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Jordan Peterson | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union

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SUBSCRIBE for more speakers ► http://is.gd/OxfordUnion SUPPORT the Oxford Union ► https://oxford-union.org/supportus Oxford Union on Facebook:   / theoxfordunion   Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion Website: http://www.oxford-union.org/ A Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Peterson has received considerable media coverage after publishing a series of videos criticising the Canadian government's move to enact Bill C-16, which made misgendering a form of hate speech. His recent bestselling book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos topped the Washington Post, WSJ and Reuters U.S bestsellers lists ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. Since 1823, the Union has been promoting debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe. The Oxford Union is dee …...more
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So I Think I'M Going To Talk to You Today a Little Bit about Hierarchy It's a Small Talk That I'Ve Been Developing as I'Ve Been Doing My Public Lectures over the Last Couple of Weeks It's an Elaboration of some of the Ideas I Put Forth In on some of My Scientific Writings and in Maps of Meaning but More Particularly in 12 Rules for Life in Rule One Which Is Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back and It's in Part of Meditation on Hierarchy

0:53

And It's True for Us As Well and We Have To Move Forward towards Things because We Have Requirements There Are Things That We Require To Keep Us Alive and To Keep Us Wanting To Be Alive As Well and those Are Different Things and We Move Forward towards Things That We Value so There's Two Propositions There the First Is that We Have To Move Forward because There Are Things To Move Forward to because There Are Things We Need and Want and the Second Is that To Move Forward towards Something Is Simultaneously To Value It and So One of the Implications of that Is that We Always Live in a Framework a Value There's no Escaping that and that We'Re Moved for Our Detail that this Out Quite Substantially in My Book Maps of Meaning but We'Re Always at a Place and and and We'Re Always Moving towards a Place That in Principle Has some Advantage over the Place We'Re at Otherwise

2:24

You'Re Going To Pursue that Thing of Value in a Social Space and that Means You'Re Going To Compete and Cooperate with People around You in the Pursuit of that Value and What that Inevitably Means Is that Given that the Pursuit of Anything Valuable Is Going To Be a Collective Enterprise That You'Re Going To Produce a Hierarchy or Maybe More than One Hierarchy but At Least a Hierarchy of Competence in Relationship to that Pursuit so It Doesn't Matter What You Decide To Pursue Maybe You'Re Going To Do that Cooperatively You'Re Going To Find that You and Other People Vary in Your Ability To Manage that Pursuit Effectively and and Efficiently and So There's Going To Be a Hierarchy of People from those Who Are Very Good at the Pursuit Maybe It's Pole Vaulting Maybe It's Delivering Massages Maybe It's Delivering Groceries Maybe It's Setting Up an Enterprise It Doesn't Matter

5:05

And So There's Going To Be a Hierarchy of People from those Who Are Very Good at the Pursuit Maybe It's Pole Vaulting Maybe It's Delivering Massages Maybe It's Delivering Groceries Maybe It's Setting Up an Enterprise It Doesn't Matter but if It's a Valuable Purdue Pursuit and You Pursue It Socially GonNa Produce a Hierarchy and the Hierarchy Is Going To Be One of Competence and So if You'Re Going To Pursue Value Then You'Re Going To Construct a Hierarchy and Then There's an Implication from that Which Is that if You Construct a Hierarchy Most of the People within that Hierarchical Structure Are a Minority of People Are Going To Be Fantastically Successful at the Pursuit and a Very Large Number Are Going To Stack Up at the Bottom and that's a Manifestation of What's What's Known as Prices Law It's Mapped by the Pre Distribution

5:40

And a Very Large Number Are Going To Stack Up at the Bottom and that's a Manifestation of What's What's Known as Prices Law It's Mapped by the Pre Distribution It's an Expression of What's Been Known among Economists as the Matthieu Principle from the New Testament to those Who Have Everything More Will Be Given from those Who Have Nothing Everything Will Be Taken Away and It's an It's an Iron Law of the Distribution of Success in Hierarchies so if You'Re Going To Have Value and You'Re Going To Have Hierarchy

6:14

It's an Expression of What's Been Known among Economists as the Matthieu Principle from the New Testament to those Who Have Everything More Will Be Given from those Who Have Nothing Everything Will Be Taken Away and It's an It's an Iron Law of the Distribution of Success in Hierarchies so if You'Re Going To Have Value and You'Re Going To Have Hierarchy Then You'Re GonNa Have in Equality and that's a Problem Now You Can't So Now Now You Have a Political Divide There so the Conservative Types Say about We Need Two Hierarchies and that's Self-Evident As Far as I'M Concerned Given that Set of Propositions because if You Don't if You'Re GonNa Pursue Something of Value Which You Have To and Need To Then You'Re Going To Produce a Hierarchy

6:23

So if You Demolish the Hierarchies You Demolish Value Itself and that's Not a Tenable a Tenable Move the Left-Wing Though Says and to Their Credit Yeah but You Have To Be Very Careful with Your Hierarchies because They Tend towards Inequality of Distribution That's One Problem once They'Re Established They Always Also Tend to a Form of Tyranny because Once a Hierarchy of Competence Has Been Established It Can Be Invaded by People Who Use Power as the Means To Attain Status in the Hierarchy and that Can Corrupt and Destroy Even the Entire Hierarchy so You Have To Be on Guard for that

7:03

That Who's Temperamental Proclivity Is To Admire and Support Hierarchies and Work Effectively within Them and that's Actually the Personality Traits That Make Up a Conservative because Conservatives by Temperament Are Low in Trait Openness Which Is a Creativity Dimension That's Associated with Lateral Thinking It's Not I Would Say It's It's Very Environmentally Underdetermined It's It's It's a Biological Predisposition Especially with Regards to Creativity and High in Conscientiousness and the Conservative Temperamental Types Make Very Good Managers and Administrators That's How They Manifest Themselves in the World Essentially if You Set Up a Hierarchy and It Runs on Algorithmic It Runs Algorithmically Then the Conservatives Will Do Very Well in that Structure because They Can Implement an Algorithm

8:38

It Runs Algorithmically Then the Conservatives Will Do Very Well in that Structure because They Can Implement an Algorithm and They'Re Very Good at Implementing whereas the Liberal Pipes Are Very Good at Generating New Hierarchies and So and that's and that's because They'Re Hired Trade Openness They'Re Less Conscientious so They'Re Not Suited As Well To Do within Hierarchy Operation but in a Functioning Economy and in a Functioning Democracy I Would Say You Need both Types You Need the Liberal Types To Establish New Territory and To Put Out New Values so that New Hierarchies Might Be Organized

9:18

So They'Re Not Suited As Well To Do within Hierarchy Operation but in a Functioning Economy and in a Functioning Democracy I Would Say You Need both Types You Need the Liberal Types To Establish New Territory and To Put Out New Values so that New Hierarchies Might Be Organized so that Effective Movement towards those Ends Might Be Instantiated and You Need the Conservatives To Actually Implement the Processes and So a Society of Only Conservatives Becomes Static and that's Not Good because the Environment Transforms and You Have To Keep Up with It and a Society That's Only Composed of the Left-Leaning Liberal Types Is Very Good at Generating all Sorts of New Possibilities

9:35

I Would Say You Need both Types You Need the Liberal Types To Establish New Territory and To Put Out New Values so that New Hierarchies Might Be Organized so that Effective Movement towards those Ends Might Be Instantiated and You Need the Conservatives To Actually Implement the Processes and So a Society of Only Conservatives Becomes Static and that's Not Good because the Environment Transforms and You Have To Keep Up with It and a Society That's Only Composed of the Left-Leaning Liberal Types Is Very Good at Generating all Sorts of New Possibilities but Very Bad at Generating all Sorts of New Actualities

9:44

So Here's What I'Ve Been Thinking about that and Trying To Formulate My Thoughts for My Six Minute Initial Opening Remarks Tomorrow Is a Very Tight Tight Time Constraint So Think about It this Way Imagine that You Need To Describe the World in Two in Order To Perceive the World and To Act In at both of those Not Just To Act in It but Also To Perceive It and that You Need a Description at Different Levels of Resolution Know When You Can Think about How You Use Your Computer When You'Re When You'Re Dealing with Images You Know There Are some Times When What You Really Need Is a Thumbnail

12:21

And Maybe There's a Rule of Thumb Which Is Never Use a High-Resolution Theory When a Low-Resolution Theory Will Do the Converse Is Also True by the Way So Then Let's Say that in Order To Orient Ourselves Properly in Society We Need a General-Purpose Low Resolution Theory Existential Theory Something like that It's Not Precisely a Description of the Objective World It's More like an Agreed upon and It's an Agreed upon Narrative about How the World Is Constructed in Relationship to Human Experience

13:16

It Was Very Shocking to Everyone When that Was When that Was First Discovered because There Was a Very Influential Line of Thinking Mostly Derived from People Who Were Influenced by Rousseau that You Know Human Beings Were Innately Good and that Only Culture Made Them Cruel and Incapable of Atrocity but the Fact that the Chimpanzees Patrolled Their Borders and Tear Apart Their Enemies Really Did that Theory and in a Very Serious Way So At Least At Least Made It More Complicated so so the Collectivist View Is Essentially that the Best Way To Conceptualize What a Human Being Is Is To Look at What Tribe They Belong to and the Tribe Might Be Well this Is One of the Problems with the Collectivist View Is Which of Your Tribal Allegiances Is To Be Paramount

14:44

Sixties Was that a Very Large Number of Disciplines Simultaneously Realized that It Was Actually Technically Impossible To Perceive the World because There Was an Infinite Number of Ways That You Could Perceive the World and so that Bedeviled Artificial Intelligence I Mean People Thought for a Long Time that It Would Be Easy To Build Machines That Could See the World because There Was the World and There Were the Objects and Figuring Out What the Objects Were Wasn't Hard It Was Maneuvering in the World That Was Hard but that Turned Out To Be Wrong It's Really Really Hard To Figure Out What the Objects Are and We Actually Don't Know How We Do It Now You Know 50 Years Later We Have Machines That Can Orient Themselves Pretty Decently in the World

19:41

What You Find Is that once the Large Rat Dominates the Small Rat the Small Rat Has To Ask the Large Rat To Play and if the Large Rat Doesn't Let the Small Rat Win 30 % of the Time and Repeated Play Boats Then the Small Rat Won't Play Anymore and You Think Well So What It's like no no no no Not So What that's a Major Discovery That's like Nobel Prize-Winning Material because What Banks Have Demonstrated There Was that There's an Ethic of Fair Play Emerges Even among Rats all You Have To Do Is Pair Them Together and There Are There Are Rules That Govern Iterated Ethical Interactions That Are Emergent Properties and those Emergent Properties Are Manifested As Far as I Can Tell Described in the Great Mythological Stories That We Tell in the in the Great Narratives That Underlie Our Culture and They'Re Not Based on Arbitrary Assumptions

23:29

Because What Banks Have Demonstrated There Was that There's an Ethic of Fair Play Emerges Even among Rats all You Have To Do Is Pair Them Together and There Are There Are Rules That Govern Iterated Ethical Interactions That Are Emergent Properties and those Emergent Properties Are Manifested As Far as I Can Tell Described in the Great Mythological Stories That We Tell in the in the Great Narratives That Underlie Our Culture and They'Re Not Based on Arbitrary Assumptions They'Re Based on Observations of What Furthered Survival and Reproduction To Speak in a Purely Darwinian Manner over Massive Spans of Time and So and To Point to Truth as Construed in a Darwinian Realm and To Use the Example of Say Iterated Games To Buttress that Point Is by no Means Similar in any Way to Participating

23:51

The History of Western Philosophy Is that Ethic Manifested Itself First at the Level of Behavior We Acted Out We Don't Understand Just like a Chimpanzee Troupe Acts Out the Ethic of Their of Their Hierarchy They Can't Represent It They Can't Articulate It the Structure Emerges the Structure and the Behaviors That Are Associated with the Structure Emerge before that Is Represented and Certainly before It's Articulated So First of All the Ethic That Governs Repeated Interactions at Different Scales of Social Interaction the Structure Emerges First and Then It's Mapped

25:29

And I Would Say Well I Talked Earlier about the the Role That England Has Played that the Uk Has Played in Articulating the Political Doctrine of the Sovereign Individual but the Idea of the Sovereign Individual Is Far or Older than those Political Articulations and It's Based in a Narrative Structure That Is in Turn Based on the Observation of Behavioural Patterns That Have Emerged Reliably across Time and So and that's Not Postmodern in the Least It's It's It's Very Straightforward Claim that There Is Something That Approximates a Universal Human Ethic That's Built Deep Deeply into Our Biological

26:08

All of the Meaning That We Reap from the World Is Already Given to It by Us and There's no Net Meaning in the World or Something like that So I'M Wondering What You Would Say about Where a Meaning Comes from Hmm that's a Really Good Question I Mean So When Nietzsche Announced the Death of God Which Was a Something He Announced Actually in Sorrow and Trembling I Would Say Rather than Triumphantly Which Is Often How that's Read because People Actually Don't Read Nietzsche They Just Read One Half of a Quote

29:18

We Might Be Able To Participate in the Creation of those Values but We Have To Come to Terms with Our Own Nature while We'Re Doing So and I Think the Biological Evidence for that Is It's Absolutely Overwhelming if You Don't if You Don't Believe that Then What that Means Is that either You Don't Know Anything about Biology or that You'Ve Stuck Your Head in the Sand to the Point Where You'Re Unable To See Now Young Was Very Interested in How that those Internal Forces Manifested Themselves but Also How They Organized Themselves across Time Okay so There's Two Answers to Your Question One Is that They Organize Themselves into a Hierarchy

31:35

And What He Believed that What Was at the Talk in the West Was Symbolized by the Figure of Christ and He Thought of Christ as a Symbol of the Self and the Self Was an Emergent Consequence of the Internal Arranging of Motivational States into a Hierarchy Partly as a Consequence of of Psychological Activity Integration Maturation but Also Partly as a Consequence of Social Pressure because How You Organize Yourself Is Partly a Consequence of Who You Are and How You Organize Yourself but It's Also Partly a Consequence of How Other People Demand that You Be Organized and So and I Think that Jean Piaget-- zz Work Fits Very Nicely into that I Think that They Were Aiming in some Sense at the Same Synthesis

32:15

I Was a Devotee of the Russian Neuropsychologists Alexander Luria and His Students Sokolov in Vineger Dov'who Were Arguably the Three Greatest Neuropsychologist of the Last Half of the 20th Century and Vinegared Ovah and Sokolov Discovered the Orienting Reflex Which Was Probably the Biggest Discovery in Psychophysiology in the Last 50 Years of the 20th Century It's a None La Important Discovery and the Orienting Reflex Is the Reflex That Orient's You towards What You Don't Understand It's the Reflex That Orient's You towards Anomaly and What that Means Is that You Have a Structure

33:30

But that Orienting Reflex Is and that's Very Low Level Nervous System Responds Very Very Quick Very Reflexive Requires Very Little Cognitive Processing Fast Enough To Have You Jump out of the Way of a Striking Snake So Extraordinarily Quick and Dirty but like Many Important Evolutionary Adaptations It's Echoed at Multiple Levels of the Nervous System and so the Orienting Reflex Is Actually Very Complex as It Unfolds across Time and So if Something Startles You You Might Spend a Year Thinking about It Depending on How Startled You Were and that Entire Year-Long Process of Thinking Is Actually an Extended Manifestation of the Orienting Reflex and that's a Deep Source of Meaning

34:22

First Takes Root because Imagination Is Part of the Process by Which You Make Sense out of What You Don't Understand that's Where the Hypotheses Are Generated the Right Hemisphere Tends To Think in Metaphor and the Left Hemisphere Is Embedded in the Metaphorical Structure of the Right Hemisphere and that's Quite Well Documented in the Relevant Neuropsychological Literature from from a Multitude of Sources Even from People Who Aren't Concerned Specifically with Metaphor the Sense of Meaning Seems To Manifest Itself When the the the the Systems That Are Operating in Explored Territory

35:41

And the Systems That Are Operating in Unexplored Territory Are Operating Optimally Together So Imagine that What You Want To Do to To Adapt Property To Properly to Life Is To Stay Where You'Re Adapted Okay so that's a Conservative Approach Don't Go Where You Don't Know How To Act the Problem with that Is that Things around You Will Change without Your without Your Control so You You Can't Just Stay Where You Are You Have To Be Prepared

36:13

The Problem with that Is that Things around You Will Change without Your without Your Control so You You Can't Just Stay Where You Are You Have To Be Prepared for the Next Thing That's Coming and So Not Only Do You Have To Master Where You Are You Have To Master What's Most Likely To Happen Next and So You Have To Have One Foot in Chaos or in Order and You Have To Have One Foot in Chaos and the Way You Know that that's Happening Optimally Is that You'Re Imbued with a Sense of Meaning

36:31

Men and Women Differ in Temperament

44:59

Hate Speech Laws

56:13

Regulating Hate Speech

59:17

Why Should You Have the Right To Say Something That's So Offensive

1:01:00
Jordan Peterson | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union
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11,194,954Views
2018Jun 24
SUBSCRIBE for more speakers ► http://is.gd/OxfordUnion SUPPORT the Oxford Union ► https://oxford-union.org/supportus Oxford Union on Facebook:   / theoxfordunion   Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion Website: http://www.oxford-union.org/ A Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Peterson has received considerable media coverage after publishing a series of videos criticising the Canadian government's move to enact Bill C-16, which made misgendering a form of hate speech. His recent bestselling book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos topped the Washington Post, WSJ and Reuters U.S bestsellers lists ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. Since 1823, the Union has been promoting debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe. The Oxford Union is deeply grateful and encouraged by the messages of support in response to our determination to uphold free speech. During our 200 year history, many have tried to shut us down. As the effects of self-imposed censorship on university campuses, social media and the arts show no signs of dissipating, the importance of upholding free speech remains as critical today as it did when we were founded in 1823. Your support is critical in enabling The Oxford Union to continue its mission without interruption and without interference. You can support the Oxford Union here: https://oxford-union.org/supportus

So I Think I'M Going To Talk to You Today a Little Bit about Hierarchy It's a Small Talk That I'Ve Been Developing as I'Ve Been Doing My Public Lectures over the Last Couple of Weeks It's an Elaboration of some of the Ideas I Put Forth In on some of My Scientific Writings and in Maps of Meaning but More Particularly in 12 Rules for Life in Rule One Which Is Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back and It's in Part of Meditation on Hierarchy

0:53

And It's True for Us As Well and We Have To Move Forward towards Things because We Have Requirements There Are Things That We Require To Keep Us Alive and To Keep Us Wanting To Be Alive As Well and those Are Different Things and We Move Forward towards Things That We Value so There's Two Propositions There the First Is that We Have To Move Forward because There Are Things To Move Forward to because There Are Things We Need and Want and the Second Is that To Move Forward towards Something Is Simultaneously To Value It and So One of the Implications of that Is that We Always Live in a Framework a Value There's no Escaping that and that We'Re Moved for Our Detail that this Out Quite Substantially in My Book Maps of Meaning but We'Re Always at a Place and and and We'Re Always Moving towards a Place That in Principle Has some Advantage over the Place We'Re at Otherwise

2:24

You'Re Going To Pursue that Thing of Value in a Social Space and that Means You'Re Going To Compete and Cooperate with People around You in the Pursuit of that Value and What that Inevitably Means Is that Given that the Pursuit of Anything Valuable Is Going To Be a Collective Enterprise That You'Re Going To Produce a Hierarchy or Maybe More than One Hierarchy but At Least a Hierarchy of Competence in Relationship to that Pursuit so It Doesn't Matter What You Decide To Pursue Maybe You'Re Going To Do that Cooperatively You'Re Going To Find that You and Other People Vary in Your Ability To Manage that Pursuit Effectively and and Efficiently and So There's Going To Be a Hierarchy of People from those Who Are Very Good at the Pursuit Maybe It's Pole Vaulting Maybe It's Delivering Massages Maybe It's Delivering Groceries Maybe It's Setting Up an Enterprise It Doesn't Matter

5:05

And So There's Going To Be a Hierarchy of People from those Who Are Very Good at the Pursuit Maybe It's Pole Vaulting Maybe It's Delivering Massages Maybe It's Delivering Groceries Maybe It's Setting Up an Enterprise It Doesn't Matter but if It's a Valuable Purdue Pursuit and You Pursue It Socially GonNa Produce a Hierarchy and the Hierarchy Is Going To Be One of Competence and So if You'Re Going To Pursue Value Then You'Re Going To Construct a Hierarchy and Then There's an Implication from that Which Is that if You Construct a Hierarchy Most of the People within that Hierarchical Structure Are a Minority of People Are Going To Be Fantastically Successful at the Pursuit and a Very Large Number Are Going To Stack Up at the Bottom and that's a Manifestation of What's What's Known as Prices Law It's Mapped by the Pre Distribution

5:40

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