannot view the world without an a priori structure and that a priori structure has a dogmatic element and so you can't just say well let's get rid of the dog won't because you can't perceive the world without it has an uninspected element if you're talking about just perceiving the world yes we have it we have perceptual structure that allows for us to perceive the world”
Peterson argues that good versus evil (or order versus chaos) are fundamental abstractions that remain valid across all human environments and circumstances because they reflect permanent features of the underlying structure of reality, not just contingent cultural values.
“the religious landscape is good versus evil to Sam's point that we should strive for a good life on a landscape of chaos first disorder and I think that landscape is permanent now I know we've moved from our African ancestral homeland but these this underlying abstraction this underlying on this underlying reality is so profound that it it maintains its validity across all sets of potential environmental transformations”
Harris argues that if evil were fully understood at the neurobiological level—if we could explain all evil behavior in terms of brain states, genetics, and environmental influences—the category of evil itself would be deflated, much like understanding Charles Whitman's mass murder through his brain tumor.
“evil is a category of human misbehavior human intention that we don't understand significantly at the level of the brain but if we did understand it totally at the level of the brain then every evil person we had in the doc at trial would be just like Charles Whitman with his brain tumor after he shot up everyone at the University of Texas right so like he he's the prototypical evil mass murderer but he's complaining about that this change that overcame his personality and he thinks it would be good because a good idea that after the cops kill me you autopsy my brain because I don't know why I'm doing any of this right and lo and behold he had a glioblastoma pressing on his amygdala”
The fact that one gets more satisfaction and willingness to act from individual stories about specific people than from abstract statistical presentations of aggregate suffering is not a defect to correct but a feature of how human empathy works and should be respected.
“we are wired to feel intense empathy for individuals who are close to us and we can be told stories in a manner that that makes that system manifest itself and everyone and their dog thinks that that's a wonderful thing and we call that empathy right and empathy has a narrow domain of utility as it turns out because how I mean maybe if you were all who you should be you'd be weeping constantly for the catastrophic fate of sentient beings on the earth”
Religious stories encode not only the wisdom of ancestors but possibly wisdom born from the hard knocks of evolution of the species, and the significance of the information encoded in stories runs deeper than is commonly understood.
“stories encode not only the wisdom of our ancestors but quite possibly the wisdom born of the hard knocks of evolution of the species right so there's no telling how deep the significance of the information encoded in stories goes”
In the biblical narrative, the arc of child sacrifice progresses from being initially demanded by God (in stories like Abraham and Isaac) to being explicitly forbidden, then replaced by symbolic substitutes like circumcision, and finally becoming completely psychologized as a metaphorical rather than enacted practice.
“you see echoes of child sacrifice at the beginning but what happens is the sacrificial notion gets increasingly psychologists as the story progresses so you know you see that transition with Abraham and Isaac where the child sacrifice is actually forbidden although previously demanded by God and then you also see it as you already laid out in the substitution of the circumcision for the idea of sacrifice itself and then what seems to happen see I'm trying to figure out how these ideas develops like psychologically from their behavioral underpinnings is that eventually it becomes psychologize completely”
Peterson claims that you cannot find a value (like the monetary value of an antique) by disassembling the physical object; value is not located in the material substrate but exists in social agreement about the antique's position in a hierarchy of meaning.
“so this is designed to point out the difference I'm not making the claim that the idea that we should ground values in facts is wrong I'm not gonna make that claim although I think it's way more complicated than we've opened up so far but I would say is I can I think relatively easily demonstrate a situation in which you cannot find the value from the fact let's say you own an antique it's valuable and you think I'm gonna take this antique apart and I'm gonna find out where the value is good luck well it is it's not valuable in that sense well wait a second wait a second so we need to know so that's right it's not valuable in that sense because the value of the antique is a social agreement about its position in a hierarchy”
Peterson argues that you can act as if something is true without forming a strong propositional belief that it is true—we suspend disbelief in movies and fiction all the time, and this same mechanism likely applies to how people relate to religious narratives.
“I think they do things much more like we're talking the metaphorical truth we're talking about you we act as if things are true without forming any strong propositional claim and that's fine that's fine that has its own utility I mean you know you don't think this is basically I mean we all suspend disbelief when we go and watch a movie and we sort of entitled the movie maker to to set the ground rules of the space and if it's Harry Potter then there are magic magical things that can happen and if it's some other story maybe there aren't so we all have a mechanism whereby we know we can suspend disbelief and it's interesting to me that you seem not to imagine that people are doing that with respect to metaphysical beliefs”
The heuristics and cognitive biases we've evolved—which often look irrational when placed in laboratory conditions or applied to novel problems—generally produce adaptive outcomes in the natural environments where they evolved, and eliminating them would be more harmful than correcting them.
“we do know we do know quite well the heuristics that we use to orient ourselves in the world can be placed into frameworks where they produce contradictory outcomes but that doesn't mean that the heuristics themselves are deeply flawed it's that it's a problem with the work of people like Kahneman and Tversky is they really valued robotics or them we need to correct for them”
Moral progress in human history has often come from moving away from story-driven, protagonist-centered moral intuitions toward quantified, statistical frameworks that correct for predictable emotional biases.
“moral progress here is often the result of moving from our story driven protagonist driven intuitions to something far more quantified right so I mean it's there's a classic you know moral study done by Paul slovic oh I'm sure you are aware of where you tell people about one needy little girl in Africa”
You cannot voluntarily choose to believe something merely because you think it would have good consequences; genuine belief must track what you take to be true, not just what you wish were true.
“the only way you can believe something to be true really true not just metaphorically true is to believe that if it weren't true you wouldn't believe it they you stand at some relationship to its truth such that that is the reason why you believe it”
People have evolved tribal attachments and fear responses to out-groups that remain active even in modern multicultural societies—terrorism motivated by religious identification and burning of religious symbols produces disproportionate responses that show these ancient mechanisms still drive behavior.
“you wouldn't be concerned about that fundamentalist terror of Islam if you weren't driven by those essentially tribal considerations... there are many times when we still face the same threats”
We don't yet have adequate measures of well-being, flourishing, and the qualitative dimensions of human experience that would allow empirical value theory to fully replace traditional frameworks—our best current measures tend to degenerate into measures of neuroticism or immediate emotional states.
“like if your if your thesis is that if we had the measures of well-being that were appropriate we could use them in a positive way and the responses but we don't have those measures it's like well okay well then what do we do”
Child sacrifice historically appeared in many cultures and was a response to observable necessity: in conditions of extreme privation, food scarcity, and absence of birth control, populations sometimes had to sacrifice children for the family or community to survive; the practice then became ritualized.
“how often do you think it was necessary and this is not obviously something I'm in favor of and this is also one of these situations where we get to play with ideas that we might not otherwise play with how often do you think it was necessary for people in the past who had absolutely no access to birth control and who didn't have enough food to sacrifice a child for the survival of their family I mean god only knows yeah that's it well but that's worth thinking about it's like you know life is unbelievably cruel and difficult”
Peterson argues that the spheres of the left and right hemispheres of the brain operate differently—the left hemisphere is more literal and totalizing, the right hemisphere deals with metaphor and exceptions; both are necessary and in conflict, with the right serving as a corrective to the left's tyranny.
“there's there's a problem that we have a bifurcated brain the question is well why do we have a bifurcated brain and the answer seemed and not just us animals to master seems to be well there's two necessary ways of looking at the world and they have to be in conflict to some degree in order to work properly the right hemisphere mode and the hemisphere mode the right hemisphere mode is a lot more metaphorical than the left hemisphere mode the right hemisphere is the hemisphere that seems to deal with exceptions to the rule and it seems to deal with exceptions to the rule by meant by treating them by aggregating and then trying to recognize patterns that unite them as a corrective to the totalitarian system in some sense that the left hemisphere imposes”
Harris argues that Christianity is fundamentally a cult of human sacrifice—the notion that Jesus's sacrifice is necessary and effective for redemption—making it morally abhorrent because it perpetuates the sacrificial framework rather than transcending it.
“I think that Christianity is actually a cult of human sacrifice a Christianity is not a religion that repudiates human sacrifice Christianity is a religion that says actually no human sacrifice is necessary and there was only one that in fact was necessary and effective and that's the sacrifice of Jesus and I think that is when you dig into the details not only a morally uninteresting vision of our circumstance and how how we can be redeemed it's morally abhorrent right”
Stories and narrative structures are extraordinarily compelling because they engage our evolved capacities for pattern recognition and social learning, but this power does not depend on the stories being literally true.
“there's no question that certain stories are incredibly compelling and in our conversation with one another the moment you begin to frame something in terms of a story people become much more interested right... that's not an accident and that says something deep about us that we could understand in evolutionary terms and we might in fact want to creatively leverage to be better people”
Harris argues that value, including the value of an antique, can be understood as facts about intersubjective agreement and the conscious states of people involved—the beliefs, desires, and experiences of those who care about the object constitute facts about subjective experience that can be objectively described.
“it's in the dominance hierarchy of values that's been socially constructed around the guitar it's located in an interpersonal space and that that location so value is located in interpersonal space and if you want to say well that's also a fact it's like okay but in fact and that's the beliefs and desires and conscious states of all the people involved okay well that's the only place where it exists it's only for the idea of Elvis's guitar can show okay well I'm trying to figure out then you see because what seems to me to be happening at least in part is that the we can stretch the the domain of what constitutes a fact so that the domain of fact starts to incorporate the domain of values”
Peterson argues that our evolved empathetic responses are optimized for small-group environments (families and local communities) and do not scale naturally to abstract populations or distant groups, making it irrational to expect someone to care about a genocide with the same intensity as personal suffering.
“you're wired to feel intense empathy for individuals who are close to us and we can be told stories in a manner that that makes that system manifest itself and everyone and their dog thinks that that's a wonderful thing and we call that empathy right and empathy has a narrow domain of utility as it turns out because how I mean maybe if you were all who you should be you'd be weeping constantly for the catastrophic fate of sentient beings on the earth but you can't handle it you know what I mean it's that you can barely handle your own suffering and maybe you can handle a bit of the suffering of your family and more power to you if you could rectify that and if you were better human beings maybe you could expand that outwards but the fact that our empathy doesn't scale up to the level of genocide with the same intensity that we treat instances of individual suffering isn't an indication that we're irrational it's just an indication that were limited”
Harris argues that religious attachment to sacred objects (like the Quran) and sacred places (like disputed territory in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) are functionally irrational because they prevent rational negotiation and compromise based on material interests.
“the reason why the Israel and the Israelis in the Palestinians can't negotiate as though their problems could be solved by a real estate transaction is because they have irrational and irreconcilable claims upon land and building do you think they're ready only thing there any more irrational than the claim that that class is worth something”
Harris argues that dogmatism—the insistence that certain truths have been decided for all time and no future evidence or argument is admissible—is a fundamental obstacle to honest conversation and moral progress in any domain.
“it is a the idea that certain things have been decided for all time and there's no future evidence or argument that is admissible on those points now that is clearly bad everywhere in science it's bad everywhere in in how we renegotiate our proximity to one another in society in new laws and new ideas are born all the time about how to structure institutions and social relationships because new things happen we didn't have an internet and then we did so our old laws and our old expectations of human communication simply don't work”
Harris argues that science itself requires certain foundational axioms (like basic logic and mathematics) that cannot be self-justifying, but these axioms are universal intuitions not subject to arbitrary cultural variation, unlike religious dogma.
“in every domain of human inquiry no matter how the most hard-headed so mathematics logic physics at some point we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps at some point we make a move that is not self justifying and is not justified by any other move that's more rudimentary right that's a statement of faith that was epic that's a callow use of this term faith is not the same precise definition of an axiom is my faith my faith that two plus two makes four that's not faith what no I didn't know is my intuition that this is a valid and replicable and generalizable principle”
Peterson argues that contemplative practices like meditation can produce experiences of self-transcendence (feeling one with all consciousness) without recourse to religious dogma, providing an alternative path to the experiences religion promises.
“is it possible to feed that wake up tomorrow morning feeling like meister eckhart right feeling like you're just inseparable from the pure capital b beam that is consciousness right and there's no separate self there's a self-transcending union with everything you can perceive right I think that can be had without any kind of religious dogma tis and that's just a matter of paying close enough attention to the nature of conscious”
Religious texts like the Bible and Quran are often granted an epistemological status fundamentally different from other human writings—treated as having divine authority rather than being open to the same critical scrutiny we apply to other literature and philosophy.
“there's a different way of framing it which is that there are we have two categories of books in this case we have those written by people like ourselves just endlessly open for criticism and conjecture and those written by invisible omniscient”
Belief in paradise and divine reward/punishment in the afterlife is ruinous for prioritizing what we should be prioritizing in this life—it devalues the present moment and causes people to accept suffering that could be prevented.
“a belief that this life it probably doesn't matter very much at all because we get what we really want after we die is forget about the evidentiary basis for that belief it it is it's ruinous for prioritizing what we should be prioritizing in this life”
You cannot derive a value structure from observable facts without an a priori interpretive structure, because there are too many facts and facts do not speak for themselves—the structure comes from evolved neurobiology and cultural socialization, not from facts alone.
“you cannot view the world without an a priori structure and that a priori structure has a dogmatic element and so you can't just say well let's get rid of the dog won't because you can't perceive the world without it has an uninspected element”
We have axiomatic commitments in every domain including mathematics, logic, and physics—points at which we must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make moves that are not self-justifying or justified by more fundamental principles.
“I freely admitted that in every domain of human inquiry no matter how the most hard-headed so mathematics logic physics at some point we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps at some point we make a move that is not self justifying and is not justified by any other move that's more rudimentary right”
We cannot fully eliminate our perceptual and structural biases by act of conscious will—even if we intellectually understand that all guns are loaded, we may still emotionally and behaviorally treat guns as if they might be unloaded, and this is appropriate.
“I have a I have a superstitious attachment to always be in safe with the gun right and it's and it's important it's important that that get ingrained and yet it is not strictly right it's not irrational because it has good effects but it's it's not actually in register with what I know to be true factually in each moment right”
Ignorance of causal structure—not knowing how weather works, why people get sick, whether neighbors can cast spells—led people to make horrific sacrificial practices, and human sacrifice represents a consequence of ignorance rather than evolutionary wisdom.
“it's not just the insanity of humanity it's the the misapprehension of the causal structure of the cosmos that you don't know what Naturals the weather well you don't know why people get sick you think your neighbor's capable of casting magic spells on you you're ignorant of everything and you're trying to force some order on things”
The tension between maintaining traditional moral and behavioral frameworks that have proven adaptive over generations and updating those frameworks to reflect new evidence and changed circumstances is not resolvable through simple rationality—it is a permanent practical problem.
“if we stay locked in our current mode of apprehension oh hell is gonna break loose if we generate a whole bunch of new solutions most of them are going to be wrong and we're gonna and so what we need to do is well it it's a Darwinian claim in some sense is that yep despite the fact that most new ideas are stupid and dangerous a subset of them are so vital that if we don't incorporate them we're all going to perish that's the bloody existential condition”
Harris criticizes religious fundamentalism primarily by 'shooting fish in a barrel'—attacking the most obvious cases of zero-sum contest between fundamentalism and scientific open-ended inquiry, rather than engaging with the deeper question of whether religious thinking as a narrative technology for orienting human life has legitimate value.
“my criticism of religion because it tends to focus on the the most obvious case of zero-sum contest between religious dogmatism and you know scientific open-ended discussion is doesn't address this core issue of the significance of religious thinking and religious narrative because I am for the most part just shooting fishing in a barrel criticizing fundamentalists”
Peterson notes that postmodernism, while wrong in rejecting the domain of facts entirely, correctly identified something important: it is not easy to localize the structure that attributes to facts their value—the link between facts and values is complex and not straightforward.
“they've pushed away the domain of facts entirely and they say well the only thing is is that the only thing that actually exists is that this domain of interest subjective agreement and you and I are on the same page with respect to post-modernism right but but but you have to give but you have to give the devil his due as well there they pointed out something and what they pointed out is that it's not so easy to localize the structure that attributes to facts their value it's not a simple thing”
The problem of grounding values in facts is a pseudo-problem because value is not something separate from the facts of conscious experience—it is intrinsic to having experiences that are better or worse, and the navigation toward better experience is the whole point.
“I think the mirtha the starting point is deeper than morality the starting point and this is all this is our starting point all of us right now in the universe the starting point is we are conscious right we have a we have a circumstance that admits of qualitative experience”
Sam Harris believes two fundamental dangers to psychological and social stability exist: religious fundamentalism on the right (establishing revealed axioms as indisputable truth and using them to tyrannize), and moral relativism and nihilism on the left (leaving people without orientation).
“Sam believes that there are two fundamental dangers to psychological and social stability religious fundamentalism essentially on the right and moral relativism and nihilism on the left and so the danger of the right wing position is that it enables people to arbitrarily establish certain revealed axioms as indisputable truth and then to tyrannize themselves and other people with the claims that those are divine revelations”
Peterson has a long-term integrative measure of well-being instantiated in an evolutionary belief system, while Harris has an instantaneous moment-to-moment measure, and both measures degrade when applied outside their proper domain.
“you have a parallel problem it looks to me like the exact mirror image which is that you've got an integrative long-term measure of well-being instantiated in an evolutionary belief system but it's coming apart because we are living in circumstances that are less well mirrored”
Harris claims we can identify basic facts about well-being: a bad life consists of endless pain, suffering, anxiety, and negative emotions; a good life involves freedom from privation, want, threat, and anxiety, plus hope for the future—and these constitute factual claims about poles of human experience.
“we can begin with some basic facts that we can identify as I mentioned briefly what constitutes a bad life endless pain suffering anxiety tremendous amount of negative emotions short-term life span all the things that no one would choose voluntarily for themselves if if we would all agree that they were thinking in a healthy manner and we can contrast that sort of domain of horror with the good life which might involve while certainly freedom from privation and want and undue threat and anxiety and hope for the future and all of that and that we can agree that those are poles good bad and good and that that's a factual claim”
The moral landscape has multiple peaks of equivalent well-being that may be irreconcilable with each other—it's not a matter of finding the single highest peak but acknowledging that different minds and cultures can achieve equivalent flourishing in different configurations.
“in fact certainty that there are different ways for similar minds and certainly different ways for different minds to be constellated so that they have equivalent but irreconcilable Peaks on the bland scape so there's a lot of wellbeing over here and there's a lot of well-being over here and there's a valley in between”
Harris proposes that the solution to avoiding both dogmatism and nihilism is a value system grounded in something real and demonstrable—specifically, empirical facts as they've been manifested in sciences and technologies that have made humans increasingly powerful and able to flourish.
“we require a value system that allows us to escape these twin dangers one stultified us and the other leaves us hopeless and that value system has to be grounded in something real and the only thing that he can see that actually constitutes real in any provable sense is the domain of empirical facts as they've been manifested in the sciences and technologies that have made us incredibly powerful”
Harris argues that the utility of stories and religious narratives as behavioral motivators is not evidence that those narratives are true or should be preserved, and that we can achieve the same behavioral outcomes through different frameworks without the false supernatural claims.
“religions do exactly this restructuring of values because they say something like actually your goodness in risking your own life to save that other child from a fire is observed and it is it is calculated and you will be rewarded for it in some way that's one possible benefit of some religions right good and okay so you put that on the balance but I have a lot to put on the other side of the ground do I know you know however analyst that's what I'm trying to point out to Jordan here which he actually acknowledges which is that he's got a big stack of good things that come from this heuristic but he's also acknowledged actually get this this is our core of disagreement here which is it however you want to however the balance is in a swing.the difference between us here is that I think we read the utility of rule of anything but in this case religious thinking as evidence of you you read it as evidence of something perhaps literally true inevitability okay so as and I view that as a conversion of either the genetic or naturalistic fallacy”
Harris argues that we can make objective claims about the subjective experience of others—for example, we know JFK was not thinking about Harris and Peterson's conversation at the moment he was shot, and we can make infinite such objective claims about his subjectivity without needing direct access to his conscious states.
“what was JFK thinking the moment he got shot right that's it we don't know so we'll never get the data right so the truth or false nosov of what I'm about to say can't be predicated on actually getting access to the data because because he's not around and his brains not around to scan so but we you and I both know an infinite number of things he wasn't thinking about we can make an objective claim about his subjectivity I know he wasn't thinking well I hope Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris work it out on stage that night and an infinite number of things like that he was thinking something he was experiencing something but we don't know what it is”
Harris argues that most new ideas are stupid and dangerous, but a small subset are vital, creating an evolutionary dilemma: you must risk incorporating dangerous new ideas to avoid stagnation and extinction, but excessive openness to change produces catastrophic errors.
“most new ideas are stupid and dangerous but but most some of them are as well some of them are vital right and so we have we're screwed both ways it's like well if we stay locked in our current mode of apprehension oh hell is gonna break loose if we generate a whole bunch of new solutions most of them are going to be wrong and we're gonna and so what we need to do is well it it's a Darwinian claim in some sense is that yep despite the fact that most new ideas are stupid and dangerous a subset of them are so vital that if we don't incorporate them we're all going to perish”
Harris argues that the capacity to think critically and rationally about one's own beliefs—even religious beliefs—is itself part of the Western tradition and can be applied internally to religious claims, allowing people to examine and potentially revise their faith commitments.
“we know that there are people who can point to these the paragraph where they lost their faith right well in reading somebody in reading Richard Dawkins or hearing a debate between between me and some theologian where it's just a collision against rationality which is so useful in every other context suddenly proves its utility in this context where they think well okay clearly I know the Muslims are wrong about the status of the Quran let me let me take that that that spirit of criticism in the internal space of my own culture and what what moves well a dogmatic attachment to Christianity has to move by that same standard”
Peterson argues that while evil as a category might face deflation from a complete neurobiological account, 'bad' or 'dysfunction' remains a useful category; distinguishing the concept of actual evil (rare) from badness (much more common) prevents Harris from dismissing religious categories too quickly.
“so I think this is actually really important so I think actual evil of that kind is pretty darn rare and there's a lot of badness that yes oh yeah well the most troubling thing are all the good people doing evil because they're ruled by bad ideas but that I think is more consequential than we introduced we introduced a whole set of other things here but a free will and evil”
The ability to steelman one's intellectual opponents and find common ground is an important upgrade in conversation capability that depends on freedom to explore positions without being recorded and disseminated.
“the freer that Sam and Jordan feel to use new tools to try out positions that maybe they haven't explored before the more likely we are to succeed so please don't film but that does not mean that we don't want you talking about what was discussed here tonight in fact we're very excited to see what you all make of this conversation”
The sense-making apparatus that traditionally helped people figure out what to think—including political parties, universities, and journalism—has begun to fall apart, and alternative sense-making networks through the internet are now critical to cultural coherence.
“we've arrived at a place in history where the sense making apparatus that usually helps us figure out what to think about things has obviously begun to come apart the political parties the universities journalism all of these things have stopped making sense an alternative sense making networks have begun to rise”
Harris argues that well-being can be measured or at least practically assessed through lived experience, self-report, and behavioral observation, though we currently lack perfect measures—but that absence of perfect measurement does not undermine his thesis.
“well the in taneous is not good but you have a parallel problem it looks to me like the exact mirror image which is that you've got an integrative long-term measure of well-being instantiated in an evolutionary belief system but it's coming apart because we are living in circumstances that are less well mirrored that the present does not mirror the past and therefore these games which you you believe are timeless are degrading rapidly”
Some religious effects could potentially be replicated through secular frameworks, but we have not yet demonstrated that all the benefits can be achieved—it is an open empirical question whether secular approaches can fully replace the motivational and psychological functions of religion.
“my argument here is that religion gives people bad reasons to be good we're good reasons are available okay and I think I can I can get you there by some other way without the downside or if not that's just one of those cases where yes the fiction was more useful now”