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0:00
This might be my favorite clip on the internet.
0:09
sometimes it Bingo. Put that on my birthday cake. Oh, if it were only that easy. I mean, right here. Professor Glenn Lowry is bringing it up because there's a problem Why don't people want to hear truth? It's not just sensitivity. It's deeper than that This video is about a cognitive bias that each and every one of us is a carrier for. We can't even help it. We're born with it. it works like this. Basically, this cognitive bias hacks our brains judgment.
0:42
Like when a bad idea should be blocked, it allows it in slipping through like sensitivity in an intellectual community. Okay fine. Well, let's isolate it and booted out of our brain. Oh, if it were only that easy. I can't just point to this cognitive bias and say, there it is, because this bias is so ingrained in our reasoning. It's basically become our reasoning. It's invisible to us. but we can't address it. We're just going to need to get clever about Like, if we're searching for an invisible
1:12
man, you don't just look for him directly because he's invisible. You look for secondary signs of his presence, this cognitive bias, those secondary signals our emotions. We cannot see it, but we can feel it. And to accomplish this task, I've organized this video to be part exercise by examining the logic of this guy, Jordan Peterson, one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. People love him. People hate him. He's very polarizing, which is kind of the point.
1:44
I believe I can speak about Jordan Peterson because I love him and I hate him. And here's why. There are two types of Jordan Peterson type one. He's the one I like. This Jordan Peterson is a rare type of public intellectual because he is distinctly life affirming. He uses his deep knowledge into clinical psychology to tell a story that, yes, existence is a struggle. It's cold. It's isolating, but it's also miraculous. And there's meaning to be found.
2:11
This is a message that has benefited millions. I include myself in that group. And then there's type two Jordan Peterson. This one can be frustrating. This is the type we recently saw on a jubilee show, which was billed as a classic debate with Peterson defending Christianity against 20 atheist. It was ugly. Jordan Peterson was not only condescending and angry, but he was dodgy. He refused to clearly define his terms and ideas, which is a real bad look for a debate show He also want to disclose
2:40
whether he believed one way or the other about Christianity, which for a person tasked with defending Christianity just came off as suspicious. the people most aggravated with Peterson, Were Christians because he was a terrible representative of their faith. So what happened? This is a visualization of Jordan Peterson's argument, not from the Jubilee show, but from an interview he did a year prior on the Modern Wisdom podcast. I share this one because it is a clear indication of the logic
3:10
that Jordan Peterson would later use on Jubilee. The difference is, on this show, Peterson went hard for Christianity. I think I can demolish the atheistic argument with the death of God, many other things die, And one of the things that dies when God dies is science. And no one expected that. Science is dead because we killed God. Whoa. So, how does that make you feel? This argument was passionate. It was creative. It was sophisticated, and it was effective.
3:44
the conclusion that we will be examining. But does it elevate truth? video is not about Christianity I reviewed logic. This video is about a cognitive bias that Jordan Peterson uses that appears to support Christianity, but in reality is exploiting Christians, which is kind of a crappy thing to do. But you can judge for yourself, because in this episode of Logic Instant Replay, I'm going to slow things down, visualizes logic, put names to his tactics
4:09
so you can first feel, then see this cognitive bias for yourself. And once we've collected this data, we will score his logic and rake Jordan Peterson on the bad logic hall of shame. Because if you agree with Glenn Lowry, truth is our highest value, which as we'll see, Jordan Peterson has a lot to say about. So let's examine his logic.
4:33
Okay, before I get to the logic, I want to thank this video's sponsor. Delete me. The internet is full of data brokers who are selling your personal information to the highest bidder. Information bad actors need for phishing scams, identity theft, even robocalls. Or like whoever's trying to reset my Facebook password because it is definitely not me. Delete me is a service that goes out and actively works to remove your personal information from the internet
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5:23
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5:30
Okay. Let's begin with his argument. with the death of God, many other things die, things you don't expect. And one of the things that dies when God dies is science. And no one expected that. How so? Okay, let's pull out the argument map. So if you're new here, here's what I do. Logic moves fast. So just like an instant replay in sports, the goal of a logic instant replay is to slow things down so we can visualize exactly how the logic is working, which allows us to isolate the deception.
6:00
Put it aside, and then reveal the true meaning of the argument. It's done in this argument. Review map process follows an acronym called clear. C is for conclusion, which we've already seen. When God dies, so dies science. This is our North Star, and everything that we are about to do is directed towards this conclusion. L is for labels. One of people's biggest gripes with Peterson is that he avoids clear definitions like the plague. So I'm going to nail him down on that.
6:28
We already know a few important terms. E is for evidence, which we'll I hear in Peterson's argument, let's highlight the different premises. The evidence of his argument. Let's number them or reference them over here in the evidence category. And here is a visualization of Peterson's argument with the premises and the evidence all coming towards the conclusion. When God dies, so does science. Next. A is for assessment. Or how he uses logic properly or improperly to establish his reasoning.
6:58
Let's jump into
7:00
Because science as a practice is a religious practice. It's predicated on religious axioms. Is it? Well, you have to believe that there's such a thing as truth.
7:10
You have to believe that the truth is understandable. You have to believe that understanding the truth is good.
7:18
You have to believe that there is such a thing as good, right? So imagine to be a scientist, you have to imagine that first of all, that the world is comprehensible to the human intellect, but more that if you investigate the mysteries of the material world, that that will
7:38
Okay, so what do you think of the logic there? A quick note on this exercise. If you'd like to participate and see this cognitive bias, all you need to do is make a mental note of the moments of this assessment where you feel a pang of heightened emotion. we'll come back to them later. I've added this part of his argument to the argument map. Another piece of evidence is science is a religious practice. This is a huge statement. I remember when I first heard it.
8:02
After I released the clutch of my pearls, I remember feeling my brain trying to make this argument work, which is basically the logical exercise called steel mending or elevating the argument to its maximum good faith to make it as strong as you possibly can. let's do that now. so how is this true? Science and religion have many things in common. Science is a religious practice. I think he means that science is like a religion in that people venerate it with great respect.
8:30
It is repeated ritualistically Both science and religion have their important locations, important texts. There's groups and communities. Both have rigorous intellectual practices. So there are real similarities. do a quick lesson in logic. One of the ways you can think about logic is as an examination of inferences between ideas. There are two different ideas. Each is an island, and the inference the words that are not said. is the bridge that connects these two islands into one greater idea.
9:01
Logic is basically exploring whether or not that's a strong bridge. So, is this inference logical? clear definitions here are critical. Unclear definitions create ambiguity. Ambiguity can be exploited to shift their argument when it suits them. So let's blow away the fog of ambiguity by establishing clear, definite evidence for these ideas. So here's the definition for science. here's a definition of religion that seems reasonable to me. But to better visualize them, let's continue
9:30
this process of what we've been doing, of reducing them to their elements. So here's what we already have. and here are the elements that go on to religion. Sacred texts, belief systems, supernatural elements, And here are the elements that go into science empiricism, systematic observation, hypothesis, falsification, all the stuff that we've seen in science class a hundred times before. So what about the elements they do not share? Provisional ism.
9:52
Science is provisional, which means that it just itself as new information is presented. the scientific body of knowledge of textbooks, etc. can change when new evidence presents itself. The sacred texts of religion are not changing. Now humans may interpret it in new ways, but the cortex is not provisional. It is unerring. It is perfect. It is eternal. another difference is falsification, or the spirit of doing the work to prove your scientific idea wrong.
10:21
Falsification is not part of Christianity. Moreover, Christianity cannot be falsified, And I'll prove it to you. let's do a thought experiment. It probably only works if you're a Christian. I want you to think of an idea. Any idea, any piece of evidence, whether it does exist or could potentially exist, that would prove to you that Christianity is false. Can you think of anything? If you cannot think of any piece of evidence that would prove
10:49
Christianity is false and Christianity is unfalsifiable. which is fine. That's Christianity. Conversely, I can think of any scientific idea that if a piece of evidence existed, we can prove that that scientific idea is not true. Another big difference is faith. believing without sin. Christianity elevates faith as a virtue, This virtue is not shared with science. A few other differences are control, experimentation, peer review processes, supernatural elements, salvation.
11:19
or being concerned with end times. So it's talks about this a lot climate change, asteroids, etc., There's a huge difference between studying civilization, ending asteroids, and willing a prophecy to come to pass. The incentive structures there are a tad bit different. So, Does the bridge of his logic successfully connect these two ideas into one greater idea? No, the similarities are superficial and the differences are massive and often very contradictory.
11:47
So how can we describe his error in reasoning In logic, we call this a category mistake. It's an error in reasoning because it logically makes no sense to do what he's doing here. Sure. Science and religion share characteristics, but those similarities are irrelevant compared to the differences. And to put them together as he did is very misleading. please, let's tally this up.
12:12
Yeah, I know, can you believe in the last episode that some people thought you were fake?
12:18
All right. Okay, man, let's stick it. Let's not get mad at people on the internet. That was a dense section, but we needed to get through it to establish the logic that is to come. So I'm counting just one logical fallacy and premise. One. Go. See you soon. Because science as a practice is a religious practice. It's predicated on religious axioms. have to believe that there's such a thing as truth. You have to believe that the truth is understandable.
12:44
You have to believe that understanding the truth is good. Here's an important piece of evidence. Truth comes from religion. To look at his logic, we first need to define some terms. How does Christianity define truth? I want to be accurate here. So how about we go directly to the Good Book for a Bible based definition? Here's a good one in Psalm 119 160. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. That's pretty good to me.
13:09
But here's another one from Jesus. John 14 six I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus doesn't speak truth. He is truth. These are from the King James Version of the Bible. They're good, but they're only two of the 235 mentions of the word truth. What do those verses have to say about truth? I'm trying to be accurate here, so I think this is a job for Artificial intelligence. Okay. Digital Antichrist. I want you to take every single mention of the word truth in the King James
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Version of the Bible, including the context, story, moral implications, and average them out into one super definition of Christian truth.
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Truth is the eternal, unchanging reality grounded in the nature and Word of God, expressed through moral righteousness revealed by divine guidance and powerful enough to liberate the soul from deception and sin.
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Okay, that Hopefully these appropriately represent your idea of Christian truth. But even if you hate these, bear with me because as we will see, The most important thing that we're getting at is the logical relationships between the definitions. Okay, so what about science? How does it define truth? Stop right there. I'm going to take some inspiration from Jesus and flip the dang table. I'm not playing Jordan Peterson's game here because the game is rigged.
14:33
His words trap us in a framing device, which I'll get to in a minute. What if reasoning on truth in science is itself an error in reasoning? Because really, the goal of science is not to find truth. That may sound surprising and sure. Truth happens because of science, and it's an important part of it. But truth is a result of the primary practice of science, which is empiricism. controlled experiments, controlled variables being able to repeat results,
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confirming through peer review, In Christianity, truth is not changing. It is unerring. It is universal. It is infallible. But in science, yes, you can take truth. Put it on the mantle and say, yay! Look, we have truth. The difference with science truth is that it can be replaced like that. when something better is found. This is what provisional ism is. So we can see that truth in science and truth and religion are distinctly different, so much so that they deserve different words.
15:30
I mean, in some ways they're opposites. So here we can see how Peterson is artificially strengthening his argument by using a sneaky rhetorical device that we call equivocation. Equivocation works by blurring the line between these two definitions, and within his argument, he can freely slide between these two definitions based on what suits his argument at the moment. Here's another way to think about it. This equivocation would not be possible
15:58
if these two different versions of truth were actually different words. Here's what I mean. Say we replaced each appropriate truth with this new word. Now look at the argument with these new words. If we did this, his argument would not work because we would immediately see the difference But truth is a word he can use in both categories. And this is bad logic because he takes advantage of this fallacy of equivocation. equivocation is such an important fallacy because people use it all the time,
16:26
so keep an eye out for it. So I said a minute ago that Jordan Peterson's logic is a trap. Here's what I mean by that. When Peterson says you have to believe in such and such and yada yada. This is a framing device because without us realizing it, Peterson's argument has laid down this invisible barrier Like a child's playpen. And he says, you have to solve the problem in their. So when I say the game is rigged, it's because his argument forces us to think inside this pen.
16:53
It's like if argumentation is a battlefield. Peterson has picked the time, the location of the battle. He's pre laid groundwork. And he's funneling us into this killing zone. Everything is to his advantage. And it's very clever. So if this framing device is a mental cage in our thinking, the actual good logic exists outside Peterson's cage. where we can see the dynamism of the definition of truth, and where we can see that science is really about empiricism. So the errors continue.
17:23
He begins by saying that science is predicated on religious axioms, goes on, yada yada, and then lands on those are metaphysical claims. This is a conflation fallacy. Those are two different things that are metaphysical things that are not religious. There are religious metaphysical concepts that are not secular. He starts out with one position and then as he goes through his argument, he changes the terminology to a different position.
17:47
This muddles the argument, and it also makes it easier to prove, which is another fallacy called moving the goalposts. this change in terminology makes it easier for him to make his point. So where is this all coming from? Let's rewind a bit. In the interview to another claim that Jordan Peterson made about his book, which is out now, by the way. Read it if you want, Check this out. This is the goal of his book. I don't think that you'll be able to read this book and understand
18:13
it and be atheistic. I think I can demolish the atheistic argument permanently, Whoa. No big deal. Look out, atheist Jordan Peterson's coming for you. So up until now, what we've been looking at is Jordan Peterson's tactics on how to destroy the atheistic argument. When we see Peterson point by point, systematically misrepresenting science on the grounds of truth, on the purpose of science, the purpose of these tactics is to make science look weaker than it is.
18:41
It's much more difficult to attack the strongest position, It's a lot easier to attack something at a weakened state. That is a straw man argument. a very eloquent, sophisticated straw man argument, which is also one of the top three most common logical fallacies,
19:01
Okay, let's let's tally this up. We have four more logical fallacies. One framing device an atrocious misappropriation of the meaning of truth, and a misdirected argument on the purpose of science.
19:14
Yeah, they're quickly adding up. That's where the universities came from. And science as a widespread enterprise got its start in the universities. They grew out of the monasteries. That's not questionable. Like if you go to Harvard or if you go to Oxford and Cambridge, it's just starkly evident. The layout of the unit of the colleges is a monastic layout. So the idea that there is some fundamental contradiction between religious belief in the scientific enterprise,
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it's it's there's nothing about that that's true. Okay. The university was born from monasteries. Religion supports science. And when the Luciferian say otherwise, they're lying. then science comes from university as a widespread enterprise. let's begin with this. That's a Luciferian intellect. History. You see, the enemy has leveled up from cultural Marxists to lose a variance.
20:16
Beautiful. Peterson. this is a poisoning the well fallacy. So what the heck does this mean? Well, it turns out that Luciferian intellect is a Jordan Peterson idea,
20:38
So the problem here is that just about everyone else in the world calls this time period the enlightenment. I was taught that the enlightenment was a good thing. But here we have Jordan Peterson bravely going against the grain that everybody else. rebrands the Enlightenment as Luciferian. Luciferian intellect, kind of hits different This is poisoning the well because this tactic, it does work to go out ahead of Jordan Peterson in his argument.
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it's negating the possibility of having like a nourishing discussion in the future when he's using this, like super loaded language. like any good rebrand, it's working unconsciously without us knowing it. We're associating the scientific awakening of the enlightenment with the most evil, most despised character in Western civilization. The universities
21:36
Bam! Take note. Now, this is real evidence that we can assess. out of Oxford is monastic. down and think about this. Is it really the shape of the four walls that creates universities? There's a lot of buildings like that. what Jordan Peterson needs to prove is that the monasteries had some creative impulse, that was passed into the universities to create them. because otherwise universities coming from monasteries are correlated but not causative. It is that and I will show you soon.
22:06
But Peterson is getting somewhere. Let's take a moment and steal. Man. His argument. Why? While this talk about monasteries, what are monasteries? They're not a church, but they were supported by the greater church. Let's take, for example, the year 1200, around the time Oxford came to be a monastery. It would be a gravitational center for monks and nuns to come together and be religious. They would pray a lot. They would hold services. They were centers for knowledge.
22:31
They would copy manuscripts. Sometimes they would write an original one. Occasionally they would do early science. I mean, how can they not do all this? If you gather the most educated people in the community, the only ones that could read in the place, where books were. and if they have an intellectual spark, there's going to be interesting stuff that happens here. And imagine if, like, their monastery certification was suddenly yanked by the church. Now all you would have
22:57
would be a building full of educated people with a bunch of books. Kind of sounds like an early university, This is why Jordan Peterson says
23:08
It's unquestionable. And he just wants you to know it's unquestionable, because all unquestionable things They become even more unquestionable when you say they're unquestionable. But of course, it's questionable But instead of quibbling I think it would be more fruitful if we did a thought experiment. Let's assume in this thought experiment that, yes, every medieval university grew out of a monastery. So at some point there was a monastery.
23:30
And out of that nutrient rich substrate germinated a little university. And for a time, they are one. What happens next? Maybe for a good period of time. The university heavily reflects the monastery with a focus on theological stuff, eventually it starts dabbling in some light philosophy, some mathematics, maybe some natural sciences. But at some point, this single entity separates and becomes two distinct entities. We know this happened, and as time goes on, these paths continue to diverge.
24:02
And eventually the modern university as we know it today has completely shed its theological roots. Two entities, each with their own goals incentives, each with a very different definition of truth, here's the most important question. Did the sameness ever really matter? Did the university happen because of the monastery? another way of thinking about it. Let's imagine a different Europe, where Christianity never existed. If Christianity never existed, the monastery never existed.
24:32
Does that mean that universities never formed and therefore science never formed? Like if Christianity never existed, then right now Europeans would still be plowing their fields with oxen and coughing bubonic plague into each other's mouths. I mean, tell me if I'm not being fair, but I think that's what his logic assumes. If God dies, science dies. Does that mean if God never lives, then science never lived? That's his logic. That contains massive omissions.
24:58
Science came from many other places other than monasteries or universities. We'll come back to this. So what's wrong with this? the false continuity fallacy. That is the false assumption that if A precedes B, that A remains necessary for B. Peterson's logic says that when the university was birds from the monastery, this original creation was connected by a thread like an umbilical cord, where the monastery was giving the university creative energy via God.
25:28
And so when the university broke off, this thread was severed When God is taken out of it all, the rest of it falls apart because of this thread of continuity This might be Peterson's most important fallacy to show that his logic is not good. Another way to visualize this is as a genetic fallacy. That is to judge the present state of something based off of its origins. An example would be you can't trust that judge. She used to be a Democrat or a Republican or whatever,
25:57
I think what we're talking about here is a question of dependance. Were the universities dependent on the monasteries, and how so? But was this dependance a healthy relationship, like a loving, supportive parent? Go on universities, go study whatever you want. We support you. Or was the dependent, subservient and tyrannical controlled, I think this relationship between the university and the monastery comes down to this question. Did this happen because of religion or in spite of religion?
26:28
Did So the idea that there is some fundamental contradiction between religious belief and the scientific enterprise, there's nothing about that. That's true. What do you think about that?
26:39
Really Jordan? No contradiction. I need to tell a story. The year is 1633. The location Rome, in the Palace of the Holy Office. Right next door to the Vatican. Galileo has been called to defend himself in front of the Inquisition, because he had just written a book saying that the earth rotated around the sun. it should be said that this was not the first time this was written. Copernicus had famously published that idea more than 100 years before Galileo, But Copernicus,
27:08
his book was math heavy and tame, so it slipped under the radar. Galileo's book was different after Galileo finished his science He converted his findings into a narrative based book that regular people could enjoy. Unlike Copernicus, Galileo's book was a bit saucy on his whole earth, rotating around the sun view. Also, the book was funny. Galileo created a character named simply SEO, who refused to see the reality that was made clear by the telescope.
27:38
Galileo gave the readers permission to laugh at simplest SEO for being so dense. The book was a hit with regular people, which ended up being a problem for Galileo because it won him the attention of the church's secret police. When Galileo was defending himself against the Inquisition, he told them, hey, look through my telescope so you can see it for yourself. But that didn't matter because his science contradicted church doctrine.
28:04
This was a serious thing because people had been executed for lesser crimes, which made what Galileo did next even more courageous. It is said that as Galileo was leaving his defense, knowing full well that the Inquisition would be upholding the church's dogma. Galileo muttered under his breath. And yet it moves. the earth around the sun. The very next day, the Inquisition declared Galileo vehemently suspect of heresy for his crime. Galileo was forced to publicly recant.
28:34
His Earth, rotates around the sun, views. was sentenced to house arrest the rest of his life. His book was banned and he was forbidden to even talk about his ideas.
28:45
And logic. Just as important as what you do say is what you do not say. Jordan Peterson's argument works way better when you leave out the Galileo story. But I'm going to assume good faith and that he just forgot about Galileo. So let's take a moment and remind Peterson of a few more of these contradictions that he says don't exist. At certain times, the church either opposed or outright banned these subjects. These books were banned. The Copernicus book did get banned.
29:11
Only after Galileo made the idea more accessible. These ideas were censored in universities. And these early scientists were burned at the stake. But getting house arrest, Galileo got off with a slap on the wrist compared to what happened to some of his earlier colleagues. Now, after a little memory refresher, we can see how ridiculous this is. But without that refresh, you know, it seems rhetorically powerful. Like there's a rhetorical device here. Argument from confidence.
29:39
I don't really need to explain that one. Say anything with enough confidence. Some people are going to believe you, especially if they want to believe you, before we score his logic, let's go over the experiment. There's a cognitive bias that has haunted this entire argument. can't see it, but we can feel it. The exercise was to make a note when you had a heightened emotional reaction to Peterson's argument. Or maybe something I said. So when did these moments occur? Maybe it was the premise.
30:05
Maybe it was how he defined Christianity or how I define Christianity. Maybe it was how Peterson rebranded Enlightenment as Luciferian. So what were those feelings like? you ever feel a connection with Peterson? Did it feel like a win? Let's be clear. Peterson's argument is designed to resonate with Christians. and it comes at this pivotal time. It's not easy being a Christian today. talking about political or cultural stuff What I'm talking about
30:31
is reconciling biblical supernaturalism with science. We live in the most scientific time ever. That is very unfriendly to biblical supernaturalism. I mean, outside the church. What scientific type figure is defending the faith? Jordan Peterson is. He comes along this towering public intellectual and with an intense passion, not only supports Christianity, but goes on the attack for Christianity. He flips the script. he says science. It only exists because of God.
31:03
Hearing that has got to be a warm shot of hope in a time of supernatural despair. And when he brings all the psychology, philosophy and history, the same science that normally is aimed at God, turns it around and aims it back at science. That's, That sounds like a convincing argument. But there's a difference between sounding convincing and sound logic. Peterson's argument is riddled with logical fallacies, deceptive rhetoric, dishonest framing devices, and significant errors of omission.
31:35
This is certifiably terrible logic. And finally, there's this cognitive bias that hangs over everything. And here's the thing. This cognitive bias does not operate within Jordan Peterson's argument. Instead, it operates within the minds of the listener. The cognitive bias is called the confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the mind's habit of noticing what proves us right, while ignoring what proves us wrong, so we can feel smart, safe, and connected. It's not about rejecting reality.
32:06
It's about only seeing the reality that confirms what we already want to believe. So here's how confirmation bias works. This circle represents your beliefs. This circle represents another person's argument. When confirmation bias occurs, is that your brain bias is the part of the argument that you already believe. This overlap section is confirmation bias. The part you see here and accept. And in this section, your brain just doesn't do the necessary work to consider its viability.
32:36
So here's the problem. It's possible. The most important part of the argument is in this section. So we could be missing the new truth that we need to know. I mean, not to mention the part that we do see maybe wrong just because we already believe it doesn't make it right. Confirmation bias is an unconscious statement that says I already know everything I need to know. No need for new information, which of course is silly. So if we want to optimize our reasoning, we need to get confirmation
33:04
bias under control. But in order to do that, we first need to understand epistemic vigilance, or what I like to call the bouncer in our brain. what does this mean? I try to avoid using technical words, but I think this one is worth knowing. Epistemic is Greek for knowledge, Which is the same root word in epistemology or the study of knowledge? To put it another way, why do you believe what you believe? premise of this channel is that every idea in our head
33:34
has some paper trail leading back to an origin of how and why it is there. aren't magic. Someone put them there. A parent teacher society. Each one has an origin story. Some of those stories are good and justified, and some of those ideas should have never been put there in the first place. Part of logic and critical thinking is recognizing this and intentionally managing it epistemic vigilance, and the bouncer is our brains filtration system. It's the barrier I mentioned in the beginning.
34:03
The bouncer is basically deciding what information to let in, or what information to turn away. How strict the bouncer is can vary. As children are, epistemic vigilance is non-existent. as adults we can train up our bouncer to work with us. by the way gullible is written on your ceiling? Is it? how gullible you are is another way of thinking about epistemic vigilance. For example, you might believe that carrots are not food like I showed in my previous episode of Logic Instant Replay.
34:29
So we want our bouncer to let in good ideas and turn away bad ideas. The problem is our bouncer is flawed but he can't really help it. And that's because of his ancient bouncer training. Here's what I mean. Confirmation bias. Like basically all cognitive biases have deep roots in our ancient past. I'm talking deep past. Like hunter gatherer small tribes living in caves, past For these people, confirmation bias was important because it was a mental shortcut
34:57
that made life or death decisions quickly and efficiently. It said, hey, that person next to you, your kin, your tribesmen, that looks like you, sounds like you, thinks like you. believe them. Trust them. Let their words in because they have your back. that other tribes who we don't really know. Block them out. this technique worked for our ancient relatives. And it was selected for. today, hundreds of thousands of years later, our balancers are still programed with this outdated training.
35:21
which is not ideal for the modern world, nor is it optimized for truth seeking. So what can we do to update his training? The bouncer fails due to three main flaws laziness, aggressiveness, and excessive defensiveness. Here's how we can recognize them. His first floor is he's lazy. He's trying to minimize effort, and that comes in three forms. The first is familiarity. An idea is much more likely to get past the bouncer if he's familiar with it.
35:49
Has he seen the idea before? Has it worked in the past? If it has, he lets it in. This is what we call a heuristic. Why do the mental labor if we already know it works Of all the reasons this one makes the most sense, The second part of his laziness is what we call a cognitive ease. he's putting minimal effort into these decisions. The bouncer would much rather just chill on a very simple idea, then think too hard on a complicated idea. The third component of his laziness is emotional salience.
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That is, emotionally charged. Ideas are more likely to get past the bouncer. Emotional things grab his attention. More neutral, fact based things. That's boring. And they get blocked. The second type of flaw is that he is aggressively offensive in a biased way. What does your group tribe team ideology believe? His eyes are going to see that and let it in because it feels comfortable and safe. The bouncers prime directive is to bring the tribe together.
36:45
whether the thing in question is true or not, because the bouncer doesn't want to get you isolated. Which is why, if we think outside the confirmation bias, doing so is a brave act of individuality. The second offensive characteristic is to go out and interpret ambiguity in a way that supports our side. Say you hear an unclear argument, like an argument that has holes in its reasoning. The bouncer will take those holes, rationalize the lack of information,
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and fill it with what we want it to be so that it aligns with our identity. In other words, the bouncer here's what he wants to hear, which again, is comfortable. Safe. The belief system of our tribe. The third floor is that he's very defensive and close minded. He's not interested in meeting new people. If he encounters a person, an idea that does not align with our tribe or ideology, they're going to get turned away. The second part of his defensiveness is identity protection.
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The bouncer thinks you're just fine as you are. If your identity is X, anything that challenges that must be kept out. He'll have you defending your beliefs long before you even consider new ones, even if that means rejecting facts, evidence, or sound logic. If the facts support who you are or let in If they contradict your identity, they're turned away. This is why we stubbornly defend our positions not just to be right, but to protect who we believe we are.
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your bouncer believes that he has your best interests in mind. He wants to keep you safe. Just kind of simple and beautiful. Now, how strong that correlates with the truth is another matter altogether. So when we feel the emotion that happens when our tribal best interests clashes with the truth, We can see why that friction can cause sensitive. I would want my, listeners to understand that sensitivity is not the highest value in an intellectual community.
38:37
But truth is, and sometimes it can only be gotten to
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If truth is not being elevated to the forefront, it's probably because somebody's bouncer is feeling uncomfortable and they're blocking out some idea because it's causing friction with their identity. Jordan Peterson's logic is bad, but his argument lands with his audience because it is perfectly calibrated to get past their bouncer Because it clicks with what they want to believe. In fact, Let's count the triggers that are known to lower epistemic vigilance in a bouncer. first?
39:10
Is he talking about a familiar ideology that you know? he talking about your friends, family, or community? Did it feel good to get your identity confirmed? Maybe you know about the history of contradictions. Did you do the mental work to pull up that history? Maybe you don't know about the history. Did your mind just trust him that there are no contradictions? Did you do the critical thinking work to ask, hey, maybe there are contradictions. When God dies, science dies.
39:36
Was that emotional language louder and more resonant Did you like it when Peterson dunked on the Luciferian scientist types? This is an effective argument. Not because it is logically sound, not because it is a convincing argument that is coherent with reality, simply, it is just what some people want to hear. let's score his logic. Up until now, all of this work that we have been doing has been to collect the necessary information we need in order to score his logic down to one single metric.
40:08
Cogency. which is these elements consolidated into one, which is frankly beyond my pay grade. So that is why I have my partner here. The logic score 9000 yeah. Why don't you show the viewers your weighted formula you invented specifically to calculate cogency. Now I'm a logic guy not a math guy. But LZ tells me that this is one of the most sophisticated mathematical formulas ever created. So let's convert this logic to data LZ can use.
40:34
So then we can finally rank Jordan Peterson on the bad logic hall of shame. Okay, LZ, go rest up. See you soon. Let's begin with the most basic elements, and that is labels and terminology, Here are the labels and terms that we are concerned with. Let's talk about truth. He conflated two vastly different definitions of truth then as he went, he equivocated between these two definitions of truth as it suited his argument. each of these seven categories begins at 100%
41:02
And then I mark it down based off of strikes. looking at definitional clarity, all of these key terms are undefined or ambiguous in a way that Peterson can use to his advantage. This is what Jordan Peterson does, and it's annoying. for definitional clarity. I'm going to give him a three.
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untruths. Peterson's argument doesn't use a ton of facts. He more uses blocks of ideas. As an example, science as a religious practice. Is science a religious practice? No, clearly There are a few superficial similarities and many more diametrically opposed differences. Oxford and Cambridge, If you check the history of the buildings of Oxford, there's a clear purpose of why each building was built. There are many old buildings left.
41:50
None of them were built for monastic purposes, It's just starkly evident. Line scientists are atheistic. This is just childish. What makes science science are the mechanisms built into the practice designed to catch liars. That is, unless you covertly redefine truth as the Word of God. In that case, yes, they're liars. The scientific enterprise seems to be collapsing. Is it Nietzsche wrote the whole God is dead thing in 1882. So has science been in decline ever since then?
42:21
You know, like the time period where we traveled through space, split the atom, edited genes, created the internet, and cured diseases? Science is collapsing. Katy Perry just went to space, man. Come on. or Jordan Peterson, when you say that, are you thinking about trans stuff in colleges? Ooh, that in that case, yeah. Science is just collapsing all around us Every single one of his premises has a substantial untruth in them. So he gets a two.
42:47
Sometimes the only thing more important than what you do say is what you do not say. He argued that science is predicated on religious axioms while omitting the aspects of science that actually define science. there's nothing about that. That's true. Nothing about that is true. Why don't you tell that to Galileo? Oh, wait. He's dead. From a broken heart, no less. I've been holding back on this one. Finally, the universities that did not come from where he says they do.
43:16
He's fond of talking about Oxford and Cambridge. Well, he admitted, Europe's oldest continuously operating university, the University of Bologna, which was started by students, not a church. He admitted early, scientists who were doing work outside of the university. Galileo wasn't part of a university when he did his most important work. He omitted entire continents of people. I mean, just think about that. Do you see how better his argument works when he conveniently forgets
43:43
about Arabia, India, China, Japan? That's confirmation bias, Yeah, don't think about those people and his argument works better. That's a lot of omissions. going to give him a four.
43:56
When I check for contamination, I use another acronym called Throw scum. first logical fallacies Okay, of the 16 sentences of his argument, I'm counting nine unique fallacies per sentence. That's a high density of logical fallacies. Granted, just because you have a fallacy doesn't ruin your argument, But still, a good argument could and should have zero fallacies. perhaps the fallacy that most clearly isolates his bad reasoning
44:25
is the false continuity fallacy I'm counting three rhetorical devices. By far, the worst of those is the confidence bias. I'm counting two framing devices. You have to believe. You don't have to believe it because it's not true. And cognitive biases. Jordan Peterson is the Michael Jordan of confirmation biases. Because he creates amazing world championship level confirmation biases. So this entire argument hinges on just an exquisite confirmation bias. this is the big question.
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Does Peterson purposefully weaponize this bias? I don't know, because I'm not inside his head, but I can say it's one of these two things. one, he's very clumsy with the facts, misleading with history, theology, metaphysics. And his memory is riddled with historical blind spots. Or he's actively deceptive. He's either really dumb or malevolent. because this confirmation bias very much helps him win over his audience. Who is thirsty for this type of argument,
45:33
an audience that we know he wants to sell books to. Which brings us to meta biases or anything outside of his words that is affecting his argument. Again, I do not know what is going on in his head, Peterson calls his shot. He says, I think I can demolish the atheistic argument permanently right after he mentions he's got a book to sell. So I think it's reasonable to say that his argument is suffering from motivated reasoning. This explains the conflagration of abysmal logic
46:06
because he wants to deliver a best conclusion. To do that, he needs base premises. Jordan Peterson.
46:14
Here's the thing. I'm sorry to report that the atheist argument has not been destroyed. It seems as if it has only been struck by a logically unsound, limp wristed slap to the shoulder. Every single one of the sentences of his argument is touched by one of these contaminations. Ten clearly. We have arrived at the most important logic stuff. a critical aspect of cogency, is the quality of premises. Okay, let's look at premise one. Science gets its direction. Energy, validity from religion.
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If this was true, and if science had the vulnerability that he's describing, then yes, that would be bad. But science is what it is because science has failed safes. It has guardrails. It has checks and balances built into the system so it can stand up to liars boot them out of the process. So it doesn't lose its validity. and he omits the most critical defining aspects of science. Its premise sucks. It's unsound. it is poorly grounded.
47:10
It does not have the evidence that it needs to make itself a good premise. Premise two the university was born from monasteries. Now, does he prove that it happened because of monasteries Was the university going to happen regardless? That's the question. Or did it only happen because of the monasteries? And he does not prove that the whole monastic layout evidence is very bad. this is also a very bad premise. The universities do have some connection with monasteries.
47:43
I'll give him that premise quality for.
47:48
G oh, man. Doing this part of the process just gets me fired up, because all the manipulation and the deceit just comes into stark clarity. Jordan Peterson yikes. It's just such a contrast. You hear the argument the first time and you're like, oh, okay. I mean, I guess that's true. And then you do this work and you realize how deceptive it is.
48:15
can I prove that he's doing it on purpose. No but he's a fricking a player. He does this stuff for a living. I can't help but assume that he knows exactly what he's doing. He knows how he's constructing this argument to be perfectly cater made this perfect neurotransmitter connecting with the brains of the person that wants to hear this argument. it just floods their brain with the argument that they exactly want to hear, that they need to hear that they're so thirsty for.
48:47
And then and then when you see the logic, see the holes in it and all the faults of every single piece of premise and conclusion, it's just really frustrating. Oh, argument strength. This is what it's all about. argument straight basically says do these boxes and these bubbles work together in a way that will make the conclusion likely to be true? Now, you may be surprised to hear this, but there's some good things happening here. The structure of this logic is decent.
49:19
I'll give them points for that. let's assume that each one of these premises and pieces of evidence are true. The real question that becomes, can science survive if it has been severed from this, train of cause and effect? Going back to God, Peterson says no, from the work that we have done we know that these premises are bad. We know the evidence is not well-grounded. We know that Peterson has misappropriated what science is in general.
49:44
He's admitted the most operative things that define science So therefore science will not die if God is dead. The conclusion is a non-sequitur. The bones of his logic are decent. The meat on those bones is rotten. Argument strength five. Let's do it. This is the moment of truth. Ready? Let's hit calculate. One. Whoa!
50:20
Yeah that's. That's ugly, That's. I mean, it is. It is that, All right, finally, let's rank him on the bad logic hall of shame.
50:35
Yeah, he's. I mean, he's not the worst. Subscribe. Hit that bell icon so you don't miss a thing. This is part of a series. Here's the playlist. You really got to see the number one. If you haven't seen her yet, it's insane. these episodes take a long time to create. So I want to again thank my Patreon supporters. If you'd like to see more logic in replays replacement, click on that link below to become a supporter And you also get the argument map or a blank argument map.
51:04
So you can do this on your own, as well as all my logic infographics. After the last episode, I was just blown away by the responses. Had no idea that was going to blow up like it did. This is a project that I've been working on for years now. It's required a lot of sacrifices, I am so thrilled that it is resonating with people. I've gotten a ton of requests to publish these videos faster. The only way I'm going to do that is if I can outsource some of these
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longer, more tedious parts of the process so I can write and shoot more episodes. So with your support, that is what I will be doing. Expanding the team and putting out more episodes modes. So thank you in advance. So I've done two episodes now, I'm doing this full time, and you can see how long it takes me to do each episode. It's a lot of work, but I'd love to keep up the standards without cutting corners on quality. you'd like to support, click on that Patreon link
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you want to nominate a video you see for Logic Instant Replay, then DM me a link here or on the socials at Framing Logic. and to get help removing your personal information from the web. Click on the link below and use code logic for 20% off your delete me plan.
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