Decoding the Gurus - A Sense-Making Odyssey, Part 1: Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke & Jordan Hall

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Join Matt and Chris as they enter an intellectual labyrinth of recursive sensemaking featuring the combined insights of Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke, and Jordan Hall. You will learn about many, many deep and complex concepts and puzzle over definitions of conscience, the vertical hierarchy, value, normativity, goals & ideals, quests, the ultimate unifying meta-narrative, self-sacrifice, and touchstones.With frequent excursions into a wild assortment of biblical stories, Platonic philosophy, Jungian psychology, Martial Art stances, and much, much more! This is a voyage through the refracted and refracting philosophical frameworks of three contemporary sensemaking powerhouses.So get your oars ready and prepare your mind to taste the Dialogos, vis-à-vis Moses...SourcesA Dialogue So Dangerous, It Just Might Bring You Wisdom | John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall | EP 532

All right, all right, all right. the Codin the Gurus podcast. We're an anthropologist and the psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer. And we try to understand what they're talking about. Never has our introductory spielker has been more apropos than today, may I say. So I'm Matt Brown. With me is the monkey magic to my Tripitaka,

the bad boy of the podcast scene, Chris Kavanaugh. Did you make a bird's reference, like the Tripatica? Tripitaka? Monkey Magic Trippi Tropic Taka I thought it was a Trapataka but what do I know? I don't know

maybe that's well like I yeah what do you know I could be right I could be right yes monkey magic is based on a Buddhist scrolls or something I don't know Yeah

Journey to the West Journey to the West yeah I did read a book Chris So I mean I watched the TV show What? Hold on my Hold on hold on I know. Okay, first of all, let's be clear. My reference there is to the children's TV show. There was a very popular export from Japan to Australia, very popular over here. I had a big

influence on me. But then, like as a teenager, I somehow was given or came across a big, thick book. And it was in English. And I feel like it kind of was Journey to the West. It had it had legends about a monkey in it being hatched from an egg and stuff it was kind of weird. Was there like a pig guy doing stuff? I think so. I think so. Yeah, it sounds like the journey to the west. Yeah, I actually went to see a musical

in London one time that was, you know, gorillas? It was like the band guerrillas. The band, yeah. Yeah, with the guy from Blur. It was basically like the journey to the west reimagined with visuals from the guerrillas. kind of art style so yeah okay it was okay okay so right uh did you like gorillas i like gorillas my my muso friends just loved guerrillas and i don't know i thought it was

all right but i didn't i'm i mean i'm i'm not a gorilla's head right but i'm like i'll i'll put it on the nice scent wave mix the time the time yeah so what's one of these days i got find out what synth wave is i don't think i've ever listened to a single synth wave track of my life this is horrifying for editor andy because he has a synth wave podcast no i know i know we both subscribe and listen to every episode but so i don't know how you best hold this off sorry i listen auntie i listen he listens chris likes that kind of thing yeah yeah but matt listen today we don't have time for these shit on the game no we do not we we got a deal with something that is, I mean, it's dangerous. They say so themselves. It's a ticking time bomb.

The conversation that we're looking at, you know, we look at lots of different conversations, Matt. We listen to proto-fascists. We listen to anti-capitalists. We listen to people who only eat ruminant meat and various other things. But there's a particular specialty that we often return to, which happens to be sense makers, right? And if you don't know what a sense speaker is, don't worry, you're going to by the end of this conversation. But the particular morsel that we are looking at in this genre, they titled this. We didn't title it this. A dialogue so dangerous, it just might bring you wisdom. Jordan B. Peterson, John Verveke, and Jordan Hall. Episode 532 of the Jordan-Beterson.

532, just let that sink in. Yeah, so, you know, this is a dangerous dialogue. That's the fair means. And wisdom, you know, you might not be able to get the wisdom, but you might if you listen closely. Like you said, we cover a lot of content, some of it more prosaic, some of it more mundane, than others.

Some of it garrows economics. Some of it is more cerebral, more abstract, more up in the realm of pure forms. And this definitely falls in that category. So it's going to be a wild ride. But tell me this, Chris, why are we returning to these three? Because we've spoken to John Verbecki. We've covered Jordan B. Peterson in some depth. And we've even covered Jordan Hall in his sense-making exploits previously.

So why return? Why should we return? Well, there's two reasons. In good sense-making fashion, there's a meta reason. The meta reason is because we wanted to. Because we have had to, not had to, but we've listened to a lot of nonsense. You know, Naval and Scott Adams was the most recent one. And the sense makers, they're a particular brand of pretentious waffle. that is at once

like yes it is annoying and stuff but it's also like quite I think it's art I think the way you're looking for is art it's in a sense it's performance art in a very special way so it is kind of a bit like a holiday for us isn't it yes so that's that's one reason the other reason that I will say

though this wasn't the original motivation but I think it does apply is that actually the themes that you will hear here are so recurrent across other areas and people that we cover, the kind of rhetorical techniques and whatnot, they crop up all over the place.

And this is Jordan Peterson, who is a big figure in like all sorts of spheres. And Jordan Hall, a lesser known figure and John Verveke as well. But in this sense, it kind of shows how you can have very strong political, ideological content and culture war stuff. And you can, in a way, like, launder it with these apparently lofty philosophical conversations. We'll see whether that's true. But I think this is an important part if you want to be a Jordan Peterson.

You have to do these conversations as well as the conversations with like a Ben Shapiro or a right-wing, conservative pun bit because this is what gives you the intellectual capital for some of your audience to join you on your what might look like reactionary political rounds. Yeah, yeah. Well, looking at the top comments on YouTube, the one with the most up votes says, I have no clue what they are talking about, but I love it. Which I think is, that's an understandable reaction. And another one just below that is, yeah, I'm not high enough for the.

this right now, which I also think it's a good take. Yeah. Yeah. Now, let's find out. Yeah, let's let them free him what's going on. So, you know, in good sense-making fashion, a lot of what you have to do when your sense-making is talk about what you're talking about. You have to free him things. Like we just did, right? Like what we just did. But not exactly. It goes much more meta than that. So let's hear Jordan Peterson. This is him on his own, attempting. to introduce, you know, what's going to come up in today's conversation? Today's conversation is an extension and continuation of a series of conversations I've had,

most particularly, I would say, with John Verveke, who joins me today, and also with Jonathan Pazio. And those conversations really center on specifying the foundational principle. of iterable society and stable psyche, that's a decent way of thinking about it, or specifying more clearly and understandably the apex towards which systems of value strive. And that's a very complicated set of problems, and so it takes a lot of conversations to make progress. But I found I've been able to make a lot of progress with John and Jonathan. And keeping up, everyone, you still?

Yeah. I mean, so the interesting thing for me is like, as he pointed out there, this is really an endless conversation that will never be resolved. The important thing is it continues, right? And he mentioned out Jonathan Peugeot. I figured that often comes up. So the sense making ecosystem is a bit like a multi-level marketing scheme where there's like the people at the top, you know, Jordan Peterson.

John Verviki, Jennifer Peugeot, and there's other nodes that can come in. But the important thing is we all contribute to the said speaking endeavor,

and we're making progress. We promise you, we're all moving forward. You might be forgiven for thinking they're going in circles, but no, they are moving forward. It's a research project

that is unfolding it is, yeah, via conversations, dialogues. And, you know, there were a lot of big words there.

The foundational people, principles of iterable society and stable psyche, the apex towards the systems of value strive, so on and so forth, right? But I'm going to attempt to, you know, translate sense makerism into normal speech. So what he said there is that they're going to have a conversation about the principles of resilient societies, psychological health, and the values that connect to them. That's what he said, right? In a lot more words. So they're talking about big ideas, and that's going to link to your big conversations, and that's just the way it is. And actually, speaking of multi-level marketing, so there is a place that you can go to

if you really like sense-making conversations. There is like a hub that is gathering them. They're also both lecturing, by the way, as well as me, for Peterson Academy. And so one of the things Peterson Academy is doing is aggregating a group of thinkers who are pursuing this problem, some directly, like John and Jonathan, some more peripherally. And so many of you who are listening will have listened to some of the conversations I've had with Pajou, Jonathan Pajor, or with John Vervaki. Yeah, yeah. So it's a research enterprise, and it's happening at Jordan Peterson Academy. So their goal is to understand this systems of value and moving towards an apex.

What is Jordan getting at there, Chris? Oh, well, don't put the cart before the horse, Matt. You're going to hear a lot about what those systems of value are. I'll let Jordan outline it. But, you know, like he said, it's not just the systems of values. It's also psychological health. It's also the values that we arrive at, all these kind of things. So you're going to get to what Jordan.

thinks they are, but there still needs to be ground setting done. And, you know, we've had a conversation with John Verviki. He's a professor at Toronto University, philosophically inclined professor who talks about cognitive stuff, but not really cognitive science-y stuff, like more philosophical speculations, you might say, or reflections. He's more concerned about the philosophy of Plago, I think, than the particular areas in the brain that are associated with different parts of speech or stuff like that,

right? So if that's what you want to, imagine which faded to put them in. But Jordan Hall, Matt, we know who Jordan Hall is, but Jordan Peterson happily introduces them. So for those of you who don't know Jordan Hall, this is Jordan Hall. We introduced another person into

this conversational realm today. Jordan Hall. And Jordan is a serial entrepreneur who's been successful multiple times as a tech founder and has developed the capacities that are necessary to serve as a serial entrepreneur and that means an openness to high-level creativity

conjoined with a deep technical prowess and then also the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff under low information conditions. And so Jordan Hall has been, been talking to John Verveke for quite a long time, a series of conversations. And I met John again recently and we talked about meeting and John suggested that I include Jordan and he flew in today to make that possible. Another tech figure being invoked. And there are all our conversations going on. All the people are talking to other people. Jordan's been talking

with John elsewhere. And that flowery language about, you know, he's a, He's got deep technical progress, a high level of creativity. I do like this introduction. It's like a ring anointe, seven into the ring, a man that needs no introduction. But, yeah, why don't you introduce me like this, Matt? You know, a man with deep insights. If you could separate the wheat from the chaff and lower information conditions, Chris, then I would. Oh, that's a problem.

You've got to demonstrate it first. Yeah, so you must be itching now, Matt, to get into. to the conversation, right? So there's a lot that's been said about the conversation that's about to come up. Oh, no, wait, sorry. He's not finished introducing the conversation. Let's just hear a bit more.

Like, we're not ready yet. And so we're in our conversation, we continued to flesh out. Really, I think the best way to conceptualize it is we're attempting to articulate the structure of something like Jacob's Ladder, which is this nested, sequence of value structures that tends towards a pinnacle. The pinnacle is the transcendent, let's say, or the ineffable divine. Those are matters of definition. And we're trying to understand the

hierarchical relationship between our local plans and our ultimate ends, let's say, which is the same thing as trying to understand the relationship between the finite and the infinite. And we're trying to do that in a way that's quite differentiated and propositional, but also is true to the phenomena and the, what, and the, what, the uniting reality of the transcendent. And so I know that's complicated, but it's a complicated issue. And while many of you are familiar with this already, and you can regard this conversation as a continuation on the same quest. It does sound complicated, uniting the differentiated. The differentiated reality of the transcendent. Yeah, the differentiated and the proposition.

and, you know, Jacob's ladder. Yeah, and the nested series of value structures that tend towards a pinnacle, like Jacob's ladder, the hierarchical relationship between our life. So, look, okay, you're the Jordan Peterson whisperer. You said you could translate this, Chris. Would you like to have a go? Oh, sure, sure. Actually, I think this is useful because what he says here, I will argue,

is essentially the only thing that he says. in this conversation. What was just said there is all that Jordan Peterson is going to do, but he's just going to repeat this endlessly over and over again using different words, but they say the same thing. So the insight he had there, Jacob's Ladder, this biblical reference about a dream somebody had ascending from up to heaven, right? So the notion is, Matt, there's a vertical, in this case, like a ladder, an actual ladder, ascending to heaven. At the very top, you've got God. At the bottom, you know, you get humans and whatnot. So there's a, there's a vertical ladder that we want to transcend. So verticality. And then by thinking about this and discussing what that

means, what values lead us up the ladder, that is helping us in this quest to get from the mundane towards the divine. Right. So you got biblical references, the notion of vertical relationships, and that we can go up these vertical relationships by focusing on God, basically. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think part of his philosophy is that everything we do, every little mundane thing from making a cup of coffee

to making a YouTube video is guided fundamentally by the highest thing up this last. which is God. So everything flows from God, all your little decisions that you're making. Yeah. So if I could sketch out the sensemaker grammar for Jordan Peterson, it is reference to the Bible, reference to philosopher, psychologist, or some figure to show that he's, you know, read Tolstoy or whoever it might be, mention of verticality and perhaps some reference about defining words and then it'll return to the Bible and God. That is it. And let's see if that holds up throughout this conversation. And it's also worth mentioning Matt that again, this is just Jordan

Peterson's framing. The other people aren't there. He's just talking about the conversation that he is going to have. But the first topic that comes up when they start the conversation together is what are they trying to do? What are they doing? So it's a conversation. It's a conversation the conversation about the conversation. That's the first topic. Right. So let's hear that. So now Jordan Hall and John Verveke have joined him and he's going to set out, you know, what are we doing today? Jordan, I was watching your podcast with Jonathan Pazio and you started to talk to him about the vertical dimension. And one of the things you both discussed was the notion that one of the things that might distinguish AI systems from human beings is this vertical dimension.

Now, cognitive capacity is soon not going to distinguish us by all appearances. So I thought we might well delve into that. This is obviously something John can immediately contribute to as well. I've been trying to figure out the technicalities of the vertical dimension. So let me run a hypothesis by you to begin with. John, you should perhaps find this interesting. I think it's a development of some of the ideas that we discussed when we were on tour together.

Okay, so the beginning of the conversation, Matt, it's the vertical dimension. We need to define that. We need to figure out the technicalities of that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So the conversation is going to be about the vertical dimension.

Maybe this will be part of the way that we can distinguish AI and human consciousness. Maybe, let's see. I think they forget about AI. I don't know if they return to it, but I think Jordan's intuition is that this is what distinguishes us from AI. We're connected to God

and the machines aren't. So that's kind of helpful. Maybe. Well, so there we go. The contours of the conversation are said, this is going to be about verticality. Let's let's see how they get to it. And of course, it's a continuation of another conversation that they've been having elsewhere. We've established

that. These conversations go. So here they go. Verticality. So in this new book I wrote the we who wrestle with God, one of the things I pointed out was that the God of the Old Testament, and this continues in the New Testament as well, is characterized very fundamentally in multiple ways, but one of those ways, one of the cardinal ways that he's characterized is as the voice of conscience.

And I've been trying to figure out how conscience operates psychologically. and I think it the fact of conscience indicates something like a vertical hierarchy of value so imagine that whenever you do something

whether you know it or not you have a proximal reason for it and then a slightly wider reason than that and then a slightly wider reason than that and then a wider reason than that and so forth and that sort of shades off into the unknowable Okay, Matt. So can you recapitulate for the class what we're starting with here? So what's the first

pillar of this analysis? Okay, so I think the first pillar is conscience and Jordan is relating it there to God because the God of the Bible is an instantiation of one's conscience. So we're going to understand how conscience works psychologically, which for Jordan, I think, is putting it on this ladder. Maybe conscience is the thing that calls us to move higher up on this ladder. I'll, I just can't help but point out that this is not the conventional psychological description of conscience. It's a bit different from that, but yeah, that's Jordan's. Well, what would the conventional definition of conscience, B-Mart, just that of I mean, I think it's roughly along the lines that you've internalized some sort of moral

standards or social expectations in terms of what's frowned upon and what's good, what other people will approve of, and you essentially internalize those things. So it's kind of like a control process and inhibitory control process that's connected to socialization and temperament and all sorts of things and affect as well. So you're going to feel embarrassed or ashamed or whatever. So So we're essentially internalizing the social values because we're social creatures. That would be the more conventional version, I think. I have a feeling that will come up. Yes, so we've got conscience psychologically is the vertical hierarchy of value.

And as you imply maybe the more that you grow up that, the more conscience that you have that's sort of implied. But okay, so we've started off. we've got a fundamental premise that we're starting with. So let's move on to the next step. So imagine that whenever you do something, whether you know it or not, you have a proximal reason for it

and then a slightly wider reason than that and then a wider reason than that and so forth. And that sort of shades off into the unknowable. Now, for example, if I asked you why you're here having this conversation, let's play it out a little bit. Why are you here having this conversation? You invited me. Okay, so that would be an indication of what, reciprocity with regards to hospitality? Mm-hmm.

Okay. So why is it, why was it important to you to accept the invitation? Mm-hmm. So there was two other people who were connected to that invitation that, oriented me towards thinking that it was a very good idea. Okay. We can keep going, but step by step. So then part of that was that there was a social network that you regarded as valid.

Yep. You were willing to take direction from that. And they indicated to you that the conversation might be worthwhile. Is that a good summary? Okay, so now we've got two superordinate. Okay. What would it mean for the conversation to be worthwhile? Well, that's a very hard question.

Yeah, well, they get harder as they get, as you go up, the ladder. Yeah, yeah. Okay, look, that might seem like a very self-indulgent and elaborate way to describe, you know, why you agree to come and talk to someone. But what Jordan's getting at here is that you've got sort of mundane, proximal reasons for doing things, but all of those reasons are connected to other reasons and other values and beliefs that you've got.

And if you trace it all the way back, it gets to some fundamental value about the world. Do you think that's fair? Yeah. Those of you familiar with Jordan Peterson's output might recognize this particular technique that he likes to do. He defines having any value system at all, like thinking that anything is good, is being religious. Therefore, any action, you can connect. to any value, including value like that you want to eat food or live, is being religious. That's an instantiation of the life essence and, you know, so you can persist and, you know,

work towards the higher good and look after your children and love God. Yeah. Yeah, so you're kind of checkmated by purely existing in Jordan Peterson's word. That kind of proves his thesis. So, but as you say here, he is pure. purely trying to demonstrate that, like, yes, people have mundane reasons, but these often actually have these hidden assumptions that if you think it through, reflect on things that, you know, you value social interactions and you think that it's possible to get the truth through conversations and so on and so forth. And he almost, they almost got caught up there because he said, what would it mean for it to be valuable? And he's like, well, or worth.

With while. Yeah, worthwhile. He said, what would it mean for the conversation to be worthwhile and oh, that's a very, how will we define worthwhile? But they managed to slightly side stuff just for a moment. But that's it. So as I promised, we're back to discussing the conversation that they're having. They're having the conversation and the very fact that they're having a conversation illustrates the thesis that we're all on a vertical hierarchy oriented towards God. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's let's move on, Matt. It's so far, it's all making sense. All very logical and coherent. So Jordan Hall is going to talk a bit more about conversations. One of the things that I've

noticed is I've accepted invitations over the past, gosh, 10 years, is that oftentimes I don't discover that the conversation was worthwhile until well after the conversation occurred. and so there's something like there's a split between let's say the epistemological sensibility of what would it mean for me to know that the conversation was worthwhile and let's say for the moment the ontological sense

of what would it mean for the conversation to have been worthwhile regardless of whether I knew that and there's something like a commitment to a perception or a feeling that a particular choice is worthy and then what it means

to commit on the basis of that feelings to simply engage in the moment that's occurring, regardless of having to constantly try to decide whether or not what's happening is worth being part of, as you might imagine. Okay, okay, okay. So I think what you just described is the how you might gather indication that a path that you can't quite specify might be worthwhile. Yeah. First of all, you said that there are paths that you can't specify that are worthwhile, right?

that that would be part of exploration. Right, and that there are conditions under which circumstances under which you might be willing to proceed down that investigative path. Okay, so then we could divide that into two parts. We can say that you're making the presumption that there's something worthwhile in conversational investigation, which is a reflection of the logos, let's say. The logos came in.

Logos craps. It was a appearance there. Well, this is a dialogue, Chris. This is a dialogue. The Logos is going to feature. Okay, so it's kind of painful, but they're digging deep into what's, I don't know, why you do things if you're not sure if it's a good idea. And, oh, God, I actually, actually, I don't think I could follow that.

I didn't really follow. Oh, you know, Sensemaking has this unique quality where sometimes your brain just tunes out because what's being said is so, it's such sort of profundity, or such mundane observations that your brain simply refuses to vote. It just glides past, but I think I can help you here,

but so Jordan Hull wants to say, he's noticed Matt. Sometimes he has conversations, and at the time, he didn't realize that they were worthwhile, but afterwards, it was like, actually that was worthwhile,

because later on, it made him think about something or, you know, connect something. So that's good. So he's noticed this. And this means that saying the conversation is worthwhile, that is tricky, Matt, because the epistemological sensibility of what it would mean to know that in the conversation is different, right?

Because the moment... So what is saying, he's saying that it could be worthwhile, but you might not know it was worthwhile at its time. Well, yeah. So you can't ask him that because that's, he wouldn't know that in the... And then Jordan, Jordan was born saying, right, yes, that's true, that's true.

But the very fact that you think that there is something that's worthwhile and not worthwhile, and that you admit that that's a possibility, all right? That means that you do recognize that there is a path that can lead to like a more, you know, there is a value that you want the more worthwhile conversations.

basic concept map it. Yes. It proves it, right? Jordan is acknowledging that some things are worthwhile. So this is a very important point. Jordan Hall. Jordan Hall acknowledges that and that is an important component of Jordan Peterson's argument. So yeah, it's a, you know, meta, metacometry of the conversation, pseudo-profined proofs it. And I mention of the logos and sense making jazz. That's what we got there. All right. So let's keep going. I mean, we're making slow progress.

We're still at the point that trying to work out the conversation once forward. But they're moving forward. They record this episode in stages. And I encourage people and they have to listen to it in stages because I think that you can take it all in one go. No, it's hard. So some competitions are worthwhile. And that means something. That means something.

Okay. What does it mean? Yep. Yeah. Let's find out. but there's also conditions under which you've already been set up to presume that the probability that that exploration will take place is relatively high, yes? And you used your social connections, partly to triangulate in on that.

So, okay, okay. So, all right, so that's not a bad indication of some nesting. We could continue because we could say things like, well, this is also a public conversation. And so if we manage it successfully, then we can explore together. And hopefully that's worthwhile, which we haven't defined yet, worthwhile. But we'd also have the opportunity to bring it to other people. Yep. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. All right. So you may not know for sure that the thing that you're going to do is worthwhile, but you can guess with a very high degree of probability triangulating all of the things. So that's why you might do things. The other thing it reflects is there's social connections involved, Matt, and that's important. If you have a conversation, it requires social connections because you need other people.

So this is important to, now, they did point out there, Matt, that they haven't defined worthwhile. Now, that's a, that's a problem, you know, Jordan Hall highlighted some issues around how you know of something is worthwhile, but he didn't define, like, what is the, you know, no precise definition of worthwhile. Well, let's see if we could define worthwhile. So what would make the conversation worthwhile? Well, it's happening, but then also in retrospect. So you would have something like, it's funny. Part of me wants to go and make it an analytic,

like to articulate it in an analytic fashion. We go there for a while. I think this is actually wrong. I guess the wrong fundamental approach, but let me just take that approach for a little bit just to give some room. Because you can imagine if you have a hierarchy of values, then you have a, and we have a finite amount of time and energy.

So we always have to be able to coordinate our allocation of finite time and energy. For the moment, let's say our purposes and the things that we can actually consider to be strategic or have plans. We make plans, I'm just find that as a purpose, and then we have our values. And we want to be able to do this we want to be to coordinate our purposes and our values so that the most valuable things are the ones to which we attend with the most quality and amount of time. time. And so to the degree to which we realize the most valuable things on the basis of the amount of time that we're choosing to make, then we are effectively aligning our purposes with our values. So I actually think this is a bit of a side journey, but it looks to me like that's the basis for the instruction in the Sermon on the Mount. So the Sermon on the Mount, which I think

of as an instruction manual in some ways, basically says the first thing you do is orient yourself to the highest possible good, right? And I think you could do that awkwardly and badly, and it would still be better than not doing it, right? Because you're developing a relationship with the highest good, and then once you've done that, you attend with all due care to the present. You set the frame, which is what I'm trying to do here is to serve the highest good, even though I might not be able to conceptualize that or articulate it, but that's my aim.

Right. So, so Jordan there, he's doing well, he's doing well, he's defined worthwhile. Jordan Hall, we should always. Yeah, I've got to say, yeah, I'll call him Hall from now on. So Hall spends a bit of time there defining what's worthwhile, and things that are worthwhile are the things that you prioritize, that you do, because you value them. Mm-hmm. no it took him a while to say that but i think that's essentially what he's said am i missing anything no he did say that though it's worth noting matt that he began by framing it

that that is the wrong what he's about the island is the wrong so he's like there's a way that we can approach this is just wrong the analytic way but allow me to do that right so he's doing the wrong thing first um jordan interrupts the wrong approach by saying, well, there's a bit of a sidetrack or that if we think about the Bible. And you'll note again there about the concept of verticality given. So the servant of the mind that Jordan mentions, it's an

instruction manual in some ways. Basically says the first thing you need to do is oriented yourself to the highest possible. So we got the vertical. All right. So as I said, Bible reference, mention of verticality. That's what Jordan and thought that he needed to mention. So, yeah. Now, Chris, I have to interrupt you because I had to quickly Google the sermon on the Mount

because not being a religious person, I didn't know what happened up there. Like, a lot of stuff was said according to the Bible and the sermon of the Mount. Yeah, I don't know if it's all about orienting yourself to the highest possible thing or whatever. Like, I'm sure that that's in there somewhere. But there's a lot of other stuff that we're set up there. Just saying. Yeah, well, I mean, there is, Matt. There's a lot of things.

The Bible's very different books, so there's different stuff that you can say. You can interpret. Yeah, you can read different things into different parts, I think. That's, well. Yes, but the important thing is we've got the vertical dimension. Yes. And that's it. And we've defined worthwhile what we allocate time to achieve.

goals given that we have finite time and resources so that's but that is the wrong definition but at least it's no no i don't remember because my my ears were bleeding by this point but um did jordan hall get a chance to give the correct definition of worthwhile i don't want to spoil that might you'll find out so you know with me at a start we're not finished yet so let's hear a little bit more Because, you know, they reference values there, Matt, right? And they haven't defined values. Having established that aim, John, you might have some things to say here, too. Like, we've talked about the relationship between value and perception and emotion in quite a bit of detail.

So it seems to me that if you set your aim high, then even if you can't exactly specify the goal, you know, concretely, that your perceptions and your emotions will fall into alignment with that goal and they'll show you the way, so to speak. Maybe that's, and this goes back to the idea of conscience, you know, so maybe once you get your goal set and the perceptual systems, are they going to lay out the landscape for navigation?

You can feel your way along. And I don't know if that's something like, do you think when you're doing that, assuming that the goal isn't concretely specific, that it's transcendent, you're still going to be able to see or feel which steps you're taking forward are what, reducing the entropy between where you are in that goal. And then, so you can see that both as a combination of conscience

and calling in relationship to the goal. The conscience would be the voice of negative emotion informing you when you're deviating from the path and calling would be the invitation of positive emotion informing you, at least in part at the level of emotion, that you're making the path manifest. And I wonder, too, if while you're doing that, if at the same time this probably happens particularly with dialogue,

that you're clarifying the nature of the goal further, right? Is there any of that? Yeah, I mean, so... Poor John Veracques. It's just starting to get you, how are we going to respond to that? But as you mentioned a couple of times, this two-and-a-half-hour thing is absolutely littered with pseudo-profound bullshit. Like every opportunity, it's just, just swarming with it.

So we'll probably let most of it just pass over without comment. But I'll just take one example. And, you know, one example would be with Jordan there is trying to talk about, you know, moving closer to a goal, right? taking steps closer towards the highest good or whatever. And he chooses to talk about it as like reducing the entropy between yourself and the goal. Now this is a very small example.

It's just one of thousands. But this is an unnecessarily opaque and complicated way to describe just staying on the path versus veering off it. A lot of these descriptors they use are kind of unsuitable for the thing that they're trying to say, but they sound smart, I suppose. So there's a lot of that going on. not. But so let's put, let's put all of that aside, though. What's he saying? Conscience,

you know, you don't know what the, what the ultimate good is. You might not be sure, but you can feel it. If you're moving towards it, you can sort of feel your way towards it because you're going to be getting, what is you called? He calls the perceptual feedback, perceptual systems and the landscape of navigation or whatever. But what is saying is that you'll feel the correct vibes if you're heading towards God, essentially. That's, that's what your conscience is. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, charitably, you could say he's making a similar point to what you referenced earlier about conscience and emotions, reactions about like feeling embarrassed or, you know, when you're aligned more to what is regarded as normative or socially good in your environment, right, that it'll create positive emotions versus negative emotions for behaving in ways that are seeing as negative and so on. But it is comprehensive. Combining that psychological and technical jargon to essentially connect all of that to the notion that there's transcendent values and conscience is oriented towards transcendent values. So, right, like he wants value, perception and emotion connected to conscience and conscience is connected to God.

Yeah, basically God. Yeah, basically God. Yeah, and this is where he's different. This is where what he's talking about doesn't really have any connection to psychology. Like if you're being very fair, you can detect some similar notes. It might seem obvious to people, but there are pretty sophisticated psychological models of shame and stigma and self-esteem and pretty good models of why, you know, we're social creatures. So we tend to monitor each other for good behavior and punish each other for bad behavior. And then we tend to internalize those sorts of things

or to sort of punish ourselves, if you're like, for behaving badly, doing stuff that is going to essentially make us lose cachet in the eyes of others, right? We have the self-monitoring system which helps us along with that. Like, if you have a dream of, like, giving a public talk and, you know, the cliche that you're doing it in your underpants,

you know, like, it's that kind of fear of social embarrassment that you've just, like, you've dramatically lost prestige and respect from other people. This is the kind of thing you internalize and worry about. Yeah, and so in this bit, you heard Peterson and right, he's doing what I already highlighted,

which is he references the Bible. In his case, he likes to use, you know, psychological theories and whatnot, the buttress, the points that he makes, but they tend to come from the realm of Jungian psychoanalytic approaches and this kind of stuff.

John Verveke is not going the answer. You heard him. I'd say, um, and now this will be a different flavor of sense making because he's a little bit different than Jordan Peterson. So let's see what kind of references he brings up. This is a direct response to that thing that Jordan Peterson just said. Okay. So if you're trying to track along, it's in response to that. I've actually been doing a lot of work around that right now with respect to what I call prospectival knowing knowing what it's like and being able to take a perspective and some some sort of a confluence of things I mean first of all we are talking about basic relevance realization like what do we ignore what we pay attention to and then

within that I think what you're talking about is there's three interlinked things there's origin orientation and ostension origin is where am i and this is very much the vertical dimension right it's where am i who am i what kind of thing am i where am i in the environment and so this is this is some like think about think about it very concretely you're lost you first have to where's your origin where am i then once you once you have your origin you do orientation and orientation is kind of like this. Here's the proposal. So we've talked before about Marlon Ponte's idea

that relevance realization caches out in optimal grip, getting the right trade-off relations between being too close, too far away, too loose, too tight, you're constantly doing that. Now, I'll use an analogy. When I'm sparring, I take a stance. I don't actually fight with that stance. That stance doesn't, you don't do anything with it.

the point of the stance is to get me sort of at this nexus place so that I got the best access to all the specific optimal grips. It's readiness. You're right. Generalized readiness. So orientation is this stance taking. Yeah. So to remind people, before they were struggling with the definition of conscience, but I put

that aside for the moment, and Gianvovacchi has introduced his own model of, I'm not sure what is a model of what, but it's a model. that involves, knowing where you are, knowing which way you're pointed, and then I think extension, I think is the third thing. No, he said origin, orientation, and ostentation? I don't know what that third one was. No, I don't know either, but I assume it's got something to do with... No, no, they get distracted.

We don't actually finish any... There's a lot of threads left untied, but yeah. there's a lot of talking but not a lot of points and like actually it's worth noting that so far but jordan hall i mean you asked matt at the time well what is the correct way to approach worthwhile that is not returned to okay so like the jordan hall outlined a definition that is the wrong definition has a freedom and this he never he never got a chance to give to give no they got they got sidetracked. And now they're onto, well, I suppose you can say it's connected, right? Because they're on conscience. This is really around conscience, right? But conscience is

connected. I mean, everything's. It's connected. Well, it's not immediately apparent to me how conscience is connected to what the vacuum was just talking about. Well, it's connected in the sense that he is taking the notion that Jordan Peterson has, right? That, like, you have to orientate yourself towards certain values. And remember, that's how Jordan defined what conscience is. What conscience is, orienting. So you say, okay, I get it. And he did mention the latter, because where you are on the ladder, on the verticality.

He was important that note, yes, this is related to the verticality. And he referenced relevance realization, another kind of technical term. And he makes a reference to Marlopontes, right? So, like, it's the same thing where you're referencing cognitive research, psychological terms. But in Verviki's grab bag of references, there's martial arts metaphors, right? So there's he's into Tai Chi and a bit interesting. interested in Taoism and this kind of thing. So, you know, it's about taking stances and the way that you get grips on your opponent, redirecting energy, all this kind of thing. So I love Verviki is not above a Bible quote. He will often reach more for Eastern wisdom or reference to Plato, these kind of things. But certainly the Bible is not outside the realm of possibility. So he's saying perspectival knowing, like the ability to take, someone else's perspective, is related to relevance realization, which is related to what Jordan

Peterson is talking about, verticality, which is related to conscience. I see. It's just, what's not explained is how, but. Oh, well, well, hold on, Matt. Let's let, let, let's let them flesh it out a bit more, okay? I mean, the connections seem pretty clear to me, but that's, that's all right. People like, here you might need some help. So here we go. So are you distinguishing between the, you made reference to figure out where you are. That's like an orientation point. And then the stance is preparation for, yeah, for where you're going to go. The orientation, the origin has, there's a technical term called indexicality, which is like me here now. That's what you're trying to find. What, what, who am I? What state am I in? Where am I, right? Like, where am I actually

standing. That happens when you wake up. Right. So you have your standing, and then you have your stance, and then you have a stare, which is you, you, you stand, you point, right? And then all of those are, what they're doing is they're configuring a perspective, what is being foregrounded, what is being backgrounded. Yeah, right.

And then now you can begin to do. And that's a world creation. But it's what you said. It's like, it's what Hartbro-Rosa calls, you're looking for moments of resonance. You're looking for moments where, right, you, right, you are directing yourself to the world, but the world also, as you said, is calling to you. Yeah. Oh, there is a way I can call.

It calls out to you, right? And so if you're optimally oriented, you're both controlling, you're finding that sweet spot between control and responsiveness. And you dance that out, which I think is a good representation. Totally. Did that help? No, no, not so much. Well, but Matt, didn't you hear indexicality?

Okay, look, you've got a standing, you stand, and there's a stare, right? Yeah. Look, Hartberg, Rosa, she said, we look for, yeah. So, you know, look, what's being pointed out here, Matt, is oriented towards verticality. That's related to your own position. You have to understand where you are in order. to understand where you want to go and where other people are and, you know. Yeah, yeah, so it's about, yeah, I mean, I get the vibe.

You've got to be optimally oriented and in tune with your environment. And that's going to help you go up Jordan's ladder, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So, like, no, it's worth noting a game map. This is all related to what are they doing? Like, what is the point to have a conversation? That's where this is all stabbing from. You remember it was Jordan Peterson asking Jordan to all, like, why did you come here?

That's where we're still on this. What is having the conversation even me? I think they may have had sometimes forgotten. That's where this is. But we're still on topic one. We've just went out a couple of tangents. What makes it very hard is it is, what you said is true, that Jordan has a distinct theme that he keeps returning to, and he wants to steer it towards. But even so, it has the feeling of like a dream sequence where the conversation segues from one little rabbit hole and to the next rabbit hole.

And that makes it very difficult to track where we're going. But yes, we've started off with talking about, you know, vertical dimensions and taking perspectives. and we've got orientation, and what's going to happen next? Well, allow me just a very quick recap for you, Matt. We've got conscience, which is the vertical hierarchy of value. Value perception and emotion, they are elements that make up conscience as well. And what's worthwhile is what we allocate time to do because of our values to achieve, like, set goals, right? We've got a couple of things that are around.

There's all other things that we haven't completely... Oh, sorry, that was the wrong definition of worthwhile, but that's what we're working from. That's what we're working with. And so, okay, that's a couple of things that we've defined, but there's other things that we haven't got defined, and there's some concepts we haven't considered. So let's continue on, right? Maybe this will help. You have to include the fact, as you mentioned, that you're also undergoing a process of

transformation of self in Medius Rest. Yes. As you said, you're an orienting stage. That's what happens in an exciting conversation. So what's happening here, yeah, performatively, we're engaging in the process that currently we're talking about. Right, right. So that means in a deep conversation,

partly what you're doing is progressing forward to your various superordinate goals, but at the same time, you're transforming the nature of the superordinate goal and the relationship between the goal hierarchy as you proceed. Right, and that's not a bad definition of a quest. And just one thing to make sure that all of our questions, questions are caught up. So conscience would be the voice that comes from a higher order goal to you while you're operating at a more proximal, where you're operating more approximately,

telling you that your proximal operations are violating a higher order goal. Yeah, that's fine. Then you can then you can imagine, okay, so yes, that seems reasonable. Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it technically, right? Because it is still, in a sense, it's your voice still because it's associated with your goals, but then it's also a voice from above, so to speak, especially if your goal hierarchy. Okay. So they

did have a bit of a moment there where they're like so we're talking about the process of talking and this conversation we're having now, would this be an illustration? Yeah, but but he's Jordan Peterson's credit that. Yeah, he brings it all together.

He's like, yeah. Okay, so what we've said is this, right? And he got agreement. The conversation is like a quest. And just like with any quest, you've got to know where you are, where you're going, how you're going to get there, and you've got to be checking all the time. And, you know, maybe you're hacking through the forest or something, and your conscience is telling you whether or not you're moving towards the ultimate,

most high order goal, which is God. It is God. But, yeah, so that all makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And I will know we got a definition of quest. Quest is transforming the relationship between the superordinate goal and the relationship of the goal hierarchy.

Okay? Yep, that makes perfect sense. And I think Jordan Hall's contribution was important too, which is to remind them that you're in a constant state of transformation. You know, you might well be in a particular place oriented towards something, but you're transforming yourself at the same time, which just got to keep that in mind, I think. Yeah, yeah, this does come up.

speakers like the part decide that like when you have a conversation with someone, Matt, you're not just talking to yourself, you're talking to someone else. So that makes a third thing, which is the interaction between the two people. And that interaction affects the two people. So there's a lot of things going on and having, you think you're just having the chat, right? But it's it's not. It's not so simple. It's a lot more complex than that. Now, some people have accused Jordan Peterson of being a religious maniac. Now, is that warranted? Well, Let me just play a clip. Now, you could imagine, too, that if you talked a bit about Christianity with Pajot as well.

So if you could imagine that you made the imitation of Christ your superordinate goal, even if you didn't exactly know what that means because you can't, that would open up the possibility that whatever that represents could speak to you in the voice of, insofar as you understand what that means. That could now speak to you with the voice of conscience. And hypothetically, if it was orienting you more accurately, as you practiced it, your understanding of that would increase and you'd get sharper at it. You'd get more skilled at it because you'd get more...

I've been talking to my wife, you know, she's been investigating the relationship between self-will, so to speak, and divine will. In her prayer practice, she's trying to orient herself towards the divine. So what she does in the morning is that's what she does, is she sits down for an hour and she thinks, okay, if I was really going to do things right, whatever that means, what attitude would I have to adopt and how would I do that? And then you distinguish that from self-will. So I would say, because self-will begs the question, what do you mean by self, right? And my suspicions are that the more selfish the will, the more a goal that should be lower order, is elevated to the highest place. So like a hedonistic self,

because the hedonist will say something like, I would like to do exactly what I want to do right now regardless. But there's a question that isn't answered there, and the question is, well, why do you associate I with what you want? Because an alternative way of conceptualizing that is that something that's lower order has taken possession of you so completely that you now identify. with it. That's kind of revealing, isn't it? That's kind of a mishmash of ideas from Christianity

and like Buddhist thought, right? Like he's got the, you want to be orienting yourself towards the divine, you want to be imitating Christ. If you do that, then your conscience will guide you towards this wonderful state, even if you're not quite sure what it means, he emphasizes. Yeah. And if you don't do that, the only other thing that could guide what you do, selfish motivations, base, wallowing in your own cropulence, and also because there is no self, you're not even really doing what you want, probably like a devil, something lower order, chaos has taken control of you, and you've been deluded that you are acting for yourself, but actually probably you're acting for some nasty, horrible, base motivations.

Yeah, there is a mishmash of things there. The thing is that because Jordan's obsessed with the Bible, right, and his wife also, very religious person, right? So she's spending the morning meditating on how to be more Christ-like and what that actually means and all this kind of thing. And this is important. And it's important in a way that, you know, most normal religious people's reflections probably aren't as profound.

My wife doesn't do that. Well, you know, the Peterson. a unique breed. But the thing there is, Matt, that you mentioned, you know, well, that's a bit Buddhist, but I don't think Jordan Peterson is drawing from the Buddhist thing, except as it's reflected through other writers, right? That he likes. But that means that, like, this just reflects how Jordan Peterson is extremely myopic, because almost all religions have in them this notion about, you know, they're being a you, which is selfish. and which is, you know, for whatever reason,

it can be because of demons or it can just be human nature or it can be any number of things, but you can replace that by like, you know, so when Jordan is like, it's all about Christ, right? Emitting Christ, but like in Buddhist traditions, it can be about imitated in the Buddha

or the body satpahs or, right? So like, what he presents as incredibly profound in Christianity. Yeah. Is something that you find in almost every major religious tradition. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this should be emphasized, I think, because at the abstracted bespoke level, but Jordan Peterson engages with theology, Christian theology, it is so bespoke and so abstract that actually, you know, he could pick any religion.

It doesn't have to be Christianity. Any religion he could make reference to, and it would fit his highly abstracted theology slash philosophy, whatever it is, perfectly well. But, yeah, no, he likes Christianity. he's a Christian guy, so that's his bad thing. And before people say, I know that Jordan Peterson does make comparative religious analogy sometimes, but he's still very clear that despite that he might reference something from Sunni Islam or he might reference, you know, something from a Buddhist parable or whatever,

the overall thing you want to emphasize is like, Christ is the best version of it. And this is a very common thing amongst religious people, right? they'll often take the view that other religions, they sort of getting glimpses of the perfect truth that their particular religion does best. So he's not alone in that. No, I'll also mention, Matt, you know, the indulgence of people like Peterson

is quite something to be fulfilled. There's two other people there, and he's just waffling away about, like, you know, what does wife say in the voice and stuff? Yeah, and it continues. It continues. It invites his people onto his podcast, but they rarely get a word in.

Jordan Hall never got to tell us what the good definition of of conscience was. But yeah, let him continue, Chris. So, okay, one more question that, at least on this line, with regards to this, so imagine this superordinate figure being Christ

just for the sake of argument for the moment. So I've been trying to think through what would be the antithesis, I guess it's the antithesis of evil. That's one way of thinking about it. And at the same time, thinking about the postmodern insistence that there's no uniting story but power. And so I think the idea that there's no uniting story,

but power is self-defeating fundamentally. I've seen no evidence that in complex biological systems, even in chimpanzee troops, that power iterates. well. Power is a degenerating game. So one of the things you might ask is, well, you might say, like the postmodernists do sometimes, that there is no superordinate game. Like, that's the central claim of postmodernism, as far as I've been able to determine, that there's no uniting meta-narrative. Everything we do is united by a narrative at some level, and to just decapitate that arbitrarily and say, well, at some point, there's no union. It's like, well, what point? That's a really

big problem. But when they don't refuse to admit that there's a uniting metanarrative, they turn to power. And I've been trying to conceptualize what the antithesis or what the alternative might be. So, you know, there you heard usual Jordan Peterson motifs, right? Postmodernists, they're obsessor of power. They don't recognize that, you know, there can be other things, unifying stories, meta-narratives, other than power, and the fact that they will deny that

makes them evil, the antithesis of like a unifying. So he doesn't like postmodern people because they only talk about power, but there are other stories. And yeah, a uniting metanartive, one critique, Matt,

just, you know, there's many different ones, but for arguments, let's say, we take the super figure of Christ unified just an example of a unifying

it could be any it could be anything but if you want you know just for an example yeah so I guess you know we don't need to cover

how he doesn't like post monum as we get it but Jordan Peterson does like stories he does like narratives oh very much yeah and so

this is this is how he frames it the other the other narrative makers or the other people that you know focus on narratives they're very bad

because they don't recognize that there is one correct narrative, which is Christ. There could be many correct. There could be many correct. Christ is just an example. But actually, Christ in himself, he's really just instantiating a more powerful meta-narrative. So this is Jordan Peterson's thesis. This is where the utmost verticality region. So listen to this.

And it seems to me, I'm curious about this, John. It seems to me that the central message of the Christian drama is that voluntary self-sacrifice is the uniting metanarrative. And that works to unite people psychologically, and it works to unite them socially. And it seems to me almost a matter of definition that social interaction is based on self-sacrifice, because that's kind of like the definition of social.

So, and then psychological self-sacrifice would seem to me to be the offering up of the lower order value structures to something that's transcendent. And then you get to have your cake and eat it too. You get, if you adopt the ethos of voluntary self-sacrifice, then you unite yourself psychologically. But at the same time, it's the best possible strategy socially.

And that is definitely, that's, and that's not only an alternative to power, it's antithetical. It's the opposite. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thesis, isn't it? So, so Christianity, like, you know, like most religions, I mean, where he's right is that they are, they do tend to be pro-socialal, right? They encourage pro-sociality. To the other believers, yes. Yes, to the other people in your group, right? Don't, don't cover, don't, don't covet your neighbor's ass, but smite, you can smite the unbelievers. Except maybe in Christian, you know, whatever. No, no. We're not coming all the way with that one. Yes. All of them also have calls to, you know, turn yellow

cheek and be kind, but in practice. When push comes to the shelf, I know, I know. Okay. So, but he's saying this is, I mean, this is great. This is the perfect metanarrative because not only are you being a good, a good person to other people in your society. By aligning your values with the highest values, you get to be really happy because you're now acting perfectly in sync with the greatest good. Have I framed it right? Yeah, yeah. I do want to call out one little definition that he slipped in there.

He said the definition of social is based on self-sacrifice. And no, the definition of social is based on interacting with other people. Now, he wants to conceptualize that that ultimately involves sacred. But that's because of what a narcissistic prejudice is. But I'm sorry, but it's just, it's not reframing word. It's self-sacrified. No, social is very easily defined as just interacting with other people. And there are lots of ways to get respect and to do well in a society without putting

your interests last and sacrificing yourself for the good of other people. I mean, we live in a world where fucking bloody Elon Musk and Donald Trump are running the show. So there are clearly other ways to get ahead in a society. Hello, Jordan Peterson views them both as like, you know, Superman and superheroes, X-Men, as he's described. So, yeah, but we've got there. The voluntary self-sacrifice is the unifying meta-narrative of Christianity. This is at the top of the vertical hierarchy. So in conversations, by being oriented towards having a good conversation

or things being worthwhile, you are demonstrating the reality of this reality, right? There is a tangential connection here to what they've been talking about. But now, Matt, I'm careful, okay, because there's one thing about sense-making conversations. Like, in a way, they are interacting with each other. But the thing is that, as I pointed out earlier, they've got their own grab bag of references and their own little philosophical... Hobby horses.

Yes, hobby horses. That's a good word for it. And so very often what you'll find is one of the monologues about a topic and lays out about his things. And the other one says, ah, yes, that reminds me of blah. And then they leap to their hobby horse,

which is like it's related. because there's a word they used which is connected, but it's often actually quite different than what was just being discussed. And this will happen multiple times. So here, this is John Verveke,

connecting his views about conscience. Okay, that's ostensibly of what it's about, but he's going to give a different definition than what Jordan Peterson supplied. Remember, the Peterson definition is conscience, is the vertical hierarchy of value.

So you're having that is what is conscience. Now, let's see what Verveiki says conscience is. So I want to say two things about two of your main points. The first is I want to explore conscience because, I mean, there is conscience that I think is the call to something higher, but I think there's also conscience that can be pathological because it's the internalized voice

of authority figures who have punished us or have traumatized us. That's like the harsh Freudian super ego. Yeah, I tend to have a sadistic super ego. Right. So there's that. And then the other thing you said about self-sacrifice, but you said something that maybe qualified it

because this is a qualification I would make. I think the meta-narrative, I'll challenge you. I think the meta-narrative isn't self-sacrifice. I think it's self-sacrifice in service of getting to what is most real. Oh, so it's not, like, this is important, Matt. There's a very important distinction there. Okay, it's going to go on as well. But so, Raviki corrects him, right?

He wants to point out, first of all, that you can have like a negative conscience, right? And Peterson seems to be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 40 and Superwego, right? Yep, yeah, because, because Peterson's really focused on the, on conscience being, essentially the voice of God calling you towards him. But, you know, the fact he's like, hang on, hang on. Sometimes you can have like a neurotic kind of conscience. And it might not be in steering you in a good direction. Okay, good.

Peterson's right. Like, yes, I'm done with that. And then he says, another correction. Another correction. You said that the unifying meta narrative is self-sacrifice. That's wrong. It's sacrifice in service of getting what is most real. Yes, getting to what is most real.

Getting to what is most real. Yes, there we go. But they're talking about the meta-narrative. I mean, just to clarify here, Chris, like, what is the meta-narrative? Like, Jordan Peterson would say it, the met-unified meta-narrative. Yeah, well, what is it, what is a unifying meta-narrative exactly? It's the top of the vertical relationship hierarchy. I like took it to mean

he's saying that's what the meta narrative should be but is the metanarrative kind of like the unspoken thing that everyone agrees is good or something or like is it the sort of the underlying social values of a culture like what what

to exist you have to have a unifying meta narrative because otherwise you just wouldn't get around like a fish right this is 20% so you can have lots of different ones, but ultimately the ones that are at the top

of this hierarchy are, you know, like the postmodernists say, the only one that you can have, right, is like power. If there's a unifying meta that combines people together, mix and behave socially, it's just power. It's power relationships, it's exploitation.

Peterson says, no, no, no, they've got it all wrong. There's so many better ones and actually the best one, the one, you know, that that actually everyone is kind of oriented to whether or not they admit it to themselves is this self-sacrifice for other people, which is best encapsulated in the notion of Christ in the Christian doctrine.

But is Peterson saying, okay, just accepting his framing of postmodernness, right? Yeah. It's even Jordan Peterson would agree it's kind of a, it's a descriptive in his framing. They're describing how the world is, right? how relationships between people are and how people act and so on. It's a descriptive thing. They're getting it wrong, but they're describing it, yes. But Jordan Peterson, is he describing how people everywhere always operate or how they

ought to be operating? A little bit of both because, like, based on what else I know about Jordan Peterson, right, like from like his appearance on Jubilee and all the other content we've looked at, his notion is that this is true, regardless of whether you acknowledge it. So you can say you're not religious. You can say you're not oriented to what is true or whatever. And you might even have adopted an ideology that obscures that. But fundamentally underneath it, the very thing that allows people to act socially is this.

And this doesn't mean that you don't get tyrants and whatnot. But that's because they're fundamentally rebelling against what is true and right and so on. So, I think this is an underlying reality, which is best encapsulated in the Christian meta and art of, but it is a reality. I see. Yeah, no, I get it. Thanks. You actually, that helped a lot.

Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, that's why he tells people who are explicitly atheist that they're not. Yeah, you can't be. It's not possible. Yeah. You got out of bed this morning. So you're not what you say you are.

You're just flopping around at a lower order of, on. the hierarchy. You're low on the ladder, basically, diluting yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're kind of, you know, in the Christian version of it, you're rebelling against God's truth. You're refusing to acknowledge it. I get it. I get it. Yes. This is a new way of looking at the world for me. So it's a bit of a struggle. Yeah, but so, uh, Verbeki give a correction, right? So I like to do this where they're like, it's not about knowing. It's about what is known. And in this case, it's not about self-sacrifice, right? It's about sacrifice in service to reach what is real. Yeah, what is real. So I guess, so this is

more of a backy's thing, like self-actualization, you know, Freudian, you know, stuff. Not so much the Christian religious stuff, obviously. So, yeah, although he has his hang-ups wrote that as well. But, I mean, don't forget Hermes told him that he's essentially going to be bringing people back to Christianity at the end of the day. And he was reused in a hardcore fundamentalist Christian background. I think he did a bit of a number on him. But yes, but that's not his fault. So anyway, it continues. So this is still related to conscience.

But Verviki is going to try to flesh out why this distinction is important. Okay, no arguments with that. I was using self, I would say, in that fractionated hedonistic manner, right? Because you're, if you're trying to organize yourself in relationship to a higher unity, you're sacrificing what's lower to that upward. I agree. But what I'm scanning at is I think what, perhaps I guess, because we're talking about, we're talking about conscience, and conscience is a normative self-knowing, knowing yourself, normatively rather than descriptively, right? That's what conscience is. Okay, why normatively? Because, as you said, what you're doing is you're knowing yourself through a normative lens. What is true, what is going is beautiful.

Oh, yeah, okay, okay. So it's con science, knowing of yourself, but what you're doing is you're reflecting on yourself through a normative lens. Okay, so that ties together the psychological and the social, that normative lens. Normativity, Chris. Normative. We're talking about normativity, right? So, Verviki's definition of conscience is normative self-knowing, knowing, reflecting upon yourself through a normative lens. Yes. Yes. So not descriptively. So this is a different framing than Jordan P. Alohi. They're connecting it. They're both nodding along and saying, yes, yes. Well, that's basically the thing. But this is a. new definition that we've just received. Jordan Hall wants to get in, Matt, because he's got another definition that's a little bit different.

Yeah, because it's a little different. Like, Vavaki's definition is a little bit bespoke, but it's, you could see it resonates with what philosophers generally describe normative things as, you know, because the philosophers have got their definition, psychologists have got a different definition. Philosophers just say it's normative is just how things ought to be. the standards and things that you claim prescribe good things justified things and so on right what ought and in psychology we talk about normative where we're just talking about society like what's typical what's expected what sort of norms are in society that sort of judge people's behavior and what

what is considered normal kind of development of behavior so anyway that's what the rest of the world thinks of normative, what does Jordan Hall think? Well, let's see. Let's see what Jordan Hall has to add to this. Let me check if I disagree. I may. I don't think I do, but I want to check, which is I'm grounding the notion of conscience at a level that is quite below semantics. Sure. It's like the moment when you are playing music and you feel the sour note come, that feeling that you have of a direction towards wrongness is conscience. Well, this is what I want to, I agree. And what I would say there is that, but that's the normative,

but that's showing up in perspective taking, right, as opposed to rule following. What you're doing is you're doing that, like Jordan P. said, I'll have to do Jordan P and Jordan Mace, right? The dance, right? The dance of the perspective taking. Yep. So when I mean normative, I don't mean like a Kantian code.

I mean the very sort of sets of constraints that you put on yourself so they shape your behavior according to you're trying to get out what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. That's what I meant by you. So why normative then rather than ideal? Because I, okay, so I use ideal in a technical sense, which might be valuable to us. So let me recapitually for George.

Hall. So for Jordan Hall, he wants to note that when he thinks about normative, it's not at the level of, you know, semantic knowledge or it's, it's more like an emotional feeling to hear a sour note in a song. Like, that doesn't feel. Right. And, um, Verviki is okay with that. He's like, yeah, yeah, that's, that's right. And that's because in his notion of normative, normative is the set of constraints that you put on your, yourself to shape your to behavior to what is true and beautiful. So that's all the different, Matt, than what you said, psychologists there. Because, like, you know, what is normative in your society may not be oriented to what

is true and beautiful. It could be conventional, like, or just based purely on, like, socially pragmatic things or, you know, conventions and so on. So that's different. But that is also indicative of Jordan Hall's approach, which is he likes to use analogies a metaphors to describe things, right? That's often his contribution. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, and to be fair to John Verbecki, his take on it is wildly different from the philosophical version of normativity. He adds a bit of flair. It's the dance of perspective taking. But they go on, don't they, to put some work into understanding what normative is. Because now they've forgotten about conscience for the moment, now we've got to figure out normative. Yes, well, actually, you've got a bit of a side track.

Matt, you get ahead of yourself because somebody mentioned the word ideal. Oh, yeah, they must have to sort that out because Jordan Peterson said, well, why do you use normative when you could say ideals? He said, wow, that's a good point. Let me clarify that. So, yes, a sidetrack for a minute on ideals and goals. So I use ideal in a technical sense, which might be valuable to us. So John Keeks makes a distinction between goals, which are states you can realize, and ideals which are constraints that you bind yourself to. So, for example, a clear goal state when I'm thirsty is to drink water, but honesty isn't a state I get to, right? It's a constraint I'm putting on all my behavior

for the rest of my life. So he calls those, he says, and one of the mistakes we can make is we can confuse goals and ideals. Ideals are ways of being and goals. Ideals are ways of being and goals. are states. So an ideal is like a metagull? Is that a reasonable way? But then where does normative fall into that? So normative, what normativity is, is normativity are, use that language, normativity are ideals, ways in which we constrain our behavior so that we can shape it, so that we can get in contact within and without, I would argue with what is most real. It's complicated, isn't it? But we are departing from the philosophical standard definitions of these things, aren't we?

It's getting pretty bespoke. We're going to get back to sure in a minute. But there, I mean, it's a dense semantic thicket that you have to cut through here, right? So let me try and retrace the path. So Verveiki talked about conscience is normative self-knowing, right? So he was nuanced,

Jordan Peterson's thing about conscience is orientation towards the vertical, axes, right? So in his version, he's like, well, yes, but I would call that normative self-knowing. And by normative, he doesn't mean, it's actually normative meaning orientation toward what is true and beautiful. Right. So actually, it does share various things with Jordan Peterson's concept. But then here, Peterson said, well, why did you just call that an ideal? I mean, set aside whether why do you need to call it? it's the different word, why that matters.

But he's like, well, that is important, because ideals are different from goals. Goals are, you know, kind of pragmatic. I'm firstly, I want the drink. An ideal is a, as Jordan Peterson describes, a medical, an orientation. And they both say it's a constraint. It's constraint placed on your behavior. But then so Verveti says, right, so normativity is like an ideal. It's like orientating yourself towards an ideal towards what?

is true and beautiful. So I guess his definition is that normativity is an ideal. It's just a specific ideal. Like there could be other ideas. I think he may just have to leave that one. Just like, I don't think we're going to get to the bottom of it. I'm sort of, in my mind, I've got like a little graph of words and arrows pointing to it.

It's a bit of, like you said, it's a thicket. So let's just let that one. Let's just let it lie. Let's just let that one. I'll let it go. I think I got it, though. You did a good job. It's just that I...

But I think the bit that gets me is that for Vicky said, it's really important to distinguish normativity and ideas. But then he just outlined why normativity is an ideal. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And that's why I'm confused. Maybe they, he knows. Whatever.

Now, Jordan Peterson notices something here, Matt. Something's happened. They might have strayed. a bit of far. So he's going to call the, you know, the semantic bricks here while they resolve this. Okay. How does that relate? Because the other connotation of normative might be social norms, for example. And, I mean, there are, I'm trying to put together the definitions that you laid out. So, yeah, so social norms are supposed to be justified by their appeal to, what you might call ethical norms. But the proxious.

of the ideal? Yeah, but I don't like the doing that because normativity for me, ethics is too limited a sense of normativity. It's about the right thing to do. It doesn't cover everything that's covered by trying to make your thoughts as true as possible, trying to make your experiences as tracking as what is beautiful as possible. So there's a discussion in Exodus that's relevant to that, I think. of course there is

how can I relate this there's a little process that's operating in the back of Jordan citizens mind all the time which is how can I relate this to something in the Bible it's always running and every now and again

it fires up okay I did think though there Matt that you know there's a part of Jordan peace and it's buried very very deep where there's like his undergraduate psychological training right and he's like

well wait a minute, this is like a definition of normativity that doesn't gel with the way that psychologists are using it. So there's, isn't there a bit of an issue here, but no, no, no, no, like that's too limited, the one around social norms and that kind of thing. But, but there was, I think, I think even the philosophical version is too limiting for Vavaki. Like, it's, you know, it's not just what you ought to do. It's, it's whatever steers you towards the true and the beautiful. It's kind of more cosmic than, I know. God forbid anybody asked them what true and beauty.

Oh, God. I'm glad they are trying to define those words. Yeah, I've just realized they don't make that move. But if I was there in the conversation, you know, as a good sense, I could say, well, like, look, this is really great. It's all cold. But there's one thing that we haven't addressed it. Like, we keep saying true and beautiful.

What do we know without me? What do we mean by this? Yeah. Yeah. To recap, I mean, really what's been going on this entire time so far is definitions, hand-splitting definitions. That's been a fairly long period of time on it. That's one way to think about it. Well, don't worry, Matt. We're almost done with this topic. It's almost done. They've almost resolved everything, kind of. They never really get on this topic. But so the religious thing, you know, because John Verbeki was bringing up his particular hobby horse topics.

But Jordan was like, well, doesn't this really a Bible story? So here's his attempt to rest the conversation back to the, you know, the Bible stuff that he likes to talk about. So when just before Moses goes up Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, so he's gathered up a lot of implicit knowledge by that point by serving his judge for like years anyways he leaves and he leaves Aaron in charge and Aaron is the political voice of the prophet and as soon as the transcendent voice the prophet disappears

the political voice bows to the whim of the crowd right and so this is very interesting because if you have a consensus model of truth. The biblical insistence is that a consensus model of truth will devolve almost instantly into the worship of the golden calf, which is kind of like an orgastic materialism, which strikes me as highly probable, because I don't think there's much difference between an orgasic materialism and a profound fractionated immaturity. Because, yeah, you agree with that. Totally. Okay, and so then the prophetic voice speaks for the ideal that unifies what would otherwise degenerate into

orgeastic materialism. It's something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is Jordan's rejoinder, right? You can't have things that are true and good that come from just people getting together, talking about things or whatever, because it'll just descend into orgeastic. They'll be wallowing in their own copulence. That's what's going to be happening. So, yeah, he's staring things back to where he wants them to be, which is his cosmic theology. That's Jordan's bag. That's where he's going to

day. And I'll often note there, Matt, he's referencing the Bible, a religious text, the goal of which is to encourage people to follow a particular religious system and believe in a particular God. And he's saying, in that Bible, there's this story where people, they're left to their own devices. And they start going wrong until God comes back and, you know, tells them what to do. And then they swind it out. And like, isn't that typical? of atheist material. Like what all the proof do you need that a Bible said this was all going badly until, you know, Moses comes back down

and tells them, wait, wait, this is what God said. And then they're like, oh, well. It's quite shocking that a parable from the Bible should be so pro-God. I know. Who would have expected that? Who would have expected that? And I'll also call out, Matt,

that after talking about the orgiastic materialism, that will inevitably follow if people don't, you know, have a orientation towards the most high. That's what my Tuesday looks like. Yeah. And fractionated immaturity, Matt. So, you know, you already had postmodernists or idiots, right? Now you've got the atheists. They're all immature and materialist or geastic individuals worshipping golden cows.

That's definitely what atheists are often doing. He says that. And then John Verviki says, oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. It's like, oh, you agree with that? It's like, yeah. So I just want to point that out because sometimes people say, you know,

Oh, Verviki, he's much more reasonable than Jordan Peterson. But in these conversations, he never, ever pushes back at Jordan Peterson when he makes statements like this, this sweeping generalization that is basically casting everybody that isn't religious

in a particular way that Jordan Peterson thinks is good as being these immature, you know, in the moment focused head, invests. And John Vivek is like, yep, yep, that's spot on Jordan. And Jordan even seems surprised like, oh, you agree? Yeah, okay, okay. Like, let's move on then. And yeah, worth noting. Yeah. Worth noting. Because, yeah, I mean, I do think, I guess my impression is John Vovacchi's coming from a different direction, but he is incredibly agreeable and we'll go along with pretty much anything. Jordan Peterson, yeah, would like to take him. Yeah.

Right. Now, Matt, Jordan Hall, he's been a bit quiet. He hasn't had much of it. The poor guy, I mean, he spoke so much. The last time we covered the three sense makers together, Jordan Haw was dominating a conversation. And he's hardly had a chance here because he's with two big cahooners. But now he's got a chance to shine. He's going to add something.

He does. So, you know, he added something when he explained that conscience is hearing a sort of note in a song and recognizing it is that emotional feeling. He's going to have a go now with normativity. So that's here what Jordan Hall defines normativity as. I think we can ground it concretely and make it really simple. Just think about an infant that's learning how to pick up a P. There's a whole complex of feedback loops that are going on orienting towards particular, in this case, goal.

But the ability to be able to discern what random articulation of neuromuscular activity, coordinating hand, brain, eye, towards an increasing capacity to actually engage in depth perception, and everything else, produces the desired effect, that extremely complex, subtle and continuous field of feedback loops and constraints that produces the capacity to move through reality to achieve a goal, that's normative. Governed by the law of continuity

or the infinitesimal, like all the way continuous, like a continuous wave. Ethics is what happens when you endeavor to actually re-articulate that governed by the law of, let's say, the digital. I can re-articulate semantically ethics. I can take your norms, your norms have a field effect of continuity.

There's something about them which has a, how do you say it right? They're irreducible. You cannot actually break them apart. They're always available to respond to the reality that you're in because they are developed in complex relationship with reality. Ethics takes a snapshot, just like when I'm digitizing a wave and sound. It takes a snapshot of it. It reproduces that in a semantic form that allows us to actually do things like look at it.

Okay, so what would you say given that definition? So I think I've developed a parallel notion of that conceptual framework. Have me, I like that. There's the Jordan Hall we know and love. He's letting his freak flag fly. He really got a roll on there. He was spinning. He had those multiple plates spinning in the air there. So there you go. Now we know what normativity is. He's explained it in good concrete, everyday terms, using nice, simple example that we can all understand. Are you clear about what normativity is now?

Straightforward terms. Straightforward terms. Like, why would Jordan Hall use a simple word when a more appropriate, technical, complex word would be much better? So he does give a concrete example of a child picking up a P, which the first time I heard it, I thought he was referring to like the linguistic thing of, you know, learning to make the sound. But yeah, I forgot that he says neuromuscular activity.

You are forgiven. You are forgiven. The incredibly dense way in which he explains it. It's like, it's an understandable mistake. But it is hard. It is a little bit hard to understand how that's related to normativity. So, I mean, let's, should we just remind ourselves, like, what does normativity mean to normal people? And the philosophical one, remember, is just how things ought to be, just, you know, what's correct and right.

And for psychology, it's what you said, which is what is customary, what is standard, basically according to the norms of a society. What's that got to do with a child reaching to grasp a pee? Well, Ma, it's the ability to the certain what random articulation of neuromuscular activity, accordingly. hand brain, eye movement leads to an increasing capacity to actually engage in death perception. So, like, I understand what he's describing there. I understand how, you know, we develop and are able to orientate ourselves through the world.

But he seems to be doing the sense of making a thing of talking about, you know, the same thing that we're talking about in the competition. I'm going to be charitable to Jordan Hall. And I think what is doing there, I think he's got a, he's got a, he's got a very unnecessary example of, yeah, you know, error correction, right? So you have, you have feedback loops like he said, you know what I mean? Yeah. Coordination of hand-eye stuff. There's feedback loops and control mechanisms involved. So for him, this is a perfect analogy for conscience, because conscience is a kind of control mechanism, an inhibitory mechanism that

helps you steer yourself. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what he was getting at. But I really love how he took that and he likes that he liked this kind of continuous adjustment continuously and then he got into the law of continuity in the infinite decimals and a continuous wave and so ethics is is actually what you do when you take a snapshot of that so the like like lived experience of being normative which is god and you're soft all sides good it's just constant controls like jazz and you're flowing and you're dancing and you're moving towards you know, the thing. But when you stop and try to talk about it like they are, it's like you've, you've taken that dance and you've put it, it's like a fly that's been encased in

amber and now it's static. And now you break it apart and you talk about it with words and that's what they're doing now. Yeah, yeah. Well, and Jordan Hall, one of the things he likes to do is reference technical terms from the realm of technology. So he talks about digitizing waves and sounds and he you know sometimes it will refer as like let's double click on that so that's one of his unique characteristics as yeah making reference to the world of technology oh yeah he's seeing great metaphors here with like analog versus digital and yeah derivatives and continuous functions and yeah yeah well i i think you're you're doing well there matt that was a good articulation of what he's attempting to describe i think jordan people

Peterson gets a little bit more confused than you or I did with this. So here's Jordan Hall attempting to connect it to what Jordan Peterson was talking about. And then listen to Jordan Peterson's response. Also to your notion of the profit and the political. At the political, we are now an aggregate of things that are not actually part of an integrated whole. And therefore, we're governed by consensus, which is what happens when you try to simulate a hole in an aggregate. in the category of actually being in communion governed by the profit,

we are in fact a well-integrated whole and therefore no longer governed by an aggregate or by politics. Yes, okay, yes, that's, okay, that's exactly what I think that story indicates. Yeah, okay. So that's like... Did it sound like he was completely convinced

that it sounded a bit like he was like, right? Yes, yeah, okay. I mean, I can't blame Jordan Peterson. I have sympathy for him because, like, Yeah, he's like, what I'm not quite sure what to do with that. But, you know, Chris, this is a bit of a tangent. But, you know, we know something of Jordan Hall and the other sense makers. Yeah, there's kind of this bit of a dark and enlightenment political dimension to it.

And, you know, this did remind me of it a little bit because, you know, prophet is in charge of everything. He's commuting with God. Everyone does what the prophet says. They're an integrated, unified whole. opposed to this messy arguing in debate that comes around when when the populace is kind of figuring things out with themselves. You know, you have factions and you have people with different ideas. They all kind of like the other one better, don't they? Oh yeah, yeah, the top down,

the charismatic leader delivering the truth from the higher principles from God. Yes, they do like that a bit more. And I think you might hear echoes in this. various parts of this conversation. But, you know, in general, what we have been hearing so far is since speaking jazz, there's been the Omega rule as being in effect. People have been, yes, and then, they've been, maybe we should define this. And yes, everybody's, you know, trying to grab their part of the conversation pie. So that is happening.

Some people are sometimes losing their ability to articulate their second or third point that they had promised to do. But this next little bit where they're continuing. about that topic, right? But I think this is a good illustration of when, since speaking, the friction about the kind of narcissistic focus on your framing starts to bump up against the other person. So listen to this interaction between the two Jordans and see if I'm being overly sensitive or not. Yes. Okay. Yes. That's okay. That's exactly what I think that story indicates. Yeah, and so then that vertical orientation, that's symbolized in the Exodus story by

Mount Sinai. And then what happens when the commandments are delivered, they're delivered in a context of a much wider range of rules, right? So there's like these macro rules that are really foundational, and then a bunch of micro rules that are more situational. And it's, what seems to happen is that the revelation is something, in your language, that would be the translation of the normative to the ethical. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, so, okay, so you think that. Did you know of the relationship between that and what happened at Mount Sinai?

Yes. Okay, okay, okay, okay. It's not something that people generally know, so it was worth asking. Something might be interesting to add is just to think about the next step, vis-a-vis Moses. was i was i wrong like have i been unfair by needling just a little bit of a friction of the conversation what are you are you skeptical or maybe jordan hole really has really thought about the sermon on the mouth as much as jordan peterson or what just that it's that particular thing where you know jordan's like right yeah yeah so this connects the

verticality, right? And Exodus once in a night, let's spend more time on that. And Jordan Hall's like, yeah, yeah. And then he reframes what Jordan Hall was saying into an analogy around the things

that he prefers. And Jordan Hall's like, yeah, that's right. And he's like, so you made that connection yourself? Yeah, yeah. And then it's like, okay, good, because you know, most people wouldn't have made that connection. No, yeah, I mean, all right.

What about Moses, vis-a-vis Moses? Vis-a-vis Moses. I like that. Yeah, so I just detected a note there where there was like a little bit of a translation error going on, and they were, you know, they're good sense speakers, so they're trying to say yes on, but Jordan pulling it so abruptly back to verticality,

introduced just more friction than there usually is. Yeah, yeah. I think Jordan Hill tries to salvage things a little bit by... Oh. Yeah, I think you can illustrate it. I've got to illustrate it beautifully. And it kind of speaks to what you were talking about, you know, the dark Enlightenment politics because so Moses, right, you know, vis-a-vis Moses.

What about Moses? Because remember, Moses was brought up in and trained in the most executive situation humanity is ever produced. Pharaonic Egypt is an executive. And I mean this in terms of commander-in-chief executive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so one might imagine that when he finally ex- He was a slave at the same time, because he was Hebrew.

So he has a full understanding of that entire hierarchy. Yeah, yeah, he's got the whole hierarchy, yeah. That he would naturally default back to an executive form of leadership when he moves into being responsible for governing according to these rules. He would move the rules into a legislative function. he adopts the executive function. But he doesn't do that. He adopts the judge function.

And the judge operates by means of norms first, laws second. Even the common law. Like, I think about how the common law works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. What would a reasonable man do? This is a question that is actually hitting you the whole system. Well, yeah, and so there's something also that's fascinating about that. Because if you two have a dispute that you can't settle,

you're lacking a superordinate structure that unites two different, narratives, let's say. Yeah. And if I impose a narrative structure on you, if it's an imposition, it's going to be fragile. I'm going to have to feel my way between your dispute and find a superordinate principle that you can't better. Yep.

Right? And unless you accept that is valid, like, and that would be, unless it's in accordance with your conscience and your calling maybe, it's going to fragment the first time it's stress tested. Well, that's what I, but, I think, this is very close to the point I wanted to bake was that for me the normative it doesn't just encompass the moral because for example for you to get the common thing between Jordan and I you have to get first of all a shared meaning structure yes we're both and I don't

mean just semantic meaning I mean embodied embodied meaning that that can be my is, you know, sense-speaking poetry. You've got like a biblical story with reinterpreted in an insanely idiosyncratic way, which even the internal logic, which we might spend some time on, doesn't make a huge amount of sense. You've got another sense speaker trying to translate it

into a way that connects to their interest, right, about like negotiating and, again, a vertical structure of a superordinate beliefs that you agree with. And then the third sound speaker coming out at the end and saying, well, that relates to the way I was talking about normativity, right? Maybe we could turn to that? So it's, oh, it's so good. Because, like, one thing for me was Jordan Hall said that the pharaohs in Egypt, that society was like the super executive, the most executive society that's ever, which is an unusual way to put. but it's an unusual way to put it and by the way they talk about all of these things like

you know the moses come to hill and telling everyone what to do right never have to follow the law and stuff like that but in but in jordan's world none of that is a lot of power right like power is bad right that's what postmodern the word power no you can't use that right you talk about executives and stuff and uh you know but it's like he's he's a judge or something so it's so it's different and it's good yeah Like, the funny thing was Jordan for a fact in that was just not helpful that story because he was like, yeah, so the pharaohs were executive, but he was a slave, right? He was a Hebrew. And I think Jordan Hall is like, yes.

So he had a whole, he understood the whole society, right? Because he was a. So good, good incorporation of that thing, which is completely counter to the notion that he would adopt the executive mode. Because like Jordan's point was well, but he's not. not in that mode. And then then George Hall says, and this, but there's two things that are in here there. It's first, he doesn't adopt the executive function.

He exams the judge function. Now, some people might say that an executive issuing decrees and laws that must be followed is somewhat similar to like a judge, right, the ultimate judge. Like that you might say that. But you might be like, well, but a judge is just translating laws. But Jordan Hall throws a kerbola because he's like, and as a judge, of course, he's not about law. He's primarily about norms. Yeah.

Laws are secondary to judges. It's norms first, laws. Yeah. Yeah. And then your brain just gets bent into a pretzel trying to try to. Yeah. So I think the argument is Moses. adopted a judge-based rule system.

Yep, yeah. But we shouldn't understand judges to be about laws, even though Moses, you know, the most associated with it's the tech of it. And they're not executives, even though Jordan was kind of leaning that way before being corrected by Peterson. And then Jordan translates it to like,

if you're having the dispute, you have to be on the same page. Yeah, same meaning structure. you've got to all have the same semiotics or whatever and then it'll all break down because you have to have this superordinate thing that kind of, I don't know, it's pretty abstract. And then Jordan Vavaki weighs in at the end. John Vavakie.

Yeah, to bring clarity, which is that that this is all going to the point that the normative isn't just the moral or what you ought to do, it's mainly about a shared meaning structure. Yes, but the important thing, Matt, is it's not just about like semantic shared meaning. It's embodied. Embodied, right. That's different. Yeah, yeah.

So look, this kind of, I'm saying this adds a bowl to this session. It definitely does not. But this, I think, wraps up this little part of the conversation a little bit. And you'll get to hear various elements come in. So why don't I let John Verveke, you know, like elaborate a little bit more and see where this leads us? So the reason why I think of normativity as a broader notion is it includes this idea of connectedness to what's real, meaning that I think is actually more foundational than our moral decisions. Our moral decisions, I think, are ultimately regulated by what we find meaningly most real. I think that's what ultimately

orientes us because you need some touchstone that tells you well how do I know when this is true how do I know when this is good why touchstone because I think what we're talking about is what's the metaphor is contact with reality

yeah well there's a foundational element to that there's two points it's contact and comparison so think about this our judgments of realness are right this is from Spinoza basically you like think about when you're waking up you're in this small world and you're in the dream

right and then you wake up to a bigger world and from that bigger world you can see the limitations and the biases of the smaller world and you judge the bigger world to be more real than this is what people mean when they want to be connected to something larger than themselves that's more real right so that's interesting

that that's upward of course it is yeah of course it is I like John Finnisson's always scanning for any way this could be connected to verticality It's so funny He's just like

Yeah you get And that's like pointing up right I also like the interjection of Why touch story Why that word Well, because the thing about there is when there's a touchstone, there's a contact, there is a reality, and there is a point in which you find a contact with a foundation that anchors you into reality that is most meaningfully, most meaningful.

Yeah, there's a larger explanation. Here's the word touchstone. I wasn't going to play about it, but you forced my hand. So, you know, you give what you said there is just, Like, that's only beginning to scratch the surface. Well, they know it's a case because they make a contrast to comparison. So notice that I use the length of the stick to explain the length of the shadow, not the length of the shadow to explain the length of the stick.

One thing explains the other. One is a source of intelligibility for the other, and it's not reversed. So we judge things in terms of a comparative contrast of increased realness. and that is a matter of like you have to you have to do this you have to transform that's what you're saying earlier jordan you have to transform you you have to wake up like ultimately the truths are not truths that you can get to without having undergone transformation yeah so the touchstone is it's a transformation of of the axiomatic assumptions on which that viewpoint are based as far as i can tell can you believe that Good Friday and Easter are just around the corner.

These are the most important holidays in Christianity. Don't play the ad. But the ads do elevate, I think, the whole discussion. I know. I know. It's so, but there about you got, you know, the touchstone is the transformation of the axiomatic assumption of which viewpoints are biased as far as Jordan can tell. So remember everyone, we're still, the shuttle and stick, we're still defining

normativity we're still getting to grips with this thing having departed from any meaningful thing um normativity to remind people as well is john vervetki's contribution to what is conscience right what's conscience and that is important because conscience is related to the vertical hierarchy of violence which is the very reason you're having this conversation with these two guys, which is the whole point of this. This whole journey we've been on is based on why are we talking? Why are we doing this?

I like that the whole company is why are we doing this? But it's also got to do with a baby grasping a pee. Oh, we should have forget the baby. What it really boils down to. Yeah. So I've already forgotten that there are like. about three segues in that last bit, and I forgot them the first two.

Don't worry, Matt. I'll take you alone because Verviki has a correction to offer. But if you want to find out what the correction is, you will have to wait till the next episode. Because we realized that while recording this, this is such a dense journey through

the thicket of sand speaking that it wouldn't be fair to overload every one of our listeners' brains. with the full trek in one voyage. So we're going to give you a little break here, you know, try and digest the ideas that you've got so far. Yeah.

And this is part one of our sense speaking voyage. Part two will be coming before too long. So, you know, try and take time to, yeah, you know, reflect on what you've heard here today and what you've learned. Yeah, spend some time processing it. Yeah, just process that for a while.

Sit with it. A lot of nuggets of, truth in there um did you want to give any impressions any any any thoughts any any any summary like how are you big big i mean i i find it impressive that they are able to create this hermetically sealed little conceptual bubble and they can start off with with nothing they can start off with pose a question like literally nothing like literally nothing except words and then kind of define those words in such a way that they have no connection

to any, you know, prior definitions of these words, really. And then they sort of, they hermetically seal their little world and then play around with it. Start, you know, start defining those words and connecting them to other things. Yes, they have all the greatest hits, the parables and the psychology and the metaphors about positioning yourself and so on. And, yeah, they create like a little, like, world garden for themselves to play. And I find that that's why I kind of find it. art because I find it kind of amazing that anyone can do this.

Well, the bit that gets to me is what you emphasize there, that they're essentially just running down different definitions of words, like their own idiosyncratic ones, and they are connected to concepts that exist. Like, they very, very often reference other thinkers. Now, I would call what they're doing performative. If you were more charitable, you would refer to them. giving due credit. But, I mean, they will often reference a concept or a thinker, a philosopher, a psychologist, a writer, some, you know, important figure from intellectual history.

And then they speak to how this word that this person uses relates to their understanding of this topic and it's connected to the definition that they've developed of this word. And then they'll go down the road for a little bit with that word and then another one will interject a word and someone will say, well, why did you use that word? And we'll start going down, you know, the definitions of that. But underneath it, I do think there is a coherent thing. It's not particularly profound, right? But Jordan Peterson is constantly trying to connect things to the Bible, to religiosity,

and to this notion that there is a vertical system of values, value hierarchy, if you will, and, you know, the kind of Christian self-sacrifice story is at the top. That's what he always wants to bring up, always bring it back to all of the various vignettes and stories are always related to that. Jordan Hall, on the other hand, is like kind of just, you know, making references to technology and insights that he's developed from, you know, his ability to be polymathic, in different respects. And yes, he does have his own little ideas about things, right?

And they're a little bit dark enlightenment. But primarily he's there to sense make in the purest form. And Verviki is more attached to this very verbose, self-helpy, dense philosophical self-reflection and kind of religious hand-wringing as well, right? but with references to Eastern traditions, martial arts, and Plato, and a couple of other figures that he likes. So they do have a kind of core thesis that they're returning to. And it's not incoherent to me. It seems like, you know, their definitions might not all cohere in the moment or this kind of thing. But the thematic stuff is all the same. But it's just that

they're basically just using each other as a riff to link to what they want to talk about. And their presentation is that it's all coming together and they're all informing each other's worldview and they're learning things from each other. But I don't see much evidence of that happening. I just see them like enjoying the ability to riff and just whenever possible turning things back to, you know, their set of topics that they like to discuss. And that is actually something that, you know, in general happens in conversations. But with sense makers, it's kind of turned up to 12, right, in the interactions. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Like, despite all the psychobabble and the performativity and the pseudoprown bullshit, you know,

yeah, you're right that Jordan Peterson's thesis is really. really clear. All meaning and all good things come from God. Life is a hierarchy or you need to work to be ascending it. Society is a hierarchy and, you know, we should accept that and all the bad stuff that isn't God is at the bottom and all of the secular stuff is down there. And yeah, you know, he finds lots of weird ways to kind of try to prove that point that's, you know, he's consistent. And, you know, to be fair to Vavaki, I mean, what I learned from looking into some of the words he uses and the discipline from which he comes out of, is that it's an actual topic. It's a field of academic discourse, shall we say. It was one that I have been completely

ignorant of and quite happy to be ignorant of, frankly, but this sort of seniotics, sort of signs and symbols and, you know, cognition systems and this philosophy of language. Just to be clear, why lot is the field that he plays in and there is like a whole lot of debates him right there you're not saying that you were ignorant of the notion that semiotics is a field for example or that kind of thing right you know there are plenty of very influential theorists who have like developed theories around those topics and that have influenced like yeah yeah yeah like i know that theories and whatnot like i know there's a field of sociolinguistics and F-no, what-have-you.

It's nothing I've ever studied and it's not stuff that ever seems to have any connection with the whole field of psychology that I'm really familiar with. It's not very empirical. There are people in those kind of fields who are empirically oriented and quite rigorous in lots of ways.

But the approach with your own for Vakey takes is much more like... The philosophy of it. It's like the philosophy of semiotics or something. Yeah, yeah. philosophy of science, right? Or that kind of thing. It doesn't actually until doing science. There are

philosophers of science who do science or who have like very good grasps around topics in scientific fields. And there are philosophers of science who are a bit waffly. Right. Like that's just the nature of this one. But they're not

necessarily doing science. Right? That's kind of the thing. So like, Verbeki is a cognitive scientist, not in the VN. of like doing any cognitive research. Yeah, it's just a language, the entire field, papers in it and stuff like that are. Like, there's no connection to anything that I've ever studied

and anything that I know about it. But I just want to acknowledge that it, like, it does exist. He's not making these words up. He's not making up the names of these people up. It's a real thing. No, no. But you're Jordan Peterson. No, but Jordan Peterson's references are more basic, I feel.

Well, yeah, just, I think, like, that's the difference is, like, Verveki is referencing a specialized discipline language that he's more familiar of. But Jordan Peterson's references are, you know, towards Jungian philosophy and comparative religious studies and this kind of thing. So they're all just drawing from the well of a given name. You find John Verveke is more impressive? No, I don't find it impressive. I mean, it's not impressive.

it's just I mean I don't like it like this is my own prejudice my own personal whatever but that entire field of academia and in my mind I know it's not postmodernism like they're a different crowd

doing different things a different way but they're kind of the same to me like they're writing you know turgid incredibly dense non-empirical manuscripts that are

you know and they're kind of doing sense-making in the academic literature. And so I just want to really be clear that this is my own personal prejudice, if you're like, that stuff does not make sense to me and I don't see the point of it.

It typically makes sense to me, but I take your point about the waffling nature of it. So in any case, yeah, I mean, it's a high-level sense-making conversation about sense-speaking conversation. This is something that sense-makers seem to need to do periodically. But, you know, if you were doing a biological study of the sans-speaking ecosystem, you might note that periodically, sense-speakers must return in groups of three or more

and discuss the nature of sans-speaking. And then they're okay for a little while. Now, you know, Chris, I think I told this before, but when I was an undergrad, there was a studying psychology, there was a bunch of compulsory subjects we had to take, right? And there was one stream of subjects. I think the first one was called interpersonal communication. the other one was group facilitation, blah-di-blah, something, whatever, right?

But what it actually was, and this was this weird little stream. Again, it didn't seem to have any connection to the rest of the psychology that I studied. But it seemed to be, like, I'm not kidding when I say the workshops were exactly like this in the sense that they would schedule these three-hour workshops. And when I say a workshop, it was just a classroom where you sat down. And they would make a big deal about how the topic was like nothing. But what we're going to do is spend the entire three hours reflecting on the process and the nature of the conversation. And it drove everyone absolutely mental and people complained.

And there were a lot of like toxic, like you put people under that stress and you make them very bored for an hour and a half. And you kind of force them to say things. And some students would sort of, there was just basically, they encouraged unhealthy dynamics so that they could analyze them. anyway it was incredibly futile and I despised it everything about it and I've never really figured out because I was just a kid I was just an undergraduate student I just got through those subjects and then forgot about them immediately so if anyone has a background in psychology and suffered through similar bullshit I'd appreciate yeah let me know remind me of what this stream of research of not research or what this subfield of psychology is because I've never encountered it again

except sort of second end through this kind of shit and uh and shaking like i know just like burn it with fire man like that stuff needs to be gotten rid of don't put any more undergraduates through that nonsense what a waste of time well the last thing i'll say about this you know this little break we're taking people should keep in mind that we've discussed the vertical hierarchy in the vertical dimension conscience what worthwhile what that relates to quests, what a quest might be, the unifying meta narrative

and voluntary self-sacrifice, normativity, ideals, and we're going to go some other places. There's more words that we'll get. And I do understand that for listeners, people that like this, right?

These are all big concepts. And the way they talk about them is like they're constantly building something. They're constructing this very important analytical structure, which explains a lot of things and it's got a lot of concepts, right? So if somebody says,

what was this conversation about and you say, well, it's about consciousness and conscience and normativity and what ideals are and what goals are, right? Like, it's all big concepts, but it's, it actually is more like a nested doll of just,

like recursive, recursive self-referential definitions and has claims. Yes. That's how I'll describe it. And the important thing is, like, that kind of conceptual dialogos, I think the fact remains and it's undeniable is that they don't really get anywhere with it. You'll notice all of those topics they start to define it,

but then they get distracted by another word and they move on to that and they segue to the next thing. So I don't feel that they accomplish what they set out to. Or I would say that where we are now is exactly where they were at the beginning. They all hold the same definitions as they did in the same kind of focuses. They might have heard like a new analogy that they can use or whatever, but like there isn't an up to it in the perspectives, right? Like it's just Jordan Peterson started this conversation

believing that everything is about the vertical hierarchy and references the Bible. And he's going to leave the conversation believing that too. So like the notion that there's something very important being discussed and discovered in this. conversation only applies insofar as everyone involved already knows that they're right. And it's just other people confirming that they are right through different things that they've learned to prove it. Yeah, the structure of it is just endless elaboration on

stuff they already believe. Yeah, there's no revision or any forward progress, I don't think. But, you know, that's true of some fields in academia too, I think. Yeah, well, we'll see how they free met. in the second part of the conversation. But yeah, this is good, Matt. We'll give people a little rest now. You know, go, as we say, mold things over and be prepared for when you come back. And we'll do the shout outs for everyone and all that kind of stuff, you know,

at the end of the second episode. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. And for the really brave people, if you listen to this, where the second part has already released, just jump straight in. Just go ahead.

Off you go. Another two hours. Enjoy it. See you. All right. Well, bye bye-bye. Bye.

Thank you.