Jordan B Peterson Notes

I think I agree with you

So there's Newtonian truth. The scientific truth. Where nothing else matters. The kind of truth that doesn't even need the universe for it to "exist". It can easily be expressed as a single digit.

Then there's the other kind of truth that JBP was talking about. It is a meta-super-superset of Newtonian truth. It's a multi-dimensional recursive schrodinger's cat kind of truth. This truth cannot be expressed as a single digit, because once you introduce the digit, you must bring with it the whole history of digits and the reason why you're even thinking about digits. But. It does contain Newtonian truths. It can be though of as a spectrum.. ffffuckkkk.... I already feel pain inside my skull.. I'm done trying to understand or articulate it.. You can literally lose your sanity if you think about it too much.

The most confusing thing is that JBP is calling it "Truth", whereas it should be called "Banana" or something. I mean, it should be given it's own name. The same way Sam's "Spirituality" doesn't mean what most people think "spirituality" means, which makes it difficult to argue about it.

Which is why they got stuck. Sam was asking JBP to explain his "Supertruth" as a Newtonian truth. Which isn't possible, because JBP's truth is a superset of Newtonian truth, and once you strip it down to the level of Newtonian truth, it's not Supertruth anymore, and it's not possible to argue for it without bringing in a bunch of other stuff (e.g. morality) which to Sam, seemed to be off-topic.

So I think it would be better if Sam let Jordan continue into the morality zone, and then, go back and look at the issue of truths again.

/r/samharris Thread