It wouldn't work because there is no argument to be steelmanned. There's only allegations, insults and lies about eachother's past. And the rest are their beliefs and hollow promises. No legit arguments
I think *every* debate should start with a steelman argument. Or if the participants of the debate do not know the opponent's arguments beforehand, split the debate into half. At the middle you're supposed to do steelman argument. And if the opponent just lies without any evidence, the steelman argument is basically "You believe X, Y and Z because you *feel* that they are true. You cannot provide any objective evidence for any of these claims. However, your point is that how things feel is more important than what can be proven." The steelman part is about being able to *understand* the position of the opponent without any lies or claiming things that are not true. The audience is expected to be smart enough to figure out if steelman argument is made correctly.
(The 1st debate) Thanks for clarifying the Atheistic position further The left brain 🧠 vs the right 🧠 brain The debate will never be resolved since The fundamental premise of Atheism is (1=0) So it seems that Peterson Was left brain(1) and Harris(0) Since they couldn’t agree completely so Not (=) That’s true mathematically (1=/=0) Now at one point in the debate even Harris said “that I can even accept that” on God Thefore only once for a few seconds they both become fully rational (1=1) I feel sorry for Jordan he had to try so hard to make it happen(Respect him for that) He sure is an open minded guy who can pull you out of your Extreme point of views (In this case Harris’s denial of God) Why Jordan is 1 in(1=0) Jordan 1:27:00(Reading ) “God is how we imaginitivly And collectively represent the existence and actions of conscienceness across time” “As the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time frames but are not necessarily apprehensable like as objects as in here and now.” (His explanation) “What that means in some sense is that you have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structures that are a consequence of evolution that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses of time. And they structure your perception of reality in ways that, it wouldn’t be structured if you’d only lived the amount of time you are going to live. And that is also part of the problem for deriving values from facts because your evencient and you can’t derive the right value from the facts that portray themselves to you in your life span. Which is why you have a biological structure which is like 3.5 billion years old. -god is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the persuit of higher being and truth. That’s a fundamental element of hero mythology. -god is the higher value in the hierarchy of value (That’s another way of looking at it) -god is what calls and responds to the eternal call to adventure -god is the voice of conscience -God is the source of judgement and mercy and guilt -God is the future to which we make sacrifices. into the trancedental repository of reputation. Here is a cool one if you’re an evolutionary biologist -god is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men (So you know men arrange themselves into hierarchy and men rise in the hierarchy, there are principles that are important that determine the probability of their rise and those principles aren’t Tyrannical/ Power they are something like the ability to articulate truth and the ability to be competent and ability to make appropriate moral judgements and if you can do that in a given situation then all the other men will vote you up the hierarchy so to speak and that will radically increase your reproductive fitness And the operation of that process in the long expanses of time looks to me like it’s codefied in something like the notion of The God the Father. It’s also the same thing that makes men attractive to women because women peel of the top of the male hierarchy and the question is what should be at the top of the hierarchy??? The answer right now is tyranny as part of the patriarchy but the answer is something more like the ability to use truthful speech in the service of let’s say “well being” So that operates across tremendous expansions of time and it plays a role in selection for survival itself and it makes it a fundamental reality.” 1:48:08 Sam Harris (where he also admitted (1) therfore they agreed (1=1) even though only for a second then back to (1=0) “To call that thing god, fine that’s the god I have no problem with but that’s not how most people most of the time are using the word “G-O-D”
@@mohsinakhtar7876 just another example of someone using an extreme as a generalization to justify their rational when the regulars actually benefit from it and cause good from it. It is good for everyone else, but because a bad seed, throw the whole thing away. Its stupid at best. Its like a trickle down economic persons argument. Because 5 people will screw it up, out of 100, we can't do a trickle up. Despite the fact it will help 95 people, because 5 people screw up, now everyone has to suffer. Same thing as his argument vs religion. In an honest world without greedy snakes running the show, trickle down works, but as trump has shown us, snakes rule. So the trickle doesn't happen and instead is pocketed. Sams logic, like the trickle people, is wrong. Jordan is right and I would bet he would agree with my statement about trickle up as opposed to trickle down. Again, the point is, religion works despite the bad people who exploit it. Arguing that we need a perfect approach or we keep the SQ(status quo), is exactly why America is fucked right now. The SQ does not work. Acting like God works, living like God exists, is good. Just like government and most anything else for that matter, you need to keep it honest. But removing it completely is stupid at best.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
The best one I've ever seen hands down absolutely, doesnt needlessly interrupt with terrible comments. Actually understands the debate and forms compelling points.
Mark Wilkie remember when Sam asked Jordan about the resurrection, Sam got Jordan to concede that the resurrection is almost certainly bullshit and Jordan had nothing to say but Weinstein tried to come in and save him, then as the conversation went on, Weinstein was the one to pivot from that to masturbation, and you can tell by Weinstein and sams interactions that they both knew what he was doing when he changed the subject
Alfredo Gonzalez the thing is that the resurrection was never the topic of discussion. The topic is what are moral values grounded in. So JP conceded that point to Harris, but that means nothing to the discussion topic. The reality is Harris was never able to articulate what his ideal set of values is grounded in. JP admits that Christianity is not necessarily it, but that something concrete needs to fill the void to avoid us spiraling into relativistic chaos and that religious stories act as just that thing. By the way, if you study historical texts carefully, there is actually fairly compelling evidence that the resurrection happened. JP is certainly no expert in this historical event as he admits. Read, “The Case for Christ”. Don’t bring your own bias into it.
The real hero here is Bret, no joke. These guys would of rambled and talked over each other, but Bret brought them back on point and summed up what each said. He really did a great job.
RobG811 He is as brilliant as both of them. I one hundred percent agree I'll be trying to find conversations where he takes a more significant play in after this.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
....Or you can get a dictionary and/or a thesaurus and turn a 2 hour video into a 6 hour viewing session to pause and read then have your brain turn to slightly more gelatinous jelly.
Regardless of their miscommunication, I really think earnest, high-level discourse like this will be looked back at as the spark that ignited a public intellectual reawakening, technically speaking.
I'm not even sure what point Sam is attempting to make here. that we can derive morals from nihilism/atheism? that abandoning religion is supposed to make it a better world? that his criticisms of religion and its social consequences somehow disprove the existence of god? I mean clearly, atheistic communism is responsible for over 150+ million deaths in a small fragment of the 20th century. clearly, secular governments and motives are responsible for far more deaths and misery in history than primarily religious motives. Sam Harris' arguments work well on the uninformed, they're hypothetical ideas kind of like ideas of Utopia are hypothetical that don't translate into reality. but I can see how mouth foaming clueless atheists support him, they're man-children that haven't cleaned up their room, going after a TJ Kirk template. Sam is a great wizard with words, that makes useless, simplistic and irrelevant analogies to compare against complex problems................
Andrew P -- Outch. Most of the discussion must have gone over your head given what you wrote. "atheistic communism"? YOU have to prove that the absence of a belief in god leads to atrocities. What about "Christian nazism" if we're inventing new terms here...?
PW, communism was derived through atheistic rationale and implemented by power hungry atheists. given that atheists were the minority, that makes the point even more statistically relevant. the larger point is that, if you're going to blame the atrocities committed by people on religion, and argue that religion compels people to do things they would not normally do, then we have no choice but to look at what the so called "non-religious atheists" (including secular governments) are compelled to do. you cannot have the argument one-way only because it suits your particular narrative. sorry about that.
"communism was derived through atheistic rationale" - Please elaborate on that, so I know if you're an intellectually worthwhile discussion partner or a moron.
I'll let Lenin elaborate that for you: " Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.[7]" "Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[8]" and The Soviet Union was an atheist state[11][12][13] in which religion was largely discouraged and at times heavily persecuted.[14] The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly, but two-thirds of the Soviet population were irreligious. About half the people, including members of the ruling Communist Party and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, religion seemed irrelevant. Prior to its collapse in late 1991, official figures on religion in the Soviet Union were not available. State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm.[15] I could go on and on and on. if you haven't noticed, this is something called evidence for my argument and none for yours.
I'm 14 minutes in; that was a brilliant idea for resuming the conversation. Both parties summed up each other's position with a great degree of fidelity. Respect.
I think peterson's framing of sam's position was atrocious. His framing was that sam believes we don't get much value from stories and we should focus on facts. Sam literally said 10 seconds earlier that you can find a lot of value in stories you just don't have to mix them up with fact. The fact that peterson was incapable of steelmanning harris makes me think he is bad faith or incredibly close minded.
@@jaredangell8472 you have a strong need for validation if you have to put down the intellect of these two brilliant men in order to appear smart. I pity you.
@@jaredangell8472 even if you believe to ne as smart or even smarter than him, to imply that he's not a giant of intellect, as you put it, is just wrong. Im sure you are a smart guy. However Jordan Peterson is smarter than 99.99% of people, for sure. Anybody can say hes smart. Jordan Peterson proves it through his countless lectures. And just because you are hypothetically more intelligent than him it doesn't make him stupid per se.
@@jaredangell8472 I did read 12 rules for life, and he wrote it with the intention of being easy to understand by the masses. I haven't read Nietzsche or velikovsky, but i am sure they are way harder to understand. And by the way, by saying he is no giant of an intellect you are kinda implying that you are smarter than him. But thats just my opinion and im thankful for your appreciation of my right towards having it. Also thank you for the quick responses. I need practise for tomorrow's final exams in an english group discussion. This will certainly be of value :)
@@jaredangell8472 I responded because I'd like to put down people who like to put others down. Turnabout is fairplay. "Wow, seriously?" Implies disbelief. Which may mean you have a cognitive bias that if you can understand it others should as well. I could be wrong with just this sentence but on the second one... "Neither one of these guys are exactly giants of the intellect" This doesn't have proper basis as we can define "giants of the intellect" in a number of ways. But your basis on this seems to be that they aren't exactly giants of the intellect because what they write is easier to follow than Velikovsky or Nietzsche. Another bias that doesn't take in to consideration that maybe they had to make the books easily digestible to the public. And still isn't a proper measure of what "giants of the intellect" are. Anyone can make a book that is hard to follow. "my God how far the human race has fallen this century!" Implies that the human race has progressed so much that there shouldn't exist one or two individuals that can't follow the conversation of two other indivduals. It's like 'Hey man! Humans are the most advanced species that accomplished so much so everyone should be evolved enough to understand everyone else that is not even that smart.' It's ignorant of the relationship between human race progress and biology and probably can be explained by you living as a hermit. Basically you've put down 6 on the whole of your comment. Lazy quack and Chris Hardin because they could only understand every now and then but you could. Hurray for you. Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson because according to your standards they are not really giants of intellect. Even though you admit that you're aware there is plurality in intelligence.
The human race is now far-regressed in your opinion because two people could only understand every now and then. Downright absurd. And yourself by belittling the current capacity of the contemporary with just a three-sentence comment. "Is that what I did?" That is what your comment suggested. You've put down others because of a strong need for validation. And for you to not know that implies your comment was indeed a reactionary response. I really hope being a hermit and not caring about others opinions of yourself is a good contribution to human progress. Stay in your bubble.
I'm so used to seeing Jordan Peterson argue with simpleton journalists that can't even grasp the basic theses of his concepts. It's so refreshing to see him debate someone who actually challenges him intellectually. This was a great debate - tons of deep thinking done on both sides.
Agreed. Sam effectively disillusions pseudo-intellectuals. Unfortunately, I don’t think the same intellectual challenge occurred both ways. Sam shows that efficient recall and fancy vocabulary only get you so far.
Yeah, Sam Harris looked almost bored sifting through the hand signs, tone rollercoasters, and word salads. You can’t rational justify believing in one dogma while life’s ambiguity remains constant.
moderators get shit on every time they mess up, but are never shown admiration when they do a terrific job like Bret. With that being said, good job Bret; absolutely amazing job.
Old comment but I'll add to the thread none the less. It's the sound guy analogy. You never compliment the sound engineer for a clean video but you will complain if there is a problem with the sound.
I haven’t seen anything more mature and enlightening than this. Disagreements apart, the way they both foster in the common spirit of well being of everyone is a spirited refresh from most of the political nonsense that you see nowadays. Hats off to a great conversation with a level of respect and maturity we should all strive to, regardless of our differences.
There is so much truth in that comment, it’s pretty insightful. Sam Harris’s insistent dissection and deconstruction of everything reminds me a lot of my ex.
@@RecTec77 No offense taken, I don’t think she’d like him. I tend to attract to JP rather than SH because I think JPs model of philosophy is much more resistant to nihilism. It seems like SH attempts to explain the entire universe from a pure rational and materialist perspective. I don’t think humans are built to be motivated that way nor do I think the universe works purely in that way.
@@BlurryDays You and JP see the universe from the perspective of what you want it to be. Sam Harris tries to see and understand the world the way it is. Nihilism is very realistic from what we know, it's very likely that the universe has no plan for us and there is no deeper meaning. I see it this way: There is no deeper meaning to life but I still care about my family, friends and just having a good life. Why? Evolution. Why would I say fuck my family just because there is no deeper meaning? No, to me, what's important to me IS the meaning of life. I want humanity to continue, and other people to be happy, that's just in my genes. If we're all dead in a hundred years, I think that would be sad and I would try to make it so that doesn't happen, because it's important to me. If we're all dead in a million years, I still think that it's sad but I don't spend any time thinking about it, because I cannot change it and who knows what will have happened by then. I really dislike that we always talk about the universe and life the way we want it to be rather than what it actually is. There is no objective morality? So what? I still don't want to kill people and I'd rather there were no rapists and murderers. So we as a society have to come together, decide together on what the majority considers right and then do that, which we have done to a certain degree. That's a neverending process.
Both Sam and Jordan are incredible speakers. I could listen to them chat for days. But what made this series so special is Brett's ability to truly grasp both point's of view but even more importantly challenge each side. He deserves so much credit here for driving this conversation forward. Very well done.
@@tonron888 He's an incredibly successful speaker, author, professor, podcaster, etc. Clearly millions of people grasp him just fine. I'd encourage you to keep trying.
Same old arguments going around in circles, there will never be an end to the science v religion debate. Science seems to always win the logical arguments though 🤔
How dare you say that. I'm offended. Someone needs to deplatform you immediately! Help! Ring the fire alarm! Mummy I need a safe space to hide me from differing world views and intellectual conversation!.....you are right though, universities are now seriously retarded.
Summary: Peterson: I call the unknown "God." Sam: I call the unknown "unknown." Both: fundamentalism is bad, defend free speech, and discourse is the best way of getting closer to reality. Brett: I gave birth to this healthy conversation.
@@fixeddice1982 I almost agreed with you, but I actually remember Sam saying that you cannot disprove the existence of God in the same fashion that you can't disprove the existence of Santa. All he's saying is that there are many other better and more feasible alternatives than god. I think that he would still refer to the unknown as unknown.
Mike Peterson never calls the unknown 'god.' He does not rename the 'unknown' in any way. That which is unknown is unknown. He does say, 'Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god.' Peterson does not define this god, for that's unnecessary for his argument. He's making a psychological point, a fact that many atheists like Sam (who admits to an 'allergy to religion' but doesn't think about it) fail to hear and thus to understand, like Sam.
Mens et Ens True, and important to distinguish. It's not simply "the unknown" that Peterson defines god to be. This is problematic though, and is why Harris rightly objects: "Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god." That's completely subjective and argues within itself for a completely agnostic, secular society. No single "whatever is most important to me" is going to supersede others' definitions of such without causing suffering and hampering others' freedom of speech/belief/happiness etc. Basically, keep it to yourself. Your personal religion is beautiful and useful. The tyranny of religion forcing itself upon others as if it were objective truth is harmful and destructive. Harris rejects that Peterson defends the latter with the former, and Peterson rejects that Harris conflates the two as one entity. They're both right from their own perspectives. Practically, though... heuristics are only useful as long as they bridge our ignorance. We should not use ancient imperfect religious/philosophical placeholders when we have a custom-reality-shaped mold to work with.
INSET HUMANITY _This is problematic though, and is why Harris rightly objects: "Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god."_ Except that it is. Psychologically, what is 'God' but that which one follows, which directs one's life? How can Harris 'object' to that except from the unlistening assumption that 'all that sounds like religion is bad,' which misses Peterson's point? If he objects to the term 'god,' then he cannot hear what Peterson says, for Peterson does not mean what Harris means which is not what most of the Church has meant for most of its history. _We should not use ancient imperfect religious/philosophical placeholders when we have a custom-reality-shaped mold to work with._ Unless the ancient actually is true.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
@@typhoonofideas It was an interesting debate, but this part is a self-congratulatory myth. They do it to be cordial in these sorts of environments, sure. But Harris and Peterson (in particular) are both guilty of presenting the least-generously interpretation of certain arguments (say, ones that sit in opposition to their world-view) when they're not in this sort of face-to-face debate situation. It's really frustrating when you're really looking for one of them to give a clear answer to detractors.
@@usxnews1834 There's much more utility in steelmanning than just being cordial. It indicates upfront whether or not you actually understand your opponent's position.
I feel like I am the rare breed of person who loves both Sam and Jordan's perspectives equally. Everything they disagree on is the stuff I am most unsure about, and they both make such thoughtful, clear points that I could listen to them argue about anything for hours on end. This debate was awesome to watch, and I think anyone looking for a clear "winner" out of it has missed the point.
You are a step ahead. You see the pure value in simply coming to terms with eachother through deep communication. Those who truly think its easy to distinguish who is more adept at these subjects is foolish. All brilliant individuals.
captainpummel no not really. You’re just another fool who refuses to take positions even when one seems right. In short your like Switzerland - never were they great, never will they ever be great.
+captainpummel, I think it's possible to appreciate both's contribution to the intellectual discussion while still clearly agreeing with one over the other. What Sam says resonates a lot more with me (as an atheist and as a biological scientist), but I thoroughly enjoy watching and listening to both of them, especially when engaging with each other. I feel like what Jordan says is more useful than objectively true and what Sam says is more objectively true than useful. This value judgement is using each other's arguments as a frame of reference.
@@spherituality7691 I clicked off of the thread before I laughed at your reply and had to come back to like it because people who make you chuckle deserve appreciation.
Man, their knowledge of every concept they discuss is amazing. On top of having the knowledge of the concept, they have the understanding to articulate it back in layman’s terms with stories an examples. I’ve had to stop the video countless times to just research the concepts, theories and philosophers they discuss. Kudos to both gentlemen.
I love the way you said they translate it in layman's terms. I don't think a lot of people realize the big "pretentious" sounding words are a large tool of the landscape in which these topics are discussed and that the translation can be a pain in the ass.
Sam harris here, just wanted to drop by and say Fuck ALL of you and the positivity of this thread. LIFE IS GRIM. Why even small talk and give positive criticism on his positive critique? It achieves nothing more than what was already achieved by the poster. There is no more lemon juice to squeeze out of this already squeezed lemon so quit stopping by to twist it some more. Y'all sound like a bunch of Jordan's. Quit that shit.
Wow, these comments are much more toxic then I would have thought for the subject material in the video. Are all of you holding on to your token intellectual to "win" an argument to feel justified in your own beliefs? Neither Sam or Jordan "won" imo... we did, never before in history could we have such bright minds sharing ideas on a platform millions can watch for free.
They think that people they disagree with are stupid, which is in my opinion about the ignorant thing you can do. I'd love to see some of these people stuttering their way through a debate.
The moderator is outstanding, but a lot of credit too to the two speakers who are interested in others' views and open to the idea that they might be wrong or may not have correctly understood each other's point. Very interesting and good role models for how to communicate.
I feel like Peterson is not just saying that there is wisdom in old stories, but rather that the stories themselves are part of what it means to be human. He is saying you can't just replace them with new stories because they will no longer be useful to human society, though you can re-tell them with a modern twist like you see in superhero movies. I think both he and Bret Weinstein believe that these stories have evolved as a sort of collective conscience over the age, and therefore are necessary to provide us with meaning in a seemingly arbitrary existence.
I don't think we need them anymore because the good ones get retold anyway in new stories just with different characters, flavors and locations and the bad/useless ones don't. As they say, "There's nothing new since Mozart." These archetypes wouldn't vanish if I waved a magic wand and nuked every version of every copy of every religious text ever written. So I feel that JBP's point doesn't hold much water.
Sam Harris is using this debate to forward an agenda to promote Islam and Muslims in a negative light .He is coating his agenda by hiding in the cloak of universal dislike of organised religion. He is not having a universal unbiased debate based on looking at human nature in its survival instincts. That is not tring to get to the truth about human life.
I agree that stories and myths are an immensely valuable part of being human. But it's dangerous to pretend the myth is real, the way religious books and priests do.
Perhaps they don't just provide a subjective meaning, perhaps they are "the" objective meaning, and without that enlightenment, our existence becomes arbitrary as many modern people have decided in their turn away from the moral truth
Wow, this is really great. I regret dismissing Petersen in the beginning. He is really sincere, honest, polite, and is doing his best to understand Harris' points. He is really amazing. He had my complete respect here.
He is actually just making it confusing and jumping all over the place rather than just agreeing that yes presumptions are the things he tries to define everything by his ways 99% religious people.will disagree with peterson he is technically athiest if he doesn't actually believe in God but just act like god exists its like a christian who is athiest but no one knows he goes to church and all but he doesn't himself believe in God.petersons position is misleading to even talk sbout religious people with him his idea of religion and god is just ignorant
@@howardrobinson4938 Sam. He frequently talked over Peterson. I think he would be the first to get heated. I think Peterson would be the first to start using words incorrectly
Thank you both for having these discussions. I had a lot of the questions that Sam Harris asked while reading/watching Jordan Peterson. This actually helped me understand Jordan Peterson better. Many thanks!
@@alanmaher7161 that’s a good question, but masochist doesn’t translate to being upfront. A lot of people are horribly ashamed of that stuff and yes, even a true masochist.
Great respect for Sam, Jordan and Brett for making this a highly free and open discourse with minimal tangles between competing perspectives. This will be a discussion for the history books.
It gives me great hope to know that so many people are excited about listening to conversations like this. We aren't as ignorant and narcissistic as social media and the news would have us believe.
Yeah, people only believe the world has become stupid, because they don't actually understand science and statistics. They don't know what things like selection bias or confirmation bias are. There's two main examples of situations where people don't see the selection bias going on, and so they have an inaccurate picture of reality. One of the two, is that people think there's a crime wave going on, because never before has their been this many videos of crimes taking place. The number of videos has skyrocketed, as has the number of reports on news channels about these crimes. When in reality, the crime rate has never been lower. It's never been safer to live in a western country than right now. Crimes of all kinds have fallen in number dramatically, but especially violent crimes. But since everyone has a high quality camera in their pocket at all times now, there's orders and orders of magnitude more videos of crimes taking place than ever before, and so it gives us the impression that there truly is an enormous crime wave occurring, at least to those of us who lived in the time before smartphones and digital cameras existed, and had to get all our news from the TV and newspapers. And yes, the other big example of this misunderstanding of the statistics is when it comes to intelligence and knowledge. There's never been more videos of people being total morons, than there are right now. People take the comedy film Idiocracy seriously and claim that it's really happening in the real world these days, even though Mike Judge I'm sure thinks people are daft for thinking a silly comedy film is some kind of accurate prediction of reality. By every metric we have in science to measure intelligence, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now. We are collectively smarter than humanity has ever been before. And collectively we know more than every before, e.g. literacy rates have never been higher. Every single year we measure it all and humanity gets smarter and smarter each and every year. It's always going up. But there's never been more _VIDEOS_ of idiocy than ever before. There used to be more idiots, many many more idiots than are around these days, it's just there weren't thousands of videos of them being dumb like there is these days. In the past we might have seen videos on the news of people doing dumb things, every so often, but these days we can see videos recorded in every single country in the world within minutes of the video being uploaded, so of course when you take all the idiots from the 7+ billion people on earth, of _COURSE_ it seems like there's way more idiots than ever before. But there's actually far fewer of them than there were before, it's just that in the past, people didn't have their idiocy filmed and broadcast to the whole world instantly like nowadays. And it's never been easier than right now for idiots to group up with fellow idiots and have a protest against vaccines or claim the earth is flat, or something like that. They are in groups that span the globe, almost entirely on online forums, Facebook, reddit, etc. Anti vaxx morons seem to be flooding the world. But it's nothing new. Anti vaxxers have existed since the very beginning of vaccines, people have always misunderstood them and got scared to take them. Right now, we actually have fewer morons than ever before. But the remaining ones have thousands of videos of them being dumb. So it's easy to think the world is going nuts and regressing somehow. But again, by every metric we have to measure intelligence and knowledge, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now People just have to start trusting the science. Not the click bait media, or UA-camrs without scientific training, or Instagram "influencers" etc. Try to have some hope, for humanity.
Bbgirl you're on social media rn. And It seems most people watch to feel Smart as evident by the Audiences sheep like applause. Also if all the comments about having to look up words every few minutes are true then I'd say I'm a bit more right.
A couple of problems with your optimism. Most people will treat this debate as entertainment, and it will little if any impact on their lives. Applauding these debates and finding them interesting is quite a different thing that putting in the long and difficult work to change and improve. Second, social media and those who support the news (with their attention and reactions) is a sufficient sample size to point to the scary realization that enough people ARE as ignorant and as tribal as either social media or the news would suggest.
Sam: People should be doing certain things because its logical to do so. Jordan: maybe you're correct, but they wont for complicated reasons. Neither are wrong.
I don't know why this comment lacks in likes, I think this is the most accurate. Jordan argues that maybe Sam has a point when it comes to evolving out of religion but all Jordan is saying is that we don't know how to do so at the moment and Sam was unable to respond to this argument. I do feel like religion in some sense is limited but its a very powerful force that is undeniably a influence to many people in terms of morality. There both right in there own sense. Although if I were Jordan I would argue that having to compass to life has the risk of nihilism and that could also be damaging.
the Lost Q okay so how then, which is what Jordan is basically saying, do we define what is universally morally good and evil, which is what Sam claimed but is having problem defining. He used as an example if we were to touch fire on a stove we would immediately rationalize not to touch it again because of the pain we felt from touching it. But then that doesn’t explain (this is what I’m not understanding from Harris view) why raping a child bad? Why incest is wrong? What makes a murderer who kills children wrong and so on? We can’t only depend on only our feelings or rationality to decide these things because the one’s who are doing all these things have rationalize in their minds that these things are all okay to put it in simplistic terms and get pleasure out of doing these atrocious acts. Sam is blaming religion and Jordan is saying along the lines that no and not denying that some religions do have bad ethics but that this stuff that evil people do have been happening long before religion came since he believes in evolution. The questions is how then do we define what is morally right or wrong and that’s where things get complicated...
If you look back in the 60's through the 70's this type of talking on tv was mainstream. Our kind of entertainment. This kind of conversation, the format,the listening without presumption and interruption... These 3 are gentleman.
@@stevowilliams8279 You think conservatives (religious people, by and large) know the difference between correlation and causation, or the criteria for evaluating either of those individually in any kind of dataset? Seems improbable, since they're always in these comment sections, (among other places, like the town square) over-reacting to the world around them, failing to understand it, often not even attempting in the first place.
@@Arbitrary_Moniker yes i do think some of them do, thats a hell of a claim to make about an entire group of people. I think youll find the cause and effect argument on both sides of humanity.
I think it's important not to come down on one side or the other but the real value here is to find one's self in the conversation, and yes the mediator was brilliant.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
To sum it up Peterson basically argues that there is immense value in stories that have survived over such incredible spans of time and it is unwise to dismiss them, whereas Harris argues that, well while that may be true for incredibly well read and intelligent people like Peterson, for the average Joe it is dangerous and has observable catastrophic consequeces, so we might drop it all together because after all, we do have better stories to tell, than people had in the stone age, from which even the most uneducated of minds could benefit exponentially, rather than trying to revive an ancient story to not only stop causing the damage it causes but even actually benefit both individuals as well as society. It's however extraodinary to watch this conversation because esentially they both wish to catch humanity from falling into damnation, and wish to do it in a way that has already been proven successful it just so hapens that these two ways differ in their humanistic approach. They both however are geniunely humanistic and thus identical in persuit, so it is extraodinary to watch them talk about those 5% of differences between them and it geniunely give me hope in humanity overall to see such an event as a part of contemporary human repertoire. This isn't about winning an argument, because the argument is the same, how to help people so there is no debate per se, but this is a discussion about the most efficient way of going about it, with the least amount of casualities in the aftermath. It is about the finese of constructing a system that is most helpful and least damaging in so in an attempt to do exactly this, these two wonderful men sit and talk about such intricate details of their endeavour in order to individually progress towards their goal of constructing the best humanly possible system. In short, they are not at all at odds with each other but quite on the contrary, they sacrifice the comfort of agreeableness for the sake of achieving a higher even more intricate truth. Which is exactly the opposite of what people do today, which is close themselves in a cosy bubble of echo chamber where their hardly articulated beliefs are overly inflated and lauded by a select groupd of people who have the same issues and level of laziness or ignorance. It is thus geniunely beautiful to watch this !
I don't think Sam argues that we should dismiss those ancient stories, but that we should throw the divine aspect of them in the trash and accept that they all come from humans.Then there is room for discussion and doubt because people are not subscribed to a dogma. P.S. : Sorry or my english!! I assure you, I'm better at understanding them than speaking and writting them😂😂
1:50:33 "If we burned a Koran on this stage tonight, the rest of our lives would be spent in hiding, because of how motivated people would be to address that pseudo-problem. That's the world we're living in. Civilization, insofar as we have a purchase on it, is a matter of correcting for those errors. And religion, for the most part, is standing in the way of those corrections" 2:06:50 "The fullback who kicks an own goal and goes back to his South American village and gets murdered, he's surrounded by people who are taking the game too seriously. My problem with religion is that so much of the time, we're meeting those people, and we have no place to stand to criticize those people because we're so attached to the game" Probably one of the finest summations of the core problem with religion that I've ever heard. This really distills and nails it, and as much as I love JP, he never really addresses this issue. He dances around it instead, because the bottom line is that JP doesn't *want* to let go of religion.
I think you missed the point. Jordan is definitely against the religious points you highlighted. I'd watch more of him if you think otherwise, but consider this: If you remove the radicalisation and misinterpretation of religion and just stuck to the values in the search for the manifestation of truth in the world, in western culture. You will find the bible a library of books at the base of the hierarchy of knowledge and ideas in the world created over time. Something very, very strange about that fact.
Well of course, where religions compete with each other there might be conflict. But within the religion it is for the most part safe. The core problem with atheism was that it enabled so much of the millions of deaths in the 20th century. And it was purely rational because those leader (i.e Stalin) were nihilistic. If your worldview is that all life is suffering then is perfectly rational to want to end all life. What will correct for that... science ? more materialism?
um, the religious of the world are responsible for vastly more death. the core problem is with you, not someone who doesn't believe what you choose to believe. @@ed841
The way they fire analogies back and forth. The way they counter each other's points. I wish I could argue 10% as cleverly! I'm commuting 200 miles a day just now. These guys make it a joy.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
It's like reading a book written by both of them. Every other chapter swings to one extreme or the other, until the end of the book where chapters get closer and closer to a point where a conclusion can be drawn
Sam Harris said on Rogans podcast that he hopes that we move toward a Netflix style payment system for content like this. Let’s hope that never happens!
@@Brandon-kl4ns it might not be such a bad thing. Consider UA-cam when Netflix became big. Netflix just had more content for payment but UA-cam content continued improving. Similarly a paid version of this won't necessarily put this kind of content behind a wall but rather introduce new better paid content.
But he doesn't, though. I'm by no means a Sam Harris fangirl, I disagree with him on a lot of stuff, including a couple of points he made here, but Jordan's entire premise is fundamentally nuts, and all his fancy talk around definitions and minutia is only there to keep you from taking a good hard look at what he's ultimately trying to defend. Without the fancy terminology and clever tangents, you might notice that. Jordan is basically painting a masterpiece with shit. Impressive brush work. Still stinks.
Austenhead I’ve actually never seen someone say vague nothings while also using the metaphor of a poop painting? I guess you deserve some sort of award for that.
Austenhead I think that both sides are actually arguing the core source, and JP is trying to identify the black box being a black box, and Sam Harris is trying to say his Black Box is truth. The problem is that they are arguing about something different. JP isn’t crazy at all. He’s debating and trying to get to the bottom of a fundamental issue.
I find myself rewatching all four of these fantastic discussions atleast once a year! It just feels as if my mind conencts to something deeper and deeper every time! It's a crime that more discussion like these aren't being had, and imagine if political debates were as intellectual as these! Steelmaning should be tought in school!
Sam’s claim of the idea of no evil just ignorance in the Hindu and Buddhist religions is valid but that idea is also present in Christianity and Islam. There the idea of the self in Islam where the true self is like a wild dog. A wild dog does whatever it wants it’s bound by its needs and humans who want to be better put that dog on a leash or in the Islamic text a chain so that they may control themselves and not let their basic animal instincts and human emotions rule them. Now burning the Quran or the word of God part. The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) I’m using him as an example as he is the highest human moral in Islamic society. So anyway once a man did the effort to gather human and animal dung in a container and threw it on the prophet’s back. During this insistent the prophet was on a prayer mat and his daughter was sitting next to him. She wiped the dung off his back. The prophet forgave him. The second incident the man invited the prophet for a conversation but instead he publicly humiliated the prophet. The prophet forgave him. But when that man started cruelly killing innocent Muslims his head was cut off. Now with regards to war the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said avoid war at all costs unless someone attacks you three times then engage in war. With regards to his slave wives. He had no slave wife’s. Some of his wives were former prostitutes, widows, girls whose parents didn’t have financial means to raise them and women generally in need. There is a instance where he asked a woman to marry him. She’s said no so he didn’t marry her. He also said that if a Muslim man is to marry widows and prostitutes should have first priority. Just like Peterson’s idea that religion isn’t all bad but you have to read the text as a whole as well as individual verses. During Muhammed(pbuh’s) reign it was the time most slaves had been freed in history. The time after the prophet is just general history even if it’s the story of his companions. The Islamic religion was completed in his lifetime. The Muslims that perform heinous crimes are arrogant of their own religion.
As much as I love Jordan and Sam (And I really do), I have to hand it to Bret Weinstein. He does a spectacular job keeping everyone on track and getting down to the core of the issues, no BS, no wordplay, just straight shooting guy. Really digging this conversation!
You should check out the dark horse podcast, Bret and his wife Heather do some amazing live streams. I find Bret the most thorough across vast landscapes and subjects among the IDW.
Wife is out of town for a long weekend with a friend. Do I go hang out with my buds? Catch an action flick on line or at the cinema? Do much needed chores around the house? Nah, watch 10 hours of Peterson/Harris debates instead.
Maybe Sam can come up with a guide line that can suggest for you what to do best, although I doubt that. So just stick with what you have and make the best of it. ^ debate summary.
Imagine having access to some of the brightest minds as they attempt to solve some of the hardest problems in existence. We live in a really cool time.
@@CravenM1980 Humans have pondered their origins for at least as long as drawings were carved and painted into cave walls - generations ago. Isn’t it interesting that human gods came about right around the time we began storying this place to each other? The stories you tell about your god can give picture to some of the unknown but pretending it satisfactorily answers all questions is irrational. Human religion itself becomes very clear and explainable when in the context of being something created by humans. The numerous incarnations of gods exist because humans attempt to give form and meaning to this place and ourselves. It’s beautiful, deeply moving, and one of the most powerful metaphors in human history but it seems it will only ever exist as metaphor.
@@joshuareeves9985 I just love how you use cave paintings to try to explain God away. God is beginning and end. It’s proven through Jesus Christ who did come to this earth. Evolution isn’t fact just fiction. I don’t agree with religion at all. I agree with the Bible that’s it. Science has proven the Bible, history has proven the Bible. Keep trying to explain God out of existence and He will show you His power
@@CravenM1980 I was once where you are. Just as I did, you discount all other human belief. You separate yourself and your god as being an exception to all other human religion. You’re convinced your god is the correct god and somehow above scrutiny. There’s no way it can’t be real, right? It took me years of wrestling through the many questions. I challenged dozens and dozens of critically thinking humans. I was exposed to enough other perspectives and well reasoned minds that I finally, _finally_ accepted that the god indoctrination I grew up with and was sure beyond doubt of, was only part of the picture of this place. It will likely be one of the hardest things you’ll have to work through but I can tell you it’s brought more peace to me than praying to God ever could. I’m now able to admit I don’t know everything. I no longer have to rationalize the ridiculous amount of things the religious rationalize. I’m now connected to my fellow humans in a whole new way. I still find beauty in the imagery and wisdom in the stories but I see it for it is. It’s the picture given to this place by us as we try to figure all this out. It does not answer all questions. It will only ever be as real as we humans say.
@@joshuareeves9985 I’ll certainly pray for you my friend. Your issue is simple. You gave into satans lies and now you’ve turned from the one true God. I can only pray that you find truth in your heart to change. You have clearly explained someone who is completely lost
The moderator is one of the best moderators ive ever seen. he really understood both of their points and was fair in coming down on them when necessary.
Why oh why am i subjecting myself to this again?!? 😆 Sam's moral landscape completely boils down to: • When i'm choosing a course of action, i should ask myself whether the decision affects only me or also others. • Having determined that, i should then analyse whether this course of action will increase or detract from the well-being of all involved (whether that's only myself or also others). • And i should always choose the courses of action that increase that well-being and avoid the ones that detract from it. • This is true for actions taken by individuals as well as organizations, societies, governments. • This is really just a fleshed-out version of the golden rule, but my [Sam's] important innovation is this: that action-analysis must not be driven by dogma, but rather be informed by the facts of the real world as well as we can ascertain them. It really is that simple. And the shame is that he's for some reason reluctant to state it in language that straightforward. Because if he just said, "This is what it boils down to: [the thing cuzn ed typed]," it would be difficult to misunderstand or misconstrue him. But i think he thinks that the bones of the argument are so obvious, that it would be insulting to state them so plainly - so he assumes that people are disagreeing with the argument, rather than misunderstanding it because he presented it in the form of analogy. So instead of saying, "I see you misunderstood my analogy, so let me boil it down to: [the thing cuzn ed typed]," he presents another analogy. And the analogy makes perfect sense if you already grokked the argument, but is easy to misunderstand (on purpose or not) if you didn't already follow it. I think he's right about the moral landscape, as i've summarized it above. But i think the way he chooses to present it does a disservice to his argument, and to us by extension.
1:56:30 Case in point. 2 hours into their second moderated discussion, JBP says AGAIN that he (somehow) doesn't understand what Sam's ethos is grounded on. All Sam needed to or should have said is, "Well-being vs harm, as measured by real-world facts, not dogma. Full stop." But no, Sam seems to think he needs another analogy. Oy vey.
I agree to an extent. It absolutely seems that Sam does simply not understand that JP _cannot_ understand the concept of not having one clear word or phrase to ground ethics in, while reality of course is that nobody but the most zealous fanatics and literalists ground their ethic in the many holy books, which even then isn't to say that they are grounded in a shared understanding or even _assumption_ of 'god'. The idea of complex ethical discussion and elaboration and that the Golden rule based in scientific analysis of the world _can_ be a grounds for ethics is beyond JP, because that is what is done by every sane person today _anyways,_ and he somehow thinks that not having god as an achoring layer at the very top destroys that process, even though there is no proof for that at all. In fact, as criminality has decreased in most modern societies, it correlates with an increase in atheism, and the other way around of course. While this does not mean there is a causality, it also at least means there is no clear pointing towards atheists acting more immoral. But I need to defend Sam in his misunderstanding just a tad - while it's difficult seeing him stumble on how JP continuously wants something to ground ethics in, which is actually not needed, the fact remains that JP seems to have read Harris's book. And from what I've seen Harris at least holds JP's intellect in somewhat high regard. It may be that he _overestimates_ that intellect, not understanding that JP is, at his core, a lost child not unlike the people he describes as "lost" and "chaotic" who, without a god to anchor his life to, would not see any reason in it, let alone a legitimate ethic. Basically, I think Harris believes JP to be smarter than he is.
@@lVideoWatcherl ''which is actually not needed'' this in the first sentence of your second paragraph, illustrates that is YOUR OPINION. JP is so beyond you as he has spent literally 40 years trying to find the meaning of life AS WE EXPERIENCE LIFE at this moment. This guy basically just says: ''To hell with figuring out the meaning of life and JP is stupid for literally COMING AS CLOSE as the ENTIRETY OF HUMANITY'' Case in point: He read basically every great thinker in HISTORY and ACTUALLY STUDIED HISTORY. Now please state your credentials for claiming to know ''The Fabric Of Reality'' as blatantly as you put it in the five words you typed in the beginning of this comment.
@@toine6610 And HE'S STILL IGNORANT even though HE HAS READ SO MUCH. Just reading much and studying much doesn't mean you're actually _wise._ It perhaps means you are _knowledgable_ about philosophical argumentation. But wisdom doesn't come from simply reading stuff - and what's wise in one century does not automatically apply nearly to the same extent in another century. And that's Peterson's issue - he's a reactionary conservative who's so far stuck in the past because he cannot _fathom_ how progressive system change _is actually what has continuously brought about betterment for society._ Capitalism, at one point, wasn't a conservative policy after all. And Smith definitively did not want _this_ capitalism we see currently, he would in fact be largely appalled by it. And to your objection: it's _evidently_ not _objectively_ needed. Meaning, humanity has _evidently_ outgrown morality based on religion - as what was once religious morality has continuously adapted and changed over centuries. If morality _actually_ was objective in the religious sense, then _this is not possible nor needed,_ as, after all, the system would have been ultimately perfect at it's inception. However, if it is not _then,_ and it is not _now,_ then _you cannot argue objective morality either._ After all, that would indicate that our code of ethics could be _better_ in the future; implying that we need to improve. Curiously, we as a species seem to be doing that by becoming _less_ religious rather than more so. So Peterson would also be wrong on account of _this_ fact; if people definitively needed a grounding for morality, as the nonreligious population in a country increases, it would have to see more immorality. However, crime rates in all western democracies but the US (where a negative trend turned _just_ as the presidential race of 2015 got hot, I wonder if there might be a connection here?) have stagnated or decreased _for the last decades,_ while religiosity has declined in these countries. No, it is _not_ an opinion that morality does not objectively _need_ a grounding. A person can live their entire life as a moral member of society without needing any conceptual foundation for morality, without even thinking very much about morality. The _other_ stance is what needs to be supported with evidence; you need evidence _for_ the claim that morality needs a conceptual foundation for people to have the capacity to be moral. And as an aside; maybe back up a little. So far up JP's behind as you are, you're bound to just spit out more crap like that comment. Seriously, try questioning people a little _seriously._ Don't just dismiss somebody because they aren't of your opinion. And before you feel tempted to turn this around on me not liking Peterson; I can _gladly_ give you a multitude of reasons for me claiming him to be a self-help guru and pseudo-intellectual rather than a _respectable_ intellectually honest person. He's read a bunch, sure. He says some things which aren't entirely baseless and without merit, yes. But his intellectual dishonesty and bloviating in many aspects are not attributes of a person I consider to be intellectually relevant. And, just so you know, neither should you.
I've listened to this discussion three times now. There is so much to take in. One thing that I have realized is that Harris doesn't see (or perhaps refuses to admit) a major point Peterson makes: Life is so brutally difficult and the worst of our suffering is so terrible that mindful rationale is not enough to get the human race through. When it comes down to disease, injury, agony, war, famine, tyranny, genocide, loss of loved ones, fear, and despair, it is not sufficient for humans to say, "Well, these tragedies have scientifically explainable causes, and these supposed 'evil' deeds are more like malfunctions in people's brains, and stars exploded billions of years ago and you just so happened to be born composed of the elements they flung out into the universe, but hopefully science and smart people will alleviate your pain." This is NOT enough. Humans need something greater, something that exists on all levels beyond the physical. Not only do we need it, it is part of us-the worship and sacrifice, the art and music, the stories and myths, the imagination and metaphor, the values and aims, the rituals and religions, the heroes and legends, the sacred and the profane, the demons and gods, the Heaven and Hell. You can reshuffle the deck and changes the names of terms, but in the end, we are humans, playing the human game. Harris continually interrupts, overtalks, and doesn't listen. As much as I appreciate him as an intelligent thinker who does make good points, he is a blowhard. And a blowhard always talks too much in an attempt to compensate for their shortcomings and insufficiencies.
I think he said several times that he aknowledge those utilities. His basic critique is for those People that take the game too serious and are willing to kill or worse for those beliefs.
Sam's argument is that the 'something greater' doesn't have to be Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, or any other man made god. Nor does it need to be the belief that there is some sort of paradise-like afterlife that we will achieve if we are 'good' or believe in the right god. At the same time, he does not discount the notion that consciousness might go beyond the physical. The problem with religion comes from when you have large groups of people that hang on to the outdated dogmas that hold us back as a society. Maybe someday science will be able to fully explain everything about how the universe works and how life fits into it. For me, the hope of that is more than enough. I personally don't require a belief in the supernatural to live a full life.
Not quite. He certainly acknowledges that. But at least half of those terrible things you name are carried out in name of religion, which even Jordon knows in his heart of hearts in built on lies as much as it provides a framework for positivity
Point is, you can have those fictions without them being based as true. You can claim Spiderman is a great hero and motivator for human moral, without believing hes real in the reality sense. The fiction of God can be enterpreted both ways, of course there are terrible stories, but theres also good ones. But claiming them as true forever won’t work, because our morals do gradually increase each year, so by being held back by traditional beliefs you cant grow.
I know right? Something truly sinister is happening when people this reasonable, compassionate, interesting, and capable of calmly conducted civil discourse, are being threatened and kicked out of universities for doing nothing but speaking openly about issues they and others have with certain ideas. It's no wonder they've gotten as much attention as they have, this could go bat-shit crazy if we're not careful. Peace out brother!
@@StaggerLee68 Or just suck them up as part of the academic process. Unless Peterson is involved in legitimate discrimination, his biases are the concern of the employer (university), not the customer (student). It's like trying to get a car salesman fired because he likes corvettes more than trucks. Kinda.
@@hhiippiittyy If he declares to represent the values of his denomination he must do so. Most are rightly concerned about the agenda of this particular gods book and it's doomsday destiny. It is the insistence by Christians in the U.S. that Christianity be mandatory in governance and education. I welcome the concept of religion to be honored in the heart and home but apart from that, like politics, some things are meant to be private. I don't know much as you about your books but I'm pretty sure both god and Jesus stated that you should worship in private, eh? I could very well be wrong but it sounds very reasonable if you are to believe. Cheers.
Not quite. The position that Peterson maintains is actually very hard to explain briefly and easily and is actually a derivation of several premises. I highly encourage you to read his Maps of Meaning in order to understand more deeply about his position and how hard it is to explain quickly and easily.
@@davidmolina5758 Meh. I’ve listened to all 4 Harris-Peterson debates multiple times as well as dozens of JP class lectures and a few of his large Biblical lectures. I think my claim that Harris’s steel-man captured Peterson’s position in this debate better than Peterson ever articulated it holds true. He obviously didn’t address every presupposition that undergirds Peterson’s worldview but he did very much capture Peterson’s criticism of him on the topic of religion very very well and in much clearer terms than Paterson did.
I find them distracting. It’s seems when he feels unsure of what to say his hands start fluttering around to distract from his convoluted words. He needs to download and use the Waking Up app.
@@AAB463 I think he is sometimes intentionally showing visually that he is mentally fumbling, giving the opponent an awareness of the weakness. If not intentional, he has to have recognised it on playback, and be able to recognise it when it happens in realtime. And he keeps doing it.
@@jayvdb It's part of his thinking process, if you watch his lectures you'll see that he does it a lot and that it seems to help him organize his thoughts and/or it organizes how he wants to lay out what he's talking about.
Its so nice to see conversations in the comments that aren’t resentful in nature and have room for open interpretation. It’s weird how when we watch an educational discussion such as this, that the general population is available for civil discourse, but when you look at the “1 minute hit” like “peterson smashes leftist journalists” and see the comments; it is absolutely disgraceful and volatile. To see videos like this that encourages rational discussion really restores my faith in humanity. Faith and good fortune to all you sagacious individuals!
I'm an atheist, I disagree with many of Peterson's views and yet I will NEVER understand how you can call yourself a free thinker and then advocate for him being fired. He is a good speaker and a good professor (I've seen some of his lectures). The job of a professor isn't only to convey information but also to give you a toolset. Peterson does that and you don't have to agree with all of his views to learn a LOT from him. The moment we start censoring in universities, we will decline as a species. Sadly this process has already started.
Atheist huh???? A wise man said to me.. " Everyone thinks they are an Atheist, until the chopper is going down, and their buddies head gets blown off, then they ( Atheist) start praying to a GOD they don't believe in...
well said brother it takes real intelligence to fully listen and it takes considerable knowledge just to understand the extent of your own ignorance.. I have been studying quantum physics mechanics for 12 years I keep going back and forth but at this point I think I am agnostic..
And who exactly is trying to fire him? Last I checked, he's still on the staff at Uni, and has multiple media platforms from which to hawk his tired, old, whyteman worldviews. Even as he gets his fame by deliberately courting controversy, saying things most likely to offend--so that he can then switch to victim mode (a favorite tactic of 'anti-cancel culture' warriors, who believe THEIR right to offend trumps your right to express offense). Funny how often freethinkers like him create provocative, derogatory, and largely (though not always totally) inaccurate labels for every thought system not the same as theirs, attack all those perspectives relentlessly, and then are championed for straight talk. My libertarian grandpa was ranting dire warnings about the imminent death of college cirriculum at the hands of Leftists/Maoists/feminists/Liberals/whateverthefucks back in the 60s. Half a century later, same dire warnings, same kinds of anti-pc hucksters making millions from pronouncing those warnings, but like the professor now, colleges still in the business of teaching kids.
One of the reasons I've been following Jordan Peterson for a while is because he uses bible stories as a tool for us to improve as individuals and as a society. He doesn't drag you into spiritualism or imposition of dogmatism. I've read two of his books and found them incredibly constructive, especially for men nowadays. On the other hand, I also like how Sam Harris argues not over who’s right and wrong but rather asking the right questions. I must admit that I agree with many of Sam’s points. We need people like Sam, people who question religion. Some of us were raised not to question God, not to think, just believe, and many people still live this way. However, is only when the right questions are asked, and doctrine is intellectually challenged, that someone qualified like Peterson can help bring more understanding. This is where true growth is, when you take a conscious decision based on your own judgement, not because you were born in the west, Pakistan or China, seeking not only individual but collective gain while respecting others. I just finished part 1 and 2, and one of my main takeaways is Bret Weinstein's idea of a metaphorical truth - a belief that may not be factually/scientifically true, but believing it in practice turns out to be beneficial due to the behaviours it results in. The analogy of always treating a weapon as if it was loaded is a perfect example.
@@TheUArabej play Elder Scrolls (especially Skyrim), Fallout, or even DOOM and there are bugs and glitches aplenty. Great games (except Fallout, IMO), but they have their glitches lol.
Man, I never realized how smart Ben Stiller is. Learn something new every day! On a serious note, I love these conversations and treasure trove of ideas. Thank you to everyone involved for putting these together.
It is not indefensible. Religion has built many civilizations and they are well thought through. Harris will get stumped eventually I would bet, great conversations!
Among the best moderators I've seen. Kudos. Good discussion. Big props to both Peterson and Harris. I get where Peterson is coming from but I think he is stuck defending religion because he keeps coming back to the argument of "objective" morality, which itself goes back to the presupposition of god. If you abandon that presupposition (as Sam has) it is obvious that religion is (at this point in history) an objectively inferior way of determining morality. This is most obvious in the fact that *religion* has had to update what it considers moral in response to the change of social norms over time, not the other way around. It is true that Sams morality somewhat hangs mid-air. There is no real objective grounding to it, this has always been a large philosophical problem of atheism. But the point is that we can work with incomplete information. We can create "objective" guidelines if we ground them in a notion of Wellbeing as Sam defines it. This notion is based on subjective conscious experience and is drenched in human bias but it is the best we can do. No axiomatic system is complete, including Religion. To claim otherwise is simply incorrect. Petersons arguments about how advantageous behaviors have been encoded into metaphors (like sacrifice as delay of gratification and discovery of the future) is fascinating but it tells us nothing about the continued utility of these metaphors when we become explicitly aware of their meaning and have figured out ways to arrive at such conclusions without resorting to metaphor. We do not need stories about child sacrifice to realize the value of delaying gratification anymore. Another problem that Sam was getting at is that historically, people have not treated these stories as metaphors at all but as literal codes of conduct to appease "invisibile" beings in exchange for prosperity. Of course Peterson knows all of this. Which is why, when he is pressed, he says one ought to behave as if god is real, not that he thinks that god is real. The notion of "metaphorical truth" as discussed here was the most concise articulation of this concept I have seen yet, fascinating stuff. And I think that within that framework, religion can carve out an existence, as the antidote to nihilism and chaos that Peterson prescribes. But at the highest level of rational analysis (as in this discussion) one can clearly see that religion can at most serve as a useful fiction that can give us the illusion of an objective grounding of our morality. And that it is useful *only* when we actually use it to ground a morality that is based on a modern understanding of morality, not the one clearly described in the founding documents of religion.
"And that it is useful only when we actually use it to ground a morality that is based on a modern understanding of morality". In other words, we can use the doctrines to remind us what to avoid!
Well said. "One ought to behave as if god is real, not that he thinks that god is real." is essentially saying, "I don't believe in god, but I believe in some values laid out in the bible" - I guess. At best JP is an agnostic theist or perhaps a cultural Christian.
These two debates were so perfectly executed. No one was trying to win over the other. It was a display of different thoughts. Brilliantly moderated by Brett, who injected his own points of view as a plus to the conversation. LOVED IT! This is a how debates should look!
@Larry Myers Premise 1: I think he over did it. Conclusion: Thus, fuck Brett. (From 1) ^Solid logic, Larry. Really outstanding. Keep applying yourself like this and you're bound to accomplish great things in the future.
Yeah because hes already steelmanned the hell out of his ideas and Jordan has already posed to himself the point Sam builds and has worked through why he thinks his idea isnt defeated by this point. Like why resistance to update is actually necessary and seen in darwinian evolution or his relation of sacrifice to delayed gratification
Sam is so much easier to understand than Jordan. I don't understand why he always feels the need to unnecessarily complicate things. Perhaps he's not doing it consciously, but it makes it hard to seriously consider his arguments.
Peterson argues for the utility of dogma. Harris wants to get rid of dogma. Specifically religious dogma. But Peterson tries to understand which dogma he is trying to replace it with. Because he thinks dogma is inevitable. Harris isn’t aware of his own dogma. So he thinks it’s possible to live without dogma. (The most dogmatic people are those who are not aware of their own dogma). But Harris is a (more of a) progressive, so wants to move forward and leave the old (religious) dogma behind. Peterson is a conservative, so he isn’t so eager to move forward unless the path (Harris’ new dogma) is articulated, philosophically sound and well thought through first. I think that describes the impasse.
Peterson is technically a liberal but still more conservative than Harris. If you read Thomas Sowell's book it's hard to listen to Harris without hearing hubris.
I don't think you understand the word "dogma". You said Harris has his own dogma, but that's wrong. Dogma means authority and unchanging laws regardless of new evidence and science has no authority, it is open to evidence that would change their ideas. Repeating an idea does not mean dogma if it is correct. Like, repeating the fact that the earth toes around the sun is not dogma
@@ClassicRock1973 Take 1000 people and teach them something. Leave for 2 weeks. When you return they will have developed dogmatic views, in variety at least some of which will oppose others. People are not a "well informed market." That's why religion exists as a set of stories meant to align people on common values. You can't simply "take it away" as it must be replaced.
Alan Lloyd : www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dogma See definition 1a and 1c. You are exclusively refering to definition 2. If you want to understand dogma more fundamentally (than a dictionary), I suggest looking to philosophy. I think you will find that it does not mean exactly what you think it means, although you are close. I’d define dogma more broadly, from the top of my head, as: Unchallenged premises held to be true. In Harris’ worldview it would be that «concious creatures are valuable» or even moreso: that «conciousness is the most valuable thing». He uses this as a fundamental premise for his argument of «well-being of concious creatures» in his own moral landscape, with which he believes everyone would be able to agree. He doesn’t seem to recognise that it first would entail everyone accepting his own very specific set of dogmatic beliefs, as exemplified above.
I need to pause so often to look up the definition to the words they’re saying. Beyond that I don’t tend to look for a winner in this debate. I simply look to learn from both of their viewpoints. I love that I’m able to listen so a conversation such as this. If you come into this debate with bias you’ll leave not learning much. I’d simply suggest to anyone listening to approach this with a complete and unbiased open mind. I will say that I have my biases in this conversation beforehand, but I made it a point to set them aside for this. I’ll say I’ve learned a lot, and have even changed some of my views because of this conversation.
Great talk, I think I finally understand the divide between the two. Neither of them have a good answer to the question of a universal system of ethics. Sam is currently experimenting with a secular rational way of establishing this system anew whereas Jordan is cautiously on the religious side because of his experience as a clinical psychologist and the skepticism that people on average can function well on an ethical system rooted in fact. I would definitely be on Harris' side a few years back, now I'm really not sure where I land, I am way more cautious of the dangers of hyperrationalism however I suppose getting close to that pit of snakes might be just what we need to develop the antidote.
I think the most important counterpoint to taking a strictly logical approach is this: within the limited time frame and physical boundaries humans have to use our logical mind and attempt to perceive reality as completely as possible it is still not enough time to have a complete view to capture the universal moral institution with any type of accuracy, much less impose it on society. There has to be something timeless, not bound by spacial constraints that can transcend mortal human understanding that allows some kind of continuity across time. So when Sam said, "...religion doesn't give us the tools to converge on moral standard because you can't have an open ended conversation," I would argue that no matter how many conversations you have while on Earth, and no matter how many books you read, it is a discredit to the universal moral institution to think that one has the authority to approve or denounce moral claims.
Logan Pratt This was probably already covered but please explain: 1. Why does there if have to be a universal moral standard that transcends space and time? 2. If it exists, by what mechanism can ALL consciousness come to know it. - if it is universal it would necessarily be objective, correct? 3. If there is a standard by which you could begin to know it, why would it be a disservice to the thing itself. 4. If we can’t come to know it, why does it matter in determining how we ought to behave? What alternatives would be left?
SH: Two times three equals six. JP: Two times three equals the intangible evanescent process of unknowable numeracy linked to the transcendence of the highest hierarchical integral foundation of the ultimate structure of our being.
@@stewartmoore5158 You can't handle the jazz digits, man. Oh, you're fine with those pop digits; 4/4 time, nice and easy, dee dee dee. But the jazz digits... ....where are they going next? What will they do? Not even the jazz digits know. You fear the crazy jazz digits.
Everyone has a view. I say this is one of the best conversations I've ever seen. While I have my own opinion, I must say that all three of these fools are amazing
@@SnappyWasHere Sadly I agree. I think there is some true value in his 2016 Maps of Meaning lecture. Even though he makes some false claims in there, he still says many valuable things in there. Currently in each of his podcasts and interviews he forces a 'walled garden' and 'Kain and Abel' into every statement anyone makes. It does not feel like he has evolved at all but rather devolved into a very narrow way of thinking. Further I have to state that I am by no means a n environmental or climate activist and I think that there is more false information and fear out there than should be. However there was one guest JP had in his podcast who argued that we are doing the planet good for burning fossil fuels and by enriching the atmosphere with CO2. If that was not all, then the same person claiming that there is no radiation or microplastics because we can not see killed it for me. He even claimed that plastics in the Ocean is good because birds swallow it by intention like they swallow stones to help them digest. And Peterson agreed with all of that ;-( He unfortunately became what he always wanted to prevent people from becoming: bitter and resentful.
More than what was debated, what I enjoyed was HOW this was debated. By that, I don't mean a fluffy, 'let's all be respectful to each other' sense of 'everyone's opinion is valid' kind of nonsense. They challenged each other vigorously, but their respect of the principles of debate were a demonstration of how it should be done . First, they started with "steel-manning" the other person - I love this term, and will be using it regularly from here on, because it's the perfect starting point, where so often the opposite, "straw-manning" is so common. Second, I loved the way both avoided the temptation to then score cheap points, either by pretending to misunderstand the other's point, or to exaggerate it to the extreme to the point of being unrecognisable. Third, they assumed good intentions, and never tried to extrapolate an inference from a point that it indicated anything less. Finally, and similarly to the last point, they respect each other as intelligent actors, and didn't try to take points of discrepancy as indictors of a lack of intelligence. If all debates can be held like this, then Sam's point about one half of the bookstore being impervious to debate will surely change, and that has to be the best outcome that could come from this. Great job to both - I learned a lot here, so thank you.
Very well said @RLeaguer2. Respect for a different view point from our own is definitely what is missing on our TV’s when interviews are conducted today, they like you say seek to “score cheap points” I think gaining knowledge and wisdom should be the goal in discusses such as these, not the name calling shambles we heard today in the MSM. It is a glorious day indeed to watch a grown up discuss, although different in their opinions, were one in seeking new grounds in knowledge. They are well worth their PHD’s. Thanks again for your comments.
This was one the all-time best discussions that I have come across and must say the moderator did a fantastic job of inputing his own thoughtful contributions to the process. I felt the same way when I listened to it 2 years ago.
NEW EVENT! THE ANTISCIENCE OF GOD? Lawrence Krauss & Stephen Hicks ua-cam.com/video/extbcWCnhxU/v-deo.htmlsi=zbwVhOBBgwxLtB1e
The steel man opening should be the way all US presidential debates start!!!
Disagree, the only criteria should be to have two old people, one of which cannot hold themselves back from talking over the other.
@@sb_dunk CSI here, we've scouted you for an internship
That depends entirely of whether the candidate’s ideas are worth steelmaning.
It wouldn't work because there is no argument to be steelmanned. There's only allegations, insults and lies about eachother's past. And the rest are their beliefs and hollow promises. No legit arguments
I think *every* debate should start with a steelman argument. Or if the participants of the debate do not know the opponent's arguments beforehand, split the debate into half. At the middle you're supposed to do steelman argument.
And if the opponent just lies without any evidence, the steelman argument is basically "You believe X, Y and Z because you *feel* that they are true. You cannot provide any objective evidence for any of these claims. However, your point is that how things feel is more important than what can be proven." The steelman part is about being able to *understand* the position of the opponent without any lies or claiming things that are not true.
The audience is expected to be smart enough to figure out if steelman argument is made correctly.
I want Brett Weinstein to moderate all future presidential debates.
(The 1st debate)
Thanks for clarifying the Atheistic position further
The left brain 🧠 vs the right 🧠 brain
The debate will never be resolved since The fundamental premise of Atheism is (1=0)
So it seems that Peterson
Was left brain(1) and Harris(0)
Since they couldn’t agree completely so Not (=)
That’s true mathematically (1=/=0)
Now at one point in the debate even Harris said “that I can even accept that” on God
Thefore only once for a few seconds they both become fully rational (1=1)
I feel sorry for Jordan he had to try so hard to make it happen(Respect him for that)
He sure is an open minded guy who can pull you out of your Extreme point of views
(In this case Harris’s denial of God)
Why Jordan is 1 in(1=0)
Jordan 1:27:00(Reading )
“God is how we imaginitivly
And collectively represent the existence and actions of conscienceness across time”
“As the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time frames but are not necessarily apprehensable like as objects as in here and now.”
(His explanation)
“What that means in some sense is that you have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structures that are a consequence of evolution that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses of time. And they structure your perception of reality in ways that, it wouldn’t be structured if you’d only lived the amount of time you are going to live.
And that is also part of the problem for deriving values from facts because your evencient and you can’t derive the right value from the facts that portray themselves to you in your life span.
Which is why you have a biological structure which is like 3.5 billion years old.
-god is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the persuit of higher being and truth. That’s a fundamental element of hero mythology.
-god is the higher value in the hierarchy of value
(That’s another way of looking at it)
-god is what calls and responds to the eternal call to adventure
-god is the voice of conscience
-God is the source of judgement and mercy and guilt
-God is the future to which we make sacrifices.
into the trancedental repository of reputation.
Here is a cool one if you’re an evolutionary biologist
-god is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men
(So you know men arrange themselves into hierarchy and men rise in the hierarchy, there are principles that are important that determine the probability of their rise and those principles aren’t Tyrannical/ Power they are something like the ability to articulate truth and the ability to be competent and ability to make appropriate moral judgements and if you can do that in a given situation then all the other men will vote you up the hierarchy so to speak and that will radically increase your reproductive fitness
And the operation of that process in the long expanses of time looks to me like it’s codefied in something like the notion of The God the Father.
It’s also the same thing that makes men attractive to women because women peel of the top of the male hierarchy and the question is what should be at the top of the hierarchy???
The answer right now is tyranny as part of the patriarchy but the answer is something more like the ability to use truthful speech in the service of let’s say “well being”
So that operates across tremendous expansions of time and it plays a role in selection for survival itself and it makes it a fundamental reality.”
1:48:08
Sam Harris (where he also admitted (1) therfore they agreed (1=1) even though only for a second then back to (1=0)
“To call that thing god, fine that’s the god I have no problem with but that’s not how most people most of the time are using the word
“G-O-D”
@@mohsinakhtar7876 So is God a literal person then, or just an abstract concept?
@@mohsinakhtar7876 perhaps the situation is 0=0
Wont happen. trump and his office are destroying presidential debates as we know it. And Biden is not innocent of the same claim.
@@mohsinakhtar7876 just another example of someone using an extreme as a generalization to justify their rational when the regulars actually benefit from it and cause good from it. It is good for everyone else, but because a bad seed, throw the whole thing away. Its stupid at best.
Its like a trickle down economic persons argument. Because 5 people will screw it up, out of 100, we can't do a trickle up. Despite the fact it will help 95 people, because 5 people screw up, now everyone has to suffer. Same thing as his argument vs religion.
In an honest world without greedy snakes running the show, trickle down works, but as trump has shown us, snakes rule. So the trickle doesn't happen and instead is pocketed.
Sams logic, like the trickle people, is wrong.
Jordan is right and I would bet he would agree with my statement about trickle up as opposed to trickle down.
Again, the point is, religion works despite the bad people who exploit it. Arguing that we need a perfect approach or we keep the SQ(status quo), is exactly why America is fucked right now. The SQ does not work. Acting like God works, living like God exists, is good. Just like government and most anything else for that matter, you need to keep it honest. But removing it completely is stupid at best.
Sam: *Sneeze*
The crowd: *Applause*
Jordan: bless you sam
The crowed: *Applause*
They earned that applause
@Francisco Nieves wtf
@@wisespidey Francisco is probably a robot, mate. Just sayin'
@@ScottJBailey12 ik, this is outta topic but have you seen the snydercut?
@@wisespidey I have not...
The fact that I can listen to an in depth, intellectual debate while on my morning commute for free is incredible
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
Jorden Peterson is not an intellectual when it comes to Judaism and Israel.
@@TeemoTemosson You are much too generous.
Wish we were choosing between guys like this during the presidential elections.
@@Vanpotheosis haha
It depends on what you mean by "Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson - Vancouver - 2"
I am going by the definition of the literal figurative analogy of "Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson - Vancouver - 2"
Well, it's like, that's a bloody complicated question man!
What came first the dogma or the dogmatic attachment to Christianity?
I'm not trying to make the argument it's actually "Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson - Vancouver- 2" because I'm not but titles are actually stories....
You see, the "2" refers to this video's place within it's dominance hierarchy.
The best mediator ever. Able to grasp the concepts and pitch back critiques in a constructive manner TO BOTH SIDES!
The best one I've ever seen hands down absolutely, doesnt needlessly interrupt with terrible comments. Actually understands the debate and forms compelling points.
Truly. He should be utilized as much as possible.
Alfredo Gonzalez sounds to me like you didnt understand jordans argument
Mark Wilkie remember when Sam asked Jordan about the resurrection, Sam got Jordan to concede that the resurrection is almost certainly bullshit and Jordan had nothing to say but Weinstein tried to come in and save him, then as the conversation went on, Weinstein was the one to pivot from that to masturbation, and you can tell by Weinstein and sams interactions that they both knew what he was doing when he changed the subject
Alfredo Gonzalez the thing is that the resurrection was never the topic of discussion. The topic is what are moral values grounded in. So JP conceded that point to Harris, but that means nothing to the discussion topic. The reality is Harris was never able to articulate what his ideal set of values is grounded in. JP admits that Christianity is not necessarily it, but that something concrete needs to fill the void to avoid us spiraling into relativistic chaos and that religious stories act as just that thing.
By the way, if you study historical texts carefully, there is actually fairly compelling evidence that the resurrection happened. JP is certainly no expert in this historical event as he admits. Read, “The Case for Christ”. Don’t bring your own bias into it.
The real hero here is Bret, no joke. These guys would of rambled and talked over each other, but Bret brought them back on point and summed up what each said. He really did a great job.
RobG811 He is as brilliant as both of them. I one hundred percent agree I'll be trying to find conversations where he takes a more significant play in after this.
Get that man a cape!
Is that a joke?
Absolutely, man. He made a well balanced job and kept the main path. Perfect trio!
"would HAVE rambled..."
hate me if you like...I am a Teacher :-)
"the most troubling thing are all the good people doing evil because they're ruled by bad ideas." Wonderful.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
@@SlampthChompth yeah buddy!
Sadly the label of "antisemite" makes it so people cannot do the right thing.
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
@@Mark73tell that to Nazis and Communists. Good people can't be good if they are bad.
Sam: These are *stories* that guide people
Peterson: These are stories that *guide* people
This is a fantastic synopsis on the disconnect between the two.
Other way around, but yes.
@@Apokalypsiis no.
@@dyinginsidelol Yes.
Brilliant
Cant wait to watch this when they translate it to English
6 months later.......
Nope, still not finished. 😂
LMAO!
oof
....Or you can get a dictionary and/or a thesaurus and turn a 2 hour video into a 6 hour viewing session to pause and read then have your brain turn to slightly more gelatinous jelly.
LOL!
Regardless of their miscommunication, I really think earnest, high-level discourse like this will be looked back at as the spark that ignited a public intellectual reawakening, technically speaking.
I'm not even sure what point Sam is attempting to make here. that we can derive morals from nihilism/atheism? that abandoning religion is supposed to make it a better world? that his criticisms of religion and its social consequences somehow disprove the existence of god? I mean clearly, atheistic communism is responsible for over 150+ million deaths in a small fragment of the 20th century. clearly, secular governments and motives are responsible for far more deaths and misery in history than primarily religious motives. Sam Harris' arguments work well on the uninformed, they're hypothetical ideas kind of like ideas of Utopia are hypothetical that don't translate into reality. but I can see how mouth foaming clueless atheists support him, they're man-children that haven't cleaned up their room, going after a TJ Kirk template. Sam is a great wizard with words, that makes useless, simplistic and irrelevant analogies to compare against complex problems................
Andrew P -- Outch. Most of the discussion must have gone over your head given what you wrote. "atheistic communism"? YOU have to prove that the absence of a belief in god leads to atrocities. What about "Christian nazism" if we're inventing new terms here...?
PW,
communism was derived through atheistic rationale and implemented by power hungry atheists. given that atheists were the minority, that makes the point even more statistically relevant.
the larger point is that, if you're going to blame the atrocities committed by people on religion, and argue that religion compels people to do things they would not normally do, then we have no choice but to look at what the so called "non-religious atheists" (including secular governments) are compelled to do. you cannot have the argument one-way only because it suits your particular narrative. sorry about that.
"communism was derived through atheistic rationale" - Please elaborate on that, so I know if you're an intellectually worthwhile discussion partner or a moron.
I'll let Lenin elaborate that for you:
" Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.[7]"
"Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[8]"
and
The Soviet Union was an atheist state[11][12][13] in which religion was largely discouraged and at times heavily persecuted.[14]
The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly, but two-thirds of the Soviet population were irreligious. About half the people, including members of the ruling Communist Party and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, religion seemed irrelevant. Prior to its collapse in late 1991, official figures on religion in the Soviet Union were not available. State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm.[15]
I could go on and on and on.
if you haven't noticed, this is something called evidence for my argument and none for yours.
I'm 14 minutes in; that was a brilliant idea for resuming the conversation. Both parties summed up each other's position with a great degree of fidelity. Respect.
I think peterson's framing of sam's position was atrocious. His framing was that sam believes we don't get much value from stories and we should focus on facts. Sam literally said 10 seconds earlier that you can find a lot of value in stories you just don't have to mix them up with fact. The fact that peterson was incapable of steelmanning harris makes me think he is bad faith or incredibly close minded.
Just the fact that I can understand them every now and then makes me feel good about myself.
Haha same.
@@jaredangell8472 you have a strong need for validation if you have to put down the intellect of these two brilliant men in order to appear smart. I pity you.
@@jaredangell8472 even if you believe to ne as smart or even smarter than him, to imply that he's not a giant of intellect, as you put it, is just wrong. Im sure you are a smart guy. However Jordan Peterson is smarter than 99.99% of people, for sure. Anybody can say hes smart. Jordan Peterson proves it through his countless lectures. And just because you are hypothetically more intelligent than him it doesn't make him stupid per se.
@@jaredangell8472 I did read 12 rules for life, and he wrote it with the intention of being easy to understand by the masses. I haven't read Nietzsche or velikovsky, but i am sure they are way harder to understand. And by the way, by saying he is no giant of an intellect you are kinda implying that you are smarter than him. But thats just my opinion and im thankful for your appreciation of my right towards having it. Also thank you for the quick responses. I need practise for tomorrow's final exams in an english group discussion. This will certainly be of value :)
@@jaredangell8472 I responded because I'd like to put down people who like to put others down. Turnabout is fairplay.
"Wow, seriously?"
Implies disbelief. Which may mean you have a cognitive bias that if you can understand it others should as well. I could be wrong with just this sentence but on the second one...
"Neither one of these guys are exactly giants of the intellect"
This doesn't have proper basis as we can define "giants of the intellect" in a number of ways. But your basis on this seems to be that they aren't exactly giants of the intellect because what they write is easier to follow than Velikovsky or Nietzsche. Another bias that doesn't take in to consideration that maybe they had to make the books easily digestible to the public. And still isn't a proper measure of what "giants of the intellect" are. Anyone can make a book that is hard to follow.
"my God how far the human race has fallen this century!"
Implies that the human race has progressed so much that there shouldn't exist one or two individuals that can't follow the conversation of two other indivduals. It's like 'Hey man! Humans are the most advanced species that accomplished so much so everyone should be evolved enough to understand everyone else that is not even that smart.' It's ignorant of the relationship between human race progress and biology and probably can be explained by you living as a hermit.
Basically you've put down 6 on the whole of your comment.
Lazy quack and Chris Hardin because they could only understand every now and then but you could. Hurray for you.
Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson because according to your standards they are not really giants of intellect. Even though you admit that you're aware there is plurality in intelligence.
The human race is now far-regressed in your opinion because two people could only understand every now and then. Downright absurd.
And yourself by belittling the current capacity of the contemporary with just a three-sentence comment.
"Is that what I did?" That is what your comment suggested. You've put down others because of a strong need for validation. And for you to not know that implies your comment was indeed a reactionary response.
I really hope being a hermit and not caring about others opinions of yourself is a good contribution to human progress. Stay in your bubble.
I'm so used to seeing Jordan Peterson argue with simpleton journalists that can't even grasp the basic theses of his concepts. It's so refreshing to see him debate someone who actually challenges him intellectually. This was a great debate - tons of deep thinking done on both sides.
When I saw him debating Eric Weinstein on Dave Rubin's show, I thought the debate was even harder to follow. Couple of absolute geniuses
Check out his interview/discussion with Camille Paglia. It's just brilliant. She and him are literally best friends for life by the end haha
I didn't saw a big challenge there, man.
Agreed. Sam effectively disillusions pseudo-intellectuals. Unfortunately, I don’t think the same intellectual challenge occurred both ways. Sam shows that efficient recall and fancy vocabulary only get you so far.
Yeah, Sam Harris looked almost bored sifting through the hand signs, tone rollercoasters, and word salads. You can’t rational justify believing in one dogma while life’s ambiguity remains constant.
moderators get shit on every time they mess up, but are never shown admiration when they do a terrific job like Bret.
With that being said, good job Bret; absolutely amazing job.
for sure man.... i thought its impossible to moderate like he did untill I saw him here
Old comment but I'll add to the thread none the less.
It's the sound guy analogy. You never compliment the sound engineer for a clean video but you will complain if there is a problem with the sound.
I haven’t seen anything more mature and enlightening than this. Disagreements apart, the way they both foster in the common spirit of well being of everyone is a spirited refresh from most of the political nonsense that you see nowadays. Hats off to a great conversation with a level of respect and maturity we should all strive to, regardless of our differences.
I wish our politicians thought this hard.
They're getting paid to keep the ball rolling. If the "ball" isnt moving the masses begin questioning their relevance and competence
Then they wouldn't be politicians now would they?
Sadly I don’t think on average they have the raw intellectual material like Sam and Jordan to even get close.
You sick sadist. You really want to watch old men’s heads explode like the fembots in Austin powers?
Actually not a bad idea.
Umang Jain touché
This is the most interesting couple’s therapy I’ve ever seen.
There is so much truth in that comment, it’s pretty insightful. Sam Harris’s insistent dissection and deconstruction of everything reminds me a lot of my ex.
@@BlurryDays The exact same thing can be said about JP. I wonder what your ex thinks about him. No offense intended.
@@RecTec77 No offense taken, I don’t think she’d like him. I tend to attract to JP rather than SH because I think JPs model of philosophy is much more resistant to nihilism. It seems like SH attempts to explain the entire universe from a pure rational and materialist perspective. I don’t think humans are built to be motivated that way nor do I think the universe works purely in that way.
@@BlurryDays You and JP see the universe from the perspective of what you want it to be. Sam Harris tries to see and understand the world the way it is. Nihilism is very realistic from what we know, it's very likely that the universe has no plan for us and there is no deeper meaning. I see it this way: There is no deeper meaning to life but I still care about my family, friends and just having a good life. Why? Evolution. Why would I say fuck my family just because there is no deeper meaning? No, to me, what's important to me IS the meaning of life. I want humanity to continue, and other people to be happy, that's just in my genes. If we're all dead in a hundred years, I think that would be sad and I would try to make it so that doesn't happen, because it's important to me. If we're all dead in a million years, I still think that it's sad but I don't spend any time thinking about it, because I cannot change it and who knows what will have happened by then. I really dislike that we always talk about the universe and life the way we want it to be rather than what it actually is. There is no objective morality? So what? I still don't want to kill people and I'd rather there were no rapists and murderers. So we as a society have to come together, decide together on what the majority considers right and then do that, which we have done to a certain degree. That's a neverending process.
@@famatu Before I can address any of that I’m stuck wondering how you are so sure of that first statement... ?
Both Sam and Jordan are incredible speakers. I could listen to them chat for days. But what made this series so special is Brett's ability to truly grasp both point's of view but even more importantly challenge each side. He deserves so much credit here for driving this conversation forward. Very well done.
Nobody grasps peterson because he talks bollocks!
@@tonron888 He's an incredibly successful speaker, author, professor, podcaster, etc. Clearly millions of people grasp him just fine. I'd encourage you to keep trying.
@@tonron888 I'm a fan of JP but he does use 100 words when he could just use 1.
@@sharplikecheddar2 no they dont, if they did we wouldnt be seeing him anymore;)
@@tonron888 so millions of people listen to JP cz they dont understand him....u shd start a podcast tony :D
Watching these discussions has taught me I need to brush up on my vocabulary just to keep up
40 years later:
Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson - Vancouver - 9,418
actually if they perform one session per day that number will equal 14600
We can only dream, hope and...dare I say it? Pray.
Kevin Byrne lmmfao
Lmmfao
Same old arguments going around in circles, there will never be an end to the science v religion debate. Science seems to always win the logical arguments though 🤔
Universities used to be for this form of conversation.. :,-(
How dare you say that. I'm offended. Someone needs to deplatform you immediately! Help! Ring the fire alarm! Mummy I need a safe space to hide me from differing world views and intellectual conversation!.....you are right though, universities are now seriously retarded.
Until they ve become political businesses
well go to a good university not in america. You'll find conversations like these but they arent broadcasted
Sad how lefty snowflakes have robbed universities of value beyond the electronic proof of indoctrination you get.
Wow that just broke my heart
Summary:
Peterson: I call the unknown "God."
Sam: I call the unknown "unknown."
Both: fundamentalism is bad, defend free speech, and discourse is the best way of getting closer to reality.
Brett: I gave birth to this healthy conversation.
Sam calls the unknown "not god" is probably more accurate. He doesn't know what it is, only what it's not. Which is not a reasonable argument.
@@fixeddice1982 I almost agreed with you, but I actually remember Sam saying that you cannot disprove the existence of God in the same fashion that you can't disprove the existence of Santa. All he's saying is that there are many other better and more feasible alternatives than god. I think that he would still refer to the unknown as unknown.
Mike Peterson never calls the unknown 'god.' He does not rename the 'unknown' in any way. That which is unknown is unknown. He does say, 'Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god.' Peterson does not define this god, for that's unnecessary for his argument. He's making a psychological point, a fact that many atheists like Sam (who admits to an 'allergy to religion' but doesn't think about it) fail to hear and thus to understand, like Sam.
Mens et Ens True, and important to distinguish. It's not simply "the unknown" that Peterson defines god to be.
This is problematic though, and is why Harris rightly objects: "Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god."
That's completely subjective and argues within itself for a completely agnostic, secular society. No single "whatever is most important to me" is going to supersede others' definitions of such without causing suffering and hampering others' freedom of speech/belief/happiness etc.
Basically, keep it to yourself. Your personal religion is beautiful and useful. The tyranny of religion forcing itself upon others as if it were objective truth is harmful and destructive.
Harris rejects that Peterson defends the latter with the former, and Peterson rejects that Harris conflates the two as one entity.
They're both right from their own perspectives. Practically, though... heuristics are only useful as long as they bridge our ignorance. We should not use ancient imperfect religious/philosophical placeholders when we have a custom-reality-shaped mold to work with.
INSET HUMANITY _This is problematic though, and is why Harris rightly objects: "Psychologically, whatever is most important to you is as your god."_
Except that it is. Psychologically, what is 'God' but that which one follows, which directs one's life? How can Harris 'object' to that except from the unlistening assumption that 'all that sounds like religion is bad,' which misses Peterson's point? If he objects to the term 'god,' then he cannot hear what Peterson says, for Peterson does not mean what Harris means which is not what most of the Church has meant for most of its history.
_We should not use ancient imperfect religious/philosophical placeholders when we have a custom-reality-shaped mold to work with._
Unless the ancient actually is true.
Ignoring the incredible discussion that Jordan and Sam had, let's give major props to Brett for being the best mediator I think I've ever watched.
True, He is incredible.
He was sharp back then. Now he’s a proper loon. So sad.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
Not a patch on Douglas Murray.
You need to watch more debates.
God I love this moderator. Literally the best moderator I’ve ever witnessed in debate.
And he's a very interesting person in his own rights as well 👌
Bret and his brother should do such an event.
Probably the only moderator I've ever watched that I actually want to intervene and get excited to hear what he has to say
Bret is the most intelligent on stage
He should mediate those foolish presidential debates unlike the ones they bring on who are blatantly biased and stupid
That "steel man"thing at the beginning was amazing.
True, it'd be nice to have more of that in other debates of any kind.
@@typhoonofideas It was an interesting debate, but this part is a self-congratulatory myth. They do it to be cordial in these sorts of environments, sure. But Harris and Peterson (in particular) are both guilty of presenting the least-generously interpretation of certain arguments (say, ones that sit in opposition to their world-view) when they're not in this sort of face-to-face debate situation. It's really frustrating when you're really looking for one of them to give a clear answer to detractors.
I know right,that was such a badass move.
Jordan Peterson almost made me believe Sam views
@@usxnews1834 There's much more utility in steelmanning than just being cordial. It indicates upfront whether or not you actually understand your opponent's position.
I feel like I am the rare breed of person who loves both Sam and Jordan's perspectives equally. Everything they disagree on is the stuff I am most unsure about, and they both make such thoughtful, clear points that I could listen to them argue about anything for hours on end. This debate was awesome to watch, and I think anyone looking for a clear "winner" out of it has missed the point.
captainpummel we’ll put
You are a step ahead. You see the pure value in simply coming to terms with eachother through deep communication. Those who truly think its easy to distinguish who is more adept at these subjects is foolish. All brilliant individuals.
captainpummel no not really. You’re just another fool who refuses to take positions even when one seems right. In short your like Switzerland - never were they great, never will they ever be great.
You find JP clear?
+captainpummel, I think it's possible to appreciate both's contribution to the intellectual discussion while still clearly agreeing with one over the other. What Sam says resonates a lot more with me (as an atheist and as a biological scientist), but I thoroughly enjoy watching and listening to both of them, especially when engaging with each other. I feel like what Jordan says is more useful than objectively true and what Sam says is more objectively true than useful. This value judgement is using each other's arguments as a frame of reference.
Some of the best intellectual dialogue that I have ever listened to.. I wish tv interviews and debates were like this
Unfortunately we can not have these type of intellectually stimulating debates when it comes to the mainstream media as they mainly target the masses
Amen.
An actual intellectual debate and mediation by top shelf individuals.
@@sylviaowega3839UA-cam is more main stream then main stream media why you think flat earth took off?
Could you imagine saying something and hearing Jordan Peterson say - ''Yes, that's exactly right''
Yes, thats exactly right
Very sycophantic.
@@local-teen it's a joke though.
Me: "Under no circumstance does pineapple belong on a pizza."
Jordan Peterson: "Yes, that's exactly right."
@@spherituality7691 I clicked off of the thread before I laughed at your reply and had to come back to like it because people who make you chuckle deserve appreciation.
Man, their knowledge of every concept they discuss is amazing. On top of having the knowledge of the concept, they have the understanding to articulate it back in layman’s terms with stories an examples. I’ve had to stop the video countless times to just research the concepts, theories and philosophers they discuss. Kudos to both gentlemen.
Kudos to you for treating this with that much seriousness. It shows a real thirst for knowledge
I love the way you said they translate it in layman's terms. I don't think a lot of people realize the big "pretentious" sounding words are a large tool of the landscape in which these topics are discussed and that the translation can be a pain in the ass.
Sam harris here, just wanted to drop by and say Fuck ALL of you and the positivity of this thread. LIFE IS GRIM. Why even small talk and give positive criticism on his positive critique? It achieves nothing more than what was already achieved by the poster. There is no more lemon juice to squeeze out of this already squeezed lemon so quit stopping by to twist it some more. Y'all sound like a bunch of Jordan's. Quit that shit.
Ludus Music Sam Harris here... Id be delighted
Ludus Music love your avi 😂
Wow, these comments are much more toxic then I would have thought for the subject material in the video. Are all of you holding on to your token intellectual to "win" an argument to feel justified in your own beliefs? Neither Sam or Jordan "won" imo... we did, never before in history could we have such bright minds sharing ideas on a platform millions can watch for free.
Love this!!
Only because before it was in books haha, Plato and Aristotle etc
But I near totally agree :D
They think that people they disagree with are stupid, which is in my opinion about the ignorant thing you can do. I'd love to see some of these people stuttering their way through a debate.
id also add on that the debate never finished... it should of had another 2 hours
and that is exactly what Jordan was trying to say with the steelman opening statement.
The moderator is outstanding, but a lot of credit too to the two speakers who are interested in others' views and open to the idea that they might be wrong or may not have correctly understood each other's point. Very interesting and good role models for how to communicate.
I feel like Peterson is not just saying that there is wisdom in old stories, but rather that the stories themselves are part of what it means to be human. He is saying you can't just replace them with new stories because they will no longer be useful to human society, though you can re-tell them with a modern twist like you see in superhero movies. I think both he and Bret Weinstein believe that these stories have evolved as a sort of collective conscience over the age, and therefore are necessary to provide us with meaning in a seemingly arbitrary existence.
I don't think we need them anymore because the good ones get retold anyway in new stories just with different characters, flavors and locations and the bad/useless ones don't. As they say, "There's nothing new since Mozart." These archetypes wouldn't vanish if I waved a magic wand and nuked every version of every copy of every religious text ever written. So I feel that JBP's point doesn't hold much water.
Sam Harris is using this debate to forward an agenda to promote Islam and Muslims in a negative light .He is coating his agenda by hiding in the cloak of universal dislike of organised religion.
He is not having a universal unbiased debate based on looking at human nature in its survival instincts.
That is not tring to get to the truth about human life.
Joseph Marsh I don’t think we need them anymore because Disney and Pixar movies
I agree that stories and myths are an immensely valuable part of being human. But it's dangerous to pretend the myth is real, the way religious books and priests do.
Perhaps they don't just provide a subjective meaning, perhaps they are "the" objective meaning, and without that enlightenment, our existence becomes arbitrary as many modern people have decided in their turn away from the moral truth
Wow, this is really great. I regret dismissing Petersen in the beginning. He is really sincere, honest, polite, and is doing his best to understand Harris' points. He is really amazing. He had my complete respect here.
Yes. I don't agree with everything he says but I respect his sincerity and civility.
most importantly he is RIGHT =D
He is actually just making it confusing and jumping all over the place rather than just agreeing that yes presumptions are the things he tries to define everything by his ways 99% religious people.will disagree with peterson he is technically athiest if he doesn't actually believe in God but just act like god exists its like a christian who is athiest but no one knows he goes to church and all but he doesn't himself believe in God.petersons position is misleading to even talk sbout religious people with him his idea of religion and god is just ignorant
@Shams true
@@mazenibrahem9641 he isn't
I can imagine being at a dinner with these guys. I'd be sooooo quiet.
😂
i would debate to the last breath, what an opportunity
Between the two, who would be the more likely belligerent after a few brewskys?
@@howardrobinson4938 Sam. He frequently talked over Peterson. I think he would be the first to get heated. I think Peterson would be the first to start using words incorrectly
Right?!
Thank you both for having these discussions. I had a lot of the questions that Sam Harris asked while reading/watching Jordan Peterson. This actually helped me understand Jordan Peterson better. Many thanks!
Huge respect for both of you!
“If you’re a real sadist you never mistreat a masochist when he asks you to.”
Haha... That was clever indeed
Ohh, nooo! ⚡⚡
damn. I have so much to learn.
Would a true masochist just keep it a secret?
@@alanmaher7161 that’s a good question, but masochist doesn’t translate to being upfront. A lot of people are horribly ashamed of that stuff and yes, even a true masochist.
Great respect for Sam, Jordan and Brett for making this a highly free and open discourse with minimal tangles between competing perspectives. This will be a discussion for the history books.
Did you watch the first debate?
Trey Love I did watch the first. I felt it to be necessary to really get to the meat of the conversation which was in the second night.
It gives me great hope to know that so many people are excited about listening to conversations like this. We aren't as ignorant and narcissistic as social media and the news would have us believe.
Yes we are.
Whoever is „we”.
I am 😌
Yeah, people only believe the world has become stupid, because they don't actually understand science and statistics. They don't know what things like selection bias or confirmation bias are.
There's two main examples of situations where people don't see the selection bias going on, and so they have an inaccurate picture of reality. One of the two, is that people think there's a crime wave going on, because never before has their been this many videos of crimes taking place. The number of videos has skyrocketed, as has the number of reports on news channels about these crimes.
When in reality, the crime rate has never been lower. It's never been safer to live in a western country than right now. Crimes of all kinds have fallen in number dramatically, but especially violent crimes. But since everyone has a high quality camera in their pocket at all times now, there's orders and orders of magnitude more videos of crimes taking place than ever before, and so it gives us the impression that there truly is an enormous crime wave occurring, at least to those of us who lived in the time before smartphones and digital cameras existed, and had to get all our news from the TV and newspapers.
And yes, the other big example of this misunderstanding of the statistics is when it comes to intelligence and knowledge. There's never been more videos of people being total morons, than there are right now. People take the comedy film Idiocracy seriously and claim that it's really happening in the real world these days, even though Mike Judge I'm sure thinks people are daft for thinking a silly comedy film is some kind of accurate prediction of reality.
By every metric we have in science to measure intelligence, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now. We are collectively smarter than humanity has ever been before. And collectively we know more than every before, e.g. literacy rates have never been higher. Every single year we measure it all and humanity gets smarter and smarter each and every year. It's always going up.
But there's never been more _VIDEOS_ of idiocy than ever before. There used to be more idiots, many many more idiots than are around these days, it's just there weren't thousands of videos of them being dumb like there is these days. In the past we might have seen videos on the news of people doing dumb things, every so often, but these days we can see videos recorded in every single country in the world within minutes of the video being uploaded, so of course when you take all the idiots from the 7+ billion people on earth, of _COURSE_ it seems like there's way more idiots than ever before. But there's actually far fewer of them than there were before, it's just that in the past, people didn't have their idiocy filmed and broadcast to the whole world instantly like nowadays. And it's never been easier than right now for idiots to group up with fellow idiots and have a protest against vaccines or claim the earth is flat, or something like that. They are in groups that span the globe, almost entirely on online forums, Facebook, reddit, etc. Anti vaxx morons seem to be flooding the world. But it's nothing new. Anti vaxxers have existed since the very beginning of vaccines, people have always misunderstood them and got scared to take them. Right now, we actually have fewer morons than ever before. But the remaining ones have thousands of videos of them being dumb. So it's easy to think the world is going nuts and regressing somehow.
But again, by every metric we have to measure intelligence and knowledge, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now
People just have to start trusting the science. Not the click bait media, or UA-camrs without scientific training, or Instagram "influencers" etc. Try to have some hope, for humanity.
Bbgirl you're on social media rn.
And It seems most people watch to feel Smart as evident by the Audiences sheep like applause. Also if all the comments about having to look up words every few minutes are true then I'd say I'm a bit more right.
A couple of problems with your optimism. Most people will treat this debate as entertainment, and it will little if any impact on their lives. Applauding these debates and finding them interesting is quite a different thing that putting in the long and difficult work to change and improve. Second, social media and those who support the news (with their attention and reactions) is a sufficient sample size to point to the scary realization that enough people ARE as ignorant and as tribal as either social media or the news would suggest.
The way Brett “held Sam’s feet to the fire” on the gun analogy, and how it compares to religion was really something. What a compelling metaphor.
he did a great job moderating these debates. However he sadly fell off the intellectual cliff since then....
A Canadian and 2 Jews walk into a theater.......8 hrs of mic drops. I love these guys. I can't believe they are in our time. These minds are gold.
Canadian Jew✌️
Sam: People should be doing certain things because its logical to do so.
Jordan: maybe you're correct, but they wont for complicated reasons.
Neither are wrong.
I don't know why this comment lacks in likes, I think this is the most accurate. Jordan argues that maybe Sam has a point when it comes to evolving out of religion but all Jordan is saying is that we don't know how to do so at the moment and Sam was unable to respond to this argument. I do feel like religion in some sense is limited but its a very powerful force that is undeniably a influence to many people in terms of morality. There both right in there own sense. Although if I were Jordan I would argue that having to compass to life has the risk of nihilism and that could also be damaging.
the Lost Q okay so how then, which is what Jordan is basically saying, do we define what is universally morally good and evil, which is what Sam claimed but is having problem defining. He used as an example if we were to touch fire on a stove we would immediately rationalize not to touch it again because of the pain we felt from touching it. But then that doesn’t explain (this is what I’m not understanding from Harris view) why raping a child bad? Why incest is wrong? What makes a murderer who kills children wrong and so on? We can’t only depend on only our feelings or rationality to decide these things because the one’s who are doing all these things have rationalize in their minds that these things are all okay to put it in simplistic terms and get pleasure out of doing these atrocious acts. Sam is blaming religion and Jordan is saying along the lines that no and not denying that some religions do have bad ethics but that this stuff that evil people do have been happening long before religion came since he believes in evolution. The questions is how then do we define what is morally right or wrong and that’s where things get complicated...
If you look back in the 60's through the 70's this type of talking on tv was mainstream. Our kind of entertainment. This kind of conversation, the format,the listening without presumption and interruption...
These 3 are gentleman.
@Rocknrolladube is it strongly correlated or just happening at the same time?
@@stevowilliams8279 You think conservatives (religious people, by and large) know the difference between correlation and causation, or the criteria for evaluating either of those individually in any kind of dataset? Seems improbable, since they're always in these comment sections, (among other places, like the town square) over-reacting to the world around them, failing to understand it, often not even attempting in the first place.
@@Arbitrary_Moniker yes i do think some of them do, thats a hell of a claim to make about an entire group of people. I think youll find the cause and effect argument on both sides of humanity.
I felt like there was plenty of interruptions
The old Dick Cavett show was very good for this type of thing. Bob Costas' talk show was probably the last truly great talk show...
I think it's important not to come down on one side or the other but the real value here is to find one's self in the conversation, and yes the mediator was brilliant.
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
To sum it up Peterson basically argues that there is immense value in stories that have survived over such incredible spans of time and it is unwise to dismiss them, whereas Harris argues that, well while that may be true for incredibly well read and intelligent people like Peterson, for the average Joe it is dangerous and has observable catastrophic consequeces, so we might drop it all together because after all, we do have better stories to tell, than people had in the stone age, from which even the most uneducated of minds could benefit exponentially, rather than trying to revive an ancient story to not only stop causing the damage it causes but even actually benefit both individuals as well as society.
It's however extraodinary to watch this conversation because esentially they both wish to catch humanity from falling into damnation, and wish to do it in a way that has already been proven successful it just so hapens that these two ways differ in their humanistic approach. They both however are geniunely humanistic and thus identical in persuit, so it is extraodinary to watch them talk about those 5% of differences between them and it geniunely give me hope in humanity overall to see such an event as a part of contemporary human repertoire.
This isn't about winning an argument, because the argument is the same, how to help people so there is no debate per se, but this is a discussion about the most efficient way of going about it, with the least amount of casualities in the aftermath. It is about the finese of constructing a system that is most helpful and least damaging in so in an attempt to do exactly this, these two wonderful men sit and talk about such intricate details of their endeavour in order to individually progress towards their goal of constructing the best humanly possible system. In short, they are not at all at odds with each other but quite on the contrary, they sacrifice the comfort of agreeableness for the sake of achieving a higher even more intricate truth. Which is exactly the opposite of what people do today, which is close themselves in a cosy bubble of echo chamber where their hardly articulated beliefs are overly inflated and lauded by a select groupd of people who have the same issues and level of laziness or ignorance.
It is thus geniunely beautiful to watch this !
I don't think Sam argues that we should dismiss those ancient stories, but that we should throw the divine aspect of them in the trash and accept that they all come from humans.Then there is room for discussion and doubt because people are not subscribed to a dogma.
P.S. : Sorry or my english!! I assure you, I'm better at understanding them than speaking and writting them😂😂
Nice post! Can I ask you which person you tend to agree more?
Well said!
ya thats what I got from it as well. Pretty bob on summary.
really well written :) do you have a reddit or something? would follow
Jordan "I know the literature on child sacrifice reasonably well" Peterson
Funny thing is, I believe him!!
He probably does !! Haha
lol, the funniest thing is that I've seen enough evidence to believe him to be true XD
Yes, the data on that is quite clear
Lmao
Damn. Brett is such a great moderator!!
Krishnanunni H M
Yes, he's actually moderating and does it very convincingly.
Yes, it really helps to pick a moderator that is on the same intelectual level as the debatees.
He's playing god. ;-)
IKR!!???
He's great at summarizing their points and asking good questions. He's not great at balancing the conversation when Sam cut off Jordan a dozen times.
1:50:33 "If we burned a Koran on this stage tonight, the rest of our lives would be spent in hiding, because of how motivated people would be to address that pseudo-problem. That's the world we're living in. Civilization, insofar as we have a purchase on it, is a matter of correcting for those errors. And religion, for the most part, is standing in the way of those corrections"
2:06:50 "The fullback who kicks an own goal and goes back to his South American village and gets murdered, he's surrounded by people who are taking the game too seriously. My problem with religion is that so much of the time, we're meeting those people, and we have no place to stand to criticize those people because we're so attached to the game"
Probably one of the finest summations of the core problem with religion that I've ever heard. This really distills and nails it, and as much as I love JP, he never really addresses this issue. He dances around it instead, because the bottom line is that JP doesn't *want* to let go of religion.
I think you missed the point. Jordan is definitely against the religious points you highlighted. I'd watch more of him if you think otherwise, but consider this:
If you remove the radicalisation and misinterpretation of religion and just stuck to the values in the search for the manifestation of truth in the world, in western culture. You will find the bible a library of books at the base of the hierarchy of knowledge and ideas in the world created over time.
Something very, very strange about that fact.
Religion =/= God
Well of course, where religions compete with each other there might be conflict. But within the religion it is for the most part safe. The core problem with atheism was that it enabled so much of the millions of deaths in the 20th century. And it was purely rational because those leader (i.e Stalin) were nihilistic. If your worldview is that all life is suffering then is perfectly rational to want to end all life. What will correct for that... science ? more materialism?
precisely correct and a frustrating to see 🙈🙈
um, the religious of the world are responsible for vastly more death.
the core problem is with you, not someone who doesn't believe what you choose to believe.
@@ed841
The way they fire analogies back and forth. The way they counter each other's points. I wish I could argue 10% as cleverly! I'm commuting 200 miles a day just now. These guys make it a joy.
You commute 200 miles a day :---()
@@djuj2121 I've changed location. It's only 130 miles a day now!
@@victorgibson4932 oh just 130 miles. Are you by any chance in a wolf pak
@@djuj2121 just go where they tell me. 😀
What never makes sense is a highly intelligent, well educated person who is deeply religious or even sees value in religion at all. No one has to be a 180 IQ supergenius to be an atheist. Literally all that's required to be an atheist is ligic, reason, common sense, and a true grasp on morality(as opposed to the barbaric "moral" codes of ancient religious texts). There is precisely zero value, intellectual or moral, to be found in the Bible, because everything contained in the Bible is already generally accepted in the modern world, or has been disproven, refuted, repudiated, and rightly shunned. The fact that a person who has an IQ above room temperature believes in god in the 21st century is just astonishing and confounding. Religious ideas are just so patently ridiculous and out of touch with reality that it's difficult to imagine that any rational person actually believes them deep down. But when an otherwise highly intelligent public intellectual endorses them, that is even worse.
its amazing that these insights are for free
@Emmanuel Araujo access without direct payment or services
@@hellomynameissL1m so yore saying there is an indirect way...
It's like reading a book written by both of them. Every other chapter swings to one extreme or the other, until the end of the book where chapters get closer and closer to a point where a conclusion can be drawn
Sam Harris said on Rogans podcast that he hopes that we move toward a Netflix style payment system for content like this. Let’s hope that never happens!
@@Brandon-kl4ns it might not be such a bad thing. Consider UA-cam when Netflix became big. Netflix just had more content for payment but UA-cam content continued improving. Similarly a paid version of this won't necessarily put this kind of content behind a wall but rather introduce new better paid content.
this is so good to me because I so easily naturally side with Sam, yet Jordan constantly has such good points
But he doesn't, though. I'm by no means a Sam Harris fangirl, I disagree with him on a lot of stuff, including a couple of points he made here, but Jordan's entire premise is fundamentally nuts, and all his fancy talk around definitions and minutia is only there to keep you from taking a good hard look at what he's ultimately trying to defend. Without the fancy terminology and clever tangents, you might notice that. Jordan is basically painting a masterpiece with shit. Impressive brush work. Still stinks.
Austenhead I’ve actually never seen someone say vague nothings while also using the metaphor of a poop painting? I guess you deserve some sort of award for that.
@@cheetahinireland18 i think she herself did the same thing she was complaining about
Austenhead I think that both sides are actually arguing the core source, and JP is trying to identify the black box being a black box, and Sam Harris is trying to say his Black Box is truth. The problem is that they are arguing about something different. JP isn’t crazy at all. He’s debating and trying to get to the bottom of a fundamental issue.
Gourav Thappa except you understand exactly what they’re saying, how are they guilty of Peterson’s rambling while saying nothing.
I find myself rewatching all four of these fantastic discussions atleast once a year! It just feels as if my mind conencts to something deeper and deeper every time! It's a crime that more discussion like these aren't being had, and imagine if political debates were as intellectual as these! Steelmaning should be tought in school!
Sam Harris: I’ll probably just have a few drinks, nothing crazy.
Sam Harris after 6 beers: ‘if we burned a Quran on this stage tonight’
haha
Sam’s claim of the idea of no evil just ignorance in the Hindu and Buddhist religions is valid but that idea is also present in Christianity and Islam. There the idea of the self in Islam where the true self is like a wild dog. A wild dog does whatever it wants it’s bound by its needs and humans who want to be better put that dog on a leash or in the Islamic text a chain so that they may control themselves and not let their basic animal instincts and human emotions rule them.
Now burning the Quran or the word of God part. The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) I’m using him as an example as he is the highest human moral in Islamic society. So anyway once a man did the effort to gather human and animal dung in a container and threw it on the prophet’s back. During this insistent the prophet was on a prayer mat and his daughter was sitting next to him. She wiped the dung off his back. The prophet forgave him. The second incident the man invited the prophet for a conversation but instead he publicly humiliated the prophet. The prophet forgave him. But when that man started cruelly killing innocent Muslims his head was cut off.
Now with regards to war the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said avoid war at all costs unless someone attacks you three times then engage in war.
With regards to his slave wives. He had no slave wife’s. Some of his wives were former prostitutes, widows, girls whose parents didn’t have financial means to raise them and women generally in need. There is a instance where he asked a woman to marry him. She’s said no so he didn’t marry her.
He also said that if a Muslim man is to marry widows and prostitutes should have first priority.
Just like Peterson’s idea that religion isn’t all bad but you have to read the text as a whole as well as individual verses.
During Muhammed(pbuh’s) reign it was the time most slaves had been freed in history.
The time after the prophet is just general history even if it’s the story of his companions. The Islamic religion was completed in his lifetime. The Muslims that perform heinous crimes are arrogant of their own religion.
Daas Demha wtf bro
@@saad-wd6fd while reading about Muhammad's life and his actions you can only wonder how ANYONE, even Muslims, could call him a man of morals.
😂
As much as I love Jordan and Sam (And I really do), I have to hand it to Bret Weinstein. He does a spectacular job keeping everyone on track and getting down to the core of the issues, no BS, no wordplay, just straight shooting guy. Really digging this conversation!
You should check out the dark horse podcast, Bret and his wife Heather do some amazing live streams. I find Bret the most thorough across vast landscapes and subjects among the IDW.
@@dpcsoup04 I watch them on the regular now, they are amazing!
Mysidian Bard yes!!!! So glad to hear that
I completely agree, he would be perfect in the middle for the presidential debates.
Wife is out of town for a long weekend with a friend. Do I go hang out with my buds? Catch an action flick on line or at the cinema? Do much needed chores around the house? Nah, watch 10 hours of Peterson/Harris debates instead.
now we just have to show young people how enjoyable it is lol
Put in some earbuds and clean ya room
Maybe Sam can come up with a guide line that can suggest for you what to do best, although I doubt that. So just stick with what you have and make the best of it.
^ debate summary.
Peterson: but what do you mean by watch?
Harris: what do you mean by debates?
I have exams in a couple of weeks. I'm gonna fail but at least I'll have gotten through these debates
This is one of the most respectful, robust, intelligent and engaging debates I've ever seen. Just brilliant.
Imagine having access to some of the brightest minds as they attempt to solve some of the hardest problems in existence. We live in a really cool time.
What problems???? The answers are very easily found in Gods Holy Word. You don’t have a very bright mind if you don’t trust in that
@@CravenM1980 Humans have pondered their origins for at least as long as drawings were carved and painted into cave walls - generations ago. Isn’t it interesting that human gods came about right around the time we began storying this place to each other?
The stories you tell about your god can give picture to some of the unknown but pretending it satisfactorily answers all questions is irrational. Human religion itself becomes very clear and explainable when in the context of being something created by humans. The numerous incarnations of gods exist because humans attempt to give form and meaning to this place and ourselves. It’s beautiful, deeply moving, and one of the most powerful metaphors in human history but it seems it will only ever exist as metaphor.
@@joshuareeves9985 I just love how you use cave paintings to try to explain God away. God is beginning and end. It’s proven through Jesus Christ who did come to this earth. Evolution isn’t fact just fiction. I don’t agree with religion at all. I agree with the Bible that’s it. Science has proven the Bible, history has proven the Bible. Keep trying to explain God out of existence and He will show you His power
@@CravenM1980 I was once where you are.
Just as I did, you discount all other human belief. You separate yourself and your god as being an exception to all other human religion. You’re convinced your god is the correct god and somehow above scrutiny.
There’s no way it can’t be real, right? It took me years of wrestling through the many questions. I challenged dozens and dozens of critically thinking humans. I was exposed to enough other perspectives and well reasoned minds that I finally, _finally_ accepted that the god indoctrination I grew up with and was sure beyond doubt of, was only part of the picture of this place. It will likely be one of the hardest things you’ll have to work through but I can tell you it’s brought more peace to me than praying to God ever could.
I’m now able to admit I don’t know everything. I no longer have to rationalize the ridiculous amount of things the religious rationalize. I’m now connected to my fellow humans in a whole new way. I still find beauty in the imagery and wisdom in the stories but I see it for it is. It’s the picture given to this place by us as we try to figure all this out. It does not answer all questions. It will only ever be as real as we humans say.
@@joshuareeves9985 I’ll certainly pray for you my friend. Your issue is simple. You gave into satans lies and now you’ve turned from the one true God. I can only pray that you find truth in your heart to change. You have clearly explained someone who is completely lost
I would leave a comment, but it would take over 40 hours.
@MNI Andes But then I have to spend 40 hours reading it.
Where are the imojis in this Utoob interface?
The devil is in the details.
Almost certainly not.
That's a hell of an assumption, man!
The moderator is one of the best moderators ive ever seen. he really understood both of their points and was fair in coming down on them when necessary.
Brett is a ridiculously intelligent man.
The average mediators are journalists, Brett is 25 levels above them when it comes to cognitive ability.
@@jamestodd1104 perfect answer. Brett is utterly brilliant.
The concept of Metaphorical truth is actually coming from Bret Weinstein.
Why oh why am i subjecting myself to this again?!? 😆
Sam's moral landscape completely boils down to:
• When i'm choosing a course of action, i should ask myself whether the decision affects only me or also others.
• Having determined that, i should then analyse whether this course of action will increase or detract from the well-being of all involved (whether that's only myself or also others).
• And i should always choose the courses of action that increase that well-being and avoid the ones that detract from it.
• This is true for actions taken by individuals as well as organizations, societies, governments.
• This is really just a fleshed-out version of the golden rule, but my [Sam's] important innovation is this: that action-analysis must not be driven by dogma, but rather be informed by the facts of the real world as well as we can ascertain them.
It really is that simple.
And the shame is that he's for some reason reluctant to state it in language that straightforward. Because if he just said, "This is what it boils down to: [the thing cuzn ed typed]," it would be difficult to misunderstand or misconstrue him.
But i think he thinks that the bones of the argument are so obvious, that it would be insulting to state them so plainly - so he assumes that people are disagreeing with the argument, rather than misunderstanding it because he presented it in the form of analogy. So instead of saying, "I see you misunderstood my analogy, so let me boil it down to: [the thing cuzn ed typed]," he presents another analogy. And the analogy makes perfect sense if you already grokked the argument, but is easy to misunderstand (on purpose or not) if you didn't already follow it.
I think he's right about the moral landscape, as i've summarized it above. But i think the way he chooses to present it does a disservice to his argument, and to us by extension.
1:56:30
Case in point. 2 hours into their second moderated discussion, JBP says AGAIN that he (somehow) doesn't understand what Sam's ethos is grounded on.
All Sam needed to or should have said is, "Well-being vs harm, as measured by real-world facts, not dogma. Full stop."
But no, Sam seems to think he needs another analogy.
Oy vey.
I agree to an extent. It absolutely seems that Sam does simply not understand that JP _cannot_ understand the concept of not having one clear word or phrase to ground ethics in, while reality of course is that nobody but the most zealous fanatics and literalists ground their ethic in the many holy books, which even then isn't to say that they are grounded in a shared understanding or even _assumption_ of 'god'. The idea of complex ethical discussion and elaboration and that the Golden rule based in scientific analysis of the world _can_ be a grounds for ethics is beyond JP, because that is what is done by every sane person today _anyways,_ and he somehow thinks that not having god as an achoring layer at the very top destroys that process, even though there is no proof for that at all. In fact, as criminality has decreased in most modern societies, it correlates with an increase in atheism, and the other way around of course. While this does not mean there is a causality, it also at least means there is no clear pointing towards atheists acting more immoral.
But I need to defend Sam in his misunderstanding just a tad - while it's difficult seeing him stumble on how JP continuously wants something to ground ethics in, which is actually not needed, the fact remains that JP seems to have read Harris's book. And from what I've seen Harris at least holds JP's intellect in somewhat high regard. It may be that he _overestimates_ that intellect, not understanding that JP is, at his core, a lost child not unlike the people he describes as "lost" and "chaotic" who, without a god to anchor his life to, would not see any reason in it, let alone a legitimate ethic. Basically, I think Harris believes JP to be smarter than he is.
@@lVideoWatcherl ''which is actually not needed'' this in the first sentence of your second paragraph, illustrates that is YOUR OPINION. JP is so beyond you as he has spent literally 40 years trying to find the meaning of life AS WE EXPERIENCE LIFE at this moment. This guy basically just says: ''To hell with figuring out the meaning of life and JP is stupid for literally COMING AS CLOSE as the ENTIRETY OF HUMANITY'' Case in point: He read basically every great thinker in HISTORY and ACTUALLY STUDIED HISTORY. Now please state your credentials for claiming to know ''The Fabric Of Reality'' as blatantly as you put it in the five words you typed in the beginning of this comment.
@@toine6610 And HE'S STILL IGNORANT even though HE HAS READ SO MUCH.
Just reading much and studying much doesn't mean you're actually _wise._ It perhaps means you are _knowledgable_ about philosophical argumentation. But wisdom doesn't come from simply reading stuff - and what's wise in one century does not automatically apply nearly to the same extent in another century. And that's Peterson's issue - he's a reactionary conservative who's so far stuck in the past because he cannot _fathom_ how progressive system change _is actually what has continuously brought about betterment for society._ Capitalism, at one point, wasn't a conservative policy after all. And Smith definitively did not want _this_ capitalism we see currently, he would in fact be largely appalled by it.
And to your objection: it's _evidently_ not _objectively_ needed. Meaning, humanity has _evidently_ outgrown morality based on religion - as what was once religious morality has continuously adapted and changed over centuries. If morality _actually_ was objective in the religious sense, then _this is not possible nor needed,_ as, after all, the system would have been ultimately perfect at it's inception. However, if it is not _then,_ and it is not _now,_ then _you cannot argue objective morality either._ After all, that would indicate that our code of ethics could be _better_ in the future; implying that we need to improve. Curiously, we as a species seem to be doing that by becoming _less_ religious rather than more so. So Peterson would also be wrong on account of _this_ fact; if people definitively needed a grounding for morality, as the nonreligious population in a country increases, it would have to see more immorality. However, crime rates in all western democracies but the US (where a negative trend turned _just_ as the presidential race of 2015 got hot, I wonder if there might be a connection here?) have stagnated or decreased _for the last decades,_ while religiosity has declined in these countries.
No, it is _not_ an opinion that morality does not objectively _need_ a grounding. A person can live their entire life as a moral member of society without needing any conceptual foundation for morality, without even thinking very much about morality. The _other_ stance is what needs to be supported with evidence; you need evidence _for_ the claim that morality needs a conceptual foundation for people to have the capacity to be moral.
And as an aside; maybe back up a little. So far up JP's behind as you are, you're bound to just spit out more crap like that comment.
Seriously, try questioning people a little _seriously._ Don't just dismiss somebody because they aren't of your opinion. And before you feel tempted to turn this around on me not liking Peterson; I can _gladly_ give you a multitude of reasons for me claiming him to be a self-help guru and pseudo-intellectual rather than a _respectable_ intellectually honest person. He's read a bunch, sure. He says some things which aren't entirely baseless and without merit, yes. But his intellectual dishonesty and bloviating in many aspects are not attributes of a person I consider to be intellectually relevant. And, just so you know, neither should you.
Given your points, you will find them in the bible, written thousands of years before Sam arrived in town....
This is what teenagers arguing in YT comment sections feel they sound like I guess
That also includes you now you have put that comment
& now me
@@LowieX accurate
Ded
"I feel like this and that" means nothing to me because I don't care how anyone 'feels' about things.
very good funny- but I'm alway aware of my abject stupidity.
I've listened to this discussion three times now. There is so much to take in. One thing that I have realized is that Harris doesn't see (or perhaps refuses to admit) a major point Peterson makes: Life is so brutally difficult and the worst of our suffering is so terrible that mindful rationale is not enough to get the human race through. When it comes down to disease, injury, agony, war, famine, tyranny, genocide, loss of loved ones, fear, and despair, it is not sufficient for humans to say, "Well, these tragedies have scientifically explainable causes, and these supposed 'evil' deeds are more like malfunctions in people's brains, and stars exploded billions of years ago and you just so happened to be born composed of the elements they flung out into the universe, but hopefully science and smart people will alleviate your pain." This is NOT enough. Humans need something greater, something that exists on all levels beyond the physical. Not only do we need it, it is part of us-the worship and sacrifice, the art and music, the stories and myths, the imagination and metaphor, the values and aims, the rituals and religions, the heroes and legends, the sacred and the profane, the demons and gods, the Heaven and Hell. You can reshuffle the deck and changes the names of terms, but in the end, we are humans, playing the human game. Harris continually interrupts, overtalks, and doesn't listen. As much as I appreciate him as an intelligent thinker who does make good points, he is a blowhard. And a blowhard always talks too much in an attempt to compensate for their shortcomings and insufficiencies.
I think he said several times that he aknowledge those utilities. His basic critique is for those People that take the game too serious and are willing to kill or worse for those beliefs.
What do you think exists beyond the physical realm?
Sam's argument is that the 'something greater' doesn't have to be Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, or any other man made god. Nor does it need to be the belief that there is some sort of paradise-like afterlife that we will achieve if we are 'good' or believe in the right god. At the same time, he does not discount the notion that consciousness might go beyond the physical. The problem with religion comes from when you have large groups of people that hang on to the outdated dogmas that hold us back as a society.
Maybe someday science will be able to fully explain everything about how the universe works and how life fits into it. For me, the hope of that is more than enough. I personally don't require a belief in the supernatural to live a full life.
Not quite. He certainly acknowledges that.
But at least half of those terrible things you name are carried out in name of religion, which even Jordon knows in his heart of hearts in built on lies as much as it provides a framework for positivity
Point is, you can have those fictions without them being based as true. You can claim Spiderman is a great hero and motivator for human moral, without believing hes real in the reality sense.
The fiction of God can be enterpreted both ways, of course there are terrible stories, but theres also good ones. But claiming them as true forever won’t work, because our morals do gradually increase each year, so by being held back by traditional beliefs you cant grow.
Imagine being lucky enough to have Brett or Jordan as a professor at your university, then trying to get them kicked out.
I know right? Something truly sinister is happening when people this reasonable, compassionate, interesting, and capable of calmly conducted civil discourse, are being threatened and kicked out of universities for doing nothing but speaking openly about issues they and others have with certain ideas.
It's no wonder they've gotten as much attention as they have, this could go bat-shit crazy if we're not careful.
Peace out brother!
I am no fan of Perterson, but trying to get him kicked out is some serious snowflakery.
@@hhiippiittyy You would think rational students would naturally steer clear of his biased lectures, eh?
@@StaggerLee68
Or just suck them up as part of the academic process.
Unless Peterson is involved in legitimate discrimination, his biases are the concern of the employer (university), not the customer (student). It's like trying to get a car salesman fired because he likes corvettes more than trucks. Kinda.
@@hhiippiittyy If he declares to represent the values of his denomination he must do so. Most are rightly concerned about the agenda of this particular gods book and it's doomsday destiny. It is the insistence by Christians in the U.S. that Christianity be mandatory in governance and education. I welcome the concept of religion to be honored in the heart and home but apart from that, like politics, some things are meant to be private. I don't know much as you about your books but I'm pretty sure both god and Jesus stated that you should worship in private, eh? I could very well be wrong but it sounds very reasonable if you are to believe. Cheers.
Harris’ steel-man of Peterson was a thing of beauty. He articulated Peterson’s position better than I think Peterson ever did in these talks.
Not quite. The position that Peterson maintains is actually very hard to explain briefly and easily and is actually a derivation of several premises. I highly encourage you to read his Maps of Meaning in order to understand more deeply about his position and how hard it is to explain quickly and easily.
Sounds bias but whatever it's yt
@@davidmolina5758 Meh. I’ve listened to all 4 Harris-Peterson debates multiple times as well as dozens of JP class lectures and a few of his large Biblical lectures. I think my claim that Harris’s steel-man captured Peterson’s position in this debate better than Peterson ever articulated it holds true. He obviously didn’t address every presupposition that undergirds Peterson’s worldview but he did very much capture Peterson’s criticism of him on the topic of religion very very well and in much clearer terms than Paterson did.
Way better, and with 39.8 less hours 😂
If you can't see JP's hands when he's talking, you're missing half of his dialogue
The one where it looks like he's wanking an invisible penis in font of his chest doesn't help his argument.
I find them distracting. It’s seems when he feels unsure of what to say his hands start fluttering around to distract from his convoluted words. He needs to download and use the Waking Up app.
@@AAB463 I think he is sometimes intentionally showing visually that he is mentally fumbling, giving the opponent an awareness of the weakness. If not intentional, he has to have recognised it on playback, and be able to recognise it when it happens in realtime. And he keeps doing it.
@@jayvdb It's part of his thinking process, if you watch his lectures you'll see that he does it a lot and that it seems to help him organize his thoughts and/or it organizes how he wants to lay out what he's talking about.
@@jayvdb its not that deep, all types of people talk with their hands and jordan happens to be one of them.
I feel my brain growing.
If you’ve experienced any sudden and unexpected brain growth, you may be entitled to compensation
So me.... LOL
I feel my brain hurting.
you may wan to have that checked out lol
nah man, few moments after the vid finished, the smoke stopped leaking from my ears and everythng, I think we're good
Its so nice to see conversations in the comments that aren’t resentful in nature and have room for open interpretation. It’s weird how when we watch an educational discussion such as this, that the general population is available for civil discourse, but when you look at the “1 minute hit” like “peterson smashes leftist journalists” and see the comments; it is absolutely disgraceful and volatile.
To see videos like this that encourages rational discussion really restores my faith in humanity.
Faith and good fortune to all you sagacious individuals!
Runs to dictionary to look up definition of sagacious!
As a sanatani I can see Sam has understood some fundamental distinctions between Abrahamic religions and Dharmic religions. Good for you brother 👏
I'm an atheist, I disagree with many of Peterson's views and yet I will NEVER understand how you can call yourself a free thinker and then advocate for him being fired.
He is a good speaker and a good professor (I've seen some of his lectures). The job of a professor isn't only to convey information but also to give you a toolset. Peterson does that and you don't have to agree with all of his views to learn a LOT from him. The moment we start censoring in universities, we will decline as a species. Sadly this process has already started.
Atheist huh????
A wise man said to me..
" Everyone thinks they are an Atheist, until the chopper is going down, and their buddies head gets blown off, then they ( Atheist) start praying to a GOD they don't believe in...
@@heidi22209 it's annoying that this was your takeaway from the comment.
@@heidi22209 ..you are projecting your insecurities onto him because you doubt what you are saying.. pretty funny..
well said brother it takes real intelligence to fully listen and it takes considerable knowledge just to understand the extent of your own ignorance.. I have been studying quantum physics mechanics for 12 years I keep going back and forth but at this point I think I am agnostic..
And who exactly is trying to fire him? Last I checked, he's still on the staff at Uni, and has multiple media platforms from which to hawk his tired, old, whyteman worldviews. Even as he gets his fame by deliberately courting controversy, saying things most likely to offend--so that he can then switch to victim mode (a favorite tactic of 'anti-cancel culture' warriors, who believe THEIR right to offend trumps your right to express offense).
Funny how often freethinkers like him create provocative, derogatory, and largely (though not always totally) inaccurate labels for every thought system not the same as theirs, attack all those perspectives relentlessly, and then are championed for straight talk.
My libertarian grandpa was ranting dire warnings about the imminent death of college cirriculum at the hands of Leftists/Maoists/feminists/Liberals/whateverthefucks back in the 60s. Half a century later, same dire warnings, same kinds of anti-pc hucksters making millions from pronouncing those warnings, but like the professor now, colleges still in the business of teaching kids.
I can just sense that Peterson is having so much fun while discussing with Harris
I think by the 4th one he was stressed out.
Nevertheless I LOVE seeing them together
@@shiskeyoffles what 4th one?
Achilles 999 there were 4 debates between the two, as well as two podcasts
This steelmanning in the beginning is like a family therapy session
One of the reasons I've been following Jordan Peterson for a while is because he uses bible stories as a tool for us to improve as individuals and as a society. He doesn't drag you into spiritualism or imposition of dogmatism. I've read two of his books and found them incredibly constructive, especially for men nowadays.
On the other hand, I also like how Sam Harris argues not over who’s right and wrong but rather asking the right questions. I must admit that I agree with many of Sam’s points.
We need people like Sam, people who question religion. Some of us were raised not to question God, not to think, just believe, and many people still live this way. However, is only when the right questions are asked, and doctrine is intellectually challenged, that someone qualified like Peterson can help bring more understanding. This is where true growth is, when you take a conscious decision based on your own judgement, not because you were born in the west, Pakistan or China, seeking not only individual but collective gain while respecting others.
I just finished part 1 and 2, and one of my main takeaways is Bret Weinstein's idea of a metaphorical truth - a belief that may not be factually/scientifically true, but believing it in practice turns out to be beneficial due to the behaviours it results in. The analogy of always treating a weapon as if it was loaded is a perfect example.
52:19 "No, it's a bug and a feature" Thank you Bethesda
Lmao
I don't get Bethesda reference
@@TheUArabej play Elder Scrolls (especially Skyrim), Fallout, or even DOOM and there are bugs and glitches aplenty. Great games (except Fallout, IMO), but they have their glitches lol.
@@turdfergeson8641 I got what bug and a feature is. Don't get this name though.
Ok this is amazing xD
Man, I never realized how smart Ben Stiller is. Learn something new every day!
On a serious note, I love these conversations and treasure trove of ideas. Thank you to everyone involved for putting these together.
My man was giving us Blue Steele during the whole debate
Go home ball!
And Daniel Day Lewis
Lol
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
John Zhang
Sun tzu?
Proverbs 27:17
It's a friend sharpens a friend
That was a proverb?!, nice.
@@TheClassicWorld You talk alot of shit you don't know
Peterson is attempting to defend an indefensible position. And Harris skillfully and tactfully, is not giving him an inch…..
It is not indefensible. Religion has built many civilizations and they are well thought through. Harris will get stumped eventually I would bet, great conversations!
Among the best moderators I've seen. Kudos. Good discussion. Big props to both Peterson and Harris.
I get where Peterson is coming from but I think he is stuck defending religion because he keeps coming back to the argument of "objective" morality, which itself goes back to the presupposition of god. If you abandon that presupposition (as Sam has) it is obvious that religion is (at this point in history) an objectively inferior way of determining morality. This is most obvious in the fact that *religion* has had to update what it considers moral in response to the change of social norms over time, not the other way around.
It is true that Sams morality somewhat hangs mid-air. There is no real objective grounding to it, this has always been a large philosophical problem of atheism. But the point is that we can work with incomplete information. We can create "objective" guidelines if we ground them in a notion of Wellbeing as Sam defines it. This notion is based on subjective conscious experience and is drenched in human bias but it is the best we can do. No axiomatic system is complete, including Religion. To claim otherwise is simply incorrect.
Petersons arguments about how advantageous behaviors have been encoded into metaphors (like sacrifice as delay of gratification and discovery of the future) is fascinating but it tells us nothing about the continued utility of these metaphors when we become explicitly aware of their meaning and have figured out ways to arrive at such conclusions without resorting to metaphor. We do not need stories about child sacrifice to realize the value of delaying gratification anymore. Another problem that Sam was getting at is that historically, people have not treated these stories as metaphors at all but as literal codes of conduct to appease "invisibile" beings in exchange for prosperity.
Of course Peterson knows all of this. Which is why, when he is pressed, he says one ought to behave as if god is real, not that he thinks that god is real. The notion of "metaphorical truth" as discussed here was the most concise articulation of this concept I have seen yet, fascinating stuff. And I think that within that framework, religion can carve out an existence, as the antidote to nihilism and chaos that Peterson prescribes. But at the highest level of rational analysis (as in this discussion) one can clearly see that religion can at most serve as a useful fiction that can give us the illusion of an objective grounding of our morality. And that it is useful *only* when we actually use it to ground a morality that is based on a modern understanding of morality, not the one clearly described in the founding documents of religion.
Brilliantly written
Hats off to you, well said!
"And that it is useful only when we actually use it to ground a morality that is based on a modern understanding of morality". In other words, we can use the doctrines to remind us what to avoid!
Obvious? Another example of dogmatic thinking not realizing its own dogma.
Well said. "One ought to behave as if god is real, not that he thinks that god is real." is essentially saying, "I don't believe in god, but I believe in some values laid out in the bible" - I guess. At best JP is an agnostic theist or perhaps a cultural Christian.
These two debates were so perfectly executed. No one was trying to win over the other. It was a display of different thoughts. Brilliantly moderated by Brett, who injected his own points of view as a plus to the conversation. LOVED IT! This is a how debates should look!
@Larry Myers Premise 1: I think he over did it.
Conclusion: Thus, fuck Brett. (From 1)
^Solid logic, Larry. Really outstanding. Keep applying yourself like this and you're bound to accomplish great things in the future.
I'm speechless. An amazing discussion.
Kept me awake most of the night… brilliant.
Man WWE has gotten a lot more intellectual these days
Yeah they even introduced steelmanning
Bwahhhahahaha
SAAAMMM HAARRRRIIISSSSS!!!
"If you're a real sadist you never mistreat a masochist when they ask you to"
- Jordan Peterson
Old joke...
Masochist : hurt me
Sadist : no
My brain cells died trying to understand that
while it's funny I don't think it's true.
from the masochists perspective it wouldn't be mistreatment tho xD
@@rizvlogs7927 my brain cells died from the lack of humour in the joke.
I love how many times Sam is building a point that he thinks Jordan will disagree with and then Jordan says “yes, absolutely. I agree.”
Exactly. Jordan is an A class bullshit artist, a weasel.
@nikolai 1939 But it's not what you said, and the rest of us are normal adults, so you must be confused :/
@@Cr0uch1ng71g3r I'll second your notion. Proof of that is how well he gets along with fellow weasel Shapiro
Jordan doesn't care about debate. He cares to tell everyone what he thinks true to better the society.
Yeah because hes already steelmanned the hell out of his ideas and Jordan has already posed to himself the point Sam builds and has worked through why he thinks his idea isnt defeated by this point. Like why resistance to update is actually necessary and seen in darwinian evolution or his relation of sacrifice to delayed gratification
Sam is so much easier to understand than Jordan. I don't understand why he always feels the need to unnecessarily complicate things. Perhaps he's not doing it consciously, but it makes it hard to seriously consider his arguments.
Because Sam is philosopher, part of his profession is to simplify things that are complex to understand
I think it’s also because Sam is so smart and tries to convey his messages clear and concise. Sam is a Wonderful rhetorician.
Peterson argues for the utility of dogma. Harris wants to get rid of dogma. Specifically religious dogma. But Peterson tries to understand which dogma he is trying to replace it with. Because he thinks dogma is inevitable. Harris isn’t aware of his own dogma. So he thinks it’s possible to live without dogma. (The most dogmatic people are those who are not aware of their own dogma). But Harris is a (more of a) progressive, so wants to move forward and leave the old (religious) dogma behind. Peterson is a conservative, so he isn’t so eager to move forward unless the path (Harris’ new dogma) is articulated, philosophically sound and well thought through first. I think that describes the impasse.
Excellent summary 👍
Peterson is technically a liberal but still more conservative than Harris. If you read Thomas Sowell's book it's hard to listen to Harris without hearing hubris.
I don't think you understand the word "dogma". You said Harris has his own dogma, but that's wrong. Dogma means authority and unchanging laws regardless of new evidence and science has no authority, it is open to evidence that would change their ideas. Repeating an idea does not mean dogma if it is correct. Like, repeating the fact that the earth toes around the sun is not dogma
@@ClassicRock1973 Take 1000 people and teach them something. Leave for 2 weeks. When you return they will have developed dogmatic views, in variety at least some of which will oppose others. People are not a "well informed market." That's why religion exists as a set of stories meant to align people on common values. You can't simply "take it away" as it must be replaced.
Alan Lloyd : www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dogma See definition 1a and 1c. You are exclusively refering to definition 2. If you want to understand dogma more fundamentally (than a dictionary), I suggest looking to philosophy. I think you will find that it does not mean exactly what you think it means, although you are close. I’d define dogma more broadly, from the top of my head, as: Unchallenged premises held to be true. In Harris’ worldview it would be that «concious creatures are valuable» or even moreso: that «conciousness is the most valuable thing». He uses this as a fundamental premise for his argument of «well-being of concious creatures» in his own moral landscape, with which he believes everyone would be able to agree. He doesn’t seem to recognise that it first would entail everyone accepting his own very specific set of dogmatic beliefs, as exemplified above.
I need to pause so often to look up the definition to the words they’re saying.
Beyond that I don’t tend to look for a winner in this debate. I simply look to learn from both of their viewpoints. I love that I’m able to listen so a conversation such as this.
If you come into this debate with bias you’ll leave not learning much. I’d simply suggest to anyone listening to approach this with a complete and unbiased open mind. I will say that I have my biases in this conversation beforehand, but I made it a point to set them aside for this. I’ll say I’ve learned a lot, and have even changed some of my views because of this conversation.
Great talk, I think I finally understand the divide between the two. Neither of them have a good answer to the question of a universal system of ethics. Sam is currently experimenting with a secular rational way of establishing this system anew whereas Jordan is cautiously on the religious side because of his experience as a clinical psychologist and the skepticism that people on average can function well on an ethical system rooted in fact. I would definitely be on Harris' side a few years back, now I'm really not sure where I land, I am way more cautious of the dangers of hyperrationalism however I suppose getting close to that pit of snakes might be just what we need to develop the antidote.
Buttersnow yep, sounds exactly right.
Great summation.
I think the most important counterpoint to taking a strictly logical approach is this: within the limited time frame and physical boundaries humans have to use our logical mind and attempt to perceive reality as completely as possible it is still not enough time to have a complete view to capture the universal moral institution with any type of accuracy, much less impose it on society. There has to be something timeless, not bound by spacial constraints that can transcend mortal human understanding that allows some kind of continuity across time. So when Sam said, "...religion doesn't give us the tools to converge on moral standard because you can't have an open ended conversation," I would argue that no matter how many conversations you have while on Earth, and no matter how many books you read, it is a discredit to the universal moral institution to think that one has the authority to approve or denounce moral claims.
Logan Pratt
This was probably already covered but please explain:
1. Why does there if have to be a universal moral standard that transcends space and time?
2. If it exists, by what mechanism can ALL consciousness come to know it.
- if it is universal it would necessarily be objective, correct?
3. If there is a standard by which you could begin to know it, why would it be a disservice to the thing itself.
4. If we can’t come to know it, why does it matter in determining how we ought to behave? What alternatives would be left?
Great summary. I agree.
SH: Two times three equals six.
JP: Two times three equals the intangible evanescent process of unknowable numeracy linked to the transcendence of the highest hierarchical integral foundation of the ultimate structure of our being.
ROFL
Haha he’s allergic to straight answers
Exactly 😂
Thanks for the Arabic translation
شكرا للترجمة العربية
I love Jordan's crazy jazz digits .
They're creepy as hell.
@@stewartmoore5158 You can't handle the jazz digits, man. Oh, you're fine with those pop digits; 4/4 time, nice and easy, dee dee dee. But the jazz digits... ....where are they going next? What will they do? Not even the jazz digits know. You fear the crazy jazz digits.
imo they seem kind of pretentious. i like him though.
I thought I was the only one who noticed. They irritate me...
@@KaP0401 micro aggressions 😂😂😂
The way they come up with witty jokes in an instant shows how smart they are.
brevity is the soul of wit
Everyone has a view. I say this is one of the best conversations I've ever seen. While I have my own opinion, I must say that all three of these fools are amazing
Why is Ben Stiller all of a sudden talking about philosophy?
@Crom haha,
Savage bro
I didn't realize he was so intelligent.
My thoughts exactly!
@@eelhead1141 wait what? It is him! Lolol! I thought it was some Dan Ferris guy lol. SERIOUSLY though how is Ben this ridiculously smart?
Most profound conversations I ever heard to date. Changed my whole life concept three times lol
6 times for me. You weren’t listening carefully enough.
@@karagi101 or it's simply info. And the worldview changing only suggests you need to keep learning 😂
You must be quite gullible then.
@@samsabruskongenyou might be quite close minded then😈
Listen to Bahnsen V Stein. This is babby-tier prattle.
It's always great to watch the great Daniel Day-Lewis and Ben Stiller discussion!
Haha
😂😂😂😂
Hahahahhhha
You're right, Jordan Peterson DOES resemble Ben Stiller. On several levels.
@@AlanWinterboy The other way around.
I feel very strongly that this is a good faith conversation and that makes me feel good.
For me, Peterson's narcissism ruins. It
@@davidstaffellIt’s really a shame how far Jordan has fallen from critical thinking from the date of this debate.
@@SnappyWasHere Sadly I agree. I think there is some true value in his 2016 Maps of Meaning lecture. Even though he makes some false claims in there, he still says many valuable things in there.
Currently in each of his podcasts and interviews he forces a 'walled garden' and 'Kain and Abel' into every statement anyone makes.
It does not feel like he has evolved at all but rather devolved into a very narrow way of thinking.
Further I have to state that I am by no means a n environmental or climate activist and I think that there is more false information and fear out there than should be.
However there was one guest JP had in his podcast who argued that we are doing the planet good for burning fossil fuels and by enriching the atmosphere with CO2. If that was not all, then the same person claiming that there is no radiation or microplastics because we can not see killed it for me. He even claimed that plastics in the Ocean is good because birds swallow it by intention like they swallow stones to help them digest.
And Peterson agreed with all of that ;-(
He unfortunately became what he always wanted to prevent people from becoming: bitter and resentful.
literally no one:
this crowd: *claps loudly*
It's distracting and unnecessary.
A crowd full of NPCs
The comment I was looking for
More than what was debated, what I enjoyed was HOW this was debated. By that, I don't mean a fluffy, 'let's all be respectful to each other' sense of 'everyone's opinion is valid' kind of nonsense. They challenged each other vigorously, but their respect of the principles of debate were a demonstration of how it should be done . First, they started with "steel-manning" the other person - I love this term, and will be using it regularly from here on, because it's the perfect starting point, where so often the opposite, "straw-manning" is so common. Second, I loved the way both avoided the temptation to then score cheap points, either by pretending to misunderstand the other's point, or to exaggerate it to the extreme to the point of being unrecognisable. Third, they assumed good intentions, and never tried to extrapolate an inference from a point that it indicated anything less. Finally, and similarly to the last point, they respect each other as intelligent actors, and didn't try to take points of discrepancy as indictors of a lack of intelligence. If all debates can be held like this, then Sam's point about one half of the bookstore being impervious to debate will surely change, and that has to be the best outcome that could come from this. Great job to both - I learned a lot here, so thank you.
Very well said @RLeaguer2. Respect for a different view point from our own is definitely what is missing on our TV’s when interviews are conducted today, they like you say seek to “score cheap points” I think gaining knowledge and wisdom should be the goal in discusses such as these, not the name calling shambles we heard today in the MSM. It is a glorious day indeed to watch a grown up discuss, although different in their opinions, were one in seeking new grounds in knowledge. They are well worth their PHD’s.
Thanks again for your comments.
This was one the all-time best discussions that I have come across and must say the moderator did a fantastic job of inputing his own thoughtful contributions to the process. I felt the same way when I listened to it 2 years ago.