Decoding the Gurus - Dawkins vs. Peterson: There Be Dragons

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

In this special episode, we return to the forboding Dragon's Den of the Peterson-verse and enjoy a rather punchy conversation between Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, facilitated by Alex O'Connor.As always, the discussion is dense with abstract symbolic interpretations, evasive answers to direct questions about biblical events, and highly speculative claims. So Matt and Chris don their best decoding armour, steel their resolve, and prepare to face down endless waves of indulgent analogies and the constant conflation of mythological and scientific truths.Important insights from Matt on American public toilets, shower technology, and stories of Chris' previous life as a coal-shovelling street urchin are also included.LinksDawkins vs Peterson: Memes & Archetypes | Alex O’Connor Moderates | EP 491The Times: We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan Peterson review — rambling, hectoring and madThe Guardian: We Who Wrestle With God by Jordan Peterson review – a culture warrior out of his depth

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist look at the biggest online e-jits and try to work out what the hell they're talking about. That's my adjusted intro, Matt, because this is a special episode. It's not a real. It is a kind of regular decoding. You don't know what's going on, but it's a little impromptu episode. It's a mini decoding. Ma, I'm in need of is it.

Wait, no, no, no. You told me this was a grometer episode. No, no, no, no. I told you many things. I thought you made things. But one you many things, but one of the things that I also said was before we do the grometer, we have something else. This is something else. You know what it is, but I'll remind you about it momentarily. But before that, before I let you in on the secret that all the listeners know because they've seen the title. You're still in America, Matt. You're still traveling around. You're the modern-day Lawrence

of Arabia. Was he someone that traveled around in foreign land? He did travel. Okay. All right. I'm just like, is he a terrible figure from history or whatever? You're the modern-day Kublai Khan rampaging through the Chinese countryside. Now, so you're in America. You've given some of your observations. We know a lot of things about burgers and fried chicken, a little bit about squirrels, Americans being kin of Australians, but a bit more. What else have you got? What have you got?

Well, first of all, I got to give a shout out. I just remembered to some fabulous patrons, decoders who met up with me in St. Louis, and we went to an extremely cool jazz bar and heard some very cool jazz, had cocktails, food, drinks, had a good old chat and it was good. I think we all had a nice time. Yeah. Of course, Matt, you massage parasocial bonds and you as the, you know,

locus of attention, we're just showered with free drink, free food, hugs, sexual fever. I could have done with a hug. Yeah. No, I wasn't the center of attention. We're just, yeah, that was good. Enjoyed myself a lot. And St. Louis generally, Chris, it's a hidden gem. It's a cool town.

I like the vibe there. I mean, yes, parts of it are in disrepair and there is a homeless problem, but that's true of I think pretty much every American city. But not every American city has St. Louis' vibe. It's cool. So you were giving- Wait, no, no, you don't need to remind me. I remember.

So Chris, Chris, Chris, let me ask you a question. So in jelly old Belfast, in Ireland, in the shower and bath, often they're combined, right? And you'll have some way of controlling the hot and cold water. Explain to me, how does it look like for you? Tell me the tap situation. In the UK, the traditional way was that you have two taps, a hot and a cold, and that you adjust them so that the kind of combination is correct. So like you can turn the cold up and turn the hot up independently,

but they come together in a pipe and then the mixture gives you the temperature. Right, that's the traditional way. And you have two sets, right? One for the bath and one for the shower, right? have, you have two sets, right? One for the bath and one for the shower, right? Uh, no, you have the thing that you pull that makes the water go up in the shower or down through.

Oh, oh, so you've got it. You've got things in common with the American way. Yeah. Well, anyway, this is one of my gripes. This is one of my gripes. I never had a problem with this in Japan, but in America, maybe it's American motels, I think. But one, so one, it doesn't work like that, right? A lot of it's like one, it's always random. So sometimes you make the water come on just by like pulling the tap thing out. And sometimes the water

comes on by turning the knob around. But in all cases, the thing that makes the water comes on by turning the knob around, but in all cases, the thing that makes the water go from the bath up to the shower is going to be something else. And it could be like a little knob that you pull out somewhere, or it could be sometimes it's on the end of the tap, you're going to pull the thing on the tap down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or it's some other random... The thing is, it's always different. It never works properly. Like there's still water coming out of the bath thing

when it's meant to be coming out of the shower thing. And it reminds me of... I was at the zoo at St. Louis, and it's like they have these tasks, like these enrichment activities for the, for the animals that I feel like it's one of those. So it's a very frustrating, unfulfilling enrichment activity. And well, yeah, like an escape room, you know, you have to work on this.

This is true though. I will also say that that is the traditional bath shower combination system, but more recently it has taken the form that there is like a thing installed, which is separate. And that modern houses in Ireland have dedicated showers now that are not just re-routing tap water. I'm OK with new things. I'm OK with things being different, but they should work.

And it shouldn't be different every time. I do remember, you know, for most of my childhood as well, taps in Northern Ireland had hot and cold, hot and cold taps, but that meant that one tap was, you know, cold water, which is fine. But the other tap was like scalding hot water. And unlike what happens in other countries where they put those two together and there's one outlet, right? So you can kind of control. In the UK, it was actually that there was like- Oh, two taps. Two outlets. So you needed to like mix the water in your hands to prevent spawning. Yeah, I don't understand why that system was ever like, I mean,

it seems like a technological limitation that can be overcome by simply extending a metal pipe into the connecting. So, yeah, but that I realized when you were going to someone's house and it was a bit more fancy, they would have like a single tap, right, where it could turn to control the temperature, which is the normal situation ever else. But yeah, but then I was like, it doesn't make sense. Why do we have a scalping hot tap? It's so strange. I thought that's what you were going to reference, but no, America isn't that bad. No, it's not that bad.

I think, I think the takeaway is that just water bathing culture is extremely weird everywhere in the world and dysfunctional in the motels and hotels in the U S except for Japan, Japan has their shit worked out. Yeah. I have another gripe though, Chris. Do you want to hear my other gripe? Yeah, but we, before you tell the other gripe, because you'll probably be thematically unconnected, I just want to check something.

It is thematically unconnected. When I was a young boy in, in Belfast, right? Back in the days of the Troubles. Were you in short, were you still in short pants? You had your leather shoes. I was too cold over there for that. But I, I shoveled coal in the back of my house. Were you a chimney sweep at any point?

No. We had a coal bunker where there was coal and I went out with a shovel and filled up a bucket and took it into the house and then we, you know, lit the fire with the coal. Is that something that Australians are aware of or did? Cause like I've since, I've not found many people that I've encountered anywhere else who shoveled coal when they were young, but like, yeah, they make no coal because of Santa, but they've never like actually interacted with coal. And yeah,

like it was a task that you had to do. Like what? Wow. Yeah. No, no. Tancy Christian, I've never interacted with coal and I don't really want to. We even had a, at one point, the central heating system where the fire heated up the something and then that's what made the, you know, or it helped. I don't know if it specifically did it or it helped anyway, the radiators come on. What's it like having a coal? So you had a, did you have a coal fireplace or a coal boiler? Yeah, I had a coal fireplace, a chimney.

And like, what was it like having, what's it like having a coal fire rather than a wood fire? Cause I've got a, I've got a wood place at home, even though I don't really need one. But it's pretty good. I like that as a kid because it was like, you made a big fire and the coal turned red and you could poke it with the poker. We had like a metal knight beside like a suit of armor, but not the full size one, just like a little tiny mini man. And if you pulled his head open, there was poker and implements for moving coal around. So that was like very entertaining. And there was one that was like two little hands,

like a tool. So I liked it. Yeah, that was like my fun activity was poking around with the fire. But I feel like I kind of street her from Oliver Twist. Yeah, it does feel like from another era. I associate coal with Dickens, the Victorian era. Yeah. How about that? Well, okay, my other gripe, Chris, is that America has a thing about public toilets. Have you ever been to the US? Have you ever struggled to find a public toilet?

Matt, listen, I know you're going to go on about the trans bathroom bills and whatnot, but just don't get so political, man. Every day you're talking about. No. Yeah. What about public restrooms? There's no controversy. I imagine. I think it's incredibly ironic that America is the epicenter for a big debate about, you know, differential access for trans people to bathrooms or whatever, when they should sort their shit out and actually get some public bathrooms first. They're basically aren't any, get some public bathrooms first. They basically aren't any, not by Australian standards, right? In an Australian city you can't go 20 meters without running into a public bathroom. They're just everywhere. I think the Australian government and municipal councils are just, you know, afraid of

Australians just pissing in the street everywhere, but that's clearly not a fear that American governments have. Basically, every establishment will have a sign saying, no public bathrooms. In fact, if you go to the United States, you'll get one clear message, which is that you cannot use the bathroom and there aren't really any public ones. I think by objective metrics, America isn't any more or less capitalist really than Australia. Maybe a bit more. Maybe it's ahead on points, but it's not so different. But culturally, Chris, culturally, there is definitely a zeitgeist. You feel it, which is that there's nothing for free, very little for free. You pay for everything.

Health care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think toilets, they should make, I get it, okay, museums, art galleries, public parks, all that stuff, you want to charge entry, you're not going to provide that free to people. You can make different choices. But I think with toilets, I think you're really shooting yourself in the foot there. You know what I mean? You want people to go to the toilet in a toilet. Like that's something it's a win for everyone. Like we all lose, don't we?

When somebody I live that I remember. Yeah. But so I would imagine this is just my perhaps bigoted image, but is that public toilets in Australia are not fun places to be, not particularly well maintained, or that would be my assumption. Is that true? Or are they like luxurious places that are very hygienic and well kept? I think there's a spectrum, but I think, no, I think they're perfectly fine. They're perfectly fine.

Your prejudice, your prejudice, Chris is unfounded. It's just ignorance. And your part, I have to say. Generally not good, just to be clear. Not good. There's, they live up to the stereotype of what you would expect. Japanese public toilets on the other hand, pretty good. Pretty good.

Pretty good. And most people, visitors, I think, don't fully appreciate that almost every convenience store has a toilet. Oh my God. That is the secret code. That's also where all the bins are for people visiting Japan, wondering where the bins are. They're in the convenience stores. Like even not only that you will not find them in a convenience store in the US,

but even in a restaurant, let's say a subway, imagine a little subway restaurant. Even if you buy something, often the toilet will be locked. There'll be a passcode. They won't tell you the code or anything. They'll give you the key. They actually have to stop what they're doing, go over there to let you in. Oh, and let you in? Yeah.

They are locked down, man. It's because you can see how it happens right because the less public toilets there are the more desirable public toilets or toilets of any kind become and Then the more they're gonna get like Sean's told me stories scary stories about McDonald's Which I think is one of the few places where you can actually use the toilet and because it's the only toilet for like miles Around it's it's a only toilet for like miles around, it's a disaster zone that you wouldn't want to go there. It's terrible. So it's an escalating problem where the toilets become more and more locked down, the more desirable they become. I see. I see how it goes. Well, those are good insights, Matt, and that's the kind of anthropological information that

we like to hear, hear the good and the good. I appreciate this and I think our listeners know us both a little better now. They understand our backgrounds, our struggles, various experiences we've had, hot and cold times, digging cold, looking for toilets. Life is suffering. I think we've covered all the essential necessities. Getting clean, getting warm, and going to the toilet. That's the one we haven't got yet, but we've covered that in other episodes.

Now, Matt, just before we start, for those who are visually aided on this episode, Matt is in the position of a teenage girl speaking to his crush on the phone. That's because of where he needs to put his microphone. So if you see his feet wandering in the background, he's not unusually limber. He's horizontally aligned. Okay. So that's just the idea, just to give some visual information to people. Noi, why I've convened this meeting of the Decoding the Guru's Podcast is, Matt, that we have some content that we didn't get to. It was clipped. It was put into a folder. it was on the to-do list and it fell away over time. It got lost. Some things that were, should not have been forgotten. I see.

A lot of memory. I know of the secret of which you speak, but I don't actually. What is it? What is it? Well, let me play a clip and let's see if it will jog your memory. Your precious will flash back to you. Two gurus, Matt, a crossover. And I would prioritize my perceptions like this. The fact that I care about are the fact

that are true and have evidence going for them. And I'm not that interested in symbols. I think, Dr. Peterson, you're drunk on symbols. Yes, you mentioned, I've heard that comment, yeah. Yes. I mean, for example, I counted up in your book, We Who Wrestle With God, the number of references to Cain. There are 356 references to Cain in the book

and 20 references to the descendants of Cain. You're obsessed with Cain because Cain is symbolic of evil. All the evil in the world, you more or less blame Cain for. And this is, Cain, I mean, you don't believe Cain actually existed, I presume. Well, I think of Cain as, well... Dawkins and Peterson. Mmm, yes.

They had a meeting of the minds courtesy of Alex O'Connor, cosmic skeptic. And there was some amusing exchanges like that one that we just heard. You heard Dawkins repeat his line, which he'd said before about Peterson being drunk on symbols. But he's actually done a bit more homework this time. You know, he has. Counted up the number of references to Cain and he's, he seems to be in a punchy mood, you're, you're obsessed with Cain.

Um, and yeah. Yeah. Um, that's good. So, so Chris, tell me how did Jordan Peterson respond to that? Cause I liked that. That was a shot across the bow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, does Jordan Peterson believe that Cain existed? Do you believe Cain existed? I think the pattern that Cain represents is an eternal pattern. Oh, yes. That's different.

And so it's a higher level of existence. That's different. I realise that. Well, there are Cain types who exist, and they're very well-known. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are Cain types, but Cain himself, I mean, you give the game away where you say in your book, Cain and Abel were the first humans to be born in the natural way. Now, that betrays you, as as if we're pretending you think they really existed, because you wouldn't have said they were born in a natural way unless you were muddling up facts with symbols there because you don't think that that Cain and Abel existed

Well, I don't what do I think about Cain and Abel? I said I think the pattern that they represent always exists always exists always exists. Always exists. You understand that that's a different thing? What's the difference? A pattern that they represent, the conflict between brothers, the rivalry between brothers. This is a fundamental pattern, which yes, it's something that's there. But I care about facts.

I mean, did they exist or did they not exist? Well, I can imagine a situation where, when the story was originated, that it referred to two actual brothers, but as the stories propagate across time, as they mutate, as they adapt, let's say, to the structure of human memory, they deepen and they become broader. And so then they become emblematic, not only of the pattern of conflict that might characterize the original two brothers that the story was about, but about the conflict between

brothers as such and then the more fundamental levels of conflict that exist within human beings, which is what you see in more sophisticated literature. Well, I thought he did a pretty good defense there actually to his, you know, to give him credit. He's quite there actually to give him credit. He's quite consistent there. He doesn't know for sure whether or not these two individuals existed. It may well be that they were a real couple that these legends were based on, but the point about legends is that they're legends. To some degree, it doesn't matter whether or not, you know, Troy really existed and, you know, Achilles did these things, right? You can argue that the important thing is, is that how it sort of, that it changes and molds as it's told and retold and becomes this sort of archetypal thing or fits whatever

the, like the way human brains like to remember things or the stories that we like to tell ourselves. So, I mean, he's at least being frank, I think, which is that what he cares about is the symbolism that and he does believe in a Jungian way that that stories that are retold a lot or even written down in these scriptures written down because they describe like a groove in the human mind, right? Yeah, he is. But I also feel that it's clear what Dawkins is asking him. And it's also clear what he doesn could quite easily say, well, look, I think they're symbolically very powerful. And, you know, well or not, they're actually where actual brothers, I have no idea. But obviously, the story, the elements of the story, which are fantastical are unlikely to be

accurate. Right. That would be easy to say, but not easy for Peterson, right, because he likes to muddle. And actually, Alex O'Connor, to his credit, highlights this. Professor Dawkins, I know you take particular umbrage with that statement that Cain and Abel were the first normally born human beings. But I think if I understand Dr. Peterson correctly, there are things that can be sort of true within a story. It's true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street. And as far as I understand, that's maybe what you mean by the truth in the matter of Cain and

Abel being the first naturally born human. It's internal to our story. Well, in the context of this story, they're the first two spirits or patterns you could think of, patterns of perception and action that characterize human existence in the fallen world. So they're emblematic of what happens in history outside of whatever is meant by the pre-existent paradise. At the same time, you must know, I know this comes up all the time when somebody says, but did Cain and Abel really exist? And I know that you want to say that the story which they...

I think it's a silly question. I think it's like asking whether Raskolnikov existed in Crime and Punishment. Like it's not a trivial question because you can answer yes and you can answer no. You can say, well, there was no such specific person as Raskolnikov, but it's not a helpful question because the reason that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

is a masterpiece is because R reason that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece is because Raskolnikov was everywhere in Russia when Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment. And so Raskolnikov is hyper real, not not real. But to be clear, is that how you feel about Cain and Abel? That is to say, an identifiable hyper real homo sapiens called Cain who murders his brother. In a sense, it's irrelevant to me because even if they were real, we don't know anything about them as historical figures. Well, of course they weren't.

Even if they weren't, of course they weren't. It's painful, isn't it? Because I think what Dawkins said at the beginning is very true, right? That he's addicted to symbols, just loves the symbols, and doesn't really think about things being true or not. It's odd though, he mentions the literary characters like Raskolnikov, and that's a very easy question to answer. You can ask whether Raskolnikov was a real person,

you can say, no, he was a fictional character in a Dostoevsky novel. It's very simple. So it can be fine to care about symbols and go, Hey, all I care about is the, is, is the sort of personality that was represented by Raskolnikov. But you could still say that's the main thing I care about, but also be very clear that it's, it's a literary fiction. Right?

Yeah. But he, so Peterson can't, that's the thing. He often draws the analogy to fiction, to say, well, but fiction, isn't it true that King Lear is this archetype that has existed throughout history? And is he less significant than some actual person that existed in history. Well, no, that's a different point. Can literary creations be powerful symbols or representations? And everyone's answer would be, sure. Of course, there can be famous literary figures who never existed that are very influential on cultures, like arguably God. Let me put this to you, Chris.

I think the reason why he can't answer that clearly and directly is that he has to pay attention to the real Christians. There are a lot of real Christians out there who do believe, like literally, in large elements of the Bible. And if he goes around saying, oh no, they're all just a metaphors to things, then he's really burned his bridges with proper Christians. And they're a big part of his constituency, right? He's not going to want to be doing that. Yeah.

I mean, that is possibly true. But I also think about that part of it is just that Peterson only cares about his own perspective. Like he, he isn't fundamentally interested in the kinds of questions and criticisms that Dawkins finds interesting, right? And the same way that Dawkins is not interested in his dance symbolic interpretation. And you can hear it in this exchange related to the Virgin Perf.

Professor Dawkins has asked quite directly that we still haven't really heard an answer. Okay, okay. And Professor Dawkins is asking about the Virgin Birth. You started talking about metaphor, you started talking about myth. I think anybody listening to this conversation will understand that maybe a society that doesn't believe in the virgin birth won't work. Maybe

that's the predictive power that you're talking about. But I think you must understand that when Professor Dawkins is asking you, do you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, he means something like a biological fact. And by the way, saying I don't know or saying, I'm not qualified to comment is an answer to that question. But is that your answer that you don't know? I said earlier, and I would hold to this, is that there are elements of the text that I don't know how to, that I'm incapable of fully accounting for. I can't account for what the fundamental reality and significance of the notion of the resurrection is. My knowledge

just ends. Sure. I know that whatever happened as a consequence of the origination and the promotion of the Christian story was powerful enough to bring Rome to its knees and demolish the pagan enterprise. So there's some power in that story that's remarkable. Let's stick to the Virgin Birth. Yes. Well, the Virgin Birth results from a mistranslation of Isaiah.

You know that. Like these sorts of questions, it's, what would you say? They don't strike me as, they're not getting to the point. I know the thing. The story has a purpose. Well, and look, I understand that there's perfect reasons to debate this. I know that. And I know that your question is more than valid, but it's beside the issue as far as

I'm concerned. Well, he's not like a politician. He just doesn't want to answer a question, right? Yeah, he does sound like that. You know, and Alex O'Connor had success, right? You know, when he got Jordan by saying, like, if there was a camcorder outside the tomb, would it record a physical person walking out of the tomb, right? He managed to get him eventually to say, probably yes,

probably he believes in the physical resurrection. And here it seems similar. Jordan is such a tortured soul because it should be very easy to answer directly here that I believe that the virgin birth might have happened or I don't think it actually happened but I think it is like an important motif in the story. Either one is perfectly fine, right? That you have faith that it happened, that you don't know, but you think something mysterious occurred or you don't actually think it physically occurred. But, you know, the story is very powerful. All very straightforward answers.

Like Dawkins isn't here trying to argue, well, that's a completely incoherent thing. He just wants to highlight that one point of view is like a supernatural belief, right? Which he thinks is impossible, but Peterson is just unwilling to stick out of position. He wants to exist in this like quantum indeterminacy of what he's actually arguing. No, I hear what you're saying because where it started was Dawkins wanted to make the original point, which is that Dawkins is a concrete, non-allegorical, non-metaphorical person who just wants to talk about things that really happened and are happening. And he just wanted to contrast the way he looks at the world with how Jordan Peterson absolutely

does look at the world, which is very like a Jungian set of stories and archetypes and so on. Yeah. Right? Symbols. But I'm just curious. I'm legitimately curious because I agree with what you said. Jordan just won't have it.

Like he won't accept the premise. He won't put himself in the, oh, I'm the symbols guy and you're the reality guy. Yeah, like you said, he exists in a quantum state of indeterminacy. But I don't know, I mean, I did have the thought that he doesn't want to sort of alienate proper Christians who would be a large part of his fans. But I think what you said is right. He actually doesn't want to give up that ground, right? He wants to say that actually, and I'm remembering now from our first episode where we covered him, where he's very explicit. He would say that the material world kind of emerges out of this symbolic soup. More fundamental. Yeah.

Like more fundamental underlying substrate, the logos, whatever it is, right? Yeah. And that part is really mental. Yeah. Yeah. But so he gets, he does get pressed on this more. I kind of appreciate that they ducked on it, so here's him trying to clarify, self-defeatingly in a way, but listen. It's like, how do you make a case on purely factual grounds that women should be treated as equals? It's a moral question. I know, that's exactly...

I was dealing with a factual question, which is, did Jesus have a father? And you won't answer it. It's a different kind of question. Well, Jesus had a father and a heavenly father, like almost all mythological heroes. So he wasn't born of a virgin then? So you're saying that Jesus was not born of a virgin? I said first of all that I don't know how to mediate the fact, value dichotomy in that case. I said the same thing about the resurrection. It's not a value, it's a simple fact. I mean, did a man have intercourse with Mary

and produce Jesus? That's a factual question. It's not a value question. You must understand what we're being asked here, that even if you think that, say, the author of the biblical texts intended much more significance than a simple scientific analysis of events. Professor Dawkins is interested in scientific truth. That's the kind of truth that he's interested in. And even if you think it's irrelevant to the point of what the gospel authors were getting at, that first needs to be clarified before you can then begin actually uncovering what the stories are about. They're making a good dovet.

They're doing their best. Most people would have given up by now with Jordan. But this is, I think this is actually fairly pathetic from Jordan, the response here, because there, right, you heard Dawkins say, but like Jordan, just answer me this, you know, is your claim that Mary produced Jesus without having intercourse with a man, right? That's that is a simple thing to, and you can, you can still talk about all the interpretations, all the physical things, but Dawkins wants to know, do you believe that is possible, right? And then he goes silent and Alex clarifies, like, even if you think this is a stupid question, you understand that, right?

Like you, you understand what people, you're, you a stupid question, you understand that, right? But you understand what people, you are in other parts of the world, we're saying. And let's see what is the result of this. Here's Jordan's response. Let's take a scientific approach. Ask the question, did this occur? I think that it's inappropriate to use a question like that to attempt to undermine the validity of the entire, what would you say, deep mythological enterprise. Well, suppose we weren't doing that.

I think it's foolish. Suppose we were asking out of interest. Suppose that we were all here devout Christians, maybe even Jungian Christians, and we thought, this is interesting, over dinner, do you think it really happened, like scientifically? Would your answer just be, I don't know? Yes. And you wouldn't consider it, I mean, it's not an inappropriate question to ask just on a point of interest.

Right. Did this really occur? And I think so often people are asking you that, and especially given the context of this conversation, we've heard everything that you're saying about metaphor and myths. But because the question is still then being asked, did it really happen? You know that that's what you're being asked. And the way you just so easily said yes, I wonder why you struggle to do that in so many other circumstances.

I think because I don't look at the situation the same. The way that Dr. Dawkins and I look at the situation are really quite different and at many, many, many levels. You know, so even on the meme question, for example, you know, like, I know the literature on the history of religious ideas. I see how these ideas have battled across millennia in a manner that is very reminiscent to me of the same sort of claim that Dr. Dawkins

is putting forward with regards to meme. I know that literature. Dr. Dawkins doesn't know that literature. It's very difficult for me to communicate from within the conf I know that literature. Dr. Dawkins doesn't know that literature. It's very difficult for me to communicate from within the confines of that literature because it's extensive and deep. And we're dealing with things that we don't understand the relationship between metaphoric truth and value predicated truth and factual truth. We don't understand that. It's a big problem. We cannot, there's no evidence whatsoever from

the scientific perspective that we can orient ourselves in the world merely in consequence of the facts. And that's a fact. And it's a fact that's been detailed out in great detail in the last 60 years by people from a variety of different disciplines. Yeah, kind of exhausting, isn't it, to hear him? Like, I feel like I've seen this a few times recently, Chris, which is that guru approach when they're on the back foot, they're feeling a bit in a bit of a weak position. They take the front foot, they go into that full butter butter butter mode, you know, usually changing the topic, switching around,

go on the offense, and it's like the squid jetting ink. And I feel like that's what he was doing there, do you? Yeah, because Alex did the thing again of setting up like a contrived hypothetical and got him to answer relatively straightforwardly. Would you just say that you don't know? Yes. And okay, but you don't think it's a legitimate question. Why didn't you just say that you don't know? Yes. And, okay, but you don't think it's a legitimate question.

Why didn't you just say that before? You could have avoided this whole thing. So that's the answer, right? Like, but then that doesn't seem particularly profound or deep or complicated. So then he launches into this verbose, like extended diatribe about the different perspectives and the meaning of truth. And I think that Peterson appeals to fairly consistently in this conversation is that he knows this literature, Matt, about, you know, the study of religion or comparative

religious research and these kind of like approaches, which Dawkins doesn't know. And it's a deep literature. And that's what my PhD is in. And Peterson's grappling with that literature is incredibly superficial. And it is exactly like his approach to everything, which is vibe based and drawing these large conclusions by just referencing ideas that he likes and people who said something.

Like he is a postmodern interpretivist, symbolic theologian kind of guy, right? He is not in any way this hard-nosed empiricist that he likes to present himself. And he's not even a careful theologian, right? No, and he's not. But his reference, you know, like if you appreciated this literature, you would understand and kind of agree with the profundity of his approach to things. And I know that literature very well. And I think that Peterson is a charlatan, right?

Like he is just a waffly windbag. And it's not that he doesn't know anything, but it is that his approach to everything is this dense interpretivist, symbolic-laden, jargon-laden thing to make everything seem deeper and more profound. But most of it is just Jordan weaving his interpretive webs. And that's all there is. The depth that exists there is purely in Jordan's perception. And that's why he can have lots of fun with people like Peugeot or Vervecky because they're willing to indulge him.

But if you're not willing to indulge him, Dawkins is not really indulging him in this conversation. It doesn't go anywhere because this is what happens when the yes and is missing. Yeah, yeah, when the yes and is missing. Yeah, when the yes and is missing. Who's that physicist who is famous for giving good, clear explanations of complex things? Oh, Richard Feynman. Feynman, yeah.

Early on, he described people like Jordan Peterson as like anti-Feynman. Yeah. Because they are. Because theology, yes, it's like, it's like history, right? There's a lot of details in there, but it's, it's not that fucking complicated. Really? Like if it's not as complex, not as hard to wrap your head around as physics, no

offense to you, Chris, and your discipline, but you know, Jordan Peterson and people like him, what they do is they do the opposite of making things clear. They, they make things complicated. They inject a the opposite of making things clear. They make things complicated, they inject a whole bunch of unnecessary jargon, they obfuscate and they just throw so much mud in the water too. Because what they want to do is wonder at the ineffable mysteries. They don't want to be challenged on any of the points where none of it is self-consistent or doesn't make sense. And they just want to drift off and yes, and each other to build those castles in the sky. And yeah, like you're saying, it's a very unsatisfying conversation when it's with

people that don't play along. Yeah. Well, and this is why, like, if you think I've been unfair to Peterson, look at his conversations with Brett Weinstein, right? Somebody who is definitely on the crank end of things. But when they have a conversation and they can combine lineage theory and Jordan's symbolic maps of meaning interpretation and the logos, they are constantly saying, that helps me develop that fills in a gap in my own theory, right? Because that's what they are. They're like cosplay academics or philosophers. It's purely vibe based.

And another point, Matt, that like has come up anytime that we're dealing with these kind of content is that, you know, you have these lofty conversations about the logos and the philosophical meaning of the virgin birth and discussions over what scientific truth is. And they're often interrupted by more mundane concerns. And there was quite a stark example here. So remember, this is on Jordan's platform, right? The predictions of quantum theory, to come back to that, the predictions of quantum theory, which are verified to, the predictions of quantum theory which are verified to a

sufficient number of decimal places that it's equivalent to predicting the width of North America to one hair's breadth. Now, that is, however difficult quantum theory is to understand, that is what you can get from quantum theory. Now, the mysteries of the Bible, if they are mysteries, aren't in the same league. I mean, they just don't cut it. Attention men who still believe in the American dream. In a world gone mad, the Precision Five from Jeremy's Razors stands as a beacon of sanity. Five Blades, a superior engineering offer,

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She was unshakable as your fear that the nation's best as she was unshakable as your faith that the nation's best dates are. It's no these anti woke products are a fucking joke. Like it's it's so horrendously on the nose. And it just reminded me when this play that like for Dawkins and Alex O'Connor and whatnot, you have to also recognize this is partly what it's about. This is the content mill for the Daily Wire and them to sell their Jeremy's madly conservative razors to their audience. So all this talk about the logos and quantum entanglement and how and quantum entanglement and high A8 applies and then interrupted by, are you a godfaring American who loves freedom?

Then buy this product. I think it's worth just remembering that's in there. Yeah. I mean, the context of the Daily Wire, Chris, you remember before I was talking to you about this crazy crank, Chris Langan, L-A-N-G-A-N. Now, he's supposedly the self-proclaimed world's smartest man with a self-proclaimed IQ of around 200. Basically, he's a crank and a charlatan. He's got his own theory of physics, but he also like the sense makers and everything. And like Jordan Peterson, he obfuscates, makes it all very

complicated. It's all very abstract and all of this physics stuff is connected with God and meaning and truth and all of these things. He was featured on a really long interview with the Daily Wire and they never released it in the end because it was just too stupid. But that's the type of- How do you know? Well, I think he actually complained and actually got the rights to it and he released it himself. I've seen parts of it. Yeah.

Wow. That's impressive. So another point, Math, after that slight diversion. So you heard Dino Dalkin's trying to argue, look, science predicts things. Cause you know, Peterson is saying, well, quantum theory is complex and counterintuitive. So, you know, people would have called that impossible. They understand that, you know, the Bible also has these, right. And Dawkins is not going along with this because he's saying, no, they

produce different outcomes, right. And here's Jordan's attempt to argue, as he often does, that doing science is itself a Christian endeavor. I've heard that before. This is partly what I've done while trying to make the case, for example, that you're more of a Christian than you think you are. So for example, I think that the scientific enterprise is motivated by the axiomatic presumption that truth tends

towards a unity. I think that it's predicated on the notion that there is a logical order that's intrinsic to the cosmos, that that fundamental order is good, that it's intelligible to human beings, and that discovering that order and aligning ourselves with it makes for life more abundant. I think that the scientific enterprise is also predicated on the idea that the truth will set you free, and I think all of those axioms are religious and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. And if you don't believe that, you have to account for why science emerged in Europe and nowhere else

in the entire history of humanity, for example, and why it's also why it's under assault from like all quarters now as that underlying metaphysics disappears. Like you don't have you haven't had to be concerned with the mythological substrate in your lifetime in some sense because it was intact. And so the universities could flourish and you had your freedom, remarkable freedom to pursue your scientific enterprise wherever you wanted and people lauded you for it. Like that time is, that time is threatened and seriously so and I think it's partly because these metaphysical assumptions have now become questionable and that's part of the reason that I'm attending to them. Matt, there's two points I just want to make quickly here. One is exactly what you said that like Peterson's perception of the world is fundamentally mystical and religious, right?

Like he believes there's some pulsating life force underpinning reality, which is under attack and can become corrupted. And this filters out into the institutions and the everyday experiences. It's a kind of comic book perception of reality and fundamentally mystical. On top of that, you also have him decrying the laws of science. Now it's under attack from all quarters and people are no longer respecting scientists. And because of people like him, and because of all of the charlatans and cranks that his ecosystem lords and promotes, Jordan Peterson is a climate science crank.

He is also an anti-vaccine crank. He is not somebody that is defending the values of truth and science. No, and his output is postmodern theological waffle. So he is one of the barbarians at the gate, but he's presenting himself here as the stalwart defender of the scientific method and like empirical truth. And no, you are not, you're a conspiracy theorist and you know, a postmodern kind of interpretive freak. Yeah. And he's, he's one of the most vocal supporters of the absolutely ridiculous

team of clowns that Trump is bringing into power in the United States at the moment, with Dr. Oz being the latest clown to emerge from the clown car, Chris. Yeah, remember, he described them as the dream team, right? The RFK Jr., for example, he lauded as such an important, significant thinker. Every crank that you can come across,

Peterson has endorsed. So it's so hypocritical. And what did you think of his arguments there, Chris, about science being fundamentally grounded in Judeo-Christian? It reminded me of the book we read, Dominion, by Tom Holland. It's a similar kind of argument, right? Tom Holland's argument wasn't that bad in Tom Holland's defense. I didn't necessarily buy it, but I don't think it was as stupid as Jordan Peterson's. Not entirely, but I mean, he did basically make the same argument that believing that there is truth and that you should have humanistic values or whatever is fundamentally Christian and it could only emerge in the Christian context where there was a God man who came and was humbled and all. You remember like he had this very...

Okay. But okay, I got to maybe, this is a sidetrack, but just defending Tom Holland a little bit, like, I've viewed it as more like a, he was tracing a historical sort of set of events, right? And he was making an argument that, you know, that shift through Protestantism, right? And revealed truth and faith and whatever. It didn't sound, doesn't sound very sciencey, and it's not. But what it did is it kind of set the stage for a certain kind of free intellectual inquiry that was, it's not rather than just following the teachings of the Catholic Church and so on. So you have the Reformation leading to the enlightenment and so on. And I think just as a purely set

of very contingent historical dominos, one could put together a bit of a case there. I'm not saying I support it, I'm just saying it's not stupid. Whereas I see what Jordan Peters is doing is saying that it's fundamentally, you know, he's saying that science is built on Christianity, which is like philosophically, theoretically, whatever. In its deepest sense, it is like an expression, theoretically, whatever, in its deepest sense, it is like an expression of Christianity. And that's, that's not what, yeah. I think Tom Holt isn't as far away from that as you might suggest, but in any case, I think they both suffered the same lack of reference to examples that contradict their thesis, right? Like Jordan Peterson saying,

there was no science anywhere in the world except the Western Judeo-Christian traditions. No, there was. There's plenty of antecedents to modern science throughout history in different cultures. You can see scientific observations and people applying elements of the modern scientific method, right? It didn't arrive all at once and it didn't arrive in Christian nations all at once either. So there's ancient Chinese history that has like elements. There's Greek, there's, you know, people doing medical observations and whatnot. And yes, it's not modern science. Modern science is a particular instantiation, but just it speaks

to either cross-cultural illiteracy or very selective reading of history to argue that science has never existed outside the Western Judeo-Christian world. Does Judeo-Christian include Islam? Because I was going to cite the Islamic examples as counter examples, but then I thought, hang on, is that included in the- Well, usually they say Abrahamic when they want to include Islam, right? Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, those are the Abrahamic. I think Judeo-Christian is Jewish Christian, but- Yeah.

Yeah. But the point you made, Chris, is that the things that Jordan Peterson raised there, which is that, you know, like an inherent belief that there is order to the universe, the inherent belief that it's understandable, right? that it is coherent and all of that stuff. I mean, that was absolutely something. These were convictions held by pagans, yeah, pagan Greeks. Oh, yeah, yeah. For many hundreds of years, right? And so anything that the modern scientific method added to that, right, which turned out to be a big deal, practically speaking.

But philosophically, like in the sort of terms that Jordan Peterson is talking about, not so different really. You can think of the modern scientific stuff as a set of principles of testable predictions and things like that, going about it in a more systematic way. But it isn't sort of philosophically much different from what was happening in other cultures. So yeah, I think it's very silly, basically. I was just curious whether... I'll also note, Matt, that the low Paganism is associated with nature,

worship, traditions in Europe. It also became a catch-all term for all non-Christian beliefs. Right? You're a Pagan or you're... If you're a Christian believing the wrong thing, you're a heretic. But so Jordan saying paganism was defeated. Not exactly Jordan. Look around the world. Plenty of non-Christian traditions still exist. It still exerts influence. If you're talking about the specific Druids in Europe, they lost ground. And science is happening just fine in places like Japan and China, right? It's working. Japanese scientists don't seem to be struggling with the concept. That's because they can't embrace the logos, Matt.

That's because they're willing to. But that's how someone like Jordan would deal with any of those points. You just rise to a higher layer of abstraction, which is that they've absorbed a fundamental logos. Well, now, Matt, you know, one thing that we've noticed with a lot of gurus is that they're willing to listen to themselves speak for long tracks of time, and they don't seem to mind if the other people are not being given ample time to respond.

They sometimes trade monologues, but on other occasions people don't have an issue going on a long monologue, then somebody attempting to respond to the monologue and then cutting them off to start another monologue. The appetite to hear your own words recited seems insatiable in the gurus sphere. And just listen to Jordan Peterson, what he suggests here that like Alex and Dawkins should do. Part of the problem with discussions like this is that the mode of approach that's taken by the mythological tends to circle and wander.

Like it doesn't, because you have to shine light on the problem from multiple perspectives. That's why it's often encoded in image, for example, or in drama. It's not the same tack as a purely propositional and logical argument. So it's more difficult to make. But let me tell you a story that I believe bears

on the resurrection. You tell me what you think about it, because this is a very difficult story to account for. It's going to take me about five minutes, because it's complicated. But there's no way around it, I don't think. So, there's a strange scene in the Gospels where Christ tells his followers that unless he's lifted up like the bronze serpent in the … There can be no hope for the redemption of mankind unless he's lifted up like the bronze serpent. There can be no hope for the redemption of mankind unless he's lifted up like the bronze serpent in the desert. Okay, this is a very strange thing for someone to say.

And so, Matt, he's going to go on about a very long-winded kind talking about serpents and portrayals of serpents and all this kind of thing. But it's just that willingness to, you know, to say to other people, well, I'm going to I'm just going to talk about a long winded example for six minutes, but I think it's important. And you're like, well, but what if we what if we don't want to listen to your dragon story for six minutes? What Peter said, it's like, oh, it's very important that I go. And at the end of it,

it isn't important, right? It is him just relating, you know, a symbolically dense story and saying, oh, and that's very mysterious. And they then go back to the discussion. I just think that level of self-indulgence is really telling. Well, it's really, yeah, it's incredibly disrespectful and childish basically too. Yeah. You know, it's really, yeah, it's incredibly disrespectful and childish basically too. Yeah. You know, it's, it's the childish level of indulgence. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a weird social situation where people like Dawkins or whoever's sitting on the other side of that just have to sit there and listen and be patient,

just bide their time. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Matt, we heard when the conversation with Verveki, and we've heard it whenever Jordan talks with Pajol as well, high grandiose conversation is, right? The sense makers, they're word worshipers, acolytes of the conversation. This is their holy sacrament. And just like his point that he was making at the moment, which was that his kind of

allegorical truth is different from scientific truths because, you know, it meanders around and it's symbolic and it's done through images because that's the shine light on all different areas. And you can't judge it by the same kind of criteria that you are judging your scientific theories, right? That was the point that he was making. And it's funny that like Jordan Peterson doesn't know this, but what he's doing is he's reprising the exact same arguments that lefty, postmodern, discursive, humanities and philosophy, continental probably, type people have been making

making to justify their academic methodologies and argue that they're valid to the more sciencey ones. And whatever you think about that argument, it's just funny that Jordan Peterson, I think, doesn't really know what he is, right? Because like you said, he is right there in the postmodern humanities thing. And he doesn't, and just like them, just like the postmodernists he hates, and that's not really postmodernists, like he calls them postmodernists, but you know who I'm talking about. It's more of a methodology, a qualitative type of discursive approach to research. So it's really just an argument of methodology, but I just think it's funny that he has no awareness that he's on the same team as the activist that he hates.

Well, he does on occasion mention that they got some things right, but then say they're wrong because they're not grounded in empirical evolutionary insights like he is. And you're like, I don't think you're as grounded as you think you think. So anyway, this is him waxing lyrical about conversations and about how Dawkins maybe doesn't appreciate how important the conversation that they're having is. Well, I don't know why it would drag the divine down into the realm of the mundane, if we're speaking of something like the straight narrow path of harmony between multiple modes of being, I don't think it doesn't make any difference to me whether it's the material reaching upward or the divine descending downward. I don't think there's any difference between those two things.

Well, you don't. That's exactly right. That's the problem. You don't see the difference. Well, look at it this way. So, for example, in this conversation, you know this to be the case. Like, there's various ways that this conversation could go sideways, right? Seriously. Like, we could... either of us could try to win. Either of us could try to demonstrate our intellectual superiority, right? Each of us could misrepresent the other. Or we could both try, and I do think we are in fact trying that, and I think Alex is helping along with that just fine, we could try to follow the thread of the

exploratory truth and see if we could get somewhere. Now, I don't think there is any difference between that, by the way, and what's expressed in the biblical text as the spirit of the logos. That's why we have dialogue. I'm very interested in the possibility that truths emerge through evolving manuscripts. It does seem like people that cross purposes but you know Jordan there in true sense maker fashion, being like the most important thing is that we can have this conversation. Have this moment. That's right. This magical moment of dialectic. You know, it sounds like we're butting our heads up against each other, but what's really happening is something quite

beautiful. Like it reminds me of when one of those sense makers came on our show to talk to us. Oh yeah, Jimmy Will. Yeah, Jimmy Will. And we've experienced it with other people too, which is that the instinct is to sort of draw you in. You know, like we're in this together in this wonderful pursuit and we're really on the same side, aren't we? And yeah, and the fact is when, especially when he's talking to someone like Richard Dawkins, despite them having a little bit of overlap and being the fuddy-duddies and edgy work time common ground, they really have no other common ground at all. Like they they look at these things that they consider to be important completely differently and have essentially no truck with each other's points of view.

But that's not the sense maker way, right? It's not the Omega principle. No. And to highlight that difference, Matt, you remember Dawkins got this coverage for saying it was a cultural question, which he's pretty much always said since his earliest writings. But in any case, Jordan obviously attaches extreme significance to this. And Dawkins asked him, why do you think that's important? And listen to their difference about, you know, the interpretation of what he said.

Well, it seemed to me that your proclamation that you were a cultural Christian was a recognition and a statement that you had found something in the culture that had been derived from Christianity that you had an affinity with, and that there's some reason for that. And one of the things I wanted to ask you is, well, what do you think that Christianity got right that allows you to make a statement like that? I mean, I know that there's differences, perhaps, in what we both think about the ultimate veracity of the biblical stories.

Maybe there isn't differences. Like, it would take a lot of conversations to figure this out. But what did you mean by that? Like, what do you think that Christianity got right that would enable you to make a statement like that? Virtually nothing. I meant by that no more than that I'm brought up in a Christian culture. I went to Christian schools, I therefore know my way around the Bible, I know my way around the Book of Common Prayer,

I know the hymns. That's all. I don't value Christianity as a truth system at all. Okay, so let me ask you about that, because maybe that's true and perhaps it's not. Yeah, that's so funny that he's pitting so many hopes on that statement, because, you know, I remember him saying that many, and, you know, that's what I'd say myself too. Like as an Australian, I'm culturally Christian influenced, and because, you know, religion is just interwoven with history and culture and it comes through in all kinds of ways that are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes indifferent, right?

But it's just part of the weave and the weft of the fabric of our cultures. And that's what I took Dawkins to mean too. So that was a nice reply. Yeah. And you know, it does remind me, Matt, that I remember back in my innocent teenage years that I had a friend, shall we say, who was Thai. And we were spending time together and they were mentioning that they're Buddhist. But at the time in my naive state, I was a kind of Sam Harris Buddhist aficionado. So I was like, Buddhism means introspective practices. It means like kind of knowing the four churfs and being

interested in, you know, the teachings of the Buddha and whatnot. And my friend didn't display any of those characteristics, right? No meditative practice, no real interest in the the philosophical precepts or whatever of Buddhism. And what they meant, of course, was they were raised in a Buddhist country. They went to Buddhist temples, they did Buddhist rituals, they respected Buddhist monks, and this kind of thing. And of course, as I became less of an obnoxious shit, I realized that is what being Buddhist is. And that person understands Buddhism more fundamentally than a Westerner who has been introduced to Buddhist modernism and gone on meditation retreats and read polytext or

that kind of thing. They grew up in a culture completely suffused by Buddhism and the tradition and you know, the kind of motifs and whatnot. So it is perfectly reasonable and accurate for them to describe themselves as a Buddhist person because their culture and country is influenced by Buddhism. And that's what Dawkins is also describing like as a cultural Christian. That's what you're talking about, right? And it's accurate. But Peterson wants to say, ah, so if you recognize that, then, you know, you recognize something fundamental about like how that resonates and how that demonstrates it's true.

And you're like, no, it speaks to where I was brought up and influences that I culturally have, right? It doesn't mean that there's a special unique part of Buddhism or Christianity that resonates with me. That is what I was raised and that has influenced me because it's in the culture that I grew up in. And that's what Dawkins says, you know, like I, I went to Christian schools. I hear hymns. I know Christian holidays. That's what I mean by I'm a cultural Christian, but Peterson's like, but maybe it means more than that, Richard.

Maybe there's something more, right? Yeah. Well, he didn't get, didn't get anywhere with that point, that entry point. Well, so the last point, Matt, and this is the point of this conversation that hit the popular discourse was this exchange about dragons and the biology of dragons. That was the part where Peterson said he's going to go into this extended discussion, right. And he ends up talking about defeating dragons and what it means and whatnot. And here's a bit of that. The dragon fight story is explore the dangerous unknown, discover the treasure that revitalizes

the community. There's no difference between that and the science that you practice. They're the same thing. What do you think of that? Same story. I don't know what to make of that. I mean, you say they're the same story. You've analogized the dragon fight to fighting Satan. How many dragons have you overcome in your life? I'm not interested in dragons.

I'm interested in reality. OK. So let's, OK. So I read a book a while back that described the biological reality of the dragon. You say, well, there's no such thing as a dragon. It's like, okay, is there such a thing as a predator? Of course. Well, that's a meta category.

What's the category of predator? Bear, eagle, if you're a primate, fire? Is fire a predator? Well, it's complicated because a fire kills you. Okay, so is there a worse predator than serpentine, flying, fire breathing reptile? Is that not the imagistic equivalent of predator? So in what way, if predator is real, in what way isn't Dragon real? It doesn't take that much imagination to see the identity. And then wouldn't the fundamental task of edible primates be to figure out how to overcome

the Dragon forever? I think you got another really good insight into the way Jordan thinks with that exchange, Chris. Yeah. And what did you think about? Were you convinced dragons as archetypes of predators and fire? Is fire a predator? Well, I keep getting stuck on the little details. Like he called it a meta category.

I don't know. I think, what's the difference between a category and a meta category? It wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't the category of predators just be a simple category? But anyway, I think they just, he adds little flourishes there. So yeah, like basically, you know, this reminds me of when we were decoding Peugeot, because this is very pageau right if there's a word for a thing if there's a concept of a thing then that thing is real it's it's a real thing and if you are overcome if predators need to be overcome yeah follow the logic here if predators need to be overcome and overcoming you know you need to overcome things when you do science, you need to overcome challenges and stuff, then aren't you really defeating dragons?

Because dragons are a predator? It's that kind of reasoning that they use again and again and again. And the little objects of their pseudo logic are things like categories of predators and dragons and Devils and what were the spirits that Peugeot was super keen on? Oh Yeah Daemons daemons and daemons and he was interested in but but also there was the aggregars. Oh Agregores, thank you. Agregores. Yeah. Yeah so Yeah, no, no, no.

I know, I know. So like there's that again, mismatch in what they want to talk about. And there's no sense, Chris, there's, there's no sense in which, in which a dragon is less real than a bear. Right? Clearly, we've proved it by that logic. Well, it's a meta category, Mark, but so a little bit more on this. Well, what's the image? Predator as such. What's the image of that? The dragon that never disappears. And then there's a twist on that, which is so cool.

It's so interesting because you can imagine rabbit mythology, which would be something like, predator appears, freeze. But that's not the human story. The human story is predator appears, there's a treasure somewhere. Right? That's a completely different pathway of evolutionary significance. Like the way that we construe the world isn't freeze-like predator. It's like, oh, there's a predator. Maybe there's something valuable lurking in

our conflict with it. You know, our sticks and our spears that enable our fragile bodies to stand up against the dragons of the world. So a dragon is a pictorial representation of the abstracted concept of a predator. Yes. As you say, we already concept of a predator. Yes. As you say, we already have the term predator. And so it might be useful in art, in narrative to, I mean, you can't paint an abstraction. We had the image way before we had the word. Sure.

Okay. But that's a seriously important thing to understand. So rabbits have their mythology. And their mythology is that when you see a predator, you just freeze. If they evolve, Mats, if they evolve to human levels of complexity. Yes, then that would be their philosophy, their religion. He should write a science fiction book. Yeah, uplift the rabbits and see how they...

Yeah, but I'm just trying to follow his logic. Well, one, can I point out one limitation with it? So like he wants to say, you know, look, dragons in representations, they are often hoarding gold, right? And this invites us to challenge the dragon, right? Challenge the predator. So that's a very particular motif. That would only be a convincing argument if dragons across the world were presented as hoarding gold, right? And even then it's a leap, but like, of course, John doesn't care about that, right?

He only cares that you can find some illustrations of dragons and this being an archetype, but there's plenty of dragon-like creatures in other cultures that do not have the same association. No, they don't have the same association. So yeah, I mean, oh God, it's so frustrating, which is that, yeah, like they just plumb. Like they just dig into all of this cultural history and detritus, right? And it's a limitless field to dig in. And there are academics in the humanities who do something

similar. Then you just pull out these little things and then let your mind run free and see what you can do with that. He's obviously thought, wow, this is great because dragons having treasure, that speaks to this wonderful human spirit where we see adversity, we see opportunity. But it's just fantasy. He's just constructing fiction. I know. Because we're prehistoric humans not hunting predators or large geom before they had dragon webs. The hippies don't seem to illustrate dragons protecting treasures. No, the cave pageants are all of bison for some reason. I don't know why, but it's mainly bison. It's like this is such a fundamental important thing in order to motivate people to like challenge

and you know move forward with human spirit, but it's a very specific cultural representation at the same time. And the fundamental components of it are not entirely wrong. The notion that humans have an interest in predator-like things, that we find them arresting, that young children like monsters, things with sharp teeth and claws that, yes, these would appear in our representations. Yes, that's true. But it's what Jordan layers on top of that. And it's essentially, you know, he wants to say that St. George slain the dragon is of foundational importance to civilization, the function. And you're like, maybe not. Maybe like, you know, maybe it's just a random story.

Yeah. Somebody killing a bear or somebody slaying a golden goose or whatever. The thing might be like, yes, there are more motifs that you can extract for them. And there are often moral lessons embedded in like, you know, popular stories. But just Jordan is in love, as Dawkins says, with symbolism, and he's more in love with his interpretation of that. Well, that's the thing. Well, for me, the thing that's popping up to me is really like the difference in the way he thinks is that there's no skepticism. Like, you know, scientific, I think good critical thinking and scientific thinking,

very similar, has like two modes, right? You have one mode where you go, okay, well, let me see if I can think of some explanations for things. Let's theorize together. Let's hypothesize. And then you go, okay, well, that's a nice idea. I like the sound of that, right? After you've, you know, you've talked about a few of them, you've discussed them with everyone. Let's go and see if we can poke some holes in that. Let's see if we can test it, right? And you could poke holes in it, what logically, right? You could just pull up counter examples like you were doing just there, just show some skepticism, and then you might chuck it. And then if you can't poke any holes of it in it with your mind, then you go, okay, well, this seems to bear fruit. Let's go and really test it more systematically.

So there's that, there's that skepticism phase. And that's the thing with, you know, Dawkins may have his faults, but he has got that style of thinking. Jordan Peterson in common with the sense makers doesn't have that second capacity. He just likes the first bit because the first bit's really fun. Right. And you don't even have to, you know, show any skepticism or whatever. You just run with it and you just talk with other people who will guess and you and go,

yes, that sounds great. Let me expand on that. Yeah, that's what it is. It's just a profusion of creativity, but it's not art. It's like a mixture of art and science and ending up with this mess. One of the things I've always felt strongly about for many years is that I've long before I even thought about Jordan Peterson is that I love artistic pursuits. I love creative pursuits. I like abstract art, jazz, the crazier the better. And I've always liked evolutionary biology

and the various sciency aspects of my work and just for recreation and fun. Same with mathematics. But these things don't mix, you know? Not really. Yeah, there might be some kind of inspiration, cross-fertilization going on. But really, these are two different modes. And I have a real problem with people that sort of mix the two and take that kind of, well, I'm going to take like a storytelling, creative, expansive approach, but I'm going to mix it with philosophy and science and stuff where I'm purportedly talking about the real world. And where you end up is some variant of Jordan Peterson. I'm sorry. And where you end up is some variant of Jordan Peterson. I'm sorry. Hmm. Yeah, I agree. And I likewise think that these kind of interpretive flights of fantasy can be interesting and engaging, but they're not science. If they wanted to be science,

you have to, like you said, do the hard work of testing that hypothesis and looking at does that suggestion hold up when you look at world literature and don't cherry pick, but like actually say, okay, so when you see representations, you're going to see treasure of like this kind of thing. Even in that context, Matt, like an alternative, and this, if I was talking to Jordan, this could be like a, you know, a very interesting insight, but it isn't. It's just like literally an alternative suggestion, which is that in the structure of a story, when there is something like a kind of

treasure or something that you want, having the challenge that someone has to overcome in order to get it, it's just a better structure for a story. Because if the story is the person goes out and gets the treasure, they just walked and they went and got it. It's not much of a story. If they overcome trials and tribulations and are able to return triumphantly with some reward, at least has, you know, the markings of like a basic story structure. But for Peterson, he probably would acknowledge that, but then spin a, you know, a huge interpretive significance.

And in this case, he's linking that specifically to dragons, but it could just be that as a story structure that you typically find, you know, yeah. Yeah. And you can see it with any monster, right? Like Grendel, right? In Beowulf. Yeah. Not a dragon.

It's just a monster. Is he a predator? Is he a big human? I've got a problem with his ear. Yeah. And it's scary. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, but this is no critical thing.

That first thing that occurred to you, just hang on. Do all dragons have treasure? Actually, no, they don't. And actually, there are a lot of other monsters other than dragons, a lot of other predators in his mind. And it just like it falls apart the minute you actually think about it. But you could tell that Jordan never did that. He just likes it.

He liked it. And he went, okay, I'm keeping that. The first time we covered Jordan, he had this long indulgent story where he talked about how in some modern city, I can't remember where it was, but there was like a representation of Mary or some Christian art and people flocked for miles to see this painting of Mary or whatever it was. And this to Jordan indicated that even if religion had kind of faded in importance in the secular context, there was still like a deep resonance to the imagery that was drawing people there.

And they couldn't really explain it. And he doesn't for a minute, but the other thing, which I immediately did when I heard that was what about the lobster form that draws people from miles away or any other, right? You know, like famous piece of art that is abstract or like modern art that Jordan Peterson wouldn't like. Does that speak to an in-depth like the blue square or whatever, you know, that people are coming from miles to see? But Jordan only fixates on his

example. This religious art is popular, the Sagrada Familia is recognized as a wonder, therefore there's some fundamental importance being communicated there and like, no humans like grand architecture, right? Famous pieces of art attract crowds, like, but he never thinks of the counter veiling example to his faces. And when he has been presented with it in interviews on a couple of times previously, it's almost like his brain exposed for a minute because he's like, hmm, right? There's a famous example where somebody walking him through the logical steps of his argument and kind of showing that they contradict.

And then he's like, well, I guess that would be wrong, right? But it just shows that Jordan remembers these things and never thinks to challenge them. They just become kind of ensconced in his mind. And yeah, like it's a, it's a different way of reasoning, but it is not a scientific way of reasoning. And one of the many issues with Jordan is that he presents himself as a scientific thinker and he's not.

Yeah. I think, and he's not a good thinker. Like, like, you know, we've been saying, so we've been contrasting him with scientific thinking, right? But, you know, science can be defined not a good thinker. Like, you know, we've been saying, we've been contrasting him with scientific thinking, right? But, you know, science can be defined as a pretty specific pursuit. But I think kind of what's more useful to think about, just like analytic thinking, careful thinking.

Like for instance, the practice of good historians who look at explanations for events, look at whether or not this really happened or that really happened, what's the most plausible explanation for this? And they're delving through a whole bunch of evidence. So it is evidence-based. It's very careful.

It's, you know, it's not technically science, right? But I think has all of the qualities in common that I think are important. So it's just not good thinking, Chris. It's not careful. It's not critical. And yeah, so I'd just go further than saying that it's not good thinking, Chris. It's not careful. It's not critical. And yeah, so I'd just go further than saying that it's not scientific thinking. I'd say it's just bad thinking. I agree. Just one of his problems. I knew you'd agree with that.

There was a review of his new book, We Who Wrestle with God by James Marriott in The Times. And it's it's a fantastic review. It's one of the most cutting reviews I've read. It's up there in my top five reviews of all time. And let me just read a paragraph from it. The obvious problem is that if you convince yourself that every animated children's film is rich with ancient allegorical meanings, it induces a kind of symbological paranoia. Potential allegories lurk behind every tree and lamppost waiting to be interpreted. Like the madman who glimpses messages from the CIA in the clouds,

Peterson sees revelation about the intrinsic nature of being in the most banal and improbable places. This is biblical scholarship as conspiracy theory. Everything is connected. Nothing happens by chance. The snitch in the Harry Potter game Quidditch is a manifestation of the spirit Mercurius, an emissary of the dream world of the unconscious, a psycho-pump who flits on the border between the human and the divine. What if it's just a made-up magic ball game? You want to ask.

But the Bible means whatever Peterson decides he wants it to mean. And because he employs no interpretive system other than his own whim, the reader is soon overtaken with apathy. Your job is not to be persuaded or argued with, just to sit still and be instructed in the specious art of Petersonian symbology. Shoes signify class, occupation, purpose, role and destiny. Smoke is essence just to our spirit. The rainbow represents the ideally subdued community, which is the integration of the diversity of those who compose it and so on. There's more to this review, but they are correctly nailing.

It is Petersonian interpretive waffle, right? And very indulgent waffle at that. And also Rowan Williamson, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't know. I don't know the Archbishop of Canterbury, so I'll take you out for it. Do you not know him? I'm not up on my archbishops, Chris. Well, in any case, Rowan Williams is a very famous Anglican in the UK. He also wrote a review for The Guardian of it. And he basically points out that this is very shallow theology and most of it is just like Petersonian gobbledygook. He draws some analogies to literary interpretations that Peterson touches on, but his constant point is like it's very superficial engagement and it's nothing new for it, like the theologically

inclined and that it is not a marvelous new approach to this whole thing. It is just retreading old ground, but with Petersonian whimsy attached to it. And he was very unimpressed by it. Right. So you have the Times credit who regards it as super self-indulgent, like interpretive bullshit, and you have a religiously inclined fee, you know, not a religiously inclined person, you have, not a religiously inclined person. You have a feel of an archbishop. That's more than more than an inclination. Yeah. Yeah. And they too recognize

it as indulgent waffle. Yeah. Which, which of course is what we do. We're all united. We're holding hands together. The archbishop, the Times guy, you and me holding hands together, self-indulgent bullshit. I mean, it really is. It's such lazy, speculative wank, isn't it? It really does annoy me. The fact that he and Peugeot and the sense makers and the rest of them, they see such significance in it. They take it so seriously.

They feel they've accomplished so much. We who wrestle with God, Chris, when really they're just wanking. Verbally wanking. Yeah. The only thing that I say in closing is that Peterson has created a little ecosystem of orbiters, much like Destiny's orbiters or any other influencer who take his content and add to it and reflect on it. And you have Jonathan Peugeot, you have Paul Van der Kley, you have John Verveke to a certain extent, right.

And the important criteria that links them all is that they all regard Jordan as profound and they're willing to indulge the master. And that's really what happened. So Alex O'Connor can disagree with Peterson as long as he acknowledges that there's something deep and important about the conversation. And the last clip, Matt, I'll play just to finish, is that at the very end. Peterson actually makes some headway with Dawkins because he starts to lean more into memes and Jungian archetypes as potential mimetic aspects of evolutionary theory. Right.

And Dawkins is more receptive to this kind of thing. And I think, unfortunately, this is the kind of area where they could end up having an indulging conversation where there's a lot more overlap and a lot less butting of heads. So just the warned of that possibility. Listen to this. And it seems to me it's not unreasonable to note that that's the fundamental story of humanity. And so I don't understand why you're not impressed by that. I started talking about the Baldwin effect and suddenly we got into women, what women like. Well the men who act out the hieratmium are much more likely to reproduce.

It's an example, but perhaps we need to explain what the Baldwin... I was going to say, that would probably help. Yes, that would be useful. It was suggested by Baldwin, I think in the late 19th century. It's a kind of genetic assimilation of a cultural or a learned idea. So the idea is that certain animals learn things, learn a clever trick. It might be nutcracking by chimpanzees, for example, or potato washing by Japanese macaques, or opening milk bottles by English tits. And they perhaps, it perhaps spread as mimetically as an epidemic of copying and that's known to have happened with the blue tits and great tits in Britain. Now,

certain individuals are likely to learn it faster than others and there may be genetic variation in the speed with which they learn it and as the generations go by natural selection would have favored speed of learning the new trick and Eventually, they would have learned the new trick so fast. They didn't need to learn it at all, right? It becomes genetically assimilated into the genome that that's the Baldwin effect that I would say that that's essentially the same pattern of I would say that that's essentially the same pattern of archetype evolution that's implicit in the Jungian theoretical model. Well, that's very interesting because that suggests that Jungian archetypes might be genetically assimilated via the Baldwin effect.

That's a fascinating idea. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, okay. So now... I know we're coming to the end of our time soon anyway. It's nice to end on a shared point of interest, which is the Baldwin effect and the archetype's potential origin and the Baldwin effect. They go on a bit from there, but like, essentially, Peterson makes more purchase by talking about, you

know, so if people learn this cultural thing, and it could make them better at reproducing, right? Wouldn't this be a potential like mimetic evolutionary factor, right? Then he's essentially talking about like cultural evolution stuff, right? And Dawkins is more receptive to that because you're moving out of the realm of, you know, symbolically talking about dragons to talking about impacting reproductive fitness through Baldwin effects and whatnot. But it's just disappointing in a way because what you would hope is that Dawkins realizes that the level of rigor that Peterson brought

to the rest of the conversation is applying here, but maybe he's just feeling relief that he gets out of like the biology of dragons. So yeah. Yeah. It's kind of nice to at least throw some sort of bone. Hopefully it's just that because yeah, obviously like the reality is any kind of weak connection there and it's just an idea, right? It's just a speculative idea is incredibly narrow,

but Jordan Peterson would make a huge deal about it. And I could tell with conversations like this, but Jordan Peterson would like not to be at loggerheads with someone like Dawkins. Like he definitely respects Dawkins. And he does like for his model of the world to also be based in science. His original books were littered with all of these little cherry picked studies that supported various things of his.

He would very much like it to be, not necessarily agreeing on all points, but having focusing on those points of agreement and finding these connections. Dawkins is, I don't know, he's a bit like Roger Penrose these days. He's somewhat old. He's willing to talk to lots of people about all kinds of things. And I don't think he should have anything to do with this kind of thing. He should stop tweeting also. That's what I would like. You know, the other aspect of it, Matt, so after this conversation, Peterson predictably did an episode with Pajol where they discussed this conversation

and how much, you know, like Dawkins didn't really get the importance of the points that Peterson... Of course he didn't. the importance of the points that Peterson and she's just. Yeah. But also just this real tendency amongst that set to indulge themselves. Like imagine doing a podcast with someone else that fundamentally agrees with you and focusing for like 40 minutes or so on the conversation that you had and how you were right and the other person was completely wrong. It levels of indulgence that have heretofore had never been seen. But, but also, like you said, so when Brett was on stage with Dawkins and Dawkins flippantly kind of responded to his suggestions and argued they didn't

really know what he was talking about. That was the worst outcome because it indicated that Dawkins didn't take Brett seriously. And this upset Eric and Brett very much. And the same thing is here. Like Jordan doesn't mind Dawkins and him ending up in fundamental disagreement as long as they both agree that they're, you know, that having it, that they're having an important conversation, right? That they are two heavyweights here together, you know, representing these archetypal fundamental views of the world and, you know, getting somewhere in glorious dialectic. That's the image that he would like. Yeah, but that's not what happened, at least not what I heard. It's just they butted heads against each other for a little while on trivially stupid things.

That took a very long time. Yes. Took a very long time. There was an intermission for him to talk about dragons for a bit. And then it just pitted out. That's the... That's an accurate representation of that conversation. That is most indulgent, like examples and then Alex trying to pin Jordan down, Jordan refusing to do it. And then,

you know, moving on to the next topic. And then at the end, there's a little bit of a coming together when they talk a bit about cultural evolution, potential aspects, but that's it, Matt. So there we go. That was it. This is the impromptu decoding episode of that content. So I hope you enjoyed that. Well, thank you, Chris. This was a, this was a bait and switch everyone.

You should know. Just want to emphasize this. We, I thought this was going to be a, a garrometer episode. It's even called the VACI Hosterdfelder. It's meant to be a, a grometer episode. It's even called the VACCHI Hustedfelder. It's meant to be a grometer. No. Of these two people. Instead, Chris just says, Hey, Matt, we're actually talking about this now.

And I roll with it being the cool guy that I am. You don't, I know you don't pay attention. I warned you, I warned you at the start that we'll do the grometer and then we'll cover this other thing which we were supposed to do before and then you wanted to offer the insights that we heard about the American society but that doesn't really fit with the grometer theme that's not what the grometer is for so I thought let's do this first so that's why we're here we're here for that I see so I see it was my fault.

I see it was my fault. I see what I brought this upon myself. You did, yes. I see that now. Thank you for explaining that to me, Chris. It was a kindness. I'll never do kindness again. Yeah, well, that's it, Matt.

Go dream about dragons. Consider fighting them. They've got treasures, apparently. And in any case, if you do that, you basically are embodying the image of Jesus and the logos. So yeah, cool. All right. We'll do Chris. All right. Well, keep well.

I'll keep monitoring the toilet, prevalence and the fixtures and bathrooms over here in America. I've got lots of other helpful tips for the continent and the nation. Stay tuned. We look forward to next time. And next decoding is Curtis Yarvin. Don't worry, he's coming. Menchus Mollblug or whatever his stupid name is. He's coming next. That's the next girl on the coding block. So I'll prepare for that. I'll be ready for that and then we'll do the garrometer for Hossenfelder just to keep me on my toes, right Chris? We'll get them all. We've got lots of content. So good night, God bless and be safe out there. Watch out for dragons.

Bye! Ciao! and be safe out there. Watch out for dragons. Bye! Ciao! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa