Well that was interesting..
For those who don't have 2 hours, Peterson defines (I am going to use the word loosely because Peterson does not talk coherently) truth as what is advantageous for our survival. So for instance our knowledge about smallpox might be true now, but if we synthesize smallpox and destroy humanity, that knowledge was not true (or it was only partially true, or a limited truth, or some other undefined term). This view of truth is one Peterson believes he finds in Nietzsche, and he thinks it is connected to an evolutionary understanding of life. No coherent argument was given for the later.
Sam Harris is very kind to Peterson and keeps prodding him with examples and illustrations of the problems of that view.. it is as if Sam Harris is thinking that Peterson can't really believe what he is saying and it is only a matter of defining certain words the same way and Peterson will accept that, say, the truth of the propositions "101 is prime" or "E=mc^2" does not depend on what happens 100 years from now. That never happens...
Whenever Peterson got bogged down with the obvious problems about this view, he launches into a random tangent, often just changing the illustration Sam Harris presented to suit his needs. If Sam Harris finally makes him confront an obvious problem with this view Peterson exclaims: "That's just a microexample!". All the while that happens Peterson seems insistent on cramming as many long words into his sentences as possible which just makes it impossible to parse if those words are supposed to do something technical or are just there to look pretty; my money is on pretty.
Obviously on this definition of truth there is room for God since Peterson just have to say that scientific materialism is not good for our survival and presto, there is a God. Fortunately, they didn't get to that gerbil of an argument.
What I think was most shocking was how poorly Petersons idea of truth was thought out. What does advantageous to our survival really mean? What is the definition of a microexample (vs. a macroexample)? Are the various words he uses (partial truth, truth, full truth, fully true, accurate, in agreement with reality, etc.) well-defined or just word-salad? (the interview suggests the later).
What I thought was interesting is that Petersons claim to fame is to misread a recent law in Canada and now believes it "forces him to use made up pronouns" such as "zir" about students (that is not true but Peterson seems completely unable to understand that). This has launched him onto a youtube crusade, bankrolled by thousands of Patreon dollars, where he sternly lectures us for hours about the evils of quite mundane demands put upon him by his employer.
What he fights against here is relativism, marxism and postmodernism a whole lot of other things which he believe will destroy society and all that is somehow connected to that law.
It is interesting that Peterson himself believes a variant of postmodern claptrap (what is true today is not true tomorrow if it turned out to be bad for you) and is on a crusade against another variant of postmodern claptrap (that a man can be a woman the idea pleases him). Is there some kind of projection going on here?
What I wished Sam Harris had asked him about is if the noun-stuff could be true (as in, it could be true a man was really a woman) if that idea helped him survive for some contingent reason. According to Petersons definition of truth that would very much seem to be the case and so his entire argument about pronouns revolves around what is really best for the students and not about biology. That is, if the male students who believed they were females got laid more the would actually be right.
I should start a patreon account!
