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Decoding The Gurus
Decoding The Gurus

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Dawkins vs. Peterson: There Be Dragons

In this special episode, we return to the forboding Dragon's Den of the Peterson-verse and enjoy a rather punchy conversation between Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, facilitated by Alex O'Connor.

As ever the discussion is dense with abstract symbolic interpretations, evasive answers to direct questions about biblical events, and highly speculative claims. So Matt and Chris don their best decoding armour, steel their resolve and prepare to face down endless waves of indulgent analogies and the constant conflation of mythological and scientific truths.

Also included: important insights from Matt on American public toilets and shower technology & stories of Chris' previous life as a coal shovelling street urchin.

00:00 Peterson and Dawkins
01:17 Matt's American Odyssesy: Shower Talk
10:25 Matt's American Gripes: Public Toilets
15:46 Jordan meets Dawkins Again
40:26 Pause for Anti-woke Advertisments
44:22 Science is Christian and reality is Mystical
53:31 Self indulgent Waffle
01:01:13 A Cultural Christian?
01:06:07 On Dragons
01:22:57 We Who Wrestle with God
01:27:41 A point of overlap?
01:35:03 Outro

Links

Dawkins vs. Peterson: There Be Dragons Dawkins vs. Peterson: There Be Dragons

Comments

I'm waiting for Dr Peterson to show up in spats. He's covered all the other academic pretensions!

Frances goulart

Jesus Mary and Joseph! When does Peterson ever stop the obfuscatory drivel? I recommend a silent retreat. And none too soon!

Frances goulart

gosh peterson sure is the apex post-modernist huh? it's all aboot the hyperreal abstractions.. didn't he used to shit on post-modernism a lot?

ketracel-white

Growing up in Melbourne Australia did not at all prepare me for the variety of shower spigots and taps that exist in North America and Europe. I did, however, get experience in lugging the briquettes (compressed brown coal) up the back stairs for our hot water service. However, I wanted to comment on the Dragon myth origins. A brief search indicates that dragon motifs originate in most early civilizations, including China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia. The Romans picked it up from the Greeks, including the role of dragons in guarding treasure, which is not common to the other dragon myths. The dragon is usually depicted as a symbol of chaos and danger. St George slaying the dragon is usually interpreted as a metaphor of Christianity defeating pagan religions and nothing more. A Jordan Peterson explanation can be described as the opposite of Occam’s Razor.

Colin Farrelly

Loved this episode. Had a couple of thoughts throughout - one was during the convo around the Anti-Woke advertisements - it's funny how conservatives get angry about corporations "virtue signaling" or taking woke stances, when they are entirely okay with this type of thing from their side. Like, why was Jordan Peterson so angry about Sports Illustrated having a plus sized model, but he would be totally fine with some conservative magazine promoting what they see as a beautiful woman? Just bizarre. Second thought was during the convo around scientific enterprise - Peterson says science was limited to Europe???? What about the invention of the abacus and all that, and I'm sure there are many more such examples. Comments such as this really reveal what a daft unserious loon Peterson is. Third thought was the stuff about encoding meaning in drama and art and about whether or not some character from the Brother's Karamazov was real....why does he give more credence to the Bible in encoding fundamental truths in comparison to any other book or piece of art? I get that the stories in the Bible are widely dispersed and very early on but why turn that into a spiritual thing or like you say not give the same credence to Greek myths and so forth. I mean, there are a lot of theories as to why Christianity became so popular including some stuff about the birth rate at the time https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-christianity?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email and there are a lot of early human societies that we wouldn't want to take "fundamental truths" from but are just as old and relatively common like human sacrifices by the Aztecs? Which is also part of the bible.... I just don't get it.

Anna

‘Lazy speculative wank’ 😂 excellent episode!

Recalcitrant Goat

Perhaps Peterson fancies himself as Dawkins’ intellectual equal, and believes he belongs on the same stage (literally and figuratively) as Dawkins?

Nancy Hale

JP would love D&D

Raysofmarie

It would be a much better outlet for their creativity

Raysofmarie

Christ Jordan is exhausting. Multiple times shouted, “oh my god, shut the F up.”

Raysofmarie

Chris mentions jokingly that JBP should write science fiction. I feel like that’s a big part of the story with him and the Weinsteins. They should be refining the fun sci-fi stuff and just go full retard in the world of fiction.

Marfolini

So Bilbo is Jesus, right? Or is he Moses? We need answers JBP!

Trees

Three month trip to New Zealand a few years ago and was impressed with the number and tidiness of the public restrooms there. Even so in small towns. Not quite Japan level but still ranks high in all my travels. As an American, there is usually a dread when headed to a public restroom.

Maytree

It reminds me of Genesis when God rejects Cain’s sacrifice, and Cain complains that he followed God’s instructions to the bloody letter, and God’s response is “You heard what I said, but you didn’t listen.”

Kevin Nyberg

Really great episode.

Maytree

Furnaces in American houses were typically coal fired up through the WWIi era, coal would be delivered to a chute/bin at the side of the house and you’d have to shovel it from there into the furnace. My dad grew up with that in Seattle. As for myself (57) we lived for 5 years in an apartment building in southern Germany in the 1970’s (my dad worked for the US military) that was heated by a coal fired boiler and radiators. We kids used to love playing with the burnt out “klinkers”.

Daniel Reed Miller

The more our decoders suffer listening to a piece of content, the more entertaining the episode - this one was great

David

My pseudo-profound bullshit detector overheated and exploded while listening to JP outtakes. Anyone know where I can get a good deal on a new one?

Mike

Agreed! We had a fireplace in my house growing up, which was good fun. I want to see the little knight holder he was talking about.

Linda Sears

Excellent episode. More importantly, a request for Matt on his trans-American odyssey: if you come to Milwaukee, please don’t broadcast about how surprisingly awesome it is. The weather has been keeping people at bay for centuries, and we’d like to keep it that way.

Nina

Oh man, I can’t believe that I was listening to shower and toilet stories for a good 15 minutes but i actually found it fascinating lol! Keep them coming boys. And having experienced horrific Indian public toilets, the ones in Australia & UK are like million miles better! Although should say that the situation has improved somewhat in India too with the shopping mall toilets these days being very good. Plus 9 months of the year, you are sweating everything out anyways 😝

SHOUNAK SARKAR

As much as Jordan is frustrating, I think Richard is a problem - he continues to go on these podcasts etc with Peterson types. It’s clear it ain’t gonna work

Tom Wheatley

On Tom Holland: I listen to a ton of his and his cohosts podcast, and it may not surprise you that he is a JBP fan and listener. His obsession with Christiandom and its fundamental necessity to interpreting history is a running gag on the show

Jake Kortum

Two more months, eh? Wait, are you planning to turn up in Washington D.C for Trump's inauguration? Are you on the guest list? :o

Robert Andrews

Jeremy's Razors seems to be a big hit - high growth revenue stream for DW. https://www.axios.com/2024/05/28/daily-wire-commerce-revenue-2023

Adam Sher

Yes in America we have a fair amount of urban parks here which have restrooms (at least where I live, in the Northern Midwest. Matt was in the Southern US it may be different I don't think so but I'm not an expert ) but the facilities are usually somewhat rustic. (I used one today, twice, it was low on frills but just fine), and the parks are not every quite few blocks. Some suburban areas have nice parks too, but suburbs can be extremely sprawling here, that's when you need a car and the lack of public transportation I mentioned is again is a problem. Often, busy shopping areas in urban or suburban areas will not be good for public restrooms. Indoor malls have public restrooms, but many malls are dying. Strip malls often don't have public restrooms at all, so that's a problem area for sure 😢.

Jacqueline Stolz

He's said for years that if Dawkins was more mystically minded he could have been Carl Jung because memes and archetypes are similar. I think he's trying to bring him into the fold.

Will

i'm an american and chris' story about the fire poker holder and shoveling coal is so fucking cartoonishly irish to me, that made me laugh my ass off i had a wood fired stove as a kid and loved melting snow on it, stoves are fun when you're a kid

Soapy Dishwater

Melbourne sounds so civilized! 😀. Spoken as someone in the US

Nancy Hale

35 mins in. Why did Peterson do this interview? Does he think he can convert viewers? Convert Alex? For money? Because he thinks he and Dawkins will create a knowledge synthesis (dare I say sense making)? He likes Alex and wants to do him a solid?

Adam Sher

I wonder if Matt has yet encountered in travels one of the few examples of truly public restrooms in the US: public rest areas along interstate highways? They’re often attractively designed and landscaped, funded by individual states. Since they intend to serve long distance travelers and truckers, they don’t have the same stigma as public facilities in cities, which get perceived as attracting “undesirable” people.

Nancy Hale

Chris’ description of the separate hot & cold taps brings back memories of an apartment I had in California. The building dated from the 1940s. I moved out in late 1990s. Pain in the arse but put up with it because of affordability & fantastic location at the beach.

Nancy Hale

Sorry that was a misunderstanding. I don't expect private businesses to cater to homeless people. I was talking about free bathrooms provided by local councils. We have tonnes of them. In fact there are like at least 3 public toilet blocks within about 5 minutes walk of me because we have them in almost every suburban park, and we have parks every few streets. We also have them at train stations and around any shopping strips. So it removes the pressure from private businesses I guess.

Emma

This one sparked joy

Jake Kortum

Great episode!

Robert Andrews

Great episode boys!!

Julie

Yes, very true there should be more help for unhoused and / or addicted people in so many ways, although what I was referring to in my post was mostly bathrooms of businesses are locked down, and I'm not sure I blame businesses specifically for not being more progressive on that issue. I feel like one huge difference in the US is that we have much less public transportation, where I think people would often fine available bathrooms in other countries. So this is another place where the US becomes a double loser is that transportation is more expensive and less accessible, as are bathrooms in public spaces. Plus it contributes to climate change so triple loss actually. And many people in the US never go to other countries, or at least not until they're older and more set in their ways, so they never even know what they're missing, or what we could have 😢

Jacqueline Stolz

🤣

Jacqueline Stolz

Honestly, it’s the fault of modern Christianity of forcing the idea of an all-loving God upon an average Near Eastern Deity whose texts don’t really make that case at all. If you have the chance, try to read Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy. It’s fun!

Brice F

By the way, learning about the Cain and Abel story is what first turned me against the idea of the Judeo-Christian God as morally good. It never made sense to me why an all mighty being would create conflict by favoring one brother over the other.

Linda Sears

Matt, I think one reason we are so bad at having public restrooms here is because we hate houseless / poor people and see them as people who failed, not people who were failed : ( The irony is we all suffer with less and less places to pee, sit, or hang out in non-commercial spaces. Super digging your US observations, was dying at the inconsistent and dated taps. ALL TRUE!

Monica B.

In Yorkshire, there are still two taps - one scold, the other cold

Jonathan Southern

Seems to me this obsession with dragon slaying as a prism to understand all scientific endeavour is fundamental to the narrative undergirding his climate science denial - he gets quite venemous when he explains that the climate science orthodoxy is composed of virtue signalling would-be heroes trying to save us and that their motivation for producing "alarmist" climate science, beyond sweet sweet grant money, is to build a bigger dragon for them to have "slain". He's so obsessed with this prism of science I think maybe he's incapable of interrogating any science topic rationally any longer. He's going to be fitting it into this childish paradigm in the dumbest ways

Jonathan Swayze

Several things clunked into place there

John S Durst

I feel like a privileged elite. I grew up in the seventies, and we had indoor gas central heat and electric ac. Meanwhile, little folks in Ireland were shoveling coal with their freezing bare hands! I learned a long time ago that Cain may have represented those who were agricultural, while Abel represented the Jews, who were nomadic herders. I figured the story’s purpose was to explain why it was ok to take over an area. That’s probably wrong, but it makes for an interesting interpretation.

Linda Sears

Exactly. Saint Augustine, he of the dreaded original sin doctrine, taught philosophy in Milan before he converted to Christianity. Persian Manichaeism was a huge influence on him as was Plotinus (a Platonist inspired philosopher). Another influence on early Christianity was the Roman Mithra cult, which had its origins in Zoroastrianism from Persia.

Linda Sears

Big grocery stores also have bathrooms.

Linda Sears

Yep! Algebra, alchemy, alcohol, and algorithm are all Arabic words. The last is a bastardizing of a mathematician’s last name. My favorite Arabic scientist is al Haytham because he revolutionized the field of optics, made cool insights into astronomy, and is considered the first person to do the scientific method.

Linda Sears

I enjoyed this one, well done guys. One of my gran's worst memories was of her carrying coal outside in the cold when she was 12, and her thinking that it wasn't right for her to be doing this. Oh and FYI - not important but just a point of fact - Rowan Willams is a former Archbishop of Canterbury. The current guy is Justin Welby, but he has just recently resigned because of child sexual abuse in the church under his watch.

DJ Wearing

Regarding the taps in the 70s and 80s where you have one cold and one scorching hot tap, you’re suppose to fill the sink and wash your hands there.

Saksaas

🤣 the coal hole and emptying the pit under the grate. even other people in the UK look at you like you’re nuts when you say as a child you had to light the fire early in the morning to get to chimney breast water tank started, and climbing under the big radiator with a match to light the gas.

Joanna Mulvaney

Wow classic communist libs giving fentanyl addicts safe spaces, probably easier to indoctrinate them into playing transgressive gender games in their altered state. NOT MY 🇺🇸 AMERICA 🇺🇸 (/s)

D

It was known as a 'back boiler'. We had one that was then converted to work with Gas. It was still working when we moved in 2007.

Nina Davies

Why doesn’t anyone just say to Peterson - Look, we get it … you’ve got an audience that you need to keep and you have to keep talking shit for dollars ?

Richard De Val

I just saw a movie about an Irish coalman... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqwn5Y_Y4xs. Very good.

Jacob_3BP

In a scenario of humans finding and killing dragons to take their treasure, is the human not more like a predator (or parasite rather)? I think it's crucial to understand how important this is...

Jacob_3BP

And I’ve still got 2 months more of different motels and hotels to deal with!

Guruspod 2

Yeah I think with JBP it’s a deep belief in how the world works. The fundamental nature of reality is psyche - metaphor and symbolism - observable events are like epiphenomenal. So I think his stance is internally coherent, just totally mad

Guruspod 2

I think Chris said something about Sci-fi with intelligent rabbits. Watership Down and Tales from Watership Down are almost exactly this, with rabbit (Lapine) language, culture, religion. There's a whole mythology. It's great. I loved it as a kid and my 10 year old daughter loved it. Highly recommended.

Randy

I didn’t shovel coal, but I was the primary wood hauler and stacker until I was 18. My parents don’t have central heating, they STILL heat their house with ONLY a wood stove 🔥

Lillie

Came here to say the same, having just learned it from the plumbing book I read because I was irritated by not really understanding how things really work. Middle age going great here. Apparently, there's also a more elaborate design of single tap which prevents contamination even if the hot supply comes from a tank. (AIUI this will become more common again as heat pumps are rolled out, so there's probably some misinformation that can be stitched together about the WEF poisoning us all.)

Philip Grant

Regarding the most important issue raised during opening banter, I recently found this explanation to be enlightening having grown up in England but then finding foreigners complain when visiting my homeland. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/HfHgUu_8KgA?si=vkkNp0lAn9GH11RT

Sean Atkinson

Public toilets: Rep. Ireland has appalling policy about public toilets. A city executive planner told me the council in the 20 century (90s? Dunno) decided to get rid of public toilets with the idea of driving people into engaging with local businesses; they’d be more motivated to go in and buy something if they could use the loo. There was in this an ‘understanding’ with the businesses that they’d let people use the loo without having to buy anything. Anyway, that doesn’t seem to have been communicated since, because loads of businesses have ‘customer use only’. So, it seems the follow-up plan is just to let people go wherever a Garda (cop) won’t see them. This does work, to be fair, because so few Garda are around

Sean Power

I'm old and also shoveled coal.

Rufus Evans

But I have known people IRL who are not as verbose as this (they probably want to be) but they have the same compulsion to make absolutely EVERYTHING into a debate/argument and they were also highly self satisfied and narcissistic

Emma

You know, in the past I thought JP's whole 'jelly that doesn't want to be nailed to the ceiling' vibe in response to questions about religion was his way to try and keep both progressive modern Christians AND fundamentalist biblical literalist Christians happy at the same time. But now I'm wondering if it's not something else as well. Like a bizzare compulsion to be disagreeable in the most show off way possible! It's just so odd.

Emma

Loved the coal chat! Fellow westie here-we had a walk-in coal shed-one side of it was coal and the other storage. I friggin HATED that thing 😂 we didn’t get central heating/radiators until 1989.

Dr Marti McAuley

MAttrix (TM) with the quote of the day on Mr/Dr’s Book: ‘It’s such lazy, speculative wank, isn’t it?’

john statham

Matt, have you encountered my new favorite hotel shower puzzle, the one where the knobs/valves are on opposite end of the tub from the spout where the water comes out? 😛 The delay between adjusting the knobs and the change in the water temp ….maddening

Kgar

I wasn't expecting plumbing chat on Decoding the Gurus. In the UK, originally there would be a storage tank on customer premises which fed a boiler which supplied hot water. Authorities didn't want water from the storage tank making its way back into the mains supply so didn't allow water to be mixed in the pipes. Thus the separate hot and cold taps. Nowadays, most houses will have a condensing boiler fed directly from the mains supply instead of a storage tank and with this arrangement they can have mixer taps.

Duncan

My main issue with Jordan's Cain and Abel response is the obfuscation of what the question against it is levied with. The suggestion isn't that Cain and Abel don't exist as archetypes or aren't based on very real things that have happened in society/humanity i.e, character/personal dynamics etc, that makes complete sense. If you read the Bible through that lens, as Jordan often portrays it leaning heavily on it as symbolism, a lot of it does have a relevance within our existence. Naturally, they are stories written by human beings, so there will be a resonance with us within those stories - but the question as to whether they existed or not is essentially asking whether or not you truly believe in the bible and God etc, which underpins your epistemology and ethics that you use to push your world view and policy decisions, that's why it isn't a silly question to me. It might sound childish in its bare form but the centre of its origin is challenging his/their fundamental understanding of right and wrong, a right and wrong he pushes continuously via his content as categorical, as do the people who follow these belief systems. When I reference Santa, as we often do, casually and whimsically, we are aware of it as a cultural symbol and we speak in a way that feels like it has a sense of realness but we know that Santa doesn't exist nor does it define world ethical decisions. (spoiler) Just like arguing that Raskolnikov is an equivalent to Cain and Abel makes sense from an archetypal standpoint but I don't use Crime and Punishment for justification of world policy, history revisionism, invalidating schools of science etc, it's conflation and obfuscation to avoid the obvious nature of the question. You could have a room of people saying "No Jordan, we do actually understand it, you're just not acknowledging it" and he'd say "No it's so complex nobody could possibly-" okay Jordan, okay, time to switch off the lights and lock up. PS, Also, why is Jordan the one who is vouchsafed with this intellect to claim we don't understand these things and they are so complex? What knowledge does somebody need to have to be aware that we don't understand it that apparently nobody else has access to but him? Must be nice.

Liam

There are literally dozens of us!

Christopher Kavanagh

I just got back from a trip, my hotel room had one of those mixer taps with the thing you pull to switch between the different shower heads and fine, it's fancy, but why is it on the other side of the shower? Now I'm all cold when I have to walk over to change temperature. I miss the days when the maid would just pour more hot water into the bath when you asked.

Jack

But that's the whole point. It's cruel and also bad for everyone to lock homeless people and druggies out of public restrooms because then what option do they have but to do their business behind a tree or something and leave used needles lying around, making the environment worse for everyone. Australian public restrooms often cater to those unfortunate people by providing free sanitary products and needle disposal bins in the stalls. Plus we have some public medically supervised safe injecting rooms so if people r going to do it anyway they can do it more safely.

Emma

Chris, I also shovelled coal from the bunker into a bucket to take indoors. It seems bizarrely antiquated now, but it can’t have been earlier than 1990.

Kung fu fan

Lol small complaint, but I feel like public parks in the US ARE free? Especially regular parks in urban areas like where Matt was visiting (I believe some National Parks charge). Also, urban bathrooms are often locked down with the stated reason being drug users or (sadly) keeping unhoused people out, but I believe bathrooms in the biggest Canadian cities are too. I lived in Japan and South Korea and visited many other Asian countries and I didn't really feel like things like Museums were noticably more free there than in the US, but maybe I'm just not observant lol

Jacqueline Stolz

Again in furious agreement with Matt and Chris. JP seems to be almost completely ignorant of history other than European history. Other ancient civilisations like the Greeks and Egyptism did a great job of developing their maths and medicine and engineering and primitive astronomy from scratch. The Egyptians for instance had a very advanced understanding of maths because they needed it for their incredible buildings. And the ancient Romans were disecting animals to teach medical students about anatomy. I think where Europeans had the advantage over say the Egyptians is we could build on the advances of other advanced civilians instead of having to start from scratch and invent things like writing. Also I have recently been learning about how the ancient Christians were borrowing from the Greek philosophers in developing their Christian theology. Like JPs favourite bible verse: John 1v1 - "In the beginning was the word (logos) ..." was inspired by Platoism.

Emma

Matt you can just go in places (cafe's, bars, stores) and ask to use the restroom. Explain you're traveling from Australia and you will get hospitality. People will love your accent.

Sam D.

Eric Weinstein was the original “Feynman Negative” type. But Jordan fits perfectly too!

Ben Godek

Listening to Jordan is like listening to nails on the chalkboard - he is championing western science and believing in the supernatural at the same time . How did such a dunderhead get so far ??? I have interacted with coal 😍

Jill

Who knew the thing that unites people across the ideological spectrum would be the hate of Peterson waffling on.

Cameron Buff

A cartoon about shower control systems: https://condenaststore.com/featured/your-friends-shower-ellis-rosen.html

brianshmrian

Also (@ Jordan Peterson) as a scientist, I don’t believe that the facts of nature that scientist try to learn are inherently good. They just are. Assigning a value judgement to them seems kinda teleological to me and that isn’t a scientific way of thinking. And, Europe was not the only place from which science emerged. For example, there are a number of Islamic scholars who described pieces of what we now call the theory of evolution literal centuries before Darwin did. Not to mention their contribution to mathematics.

KT

I never feel more stupid than when I am in a hotel trying to figure out how to make the shower work. Or just if I’m showering at a friend’s house. To say that every shower/bath mechanism is different isn’t even an exaggeration. Even at fancy hotels I feel like I’m being asked to solve a difficult puzzle. Welcome to our hell, Matt :( Grocery stores (especially the big chains) are a reliable place to find a decent, clean public bathroom if you travel the USA btw

KT

Jordan whips up the most gourmet of Word Salad

James Lucas

Peterson stresses me out. I want Matt and Chris to debate him. Although, I doubt that he would acknowledge his vibe based approach.

Shane Partington

UK taps have a separate hot and cold because they used to have different sources - cold would come from the mains and hot would come from a heated storage tank (fed by the mains). Because the onsite tank could have water sitting in it for long periods of time, it wasn't safe for drinking or anything to do with consumption and so it needed to not mix!

Charles Coatsworth

Can confirm Australian cities like Melbourne have very good public amenities. Public toilets are generally clean and well provisioned with toilet paper and soap and sometimes even free sanitary products for homeless people. We also have water fountains with inbuilt dog watering stations everywhere. Melbourne takes v good care of our public spaces.

Emma

Yes! US taps are as illogical as their paper sizes, measurement systems, date formatting, temp scale......

Nick Gilpin

stunning!

Brice F

The fact that it's even plausible...

Randy

I think JBP read the title to Carl Sagan’s “The Dragons of Eden” without turning even a single page when he references “a book he read a while back.” I might be wrong, but I also might not be wrong

Brice F

First

YellowDreams


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