Peterson vs. Harris, again

So, you might remember a series of posts I did about Jordan Peterson, now famous psychology professor from Canada, about his philosophy of life. I wrote about him here and here and here.

You might also remember that Jordan Peterson was invited to the podcast of Sam Harris, of which I wrote about here and elaborated here. That podcast made me very, very conflicted. Because I think that Peterson is right, and Harris is wrong. But Peterson makes absolutely no sense in the podcasts, neither the first or second; while Harris is eloquent and logical and just sounds smarter. Or at the very least easier to understand. Peterson just sounds like a broken record of a snake's oil salesman pitch. But make no mistake about it: Peterson is right. Harris is wrong. The problem is he isn't capable of explaining it in a way that makes sense so that he can win the argument. Now they made a second podcast; and while it's better, it's still far from persuasive.

Well, allow me to win the argument for him. And I'll do it for 1% of his Patreon salary. Nah, I'll do it for free. Sam Harris deserves being proved wrong. That's the least I can do for his good cadence of speech and the clarity of his thought.

So the two men are basically arguing about ethics: how should human people behave in society. Peterson goes on his by now familiar shtick about evolution and lobster serotonin and archetypes and Horus and Set. Harris answers that all that's very good as biology or history perhaps; but not as ethics. We're trying to come up with a system of morals, with rules of behavior; an accurate explanation of human nature, to the extent that Peterson's explanation is accurate, doesn't help there. And that's because really existing humans have had, and some still have, pretty fucked up systems of morality. Read some ethnographies and you'll find out plenty of stone age tribes with unbelievably stupid religions (i.e. beliefs about ghosts and stuff) and appalling behavior towards one another. My personal favorite are the lip plate wearers in East Africa. And of course, Harris is an outspoken enemy of Islam; and surely if you're an Enlightened, blue-pill, 1960s guy, Muslim societies today are in general quite appalling.

Harris' argument, which you can listen to from about 48:00 in the Youtube clip, is that appalling societies just have "failed science". Their religion is a way of figuring things out: but they're wrong. They're mistaken, and so they do bad things, and their societies suck. If they only knew the truth, the Scientific Truth as discovered by Western Civilization, their societies would flourish and they'd all be as nice as Scott Alexander at a gaypride parade.

This argument is, of course, as old as sin. It's moral intellectualism. That's Socrates' idea. People do bad things because they are ignorant. We should strive to know more so that we can be good. How do we know more? By asking questions and having a Socratic dialogue. Rince, repeat, then have Socrates executed for being annoying as hell.

It doesn't occur to Harris that, even granting the Whig theory of history, that humankind progressed from ignorance to wisdom on a straight line, and things get better that way, that truth needs to be sold . There's this thing in linguistics called diachrony and synchrony. Diachrony is watching the evolution of a language through time. Synchrony is watching to a language as it currently exists. You can take a synchronic look at the world today: and you'll see that while Western Civilization has used Science™ to get to this pinnacle of wisdom and morality, there are plenty of other societies out there who aren't buying it. They could buy it. Some even were buying it 50 years ago. But they're not buying it now. And they're right there, looking at us, kinda envying our technology and our wealth: but they're still not buying it. These guys are out there and they don't give a crap about we knowing the truth while they are suffering in falsehood.

And why aren't they buying it? Peterson should have explained this to him. I guess it's what he wanted to explain to him all along. The guy is a creative one and he very often finds it hard to put things into words. He should speak less and write more. He'd find it easier to make coherent arguments. Alas he gets paid infinite times more to speak than I get paid to write, so I don't blame him there. But the point is that the Scientific Truth does not matter when you try to arrange a society. Not only it does not matter; pervasive knowledge of truth quite likely is deleterious for societal harmony. You basically can't have a society, not a long-lasting one anyway, if the truth is widely known.

You may have noticed that after centuries of the scientific method; most people, i.e. 70% of the population don't give a crap. Homeopathy is still around. People believe in all sort of crap; and they're not even consistent about it. Why don't people care about the truth? Because, as Peterson said, what people care about is what their biological drives have them care about; and those biological drives have evolved over millions of years. What they tell us to care about is what people across age and culture care about; and you can discover that by reading their myths and stories. What they care about is the survival of the tribe as a unit, i.e. the resiliency of their society. What makes the group function. And sex; how to get those picky annoying women to notice you individually. Here, I spared you 20 hours of Jordan Peterson's Youtube clips. That is his argument.

Actually Sam Harris makes his own counterargument when he claims that the fact of human evolution has no place in a system of ethics, because if so anybody who understood Darwin would spend his whole life in a sperm bank so that he could have the maximum number of descendants. Yes, indeed. A society which placed high value on scientific knowledge would have people do exactly that. People want to win. Certainly guys want to win. But a society in which people understood in very clear terms that human females only mate with high-status men, and the status is a zero-sum game; well that wouldn't be a very cooperative society, would it. And so humans have evolved to put a lid over all that stuff, which is kinda obvious when you think about it. But seeing the obvious is not what human nature is about. We wouldn't be here if it were. Human nature is about coming up with bullshit, believing it and sticking to it, so that we can all get along.

Now there's a lot of ways of getting along. Some people put 10 inch diameter plates inside our lower lips. Some people have women wear burkas while they shove their dicks in the anus of 12 year old boys. Some give high public status to women, while actually paying money to high-IQ code monkeys, who then can't get laid, then dress like women so they can get the status, and allow this men to use the women's restroom, which women hate but can't complain because... I'm not really sure about that one.

Sam Harris wants a new system of ethics: well then he first must understand how systems of ethics came to exist. Peterson knows something about that. Then you can argue, indeed, that some ways of getting along are better than others. But the truth argument just doesn't make sense. You can't just drop the truth on a stone age tribe and expect they'll come out next day as Californian 140 IQ Jews. Two reasons for that. The present American culture that Harris finds so dear wasn't produced by the truth. It was produced by the Blue Pill. Which contains some truth, and a lot of made up unfalsifiable crap. That is, a lot of religion. And, as it happens, the society the blue pill produced is collapsing before our eyes. Peterson knows something about that too.

What we need is two things. One, ironically, is what Harris says he wants, but doesn't actually want. The truth. The red pill. The other is some other stuff, not quite true, to put inside the red pill and make it sweeter. Else people won't take it. People like sweet pills. That's how we evolved.

By the way it's the content of this second pill that Peterson wants to call "truth". That which works. And yeah, ok, you can put that on the package. That's probably good salesmanship. But first we have to make it. And you sure as hell shouldn't be telling people at this stage that what we call truth isn't really the truth.

"This argument is, of course, as old as sin. It’s moral intellectualism. That’s Socrates’ idea. People do bad things because they are ignorant. We should strive to know more so that we can be good. How do we know more? By asking questions and having a Socratic dialogue. Rince, repeat, then have Socrates executed for being annoying as hell." I feel compelled to come to Socrates' defense, at least a little bit. Or rather, Plato's. Whenever I read any of these passages in Plato where Socrates talks about or asks about how to be virtuous, and constructs it as a kind of knowledge, I always consider that he's being esoteric. By which I mean he intends for this explanation to remain hidden from the masses and to only be imparted to his inner circle of students. That's not because the idea is dangerous (though it is), but because the idea is only even potentially right about the sorts of people who could read and enjoy Plato. Plato's not making claims about the way the great mass of humanity works, but only about how the best of the best of the aristocracy works (or can work, or should work). To be blunt, he's not saying people are capable of changing their minds and their ways based upon reason, but that SOME people are, and that those same people are the true philosophers. Witness counter-examples in Meno and Euthyphro, one of whom inquires but does not change, and the other of whom never even bothers. This is often confused because at the same time (and often in the same place) Plato claims that all people, from slaves to sophists to oracles to rhapsodists, are capable of reason and knowledge. But he doesn't (I don't think) make the claim that all of these people are capable of following the Good by the light of Reason (or by the light of Reason alone). Of course there are still important ways in which he is wrong. I'm just not convinced that he's guilty of the mistake you pin on him. Not exactly. (Honesty check: this is a self-flattering position to take on the matter.)

[…] Peterson vs. Harris, again […]

The problem with moral intellectualism is that it provides the excuse for funding the educational establishment. I'm sure if he saw our universities he would agree to change the argument.

That seems doubly wrong to me. First off, let's underline this: Rhetocrates is saying _Socrates wasn't a "moral intellectualist"_, and I agree. Socrates was an expert at exposing the inchoate errors of his companions by taking those errors seriously and treating them as consistent doctrines. But secondly, when Socrates gets down to explaining _what makes people behave morally or immorally_, he says it's the structure of their psyche plus years and years of training in the customs of their tribe, its myths, and even its characteristic musical rhythms. Which doesn't sound like a moral intellectualist account at all, hm? And given that that is what Socrates thinks educational establishments do (which sounds pretty accurate to me...), moral intellectualism would even justify education funding anyway.

Socrates' argument is only subtly wrong. He believed that folk would change what they want if they were better informed. But, per Hume, what folk want is pre-rational. Arational. Preferences are essentially brute facts of conscious beings. However, cooperation is almost always rational, defection irrational. If folk knew more, they would change how they get what they want, and the change would be eucivic. However, seeing in the moment how cooperation is rational often has IQ thresholds. Folk have tried quote 'deontologies' to fix this, rules that even dumbos can understand and follow, that are good enough. But then the smarties realize the rules are irrational...and conclude morality is irrational, instead of the particular set of rules. More precisely, when a midwit wants to defect, they can notice the rule is wrong and justify it to themselves. And anyway, the underclass, which has the real issue with defection, can't even follow the simplified rules. Deontology is thusly unstable. Ref: read today's newspaper. The obvious solution is explicit elitism. Different rulesets for different folk, depending on their ability to recognize the rationality of cooperation. This appears to be particularly vulnerable to Sophism. Hence I expect there's no solution. Plain steel!Socrates one is best. Just let the lower classes drown in their own filth, because the alternative is letting everyone drown in their own filth.

A reasonable, and ancient, interpretation of original sin is that it gives rise to all the unpleasant truths of evolutionary psychology and economics. Capitalism is right not because every socialist experiment fails horribly, but because God ordained private property in the means of production and that a man should work for his own bread and the bread of his family. Socialist experiments fail because the experimenters "think themselves wiser than God" Socialism is wrong because it is heresy and sinful pride, not because no one person knows how to make a pencil. Socialists are wicked because they set themselves above God, rather than wicked because they set themselves above the kulak who knows how to farm and the businessman who makes pencils. Women are rightly subordinate to men and naturally inclined to be subordinate to their husbands because of the punishment of Eve, not because rebellious women who become lawyers and CEOs have markedly fewer offspring than humble women who submit to their husbands, not because natural selection produced women with an inclination towards men who can make them obey and submit. If men realize that women go for the few highest status males, and that female perceptions of status are alarmingly primitive (the guy in the corner office is apt to miss out, while the guy in prison for rape, murder and such scores like a bandit) then things are likely to become difficult, with men dropping out except for those that engage in organized violence to overthrow our society. The cure for that, is of course, seizing and redistributing the means of reproduction. You price control pussy down, and then deal with the resulting shortage by rationing to one per customer. But for this to work you have to understand that chastity and monogamy are male plots against women, which have to be imposed patriarchally by men on women against their vigorous resistance. The blue pill, that women are just naturally angels led to Victorians failing to control their women, which led to the welfare state (Oliver Twist was bastard) Old Christianity already provides moral truths consistent with what a few high IQ philosophers understand society needs.

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I'd disagree. The best solution proposed to date, so far as I can see it, is the Scholastic idea of the will. (Pre-Luther, thanks very much.) This differs significantly from Hegelian conscience by being rooted in the objective truth and goodness of God, but differs from neoPlatonist moral intellectualism (cf Plotinus) by nevertheless being a personal, non-rational movement of the individual spirit (informed, of course, by culture and background). Which leaves me puzzled as to the exact meaning of your comment, since I'm pretty sure you're all aboard the Scholastic philosophy train. Maybe I've misunderstood?

Spandrell, I don't disagree about its role in our current political milieu. I don't exactly see what that has to do with what I said, though.

There are some additional sources of insight in this debate. There is Robert Pirsig's concepts of dynamic and static quality - Both are needed. The dynamic quality for seeing the brand new and the static quality (tradition) for maintaining it. Interestingly both Pirsig and Peterson get a lot of inspiration from the american pragmatist tradition. The other is fairly straightforward - skin in the game patchwork. If liberals seek to invite refugees, then let them invite them into the liberal patch alone. The reactionary patch isn't affected.

Even granting Plato was esoteric, the fact is that he sold more knowledge as the way to achieving better social morality. The thing with esotericism is that the common people are never let in the joke; so they will argue for more education in general.

Caste systems were quite strong against Sophism. 17th Japan had one; China didn't. China had orders of magnitude more sophism than Japan. Not even close.

>We’re trying to come up with a system of morals "Come up with a system of morals"? You're coming on the tail end of about 225 years of guys trying to do that, from Rousseau to Comte all the way to the present "ethicists." All the results thus far have been awful, and a lot of those guys had more brainpower than anything one can see on the alt right today. Sure you want to keep throwing good money after bad? >And that’s because really existing humans have had, and some still have, pretty fucked up systems of morality. No need to go to the Sudan or the Aztec empire for examples. In the US, 50 million babies have been aborted in the last 50 years, and old people get stashed in senior citizen homes to rot alive and be abused by nurses' aides, and the rest of the West is no different. All built according to scientific social engineering principles, designed by the brightest minds around. >Their religion is a way of figuring things out: but they’re wrong. They’re mistaken, and so they do bad things, and their societies suck. First they suck, then they go extinct, at a speed proportional to how badly they suck. >It doesn’t occur to Harris that, even granting the Whig theory of history, that humankind progressed from ignorance to wisdom on a straight line, and things get better that way, that truth needs to be sold . No, truth needs to be sought and suffered for. That which can be sold is not truth, by definition, and the truth can't outsell a lie. Why do you think the biggest religion of the modern world is Hollywood? >You basically can’t have a society, not a long-lasting one anyway, if the truth is widely known. This is Plato's theory-the Noble Lie. Strangely, the Greeks did not do very well applying it, and neither did any of their modern-day descendants (the populist governments of the 19th and 20th centuries all subscribed to it in one way or another, and I think the elitist societies which run the modern West like Skull and Bones and Rhodes' group all did quite explicitly.) I think it's the opposite-you can't have a successful and long-lasting society which is NOT based on everyone knowing the truth. >You may have noticed that after centuries of the scientific method; most people, i.e. 70% of the population don’t give a crap. Homeopathy is still around. Right-despite the scientific method being blasted out of every megaphone, people persist in distrusting it. This is a sign of popular wisdom, actually. Throughout most of the existence of modern medicine, it was more likely to kill you than doing nothing or using some sort of placebo-based treatment. I'm talking about puerperal fever and things of that sort. Things have not gotten much better outside of trauma medicine, obstetrics and surgery. Pharmacological research is irredeemably garbaged up by pharma companies' marketing and bribery: https://medium.com/@BaruchK/watched-this-presentation-on-big-pharma-destroying-the-field-of-medical-research-a100e029c658#.x8uwt2vmu Staying away from doctors and medicine except for emergency events and childbirth is a sign of intelligence. I am also reminded of a college professor of mine, an Idiot, Yet Intellectual, who went on at length about game theory, and how us religious settlers are behaving in a non-game-theoretical way. Eventually, he complained about how his wife also did not behave game-theoretically, and how this perplexed him. >But a society in which people understood in very clear terms that human females only mate with high-status men, and the status is a zero-sum game; well that wouldn’t be a very cooperative society, would it. This would be a very stupid society, because it would be based on the sort of lie that only guys who buy PUA e-books are dumb enough to believe. Human females actually mate with all sorts of men, of all sorts of status, for all sorts of reasons. The kind that only mate with high status males are idiotic prostitutes and do not tend to raise many children to functional, reproductive adulthood. A man's status changes throughout his life and generally men have more children earlier on, before they gain significant wealth and power. Actually, anyone who had read his Darwin would understand that. For instance, in Descent of Man, when he discusses lek-based mating systems in birds, he talks about how occasionally, the female will elope with a younger and less spectacular specimen while the mature and spectacular males are absorbed in their contests. How much more humans! >Sam Harris wants a new system of ethics: well then he first must understand how systems of ethics came to exist. Peterson knows something about that. No, he doesn't. He has a bunch of just-so stories: How The Elephant Got His Trunk, and How The Lobster Got Hooked On Serotonin. >You can’t just drop the truth on a stone age tribe and expect they’ll come out next day as Californian 140 IQ Jews. You can, however, drop seductive lies on Californian 140 IQ Jews and expect that in a few generations they will go extinct. And for high-IQ people, positivism is the most seductive lie, which is why it does so well in the Ivy Leagues. >anybody who understood Darwin would spend his whole life in a sperm bank so that he could have the maximum number of descendants. Have you ever read Darwin? Honestly, please. "Say what you will about National Socialism, dude, at least it was an ethos." Darwin doesn't discuss maximizing the number of one's descendants as an ethical goal, and certainly didn't live in a way that suggests that he saw this as his ethical goal. Further, evolutionary fitness is determined in the long term. You'd be better off having ten kids with one woman and raising them in a system of ethics and morals which would maximize the odds of each one having ten kids and raising them in the same system of ethics and morals, etc., then spawning 1000 kids with various childless lesbians wielding turkey basters, since the vast majority of those kids would grow up dysfunctional and childless, and in a few generations, there would be little genetic trace of you left.

"Well, allow me to win the argument for him." LOL. Nice try.

If you think orthodox Jews are selling the truth you should be a fan of Peterson.

I don't think anybody is selling the truth, because it's not for sale. Get it through your head-what is for sale is, by definition, not the truth. Don't you ever open the Tao Te Ching? There are ways to get to the truth, and I do think the Torah is the right way to get to a truth that can be used by a nation (not individual stoics and hermits.) I'm not a fan of Peterson because his philosophy is just-so stories, most recently addressed by Stove in his Evolutionary Fairy Tales, and prior to that, Carlyle (when he talks about Pig Philosophy.) If I wanted that stuff, I think Scott Adams sells it in a more entertaining form.

I'm more into Zhuangzi. So know it's "a" truth, huh. Good one. You may have noticed that the stories that Peterson is telling are your stories. He deals on Old Testament stuff. You could show some appreciation.

If a used car dealer quotes the Bible in order to move product, should we be flattered? I'm not much into dealership. As for "a truth"-this is not something new. One midrash (allegorical tradition) says "the Torah has 70 faces." Another says this: "Rabbi Shimon said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create Adam, the ministering angels formed themselves into groups and parties, some of them saying, 'Let him be created/ whilst others urged, 'Let him not be created'. Thus it is written, Love and Truth fought together, Righteousness and Peace combated each other (Ps. lxxxv, n) 1 : Love said, 'Let him be created, because he will dispense acts of love'; Truth said, 'Let him not be created, because he is compounded of falsehood' ; Righteousness said, 'Let him be created, because he will perform righteous deeds'; Peace said, 'Let him not be created, because he is full of strife.' What did the Lord do? He took Truth and cast it to the ground. Said the ministering angels before the Holy One, blessed be He, 'Sovereign of the Universe ! Why dost Thou despise Thy seal? Let Truth arise from the earth!' Hence it is written, Let truth spring up from the earth." In other words, there is a truth which is shattered into many pieces by the reality in which we exist, as a necessary condition of our existence as men. But truth does exist.

I'm not sure who you're writing this for, but you surely can't expect me to care about what Rabbi Shimon said.

I doubt in 2000 years anyone will care what you, me or Jordan Peterson had to say. If Rabbi Shimon's words are still studied today, it's because there is something to them. Oh, look, another 5000 word NrX manifesto!