512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Episode 512. "Time, Space, and the Miraculous" | Dr. Brian Keating

In this illuminating episode of The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson engages in a profound dialogue with Dr. Brian Keating, a renowned cosmologist, exploring the intricate interplay between science, ethics, education, and the human experience. The conversation delves deep into how scientific pursuits are inherently tied to ethical frameworks, the role of wonder in scientific discovery, and the challenges faced by scientists in maintaining integrity and ethical standards.

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1. Peterson Academy and Mass Education

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson introduces the success of Peterson Academy, highlighting its mission to provide high-quality, accessible education in fields like astronomy and cosmology. Dr. Brian Keating discusses his involvement in the Academy, emphasizing the platform's ability to bring expert knowledge to a vast audience at minimal cost.

[00:40] Dr. Brian Keating: "We talked about the utility of the opportunity to bring high quality mass education everywhere at very low cost, very well produced and at low cost."

The Academy boasts approximately 40,000 students, with courses by Dr. Keating receiving significant acclaim for their depth and accessibility.

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2. The Relationship Between Science and Ethics

A central theme of the discussion revolves around the intrinsic link between scientific inquiry and ethical considerations. Peterson and Keating explore how science is not value-neutral but is embedded within an a priori ethical framework that prioritizes the pursuit of truth and beauty for the betterment of humanity.

[05:10] Dr. Brian Keating: "For science to exist, it has to not only be embedded in an a priori ethical framework, but that the scientists who are practicing science have to be oriented by that ethic."

They argue that genuine scientific endeavors are predicated on ethical decisions that place humanity's welfare above individual or political gains.

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3. Wonder and Awe in Scientific Exploration

The conversation highlights the diminishing sense of wonder in the scientific community due to the routinization of astronomical phenomena. Both speakers lament how familiarity with cosmic events like eclipses leads to a loss of the initial sense of awe and curiosity.

[07:15] Dr. Brian Keating: "We have about 40,000 students and Dr. Keating's offerings are very popular and deservedly so."

Peterson reflects on personal experiences with the night sky, noting how reduced visibility due to light pollution impacts the psychological and existential well-being of individuals.

[08:40] Jordan Peterson: "It's a weird fact really, isn't it? ... It's like, what the hell's going on there. That it produces that experience of awe."

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4. Ethical Orientation and the Scientist's Role

Dr. Keating emphasizes that the pursuit of scientific knowledge must align with ethical standards to prevent the erosion of integrity within the scientific community. They discuss the peril of scientists subordinating their quest for truth to career advancements or external rewards.

[20:19] Dr. Brian Keating: "Science is an infinite game comprised of all these finite games. Nobel Prize. It only goes to three people."

Peterson underscores the importance of balancing the embeddedness in scientific narratives with a critical understanding to avoid manipulation and loss of genuine engagement.

[17:28] Jordan Peterson: "If you just go to the gym and work out and you never recover, you can't fully grow to your potential."

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5. The Infinite Game of Science

The dialogue introduces the concept of science as an infinite game, where the pursuit of knowledge and understanding is unending. They contrast this with finite games, such as securing tenure or winning awards, which can sometimes distort the true objectives of scientific inquiry.

[20:18] Jordan Peterson: "If you master the finite games, then I will win the infinite game."

This perspective encourages scientists to focus on continuous learning and exploration rather than transient victories.

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6. Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

Peterson and Keating explore the boundaries and intersections between scientific rationalism and religious belief. They discuss how scientific advancements challenge traditional religious narratives but also how ethical frameworks are essential for meaningful scientific work.

[24:29] Jordan Peterson: "One of the things I've been trying to work out conceptually ... science itself is not science without maintaining its embeddedness in an underlying upward striving ethos."

The conversation touches on the fine-tuning argument and its implications for the existence of a higher power, with both agreeing that while science can inform these debates, it cannot conclusively prove or disprove the divine.

[28:23] Jordan Peterson: "Science itself has to be embedded in an a priori moral framework that is not itself science."

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7. The Ethical Failings of Renowned Scientists

A candid discussion unfolds about the personal flaws and ethical shortcomings of some of the most esteemed scientists in history, such as Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein. They argue that while these individuals made significant scientific contributions, their personal lives often reflected a lack of ethical integrity.

[84:04] Jordan Peterson: "You are pointing to an a priori distinction between the things that made them truly great scientists ... and all the flaws that are part and parcel of being a human but aren't in the same category."

This segment underscores the necessity of separating scientific achievements from personal morality and the dangers of idolizing scientists without acknowledging their humanity.

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8. The Role of Tradition and Community in Moral Development

Drawing from Jewish traditions, Peterson and Keating discuss how rituals, commandments, and community practices foster a sense of responsibility, discipline, and ethical behavior. They contrast this with secular or atheistic viewpoints, which they argue often lack this structured ethical foundation.

[73:35] Jordan Peterson: "Well, it's the tradition that teaches us ... sacrifice as a foundation for community."

They highlight the importance of traditions in shaping moral compasses and the potential existential void that can arise in their absence.

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9. Science Communication and Public Engagement

Addressing the challenges scientists face in communicating complex ideas to the public, Dr. Keating emphasizes the lack of formal training in public communication within the scientific community. He advocates for scientists to take personal responsibility in bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding.

[32:55] Dr. Brian Keating: "We don't get any ethical training. It's all implicit. It's implicit that you're just going to learn it."

Peterson echoes this sentiment, stressing the importance of authenticity and engagement in lectures to foster genuine intellectual exploration.

[35:20] Jordan Peterson: "I'm engaging in the process of intellectual exploration ... that's exactly like the equivalent of that."

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10. Conclusion: The Symbiosis of Science and Ethical Striving

The episode culminates in a reflection on the symbiotic relationship between scientific inquiry and ethical striving. Peterson and Keating advocate for a balanced approach where scientific endeavors are guided by a strong ethical framework, ensuring that the pursuit of knowledge serves the greater good of humanity.

[83:00] Jordan Peterson: "If you can maintain that, wonder if you can maintain that curiosity, and you are undeterred by failure."

They conclude by emphasizing the importance of continuous questioning, ethical commitment, and the harmonious integration of scientific and moral advancements.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Brian Keating [05:10]: "For science to exist, it has to not only be embedded in an a priori ethical framework, but that the scientists who are practicing science have to be oriented by that ethic."

• Jordan Peterson [08:40]: "It's a weird fact really, isn't it? ... It's like, what the hell's going on there. That it produces that experience of awe."

• Dr. Brian Keating [20:19]: "Science is an infinite game comprised of all these finite games. Nobel Prize. It only goes to three people."

• Jordan Peterson [28:29]: "One of the things I've been trying to work out conceptually ... science itself is not science without maintaining its embeddedness in an underlying upward striving ethos."

• Jordan Peterson [84:04]: "You are pointing to an a priori distinction between the things that made them truly great scientists ... and all the flaws that are part and parcel of being a human but aren't in the same category."

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This episode serves as a compelling exploration of how scientific pursuits are deeply intertwined with ethical considerations and the enduring human quest for meaning and understanding. Dr. Peterson and Dr. Keating provide valuable insights into fostering a scientific community that values integrity, wonder, and the betterment of humanity.

Transcript

[Jordan Peterson]

Hey everybody. Some announcements today before my description of the podcast with Dr. Brian Keating. So the first is I just published this book, we who Wrestle with God, and it hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So I'm kind of happy for five different reasons about that. There's a tour associated with it, some of it in December. I'm going to be in Texas with my wife, our accompanying musician, and then from January through April running through the United States. If you want more information about that, go to jordanbpeterson.com the content of the tour or the approach of the tour will be similar to my previous tours in that I'm taking abstract concepts, in this case concepts associated with the realm of story, particularly the stories of the Old Testament. I'm explaining their conceptual significance, but I'm also extracting out the practical implications of that understanding for attention and for behavior. And so it's always my goal to make what I'm discussing applicable immediately in the real world. And that continues in this lecture series. We've released a new seminar series for Daily Wire plus featuring the same players with a few substitutions as partook in the Exodus Seminar, which was very popular, this time devoted to explication of the Gospels. And so that released on the first in that series, 10 part series released on December 1st. So you could go check that out as well. We're pretty excited about it. It seems to be performing a little better than the Exodus Seminar did, which is saying quite something because I think that was the most popular offering that the Daily Wire produced, apart from Matt Walsh's movies, which is pretty good given that it's so, you know, they're, they're actually intellectually complex and somewhat arcane and the fact they have this public appeal is really something terrific. So that's the announcements for the time being. I had the privilege today of speaking with Dr. Brian Keating, one of the world's leading cosmologists. Dr. Keating has been a guest on my podcast before and that was plenty of fun and we had an opportunity to continue our ongoing conversations. We talked a fair bit about his lecturing for Peterson Academy. He has a couple of courses on astronomy and cosmology there. We discussed the utility of the opportunity to bring high quality mass education everywhere at very low cost, very well produced and at low cost. And so, you know, that was gratifying as far as I was concerned, because that project has been quite a stellar success. We have about 40,000 students and Dr. Keating's offerings are very popular and deservedly so. So you can follow us on the scientific side, more intensely there, we talked about the relationship between science and ethics. There's a very tricky thing to tease out, because the empirical presumption is that we build our representations of the world as a consequence of our experience of the facts of the world. And that doesn't appear to be correct. Precisely. That doesn't mean there are no facts. It means that the issue of what the relevant facts are is an important issue. And the determination of what facts are relevant and why is actually part of the enterprise that we describe as ethical. That's the definition of the ethical enterprise. And so we tried to bandy back and forth various concepts of the relationship between the ethical and the scientific, or maybe even more particularly, the fact that for science to exist, it has to not only be embedded in an a priori ethical framework, but that the scientists who are practicing science have to be oriented by that ethic. To be scientists, you have to put your pursuit of the truth and beauty, which is another topic we touched on, you have to put your pursuit of truth and beauty in the service of humanity ahead of all other considerations. And that's an ethical decision, not a scientific decision. And it's the ethical decision upon which all science that's genuine in its most abstract and glorious formulations and in its most practical elements is predicated. And so that constituted the bulk of our conversation. And there were many more things that we could have and would have liked to discuss. But, you know, that was plenty of crisp for the mill, so join us for that. So it's got to be more than a year since we talked, eh?

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, you were. You came in January 23rd to the house, and we had.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right to Almost Kosher Ribeyes.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your tour for the last time in San Diego. Yeah, right. That was the last time we were together. And then we did remote podcast together.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

A couple months after.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, it's always. It's always good to have a chance to talk to somebody from the scientific community. I can plague you with my preposterous questions about cosmology. I have a preposterous question for you today.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I can't wait. That's what I'm here.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, we'll get to that. I want to ask you first about the course you did for Peterson Academy.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, yeah, I've done. I've recorded two ones out currently, which is called Cosmology, Very simple. And then I've recorded a second one, Introduction to Astronomy, which you might think would come before cosmology. But actually cosmology encompasses most of astronomy anyway. And in some sense, cosmology is one of the oldest sciences, if not the oldest science. It's the science that you can do with the two telescopes that you're born with in your skull. And for that reason, it's accessible to everybody. I was thinking on my way over here, you talk so much about freedom and how important that is. There are very few things that are literally free, right? I could only think of two, and you'll probably correct me, but freedom of thought is not necessarily a guarantee. Around the world, every human being doesn't have access to freedom of speech. Certainly not, right? Definitely not your home country, especially nowadays. But air, so far as I know, is free. And the only other thing I could think about Jordan was the night sky. We all can look at the night sky. We can all enjoy it. And we're in both those ways. You know this, I'm sure. We breathe in. Every breath has millions of molecules that Jesus himself breathed in. That's the nature of our atmosphere and the mixing of molecules, et cetera. It's guaranteed that that is the case. But the only other thing that we may share with Jesus is that we see the same night sky we see in the same cosmos as he did. There haven't been any new planets coming in.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, we're also surrounded by Pharisees and scribes and lawyers, and so that's also.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's true. They're free. Yeah, that's free. Toothaches, I suppose so. I find it also quite a respite. You know, I'm a pretty tough person, but I do believe the human spirit needs safe spaces in a sense. Not the kind of places we had on campus on November 6 with Play Doh and finger painting kits for the students who are traumatized.

[Jordan Peterson]

But that's play doh, not play doh.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right. But instead, we need safe spaces that the human mind can expand within. If you just go to the gym and work out and you never recover, you can't fully grow to your potential. To me, cosmology, uniquely in science, but less so generally. Science, certainly not virology, but science in its purest sense. The pure sciences, not political science, but pure science, not applied like I'd get to do. I have the privilege of doing, which is studying. The universe offers a space for the human mind, the intellect, to relax, to enjoy, to appreciate. And there's no secret. You've heard cosmetology. I make this joke in my Peterson Academy course. I Say, you know, this course is not about hair and makeup, you know, despite my wonderful appearance, but it's actually related cosmology and cosmetology by the prefix cosmos, which in Greek means beautiful or appearance. So it's literally telling us that the night sky is beautiful and it's something to behold and it's a sensual pleasure. People don't think of that with cosmology.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, it's a weird fact really, isn't it? I mean, you wonder about it biologically because that exposure to the night sky, day sky too for that matter, is also an at hand experience of awe. And I've wondered often from the psychological perspective what it has meant for people and their existential positioning to have less access to the night sky than they once did. Because there's a lot of people who never see the full cosmic landscape because of light, light pollution, it's not a good way of conceptualizing it, but because the light interferes with the night sky. Right. And it, it is something. I remember growing up in northern Alberta. I mean, we were a long way from any major urban center. And the night sky there was very impressive. You could see the Milky Way fully and very frequently we had aurora borealis and pretty spectacular displays. And when it's 40 below and the air is dry, there's very little humidity and so the night sky is very stark. And it was dark by 6:00 at night. So even when I used to do my paper route, my friends, we spent a lot of time looking up at the night sky, watching for falling stars, watching for satellites. But that it's interesting that observing the sky is a primary pleasure. That's strange biologically. It's like, what the hell's going on there? That it produces that experience of awe. And awe is a weird emotion too because it's a very sophisticated emotion, but it's also very primal. One of the concomitants of awe is piloerection, right? That feeling of your hair standing on end. And that's actually the same reflex that manifests itself when a cat, for example, puffs itself up at the sight of a predator, like a dog, but it's trying to make itself more impressive. So it's that sense of awe we have is associated biologically with our response to predation. But it's also, as you pointed out, see, I've thought about it. It's like when the, when the cat's hair stands on end, it's becoming more than it is, right? It's trying to display itself in the most impressive Manner possible. And there's a call to higher being that's part and parcel of the experience of awe. That seems like, like the psychological equivalent of that. Right. You, you look up at the night sky and it, it fills you with a sense of wonderful and a sense of your remoteness and finiteness. But at the same time it also kind of compels you to be more than you are, evokes curiosity. That's right. It's very complex, eh, to see that happen.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah. And the dirty secret, the shameful secret of what I do with my colleagues is that most of us, myself may be an exception, are completely inured to it. We're so used to seeing, we're so used to thinking of incomprehensible, literally astronomical numbers that we sometimes don't even bother to look up at the sky. If there's an eclipse happening of the moon. Oh, so what? I'll see it some other time. Big deal. We know what that is. I know what that is. I know what causes. It's not mystery. It doesn't portend evil, doom, disaster, catastrophe. Those words have the word star, astro within them, right? Evocative of the power that was once thought to be held within the night sky's domain. Now the scientists know that we've extirpated the sort of mysterious gods and demons and so forth, but at the same time we've also, as I say, inured ourselves to the wonder that a normal person feels when they encounter the mysterious. And I think it's quite amazing when you see, in my religion, I'm Jewish and I'm practicing, I take it very seriously. We are commanded. One of the many things we're commanded to do, in addition to the Sabbath and honoring our parents and so forth, is when you come upon a miracle, you bless it. So we actually have blessings for seeing a meteorite, for seeing a meteor shower, for seeing a rainbow, for these phenomena, for seeing the ocean when you haven't.

[Jordan Peterson]

Seen it's good, it calls it, it marks it and makes you note it.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

There are, I suspect if your eyes were open as they should be, possibly you'd see that all the time. That's right. Right. And you, you, you, you suggested something that's very interesting. We know neurophysiologically that knowledge and memory inhibit perception. Because what happens when you learn to perceive something when you're familiar with it is you replace your presumption with the perception, right? You replace the perception with your presumption. That makes you super efficient because you see what you know. But it distance you. It distances you from the.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Phenomena. Phenomena means to shine forth. Right. It distances you from that. And so then you. You gain efficiency at the cost of wonder. That's part of the reason it's so nice to be around little kids.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because they're not efficient.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

No, that's for sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

But.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And everything is new.

[Jordan Peterson]

But everything's new. Exactly.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Are you familiar with the poem by Walt Whitman?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It's called When I Heard the Learned Astronomer.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, no. Yes.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

This is a different one.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And it's really. They believe it was sort of written around the mid to late 1800s, and he had heard a lecture about the recently discovered planet Neptune. So Neptune was discovered in a most remarkable way. It was the first object we would call dark matter. We saw its unseen gravitational pull afflicting and affecting the orbit of an inner planet, Uranus, which is closer to the sun. We didn't know why the anomalous behavior of the inner planet was being affected. It was predicted to exist truly dark matter discovered. And Whitman was kind of reacting to that. And the poem starts off, it says, when I heard the learned astronomer arranging with facts and tables and figures, et cetera, how quickly I became depressed and despondent by the night sky brought to numbers. And then he says, I walked outside under the silent canopy of stars to be alone and marveled at their great beauty. Now, Richard Feynman, another Whitman and Feynman, I always put them opposed. And I do this in the course at Peterson Academy. I contrast them. He says, Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of all time and a very.

[Jordan Peterson]

Cool and interesting person.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Fascinating individual, complex and incredibly brilliant. And often evocative. Yes. And often evoking Whitman's other famous phrase, I contain multitudes. Right. But in Feynman's case, he said, what is it about scientists that you presume I see less than the poets? Poets will speak of Jupiter as if he is a God. But why do I see less when I speak of him as a ball of methane surrounded by a retinue of planets? In other words, can you see more or can you see less? My wife makes fun of me when I see a shark.

[Jordan Peterson]

It'd be great to see both.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah. So that's the goal. And in fact, I say that in the course. I say, you don't. At the end, I say, who do you side with? And half the students say Whitman, and half the students say Feynman. And I say, you're both Right. In a sense, you should. You should embody both characteristics.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, you know, I've had the same experience in some ways, teaching my students about, let's say, analysis of dreams and stories. If you're a naive movie attender, moviegoer, you don't really think about the movie. Right. You certainly don't think about it as an artifact. You don't think about the direction, you don't think about the cinematography. You're just in the story.

[C]

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[Jordan Peterson]

In a way, that's where the most enjoyable capture takes place. And then when you become critically minded and you start to see the subtexts and to see the technology and to see the skill or lack thereof, then it distances you from that. And that is a gain, in that you're a more sophisticated observer and probably less susceptible to manipulation. But it's a loss in that you lose that embeddedness in the story. But my experience has been that with enough concentration on both, then you can unite them and you can have the embeddedness in the experience and the deeper understanding at the same time. And that's actually better. That's the goal.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, that's what I so often. And this is why I was drawn to Peterson Academy. I've been a professor for 21 years. You know, it's part of my identity as a human being, one of many. And I think for me, the opportunity to do something completely new, novel, and really interact with the type of intellect, the curiosity that hasn't been beaten out because they don't have to learn partial differential equations and they don't have to learn how to solder together a data acquisition system and all sorts of other things that are very important for professional physicists. That aspire to do that. Maybe some of them will. And I've in fact been encountered by people that do want to take that course further than when I present in Peterson Academy. But the point being, you know, if. If you can maintain that, wonder if you can maintain that curiosity, and you are undeterred by. By failure. You know, I always tell my students, when you solve a problem, guess what? You win. You win a ticket to an even harder problem.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that's a good thing because that's success in life.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's success, exactly. It's deferring gratification. But the thing about science, Jordan, is, you know, you can't win science. You know, science is an infinite game, as Dweck would call it, right? There's no such thing as completing. You've come to the end of science. No one will ever do that. No one will ever complete science. You may have the most knowledge, you may have a stack of Nobel prizes, et cetera, but you can't complete science because Mother Nature is undefeatable, because she's an infinite array of ever retreating forces, I think Wigner called it. And the point being, it's confusing because there's an ambiguity. The human mind hates ambiguity because we know to get a tenured position is a finite game. There's only so many professors that can get it, to get the highest score on a test, to get into graduate school, to get a post, all these things. So science is comprised. It's an infinite game comprised of all these finite games. Nobel Prize. It only goes to three people. So how do you navigate in those realms? And I think that people cleave towards the. Well, if I just do the hard things, the. The differential equations and the circuits and the. And the.

[Jordan Peterson]

If I master the finite games.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, those finite games, then I will win the infinite game. And along the way, they beat out of themselves, unfortunately, sort of the suicide of that curiosity that got them interested inside the beginning.

[Jordan Peterson]

They subordinate their truth, their search for beauty and truth, to victory in it. In one of the finite games. Yeah, right. And that's. That's like the equivalent of propaganda in the arts, is you're putting the cart before the horse. And that's a very big mistake. You know, one of the things I learned in graduate school, I wouldn't say that I'm particularly mathematically minded. You know, it's not something that comes with great ease to me. I had some students who had that proclivity, and I could certainly see how different they were from me in that regard. Although I could learn It. If I put my mind to it. I probably had more trouble with statistics in my career as a psychological researcher, learning it as a graduate student than anything else until I started doing my own studies. And then statistics became. It became as much fun as gambling, like slot machine gambling, because if you were doing a study you were interested in, there was a moment in the statistical analysis where you pulled the lever, so to speak, and you could see if you discovered something or not, or if all your work was for naught, or if it was going to move you forward. And so the thing that's interesting about the infinite game element of that is that it's like a bricklayer who's laying one of 50,000 bricks when he's building a cathedral. If you just think of the next brick, that's a pretty damn dismal occupation. But if you understand that each of the incremental steps you're taking forward is in relationship to this infinite whole, then the significance of the whole imbues the part. And if you're pursuing science properly, that is exact, you have to do it that way. So it's interesting, you know, and the conception of the divine that's laid forth in the story of Jacob's ladder is an infinite game in the same regard, because Jacob has a vision of a ladder ascending upward with no pinnacle, right? And God is at the top of the spiraling ladder with no pinnacle. Sure, but. But it is a vision of finite and infinite games, I think. But in relationship to the moral domain rather than the scientific. Those probably overlap, though. And that overlap, I think, is what we're talking about, right, is that it's the call of beauty and truth as the fundamental motivation, not only the fundamental motivation of the scientific inquiry, in that it's the pursuit that saturates all the sub elements with meaning, but it's also the ethical pursuit that makes science possible. Because unless you're very, very strongly aligned in your belief with your belief in the truth, you can't be a scientist because you'll put your career first and then the whole bloody thing collapses. Because, you know, another thing you win as a scientist is evidence that you're an idiot. And you were wrong, right? Because every time you discover anything that's actually a discovery.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right? Another Feynman quote. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts, not their knowledge, not their wisdom. And look.

[Jordan Peterson]

Or the ignorance of you.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Well, that's right, exactly. And you look at the word look, we, you know, how more than anybody, you know what the meaning of words are, you know, and you know, in Hebrew, the word for thing is the same as the word for word, suggesting an intermittent, you know, entanglement that's inextricable. But in the sense science. Let's look at the word science. What does science mean? It doesn't mean wisdom. No, that's sapiens, that's sapienza. We are homo sapiens. We are a man who is wise. What are we wise about, Jordan? That we're going to die. That's the only thing that we know, that we know for sure is that we're going to die. And it's interesting that also comes up in the first chapters of Genesis.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

As you've spoken about at many occasions. But the word science means knowledge. And what does the word knowledge in Hebrew connote? Well, what Adam knew, his wife. So it's very different. The notion in sort of the Greek, the Roman, the tradition of ASA, etc. That is coming down through us, and it's very crucial to life. I mean, technology, science and knowledge acquisition in general, that's sort of one tradition. And the Hebrew tradition is a tradition where knowledge, as I say, means something radically different. And the aspiration for wisdom, Torah wisdom, knowledge, truth, emunah, as you say, all these things have elements of illumination, but.

[Jordan Peterson]

It'S illumination also of relationship.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

A purpose. Purposefulness.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So these things, you know, and you should never confuse it. I mean, there's no one as dumb as someone who's brilliant, you know, there's no one who will believe some of the dumbest things, dumbest propositions that you couldn't convince that bricklayer you spoke about to believe than an intellectual, then an academic. You know, they spoke of Lenin, spoke of useful idiots. Sometimes I think of useless geniuses, you know, that some of my colleagues are useless genius. They're so bright. And then they'll lead their credibility to the domain of wisdom, of which they have none.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. And so you'll find the correlation between there is no correlation between what you might describe as ethical orientation, as psychometrically measured, and iq. There's no correlation between IQ and working, for example. That just shocked me when I first discovered. It's like. What do you mean there's no correlation? You mean zero? Really, like zero. You'd ex. You'd expect just maybe on the basis of something like neurological integrity, that people with higher RQs might be able to dedicate themselves to tasks over the long run more assiduously.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Nope, nope.

[Jordan Peterson]

No correlation whatsoever.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

So that's. And it's also the case you Know, and this has been laid forward in the mythological representations forever, mythological characterizations, that there's nothing, there's no sin greater than the prideful sin of the intellect. Right. Because it's extremely powerful and very, very inclined to worship itself and its own creations. Right. Very badly.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Is the serpent. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Exactly.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

In all of us. And the smarter you get. Look, I've interviewed 21 Nobel Prize winners on my podcast, and never once. I mean, they've all been brilliant. They've all been incredibly, you know, accomplished in their field, obviously, to get to that level. And I've criticized the Nobel Prize, but not the people that win it. They. You can't. I mean, the one rule I learned when I was asked to nominate winners on the two occasions I've been asked to nominate the winners of the Nobel Prize, is that you can't nominate yourself. Right. That's the one rule that they adhere to that Alfred Nobel stipulated in 1896. But most other things they've disavowed, unfortunately. Which is a grave sin, by the way, because, you know, in Judaism, the greatest. The greatest mitzvah, which means commandment, people think it means good deed. It doesn't mean good deed. It means commandment. You're commanded to do certain things, and one of the things you're commanded to do that has greatest utmost importance is to bury the dead and to not leave a dead body unescorted. Why is that? Well, it's the one thing they can't reciprocate. Right? They can't. You bury the dead, they're not going to bury you. Right. By definition. And so it's the ultimate Naltrust, beneficence in the sense. And when Alfred Nobel wrote his will, he specified exactly what he wanted. He wanted to go to one man who did the greatest accomplishments for the greatest benefit of mankind in the preceding year. So it was one person, preceding year and had to benefit all of humanity. So it was what we call in Hebrew, a zava, an ethical will. So it wasn't just a will. Here's my money. He had no kids, he had no wife, he had no heirs to give the money to. So he gave it all, in the sense, towards the betterment of mankind. Literally, it's what it says. But many of the other things they've disavowed, he can have three people win it. They can win it for stuff done 30 years ago, 50 years ago. But one of the few things that they've actually kept is this focus, if you will, that it should benefit. It should provide a benefit. To humanity. And then you wonder.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's also a non scientific element.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Completely correct.

[Jordan Peterson]

So you agree with that?

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jordan Peterson]

One of the things I've been trying to work out conceptually and I tried to talk to Richard Dawkins about this, I wouldn't say with a tremendous amount of success. I, I. Science is, can't be at the bottom of, of human endeavor. It can't constitute the fundamental, it can't constitute the foundation of human endeavor because science itself has to be embedded in an a priori moral framework that is not itself science.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And would you say then just based on that, that somebody scientist alone is fundamentally unhealthy, is not maybe psychological?

[Jordan Peterson]

I don't think you can do it because the problem is you're pointing to this. It's like is it a defining characteristic of science that it serves the benefit, at least in intent? Let's say it serves the benefit of, of what? Of life more abundant. That would be a good way of thinking about it's human centered. Life more abundant. Well, see, I read a book at one point that was written by an ex KGB officer who claimed that before the Berlin Wall collapse the Soviets had put together a bio lab in Siberia that was working on a hybrid between Ebola and smallpox that could be aerosolized. Right. Now that's science, right? Because if you accept the proposition that science is value free and that all facts are equal because that's what value free means, both of those are like very untenable philosophical propositions, but people do accept them. Then while were the scientific experiments that were done by unit 731 in Japan, in China, by the Japanese, was that science being used? The data's being used. And so if the exploratory endeavor is not motivated by the proper ethical striving, you're not a scientist. And then I think that actually works out practically too. Like I was fortunate in my graduate advisor who's still alive, I still work with him, Robert Peel, who is a very, he was a scientist. And most scientists aren't. Right. Most scientists are journeymen and I'm actually not even criticizing that because we need for there to be any exceptional people or any exceptional things, there has to be a lot of run of the mill things, like even scientific research, a lot of the publications are going to be the first publication of someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

They're incremental.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. They're not likely to be correct or useful.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

All PhDs are like that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right. But that doesn't Mean, you know, you have to dispense.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

No, no, no.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so Bob's insistence in the lab was don't publish things that you know to be wrong, even if you're tempted, because you will be tempted, because maybe you work on an experiment for a year, that's your master's thesis, and it doesn't work out. It's like, well, then what? Well, that's a year and it's supposed to take you a year. So that's a big problem. And you have to mentor someone in your lab to put the search for truth before their short term career orientation. And you can do that practically because you can say, look, if you allow yourself to take liberties with your statistical analysis and you discover and publish something that isn't true, you're going to believe it and maybe you'll pursue it for the next 15 years. And you're chasing a chimera. And not only that, so were you. That will happen to your students and everyone that your research influences. Is that what you want? Like, that's a. Maybe you'll get your postdoc because of the publication, but you've destroyed your credibility and your career and your soul, your integrity. Absolutely.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

The problem is scientists don't, we don't get any ethical training. And I say that, you know, it's all implicit. It's implicit that you're just going to learn it. Similarly, we don't get training in public communication. I view my YouTube channel, my podcast, et cetera, as I don't get paid for it. The university, you know, the university has not, you know, revoked my tenure. But they, they, they don't help with it. They don't provide any resources for it. They're, they're, you know, there's no antagonism. I do, because that's.

[Jordan Peterson]

At least.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

They don't know I know your university well, that's something. But, but no. And I have a great relationship with the chancellor and my deans and so forth. I'm very blessed to be at where I am, and it's one of the best campuses for many other reasons. But all this to say I don't get. It's not part of my duties as a professor to do the explanations that I do and provide interviews with Nobel prize winners. I do it because I believe in two things. I believe I have a moral obligation. And maybe you'll agree, too, maybe not. I have a moral obligation. I'm taking your money. I'm taking taxpayer money. Imagine if you're the person who installed the countertops in your Home. And they said to you, you said, excuse me, sir, how's it going with the. I'm sorry, Jordan, What I do is so specialized, it's so erudite, you cannot possibly understand it. Even with your PhD and your success story, you'd say, go to hell. You don't talk to your boss like that. I am your boss. The public is our boss.

[Jordan Peterson]

The public, we say, well, it's worse than that, isn't it? Because if the public wants to do their own research online, they'll find that most of it, despite the fact that it's publicly funded, is behind not only a paywall, but an appallingly expensive and inaccessible paywall for 24 hour access to a single article.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And a lot of it is p hacked. And implicitly hacked to get the results that were desired. Whether it's for some drug companies benefit, but even beyond that, the workaday scientists I'm talking to, the person in the lab next door to me, not some shill for Pfizer or something like that. I'm talking about just a workaday scientist. And she or he will say to me, I'm not good at that. I'm sorry, Brian. You have gift to it, by the way. I don't think I'm that good. But I do think that I have an innate desire for the 1% gains that can be made by iteration. That every iteration I try to get 1% better. My conversation, the questions I ask, the types of, of conversations that I have in the depth that I go into. And I think that's my unique skill, if anything.

[Jordan Peterson]

But I like you, like you're pointing to, though, a lot of that's a consequence of practice. I stopped lecturing with notes right. 30 years ago. And when I first started, especially when I was lecturing about things that I hadn't thoroughly mastered, which is the case when you first start lecturing. I used PowerPoint and I used fairly detailed notes, but my intent was to dispense with that. And that was incremental improvement over a substantial, substantial amount of time.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Like you can see it. I mean, your videos are online from Harvard, from Toronto, et cetera. But when I say that to them, they say, well, I'm just not good at that. And I say, oh, yes, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. You know, to my friend, I'll say, yeah, you were born knowing quantum electrodynamics. Yeah, no, no, no, I work really hard at. Oh, oh, so you work hard at that which you think is valuable. So that means you're telling you're Admitting you're copying to the fact that you don't think communicating to your boss is important. And I find it shameful. And I don't think that everybody should be at the lab, you know, taking 20% of their time learning how to communicate like Neil Degrasse Tyson. But they should spend some of that time and maybe they should spend 20%.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because the thing is, while it also forces you to put your thoughts in order.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, I get, I, I develop a lot of my ideas in consequence of lecturing. I agree, I would say the majority of them. Right. But that's also because, see, people also lecture very oddly because people generally conceive of a lecture as the reading of a text or something like that. And it's not that a lecture is a performance. And I've thought about this for a long time, it's a lecture theater after all. So what are you doing in a lecture? Well, you're eliciting enthusiasm by demonstrating your love of the topic. That's partly what you're doing and you're embodying that. So you're a model to story. Like I've really thought through explicitly what I do in my public lectures and now I really know what I do. I mean, I have a question in mind that's related to a long term pursuit. So it's an issue I've been interested in forever. Before I do a public lecture, I formulate the question that seems from a set of potential questions that seems to be relevant and at hand for that day. And then I try to get farther in the answer than I have before. And so what I'm modeling is the process, I'm engaging in the process of intellectual exploration. And so that's thought, question, hypothesis, which is something akin to revelation, by the way. It's like question, potential, answer, critical analysis, iteration. Yep, exactly. Exactly. And so I think that has the same structure, by the way, as the mythological quest. Right, you specify a treasure of unknown magnitude in the cave. Yeah, exactly. And then you think, well, how do we make our way there? And you know, there's a juggling element to that, keeping the plates in the air or a high wire act. That's another way of thinking about it. Because if it's a real quest, you don't know if it's going to be successful.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

So if I go on stage with a question in mind and I'm trying to push myself far, that I've got before, I don't know if that's going to happen now, everyone in the audience and me are extremely happy if as a consequence of this quest, like exploration, there's a punchline at the end. Right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It could treasure chest.

[Jordan Peterson]

And I think I've got better at ensuring that that will happen as I practice this. But it's also a blast, you know, and it is. There's no reason you can't practice that. You know, and you're right that it's a travesty that people who will be university lecturers aren't trained to do that because.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Trained to do diversity, inclusion.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

You're trained. You're. You're trained.

[Jordan Peterson]

Having punished for not doing it at least.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Well, you won't even get in the door now. You won't even have your applications reviewed. I'm interested to see what happens in the, in the, in the coming, you know, administration as we speak.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, so. So let's, let's investigate that a little bit. So, I mean, part of the reason that we established Peterson Academy, there's a bunch of reasons. One was I have access to an endless supply of great thinkers. So that's convenient. Like super convenient and fun. And so. And then we could see no reason why the best lectures in the world couldn't be identified, given a public platform, and offered the opportunity to lecture about what they love in a manner that's extremely professionally produced. And I'm extremely, very, very happy about the way the lectures have turned out. I mean, my daughter Michaela and her husband, Jordan Fuller, have taken the lead in the production side of Peterson Academy, and I think they've just knocked it out of the park.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I've traveled literally trillions of micrometers and billions of seconds to be here. And we are going to explore this universe together. Cosmology is the oldest science known to humanity since cavemen and women. People have wondered, where did everything come from? We're not going to do any alien autopsies or anything in this class, but we are going to cover a lot of fascinating questions. We're. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the universe made of? How can we possibly understand the grand landscape of the cosmos? When you look back in space, you look back in time. It's amazing. We've been able to do this to study the properties of the cosmos. Time scales of billions of years, size scales billions of times bigger than our own. And now the question is, can we go back to time equals zero? Can we go. Go back to before time equals zero? And what does that even mean? I hope in this course to Keep striving and asking these great questions, because without great questions, there can be no great answers. And without great answers, there can be no understanding. You know, Jordan, I always joke, our profession, I call it the second oldest profession, right? I mean, we. There have been universities since the University of Bologna in Italy was established in 1082. And look how much has changed. There's a guy or a girl taking a piece of rock and scraping on another piece of rock. How innovative. After a thousand bloody years, we've done almost nothing different. Okay, so there's PowerPoint, and that's not that much different, let's be honest. Right, but what if there were the opportunity to bring in literal the visualizations that they've done on my first course? And I can't wait to see how the second course and my third course is see what's nice. I'm an experimental physicist. I'm not Brian Greene. You know, I'm not manipulating wormholes like my friend Kip Thorne and so forth, who did the science behind the movie Interstellar. I was the advisor to Christopher Nolan. I'm not a theoretical physicist. So what do I do? I do experiments. The more experiments, the better. But you only do another experiment because some aspect of the previous experiment failed. Right? And that's fine. That's part of the iterative process of science that makes it so not only so important, important and so. And so annealed, so, so hardened by truth in the process of. Of attempting to achieve truth, imperfectly as it may be, but. But getting things wrong. Look, what happens when you get something wrong. Let's be honest. It's a surprise, right? You didn't think you were going to go down and you're going to discover dust instead of the Big Bang, which is what happened to me in my describing my first book. We thought we saw the gravitational wave aftermath of the inflationary universe that we talked about in my first podcast episode with you. But instead, that led to the Simons Observatory. It's led to a $200 million project that is now going to not only look for the gold, but also look for the dragons, look for the dust, look for the things that are the impediments. So the surprise was not a failure. I mean, look, when you solve a puzzle, you get a little bit of thrill. And remember when you were a kid, you had a Rubik's Cube, you had this thing or that. You'd solve the puzzle and you would do something that no adult does. You'd do it again. My kids do this all the time. They solve a Rubik's cube, then another one mess and the other one solves it. And like I already solved it. Like I don't need to rewrite my PhD thesis, like I already wrote it, you know, but there's a little bit of that thrill that you get when you are surprised. And that's.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the surprise, the thing is, is that if you lay out a prediction in keeping with your understanding of the world and something else occurs, you have no idea what you've discovered. Now, what you might have discovered is that your reputation is now shot and your future is looking gloom.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right, Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

But you also have no idea, like that's, that's a reservoir of unrevealed truth of indeterminate magnitude. Right. And so you're the proper response. And I did learn this in the lab that I trained in, the proper response to your error as an experimental scientist is I probably just stumbled across something that was even more important than what I was investigating.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

If I can just figure out what the hell it is.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I say, I say this to my students all the time. I say flaws in your experiment, in your theory, need lead to new laws. It's not like we study, do you know, Jordan, that we're made of matter? Right. But, but there, in the early universe, we think that almost, there was an almost an exact symmetry. It's one of these guiding principles of physics that there are symmetries, conservation of energy is the type of symmetry. Angular momentums, conservation is another type of symmetry. Displacement symmetry. Those are all the things that we say the laws of physics shouldn't change. They should not look different in a mirror or upside down or on Pluto or in Arizona. It should not make a difference who you are, where you are. It's kind of the great democratic process of science known as the Lorentz principle of Lorentz invariance. Galileo really crystallized. And then later, eventually fundamental things apply everywhere. Everywhere. Fundamental truth to the extent that we can perceive it. And so you know when you do something and you find out, well, this is not correct, like the fact that the postulate was. And all the greatest scientists thought there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Well, guess what, Jordan? We wouldn't be here if that were true. All the matter particles would annihilate with the antimatter particles and the universe would be a universe of complete, barren, sterile radiation. Pretty boring unless you happen to be a photon. But that's not the case. And that's obvious just from we exist. You know, I Cogito, ergo. Soon we know that that's not true. We can observe it. I refute it thus, you know, kick the rock. It's made of matter. Where's all the antimatter? Is it segregated some galaxy that we haven't been to yet? No, we don't think that's the case. So where did it go? Well, we have to look. How symmetric is the universe? How beautifully, finely balanced tuned. If you believe in an intelligent designer. How finely tuned did he tune it to be? Well, it turns out he did a spectacular job because for every particle of matter, there was another particle of antimatter. Except for there was one. For every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particle of matter. So the two matching a mirror image, matter and antimatter particles, they destroyed each other. And what was left? One particle of matter and the rest was a bath of photons.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Without that, far less than a rounding error.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It's not a rounding error. It's exquisitely balance. Now, we don't know why. Some theists will say it'd be. It's intelligently designed. And you can ask certain questions. How well designed does the universe have to be? In other words, how finely tuned? You have a good ear for classical music. My wife enjoyed talking to you about it. You know, she plays the violin, I play Spotify, so I have no musical ability whatsoever. But you guys. But you could perceive the note a 440Hz, right? Your ear can actually perceive if it's 441Hz, in other words, 1 out of 400. So less than 1%, quarter of a percent, mistuning, you can perceive it. How well tuned does the universe have to be in order for us to be having this conversation? And then the supposition is, well, if it's extremely finely tuned across a whole vast panoply of different areas, from the strength of these constants, the number of protons, to the number of antiprotons, then you might start to think this is suggestive. But it's not. Not. It's not a scientific hypothesis. Right? We can't say. We can always say God and we can always say there was no God, but you can't prove it. And I think this is an important fact that people get. I was on with a young man that you've met many times, Stephen Bartlett, on his podcast, wonderful podcast, and we spent four hours together. And one of those hours was just about me, him asking me to prove God scientifically. He said, I'm sorry, Stephen, again, and again, I cannot do that. He's searching. He's reaching for something.

[Jordan Peterson]

He was on his podcast yesterday.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Oh, you were? Okay. Yeah. Well, he. He probably talked more about God with me than he did with you. And I was quite surprised that he did, because I'm a cosmologist. I'm not a theologist.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's a hot topic these days.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It is, yeah. I always say I'd kill for 1% of God's book sales. And I told him, look, what you're searching for, I can't necessarily give you. I can give you the approach to me that I find persuasive, but it's not gonna be persuasive to you because it's specific to me and my life history and how I understand how I got to be who I am. And it doesn't use the strength of quantum electrodynamics, and it doesn't use all sorts of things. And when you search for that, I think I told him, I said, steven, you know, and I think I got this from you in the conversation you had with Dennis Prager that I was privileged to be a part of in Santa Barbara about five, six years ago. And you said, you know, who am I to say this is you? Who am I to say I believe in God? Like, what is a man to say such a thing? I mean, it's so ridiculous. And I've turned that around. I say, I don't believe in gravity. And he's like, what are you talking about? Stephen said, you're a physicist. You have to believe in gravity. I said, no, If I take this meteorite and I drop it, but I don't believe it's got evidence for it. What is the notion of evidence? It means it's something we can't necessarily define, but we can say it's certainly not faith. I don't have faith that it's going to do that. We have empirical evidence. DNA leads to the genetic inheritance that we have those things. You don't have to take on faith. You have evidence for them. So science and religion, science should not be used use. It's not one of its tool, its best purposes. You know, you have a hammer, you don't use it to screw in a screw. You have to use the tool in the domain for which it's designed or perhaps best.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's what I've often found that often. What would you say have come to the conclusion. I don't like arguments from design as proofs for the existence of God. And there's a variety of Reasons for that. What I'd like your opinion about one of them. I mean the fine tuning argument I find specious and maybe I'm wrong about this because I think that you can obliviate its, its unlikelihood with an evolutionary argument. It's like, well, if life evolved under these conditions, it's not surprising that there's an. There's a tight tuning between what's necessary for life and the conditions of the universe, no matter how improbable they are. Because this form of life wouldn't exist without those that form of material reality constituting the substrate. And so if something has adapted to something unlikely, the unlikeliness of what it's adapted to doesn't produce presume a designer.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

I think there are more powerful arguments. I'm going to give you this book right now. So this is the new book I wrote, we who Wrestle with God. It's a good time to give this to you because I've made other arguments about the relationship between science and the divine. Let's say in this book. I tried in this book not to put forward any propositions that I couldn't justify scientifically. But I'm not making a scientific case for God. I think the case, I think the rapprochement between science and religion is not going to be found in use of materialist reductionism to prove the existence of a designer. I think it's going to be more a consequence of us coming to understand what it means that science itself is not science without maintaining its embeddedness in an underlying upward striving ethos. It's so. So, for example, Cardinal Newman, famous Catholic theologian, his existence proof for God wasn't argument from design, which is an argument that's been around for a long time. It was much more akin to something that's laid out in a sequence of Old Testament stories. There's an identity proclaimed in the story of Elijah and the story of Jonah, Job as well to some degree that one of the manifestations of God is the voice of conscience. And I really like that argument, but more it's a definition, you see, not so much an argument because before you talk about the existence of God you have to say what the hell it is that you're investigating.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right. That's so resonant. That phrase that you used that is tattooed on my brain, you know, who am I to do that? I found it as a call to kind of a clarion call because it made me think, look, Jordan, there's what, a billion Hindus and Buddhists and so forth. It can't only be that Judeo Christian theology is correct. It's the only approach. Right? It can't be the only approach. And maybe it's not the only truth. In other words, maybe there's. Just assume this proposition and then you can take it apart. Assume all religions that have at their base a moral goodness, an aspect of improving human flourishing and the human condition. Not some nihilistic, you know, witchcraft or whatever that seems to serve no teleology whatsoever. But where there is clearly, and we know that Christianity and Judaism have this embedded within them. And Buddhism I'm less familiar with, but as elements of that and take away the theology and just talk about the values. There's an equivalence class in mathematical terms of all religions that practice good values. They have this in common, whatever this is, this notion of human flourishing and goodness and treatment and so forth. Again, proposition. I'm not saying it's true. Assume it's true. Just assume that's true. Assume that God, in other words, is, you know, there's no such thing as a. We don't believe that there's a thing called a photon, like specifically a particle. We believe the fundamental element is called the photon, that the field which exists everywhere at all times, in all places, that that is what's fundamental. And then this photon, you know, the human eye is miraculous. We can see a single photon in the right circumstances.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. If we're dark adapted. Yeah, it's amazing.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And that's part of the loss you spoke about earlier, where we think about the loss of the night sky. I'm curious. We'll talk some other time about how the human psychology will be robbed of this and maybe that will do something like the be having phthalates or microplastics. Those things are tangible. But the intangible loss of the night sky from all places on earth, perhaps, God forbid, but let's just say it anyway, getting back to my proposition, imagine God is a field. So that. And then each what we see as a photon, or what we see as Hinduism or Judaism or Christianity is an instantiation is actually the particle version of it, if you will, of a field that exists throughout all space and all time. In other words, what if God is. And we can't, and this is not refutable because you can't, you know, we're saying by definition it's incorporeal, it's a field. And just like you can't feel the photon field, you can detect its manifestations. And so what if the, you know, as the fruits of the. Of the tree are sort of proof of what it was made to do. Right. An apple tree doesn't produce a grapefruit, and each honeybee doesn't produce a spider. Well, so the instantiation. How do these things, you know, connect to one another? It's a relational system. And, and that. That is.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, I think. I think the. I think the great comparative investigators of religion, Mirce Eliade probably foremost among them, he was part of Jung's broad school and maybe played a role equivalent to that of Jung. They. They certainly identified the same kind of patterns in profound religious thinking that you can see characterizing literature. Literature stories are identifiable because they are manifestations of an underlying pattern. And I think you can make that case in the religious domain. I would make that case biologically, in part, by. This is the way I conceptualize it is that there's a virtually infinite number of ways that you can interact with someone, but there's a finite number of ways, extremely restricted and finite number of ways that you can interact with someone in a manner they. And you approve of simultaneously.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Like a father. Right. Like a parent. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Or two kids playing a game. Now, see, Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he thought of that as the origin of morality. And Piaget's goal was actually a rapprochement between science and religion. And he looked at play as the origin of that. In part, that was very, very smart. Okay, so now there's many ways that we could interact. Some of them will. Will jointly appreciate, okay? In consequence of that appreciation, we'll want to continue them. That's the establishment of a relationship. Okay? So now imagine there's a smaller subset of those games that will maintain their value across time and stay voluntarily desirable or improve. Now, that's an even smaller number of potential games. Well, those games are going to have a pattern, and it's the pattern of human interaction, sustainable human interaction. My suspicion is that conscience as an instinct indicates a violation of the rules of that game. And I suspect further that that's universal. Now, out of that, a realm of story is going to emerge. There's going to be representations of games that deteriorate and games that have a tragic end and games that are sustainable, where everyone lives happily ever after. Those are going to have a universality across cultures. Now, cultures are going to vary in the sophistication with which they represent those games. But there's a. It's sort of like. It's almost like making the same claim that obviously all languages are the same because they're identifiable as languages. And they're structured well and they're characteristic of human beings. But within the family of languages, there's commonality, still grammatical structure, there's nouns and verbs. Like, there's tremendous commonality, but there's also tremendous variability.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

So I think that religious domain is analogous to that. My sense, I've done a fair bit of study of comparative religion is my sense that it's the Judeo Christian endeavor proceeded farther along the line of explicit representation than any other religious system.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It.

[Jordan Peterson]

Now, we could debate that, but, you know, that's not much different than saying that Western cultures are the most literate, which is the. That's the case. So. Yeah, definitely. And. And then when you got there early.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah. And I always say, you know, we have the Eskimos and, you know, in northern Canada, reputed to have 12 words for snow. And you find that with. With the Jews, you find there's six different types of words for knowledge and wisdom and intuition. And, you know, you can identify them. They don't have as many words for snow. And so what were their tool? What was their environment like? It was saturated with religion and with literacy. Yeah, and with literacy and. Yeah, the language and being able to communicate that as well, but also expressing something which must be intrinsic. And I find. When I hosted Richard Dawkins in Vancouver, he asked me to come up. I had him on my podcast for two episodes for his most recent book. And I'm always, you know, kind of. And I've had Sam Harris on in the last year as well. And the thing that's frustrating to me about when I talk to scientists like them is how simple their understanding is, quite frankly, of religion, specifically Judeo Christian. I'm not an expert in anything. I mean, I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church as a kid. The complicated story. But I'm born Jewish, two Jewish parents, and I'm Jewish to this day. But the point, their understanding of things, like I said to Richard, you know, in Vancouver, a thousand people there, it was wonderful. People coming up, tears in their eyes. Thank you for making me an atheist. And I found it so depressing and because of the richness. And by the way, I often call myself a practicing agnostic. Meaning, and I think is in harmony with your famous statement that I mentioned before. In other words, if you know for sure that God exists, then you're. You're an absolute fool or an imbecile if you don't believe in him or whatever that means, almost to the point of evidence. And I don't dispute that many Many Christians feel it in a way that Jews don't. You know, this personal relationship with God the Savior and that he died for my sins. It's harder for Jews to relate to that, but I stipulate that they feel that way. But to say that you are an atheist like that is your identity is a very strange thing to me to believe, especially from these brilliant men like Sam and like Richard, because they have such simplistic ideas.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the thing that's odd about Sam too in that regard is that like he's drifted into a kind of a visionary Buddhism. And I think I understand why. Like one of the characteristics of the meditative tradition that, that Sam is partaking in is that the God of that meditative tradition is extraordinarily ineffable, not defined and also not concretized into ritual or story. Now the advantage to that is that you can't criticize it and falsify it.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's exactly right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, and I see, I see that in the Christian tradition the Orthodox church has been the most resistant to woke idiocy, partly because it's so embedded in non propositional tradition. Right. Liturgy and ritual that. Well, how are you going to criticize, like criticizing dance like you're just. Or music, you're just taking it anymore with it.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

The taste is not dispute. Indisputable. Right. I said to Richard, you know, I said, look, Richard, I also don't believe in the God that you also don't believe. It's so simplistic. And Sam to some extent is worse. Just, just from the perspective that he's so, he's so persuasive. I mean he's, he's the only person besides you that I've ever known I've spent four hours with that never uses the word the, you know, has any verbal crutches whatsoever. And I don't mean to jinx our conversation, but, but he just speaks in complete. He speaks in prose, as they say, you know, paragraphs. And you know, when we talk about things, very simple things. Why don't you. Do you know what is your feeling about Judaism that made you reject. I guess it's dad is Jewish, I forget. And well, just take slavery. And he just asserts that slavery is. There's no such thing. If he said to me, brian, Brian, you and I create a religion, are we gonna have slavery in it? I said, sam, this is like my 7 year old learns this in school in her Talmud class. You can't be serious. You think that slavery meant black, African, Slave trade, you know, in the deep south in America. And it's just not that. And so we go through it and I taught him, you know, what it meant to have a slave. By the way, Moses is called a slave of God. Does that mean that Moses was whipped by God? No, it means he's a servant. And there was this concept called indentured servitude, which is actually a kindness. If you couldn't pay your debt to me, Jordan, and you were going to steal something. No, no, no. I would give you, basically employ you, and I provide food and shelter. And by the way, sometimes you wouldn't want to leave. After six years, you wouldn't want to leave because I treated you so well as my slave that I would have to take your ear and hammer it into the door with a nail. And this was a part of a tradition that Jewish slaves had to undergo in order to remain with their masters, because we're meant to be free. And so this was meant to show as an outward symbol to the, to the world that I chose not to be free. And we know many people choose to be slaves of a different kind rather than be free men and women. But I said he had no idea about this.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it's also the case that, like, first of all, the entire story of Exodus is about the movement from slavery and tyranny to freedom. So, and that's like, that, that's a major part of the biblical library. And then even more importantly, the metaphysical insistence is that if you're not a slave to God, let's say, so to speak, there's something that you're a slave to.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

You might be a slave to yourself.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that's not appropriate. Or slave to your whims, your worms. And that's what hedonistic self gratification is. It's like, I'm free. It's like, no, you're not. You're a slave to your whims.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

The most common slavery that scientists practice is workaholism. They work 24, seven, they work six, you know, all, all days of the week. They're so fascinated because it's so intoxicating. You know, you have that feeling when you discover something and you realize, wow, gee, I am the first human, frail human that's ever understood this in the history of the planet. It might be small, it might be incremental. Maybe it's not.

[Jordan Peterson]

You also don't know, but you don't know.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And you don't know what.

[Jordan Peterson]

These little seeds, hot on the trail, man.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, you may blossom into something so wonderful. And that's what's so great about science. But it's addictive. And I tell my students, you have to work. But people forget Jordan, right before it says, you know, on the seventh day you shall rest. It says six days you must work. In other words, it's not optional, it's a command. It's a mitzvah command form. Hebrew has, English doesn't. You must work, Jordan, because you can't appreciate the true sense of soul society, you know, satiating of your soul unless you have that feeling of accomplishment of working the earth or working the laboratory.

[Jordan Peterson]

But if you only do that, if.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

You only do that, you're a slave. I don't care. You might have a Nobel prize, but you're a slave. And so when I talked to Richard and I talked to, I came away, you know, somewhat depressed because also, you know, as you know, in Judaism, the word Judaism comes from the word gratitude, hodo, hodeah, which means to give grace to gratitude towards God. You know, Judah's name for the thanksgiving that his mother gave to God. So it's endemic. And that's why we do say blessings. Because you can't look at a meteorite, a meteor shower, you can't look at a rainbow, and if you bless it, you can't be angry and grateful at the same time. Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It seems to be impossible. So I view it as a great.

[Jordan Peterson]

Gratitude is also the opposite of resentment.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

Resentment is the most bitter and destructive of emotions.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I look at the iPhone 16, so I'm a tech junkie. I love technology. It doesn't come with a manual. And actually this is very interesting. I'm going to show it to you in a second. I brought you a very ancient manual, but it's very interesting. We have manuals, but you can get online. So it doesn't come with a printed manual. You go to Apple and they'll tell you every single feature. There's 8,000 YouTube channels that have millions of times more subscribers than me. And it'll be listed how to get this shortcut, how to do this app. So there's an instruction manual for a bloody chunk of silicon glass and a little bit of rubber. And there's no instruction manual for people. I remember the night we brought our first son home home and we were bleary eyed. He wasn't nursing. He's gonna die, right? You remember that feeling, he's gonna die, like he's not gonna die. He's gonna be fine. He's six pounds.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's a Revelation of a child. This thing might die.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

It's sheer terror. And it's the most responsive. And they send you home, and there's no instruction manual. And I actually said, let's look at the manual to my wife. And she's, what the hell are you talking about? There's no manual. But humans need some instruction, and it doesn't have to come from somewhere, but it can't come from yourself. When I talked to Stephen Bartlett, he said, I'm a good person. I don't kill anybody. I say, stephen, how many people that committed great sin and great evil thought they were doing evil? None of them, not a single bloody one of them, thought they were doing evil. They justified it as great good, whether it was eliminating Jews or whatever. They don't even have to take it that far. So he's trying to justify, I think, his behavior. Because what happens, Jordan, when you believe in God or you. You have some notion of amuna or faith or just want to approach a creator or something bigger than you, well, then you have obligations, and people hate that. I don't think Richard. I mentioned Richard Feigen.

[Jordan Peterson]

I discovered that every audience I've discussed this with goes silent. There's no difference between obligation and adventure, you know, because you think of an obligation as something that you're involuntarily shouldering, right? That's an obligation. It's like, well, if you get rid of the involuntary part of that and you make it voluntary now you're voluntarily shoulder a great weight. It's like, well, that's an adventure. When you go see a movie about a great adventurer, a secret agent, say, the thing that characterizes his journey that you find so compelling is that he's doing something impossibly difficult, voluntarily. It's like, so. So people don't want an obligation, but that's because they have the wrong attitude towards obligation. It's like, no, you actually want a stellar obligation.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

If I told you 20 years ago, Jordan, you eat meat only and salt, you know, I have prepared meat. I think it was pretty darn good kosher ribeye when you came to my house a couple years ago. But if I told you 30, 20 years ago, Jordan, you're just going to eat ribeyes and salt, you would say, that's horrible. Like, I don't want to do that. That's gonna be, you know, take away my freedom. You're telling me it's compulsive. But now you took it upon yourself. I see it in you. The health, the vitality, the just. You Know, incredible transformation that you've under. Who is happier? Jordan 20 years ago, could eat all the Doritos or I don't know what you ate back then or has this prescribed thing to do and is in the prime of his life. And I feel that way about. So I said that to. To Stephen and also to Sam. And when you're given. Look, as a Jew, I don't eat pork. Right. I love to eat pork. And why did we not get. Who knows? There's no real reason why. We think. It's not because they're dirty. But when you have an instruction manual, the assumption is the writer, the author of the instruction manual, knew something that you don't. And maybe there's some benefit from following their instructions. The question is, you know, if you do believe in God and if you do practice some faith tradition or whatever, will you be happier or not? These people that came up to Richard Dawkins with tears in their eyes at the book signing after our event, you change.

[Jordan Peterson]

By the way, one of the things I've learned about the atheist community, so to speak, though that's a mitigating factor, I would say there's a subset of them that are just Luciferian rationalists. And they're not. Not fun. They're not fun. They know everything. Right. They're bitter, they're resentful, and they're seriously underappreciated for their genius.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, but then there's a very large subset of atheists who are relieved at their atheism because they were brutalized by Pharisaic religious pretenders. Right? So they. That's.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Where is Richard?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, it might even be Richard Dawkins because he made the odd illusion. Yeah, he's made the odd illusion.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

I've met lots of people who were very badly hurt by fundamentalist types.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I don't wanna say, you know, okay, so now I don't have to listen to him because he was abused. You know, it's like if you meet somebody who was physically abused as a child and then they turn out to. You don't wanna make that an excuse because look at the other people that were. Yes, of course. So I don't wanna let him off the hooks so easily in that sense. But I guess the challenge that I have is when I deal with somebody like that. Cause I can talk science with either one of them. Lawrence Kra. These people I can talk to, and they're so self. But they would never. I told this to Lawrence Krauss because I had him on my pod, and he's been had me on his podcast. We've talked about this and we kind of joke. I'm the religious Jew, he's the atheist, but he knows nothing about. About the faith. Why does he know nothing? But why does he know? Because most Jews boys have a bar mitzvah at age 13, which is a rite of passage, which sucks. I mean, I've got one of my kids going through it right now, and your voice is cracking and you're in front of everybody and you're embarrassed, you have pimples and your girlfriend, you know, and it's horrible, right? But you go through. It's a rite of passage, right? And then what does it mark for most Jews? Men? Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, if he had one. It marks sort of a graduation from religion. It marks the parole from prison of this obnoxious, not really satisfying or meaningful tradition that was forced upon you by the circumstances of your birth. I agree with Richard. No one could be a Christian. You know, like you're a Christian because you're born to a Christian family. That doesn't mean that you're actively doing anything in Christianity. And that's different. So Judaism is more of a behavioral religion where you have to do these mitzvahs and do certain things. That's behavior. It's practicing religion. But, you know, at the same token, if you deny somebody that, like, there's almost no chance. I'm sort of miraculously. Because both my parents were kind of atheists, they didn't take Judaism very seriously. My dad was an active, militant atheist, used to say to me, I don't believe in God. I believe in Satan because he made you believe in God. But. But the point being, you know, if you deny something that could be beneficial, even if you don't believe it yourself, I think it's. I don't want to say child abuse, but. But you're denying your. You're denying your children something. And, and, and I said, you know, the avatar for me.

[Jordan Peterson]

What do they have if they don't have a tradition?

[Dr. Brian Keating]

They have nothing. They have themselves. They have their meetings.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's exactly the problem. Problem is that because that's also a very weird definition of self. It's like, yeah, they have the self that's without tradition. Okay, so that means fundamentally, it means without discipline. It means, yes, without rich moral knowledge. It means without community. It means without the necessity of foregoing immediate gratification for a higher purpose. That's a major loss. Like like you'd only think that the child stripped of tradition has himself in the untrammeled sense. If you believe that the self that was the true self had no relationship whatsoever with the surrounding community. Right. Well that's, that's a, that's a lonely person first.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And is it going to be a bitter, unhappy.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, and also maybe narcissistic and self serving. Because if it's all about you, independent of anyone else, then, well, it's all about you.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

So one of the things I discovered in this book, and I outlined this in painful detail, you might say, is that the postmodern types were correct and the scientists wrong, or the empiricists. At least the postmodernists were correct in their proclamation that we see the world through a story. A description of the structure through which we perceive the value of the world is a story. When you go see a movie, you're looking at the consequences of the value structure of the protagonist. And you want to know that because it orients you in their direction. So you can try that out. Once you understand that the only question that, the question that necessarily arises is what story? And it could be none. Nihilism, it could be hedonism, which is whim, possession essentially. It could be power. And the problem with the postmodernists is that they were all Marxists virtually and they turned to power as an explanation immediately. Now the problem with that hypothesis is it's actually wrong because power, power is not an effective unifying motivation. That's why the ring of power in the Lord of the Rings is, is the, is the ring of Satan himself. It's very attractive. Power. I can force unity. Yeah, but it doesn't, it doesn't iterate well, it doesn't unite. Well, the biblical library is predicated on the idea that the f. The, the, the foundation of community is voluntary self sacrifice. And that's right. And it's actually self evident because when you engage in a social relationship, what you're doing is you're giving up the primacy of your immediate desire for the benefit of the relationship. It's definitional, like. So we could think about Piaget, that developmental psychologist. His proposition was that if we wanted to understand ethics scientifically, we'd look at their precursors and he thought we'd find that in the behavior of children as they became socialized. Very smart hypothesis. That's why he got so interested, interested in games. Well, when a child makes the transition from 2 year old egotist to 3 year old social creature because that's when that occurs. One of the hallmarks of that development is taking turns. While taking turns is a sacrifice.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's like it's not my turn now. I sacrifice my turn to you. Okay. If I do that, then we play. If you want to keep playing with me, then we're friends. Well, that's the.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

The contract.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's, that's. That's the social contract. Right. It's not imposed tyrannically from above. Something else PSA pointed out is that the stable social contract is voluntarily created and accepted. That's way different than Freud's superego or Foucault's power games. It's way different. Way different. And I think. I think there's all the evidence in the world that it's true.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I agree.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. And so the idea that, see, we're acting out this is something else I realized is the typical European town, Christian town, let's say, has a cathedral or church at its center, and then there's a periphery, which is the town, and then the countryside. Center, periphery, or center, surround, periphery. The center is the sacred place. And the reason for that is the center is the sacred place. That's definitional. Then in the center of the center, there's an altar where sacrifices are being made. Right. And the drama that's enacted is the community is founded on the principle of sacrifice. It's like. Well, yeah, obviously. Well, obviously, because that's the definition of community in some sense, is that the individual is brought into relationship with others.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's obviously a sacrifice of individual primacy, intimacy. Well, what's the gain? Well, maturity, that's a major gain. Now you're taking care of the future and not just the present. So that's a major gain. Because maturity is the sacrifice of the present for the future. Right. And a relationship is sacrifice of your whims for the benefit of the relationship. So it's all sacrifice.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

And perception is sacrificial because you could be attending to a lot of other things. Instead, you're attending to the one thing you're attending to.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

To me. That's why, look, I struggle with God. That's the name of your book, right? Israel. Israel means wrestle with God. It's not Islam. Islam means submit to God. When you submit to God, it's a different vision. It's a very different vision. And we can debate about it, but the fact is, when you submit, it's like I've often noted with my children, the first word they said was no.

[Jordan Peterson]

It wasn't yes, that's the magic word.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Because if you say yes, you're just agreeing with somebody else is, you know, whatever they propose. Do you want to eat this? Yes, I want to eat this. You have no self identification. I mean, you know, this is trivial 101 for you. But, but that is true. So you express your 2 years old.

[Jordan Peterson]

At 2 years old. Disagreeableness battle of no.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that is exactly how much is for me, which is what no means. And how much has to be self collected.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Absolutely, yeah. No, and so it's, it's, it's so all these things are self evident. And the thing in Judaism where I feel is, is sort of denied to people that just refute. Look, I say, as I said, I don't believe in the God that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe. It's trivial. Yuri Gagarin, when he circled the earth the first time, the communists, you know, Pravda, truth, right. They asked him, what did you see up there? He said, I can't tell you what I saw, but I know what I didn't see and what I didn't see. A man with a white beard sitting on a chair, you know, congratulations, Yuri. That's really, you know, he was a hero of the Soviet Union. That's so baby. Nobody thinks of that. Where's up? There's no up in space. There's no heaven.

[Jordan Peterson]

There's none of that in the biblical.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

No, it's not.

[Jordan Peterson]

There is in the artistic representations, but they're images and everyone understands that. But then there's also constant warnings in the biblical texts about confusing the image with the ineffable. Right, that's right. And there's been huge battles in the Christian church. The iconoclasts were people who believed that icons had the danger of concreteness, which is exactly the danger that, that say, Dawkins has fall prey to when he concretizes trivial.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

A metaphor infantile. Right. I said, you know, or you know, Stephen Bartlett asked me, he said, you know, the Bible says the earth is flat. First of all, it doesn't say that. But second of all, you know, I.

[Jordan Peterson]

Said, I think it is locally flat. It is locally flat.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I said, and I won't say this, I said, you know, look, Stephen, I could say this to Sam or Richard Dawkins, you know, I say the earth is flat. Prove me wrong. One in a thousand people, ordinary people, get that right. About 50, 60% of scientists will get that right. If I say, prove that the, the earth orbits around the sun, 90% of scientists will get that wrong. I bet most scientists watching this. I'm not going to put anybody on the spot.

[Jordan Peterson]

Don't.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Cannot prove. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

I'm not going to say stand on.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

One leg and prove it, Jordan. But we can prove it. It's discovered in the 1700s. How you could do. It's called stellar aberration, and I'll give the answer to the test. But Galileo, one of the greatest minds in human history, he believed, and he was right, that the Earth goes around the sun. And he went to great lengths. And I think this is so beautiful. We put so much emphasis on scientists that they are sort of gods, right? They manipulate. What did Arthur C. Clarke say? He said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I actually opened my podcast with that, with his actual voice, because I'm at the Arthur C. Clarke Center. So when you look at that, who wields magic? Well, it's gods or it's magicians and fairies and all sorts of wonderful, powerful creatures that certainly aren't people. But when a scientist can unlock the power of the atom or can unleash humanity's need on electricity with infinite energy, or can develop a superconductor or all the lasers, anything that we take for granted in technology, all came from basic physics. The Internet came from basic physics. And when you look at that, then you expect that they're ineffable, just like their primitive, childish, infantile notions of what we think God is. Right? They think that we think that he's the guy in the chair in outer space with the beard, but they project that onto humans so they'll say, Richard Feynman was a God. I mean, literally, there's more people, Jordan, that have play in the NBA right now than have won Nobel prizes in physics, okay? And so when you look at these great men, including my hero, Galilei, they were greatly flawed individuals, horribly flawed. Feynman cavorted with his graduate students wives. He had mistresses. He went to strip clubs. Einstein married his cousin. It was a horrible, horrible father. He neglected a child with severe mental illness. Never saw him after he moved to America to get fame and fortune, cavorting with. What's the guy's name? Charlie Chaplin. He cavorted with Charlie Chaplin, and he loved the fame and attention. He had a huge ego. Not great. I don't want to emulate him. Do I want to be like Einstein? Do I want to be like Feynman? Hell, no. But you look at a man and you analyze him or you analyze a woman. What are they willing to teach me? What can I learn from them? And what you learn from Galileo is that great men can have great flaws and they can be right and they can be wrong. And if you can learn from both of them, both those tendencies that are mixed up within them, they have both within them you must subdue.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, and even. Even in that analysis, you're pointing to a a priori distinction between the things that made them truly great scientists in that necessarily ethical sense, and all the flaws that are part and parcel of being a human but aren't in the same category.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And you can't. Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

So this.

[Jordan Peterson]

You have some.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, I brought this to show you. I can't. I can't give you this because it's signed not by the great Jordan Peterson, but assigned by gallery. So I'm gonna show you what his signature looked like. And I wanna point out just some interesting. That's his signature. Wow. So this was a book he wrote. It's called the Military Compass. Now, you and I, I told Stephen Bartlett this. I said, do you know what a slide rule is? He said, I have no idea what.

[Jordan Peterson]

A slide rule is.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Where did you get this? So I have a collector. So when I got my advance for my first book, losing the Nobel Prize, I basically bought this book. And it's a.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's in great shape. Wonderful.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Look at the pages on him. This is from 60, 16, 46, that has a custom box and so forth. And there's an English translation that they made in the 70s. You can't get this anymore, but there's an English translation of it. But there's a tag I put there. Why don't you open that up and read me what it says on a post it note page? I think it's on this side of the page. So these are all things that you could do with this thing called the Military Compass. So I think it says there. Right. What does it say? Can you read it?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes. Rule for.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Rule for monetary exchange.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes. So what is this?

[Jordan Peterson]

By means of these same arithmetic lines, we can change every kind of currency into any other in a very easy and speedy way. This is done by first setting the instrument, taking lengthwise the price in the money we want to exchange and fitting this crosswise to the price in the money into which the exchange is to be made. We shall illustrate this by an example so that everything is clearly understood.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

And he goes through. And what does he mention? The currency that he's going to convert.

[Jordan Peterson]

Florentine gold scudi into Venetian ducats.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes. So they're. So here's what that device looked like. It was like a slide rule. So maybe later we'll get the cameras to zoom in on it. It was a slide rule. It was a computer. It was a device to simplify calculations. And he invented it. And he wouldn't actually produce, as he did with his telescope. He wouldn't actually give the hardware away, he'd give the software away. He'd give the operating manual away. This is how he made money. Because he had illegitimate children, he had mistresses. He was also not the greatest of husbands and men and sort of things. He was a deep believer in God. But when I look at this and I say this book, this is the second edition. The first edition was written in 1601, and there's only about seven of them left. There's actually more Gutenberg Bibles than first editions of Galilee's Compass. So this one was cheap, very cheap compared to those. You can almost get their priceless. They're kept under lock and key at the Galileo Museum in Florence. But the point is, if he had taken. If he had taken those Florentines that he's talking about, or the ducats, you know, if I give you a ducat right now, it's almost worthless. I mean, it's kind of cool, historically. It might look good. It was a paper note. It's basically like a paper dollar. It got inflated to nothing. They would do things with the money back then. They would shave the corners of the coins. That's why coins have ridges on them now, all sorts of interesting historical tidbits. But if he had just kept one of these things, you know, kept the original edition, his heirs would have hundreds of millions of dollars. And so you look at these people and you often find that the people who have the greatest scientific knowledge and technical and maybe practical knowledge, sometimes their wisdom is to be lacking. But the average person will never look at that and say, wow, this person has been divorced six times, or treats his illegitimate stepdaughter horribly or whatever. We never look at that. We never say part and parcel. And I think. I'm not advocating we should look at Feynman and say, you slept with your graduate students wives. No, no, you should just say that there is a value in the people that, say, have those wonderful aspects, those wonderful characteristics that don't have the foibles, just they may not have Nobel Prizes. In other words, we prioritize the intellect over the ethical. And I think it's very dangerous and it's very Seductive for scientists to want to emulate Galileo and, you know, certainly I.

[Jordan Peterson]

Seductive for scientists to want to prioritize.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

The ethic, the intellectual, because how else do we get. Well, they're also smart.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, so of course you're going to do that because it's in your obvious self interest to prioritize in importance your most outstanding trait. That's also the deadliness of worship of the intellect per se. Yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, I'll be interested in your response to this book.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, I've read the first couple chapters online and it's. It starts, you know, just to think about the connection as I start my cosmology class at Peterson Academy. You know, I start off by saying, you know, what is the most important day on the calendar? Let me say it to you. Like, what. What is the most important day on your calendar every year?

[Jordan Peterson]

It's probably Christmas, I would say. Yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

So what is Christmas? It's a birth. It's a beginning, it's a new. But what is the only event for which there might not have been a preceding day, let alone a repetition of that day? The origin of the universe. We go back from now, late 2024. We go back 13.8 billion years. Let's say we're talking on a Thursday today. We'll come back, there'll be some Thursday. Just counting 24 hours doesn't mean the Earth was here, doesn't mean the sun was here. Just counting back in units of 24 hours, back comes some Thursday, and perhaps that was the day the actual Big Bang occurred on. If we could keep track of it, it. And it's totally practical to do this type of calculation. And we don't actually know what happened on the Wednesday before that day. It's a concept. You can think about it, but you can't actually necessarily know what happened. And so that is why I feel like cosmology is the ultimate, the most primitive, primordial subject and why it evokes something in people. There's reasons why the caves of Lascaux 40,000 years ago, they weren't depicting like, well, here's how you make a good adult. Or spear, you know, whatever they were depicting, like the stars and the movements of things.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, and people then of course, they started to intuit the fact that there was a. This is where. When astrology and astronomy were still rightly intermediated because the ancient people discovered that there was a relationship between the events of the heaven and the transformations on Earth. Right. The movement of the seasons. And that was obviously of critical importance. It's going to predict the movement of animals, for example, or when your crops should be planted. But just that concordance of the cosmic with the practical. Well, it's an unbelievable fact of nature to begin with.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Visceral. Right. By the way, it didn't have to be that way. Most stars are not like our sun. Our sun is not unique. I shouldn't say unique, sorry. Our sun is unusual in that it's a singular star. The preponderance of stars that you look up and see on a dark night sky sky are multiples, pairs, binaries, triples, maybe even clusters of stars. And that would be very different. That would mean you wouldn't have the ability to see because there'd always be a star out. Effectively they won't orbit right next to each other like they in Tatooine. In Star wars, remember, there's a red sun, but you don't have constellations, you don't have seasons and tracking. You don't have agriculture, the human being's first technology. And there are some of my colleagues and I'd love to talk to you about, about the psychology of aliens. There's a huge murmuration in the zeitgeist right now, both that super advanced technology is visiting the Earth, incomprehensible distances and so forth, and simultaneously that there are, you know, untold worlds yet to be discovered where life is not only abundant, but it's also maybe superior to us. And maybe, maybe they are so advanced and so in possession of Moore's law for 80 more doubling periods than we've enjoyed it for, that in fact they've created us in sort of giant silicon apparatus. This is called the simulation hypothesis. And by the way, the greatest adherence to both the alien reality hypothesis and the simulation hypothesis are atheists. Right. I mean, these are both now supplanting the need for us.

[Jordan Peterson]

Or an atheist could get all their religion from science fiction. Right? Right. I'm dead. Seriously? Really? Oh, sure. Because the mythological pattern that's science fiction stories is crystal clear. I mean, Star wars was predicated on Joseph Campbell's analysis of Hero Hero's journey.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right, sure, of course that is true.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, it's definitely.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

But it's natural, right? Yeah. So you're going to subordinate your belief in a God that is Judeo Christian, say, because then you'd have to do things. Then you'd have to, you know, have obligations on you to the community, to your, to your wife, to your parents.

[Jordan Peterson]

Perhaps pesky sacrifices to.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Sacrifices to the Sabbath. You might have obligations, but I don't need those. If I believe in an alien who's on Proxima central.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, I never thought about that particular training.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I don't have that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. So you get all the advantages of the assumption of advanced intelligence with none of the moral requirements.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right. And the tuning. You have a fine tuner.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

These same people will reject fact, the arguments of design from fine tuning, which I'm not saying is. I'm comfortable with those sciences. We discussed that already. I mean, we can put up many counterexamples of things that are extremely exquisitely tuned that didn't have a designer whatsoever. And the Earth's distance to the sun is not exquisitely tuned in a sense that necessitated a designer to do it. In other words, we wouldn't, you know, the anthropic principle would suggest we wouldn't be here if the things were radically different from the way it is. And actually, a lot of the parameters in cosmology and particle physics and imageries that we talked about earlier are not as finely tuned as a radio dial, if you remember those, as you and I do. But most of the younger folks won't. But you got to tune it. But actually, you don't have to tune it that exquisitely. Any better, in fact, than the universe was tuned along the lines of certain parameters. But this alien kind of hypothesis has gotten a lot of attention. It's political ramifications. It has military ramifications. Ramifications. You know, is it. What is it meant to do? But I'm curious, from your perspective, putting on my podcaster hat now, is there, you know, this compulsion to sort of, you know, feel that there will be. You're familiar with the Drake Equation. You've Maybe you've heard of it.

[Jordan Peterson]

I can describe it. Ufo. Really? Yes. Yes.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Wow.

[Jordan Peterson]

And he noted. He noted because the belief in UFOs historically cycles.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

And it tends to make itself manifest more frequently in times of crisis. Crisis. And he describes. He probably describes in his book on UFOs the answer to the question that you're posing, really? Because what you're really asking about is the metaphysics of materialist atheism. Right. The mythological metaphysics of materialist atheism impulse the urge.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the materialist atheist might say, we have no religion. It's like, yeah, yeah, wrong.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You have an unrecognized religion.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

You don't believe in nothing. You believe in anything. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You're laying out some of the trappings that tend to come along with that. And so, too, it's because you can't organize your existence in life without imposing a story on the world. There's no way of doing it. Your life is a story in the world.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Is that because of the intolerance that we as humans have towards ambiguity? Right. In other words, the battle over abortion or the battle over immigration.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's partly that. It's partly because if you fail to specify, you drown in ambiguity. And anxiety technically is a response to ambiguity. Right. That's technically. Anxiety signals the emergence of entropy. Right. And positive emotion. I learned this from Carl Friston because I didn't know this. Positive emotion signifies a reduction in entropy in relationship to a goal, a structure.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

And anxiety itself signals the sudden emergence of entropy. Right. So there's a way actually of aligning. This is so cool. Something we could talk about for a long. There's actually a place where the thermodynamics and emotion can be. What would you say? Brought into concordance.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Yeah, I've thought about that.

[Jordan Peterson]

We have to stop on this part of the podcast and that's too bad for all you people watching on YouTube because we're actually going to continue this on the Daily Wire side and obviously we could talk for an endless number of hours and would love to. One of the things that means is that the burning question that I wanted to ask Dr. Keating has to wait for the Daily Wire side. And what that means for you poor people on YouTube is that in order to hear that part of the podcast, you actually have to have a subscription to the Daily Wire. And that sleight of hand, you might say, wasn't done by design. It's just how it worked out. But you might want to think about throwing the Daily.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I have a subscription.

[Jordan Peterson]

Some support. There we go. Thank you for talking about Peterson Account Academy too. Today. We have 40, 000 students away.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Wonderful.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I've heard from so many and I'm so impressed by them. Jordan, you should be. Very. You and Michaela.

[Jordan Peterson]

We are pretty damn happy with the way things are going. Social media interactions on the site are extremely positive. They're all idea focused. They're upward aiming community controls. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

I just hope I can get tenure, you know, that's.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll work out that. We'll work out the details of that as we progress too. So for anybody, everybody watching on the YouTube side, do join us on the Dailywear side. We're. We're going to continue this conversation and I'm looking forward to that. Thanks very much for coming into Scott today. And thank you to all of you for your time and attention on the YouTube side and to film crew here in Scottsdale today for making this possible. Really good to see you again.

[Dr. Brian Keating]

Great.