Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Materials 6: Christian Sensemaking, Hipster Race Realists, & Marijuana Pseudoscience

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

We shake our heads in despair at some truly terrible Guru crossovers:Old Man Health Routines: Jogging, Diets, and the Pursuit of 'Wellness'Jordan Peterson and Russell Brand offer the apotheosis of indulgent Christian-themed sensemakingTaylor Lorenz and activist journalismAre Twitch Streamers the Future of Journalism? No.Huberman gets himself in hot water over Marijuana episodeThe Value of Debating Pseudoscience with HubermanCasey Means: Cramming all the pseudoscience red flags into a single TweetWhen Red Scare met Steve Sailer: Ironic Hipsterism X Old Skool Scientific RacismLinksJBP Podcast: The Collective Unconscious, Christ, and the Covenant | Russell Brand | EP 444Washington Post: Twitch streamers become go-to news source for campus protest coverage (Taylor Lorenz)Red Scare: Sailer Socialism w/ Steve SailerHuberman Lab: Dr. Casey Means: Transform Your Health by Improving Metabolism, Hormone & Blood Sugar RegulationCasey Means Red Flag filled Pinned TweetNew York Magazine: The Man Who Invented Identity Politics for the Far RightThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1 hr 43 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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Music Music Music Music Music hello and welcome to decoding the guru's supplementary materials sixth edition the the sixth version of the popular supplementary material show now matt even before we started here you've been complaining you've'd be demanding schedules, timeframes. You'd be saying, what's each clip?

How exactly long is each clip? What segment's going to take? I'm just here to say, just relax. Just relax. Just things will come, will go. This isn't a normal decoding episode. It's more go with the flow. Things can change.

Maybe another clip will just come in during the recording you're right you're right i had the wrong attitude it's a bad attitude i was i've got meetings i've got other work to do i was trying to make this all business like this is a safe space for us i'm just chatting with chris we're just talking about some things that have gone down i'm gonna i'm gonna relax i'm gonna enjoy myself i'm gonna have a nice time that's the main thing you're not you're really not with the clips i have but anyway we'll see what we can do and actually i was supposed to not clip stuff that much stuff for this this thing but i've ended up listening to more nonsense as a result of it i although i don't know if that's fair because i probably would be listening to it anyway

and then just storing it in my head instead of like mentally releasing it. Now I know you've told me the agenda because I demanded it. And there is way too much stuff, I think for one episode, too much awful things have happened out there in the discourse.

And you said we wouldn't have time, like you were going to relegate it to the very end but i think we should talk about our old man health problems and efforts to remediate them front and center i think it's important i mean for top billing so this is what the people want they want to know is it is it that i think is yeah that's that's the gold tier content like middle-aged man's health regimes come to this podcast people that i think so i mean i've been jogging you can tell you can tell by my lively effervescent sprightly yeah manner voice brightly voice that i've been jogging that i've been jogging it's a podcast yeah i've been forgoing i've been forgoing the um the whiskey and i've been taking up the jogging six o'clock in the morning i strapped my i've got knee knee things on to support my knees i've got a little fanny

pack to put my to put my phone and keys in i got running shoes and i'm choosing life chris i'm choosing life you know know, you should do that. Why the hell have you got knee pads on for running? Like this sounds like you're preparing to go get battled. You've got your... That's an appropriate metaphor for an old man's legs. Exercise. And the hard, hard pavement, Chris.

I'm not yet at the point where I'm actually getting any cardiovascular exercise because the first thing that gives out is my knees and my ankles and various other parts. No, I've got that in spades. But the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak and bruised and sore. But, you know, I'm taking in baby steps every morning, a little bit better. Yeah.

I'll report back in a couple of weeks. But, you know, people should also know that you, you bastard, you send me photographs of all the food you eat in Japan. Not all the food. I eat much more food than you do. You send me a lot of pictures. And while you're away on your little trip i was getting your pictures of the sushi and the lovely deep fried chicken and all the you know the gorgeous things and the gorgeous little bowls and so on and i was driving my car eating a whopper from

hungry jacks for americans that's burger king and you know you made me feel bad about myself chris you made me feel bad about my lifestyle about you know i was living um yeah but this is why we've turned over new leaf this is what we're reporting right we're doing this thing i was seeing this little thing about atomic habits which i i think is only 50 complete pseudoscience but one thing was you know accountability let people know what you're doing so when you feel that this shame makes you not do it. So we are both, you know, we've got goals. We're going to be healthier. And I have developed my plan, which is not to eat lunch.

That's it. I'm just cutting out my lunch. And that's going to do it. I mean, I'm going to do exercise and stuff as well but cutting out lunch and I'm replacing that with miso soup which I can get

from the and Matt informed me that this plan of mine is what Japanese peasants used to do to stave off famine or whatever

because because miso soup especially from the convenience store in Japan it's actually very tasty and because it's, you know, watery soup-like thing.

It tricks your body into feeling that you're eating something substantial. It has no calories, but it feels like it has calories. It's tasty. Very much like you and I, we're in sync. Like we follow parallel paths through life. As you know, I have a packet of dry powder that's for, that you mix with water and it's called a man shake. That's the brand. So I'm drinking man shakes for lunch as a meal replacement as well. Well, that's an overstatement. I drank it

once and I decided I really don't like it. So I don't know if I'm going to keep up with that. Second to last. You know, I do agree with your point about, you know, the sharing of the micro achievements and sharing when you fail. And because the shame and the stigma, I think, is really important. I mean, there's a big thing in psychology where we want to like avoid stigma, avoid shame. But speaking for myself personally, it's the only thing that gets me doing anything, whether it's replying to emails or drinking a man shake or jogging in the morning it's really

shame that gets me out of bed in the morning i don't know how i couldn't live without it it's my primary motivating factor i mean fuck accomplishment or goals and things like that it's just shame shame yeah i like that catholics have been using that for centuries to get things done so i'm done with it but so look matt you know i wanted to put this at the end where there were only people left who you know that they've heard all the other things you're not the boss of this podcast i i thought i you know you're right about this address it to matt okay he demanded that it goes first so that's that's it this is one way to weed out the people before they hear anything about guru so only the only the true believers are still with us so now we can say what we want okay no no enough of that chit chat we will

get into the content you've got god there's so much but you you're going to start us off with jordan peterson and a certain english comedian that's right my name yes so there was something there was an annoyance in the guru sphere which was jordan peterson hosting russell brand on his podcast and primarily to talk about Russell Brand's newfound Christianity. Right. He's he's converted and adopted Christ. He's been baptized. And and that's fine. That's fine. You know, convert to whatever religion you like.

like but it being jordan peterson and russell brand of course they must dramatically over intellectualize and also make this into indulgent guru by monologuing at each other and just to give a taste here's russell talking about his interest in in j Jesus and how it's kind of similar to an interest in quantum physics. Has there been a significant reversal of charge? And what is that charge? How are we endowed with that charge now? point when you have Richard Dawkins saying, I am culturally Christian, are people starting to recognize that this is not just a remnant ideology. This is a living thing that has been discarded. I listened to that Bishop Barron who you had on your show the other day talking about ethereal angels and i thought yes the religion that i am interested in is not a precursor and a parallel to psychotherapy it is a precursor and parallel to quantum physics helping me to understand what do you mean when you say self who is this self what do you mean when you say reality when Who is this self? What do you mean when you say reality?

When you say reality, what are you talking about? And is it possible that reality is something that we conjure here as vessels and conduits of the divine, if we have the capacity to somehow in the moment through practice disavow the strong gravitational literally pull of the material and the unconscious ethos with with which we are continually inculcated by the insidious nihilistic or albeit glistening culture that attempts to make us all devotees of this new banality. Right, right. There you go. Okay, so Russell Brand has become interested in Christianity.

Huberman also has expressed an interest. Both of them had, I mean, it's hard not to be just a tiny bit cynical. I've had the timing. They've both had these sexual misconduct allegations against them and they find jesus shortly afterwards but there has been there has been a jesus word turn of a lot of opinionators nominally secular gurus russell brand is putting his particular lyrical spin on it of course loquacious loquacious stamp and then like the thing that gets me with all of this is you know they can't just have found something that they like that that gels with them

it has to be that you know the the world has failed to properly appreciate or like you know the universe is now humming along to appreciate the true wisdom of christianity which was there and like it's a precursor to quantum physics and so it it can never be that just this appeals to them because of particular circumstances that they have and particular proclivities they have it is more like this is the key to unlocking the true meaning of the universe and it just so happens that it corresponds with all of the things that they were already talking about and interested in yeah i mean like do you really believe it like do, do you think Russell Brand has really developed a genuine interest in Christianity?

Or is this stuff that he's saying now is part of a new line of rhetoric? Yeah, I mean, it is. But I think it's just essentially Russell Brand always talks exactly like this about every topic that he talks about. And he's now relying on like a particular kind of vocabulary more, right? The kind of traditional Christian vocabulary. But you can hear him weaving in all of the usual stuff that he does, right? Yeah.

Well, he has these, he has these enthusiasms, right? Like one of his earlier enthusiasms was towards like socialist revolution and then oh yeah he had an enthusiasm for like battling addiction through spiritual awakening and now he has a enthusiasm enthusiasm for this version of christianity supposedly but yeah i know what you mean it's just like a different hey this is the new the new reinvented russell brand with this new blather i referred to this as like the apophysis of indulgent religious monologuing right and part of the reason is so his other person that is conversing with is jordan peterson so here's jordan pet Peterson belaboring a point, as he often does, and this is just the start of him outlining a conceptual framework map. So see if you can

follow the thread of what he's arguing here. So let me lay out the idea and you tell me what you think about it. So what these models do is map the statistical relationship between, you might say, markers. And so imagine that you can tell the difference between a word like, imagine a word B-I-N-T, which isn't a word, but it's kind of a plausible non-word. which isn't a word but it's kind of a plausible non-word and it's a plausible non-word because the statistical relationship between the letters mimics the likely statistical relationship between letters in a real english word so it's much more of a word than q n z t okay so now there are statistical regularities between letters that enable us to identify words. And then there are statistical regularities between words in phrases that make sense. And then there are statistical regularities between phrases in sentences and sentences in relationship to one another.

And then, say, within paragraphs, and then paragraphs in relationship to one another, and then, say, within paragraphs, and then paragraphs in relationship to one another. And the large language models are trained to map all that. So what that implies, obviously, is something like any given idea is statistically likely to exist in relationship to a certain set of other ideas and not and not distal ideas and so if i throw an idea at you i'm also throwing a network of associated co-ideas at you at the same time and then out farther in the penumbra are even more distantly associated ideas and more creative people are going to be able to leap from the center to the distal ideas we already know that

from study and creativity hey let's give you a break there so okay could you process that high level idea about semantic networks that's yep did it require the level of letters and words and words and freezes and freezes and like oh and actually the funny thing is the example he gave b-i-n-t bint do you know bint is a word it's a slang in english yeah yeah like uh it means like a derogatory term for like a girl or woman right i've been so yes yes i'm surprised russell brand didn't put him up on that you know there's no one word b-i-n-t which means nothing and like yeah it does it's something but um anyway that was just that was the start matt so you've got that things exist in semantic networks and you can hear it's like kind of riffing on llm so a little bit more the next stage of this so the large language models map the statistical association between sets of

ideas that's a good way of thinking about it. You could imagine the same thing happens with images. So if you bring to mind the image of a witch, you're much more likely to bring to mind the image of a cauldron and a black cat, for example, and maybe a spider, maybe a pumpkin. So the collective unconscious would be, take a given culture, the collective unconscious would be the statistical association between ideas insofar as that culture has represented the ideas. And that's mappable mathematically. And so a symbol would be something like a set of, it's a set of statistically associated concepts, right? Especially image-laden concepts in particular with regards to symbol. So, it's a weight, what the collective unconscious seems to be is the system of weights between concepts through which we see the world.

So, and that makes it a real thing. It makes symbols real because a symbol is a network of ideas with a core idea at the center. So, yeah, he took a leap there, didn't he? And by the way, for people, you know, up to a certain point, none of this is objectionable or interesting. For people, you know, up to a certain point, none of this is objectionable or interesting. Frankly, that, you know, words and even little visual features tend to be correlated with one another.

It's semiotics in a way. Like he's just restating semiotics, but really slowly. But he took a jump there, Chris, when he went to the collective unconscious. But he took a jump there, Chris, when he went to the collective unconscious. And so he's defined this thing as like the symbols are real. Like follow the logic there, right? Well, he also took that jump to say like symbols are real. Now, if you ask him if Jesus was real, he would say, well, it depends what you mean by real. But right, he has no problem saying symbols are real.

And of course, symbols are real. Like, because they're freaking there, right? Like a flag is a symbol. But anyway, I'm just saying he would take issue with any declarative statement made, but he doesn't mind when he says that. So symbols are real, which I think everybody would agree with. But he means they're real because they're embedded in a network of semiotic associations. I know. So he wants to mean the kind of abstract concept is real because it has a statistic regularity in the way that it's understood and mapped in a given cultural context.

It sounds profound it's like saying like the word dog is real right because it's associated with leashes and dog food and and stuff like that and that has meaning to everyone it's like you know yes but if you say the word dog dog food comes to mind and fur comes to mind and isn't that shocking like yeah i guess it's like it's a power of symbols over your mind chris yeah yeah so he's wanting to say that like llms have kind of peeled back the curtain and revealed that like statistical relationships between words can be mapped and things can be predicted and we we there is like uh you know what a deep reality to concepts and metaphors which is all

linked into his stuff with maps of meaning now i'm just the main thing i want to make here is like it takes him so long to belabor you know fairly straightforward concepts but it's not even there's not even accurate you know what i mean like he has the most shallow understanding of lms you can tell by the way he talks about them and And for instance, that aspect about like embedding a word into like a point in that semantic space, that doesn't even happen in the deep learning part of it. That's done through a pre-processing step, which is basic matrix algebra, which yes, he's right. It's all about correlations and stuff, but that's why you can do things in that space. Like you can say, take the word king or the concept of king. It gets mapped to that space.

You can subtract man from that and you'll literally get queen, right? That's all very cool. It's very interesting. But based on statistical associations, you can place words into a kind of a concept space. It's great. But that's not LLMs is my point, right? That's quite a simple bit of matrix algebra that can detect those correlations and do that.

Matrix. Matrix. I'll never change. I'll never change. You did correct it. You did correct it. But that's fine. So I agree that he's got it.

You know, like he has a shallow understanding of LLMs. He has perhaps a deeper interest in semiotics and like interpretivism, Jungian symbolism, all that stuff. We all know he loves this, right? But so this was just, as I did introduce you to, this is, you know, him looks like, you know, layering up the build up thing. Russell Brand responds to this and adds in another thing that we should consider alongside these statistical associations between words. Yes. How beautiful. Firstly, I wonder, some of the areas we might, at least it seems to me,

that I ought to address as occurring are the difference between signifiers that are of course according to post-structuralist and to much of the work done by it within semiotics arbitrary and potentially universal natural or at least practical symbols uh i wonder, for example, about the idea that is it a type of language that a barn full of chicks will respond to the silhouette of a bird when it travels above their heads on a wire in one direction because when traveling from north to south the silhouette resembles that of a hawk but when it travels back along the same trajectory but in reverse they do not respond because it no longer resembles the silhouette of a hawk a hawk does not travel in that formation that is a type of language there is language within nature this is the first thought so you're referring to something yeah okay so so that adds an additional dimension to the to the model so then you might say that there are co-occurring patterns of regularity with biological significance that exist in some real sense outside the merely conceptual.

And those are probably marked in the fundamental analysis by death. Right? What? Death? Yeah. What death? Yeah, there is one that comes up there but well so what he wants to say is like because the hawk is a predator and the response to the silhouette it like you know the kind of thing about humans respond to hearing a sound in the bush because it might be a predator, right? So evolution makes death like a more functional.

But like, so you heard that. This is like the most shallow and also obscure version of what Kevin Mitchell talked about very cogently and wrote about agency and evolution and the biology of how that stuff stuff works like this is this is like that but just a really bad version of it right well not not only that matt but do you know the experiment that russell brand is talking about the uh i don't understand why a hawk would not trigger the trigger the you know yeah so i looked it up and he's retelling so he's got it wrong right like so he's saying

it's because north to south versus south to north wouldn't trigger the response right which like it doesn't that doesn't seem sensible because a hawk ship surely they could turn and the actual experiment is called the hawk goose effect and it's basically like the silhouette in one direction resembles a hawk because the wings are up closer and then there's a long tail but if you do it the other way the silhouette goes backwards yeah it's a goose yeah so they don't respond and they were showing that like birds respond to this silhouette without instruction in some species right like it's a like biologically inbuilt behavior and but that's different right

so like so he gets the example wrong and then he wants to introduce that as like you know like another formula it's like adding on to jordan's theorizing right this is adding another level the visual evolutionary level and then jordan is like that's interesting yes we do need to and this encapsulates the notion of death so now we've got you know silhouette language added and and now like the imagery of death and this this continues on like essentially we've talked about it before but it gives the impression about you know that there's a theory they're being developed and like this is great minds like kind of adding different components to what it's it's really waffling and just riffing on research half remembered and big ideas and it's yeah i mean

i can understand why people get into it because it has the appearance of profundity and depth. It is the guru effect, right? Like everything that's been said is referencing complex ideas and research and stuff, but it's fundamentally either straightforward or like not as profound, at least as it's being presented. Yeah, I get what you're saying. They're kind of going through a pantomime of two people that are so brilliant that they're actually developing a whole new theory of language, the unconscious, society,

symbols, animals, death, Jungianism. You know, they're creating this grand theory on the fly live in this podcast except of course they're not right as you said they're reprising some half-remembered poorly expressed ideas that have just been around since forever and have been set out much more clearly by other people and then just randomly throwing in a thing like well there you go so you know the the hawk might eat the chickens and they're sensitive to that so now we need jung and the archetype of death right and then it'll go off on that and so it's a very bad theory they to call it that that they're developing but you know it's a pandemon you know

i guess it gives you the feeling of getting somewhere yeah so my you asked you know, it's a pandemon, you know, I guess it gives you the feeling of getting somewhere. Yeah. So my, you asked, you know, about death and I mentioned that Jordan had said that symbols are real, but just to highlight, you know, how this connects together and maybe it was too quick to talk about things being real. Because the other, one of the other things I've been thinking about is that people ask me questions like, you know, do you think God is real? And a question like that always begs the question for me. It's like, well, what the hell do you mean real? Like, what makes something real? And, you know, you could say tangibility, although that's only one dimension of what makes something real.

It's like, I think what makes things real in the final analysis is probably death. And in the example you used of the silhouette, which is a very famous example with regard to birds, the silhouette traveling in one direction, that signifies death reliably, right, over a very long span of evolutionary history. And any creature that didn't respond to that silhouette was at a much higher probability of being picked off. So then one of the things you might note, and this is where the postmodernists got things dreadfully wrong and where the large language models have drifted into insanity. So imagine that there's a statistical relationship between concepts that's

okay so then you might say what gives that statistical relationship reality and the post-modern types would say well it's just arbitrary cultural construction but it's not because there are patterns of relationships between events that are part and parcel of the world per se. And some of those need to be accurately mapped by the conceptual system or you die. The ideas that ring most true to us, that grip us in this sort of archetypal way, are ideas that bear directly on our survival, whether we recognize it or not. They strike a chord within us. Yeah, I mean, fair enough. That's fine. I think everyone agrees, don't they, Chris, that any kind of signaling or a language, symbolic system,

if it's not grounded in reality somewhere, like that's pretty basic sort of AI stuff. Well, yeah, like the notion that things are not completely entirely arbitrary about the concepts that people construct in the world, they are tied to material reality. Like, of course, that's the case yeah because because if it wasn't you would have no way of mapping concepts that are useful in the actual world but he wants to say there that like one i just want to highlight that there he's suddenly concerned about what real means he wasn't when he used that earlier but like here you know it comes

to god it's very important if you're asking about god then suddenly yeah i know and so yeah tables are only real to us in the sense that they help prevent me from dying because my coffee is sitting on it and if i don't drink that coffee it's going to feel like i'm dying yeah i mean i mean there's a there's a really boring way in which that's all true right in that things that are relevant or significant to us are often because of it has some functional relevance to us right um well we but it does yeah it does i mean like it's obvious that there are lots of things that relate to you know survival or that kind of thing which will be more relevant but but also jordan has this habit of you know like really or that kind of thing, which will be more relevant. But also, Jordan has this habit of, you know, like really stretching things and extending. Like, remember, he had this metaphor where he took a glass and he was like,

the reason you can pick out a glass is because it can contain water and you need water. And you're like, that's not like the correct explanation but like he's pointing at something that you know object mapping and whatnot is is like you know you can tie it all the basic processes but the fact that like a container can be filled with water is not the reason that you can distinguish like an object on the table but it's not completely wrong either well i would say in a specific sense because if you were a photorealist painter, you could spend a month painting all the reflections on that glass. It's a very complex thing to perceive, but you perceive it as a unity.

And we know this neuropsychologically. We know this scientifically. You perceive it as a unity because you can grip it and because you can raise it to your lips and because you can drink it and because you need to drink water to survive. And you are willing to drink water to survive because you believe emotionally and motivationally and perhaps rationally that survival is a good. And that's dependent on your belief that human existence in some sense is a good and that it's striving towards some sort of higher unified order.

And you might think, well, you don't need all that to perceive the glass. And the answer is, yeah, as a matter of fact, you need all of that to perceive the glass. And if you lose some of that because of various forms of cortical damage, let's say, you enter into the realm of all sorts of bizarre blindnesses. And so that point you make about the is being dependent on the ought is also extremely interesting because if the world is infinitely complex, which seems to be the case or close enough, the hierarchy of attention you bring to bear on it and so your intent determines in no small part the array of manifestations that that infinity will produce in your field of apprehension and that does determine to some degree at least what adds elements of the object you have access to so i just want to say it's like and i've got another example to illustrate this but so he's basically been saying death is everything and if if we go back he was talking about how you know the the kind of interconnection of words is everything. And Russell said,

maybe the ability to perceive visual cues is everything. And here's another thing that's everything. One of the striking meta themes of the biblical library is the necessity of sacrifice, right? And so I've been trying to understand, first of all, what it means to sacrifice. It means to give up something that's desirable for something that's more desirable. It's something like that. It's something higher. And it's higher because it extends over a longer period of time, and it includes more people. And so, sacrifice is the basis of community. Well, right? So it's a sacrificial gesture. once you understand that sacrifice is at the basis of community, the question immediately arises, which is, well, what's the most effective form of sacrifice? And this biblical story,

Old and New Testament together, is actually an examination of sacrifice per se. It's an attempt to spiral down to the core of what constitutes, well, you might say the sacrifice that's maximally effective, maximally acceptable to God. But it's something like what sacrifices by necessity at the core of community. I also don't think there's any difference between that and cortical maturation, by the way. Oh, gosh, so much work to follow along but i kind of did so chris what do you think i mean so at first he kind of references giving up things in over time right so you know

the classic example is the little you know the delayed gratification cookie experiments they did with kids all right can you sacrifice the cookie now in exchange for the more cookies later on you know i guess you can extend that idea of kind of giving up an immediate reward in favor of some sort of less tangible more abstract reward and you could you know pro-sociality and not altruism but you know basically cultivating good relationships with other people might cost you something in the short term but you get reputational enhancement so you're going to get a long-term benefit and you know i guess he's kind of right in the sense that it is got to do with cortical maturation in the sense that there is a thing called like impulsive sensation seeking where as you get older and you know you are better at

forgoing immediate gratification so fine why not grind that like if you're gonna say well that's fundamentally the core of that the key the understanding everything is sacrifice right sacrifice can't you just equally say it's reciprocity or it's cooperation yeah cooperation reciprocity or or delayed gratification right you don't need to resort to a biblical term but like or empathy yeah right like you can pick any term i guess jordan we're here he'd say that the bible encodes like like science is rediscovering these terms right which which you just listed off but the bible encodes a deep truth there about delayed gratification and reciprocity and it's all there in the bible stories about sacrifice all right but matt just again just to point something out like jordan always makes this

thing about how the bible is the absolute pinnacle of stories of sacrifice right like the bible story is one where god sacrifices his own son to save humanity, right? Like Jesus, the resurrection and all that. But like in Buddhism, there's these things called the Jataka tales, right? Which tell the life of the Buddha before he became the Buddha because of the system of reincarnation. And they're talking about his previous lives and what he did. And most of them involve sacrifice. Just for example, there was one where he was Prince Mahasattva and there was a hungry tigress that was going to eat its children because it was starving. So Prince Mahasattva gets left alone

and decides to try and offer himself to the tiger. The tiger won't eat him initially. So he goes to the edge of a cliff cuts his neck open and throws himself off the ledge so he lands in front of the tiger like all bloodied and stuff then the tiger eats him right that's a pretty significant sacrifice and it's in a completely and like jordan would say yes you know those those that's the kind of thing but like he always focuses on the christian narrative and jesus i'm just saying, there are many, many narratives about sacrifice or about, you know, being kind to neighbors or whatever in all attrition.

And Jordan shows generally not very much interest in them. It's Christianity. Well, likewise, you could, you know, themes of sacrifice feature in a lot of Hollywood films and a lot of ripping yarns generally. And I guess he would say that the Bible is the wellspring for all of that popular culture, all of that literary culture. So why is the Bible the wellspring when it comes after various things or in completely

different cultural contexts? It's not like the Jadaka stories are based on the Old Testament. They're not. So it almost suggests that Jordan's claims that all literature comes from the Bible is overstated. I agree. He's obviously starting from the point of there's significant things in the Bible

and then working forwards from there. And if you take a broad enough point of view that people respond to stories of sacrifice or or if there is a genuine sort of cognitive like pro-social longer-term thinking kind of developmental thing that tends to occur in human psychology and you know you can forge links between that and the pro-sociality that christianity encourages but yeah it's just it's just centering the bible and christianity at the nexus of a whole bunch of random um disparate ideas so i mean the thing where i always land with jordan is that if you really concentrate hard

you could go through all the obscurantism and you can find the reasonable version of what interpretation what he's saying but it's just it's a very poor explanation of that it completely ignores all of the stuff that is known in science and academia and everything basically and presents it as though he's figuring it all out off the cuff and then he links it to Jungianism or to the Bible. And you get the kind of, wow, deep kind of moment. I think what you mean is like, not that he ignores, because he does reference all these big thinkers and whatnot that exist, but his presentation is very much like, here's the idea I've had,

which is putting these concepts together in a novel and unique way. And it joins examples almost always. The logic, you can be charitable and, you know, extend it to a reasonable version. But there are often examples given that are contradictory or where there's inconsistencies, right? Like I remember the time he was talking about the fact that people want to see religious iconography in museums shows that there's something deep and fundamental to it. But like the fact that people want to see the lobster foam in museums or modern art, does that suggest that? No, he doesn't extend that logic. and the way that people normally interact is you know in podcast land things are different because people do talk for blocks and then pass over to the next person or whatever but in any case talking

in eight minute blocks is very unusual right that's a long time to talk without another person speaking and jordan and brand talk in that kind of way, eight minutes, six minutes, 30, six minutes, 55 response, seven minutes. So they're just exchanging soliloquies at each other and they make reference, you know, to each other's ideas, but it's very much, you get the impression that they're just like reading, okay, this guy has now presented something. So let me go on my riff. And this was Jordan's riff. Here's Bran's brands and now this is two minutes matt so i'm sorry for that but i i feel you have to hear it in a long stretch to get you know the kind of flow of what russell is like and how his reasoning works and you'll hear also

the standard like guru priya's shit going on so listen to this god now there's a lot of jordan peterson 101 there's a lot of hits running simultaneously here jp because we've already touched on the idea of chaos and the necessary inevitable emergence of patterns within chaos and it seems that you are positing to a degree that this chaos is analogous to perhaps the collective unconscious and some of the patterns that are emerging in AI models even with the biases evident within them are an indicator of how how these patterns emerge within a container and I suppose to say a container is to indicate that we are acknowledging an absolute we've moved from this idea of a collective unconscious and patterns emerging within chaos into sacrifice, which is obviously another great Jordan Peterson

theme. And as you say, perhaps the overarching theme of the Bible, my contribution to this incredible amount of information that you are relaying, it has to do with where might one's intention carry you in so much as it seems that in this process of maturation and uh and what and a personal relationship with sacrifice how that develops and evolves it seems to me is when one starts to acknowledge that there is not, when you use the phrase, immediately beneficial, that when we're referring to immediacy, we are talking about both spatial and temporal immediacy, and we might have to consider that when dealing with the sublime, as surely the Bible is, that even these categories are called into question. The most basic and taken for granted categories of any temporal creature will have to be challenged. This perhaps helps me to understand

how the ultimate sacrifice as rendered in the New Testament, and most I I suppose, would regard as the defining Christian image, the image of sacrifice, can tackle the complex idea of the pact that is made by the sacrifice of the man-god. That's his contribution. What's he saying there? It goes on. I cut it off there. Yeah. It's just that, you know, one, you got to hear, like I said, the guru dynamics of Jordan.

You know, you've dropped incredible. Let me add, like, it's the same when he engages with Brett Weinstein, where they're just constantly saying, okay, but what, you know, the temporal and the spatial, those concepts might not apply in the same way when we consider the sublime as an aspect of the divine incarnation of the nature of man in the Bible, which surely, it's just like, oh God, I understand there are people that really enjoy this. And to some extent, it is, you know, like maybe theologians would take this as insulting but i think there is an aspect where this reflects what i often feel like listening to people have theological debates where they are sure that they're communicating very deep sublime important things and to me it just feels a lot like indulgent waffle because like the basic thing he's saying is what you just what

jordan already said and what you summarize map which was as you get older you become more mature less egocentric theoretically that as things mature you're better at like the land gratification and maybe the bible has things to say about this that's like yeah, just like heaps and heaps of other cultural artifacts and stories. And yeah, completely non-religious morals also suggests not being selfish. That's right. There's nothing, there's nothing. Yeah. The part of the part that they refer to that is real is, is really pretty boring.

Like this morning I was talking about forcing myself to go for a jog even though my knees and my ankles are hurting, right? My instinct is to just not do that because the immediate gratification would be to stop the pain. But to my credit, I am able to think in the long term and force myself to go jogging because I know it's doing me some good. Like that's not a profound observation. It shouldn't be to anyone and it's not

the basis for for a soliloquy about religion and meaning and and spirituality and i guess what was he trying to say there he was saying okay jordan you've talked about you know the temporal which we're just we're just like mortal beings and yeah he wants to say about you know like what about the ultimate given that the message of christianity resonates across time and all that and there are mystical essences about you know the trinity and all this so it well i like it i actually had a i actually had a reading it might be too flattering to brand but i took his meaning to mean hey jordan you've been talking about essentially delayed gratification or like you said cooperative behavior but what about the ultimate sacrifice where you do something that's clearly detrimental to you materially like jesus

did but it's for this greater good and whatever how about that and it's he's kind of right in a way that doesn't that doesn't fit right? Jun's attempt to relate these two things. It actually doesn't. Oh, because you like reciprocal altruism, right? Like eventually you, you get paid back from you,

right? Yeah. Yeah. So I have a clip that might speak to that. Let's see if what you interpret this point to be from this, this is brandy and waffle. Again, it's kind of on the same point,

but just listen that when you were saying that of course when we default to making the self our deity uh the sovereign being that which is currently charged whichever instinct is at the wheel whichever instinct is in the driving seat that will become, that will become sovereign at that moment. If you have no recourse against that, if you have no principle, if you have no path, if you have no doubt, if you have no Christ, if you have no way of breathing and giving God into God. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

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